What Gets in the Way? Recognizing What Pulls Me Away from God
For the past few weeks, we have been listening for the familiar ways God draws near. We have noticed patterns of grace. We have followed their echoes. We have wondered what happens within us when we recognize the God we are coming to know.
There is something beautiful about realizing that relationship has history. Just as someone who loves us deeply learns how to reach us, God knows how to touch the particular person we are. This begs another question: if I am learning to recognize what draws me toward God, eventually I also have to ask: What gets in the way?
What interferes with my ability to receive that touch?
Fear.
Shame.
Guilt.
Comparison.
Busyness.
Pressure.
Perfectionism.
Self-doubt.
The need for certainty.
The need for approval.
The list could become quite long. And yet, I don’t think any one of these words automatically tells us that the false spirit is at work. That would make discernment much too easy, and much less interesting.
What Happened in the Garden?
When I think about what gets in the way of our relationship with God, I often return to the garden in Genesis. Something happens within that original relationship - suddenly there is awareness of vulnerability, and immediately, there is fear, then hiding, and inevitably shame, which, when provoked by the false spirit, will always end in guilt that demands blame. She did it. He did it.
Something has changed in the interior garden. The God who had been present with them has not stopped being God. But suddenly the human response is to cover, hide, protect, and turn away. I think this can teach us about our own Garden Within. We know vulnerability and fear. We know what it is to cover something because we are ashamed, and what it is to blame ourselves or someone else because guilt is difficult to bear. And we certainly know what it is to hide.
The question is not whether these movements ever appear within us. Of course they do. The question is what happens next.
The Wound Is Not the False Spirit
This distinction matters deeply to me. The wound itself is not the false spirit. The painful places within us are not evil; they are part of the lives we have actually lived.
Last week, I wrote about recognizing that one of my own patterns of grace touches a place in me that once desperately needed someone to speak for me. God did not create that wound, but God can meet me there. God can heal me there, and only God can allow grace to flow through a place that once held tremendous pain. But I have to be willing to let God near it, and that is not always easy.
I must be completely honest here - sometimes I would rather protect the wound. This lends itself to many ways the false spirit can intervene:
Comparison tells me that someone else had it worse, so perhaps mine doesn’t matter.
Shame tells me I should be over it by now.
Self-doubt tells me I am making too much of it.
Fear simply says: Don’t go there.
None of this internal dialogue or emotional overload makes the wound bad. But the movements within the drowning voice echoing in the depths of my being can keep me from letting God in.
This is one way we can begin to understand what Ignatian spirituality calls the false spirit. If that language is difficult for you, begin somewhere simpler: What is keeping me away from God?
Shame and Guilt: Mirror or Window?
Shame and guilt are two emotions that we experience deeply and, like the palette of emotions we encounter, are especially interesting because they are, as all emotions, neither good nor bad. I have experienced both in ways that drew me toward God.
Not long ago, I wasn’t sleeping well. My daughter asked me something, and I snapped at her and walked away. Later that day, I thought: Man, that was nasty. I felt it within me. Guilt, and even a little shame, penetrated my heart and gut. But there was also something else. It almost felt like God, as a dear friend, saying, "Really? Did you say that?"
And I could almost chuckle because... "Yes. Yes, I did."
There was challenge in that moment, but there was also fondness. I wasn’t being crushed by what I had done. I was being helped to see it, and what I saw invited me somewhere - back toward my daughter.
I apologized. I explained what had happened without excusing how I had treated her. And the relationship was rekindled. That experience has given me an image I return to often in discernment:
Am I looking in a mirror, or am I looking through a window?
When Shame Becomes a Mirror
When shame or guilt is being used in a way that pulls me away from God, it can become a mirror. Everything turns back toward me:
You shouldn’t have done that.
What is wrong with you?
You should know better.
You always do this.
And around and around I go. There is nowhere to move, no relationship to repair, no invitation to receive mercy, and absolutely no freedom. Just me, staring at me, condemning me.
That is very different from what happened after I snapped at my daughter. God did not leave me staring into the mirror. God opened a window, and through it was another person - a relationship that required reconciliation. This invitation gently, sweetly, and kindly opened me to the possibility of apology, healing, and freedom. The guilt did not disappear by pretending I had done nothing wrong. It became useful because it led somewhere.
God's challenge does not leave me staring at myself. It opens a window toward relationship.
Who Is on the Other Side of the Window?
This may be one of the questions I find most helpful when something difficult begins working on me. Where is this leading?
Not every difficult interior movement is the false spirit. God challenges me, sometimes inviting me toward places I would rather avoid and asking me to become vulnerable. And often I resist! But when I recognize God’s movement within that challenge, it feels relational. I can sense kindness and invitation within my affective interior. There is a sense that whatever I am being shown is being revealed because God wants me to be freer.
The false spirit does something different. It isolates and turns me endlessly toward myself. It may use something true, even something I genuinely need to address, but instead of opening a path toward relationship, it closes the room around me. And that is why discernment cannot simply become: This feels bad, so it isn’t God.
Sometimes what God reveals is difficult. The better question may be: Where is this movement taking me?
Toward hiding or toward being known?
Toward endless self-condemnation or toward reconciliation?
Toward isolation or toward relationship?
Toward greater freedom to love, or toward becoming increasingly trapped within myself?
An Embodied Pause: Mirror or Window?
Find a quiet place and allow yourself to settle. Notice something that has been working on you lately. Perhaps it is guilt, shame, fear, comparison, pressure, self-doubt, or something you cannot quite name. Don’t try to solve it. Simply notice.
Now imagine yourself holding that movement before God.
Does it feel like a mirror that keeps turning you back toward yourself? Or might there be a window somewhere?
If there is a window, don’t rush through it. Ask: God, what are You inviting me to see?
And then: Who or what is on the other side?
Stay there long enough to listen.
Journaling with God
What has been working on me lately, and where does it seem to be leading me?
When I experience guilt or shame, does it become a mirror of self-condemnation or a window toward relationship, repair, or freedom?
Is there a wounded place I have been protecting from God? What might it mean simply to allow God to be with me there?
A Closing Prayer
God who knows my Garden Within, help me notice what draws me toward You, and what causes me to hide. When something difficult rises within me, help me recognize whether it closes me in or opens a window toward greater freedom. Give me courage to let You near what I have tried to protect. Amen.
From the garden within me to the garden within you, where God awaits,
Kimi
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