Knowing Yourself

"To insure an orderly and progressive growth in the spiritual life, we must know ourselves... This knowledge of our interior state is obtained through the examination of conscience.   The examen considered in this way becomes one of the most important exercises of the spiritual life, since its object is to help the soul to rid itself of everything that might obstruct or delay its journey to God...  the examination of conscience attains its end when the soul who has faithfully practiced this exercise can say to itself:  these are the inclinations which I must watch more carefully to avoid falling into sin;  these, the weak points which I must strengthen;  these are the virtues that I must practice most of all.  In this way the soul will be able to formulate practical, firm resolutions which will then become the special subject of its subsequent examinations." (p. 303)

"Instead of trying to seek our all the faults it has committed, the soul living an interior life...should fix its attention on the degree to which its faults have been voluntary, even in the case of slight imperfections, because it is these deliberate faults that present the greatest obstacle to spiritual progress and to union with God.  The soul must carefully investigate the cause of and the motive for these failures.  It must realize that while its exterior faults are of various kinds,...all of them, nevertheless, have one and the same cause, one common root which may be, for example, pride or sloth.  It is precisely against this root of our sins and imperfections that we must direct our efforts, not simply to lessen it by mortification, but rather to fight it directly by the increase of the opposite virtues in ourselves.  In other words, we must struggle against our dominant passion or fault;  this is very important, for by aiming to destroy evil at its root, we eliminate at the same time many actual faults." (p.304) from  Divine Intimacy