Spiritual Exercises: Divine Love

I just finished week 4 of my spiritual retreat on the First Spiritual exercises. During this time, I was doing the retreat on inner peace in divine love. I have ups and downs in it.
The first week focused on 'remembering love' where I am repeatedly to look at my past experiences, my relationships, and just to dwell in those experiences of being loved. It helped a lot that I have done the spiritual autobiography or sacred history because it somewhat prevented me from going astray when walking down the memory lane. haha

Week two was centered on 'dwelling in love' wherein I contemplated on the love of God for me by imaginary prayer using the scriptures. My favorite has to be when the book made me join the last supper. I tried to pretend like the apostles, I dont know what will happen next but I knew about the passion of Christ, so that made me feel quite sad. there were times I darted my eyes away from Jesus when he spoke to me. it made me feel very uncomfortable and guilty. Then real life experiences came along and contextualize my spiritual experience: I was scammed around 4k when I bought something online. See, i've been saving money for this item (it's a pair of earphones that has no chords at all, and sits very well on your ears) because I wanted good earphones for my commute and exercise sessions. After i made my payment, the seller stopped responding to me. in my 15 years of online shopping, this is the first time I experienced this. I was sad for a few days because i thought to myself, "i was careful, i followed the rules, but this happened still." I was inconsolable by Curt until one day, I was so surprised to have received the earphones i wanted! it was from curt and he gave me his OWN pair of earphones. I couldnt stop crying because I felt so guilty that someone had to suffer the consequence for my own downfall (being scammed haha). No matter what he said, I felt really guilty that he had to resort to using a broken pair of old earphones because he gave me his new ones.

I know its probably not comparable to what Jesus really sacrificed for me, but I think the feelings I had were similar.
1. I experienced failure due to pursuing worldly desires. I was scammed for buying something I didnt really need. It was earthly and unnecessary. :(
2. Someone had to make the sacrifice to save me from the despair I was going through.
3. I am aware that I deserve to dwell in that despair because it is the consequence of my own wrongdoing
4. I feel guilty because the person willingly went through with it for me.

I wish I can say that I am totally transformed by the experience and by the exercises. Then I remembered to forgive myself and remember that there is a process, even for my transformation. What i did was, I acknowledged curt's sacrifice, used it for a few days, but I think i still somewhat sabotaged it and told him I didnt like the earbuds after all, so I kindly returned it to him. I know i do this too with God. I say no to his blessings because sometimes, it overwhelms me. I'm a work in progress and what i got from these experiences is that I finally recognized this problem! Now I can work on it. :D I may be changing, but God is constant. May pag asa pa ako.

Unfortunately, week 3 was extremely difficult for me. I think it requires higher-order thinking skills, like top tier level cognition. hahaha! Honestly, I think its because I have this internal working model of a 5 year old:

"God is in control, right? then why are bad things happening?"

You see, the 3rd week of the retreat talks about 'love at work' and it guides me in seeing how God's love (through the HS) is present around me. Don't get me wrong, I love being one with the creation and I admit that at times, it still takes my breath away being in awe with how much I feel God's presence in it. It's just that, hmm.. I think its hard to appreciate God's dwelling in creation when I am indoors. There is also this exercise where I contemplate on God's dwelling in me! oh boy... My sinfulness and my unresolved feelings of 'i dont deserve God nor his love' resides strongly in the inner depths of my being. So you can probably imagine.

Week 4 starts today. I am trying to be kind to myself by constantly reminding my brain that I dont need to master each step, I just need to keep going forward with my best efforts.