Fénelon on the Christian Who Is Too Self-Aware
⏱ 10 min read
Your introspection has become its own problem, and you cannot stop watching yourself. The faith taught you to examine the heart, and you have — and now the examining has become a second weather system, running underneath every prayer, every conversation, every quiet moment that was supposed to be rest. The watching is the loudest sound in the room. François Fénelon, in Spiritual Progress, wrote whole letters for the soul who had come to him with this exact complaint: that her honest attempt at the interior life had collapsed into a kind of perpetual self-surveillance, and that the surveillance was now standing between her and the God she was trying to be honest with. The Everspring Prayer Journal for Women carries this same gentle re-orientation into a daily companion — a small page designed for the Christian who needs, finally, to be doing less inner-looking and more upward-looking.
Fénelon, the seventeenth-century French archbishop whose private letters of direction became the volume the English-speaking world calls Spiritual Progress, lived in a religious culture that prized self-examination almost above any other discipline. He was not against examination. He was against the kind of examination that turns the soul into its own object of attention, and the God she is supposed to be seeking into a kind of audience for her introspective performance. His pastoral concern, in letter after letter, was the same. You are looking too much at yourself. You will not see God by looking harder at the place He is not. The cure for too much self examination, in Fénelon’s reading, is not the abandonment of attention. It is the redirection of attention — from the self the watching has been circling, to the God the watching has been hiding.
The first passage — the watchfulness that is full of self
Fénelon, in Spiritual Progress, named the difference between two kinds of inner watching with a clarity the over-examined soul most needs to hear.
“If, then, we never lost sight of the presence of God, we should never cease to watch, and always with a simple, lovely, quiet and disinterested vigilance; while, on the other hand, the watchfulness which is the result of a desire to be assured of our state, is harsh, restless, and full of self.”
— François Fénelon, Spiritual Progress
Read it once. Then read it again, slowly.
The line worth keeping near the page is the watchfulness which is the result of a desire to be assured of our state, is harsh, restless, and full of self. Fénelon is not describing the discipline of confession. He is naming the chronic interior surveillance — the small ongoing checking of the inner state, the perpetual inquiry about whether you are doing well enough spiritually, the quiet hope that the next bit of self-knowledge will let you finally relax. The over-examined soul has mistaken that surveillance for godliness. Fénelon names it precisely. Harsh. Restless. Full of self. It is not the spiritual practice she thought it was. It is the obstacle to the practice she has been trying to reach.
The contrast he draws is between two opposite directions of attention. The first kind of vigilance — simple, lovely, quiet, disinterested — is the watching that has its eye on God. The second kind — harsh, restless, full of self — is the watching that has its eye on the self. The over-examined Christian has been giving her attention to the second and calling it the first. The whole of Fénelon’s spiritual direction, on the question of too much self examination, is the slow rotation from the second back to the first. The cure is not less attention. The cure is attention to a different object. The eye that has been on you needs, gently, to be lifted off you.
(For the wider context this letter sits inside, the sibling article what Fénelon meant by simplicity of heart names the un-divided interior the watched soul is finally free to release herself into, Fénelon on recollection — the forgotten Christian practice walks the small daily gathering that holds the un-watching, and why Fénelon said silence is the Christian’s hardest discipline names the silence the over-examining mind has been refusing to enter.)
The somatic — for the body that has been watched too
Pause here. The interior surveillance has not lived only in the mind. It has lived in the small muscles of the upper back, in the slight forward lean of the head, in the held breath that comes from being constantly observed — even when the observer is yourself. The body has been a stage as well as a temple. The over-examined soul has, for years, treated her own body as a thing to be monitored — am I sitting right, am I breathing right, am I praying with the right posture. The watching has had a physical residue, and the residue is what is sitting in your shoulders right now.
Sit somewhere quiet. Both feet flat against the floor. Let the shoulders lower by a small amount — not by trying to relax them, but by stopping the small ongoing effort of holding them up. Let the jaw release. Take one slow inhale, not deep, only slow, and let the breath travel down to the lower belly. On the exhale, let the breath go all the way out, slower than the inhale, until the next breath arrives unobserved.
The phrase that matters there is unobserved. The next breath comes whether you watch it or not. The over-examined body has been watching its own breath the way the over-examined soul has been watching her own interior. The slow exhale is the body’s literal practice of being un-watched. The breath knows what to do. The soul does too. The cure for too much self examination is not the absence of attention. It is the slow trust that the One who is watching is competent, and you are allowed, finally, to stop watching alongside Him.
The second passage — the sweet and peaceful dependence
Fénelon, a few letters later in Spiritual Progress, named the posture that replaces the surveillance — and named, again with that characteristic gentleness, what makes the replacement possible.
“We must make use of all that Christian vigilance so much recommended by our Lord; raise our hearts to God in the simple view of faith, and dwell in sweet and peaceful dependence upon the Spirit of grace, as the only means of our safety and strength.”
— François Fénelon, Spiritual Progress
Read it twice. Slowly.
The line worth keeping near the page is dwell in sweet and peaceful dependence upon the Spirit of grace. Fénelon is not telling the over-examined Christian to stop being vigilant. He is rotating the vigilance away from herself and toward the simple view of faith — the upward look that the self-watching has been crowding out. The replacement for too much self examination is not less seriousness about God. It is more dependence on Him for the keeping of the soul Fénelon’s reader has been trying, exhaustingly, to keep by herself.
Dwell in sweet and peaceful dependence. The verb is dwell — not visit, not touch in for a moment, but live there. The over-examined soul has been visiting the dependence and going back to the surveillance. Fénelon is asking for the dependence to become the address. Sweet and peaceful — two adjectives the surveillance does not produce and never will. The surveillance is harsh and restless, by Fénelon’s earlier diagnosis. The dependence is sweet and peaceful. You can tell the two postures apart by what they feel like in the chest. The over-examination tightens. The dependence loosens. The Everspring Prayer Journal for Women holds this exact rotation across one hundred and forty days — a short passage, a small page, room for the un-anxious sentence, with no place anywhere on the page for the inner audit that has been running underneath your prayer life for too long.
The only means of our safety and strength. This is the sentence the over-examined Christian most needs. The surveillance has been her attempted means of safety. She has watched herself so closely because she has been afraid that if she stopped watching, she would drift. Fénelon names the truth gently. The surveillance was never the means of safety. Dependence is. The Spirit of grace is the keeper. The watching the soul has been doing has been redundant — and worse than redundant, because it has been displacing the only watching that actually keeps her.
The third passage — losing sight of self in order to love God
Fénelon, writing to a soul who could not see how to stop watching herself, gave the sentence that names what the rotation finally costs and finally gives.
“We must renounce, forget and forever lose sight of self, take part with Thee and shine, O God, against ourselves and ours; have no longer any will, glory or peace, but thine only; in a word, we must love Thee without loving self except in and for Thee.”
— François Fénelon, Spiritual Progress
Read it once at speed. Then read it again, slowly.
The line worth keeping near the page is renounce, forget and forever lose sight of self. The verbs are stacked deliberately. Renounce — the active turning away. Forget — the slow ceasing to call the self to mind. Lose sight of — the steady dropping out of the field of vision. The over-examined Christian has been doing the opposite of all three. She has been retaining, remembering, holding the self in constant sight. Fénelon is naming, with characteristic gentleness, that the cure for too much self examination is not the better-managed self examination. It is the slow forgetting of the self entirely, in favour of the God the self-attention has been hiding.
Love Thee without loving self except in and for Thee. This is the destination. The over-examined Christian has been loving herself badly — anxiously, surveillantly, with the constant inner audit that has masqueraded as love. Fénelon offers a different relationship to the self. Love self in and for Thee. The self is not abandoned. It is repositioned. It becomes the small daily creature that is loved because God loves her, not the constant project that has to earn the love through ever more careful examination. The relief in that sentence, slowly, undoes years of the chronic inner surveillance. You are allowed to stop watching. He is watching. The watching He does is competent, kind, and continuous, and you are finally, after all these years, allowed to rest inside it.
What the slow practice will do over a year
If you walk the question of too much self examination with Fénelon’s three passages as your quiet companion for the next year, the surveillance will not disappear in a week. The inner audit has been running for too long to stop suddenly. What will change is your relationship to it. You will start to notice, in real time, when the harsh restless watchfulness is back on the stage, and you will, slowly, learn the small rotation — the simple view of faith, the upward look, the dwell in sweet and peaceful dependence — that drops the surveillance out of the room. By the end of a year, the eye that has been on you will be on Him more often than not. The dependence will be the address, not the visit. The looking less at yourself, in order to see God, will become the small daily practice the over-examined soul has been thirsting for.
(For the bridge into the closely related question of how the Spirit Himself does the prayer the over-examined mind cannot, the Holy Spirit’s role in prayer — Andrew Murray’s plain answer walks the same rotation from a different angle, and Andrew Murray on the inner chamber and the outer life names the small room where the un-watching actually happens.)
We plan, in time, to reprint Fénelon’s letters through Everspring Press, in a slow modern edition for the Christian whose introspection has worn her out, and who is ready, finally, to let it go.
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A daily home for the un-watching practice
The slow practice we just walked has its 140-day form in Prayer Journal for Women. Each evening, a short passage and room for the honest sentence — a small daily page built for the Christian who needs to be doing less inner-looking and more upward-looking, the rotation Fénelon spent his letters quietly teaching.
The Everspring Prayer Journal for Women carries Fénelon’s slow vocabulary — the harsh restless watchfulness full of self, the sweet and peaceful dependence on the Spirit of grace, the renounce-forget-and-lose-sight-of-self — into a daily companion for the over-examined soul who is ready, finally, to look less at herself in order to see God.
