Ignatius of Loyola's contribution is a method, not a doctrine: treat what happens inside you during prayer as data, note it, and read the pattern over time. Consolation, in his definition, increases faith, hope and love and moves outward; desolation darkens, turns you in on yourself and toward hopelessness. The rules that follow are practical and slightly ruthless — never revise a decision while in desolation, because the decision made in that state carries the state's bias; do not congratulate yourself in consolation, because it will pass; test any strong movement by where it actually leads over weeks. This apparatus is why Jesuit spiritual direction became a portable technology used far outside Catholicism, including by people with no interest in the theology. It is the closest the tradition comes to an empirical discipline of the interior life.