What is a spiritual director?
A spiritual director is a privileged witness in the spiritual unfolding of another person. The focus is on the relationship between the “directee” and God, rather than on the relationship between the director and directee.
What happens in spiritual direction?
People experience and respond to God/Spirit, or the Divine, in different ways. This is influenced in part by their life experience, their personality, and their cultural and religious backgrounds. The focus of spiritual direction is discerning the movement of the Spirit in the life of the “directee.”
Spiritual directors listen carefully to the unfolding of their directees’ lives to help them discern how the Divine is leading them. A director and directee have regular one-on-one meetings (usually about 45 Min, once a month) to more deeply explore the directee’s spiritual journey.
The term spiritual direction has a long, rich history, and it is still used today, even though the practice of spiritual direction consists much more of “holy listening,” rather than “direction” in the sense of offering guidance or direct advice.
One of these methods is the one carried out by the Missionaries Servants of the Word; the content they share is structured into nine Bible courses.
Perhaps, what is characteristic of these courses is that they are biblical. The divine truths of revelation are what constitute these Bible courses.
We are aware of the danger that exists when transmitting the Word of God: presenting Revelation in parts or based on personal interpretation. This is the error sects make today which continues to pollute populations all over the world.
For divine revelation to be authentic, we must not only transmit what is written in the Bible, but also share what the Tradition of the Church, founded by Christ, conserves.
That is why Tradition is abundantly present in these courses. The Bible cannot be presented without drawing from Tradition, just like Tradition cannot be presented without the Bible. Divine revelation is transmitted through the Bible and Tradition.
Spiritual direction explores a deeper relationship with the spiritual aspect of being human. Simply put, spiritual direction is helping people tell their sacred stories everyday. Spiritual direction has emerged in many contexts using language specific to particular cultural and spiritual traditions. Describing spiritual direction requires putting words to a process of fostering a transcendent experience that lies beyond all names and yet the experience longs to be articulated and made concrete in everyday living. It is easier to describe what spiritual direction does than what spiritual direction is. Spiritual direction helps us learn how to live in peace, with compassion, promoting justice, as humble servants of that which lies beyond all names.
Lets dive a little deeper
As a process of mutual discovery and disclosure,
spiritual direction opens new horizons
of self-knowledge, compassion, and deep oneness
with the Spirit of God.
The Spirit we have received is God’s Spirit,
helping us recognize
the gifts God has given us (I Cor. 2:12)
SPIRITUAL direction is almost as old as religious tradition, yet, in our time, it is experiencing a re-birth that invites us to pay attention to its newness, as well as to its history, its present as well as its past, its contemporary rejuvenation, and the needs our society brings to it. It is at once an orientation, a relationship and a process, the coming together of two Christians to reflect on the experience of God in the life of one of them, with the intention of discerning the invitation that is being extended and the response called for.
Ideally, the one seeking assistance wants to maintain an orientation (which Sandra Schneiders calls a direction) (1) toward God and toward growth. This means that the Spirit is Director, and that direction refers to the guidance of the Spirit. Calling the human director “soul friend” or “spiritual companion” helps clarify this, but since the term “director,” as applied to the human helper, has such a long history in Catholic tradition, I am using it here to mean the person who brings a special competence to the relationship.
The goal of direction is to deepen the relationship between God and the directee, and, in the process, for the directee to come to a greater knowledge of both self and God, in an increasing interiority. The directee encounters God in prayer, and shares with her or his director both that prayer experience and the way it affects daily life and thought, allowing the relationship between director and directee to be the place where one’s life and prayer are examined, and where acceptance, affirmation, support and challenge encourage the directee’s spiritual growth.
To describe spiritual direction as a process is to emphasize its dynamic, developmental nature. Something happens. Something changes. There is a growth and becoming. One enters direction with a certain element of risk, because it means opening oneself to learning what God wants, being ready to let go of whatever hinders growth, and dying to parts of oneself that may be cherished. It is freely submitting oneself to God’s action, and trust in God’s loving will. A fundamental choice for what God wills — or at least a desire for such a choice — seems essential for direction to be fruitful.
THE GOD WHO DIRECTS
God, who is the primary director, speaks in many ways. We are surrounded by God, immersed as in an ocean. At the same time, God is also in us, in our bodies, our consciousness and unconsciousness, and in our deepest center. God is intimately present to each of us, and a relationship develops as we begin to pay attention to that Presence. Sometimes we don’t recognize God, or know how to name the experience. There is in each of us an eros for union, a basic human drive which may be channeled into lesser (never fully satisfactory) desires, but it consistently moves us to reach out for the “more than” what we experience. Usually a decision to seek spiritual direction comes out of an awareness of a relationship with God and a desire to deepen it. The person feels an invitation, however subtle and unclear, that has a persistent, recurrent strength, and finally leads to seeking help in the journey.
God’s relationship with every soul is unique. For Christians, God’s self-communication may come through Christ, through creation, through the events of one’s life, or directly, within the soul. Scripture becomes a living word for us when we spend time with it. At other times, God speaks in a rose or a river, and being present to them is to be open to the Word. Perhaps even more often, we hear God speak in the reality of our lives. Paying attention to my life, or to nature, or to the word of scripture, all share a common kind of awareness. This “paying attention” is a way of being open to God’s constant reaching out to us. It is contemplation; it is response to God’s continual attentiveness to us.
There are times when God speaks from within our very selves. Dreams and images from the unconscious can also be words of God. There are often times when I experience a word or feeling that wells up from my unconscious, and these words or feelings have been important ways of my being led. This gives me a deep respect for the struggles of others to hear God in their deepest center, or to grapple with dreams and symbols, to discern God’s mysterious presence there.
Because we come to know this God of mystery in so many ways, and because we can easily fool ourselves, it is wise to share the experience of contemplating the Word with a director who helps in the process of discerning what is being spoken. Our relationship with God is within a community, and it is part of the work of the Church to help us to experience our relationship with God in the context of broader relationships. No one has travelled our particular journey, but because of our own life experience, we are able to give support to one another.
DIRECTEE
The directee has either experienced God in her or his life, or at least desires that experience. Even in cases where a particular problem is the immediate cause of seeking help, the choice of spiritual direction for that help is an expression of faith that God is acting in the person’s life, and will reveal the way, and that another human being can aid that revelation. The directee needs to be open and trusting, i.e., to have the stance of a learner. One does not know the outcome, but comes in search of what life and prayer will reveal as God’s will for them. The trust required is trust in the God always and forever present who gives us life and leads us through our own history. It includes as well, trust in oneself and in the director, with the understanding that oneself and one’s life is the arena in which God acts for us, that others also mediate God to us, and that it is the one Spirit who, in us and in the other, is seeking to be revealed.
Phil, Kay and Alice were just such open seekers. Phil was almost forty when he was abruptly transferred by his religious congregation from a comfortable, rewarding teaching position and a compatible community to begin graduate studies in another city. He appreciated the chance to study, but was devastated by his loneliness and by the surprising new sense of darkness that he encountered in prayer. Kay was an enthusiastic young novice, eager to give herself to prayer and study, and to whatever God’s will offered her, striving to do her best at everything, especially prayer and becoming a religious. Alice was a middle-aged, successful wife, mother, and career woman. Her crowded life left room for little else, and yet she wanted very much to learn to pray with the peace and satisfaction she remembered from her younger years. We will return to these three searchers, as we look more closely at the process of spiritual direction.
DIRECTOR
Brian McDermott has described Jesus as a parable of God’s acceptance. He saw this in the prayer of forgiveness, where Christ died totally accepting those who rejected him. This act was possible for him because the acceptance he experienced in the depth of his being was complete and unconditional. He received all that he was from a constantly giving Divine Other, and his whole being was completely and continually accepted by his Father. This absolute acceptance of himself allowed him to offer acceptance in turn to those who had not found it elsewhere: the guilty, the rejected, the self-doubting, the sinner, the failure:
The worth that the creature has as God’s good creature and which secretly is known by the creature, but in a distorted, self-centered manner, is liberated in an initial way as the freely offered word of acceptance works its way into the guilty person’s consciousness. (2)
This is a model for a spiritual director: Jesus could communicate to others what he had received. When I experience myself as totally accepted by God, I can offer acceptance to a directee. When I am loved, unconditionally, I can love that way.
Jean LaPlace speaks of being confident enough in the secret zone of oneself to impart confidence in the other. He describes the depth the relationship must reach, to awaken the power of self-revelation, and he stresses the importance of the director’s own ability to be herself or himself in the relationship, warm without engulfing, trusting without anticipating, knowing one’s own limits and strengths, ensuring openness to any sharing that may come from the other’s depths. (3) My trust in the other’s power to discover God in themselves and in their lives, can only be genuine when I have experienced that power in myself, and I convey that trust by giving them an attentiveness based on that conviction.
This suggests that the director be a person of prayer and experience, knowing and being comfortable with self, accepting both gifts and failings. Having faced one’s own sin and shadow enables one to help another face darkness without judging them. To be in touch with and able to identify feelings is also necessary, as is being able to stay with tears, helplessness, anger, sadness, and fear.
