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 What exactly is spiritual direction?
 
 10/26/2006 10:47:17 PM
User is offlineaphekah
16 posts


What exactly is spiritual direction?
 (United Kingdom)
What exactly is spiritual direction? I have heard about it a bit, and I know some people who are going through it right now, but I am not sure they even know exactly what it is! Could someone explain to me what it entails, and how it is different than counseling?
 10/27/2006 4:24:44 PM
User is offlinepwilliams
3 posts


Re: What exactly is spiritual direction?
 (United States)
Perhaps a working definition would be helpful to begin with. There are many ways spiritual direction has been defined. Various authors tend to have slightly different focuses. A definition that many authors have used comes from the contemporary book "The Practice of Spiritual Direction" by Williams A. Barry and Williams A. Connoly. They define spiritual direction as:

"help given by one Christian to another which enables that person to pay attention to God's personal communication to him or her, to respond to this personally communicating God, to grow in intimacy with this God, and to live out the consequences of the relationship. The focus of this type of spiritual direction is on experience, not ideas, and specifically on religious experience, i.e., any experience of the mysterious Other whom we call God."

This definition needs to be teased out to get a fuller understanding but it is a start. Does anybody else have other definitions or insight?
 10/30/2006 1:09:29 AM
User is offlineBCOwen
7 posts


Re: What exactly is spiritual direction?
 (United States)

In considering the difference between counseling and spiritual direction, I offer the following thoughts:

Counseling focuses primarily on the resolution of problems (depression, anxiety, addictions, etc.)  Spiritual direction focuses on one’s experience of God and how to grow in relationship with him.  As a result of this focus, prayer is central to spiritual direction, focusing on the directee’s past experience of God in prayer and during the session itself.

There are some similarities.  Both Christian therapists and spiritual directors dwell in the same “interior landscape” of the person who sits before them.  Both practice empathic listening and both offer emotional awareness and attentiveness.  Both listen to problems and circumstances.  But therapists focus primarily on the client and his or her pathology.  God is present as the two individuals meet to help the client grow and resolve problems.  In contrast, spiritual directors attend to the directee’s relationship with God.  The primary encounter in spiritual direction is not between the director and directee, but between the directee and God.  The spiritual director is present while this relationship is occurring, serving as an extra set of eyes and ears to help the directee discern, obey, and follow the voice of the Holy Spirit.

 
 10/30/2006 6:14:33 AM
User is offlineKevinK
6 posts


Re: What exactly is spiritual direction?
 (United States)
Is anyone else thinking these days that much of what we use to help us, ie. counseling and spiritual direction, is the product of a church where Christian community and friendship is broken? In other words, these valuable and effective relationships (counseling and direction) are only necessary in a society where community is lost for the sake of the individual--where you have to pay somebody to listen to you talk for an hour just to have them repeat back to you what they heard, give observatioins about what God might be up to, and pray for you? Is this not simply the church in it's essense? If we had real community and functionally healthy churches, wouldn't the formalized relationship of counseling and direction be obsolete? I thank God these exist, but isn't there a larger problem? These are good bandages that help stop the bleeding, but what about healing the wound? I'm not suggesting we do away with these. I'm reacting to the obsurdity that S.D. is becoming in vogue these days and has a certain sense of novelty. This is indicative that we have not been providing something needed for a long time. Perhaps we have not been the spiritual friends that we could have been. The question becomes, how do we engender a community where this type of relationship is normal. I think we are on our way, but the S.D. or counselor shouldn't be the only ones in the church listening to the Holy Spirit and sharing what they've heard.
 11/3/2006 11:20:52 PM
User is offlinelinasong
2 posts


Re: What exactly is spiritual direction?
 (N/A)
Kevin, I do appreciate your thoughts.  Well, as a Spiritual Director in training and highly probable a clinical psychologist to be, I would agree with you and that more than those of us who are professionally trained in these fields should offer listening and care.  And yes, IDEALLY, the Church is meant to be a caring community.  Now just because it's an ideal does not mean, we should throw our hands up in the air because it will be impossible to reach that goal this end of eternity.  Ok, so yes, let's keep that "goal" or rather vision in focus.  And the problem has been identified: we're far from our vision.  Now what?  How can we contructively move forward?  More importantly How are we being lead forward?  It does seem that Spiritual Direction is being reintroduced to Christendom.  I like you Kevin, embrace the good, but also walk cautiously/wisely as possible.  IF the good of Spiritual Direction (ex: cultivating a deeper prayer life, listening to the Holy Spirit) on a whole, is only relegated to formal spiritual direction, that is problematic.  I don't see that being the intent of Spiritual Directors.  Because some of these disciplines of silence/solitude etc. haven't been embraced as much, there is a need to be a bit more intentional to help move the current current.  Ideally, yes, all members of the body, the Church, would be able to love one another well.  I suppose one person can't fix the whole problem.  And problem fixing really isn't the point, but my point is that we can walk forward to the invitations given to us.  And we are a part of the body.  Those called to spiritual direction, contribute an essential element of deeply caring and walking alongside to another.  I don't see Spiritual Direction as a bandage, per se.  IF we think it IS the solution and we make large divisions between the Directors and those less qualified etc, perhaps it would play that role of covering a larger problem.  BUT if we hold spiritual direction as ONE OF the ways to grow in relationship with God, I wholeheartedly embrace it.  I'm no where near it (and yes that was probably a false humility statement), but what comes to mind is Jesus, ultimate savior, greatest lover, healer came to serve, not tower His position over us or use us to remind himself just how important He is.  That's my vision in whatever capacity I'm given to help another in my community.  If as a Spiritual Director, then so am called to serve the one before me.  An invitation to growth of the truth of myself encountering the truth of God while being invited into the other's growth of the truth of self encountering the truth of God.   
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