Spiritual Direction: A Ministry of Listening
All that a true spiritual teacher really does is “second the motions” of the primal and ever present Holy Spirit.
Richard Rohr
Spiritual direction is a ministry of listening. A spiritual director asks the directee, “How is the Spirit moving in you today?” and listens for the response. The question may be posed directly in words, or implied in silence. The director’s listening involves a cultivated sensitivity to words and how they are said, to the feeling tone in themself and the directee, a paying attention to bodily sensations and cues.
In the Christian tradition, the one with which I am most familiar, when we say Spirit we typically mean the Holy Spirit. Throughout human history, people of many traditions and those with no religious tradition have sought to describe the Sacred Other. They might use words such as God, Allah, Yahweh, the Divine, the Holy, the Universe, Wisdom, Presence, and many other terms that convey a sense of the sacred.
Richard Rohr has said that a director’s work is to “second the motions” of the Holy Spirit, a turn of phrase that seems to have originated with John Wesley. Sometimes Spirit speaks to us and we are too close to the action or too inattentive to hear what it is saying. A third-party listener can be helpful in discerning what is there for us already.
What Spiritual Direction Is Not
If the words above point to what spiritual direction is, it is also important that both the director and the directee know what it is not. Spiritual direction is not pastoral counselling or psychological therapy, although there may be some elements in common. Both parties meet at an agreed place and time, usually sitting comfortably in chairs. The session is primarily about the directee, not the director. The directee often presents an issue which they find to be blocking their personal growth and well-being.
Training and Accountability
Both the therapist and the pastoral counsellor have post-graduate education. Training programs for spiritual directors vary, but are typically about two years in length and may involve study, spiritual practice, writing papers, and a supervised practicum. Spiritual director training is roughly equivalent to two-to-four courses at a Master’s level, but not a full degree. Therapists and pastoral counselors are accountable to professional accrediting bodies or are subject to other formal oversight. Spiritual directors may adhere to a set of guidelines for ethical conduct, but are not governed by a professional body.
Purpose and Goals
The practice of spiritual direction is not about solving the personal, psychological, or even spiritual problems of the directee. Spiritual directors listen and offer their perspectives and observations based on their formal training, spiritual practices, life experiences, and experience with other directees. It is not about finding solutions, but often help does come in unexpected ways.
Spiritual direction is also more than conversation between friends who have a mutual interest in spirituality. Such conversation can be enjoyable and provide a bit of transition at the beginning or end of a session. However, too much time spent here avoids the serious and joyous work of deep listening. It will usually be apparent in a session when the transition needs to take place.
Time and Space Set Aside
It is important to pay attention to place and time for a direction session. I usually meet directees at my home or, these days, on Zoom.
Regardless of the location, I have found it helpful to have a physical reminder of time and space set aside. I usually set out a spiral-shelled fossil that I use as a symbol of spiritual emergence and a candle as a reminder of the presence of Spirit. I have the directee sit in a relaxed position with their feet on the ground. After I light the candle, we spend a few moments consciously breathing together. I say a few words of invocation and we begin. I will either wait for the directee to say something, or I will ask a prompting question.
Meeting in a public place, such as a coffee shop, does not provide a good setting for spiritual direction. It’s impossible in such circumstances to begin the session with a ritual or to invite conscious breathing. The surroundings are too distracting and inhibiting to the free discussion of what may arise in the session. It violates the idea of time and space set aside solely for the session. That being said, I have had a couple of sessions where I sat with a directee on a park bench. That worked well enough, probably because a natural setting with relative privacy is better for direction than a crowded room.
“Is this ‘spiritual enough’?”
A question that I had to struggle with when I was first offering spiritual direction is, “What topics are ‘spiritual enough’?” I think that this arose out of my traditional religious background – you know, if we weren’t talking about God or Jesus or the Holy Spirit, it wasn’t really spiritual.
Topics that have come up with directees include: prayer and meditation practices, conflicts with a spouse and how that acts as a focus for conscious awareness of self and other, Enneagram personality traits such as perfectionism, procrastination, or withdrawing, science and religion and how these inform one’s spiritual journey, and how family health issues affect the directee.
Some questions that arose out of these sessions for me were: Am I really providing “spiritual direction” or just a sympathetic ear? Who gets to decide what these sessions are all about? Am I being “firm enough” to keep the discussion on track?
When I brought these questions to my supervisor during my training, he encouraged me not to worry too much about it and to rejoice in the fact that people were allowing me to participate in their inner journeys. This was a very fruitful insight for me. If it really is “spiritual direction”, then it really is not up to me to make it happen in a particular way.
Taking the Long View
I think it is also important to take the long view. What happens in one session is not everything that happens in my life or the directee’s life or even in our working relationship. If not much seems to be “accomplished” in a session (whatever that means), the time in that session may have been necessary to continue building the director/directee relationship by simply being together for a set-aside time. The trust built in this and other sessions might allow more movement in a future session or in some other part of the directee’s life. It may also be spiritually significant that the directee is just stuck for now and needs to let that be or to dig deep to find further inner resources.
A lesson from my teaching career is that the teacher learns as much or more than the student. The sessions with my own spiritual director have contributed greatly to my own growth over the years, but I also feel that offering spiritual direction to others has sharpened my senses and has developed my skills of listening and observation. True listening is a pretty rare thing and to give it is an unusually precious gift, one that multiplies its blessings the more it is shared.
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