A predictable phenomenon happens to many spiritual directors: they turn into functional atheists. I know because I’ve been there. I know because I’ve been working with spiritual directors for over 20 years. And here’s the pattern I’ve seen:
We want to be helpful. We want to be effective. We work hard to listen deeply. We speak carefully. We want to be liked. The ego feeds off all this wanting and falls into a kind of tunnel vision.
While in this tunnel, and with all the efforting that comes with it, we miss the intuitions, feelings, and thoughts that subtly arise from our depths.
With all our strong wanting, we drown out the still, small voice of the Divine.
It’s so easy for us to forget, in the midst of our genuine desire to be helpful spiritual guides, that we are not working alone.
Functional atheism arises in that moment when I feel the weight of “it’s all up to me.”
Functional atheism is the condition of working alone. And when we work alone, we get tired!
What turns this whole hard-working ship around is remembering this:
There are three parties involved in a spiritual direction session: The client, you, AND the Divine.
When we see ourselves functioning in this way, we are functioning in a dynamic, interactive web. And, we receive important information from each of these three sources:
We pick up cues from the words, expressions, and energy of the client.
We are attuned to the wisdom of our body, our higher heart, and our higher mind. Seemingly out of nowhere, we get hunches from these information channels.
We experience sensations, emotions, and thoughts that are guided by a Higher Source. These are subtle, powerful intuitions.
Presence is the condition in which we are open to and receiving input from all three of these channels.
And, when intentionally attune to the Spirit in a session, we plug into the highest and most powerful channel of information.
Here’s a video presentation where I offer some reflections on why we get stuck with clients, and on the power of aligning with the Spirit. I just re-watched it. It’s starts out slow, but hang in there - it gets better as it goes along.
My reminder to you is that you don’t have to work hard in your sessions. Trust your client. Trust the guidance of Grace. Trust yourself. And go with the FLOW.
There’s a wonderful ease that kicks in for us when we are aligned to self, the client, and the Spirit in a spiritual direction session.
My next post and video will explore the quirky topic of why and how we should be more sassy in our sessions. Curious? Stay tuned…
In the meantime, I hope you spend some time with this video and share it with your colleagues. I’d also really appreciate your subscribing to our YouTube channel.
Also, I’d love to hear from you. Really, I would! You can email me through my contact form.
