"Tend only to the birth in you and you will find all goodness and all consolation, all delight, all being, and all truth. Reject it and you reject goodness and blessing. What comes to you in this birth brings with it pure being and blessing. But what you seek or love outside of this birth will come to nothing, no matter what you will or where you will it" (Meister Eckhart).
Spiritual direction is an opportunity to explore your relationship with God at work in the midst of your life. It offers a time set aside to be attentive to the Divine with the help of a trained professional. Your spiritual director serves as a companion on your life journey for a time, helping you grow spiritually and in deeper relationship with your Creator. Through conversation, storytelling, and reflection on your life experience, your spiritual director forms a safe and supportive relationship with you to help foster openness and responsiveness to God’s presence and initiatives in your life.
Spiritual direction benefits persons of all faith traditions as well as those who may not claim any particular religious tradition but still seek to explore the deeper meaning of spirituality in their lives. Spiritual direction takes place in confidential one-on-one or group settings. You meet with your spiritual director typically once a month; however, this may vary according to individual needs.
Generally, spiritual direction patrons are seeking to:
- Find deeper meaning in their life
- Grow in their relationship with God or a Higher Power or Humanistic Values
- More consciously integrate spirituality into their everyday life
- Deepen their contemplative prayer life or test out new spiritual practices
- Uncover God’s calls and will in their life
- Explore who they are in relationship to the Sacred
- Discern and follow their vocational callings and live with a greater sense of purpose and mission
There are numerous promises of authentic spiritual growth that a solid spiritual formation relationship can deliver. These many benefits help patrons progress along their spiritual paths according to their needs. Your spiritual director will have these objectives in mind when working with you in the coming months or years:
- To guide in two primary spiritual questions: What must I do to dwell with God eternally? How do I discern my God-given destiny during my life here on earth?
- To discern the will of God each day
- To foster wholeness, maturity, and sanctity
- To confront and challenge a person to develop fully one’s potential and recognize one's limits
- To affirm and build self-respect and self-acceptance
- To help make present God’s healing graces
- To recognize and transform one’s positive and negative shadows
- To become attain self-knowledge and become aware of one’s masks and self-deceptions
- To overcome unhealthy tendencies that hamper authentic spiritual growth
- To live a simpler lifestyle, cutting back on one’s needs and desires
- To be more generous in responding to God’s movements of grace
- To be more open to the guidance of the Holy Spirit
- To learn how to pray better and attain a constant union of love between God and oneself
- To handle successfully the different crises of one’s life
- To make oneself accountable to another human being on a regular basis
- To maintain a balance and avoid fanaticism, extremism, exaggeration
- To give encouragement and hope during periods of darkness or personal failure
- To conquer the influence of the unredeemed world on one’s life
- To learn to live more detached from the lure to attain too much power, pleasure, or possessions
- To learn how to use sacred literature in prayer and to personalize God’s revealed self in one’s own life
- To overcome the seven deadly sins manifested in a person's life
- To become the saint God created and destined one to be
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