Spiritual Direction
WHAT IS SPIRITUAL DIRECTION?
Spiritual Direction is a prayerful process in which two people share a journey of discovery about God and life. At LifeStreams, trained and accredited Spiritual Directors are available to facilitate your personal spiritual journey. In a safe and welcoming environment, the spiritual director will help you pay attention to your experiences of God, and help you reflect on and learn from your everyday life experiences. For many people, spiritual direction becomes a source of healing, nurture and fulfillment.
Spiritual Direction encourages you to explore a closer relationship with God. The sheer busyness of life can make it difficult to notice God's presence and action in our daily routines. Yet, at the deepest level, all of us long for a more conscious experience of God's nearness and love. Spiritual Direction can help attune us to God’s presence by encouraging us to reflect more deeply on the various experiences of daily life, bringing a contemplative perspective to even the most routine of events. In turn, we begin to discern God's presence and grace in all the world, including our own lives, and may come to realise that God's spirit is truly with us every day and everywhere. We discover that God has been waiting for us to seek this closer relationship.
Perhaps spiritual directors would be more accurately called ‘spiritual companions’ because spiritual direction is not at all about being ‘directed.’ It is much more about being encouraged to draw closer to God and being supported by a fellow traveller as you do so. Spiritual direction can resource you for this journey, this relationship, no matter whether you attend a church, a mosque, a synagogue, a temple or none of these. God seeks you wherever you are, and spiritual directors are found in all faith groups. Why Might I Explore Spiritual Direction?
Reasons for which you might find Spiritual Direction helpful include:
• To help explore and integrate spirituality into your own daily life
• To help identify, reflect on and trust your own experiences of God
• To augment your discernment as you make difficult choices
• To provide a space to share and reflect on your struggles, losses and disappointments
• To discover a safe place of encouragement and affirmation
• To nurture your growing relationship with God, self, others and creation
How Does Spiritual Direction Happen?
It is the privilege and responsibility of a Spiritual Director to journey with you as you deepen your relationship with God and reflect on the insights gained in this whole-of-life process. Spiritual direction usually takes the form of confidential one-on-one conversations with your Spiritual Director. Questions and comfortable silence tend to figure prominently in spiritual direction conversations! LifeStreams Spiritual Directors have extensive training and formation and are well practised in the art of Spiritual Direction. Spiritual Directors nurture their own spiritual life by engaging in ongoing education, confidential supervision and meeting regularly with their own Spiritual Director