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SOULFRIENDING
/ SPIRITUAL GUIDANCE
In every religious tradition, there is the practice, in some
form, of spiritual guidance being offered by those who have
been on the spiritual path for some time to those starting
out at a later time. Another way to put this is to say that
a spiritual guide, or soulfriend (to use the beautiful Celtic
term), accompanies the spiritual seeker or pilgrim on her
or his path, a path with which the soulfriend is already to
some extent familiar.
And where is the path going or leading? Very simply, the following
of the path takes journeyers home: home to themselves, home
to the body, home to their place in the world, home to God.
Home and exile are recurrent themes in the spiritual journey,
which is often better understood as the following of a spiral
or labyrinthine path rather than a linear one. God, of course,
is always present with us, whether we are in some form of
exile or “at home.” But the longterm following
of the path, in the experience of countless seekers through
the ages, leads in
a more conscious sense to
God, “who is our home,” as William Wordsworth
says in “Intimations of Immortality.” A beautiful
recent book by Fiona Gardner, Journeying Home (London:
Darton, Longman and Todd, 2004), explores the spiritual journey
using this metaphor of home as its lead image.
Spiritual guidance, often also called spiritual direction,
is neither counselling (which is crisis-oriented: crisis resolved,
counselling ends), nor psychotherapy (most often oriented
to pathology, at least in the first instance). Rather, it
is a form of spiritual practice in which guide and guided
together seek the unity of past, future and present in the
life of the one guided. The term “direction” doesn’t
mean that the director issues directives or gives directions
on how to live; it means that together, director and directee
seek the ongoing direction of the directee’s life before
God.
I’ve been doing soulfriending now for twenty-five years,
and have more time for it now that I am no longer teaching
full time. Typically, I will see someone once a month (more
often at the beginning) for about an hour.
Once we decide mutually that there is a “fit”
between us, we begin to travel together in the realms of the
spiritual, which the way I use the word is equivalent to the
human, and includes every dimension of life, not simply what
is sometimes call the “inner” life.
I don't charge a fee as such, but I ask my directees to make
an hour-for-hour donation after each session (an hour of their
income for an hour of my time). Currently, I ask that this
donation be made to the Building Bridges Project (see the
Building Bridges page on my website for further information),
via the Multifaith Action Society, which has accepted Building
Bridges as an affiliated program.
Once directees have agreed that our soulfriending relationship
will be an ongoing one, they make a cheque out to the
Multifaith Action Society, and mail it to the Society at #5
- 305 West 41st Avenue, Vancouver, BC V5Y 2S5. They
then receive an income-tax receipt from the society in response
to their donation.
If you wish to explore this with me, please phone me or send
me an email. If I have room in my practice when you contact
me, we will arrange to meet and begin to explore the possibility
of working together. If I don’t have room, I will refer
you to another spiritual director.
“You speak in my heart and say, ‘Seek
my face.’ Your face, [God], will I seek” (Psalm
27.11).
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