If we observe and reflect carefully on the results of psychotherapeutic counselling and healing in our own personal lives and in the lives of others who are close to us, we can easily come to the conclusion that healing of integration is never completely achieved in anyone. We can grow in self-acceptance and become freer from those psychic blocks that prevent us from engaging more fully in the flow of life. However, the primal scars embedded in our psyches from our own personal histories and from the damaging environments in which they took place usually remain with us. Most people who are "in touch" with themselves and have done psychological work need to keep acknowledging and disengaging themselves on different levels from the effects of past wounds as they pass through the vicissitudes of life.
On this side of eternity, there is something of an illusion with our desire for complete wholeness or functionality or fulfilment or integration. This truth was always known in the past. Perhaps it was more readily accepted because life was so limiting and harsh. Most people were primarily concerned with survival; but over the past three decades, the knowledge explosion has led us to desire greater control over our lives. Many of us have come to believe that, in time, with the correct professional help, we can achieve full-scale freedom from our dysfunctionalities. Our discovery of human rights on a political level is transformed on a psychological level into my individual right to feel whole.
In our present popular beliefs about healing, we have come to expect that we can fix ourselves up by taking enough time to nurture our psyches. There is a belief that if we do enough inner work:
"I can escape from this terrible feeling of not belonging...." or ... "This dark hole in my heart ... I feel so empty! I need it to be filled before I can be happy...." or ... "Perhaps now I can finally be rid of this crazy fear...." or ... "If I get in touch with my feelings more, express them fully and attend to them enough, they will ultimately reveal to me all I need to know so that I will be completely healed...."Yet the reality is that, in most instances, these primordial scars and dark holes created in our psyches in early years never completely heal or get filled up. If I experienced abandonment as a child, I continue to experience abandonment as an adult, even after inner work and healing, particularly at those times when stress activates my vulnerabilities. Healing does not remove the historical circumstances behind those feelings. What usually happens in the process of healing is that one comes to a point of being able to accept and comprehend what has been, and then, to move on as one continues to learn how to avoid some of its more crippling effects in daily living.
Let me use a metaphor from our computerized culture. Within every word processing program, there are levels of hidden instructions that operate the program and determine both what appears on the monitor and what is ultimately produced. These levels default to the preprogrammed instructions. When a person using the word processing program does not specify the format, the hidden default system takes over. For example, if you desire your text to be justified on both the left and the right side, but your default system is automatically set up for the left side only, then you must reprogram it for this change. Sometimes, when a mistake is made or the computer has a glitch or circumstances make you forget to reprogram the hidden commands, the default system automatically takes over. In such situations, you have to reprogram the default.
Similarly, our personal histories determine the automatic default system in our psyches. Often, when we are in particularly vulnerable situations, our psyches tend to use their more inappropriate automatic default programming to cope. At these times, they need to be reprogrammed. Psychotherapeutic counselling has made great strides in giving us tools and options to reprogram our default systems.
Challenge
And Risk In The "Quasi-Safe Zone"
As one journeys through life and hits rockier paths, one may go through
a period where one requires trained psychological help to manage the rough
and threatening terrain of one's deep conflicts. Then, after a certain
amount of relief from these unresolved conflicts or after a deeper awareness
and acceptance of the sources of one's personal oppression, one begins
to experience signs of hope: "Some day soon, I'll be able to move ahead
on my own." This may be the beginning of the quasi-safe zone before the
goal of therapy is reached. When the client approaches this quasi-safe
zone, she needs to begin to take more responsibility for herself. As she
experiences more and more integration, she must both ask and answer for
herself these two important questions:
- How long should I place the forward movement of my life "on hold" before I consider myself healed?
- How much healing do I need before I am healed?
But the risk is a also a risk. One can abort the healing process that was begun, or one can be caught by a narcissistic self-concern in the name of safety or in the name of the expectations ingested from our culture. Nevertheless, often a living spirituality can give sufficient strength to the person in this quasi-safe zone to take responsibility for oneself. As noted above, it is the mark of healthy psychological growth when our personal growth is blended with a realistic concern for the community beyond ourselves. Spiritual direction, with its context of meaning, can dispose the directee for the strength and courage to exercise realistically this concern for the common good. Through the development of our own personal spirituality, we are led to a God who calls us to serve others even while we are still broken.
Spirituality, emerging from the competent practice of spiritual direction, leads us to be persons fully alive by embracing, rather than trying to escape from or to do away with, all our brokenness. Spiritual wisdom teaches that this can only be achieved through God's help in letting go of our need to fix up ourselves. On this rests the whole doctrine of grace as a free gift from God which is foundational to all the work of spiritual guidance.
Reflecting
On The Paradigm From Which We Really Operate
Now, after showing how connected and yet how different spiritual direction
is from psychotherapeutic counselling, I attempt to illustrate that, in
spite of their differences, many spiritual directors in our present culture
are, in practice, "mainly doing psychology in a faith context." I suggest
that, even though we use the language of faith and we believe that God
is active, the model we may actually be using in spiritual direction may
not be very different from the one being used by psychotherapeutic counsellors.
Therefore, at this point, let us consider our assumptions and values behind
our practice of ongoing spiritual direction. When we use the language of
faith and foster spiritual growth in our directees, what paradigms are
we actually using?(14)
Common
Approaches Of Most Spiritual Directors
Before we pay attention to our underlying assumptions, let me name the
kinds of things that most spiritual directors do during each session when
they help others spiritually. I'm quite sure most readers, including yourself,
would acknowledge the following without too much disagreement. In spiritual
direction sessions, spiritual directors usually:
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Assumptions
Behind Our Common Practices
I think I am not far from the mark in articulating the following assumptions
which many of us have about our practice of spiritual direction:
a)
We usually deal with the "intra-personal" and interpersonal levels before
we move to the societal levels.(15) We
do this in each session, and we do this over a series of sessions in the
long term. Accordingly, we expect a sense of wholeness in directees before
we consider them able to embrace a call in the societal realm. This approach
with its corresponding expectations can be verified by reflecting on the
experiences of faith/support/prayer groups in our culture. In those groups,
the transition from interpersonal to societal presents an enormous hurdle.
b) Since the 1960s, we have become more and more aware of the influences of past emotional wounds. We have come to use many of the techniques available in our culture to deal with issues we all meet in spiritual direction. For example:
empathic listening skills, journaling, incest and sexual abuse studies, Enneagram and Myers-Briggs typological matrices, art therapy techniques, dream interpretation techniques, twelve-step technologies.
Through these techniques, along with counselling skills in a faith context and the use of meditation, many of us help directees deal with issues in such areas as:
mid-life transitions, incest and sexual abuse, inner child, grief recovery, relationships, aging, toxic shame, female and male empowerment, addiction, acceptance of one's humanity.
c) We take for granted that persons must feel good about themselves before they can respond to God in a healthy way. The phenomenon of interior healing within a faith context occupies more and more of our time with people who come for spiritual direction.
d) We take for granted that emotional readiness must precede encouragement for growth. Like other professionals, many of us are more or less skilled at waiting for a person to be ready before we propose a growth-producing question or a needed challenge. This means that we do a lot of listening and a lot of waiting, but very little teaching. We believe that spiritual health is linked intimately with emotional health. We take for granted that there is a true self which somehow is imbedded in a person's subjectivity. Thus, we believe that we must encourage the individual to come to one's own awareness and live according to one's personal true self.
In order to verify whether the assertions made in a) through d) above are some of your own assumptions, it may be helpful at this point to consider the following set of questions. From my viewpoint, these questions incorporate most of those themes which spiritual directors should deal with when engaging in their skill or art. In the light of the Venn diagram at the beginning of this chapter, these questions touch upon the kinds of themes spiritual directors would use if they were to operate from both B (common area) and A (differentiating area) sections. To verify these assumptions, reflect upon your own experiences of receiving spiritual direction; or focus on your own modus operandi in guiding others; or, if you prefer, reflect upon the ways that spiritual directors talk among themselves about practical issues of spiritual direction.
Some material for your study, reflection, discussion .....
The following 20 questions/comments are placed here to help you consider this question: What areas do spiritual directors usually explore in spiritual direction sessions? Obviously no two practitioners will explore issues through questions and comments in the same manner. The sentences below are merely suggestions. They represent the themes that spiritual directors might explore. Beside each focal area, estimate its frequency of use in spiritual direction sessions: (1) hardly ever; (2) occasionally; (3) often.
1. How did you feel about that?6. What Grace do you need now?
2. It seems to me that you have to learn to forgive yourself?
3. You seem to experience a lot of anger (shame/fear/embarrassment) around
that.... Try to express that to God.
4. You are learning not to take responsibility for everything ... learning not to live
up to your expected role! Another comment in this category might be: The way
you need to control things seems to be an issue here.
5. Go back in memory, relive the experience, and ask Jesus to come into
the scene.... Let your feelings surface and allow Jesus to deal with this memory.
7. Would you name that experience as Consolation or Desolation?
8. I hear that you are indeed experiencing Consolation, but is it like a drop of water
on a sponge or on a stone?
9. How does the quality of the Consolation you experienced this past week differ from
the Consolation which you received when you were praying over that such-and-such
issue the week before (or at some other point that is recognized as being significant)?
10. What is the social history that has given rise to that situation? How does our14. What mystery of Jesus' life are you being called to manifest in this situation?
present culture influence that situation?
11. In that situation, what is the influence of money? Who benefits? Who loses?
12. In that group (community/family), who exercises the real power?
13. What symbols (values/language/ideology) are used to legitimate this
situation? What existing invisible patterns or structures never get questioned in
the situation? What are the unwritten rules that allow this situation to take
place?
15. How does the manner in which you are putting so much effort into that project
harmonize with our belief that God's gift of grace is a free gift? How might our belief
that we are created and limited by time and space relate to your anger around the
such-and-such limitation you experience?
16. What is your operative theology and how does it harmonize with your stated theology
or belief about that?
17. What Christian belief does your experience illustrate (or call for)? Why?
18. If you were to consider the executive body of your church as representedThe purpose of this reflection is to show that the focal areas to which spiritual directors often attend are emotional and/or healing issues on the interpersonal level; far less frequently do they focus on areas that deal with social systems and societal awarenesses, or with theological-principle awarenesses, or with the technical language of the Exercises and discernment.
by the Samaritan woman at the well, how would Jesus respond to her?
What would "living water" be for that executive group? What would Jesus
say in the place of "go tell your husband"?
19. You experienced a great deal of healing during the past week by praying the
Lazarus story, particularly when you heard Jesus call you forth from
the tomb.... Now pray this again, and in your imagination, let the whole
situation in which you find yourself be Lazarus.... Wait in prayer until you
hear the voice of Jesus calling to that whole setting, "Lazarus, come forth!"
20. You described that business meeting very well and have shared your personal
evaluation. Was the group in Consolation or Desolation when such-and-such
was taking place? How did that meeting manifest the experience of the
Beatitudes?
- Focal areas 1 through 5 represent the psychodynamic perspectives and issues associated with the psychological level.
- Focal areas 6 through 9 are associated more with the explicit use of the technical language of the Spiritual Exercises and discernment.
- Focal areas 10 through 13 are associated with the social structures and the systemic environments that impinge on a directee's personal experience.
- Focal areas 14 through 17 are samples of theological reflection which make connections between theological truths and a directee's life experiences.
- Focal areas 18 through 20 focus on communal-societal perspectives that affect, and are affected by, a directee.
Where do our assumed approaches come from? In general, our assumptions emerge from a different way of experiencing and understanding our world. In western culture we have shifted from the classicist worldview(16) to a more developmental worldview. It is a shift from the realm of theory to the realm of experience -- from external ideals and conformity according to a fixed mode of understanding ourselves and our relationships with each other to a more developmental mode. This shift occurred throughout the western world during the two decades following the Second World War. In the Roman Church, this shift was stimulated by the Second Vatican Council. It has affected our images of self, work, Church, God, Jesus, etc. Our new horizon(17) has made a difference in the way we view ourselves, our directees, and the universe in which we live. Here is a partial listing of various aspects(18) that have resulted from this shift:
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| Truth is believed to be objectively known and absolute. It can be arrived at rationally. Objective truth is the measure of subjective experience. More importance is given to deductive learning and the application of principles to given situations. Stress is on the interior logical coherence of an explanation. | Truth is believed to be relative and dependent upon new data. Therefore, it is measured by experience. More importance is given to inductive learning from the data of experience. Stress is on statistics. |
| Life is understood in terms of fixed and permanent categories. | Life is understood developmentally and historically; life's meanings are affected by time and place. |
| God's revelation is given in a fixed way and can be believed and taught independently of cultural meanings. | God's revelation is through symbol and is conveyed with images and metaphors. |
| Decisions are made in secrecy and through hierarchical structures. | Decisions are made by participatory structures and more consensual approaches. |
| God's will concerns the exact means. | God's will primarily concerns our final goal, our salvation. We are responsible to discover the means. |
| We are to discover God's will which is already out there known. | We make God's will; we are responsible. There is need for discernment. |
| We make use of the things of creation for the purpose of attaining salvation. | We are co-creators with God within creation of which we are a part. |
| Moral decisions are made by applying principles in a deductive way. Morality can be determined in separation from spirituality. | Moral decisions are made by a coalescence of values with an honest regard for the principles involved when various principles conflict. Morality and spirituality are not separated. |
| Spirituality is understood primarily as a person's private affair with God. Interactions with the world are regulated by obedience within a context of charity and prudence. | Spirituality is understood as interpersonal and social. Charity comes before obedience. Conscience is key. |
For a long time before this shift took place, most articulated spiritualities distrusted feelings and the role of individual conscience. They emphasized an external, objective, and rationalistic understanding of the world. As a result of this shift, we needed to revisit the human experiences behind our spiritual and theological insights. We needed to understand each other and our world from a developmental perspective. With the stress on Cartesian clarity, with a theology rooted in rationalism, and with a loss of a sense of biblical symbol, we had no way of doing this except by using those instruments and methods that were easily available to us through our culture. Consequently, we spiritual directors absorbed the methodologies that were more accessible for us to attend to the interior subjective experiences of our directees and to develop a language to speak about them.
Language
of Pietism, Existentialism, and Psychology
The study and practice of psychology, so much a part of the culture at
the time of this shift, gave us important ways of attending to interior
experiences. Pietism complemented this by affording us a simple way to
speak the language of the heart with phrases and words coming from our
Christian heritage.(19)
The exaggerated use of psychology, which can be referred to as psychologism, makes the self an object to be fixed up -- that is, if I know myself enough, if I allow myself to enter into my own unconscious, I will ultimately be able to bring myself to wholeness. Psychologism pays attention to the past in terms of the psychic, structural and emotional development in one's personal history. Often it pays little or no attention to the structures of society in which that personal history has taken place and to the continued forces of injustice which these structures perpetuate in our psyches.(20) Furthermore, it pays no attention to the basic insight of Christianity that we are radically incapable of achieving our ultimate goals by our own efforts; we cannot save ourselves without the free gift of grace.
Pietism goes back to the reactionary times of the great theological debates after the Protestant Reformation when theology became abstruse and separated itself from the ordinary people. It has affected us in many different ways such as in Methodist- and Charismatic-type movements. It is a way of thinking and speaking about God's mystery from a more devotional and tender point of view. It can be uncritical in judgments about one's own life context, emphasizing one's personal, private, devotional experience in separation from one's societal experience.
The other factor that has influenced our methodologies in spiritual guidance is a kind of existentialism that has become an accepted part of our Western culture. During the past hundred years, this philosophy has emphasized the self as the centre of one's own activity and the self as the centre of its own meaning.
You can notice these influences in the multiplicity of ways we help directees attend to their deepest selves. We help them notice their interior experiences and bring these into their affective relationship with God. As we do this, we help them notice how these deeper feelings have been affected by their own personal histories. We spend many hours encouraging directees to be in touch with themselves, to find God within, and to discover ways they can grow in personal healing. Often directees come to us for spiritual direction precisely for such discovery and growth. I suspect that most of us spiritual directors seldom spend time with our directees analyzing how culturally induced is their expectation that personal wholeness is possible.
Danger
Of Fostering Reverse Perfectionism
Without such an analysis, we run the risk of perfectionism. Within the
classicist worldview, spiritual directors had to deal with external perfectionism
since growth in perfection was understood in terms of an objectively knowable
world. Directees within that frame of reference often dealt with exactness
in exercising religious practices, distractions in prayer, practices of
obedience, proof of one's goodness through external manifestations in good
works. Scrupulosity concerning the fulfilment of external rules was very
common. On the other hand, in a developmental worldview with its stress
on knowing the truth experientially and through one's own interiority,
we can communicate a reverse form of perfectionism:
- Knowing oneself thoroughly;
- Dealing with all of one's issues;
- Needing to be certain about the options that will bring about maximum personal fulfilment.
Individualism pays attention to "my personal good" before the common enterprise. Individualism holds as self-evident the desirability of fulfilment and the possibility of wholeness. Individualism believes that the common good of marriage, of community, of cooperative work, etc., rests on the attainment of these desires within each individual person. The striving for the achievement of these desires to be authentically whole easily leads spiritual directors into the trap of encouraging too much attention to a directee's uniqueness in the name of integration and wholeness, thus contributing to inappropriate individualism.(21)
Consequently, we should ask ourselves: "What paradigm do I use in my practice of prayer guidance?" I suggest that many of us directors mainly use a psychotherapeutic model. Because of our own very psychologically literate culture, we cannot help but stress the healing of integration of a psychological model. In our attempt to lead directees to greater freedom in becoming disciples of Jesus, we easily slip into those approaches culturally accessible to us.(22)
Some material for your study, reflection, discussion .....
1. Do you agree that we operate primarily with a psychotherapeutic paradigm in spiritual direction? If not, how would you name the paradigms we do use?2. Which of the following adult concerns in our society are/are not reflected and encouraged with the paradigm(s) we use:
3. With what classes of persons do we spend most of our time in the ministry of spiritual direction -- business persons? unemployed? blind people? prisoners? upper middle class? lower middle class?
- Political involvement;
- Relationship between the various experiences of life and our belief system or theology;
- Relationship between the editorial page of the daily newspaper and the Awareness Examen;
- Relationship between some public event and the Grace being sought;
- Actual involvement with the marginated.
Developing
A Spiritual Direction Model
In
The Light Of Its Proper Horizon
When a spiritual director helps his directee articulate and reflect upon her interior experiences from the perspective of her relationship with God, he implicitly uses insights and approaches from many fields of knowledge to help discern what is being expressed. The domain of spirituality, with its applications in various forms of spiritual guidance, is and needs to be interdisciplinary. Historically this was always so, especially in the days prior to the development of the scientific method and the specializations that subsequently followed.
By the twentieth century, spiritual direction was associated with that branch of theology known as "ascetical theology" which, in turn, was relegated (in the prevalent classicist worldview after the age of rationalism) to the understanding and categorizing of the different virtues, signs of holiness, and states of ordinary and mystical prayer. Consequently, by that time, spiritual guidance had little to do with human growth and development but a great deal to do with the monitoring and guiding of external behaviour. Attention to human growth issues has only been put back as an essential component of spiritual direction since the shift towards a more developmental worldview and the consequent need to rediscover, through experience, our personal relationship with God.
As we discussed earlier in this chapter, psychological literacy was very important in reclaiming the role of attending to experience when dealing with spirituality. I suggested, however, that, now, many directors use only a psychotherapeutic paradigm and do so unwittingly. I implied that, if this is so, it is not adequate. Human experience is much broader than the focus of the psychotherapeutic paradigm. Spirituality involves the totality of human experience since it embraces values, worldview, ultimate meaning, and personal relationships with other individuals, with the world, with the cosmos. One's spirituality affects and is affected by all these aspects. Therefore, we have to go beyond the psychotherapeutic aspects of our art and emphasize more explicitly the theological and `communal-societal' aspects. In other words, our model must make more explicit use of the context from which we operate.
Making
Explicit What Is Implicit
There are two essential aspects of our context that are part of our covenant
and implied contract in every session with our directees:
- 1. We expect that we will use gospel spirituality as a key value. In the Ignatian tradition, this is often mediated through the language and structures of the Exercises which present quite explicit ways of focusing the gospel.
- 2. Both director and directee should expect to operate from an adult paradigm of spirituality which, at this time in our history, should manifest the value of transcending oneself by working in the larger world to develop a realm of inclusivity and justice for all.
If we were not living in postmodern times, the psychotherapeutic model alone might be appropriate since our directees would have an explicit identity shared with the director and a community of others. In our postmodern situations with countless levels of pluralism even in the very supportive communities in which directees may participate, this lived identity can no longer be taken for granted.
An event, very symbolic of our situation, continues to intrigue me. It happened in the early 1980s when I was invited to facilitate the process by which three directors of a religious novitiate evaluated their formation program. At some point in the evaluation process, we began "to walk around" the issue of identity. We discussed the point that although the novices showed a great sophistication in their interpersonal relationships, they seemed to lack the basics of their Roman Catholic heritage. Then I made a comment: "Since the novices do not have a common training in the basic catechism and the accepted practices of their faith, wouldn't it be helpful if, as directors of the formation program, you were to teach and give certain guidelines concerning this basic area? For example, wouldn't it be wise, as an ascetical practice, that each novice make use of confession (Sacrament of Reconciliation) every three months or at least once during each liturgical season?" Well, they shot me down. They would not consider the value of establishing such a guideline! I believe they were actually using a psychotherapeutic paradigm for their judgements.
In our work of spiritual guidance, we default to the common denominator of the psychological literacy of our culture if we do not articulate explicitly our understanding of theology and the vision of our world that it implies. To move away from over-emphasizing the psychotherapeutic model, our context needs to be made explicit, not only in ourselves but even with our directees.(23)
Figure 24 illustrates the aspects of a model of spiritual direction that a trained, Ignatian, spiritual director in our culture should be using:
click here
b) The next circle represents the aspects of a spiritual director's immediate listening perspectives, many of which would be expected of an educated Christian adult in our present culture:
- Adult literacies such as the psychological, sociological, environmental;
- Appreciation and some understanding of how God has been working in his own life;
- Basic understanding of his own faith heritage with some appreciation and familiarity with the directee's faith heritage;
- Basic understanding of the themes, symbols and values of the whole bible and, particularly, of the New Testament.
- Methodology, dynamic, and theology of the Exercises (*);
- History of spirituality;
- Social analysis (*).
d) The fourth circle represents the level of `theological reflection' (*) which can generally only take place after data from the other circles has been gathered and somewhat understood.
I believe that all these perspectives should comprise the mental framework of a fully trained, Ignatian, spiritual director in our Western culture. However, at this point in time, as discussed above, such implicit use of these aspects at the back of a spiritual director's mind is not sufficient. I would suggest that, as a spiritual director listens to and helps his directee to explore her experiences of life and prayer, the perspectives indicated by an asterisk (*) need to be used in a more explicit way. Before I discuss and illustrate how these perspectives can be used to make our implicit context of spiritual direction more explicit, let me discuss what may appear to be a digression -- the importance of Theological Thinking in spiritual direction.
Endnotes for this second section
14. Consult Richard Rohr, "Why Does Psychology Always Win?" Sojourners (November 1991), pp.10-15.
15. By intra-personal, I mean the level of one's personal relationship with God, that is, between God and oneself. By interpersonal, I mean the level of one's relationship with one's companion human beings. Both these levels imply how one copes with life. By societal, I mean the level of how one acts in, and is affected by, the public sphere. The societal level would include the following aspects:
- Structures and systems which influence, and are influenced by, one's choices;
- Culture and worldview;
- Political stances -- global concerns such as the environment and unemployment.
16. David G. Creamer, GUIDES FOR THE JOURNEY: John MacMurray, Bernard Lonergan, James Fowler (Lanham: University Press of America, Inc., 1996). Chapter 5, "Lonergan's Understanding of Understanding," gives a summary of the classicist and modern worldviews. We are living in what social philosophers call postmodern times; many of us still live within the paradigm of the modern worldview. I call the time after the classicist worldview `developmental' (not "modern" as Lonergan did) -- a word that, for me, connotes the edges of the modern merging into the beginning edges of the postmodern. This word `developmental' includes the stress on experiential and historical consciousness, and it is also open to the emerging ecological consciousness. My belief is that Ignatius would be more at home with the developmental worldview and less at home with the classicist worldview. Though he was a person seeped in medieval culture, he developed the technology of reflecting on interior experience; this is more in keeping with the developmental worldview. (p.98ff)
Richard M. Gula, S.S., What Are They Saying About Moral Norms? (Ramsey: Paulist Press, 1982). Chapter 2, "The New Context for Moral Norms," contains a good basic philosophical explanation and a good visual schema.
17. If we were to use a visual metaphor to understand how different perspectives affect the way we understand ourselves in the universe, we might think of the different perspectives of viewing a landscape: such as from a valley, a mountain top, an airplane, a space ship. Different visual perspectives give us different horizons. We view the landscape differently when we have a different horizon. Church leaders took a long time to accept Galileo's discoveries about the planet revolving around the sun. With the new horizon of Galileo, they recognized that they would have to question what they understood and believed using the older horizon.
18. A very good summary of shifting worldviews is given by Catherine Harmer, Religious Life in the 21st Century (Mystic City: Twenty-Third Publications, 1995), Chapter 1, "The Paradigm Shifts: `A New Creation'," p.15ff.
19. For a further elaboration of this, consult Gregory Baum, Theology and Society (New York: Paulist Press, 1987), Chapter 15, "The Retrieval of Subjectivity," p.261ff.
20. An example of our unwitting absorption of the psychological model is the way many of us have psychologized the cultural and systemic discoveries of the feminist movement. As spiritual guides, we encourage the North American male to rediscover his own identity and we help empower the North American female to be her real self and assume her rightful position of mutuality in cooperation with her male counterpart. We do this as we encourage inner work by using the same technologies as any other therapist who is working solely from a psychological model -- inner child work, reflection of feelings, guided imagery. Yet the feminist movement advocates primarily a feminist analysis of the structures in which we live in order to change how power has been used in our society.
21. With a more classicist worldview, spiritual direction can easily fall into the trap of encouraging inattention to a directee's uniqueness in the name of given external structures.
22. William A. Barry, S.J., Spiritual Direction and the Encounter with God: A Theological Inquiry (New Jersey: Paulist Press, 1992). Chapter 3, "The Religious Dimension of Experience," shows how every human experience is multi-dimensional. The religious dimension, context, or awareness points to that experience as being religious. In spiritual direction, a person is helped specifically to notice that dimension (p.24ff). I take this for granted, but I am suggesting that this is not enough for spiritual direction in our postmodern world. When spiritual guides only help directees to notice the religious dimension in their experience, they may merely be using a psychological model without knowing it!
23.
We want to listen so well to the directee's experience (psychological literacy)
that we hesitate to make explicit the very gospel values which are implied
in our covenant relationship with the directee. After appropriate listening,
would it not be pertinent to make explicit connections with the gospel:
"The hurt you experience is real and we have discussed the issues around
it. How would you `love your enemy' here?" or "How does such-and- such
harmonize with `Blessed are you who suffer for justice's sake'?"
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