About Ignatian Spiritual Direction
What is it?
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As you read below, invite the Holy Spirit (or your sense of higher intelligence if you have trouble believing in a holy spirit) to highlight words or phrases to you. Spend some time contemplating those when you’ve finished. Give your analytical mind a rest. Memories may rise up. Thoughts may interfere (ignore those!) Some new connection may occur to you now, or in the coming days. God is lovingly and closely interested in you, so all you need to do is gaze back and listen.​​​​
God is in all things
Ignatian spirituality is centred around the belief that the divine can be found in all things. It is action-orientated but inner-directed, focused on self-awareness, and it is experiential, adapted to the needs of each person in SD by a trained facilitator. Core values are those of the Gospels: authenticity, integrity, courage, love, forgiveness, hope, healing, service to others and justice for all.
Generous
“Magis” is a latin word meaning “more” or “greater” and to St Ignatius of Loyola this disrupted the “satis” of being satisfied with “what is” (as was the young ruler in the Gospel of Matthew 19: 16-22). Magis awakens consciousness, enabling us to imagine something else, broadening the horizon of movement and growth with a theology of growth and generosity. ​
Imaginative
Imaginative contemplation is an identifying feature of IS. Many churches are wary of the imagination, but Jesus employed it all the time through parables to help people grasp new concepts. And the Holy Spirit is doing it today, especially when we offer Him our attention and engage sanctified gifts of mind, memory, will and understanding. We pray in formal ways through prayer such as Lectio Divina, where scripture is used in repetitive ways to produce a level of understanding that surpasses knowledge. The Examen was so valued by St Ignatius that he prayed it constantly. I encourage it daily and whenever something needs reflection. It’s great as a way to review a SD session.
Sometimes, I am inspired to work with an entirely new imaginative imagery, just as I might for a painting. Metaphors are powerful. Poetry, paintings, photographs and all manner of prompts for the imagination help the process. I offer all these in spiritual direction depending on a person’s preferences and if they resonate, they’re sure to have come from the Holy Spirit.
Retreats
Discernment is a key part of the Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius, a retreat designed to assist people make “elections” or big life choices. The retreat can be completed residentially worldwide in 30 days, or as a “retreat in daily life” which is a deeply personal and transformational journey that typically takes a year to 18 months. It looks like an hour a day of prayer and a weekly meeting with a spiritual director. The experience is a weaving of scriptural and theological prompts with events in daily life revealing new levels of understanding of God’s grace and interest.
Freeing
Freedom and detachment are core to the Exercises, but are also useful in general spiritual direction. Freedom has certainly always been a core value for me. Detachment was new, but it’s application liberated me from the (di)stress so endemic in our world today.
Transformative
Each SD conversation seeks to be a transformative process of shifting from surface, matter-of-fact activity and consciousness. Ignatian Spirituality is particularly suited to this, as well as being road-tested for centuries. Direction is found in more interior, sometimes meditative, levels of awareness of the spiritual dimensions of our lives. For many, that includes God and an important early question for me in any SD partnership is “who is God to you?” For any human being, the answer encompasses their purpose, meaning, vision, motivations and potential for growth.