Guided Imagery in Spiritual Direction: Recovering a Creative, Ancient Practice
Across religious and psychological traditions, images have long been recognized as carriers of truth, insight, and transformation. Yet in much contemporary spiritual accompaniment the imaginal dimension—once central to Christian prayer and discernment—has often been sidelined or treated with caution. A rediscovery of guided imagery opens a creative and deeply rooted way of engaging the soul, a way that resonates with the ancient Christian imagination as well as with modern de
Our Changing Images of God: A Jungian Perspective
The ways in which human beings imagine God are never static. They shift over centuries, reflecting not only theological debates but also profound transformations in human consciousness, culture, and as I have shown in previous articles, our psychology - each shift revealing something about the inner landscape of the human soul. Carl Jung invites us to read this unfolding not as doctrinal confusion but as psychological evolution. The God-image changes because we change, it evo
Jungian Psychology and Spiritual Direction
Jungian spiritual direction aims to help individuals deepen their connection with their inner selves and the divine by exploring the unconscious and embracing the wholeness of their psyche (soul).
Practicing G.R.A.C.E. in Spiritual Direction
G.R.A.C.E. can be an active and adaptive process not only in the spiritual accompaniment encounter but in the context of our whole lived experience, and a powerful resource for us, not just a technique. When we live it, it can become a way in which we align ourselves with our integrity, values and deep aspiration to be of service to others in our life with God.
Psychology and Spirituality: Growing Up and Waking Up
The invitation is to weave these two journeys together. Growing up helps bring tenderness to my own humanity, while waking up reminds me that my identity is larger than the struggles I face. Together, they invite a way of being that is both deeply human and gently transcendent.
Spiritual Bypassing & Spiritual Experience
When our spiritual practice is not integrated with our psychological material, it can lead to shadow problems. We split ourselves in an unhelpful way that is not true to any path of wholeness or spiritual transformation.
Temenos: The Sacred Space of Spiritual Direction
When applied to spiritual direction, the ancient concept of temenos particularly offers a revealing and helpful metaphor for the sacred relational field that takes place between director and directee.
Psychologising our Spirituality
I have had cause to reflect recently on looking the other way down the lens of this dialogue between our psychology and spirituality, to reflect on a relatively new 20th - 21st century phenomenon of how we can also unhelpfully reduce our spirituality to our psychology. We now live in a very 'psychologised' world where this paradigm can too dominate our perspective.
Letting Go of Toxic God-Images
Spiritual direction conversations often touch into the area of uncovering and letting go of toxic images of God imbibed during life, often in childhood. In my earlier article on 'The Spiritual Life & Our Images of God' I talk through how these images are crafted in our life and the general influences and factors behind their development within us. I also discuss how our images are not the same as our ideas about God. Rather they are projections onto the Holy which may or may
A Soft Heart: Vulnerability and the Spiritual Journey
In the Christian tradition, the Book of Proverbs describes our heart as 'the wellspring of life', conjuring up in our imaginations the beautiful image from the Song of Songs of our soul, our spiritual being, as an enclosed fragrant garden with the Fountain of Life at its centre, and where the Wind blows over the flowers releasing and spreading their exotic scents into the world. But, I know from my own path and from those I am privileged to accompany as a spiritual director ,
