Growing Up and Waking Up: Psychology and the Spiritual Life
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: Discernment, Healing, and the Holding Presence of God
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.
Soul, Spirituality & Psychology
Soul is the most common translation of the Hebrew word nephesh and the Greek word psyche . The biblical meanings of these concepts are richly varied. In the Old Testament, for example, the meanings of nephesh range from life, the inner person (particularly thoughts, feelings and passions), to the whole person, including the body. Similarly, in the New Testament, psyche carries such meaning as the totality of the person, physical life, mind and heart. Here, soul is presente
Psychological Ways We Can Undermine Our Spiritual Transformation
On the spiritual path, we often assume that our deepest desire is for transformation — to become more open to God, more loving, more whole. Yet many people discover, sometimes with confusion or self-judgement, that alongside this longing there is also resistance. Change can feel unsettling, even threatening, to the familiar sense of who we are, and this tension is not a sign of spiritual failure but a deeply human reality. This reflection explores some of the psychological wa
Knowing God: Wholeness & Self-Knowledge
The spiritual journey has always been understood as a journey of transformation — not only of belief, but of the whole person. Across the Christian tradition, wisdom teachers have recognised that knowing God and knowing ourselves are inseparable movements of the same deepening process. This article reflects on how self-knowledge and wholeness belong at the heart of an authentic spiritual life. Wholeness, Self-Knowledge, and the Spiritual Life In our contemporary world, we und
Spiritual Life and Our Emotions: A Contemplative Way of Being
Having looked at some of the benefits and challenges of our emotions in the spiritual life and journey, we can now explore some practical ancient ways of meditative prayer to facilitate this process. The key is to find, and rest in, a place of undefended awareness where we can open to the divine with intention of heart in the midst of our emotional turmoil; returning again and again to the unconditional divine embrace that offers us this freedom of heart. So, below, I explor
Spiritual Pathology: How Inner Wounds Can Distort the Spiritual Life
Spirituality is often assumed to be inherently life-giving and benign. Yet, like every dimension of human experience, it is shaped by our inner world — including our unresolved wounds, fears, and unconscious patterns. This article explores how spiritual life itself can become distorted, not because spirituality is false, but because it is taken up into the very places within us that most need healing. Spiritual pathology describes how we can distort and undermine our spiritua
Living With Paradox
In the Christian spiritual tradition, paradox is not a problem to be solved but a reality to be lived. Again and again, the life of faith draws us into tensions that cannot be neatly resolved — between strength and weakness, certainty and unknowing, action and surrender. This article explores why the capacity to live with paradox is not a spiritual failure, but a sign of growing maturity, opening us to a deeper, more spacious way of knowing and being with God. Paradox and the
Spiritual Life and Our Emotions: When Spirituality Avoids Feeling
Spiritual bypassing names a subtle but pervasive tendency within spiritual life: the use of spiritual beliefs or practices to avoid painful feelings, unresolved wounds, and developmental needs. While often unconscious and well-intentioned, it can quietly undermine growth, wholeness, and genuine transformation. What Is Spiritual Bypassing? The term spiritual bypassing, coined by psychologist John Welwood in 1983, describes the use of spiritual beliefs or practices to avoid eng
Spiritual Life and Our Emotions: Toward Wholeness and Integration
Transformation of our emotion life remains one of the greatest challenges confronting us on our spiritual path. Emotions and the Spiritual Struggle Indeed, perhaps in exasperation, many historical strands of Christianity relegated feelings to an inferior and suspect status, often seeing them as manifestations of female weakness far less trustworthy and more 'primitive' than 'male' rational powers. Strong feelings needed to be muted for fear of muddying objectivity, with 'dis
