Spiritual Life and Our Shadow
Carl Jung , a 19th century Swiss psychoanalyst whose work bridges the gap between psychology and spirituality, understood our Shadow to be where we hide all the bits of ourselves we think are shameful or primitive . It is that aspect of our nature that is cast into the unconscious and held there in the dark to protect our conscious life from what we feel may be unacceptable, either to ourselves or to others. This reflection draws on many years of working with people in spiri
Contemporary Trends in Spiritual Direction: Reflections at a Time of Emergence
Today, around the world and across traditions, the ancient spiritual practice of meeting regularly with a spiritual director is growing and developing. What follows are six observations offered as reflections rather than predictions. These reflections were written in the early 2010s, drawing on conversations and articles published at the time in Presence, the journal of Spiritual Directors International, and in conference conversations among those involved in training spirit
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
Barbara Hepworth's Spiritual Vitality
A Garden of Presence: Encountering Barbara Hepworth in St Ives I've been staying a stone's throw from Barbara Hepworth's studio and museum in St Ives. So, before the crowds arrive each morning, I slip alone into her extraordinary garden - a captivating blend of sculpture and exotic planting. Her working spaces lie undisturbed as if she has just popped out for a moment to fetch milk for morning tea, or perhaps in her case a packet of cigarettes. The early morning light in St I
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
The Wisdom of Imperfection
Many of us approach the spiritual life with an unspoken assumption that growth means improvement — becoming better, purer, or more complete versions of ourselves. Yet again and again, both spiritual tradition and lived experience suggest something more paradoxical: that our imperfection itself may be one of the primary places where transformation begins. Wisdom, it seems, does not arise from eliminating what is broken, but from learning how to live more truthfully, compassion
The History of Spiritual Direction
Spiritual direction is often spoken of today as a contemporary practice, yet its roots reach deep into the history of spiritual life across centuries and traditions. This article traces the long and rich story of spiritual direction — from the wisdom of the desert, monastic and Celtic traditions, through to its contemporary rediscovery — and reflects on how spiritual accompaniment has always sought to support the deepening of a person’s relationship with God and their own inn
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
Spiritual Direction or Counselling?
This question is often asked as though spiritual direction and counselling are competing or interchangeable practices. In reality, the relationship between them is more subtle and more fluid than a simple comparison allows. Over the years, as spiritual direction has increasingly entered dialogue with psychology, many practitioners have found themselves working at an attentive boundary between inner healing, meaning-making, and spiritual discernment. What follows is therefore
