Dreams, the Unconscious, and Spiritual Maturity
Dreams often arrive at moments when something within us is shifting. We wake with an image that lingers, a feeling that does not easily fade, or a story that seems to hover at the edge of understanding, asking not to be solved but to be noticed. They tend to surface not when life feels settled and clear, but when we are unsettled — when prayer has grown dry, when a long-held certainty begins to loosen, when we feel inwardly stuck, conflicted, or quietly disturbed without know
Shame and the Spiritual Journey: Healing the Inner World with Compassion
Shame longs not to be fixed, but to be met. Many people come to the spiritual life carrying a quiet but persistent burden of shame — a quiet, corrosive sense that something is wrong with who they are. It may not always be named as such, yet it often shapes how a person prays, how they imagine God, and how safe or unsafe it feels to be truly known. Shame whispers: “I am not enough.” “I am fundamentally flawed.” “If I were truly known, I would be rejected.” Shame is not simply
Depth Spiritual Direction: Tending Soul and Spirit
A contemplative space where soul and spirit are held together, and deeper truth is allowed to emerge. Spiritual direction has always been concerned with the interior life — listening where soul and spirit meet — with how a person responds, over time, to the presence and movement of God. At its best, this ancient practice has never been limited to prayer techniques or spiritual discernment alone, but has attended to the whole terrain of human experience through which the spir
Working with our Dreams in the Spiritual Life Part III
Dreams often linger with us long after we have woken, carrying questions, images, or emotions that do not easily resolve. In this final article in the series, I turn toward how we might respond to what a dream reveals and allow it to shape us over time. Responding to the Dream When a dream has been lived with prayerfully — recorded, explored, and allowed to speak — we often arrive at a quiet sense that something has been revealed. This knowing is rarely dramatic. More often
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
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.
Psychologising our Spirituality: Depth, Soul, and the Loss of Mystery
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
Our Images of God Are Formed Early Spiritual direction conversations often touch on the process of uncovering and letting go of toxic images of God that have been absorbed during life, often in childhood. In an earlier article, The Spiritual Life & Our Images of God , I explore how these images are formed and the influences that shape them. Our images of God are not the same as our ideas or beliefs about God. Rather, they are emotionally charged inner representations — proj
Working with Our Dreams in the Spiritual Life Part II
When we begin to attend to our dreams, we often sense that they are carrying more than we can grasp at first glance. Their meaning unfolds slowly, inviting imagination, reflection, and prayerful engagement rather than quick interpretation. In this second article, I explore ways of being with a dream more deeply, allowing its symbolic language to open and speak in its own time. In the previous article, Working with Our Dreams in the Spiritual Life – Part I , I explored some in
