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.

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.

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 ,

As human beings we have a natural inclination toward the transcendent, and prayer is an expression of that inclination. The impulse to pray precedes theology and belief; 'wherever one finds humans, one finds humans at prayer' .* Thus, it is not a surprise that prayer and prayerful contemplation or meditation, occupy an important place in all faith traditions. What is prayer? People use the terms prayer, contemplation and meditation in different ways. Some think of prayer as

Many people following a spiritual life are often mystified by the fact that when they are most troubled and in need of quiet prayer, they are least likely to find the space for it. There can always seem to be reasons why there isn't time, we have other pressing obligations or we simply forget. And even when we do pray there may be inner resistances to focusing on the very areas of our lives that are most troubling to us. Here, I highlight some of the psychological defenses

In our Western world many people suffer from an inability to live with paradox and contradiction. We have lost touch with paradoxical, mystical or contemplative thinking in an education system with its basis in formal laws of logic and linearity, which has an unfortunate tendency to reinforce either/ or dualistic thinking. The startling idea that truth can be multilayered, unpredictable and contradictory is generally not a part of our modern Western world. Yet many of our gre

Rob Preece, a Buddhist spiritual mentor I am privileged to know, recently wrote a book entitled 'The Wisdom of Imperfection.' An excellent book understanding that, at heart, the spiritual journey involves encompassing all that we are, not a striving for a state of perfection, and encouraging us to have compassion on our vulnerability and fallibility as we travel our path. But this is not a new idea, although it is one we have great need of continually revisiting. In the Chr