This is quite a long post and is intended for those who would like a very clear explanation of the process of Transformational Listening and the transition from spiritual direction. This practice is rooted in the 6 Principles of Transformation which are explained in another post.
I am engaged in a grand adventure and experiment that God has lovingly and with gentle expectancy placed in my heart and my hands. The general term for this adventure is The Six Principles of Transformation. I have been teaching these principles to small groups of people over the past year, deepening my understanding of them and learning ways to apply them in groups and in my practice of listening. Please see the attached graphic to get a sense of the Principles.
In my current best understanding, the two most important pieces of the graphic is (1) the center, the point at which everything comes together to allow transformation of our Being and (2) the unlabeled yellow circle. I am glad that I never labeled it, because it allows it to mean many things to me. The circle represents the fact that the other principles ALWAYS take place within the container of whatever we name the yellow circle. It could be God, it could be the Ground of our Being, it could simply be called LOVE. Whatever we name it, the yellow circle represents all that is highest and best for us and the One who is at the heart of all that is. It is FOR us, in the sense that it is on our “team”, drawing us on, inviting us onward, and at the same time, waiting patiently until our time is right, when we are ripe for movement.
The concept of transformation has become the clear focus for all work that I am now doing in the world. I am still researching and writing to help myself get clear about what exactly I mean by transformation. Here is one way of thinking of it:
“Transformation means, literally, a change in form. In individual inner transformation, the form of our self–the interface between our internal experience and our behavior in the world–is what changes.” Terry Patten, A New Republic of the Heart.
In the Christian scriptures, the apostle Paul talked about transformation in terms of the “renewing of our mind”, but the meaning of “mind” here isn’t simply what we “think”, it means a change in our consciousness, in our way of viewing and interacting with the world. We are new creatures because we feel differently, we see differently, we act differently.
When we are transformed we settle back into the Being from which we came and from which we have become distant in our years on earth. As we are able to return to Being, the NEW arises in us. The new behaviors, the new way of moving in the world, new ways of relating, higher ways of loving, deeper ways of holding our grief and our collective sorrows. Transformation moves us toward a wholeness and a re-union of ourselves with God, with ourselves and with our communities.
I just used many words to describe transformation. But if I could use only one word to describe what transformation actually feels like, that word would be FREEDOM. Both freedom from and freedom to.
Transformation feels like freedom from all that holds me back. Fear, anxiety, doubt, worry, disconnection, shame, anger, hatred, hopelessness. It also feels like freedom to become all that I was always meant to be; loving, creative, open-hearted, peaceful and peace-making, accepting, curious, hopeful, joyful, whole.
So, to reiterate: the focus in any work that I now do in the world is TRANSFORMATION; inner and outer permanent change.
How does this affect my practice of spiritual direction?
Spiritual direction is inherently a transformative spiritual practice. That is the reason I was immediately drawn to it nearly 20 years ago now and why I decided to begin practicing as a spiritual director. I believe that it is my practice of being a spiritual director that has been the most transformative piece of my life journey. To listen the way a director is called to listen over countless hours with many, many souls has been the main transformative practice in my life.
The invitation for me now is to catalyze the transformative power of spiritual direction. To be a catalyst is to increase the rate of change in any given situation or setting. Speeding up the rate of development or change has never been a concern to me until quite recently. I am reminded of the stages of life that come from Hindu teachings being (1) the student (2) the householder (3) the retired person (4) the renunciate. It was expected that depth of spiritual experience and wisdom would come toward the end of a person’s life. The rest of the time was to be spent actively in creating family and vocation. That has been the age old rhythm of things. There has always been time to let our transformation unfold.
We no longer have the luxury of time. The rate of change and “progress” in industry, economics, culture, transportation and especially, technology, have sped up in exponential numbers over the past century. So have our crises. I don’t need to list them for you once again. I know that you all know all of the challenges that we are facing. Our spiritual development has not kept pace with the external milieu that our souls are attempting to navigate. It is now imperative that enough of us develop cognitively and spiritually to a high enough level that we can create the change needed to save us as a species.
I believe that some tools that can catalyze transformation have been unfolding themselves to me over the past year. Rather than using the term “tools”, I believe that a more descriptive and accurate word is psychotechnology. Pyschotechnologies are not necessarily digital or technological in the way that we generally think when we hear the word technology. Psychotechnologies are cognitive, psychological, or spiritual processes that we purposely use and engage to create a desired outcome. Psychotechnologies include things like meditation, centering prayer, yoga, fasting, and breathing techniques. Spiritual direction would qualify as a psychotechnology. They are tools that we use to increase the possibility and probability of growth and change.
Spiritual direction is a journey and a process, both in the individual session and the unfolding of many sessions over time. I am now identifying five phases in the process of guiding my co-listeners in the unfolding of our one hour listening sessions. You will likely recognize them, though some of them are still evolving.
(1) The opening question.
I invite my co-listeners to hear three different questions and then respond to the one that is most resonant for them in the moment.
The questions are:
What feels like is needed in this moment?
What is your heart longing for?
What is arising now?
I then invite the directee to sit with the question for a moment or two and see what arises.
The answer that is spoken by the listener is used only as a seed for the conversation or as a guide post to beginning the journey of this particular session of spiritual direction. Often, the journey will circle around and return to this need, longing, or arising at the end of the session.
The answer is never used as a goal to make sure the listener gets the named longing or need out of the session or as a destination for the journey. It is not anything that I or my co-listener insists on or demands of Spirit in the session. It is simply a noticing of what is needed, what is being longed for, what is arising.
(2) Presencing
The next phase supports both of us in coming into deeper awareness and presence. The listening space of spiritual direction is outside of the usual ways that we as human beings meet and work. It is a set aside time to intentionally meet God, our deepest selves, and also each other. When we enter into this phase we are crossing a threshold from normal time and space into sacred time and space and doing that intentionally and with reverence. This is where a hush settles and we recognize that we are on holy ground. The ways that I guide individuals in presencing will vary from listener to listener, but it will always include your body, mind and heart/spirit. This part of the session lasts between 10-15 minutes and, I believe, greatly deepens our attention for what will unfold..
(3) Experience and processing of experience.
This phase generally takes up the most time in a session and is the part that looks the most like the traditional models of spiritual direction as it was taught to me.
Directees come into the space in many different ways, but two of them are: (1) an experience that they want to process (what is going on with them) or (2) an openness to the session and the allowing of an experience to arise within the session. To be clear, most experiences don’t arise through talking or discussing. Experiences are felt and lived happenings that arrive through grace for us to observe and to use in order to know ourselves and God in a new and expanded way. The experience is deepened for co-listeners through contemplative listening, spiritual curiosity, and a constant return to the presence of the Divine. The most important thing to know about this phase is that the listener’s experience is deepened, understood and made meaning of in a way that brings some clarity, even if that clarity is simply that things are remaining foggy, or confusing or unknown. When that is the case, I find that the vast majority of the time, listeners come to a place of some ease or surrender to the unknowing. Again, there is never a goal to make sure that we clear things up.
(4) Two Turnings.
During phase 3 it is quite important to be alert to the two spiritual movements. I noticed the two movements in a Bible passage in which John the Baptist says, “Turn from your sins and turn to God, because the Kingdom of God has come.” In the reading of the passage, something clicked. I understood why so many of us remain stuck. We aren’t freed from what is holding us because we don’t TURN.
There are two turnings in the passage. First is the turning away from what it is that we are struggling with or against. What John calls sin. What we are turning away from is anything that is bringing us discomfort, hurt, shame, or suffering. The vast majority of people in our culture do not turn. Though people who are being supported in an inner process often do. We generally need the support of an outside observer or a compassionate listener to help us to notice that we must turn. Without that support we just keep avoiding the struggle and wanting it to go away or fix itself. Or we are very, very willing to do the work of changing it but we simply don’t know how. The metaphor I use is of a person pushing against a massive stone that is obstructing their path to freedom and they absolutely cannot budge it.
The first turning is to turn away from what we are struggling against. This first turn is a 90 degree turn, not a full 180 degree turn in the other direction. That comes later. In this first turn we can still see our struggle and our challenge. We don’t turn our back on it or pretend that it doesn exist. But neither does it take up our entire visual field. This first turn involves some sort of letting go, a recognition that we are unable to fix or free ourselves by doing the same thing we have done over and over. When we make the first turn we create some space from whatever feels insurmountable and unchangeable. In this space things can be seen and known. We can begin to work with them without fear of being overwhelmed by them. We can work with what is holding us rather than pushing against it or pushing it away.
The second turning is turning toward freedom, wholeness, health, love. The scripture says we are turning toward God. This turning involves turning toward what we know is highest and best for us. Turning toward what we are longing for in contrast to pushing away what we despise. We turn our face toward what we want in our life and begin taking steps based on listening and discernment. In this second turning we begin to see where we are going. We are able to name what it is that we want rather than just focusing on what we don’t want.
Finally, the scripture says that the Kingdom of God is already here. This isn’t necessarily a turning, but it is absolutely fundamental to the process of waking up, opening our forgetful hearts and remembering that what we need is already here. We might not trust it yet, we might not be able to see it yet, but all of those who have made this journey to transformation before us will tell us, “it was right there waiting for me the whole time”.
(5) 4 steps of Spiritual engagement.
This very, very simple process is the one that I believe can absolutely catalyze the transformative process of spiritual direction and what I would label as a psychotechnology.
How many of us have been to an amazing retreat, conference, religious service, spiritual circle or finished an amazing book that knocked our spiritual socks off and we say something like, “This is so amazing. What an experience! Something important just happened here!.” We know that we have been affected. That our hearts are open in a different way or that our mind, even our consciousness, has changed in some way. There are all kinds of words for it; the aha. The insight. A shift in awareness. This happens very commonly in spiritual direction. But here is what I want you to think about. Has your mind or consciousness been changed in a permanent way? Has the heart, mind, or even the body, been transformed?
I will tell you from my own personal experience and in journeying with directees that the answer is generally no. I believe that our usual process is to have many, many of these experiences that eventually lead us to some cognitive or spiritual tipping point where we come to the point that yes, we are changed. At that point, there is no going back. We are permanently changed. We are transformed.
I believe that we can shorten the time between the insight or experience and our permanent change by utilizing the 4 Steps of Spiritual Engagement.
The steps are:
(1) The experience.
This was covered above in Phase 3 of the process of spiritual direction. This piece will take up the bulk of time and practice. It is extremely important to inquire into an experience, come to some sort of understanding and meaning of the experience, and maybe most importantly embody an experience in order to move on to the next step. This is the place where traditional forms of spiritual direction, group processing and discernment practices end. In most settings that I have engaged with, we walk away happy with the “aha”. But wait, there’s more.
(2) The invitation.
Once we have some understanding and have made meaning around an experience, just on the edge of that understanding, waiting quietly in the wings, subtle and sometimes hidden, is an invitation. The feeling of the invitation is one of a gentle whisper, a drawing of your heart in a certain direction, even a loving wooing of your heart. This drawing or invitation is not at all something that we “think” our way to. The invitation is heard in the heart and known in the heart. I always invite the listener to listen from the heart.
Once the invitation is sensed, I invite my co-listener to name the invitation aloud. There is often great power in the naming.
(3) Heart response
Just as the invitation is heard in the heart, it is the heart that responds. Therefore, the heart doesn’t necessarily respond with a “yes” or a “no” as we might respond to an invitation to an event or party. The response is what the heart is feeling or knowing in the presence of the invitation. Responses of the heart are as infinite and varied as our hearts themselves, but some of the responses could be:
An opening.
A melting quality.
Warmth.
A closing. Protecting the heart.
A peaceful sensation.
Great energy.
Quiet determination.
Integrity.
Trust.
Surrender.
A no.
Fear.
One response that has been coming up with directees fairly frequently is “I will try” or “I will do my best.”
(4) Integration
Integration is the work of the soul outside of the direction session. It is the “living into” the invitation and response in daily life and practice. The first step of integration is for me to invite you to journal immediately following your listening session. It need only take a few minutes to write down the invitation, the response, and some sort of next step for integrating this piece into your life. Integration requires returning to the invitation and the response over and over again until it becomes a part of your lived experience and becomes natural in you.
A fictional brief example:
Experience: In my spiritual direction session I had the experience of feeling my body let go and my knees buckling. I can see myself floating down onto the ground until I am bending forward and my nose is almost touching the ground. I recognize that I am in child’s pose. That I am surrendered. Quiet. At rest. And that I feel the loving presence of Being letting me know that it is safe to let go. That I will be caught and held.
Invitation: To stop trying to change the situation that I am in and simply to rest into it in the presence of the divine.
Heart response: a quiet knowing that my heart is safe and all is well.
Integration: In my morning meditation I return to this body posture and allow my heart to remember this feeling. I am intentional about a practice of surrender to what is.
That’s it. That is the process of spiritual direction in the way I have been invited to practice it.
Lastly, in spiritual direction I will be drawing attention to the pyschotechnology of the 6 Principles of Transformation. We will use the graphic and the concepts to help you see where you are on your journey of transformation and how you might bring more trust, grace, practice, vulnerability, connection and “out” into your life and experiences.
And now, I want you to know that I am changing the name of what I do. I am not doing this in order to be cutting edge or to set myself apart from other spiritual directors. I am doing this so that I can remain focused and in integrity to what I am called to do which is again, to support soul transformation for the individual, the group and ultimately, all of being.
I am now calling myself a Transformational Listener. And actually, that is what I am calling you as well! Instead of director and directee, I view us as co-listeners, with one of us facilitating the listening process.
In the past few years I have also decided to only see clients 3 days a week. I would like to hear from you if that is impinging on your ability to schedule. While I feel that it is very important to keep days open in my calendar for the unfolding of The Six Principles in terms of groups and also my work around writing, it would help me to know if my restrictive hours are keeping people from being in transformative listening with me.
