How to Grow in Spiritual Direction

We do not see ourselves

The great motive for direction is blindness to oneself. Left to himself, man judges himself badly: he takes his desires for inspirations, his fatigue for mystical nights, his cowardice for prudence, his stubbornness for fidelity. Self-love is a partial witness that never testifies against itself. Saint John of the Cross sums up this peril in a famous image:

"He who wants to remain alone without the support of a master and a guide is like a solitary tree, abandoned without a master in the countryside; whatever fruits it bears, passers-by will pick them before they ripen." — Saint John of the Cross, Maxims and Spiritual Counsels^[5]

The tree without a gardener bears fruit, but it is stolen or rots before ripening. Likewise the soul without a guide can do good, yet remains exposed to error and to losing its graces. Growing in direction means precisely consenting that another see in us what we do not see — and that takes great humility, for no one likes to be seen where he would rather stay in shadow.

The constant witness of Scripture and the saints

This is not one author's idea, but a constant of revelation and tradition. Scripture makes it a law of the spiritual life. When the deacon Philip finds the Ethiopian eunuch reading Isaiah without understanding, the man confesses his need for a guide:

"How can I, unless someone guides me?" — Acts of the Apostles 8:31^[6]

The book of Proverbs draws a general rule from it: "Where there is no guidance, a people falls; success lies in an abundance of counselors" (Prov 11:14)^[7]. And the book of Tobit offers the image the whole tradition would retain: young Tobias, ignorant of the way, receives as traveling companion the angel Raphael in human form^[8]. Christian holiness is never a solitary exploit: it is received in a chain of spiritual fathers and sons, in which each was first led before leading. Saint Teresa of Avila (Life, ch. 13^[9]), Saint Ignatius of Loyola (Spiritual Exercises, annot. 15^[10]), Saint Francis de Sales (Introduction to the Devout Life, I, 4^[11]), John Cassian (Conferences, II, 10^[12]): all recommended being guided.

"Growing in" direction is not "choosing" a director

Two often-confused questions must be distinguished. The first — how to find and recognize a good director — belongs to choice: it supposes knowing what a director is, what qualities to require (charity, learning, prudence, experience), where to look and how to guard against bad guides. That is the subject of How to Choose a Spiritual Director?.

The second — the subject of this article — begins afterward: the guide is found, the relationship established; how, then, to draw all its fruit? How to grow through direction? The answer no longer depends first on the director, but on the directee — on his dispositions, his fidelity, his manner of letting himself be led. It is a decisive shift of gaze: one stops asking "do I have the right guide?" and starts asking "am I a good directee?"

It is not the director who must grow, but the directee

The first truth, a liberating one, is that the fruitfulness of direction rests for a large part on the one who receives it. Many expect everything from the guide, as a sick man might expect healing from a doctor without taking the remedies. But direction does not work magically: it offers a light that must be welcomed, a counsel that must be followed, a truth that must be allowed to work within. The same director can be barren for one and fruitful for another, depending on whether one closes and the other opens. Growing in direction is therefore first working on oneself: cultivating the dispositions by which a word received bears fruit.

A work of two, in which God alone is the true master

Cultivating these dispositions does not mean deifying one's guide. The director is only a servant: he does not possess the soul, he serves it. The Catechism situates his role exactly in the economy of the Spirit:

"The Holy Spirit gives to some of the faithful gifts of wisdom, faith and discernment for the sake of this common good which is prayer (spiritual direction). Those endowed with them are true servants of the living tradition of prayer." — Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 2690^[13]

The true interior master remains God; the director only helps Him make Himself heard. That is why Saint Ignatius of Loyola requires the accompanier to efface himself, to stand "like a balance at equilibrium", inclining to neither side, so as to "leave the Creator to act immediately with the creature, and the creature with its Creator and Lord"^[14]. The good guide opens the door, but it is God who enters. Growing in direction is therefore not depending on a man: it is learning, through a man, to listen better to God.

The dispositions of the directee

The whole spiritual tradition, from the Desert Fathers to Saint Francis de Sales, converges on a small number of dispositions without which direction remains a dead letter. They can be reduced to five, which the rest of this article develops: transparency — opening one's heart with entire sincerity; docility — receiving counsel and putting it into practice; humility — accepting correction and reproof; perseverance — holding on over time with regularity; and prayer — asking God for the grace of being well led, and praying for the one who leads us. None is spectacular; it is their faithful exercise that transforms.

Like every spiritual reality, the life of direction stands on a summit between two abysses. By default, the directee falls into closedness: he keeps control of his interior life and never really lets himself be led. By excess, he falls into servility: he abdicates his conscience and becomes dependent. Knowing both protects growth, for one can miss direction by falling on either side.

By default: closedness and self-sufficiency

The first defect is not letting oneself really be led: holding back, delivering only what flatters, keeping silent what costs, debating every counsel, changing guides as soon as a word disturbs. It is direction as façade, where one consults without obeying, where one talks without opening up. At the root lies almost always self-sufficiency: the secret conviction that deep down one knows oneself better than anyone and will manage well enough alone.

Saint John of the Cross unmasked this peril with formidable lucidity. Listing the three "blind guides" that can turn a soul aside from the path God traces for it, he places, alongside the bad director and the devil, the soul itself:

"The blind who can lead it off the right path are three in number: the spiritual master, the devil, and the soul itself." — Saint John of the Cross, The Living Flame of Love, stanza 3^[15]

The directee can thus be his own chief obstacle. The best guide can do nothing for one who evades his light. That is why closedness is the most frequent danger: it wears the appearances of prudence ("I don't have to tell everything") or of fidelity to self ("I know what is good for me"), when it is often only pride refusing to be seen.

By excess: servility and dependence

The opposite error is subtler, for it wears the mask of virtue. The servile directee, for his part, surrenders too much: he hands over to the guide not only his interior life, but his conscience and his freedom. He waits for orders for the smallest details of his life, no longer dares decide anything alone, becomes dependent to the point of being unable to act without his director. This submission is not docility: it is an abdication, and it opens the door to undue influence.

For the bad guide exploits this servility: instead of leading to God, he puts himself in God's place, creates dependence, isolates the soul, punishes every stirring of autonomy. It is the exact contrary of the Ignatian rule of the "balance at equilibrium"^[16]. This mechanism of spiritual abuse — manipulation of consciences, confusion of roles, captation — is a grave perversion of direction, better known and firmly combated today; it is treated in more detail in the article on abuse in the Church. The directee must know that docility is not servility: letting oneself be counseled is not abdicating one's soul.

The middle way: a free and trusting docility

Between these two shores, the directee's virtue stands in a balance the tradition sums up in one word: a free docility. It is docility, for it truly receives counsel and puts it into practice; it is free, for it renounces neither conscience nor personal responsibility. The following table fixes this discernment.

Reading the table: the directee's right attitude is not a fragile point between two dangers, but a fullness holding together what each defect separates — true openness and true freedom, true docility and true responsibility. One grows in direction by moving away from both shores at once: neither the reserve of the one who holds back, nor the dependence of the one who surrenders.

Here is the practical heart of this article. Tradition has not only praised direction: it has indicated precise, repeatable means by which the directee makes grow within himself the dispositions that render accompaniment fruitful.

Cultivating transparency: openness of conscience

The first means, and the most decisive: transparency. Opening one's heart with entire sincerity, hiding nothing of one's temptations, faults, lights or darkness. The monastic tradition calls this openness of conscience or the manifestation of thoughts: one does not let oneself be guided by halves.

Saint Francis de Sales makes it an absolute rule of direction. To Philothea, who has just found her guide, he prescribes unreserved sincerity:

"Deal with him with an open heart, in all simplicity, manifesting to him clearly your good and your evil, without any kind of disguise or evasion. By this means, the good will be more secure, and the evil more promptly repaired." — Saint Francis de Sales, Introduction to the Devout Life, I, 4^[17]

This requirement goes back to the origins of monasticism. The Desert Fathers held the manifestation of thoughts to one's elder as the first school of humility and the surest rampart against illusion. John Cassian, who gathered their teaching, gives its deep spiritual reason: an evil thought draws its strength from the shadow in which it is kept, and loses it as soon as it is brought to light.

"An evil thought is dispelled as soon as it is brought to light. Even before the sentence of discretion, the hideous serpent that confession draws from its dark cavern to produce into the open hastens to flee, covered with shame." — John Cassian, Conferences, II (On Discernment), ch. 10^[18]

Cassian made it the very mark of the beginner who wants to progress: "hiding from the elders, out of false shame, none of the thoughts born in the heart, but disclosing them to them at once", and judging their worth "not by one's own feeling, but by their opinion"^[19]. It is the mainspring of all fruitful direction: what is kept silent cannot be healed; what is concealed keeps reigning. The directee who learns to say everything — above all what costs most — has already come halfway.

Preparing and caring for one's meetings

Transparency is prepared. One does not open up well arriving empty-handed, without having reviewed one's life. Growing in direction therefore supposes work between meetings: making one's examination of conscience, noting what happened in prayer, trials, temptations, lights received, questions to ask. A prepared direction gains in depth what an improvised direction loses in chatter. It means bringing the guide the real matter of one's interior life — not an arranged narrative, but an honest inventory — so that his discernment has something to work on. This regularity of examination rejoins the watch over oneself in which all spiritual life lives; see How to Grow in Spiritual Vigilance.

Putting into practice: the docility that obeys

A direction is fruitful only if one puts into effect what has been discerned. Receiving a counsel and not applying it renders direction vain. The directee's docility consists precisely in moving from word to act: following the counsel received, attempting what was proposed, coming back to report the fruits. Saint Josemaría Escrivá bound this docility to guide and grace as the very condition of holiness:

"Great obedience to your director and great docility to grace are needed. For if you do not let the grace of God and your director act, the sculpture, the effigy of Jesus, which the saint becomes, will never appear." — Saint Josemaría Escrivá, The Way, no. 56^[20]

This obedience is not servile: it remains free, and bounded by conscience (see below). But in all that is good and within his competence, following one's guide is a school of humility without equal, for it dislodges self-will where it hides best: in the "spiritual" domain, where one readily believes one owes accounts to no one. On this virtue of obedience and its degrees, see How to Grow in Obedience.

Welcoming correction: the directee's humility

There always comes a moment when the guide does not say what one hoped: he reproves, contradicts, puts his finger on a fault one preferred to ignore. It is the test of truth of direction. The closed directee bristles, justifies himself, or changes guides; the growing directee welcomes correction as a good, for he knows one does not let oneself be led to hear oneself approved, but to be set straight. Humility is here the master disposition: "submitting all one's actions and even all one's thoughts to the wisdom of the elders", said Cassian, is "the first proof of humility"^[21]. Accepting to be seen as one is, and reproved where one fails, is dropping the mask self-love would keep. On this root, see How to Grow in Humility.

Persevering over time with regularity

Direction bears fruit only in duration. Like all deep work, it asks for constancy: regular meetings — according to needs and availability, often once a month or every few weeks — and above all fidelity to the same guide. Constantly changing directors prevents all deep work, for the newcomer must each time rediscover everything. Saint Francis de Sales firmly discourages this fickleness: once the right guide is found, "do not change him without serious consideration"^[22]. Fidelity, here as elsewhere, is the condition of fruitfulness. An episodic direction, abandoned at the first dryness or the first contrariety, produces hardly any fruit. It is in constancy that what the soul alone could not untangle gradually comes undone. On this virtue of duration, see How to Grow in Perseverance.

Asking for grace and praying for one's guide

Finally, like every spiritual good, a fruitful direction is asked for before it is deserved. The Catechism recalls that direction is a gift of the Spirit^[23]: it is therefore of the Spirit that it must be asked. Saint Francis de Sales counsels asking God for this guide "with great insistence"^[24] — and the same prayer holds for profiting well by it: "Lord, grant that I let myself be led." It is also right to pray for one's director, who bears a heavy charge and needs light to lead well. This reciprocal prayer is the supernatural cement of the relationship: it recalls that the true director of every soul is the Holy Spirit, and that the human guide is only His instrument.

It remains to fix the limit, without which all the above would become dangerous. The directee's docility is never unconditional, for no director is God. Spiritual direction — outside religious vows, which are another case — founds no absolute obedience: it proposes, enlightens, advises; it does not command the conscience. The directee always keeps his personal responsibility and is never bound to follow advice contrary to faith or morals.

This limit, far from weakening docility, purifies it: it distinguishes virtue from servility. The servile obeys always, even the undue; the truly docile directee lets himself be led toward God, and therefore stops following as soon as one leads him away from God. That is why a good director never demands blind trust from the first day: he knows trust is built, and he respects the freedom of the one he accompanies. The Church moreover protects this freedom by a principle of wisdom: the separation of the internal and external forums — the secret domain of conscience must not be mixed with that of government and public authority. When these two forums merge, the door is open to abuse. Letting oneself be led is therefore not resigning: it is putting one's conscience in its true place — sovereign for discerning good and evil, docile in all the rest.

By what does one recognize that one is really growing in spiritual direction? Not by a feeling, but by stable fruits.

Discernment and liberation from illusions

The first fruit is discernment. By dint of exposing one's interior life to a competent gaze, the directee learns to see clearly within himself: to distinguish inspiration from whim, purifying trial from mere discouragement, God's call from one's own desire. Illusions, brought to light, lose their hold — exactly as the evil thought is dispelled "as soon as it is brought to light"^[25]. Little by little, the light received from the guide becomes an interior light: the directee acquires, through direction, a discernment he would never have won alone.

Peace and security of the path

The second fruit is peace. The soul that knows itself led ceases to advance alone, groping, in the anguish of going astray. It lays down the exhausting burden of having to discern everything by itself. Saint Teresa of Avila, who long suffered from the lack of good guides, testifies to the security an enlightened master gives:

"It is extremely important that the master be prudent — I mean of sound mind — and experienced. If to this he joins learning, that is perfect." — Saint Teresa of Avila, Life, ch. 13^[26]

Advancing under such a gaze means walking with a surer step: one is no longer the sole judge of one's road. This assurance is not presumption; it is the peace of one who knows he does not guide himself, and that God acts through the means He has established.

Lasting progress in the virtues

The third fruit is progress itself, stable and lasting. Direction prevents going in circles: it relaunches when one gets bogged down, corrects when one deviates, encourages when one despairs. Where the solitary soul stagnates or recedes, the accompanied soul advances — not in fits and starts, but in continuous movement, for each meeting picks up the thread and fixes one step more. That is why the masters judge the guide's experience indispensable for the high paths: without it, "he is incapable of leading souls there when God yet calls them to it, and he will not even understand it"^[27]. A good directee, under a good guide, never ceases to grow.

The spirituality of the Divine Will, transmitted to Luisa Piccarreta (1865-1947), gives the directee's docility its final accent. Where self-will hides best — in the "spiritual" domain, where one believes one must answer to God alone — obedience to one's confessor and guide comes to flush it out. Jesus asks of Luisa an almost unreserved trust in her confessor, to the point of identifying his word with His own:

"I want you to have full trust in your confessor, even in the smallest things, so that there be no difference between him and Me. Each time you trust him by listening to his words, I shall be of the same mind as he." — Jesus to Luisa Piccarreta, The Book of Heaven, vol. 2, 2 May 1899^[28]

This word is no blank check given to just any guide: it supposes a trustworthy confessor, and it never dispenses from the limit of conscience. But it reveals the deep meaning of the directee's docility: letting oneself be led by a man is, in faith, letting oneself be led by God acting through him. Direction is not a concession to our weakness: it is the ordinary way by which God, who "wills man to be governed by another man"^[29], leads souls. Growing in direction is finally dropping self-will's last entrenchment — the one where, under cover of spirituality, one still wants to lead oneself — to entrust oneself, through a guide, to God's guidance alone. This surrender rejoins abandonment and trust: see How to Grow in Abandonment to God and How to Grow in Trust.

The life of direction does not grow by grand resolutions, but by a small and repeated fidelity. The means studied can be summed up in a simple program.

Reading the table: none of these exercises is spectacular; it is their faithful repetition that transforms. One begins by bringing the matter, learns to say everything, puts into practice, accepts reproof — and holds on over time, until direction bears its fruits.

The point is not to aim at direction in general, but to posit, at the next meeting, the concrete act presenting itself: that thing one would rather keep silent and must say, that counsel received and not yet applied, that correction to welcome without bristling. For growing in spiritual direction means consenting, step by step, to be led — and learning thus, by a man's hand, to let oneself be led by God.

• How to Choose a Spiritual Director? — the upstream article: what a director is, his qualities, how to find one and recognize a bad guide.
• How to Grow in Obedience — the virtue founding the directee's docility, and its degrees.
• How to Grow in Humility — the root: one does not open up while believing oneself always wiser than one's guide.
• How to Grow in Trust — the trust making transparency of heart possible.
• How to Grow in Abandonment to God — the surrender of self that direction extends into the interior life.
• How to Grow in Mental Prayer — the personal prayer that direction enlightens and sustains.
• How to Grow in Spiritual Vigilance — the self-examination feeding the matter of direction.