Common Mistakes About Spiritual Direction

The Modern Cult of Autonomy

The first root of the misunderstanding is cultural. Our age has made autonomy the supreme ideal: to be an adult would mean depending on no one, deciding alone, accounting only to oneself. In this climate, the very idea of entrusting one's interior life to another looks like a regression — a return to childhood, an abdication of freedom. People accept consulting a doctor for the body, an expert for taxes, but entrusting one's soul to a guide is taken as an affront to personal dignity.

Yet the Catholic tradition, from the Desert Fathers to the doctors of the mystical life, speaks with one contrary voice: we do not see ourselves, and the soul that wants to advance seriously needs an outside gaze, competent and benevolent. Far from being an inferiority, letting oneself be led is, for John of the Cross, the very order willed by God:

Saint John of the Cross teaches it in the Ascent of Mount Carmel (Book II, ch. 22): God "so loves to see man governed and directed by another man like himself" that even His supernatural communications must be believed only after they have passed "through this human channel of the mouth of man"^[2].

Absolute autonomy is not a summit but an isolation. He who claims to lead himself to God deprives himself of the ordinary means God has chosen — another man — to lead him. Everything that follows in this article flows from this reversal: letting oneself be led is not abdicating, it is entering into the way God acts.

Long before John of the Cross, the Desert Fathers already taught this salutary mistrust of solitary judgment. John Cassian, who gathered their doctrine for the West, made humility the first mark of discernment: to submit all one's actions, and even one's thoughts, to the wisdom of the elders^[3].

Twelve centuries separate the monk of Egypt from the Carmelite doctor; they teach the same thing: he who judges his own interior life alone exposes himself to his own illusions, while he who opens himself to an outside gaze receives the light he lacks.

Confusion with Secular Helping Relationships

A second source of misunderstanding, more contemporary: for half a century, "helping relationships" have multiplied — psychotherapies, coaching, personal development, life accompaniment. Their vocabulary — listening, journey, accompaniment, work on oneself — overlaps on the surface with that of the spiritual life, to the point that people readily classify direction among these techniques, as a religious variant of the same kind. What is expected from a director is what is expected from a coach: that he help one to "feel better," to "fulfil oneself," to solve one's problems.

Yet spiritual direction does not aim at well-being, but at God. Its end is not the fulfilment of the self, but union with God and holiness. The Catechism says it is ordered "to this common good which is prayer"^[4], not to psychic comfort. To confuse the two is to reduce the supernatural to the natural — and to miss what no coach can give: guidance toward God.

The Long Shadow of Spiritual Abuse

A third root, the most painful and the most current: spiritual abuse. High-profile cases have revealed that, under cover of direction, some guides have manipulated consciences, created dependencies, captured and enslaved souls. The word "direction" has taken on, for many, a worrying color: it evokes the guru, undue influence, blurred roles. As a reaction, people come to suspect all accompaniment, as if the relationship itself were tainted.

The danger is real and must be named. But abuse is not direction: it is its counterfeit. Saint Ignatius of Loyola had fixed, four centuries before our commissions of inquiry, the exact criterion that separates the true guide from the manipulator — the self-effacement of the one who accompanies:

"Let him who gives the Exercises neither move nor incline him who receives them […], but, standing in the middle like a balance at equilibrium, let him leave the Creator to act immediately with the creature." — Saint Ignatius of Loyola, Spiritual Exercises, annotation 15^[5]

The true director leads to God, then steps aside; the false one puts himself in God's place. To reject all direction because of abuse is to throw away the gold with the counterfeit. On this mechanism of undue influence and how the Church combats it, see abuse in the Church.

"Spiritual Direction Is Psychotherapy or Religious Coaching"

This is the most widespread error among contemporaries: direction would be a spiritual variant of helping relationships — a baptized psychotherapy, life coaching with a touch of prayer. It is expected to help one feel better, know oneself, resolve blockages, "move forward" in life. The error is attractive because it rests on real resemblances: direction and therapy both presuppose listening, trust, regular meetings, attention to interior life.

But surface resemblances hide a difference of end. Psychotherapy aims at psychic health; coaching, at efficiency and self-realization; spiritual direction aims at God. Its object is not the well-being of the self, but union with God, growth in virtues, docility to the Spirit. The Catechism places it unambiguously on the side of prayer and spiritual discernment, as a "gift of the Holy Spirit"^[6] — not on the side of the human sciences. The director is not a therapist: he does not heal a psyche, he helps a soul to recognize God's action within it and to respond. This does not mean that direction despises the psyche — a good guide knows how to refer to a doctor or psychologist what belongs to their competence — but that it is not reducible to it. Where therapy restores a natural equilibrium, direction leads to a supernatural end that no technique can produce: holiness. To take direction for coaching is to ask a reality of the divine order to serve objectives of the human order — and to miss the essential.

"It Is the Same Thing as Confession"

An error of confusion, frequent among practicing Catholics: spiritual direction and confession would be so similar as to be confused — one "goes to see a priest," opens one's heart to him, he gives advice; why distinguish? The error is attractive because the two realities are close, often lived with the same priest, and a good confession includes some spiritual advice.

But they are two distinct realities, which it is precious not to muddle. Confession is a sacrament: its proper object is the forgiveness of sins, its minister is necessarily a priest, and absolution there is an act of Christ himself. Spiritual direction is not a sacrament but an accompaniment: its object is the growth of the whole spiritual life — prayer, discernment of God's will, the battle of virtues — and its guide can be a priest, but also a religious, a nun or a trained layperson. The Catechism indeed takes care to specify that "those endowed with them are true servants of the living tradition of prayer"^[7] — men and women, which would be impossible for confession. One can therefore go to confession without having a director, and have a director who is not one's confessor. To confuse them impoverishes both: direction is reduced to the mere examination of faults, and confession is burdened with a weight it does not bear. Tradition on the contrary recommends articulating them — confession purifies, direction orients — without merging them.

"It Is Reserved for Priests, Monks or Great Mystics"

An error of reduction, and a great alibi: spiritual direction would be the business of specialists — a luxury for seminarians, monks, advanced contemplatives, or those exceptional souls whom God leads by extraordinary ways. The ordinary Christian — the parishioner, the overworked father — would not need it: "I am not a mystic, I have nothing important enough to tell." The error is attractive because it is convenient: it dispenses from seeking a guide by persuading oneself that one is not concerned.

Yet Scripture and tradition make accompaniment a general law of life according to God, not a privilege of a few. The Book of Proverbs draws a universal rule from it: "Where there is no guidance, a people falls, but success lies in an abundance of counselors"^[8]. And it is to a simple traveling official — the Ethiopian eunuch — that Scripture puts the founding avowal:

"And how could I, unless someone guides me?" — Acts of the Apostles 8:31^[9]

Saint Francis de Sales precisely wrote the Introduction to the Devout Life for laypeople engaged in the world — Philothea is a married woman, taken up with her duties of state — and he makes the search for a guide the very first step of devotion. Direction is not reserved for the heights of the mystical life: it is the ordinary way for every Christian who wants to take his spiritual life seriously. To believe oneself too ordinary to need it is to confuse humility with laziness — for it is precisely the ordinary soul, exposed to its daily illusions, that most needs an outside gaze.

"Letting Oneself Be Directed Means Abdicating One's Freedom and Conscience"

An error born of the climate of autonomy, and a great fear for the beginner: to accept a director would be to renounce leading oneself, to hand over one's conscience to another, to become a minor. People fear alienation: that the guide will think in their place, decide their life, impose his views. The error is attractive because it rests on a real danger — servility does exist — and because the ideal of autonomy of the age makes it almost obvious.

But letting oneself be led is not abdicating: the docility of the directee is never unconditional, for no director is God. Spiritual direction — apart from religious vows, which are another case — founds no absolute obedience: it proposes, enlightens, advises; it does not command the conscience. The directee always retains 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 person always obeys, even what is undue; the truly docile person lets himself be led toward God, and therefore stops following as soon as he is led away from Him. Letting oneself be led is not resigning one's conscience: it is putting it in its true place — sovereign to discern good and evil, docile in all the rest. True freedom is not listening to no one, but being able to receive advice without enslaving oneself to it. All this discernment between free docility and servility is developed in How to Grow in Spiritual Direction.

"The Director Decides in My Place: He Commands, I Execute"

The opposite error to the previous one, and more dangerous, because it wears the mask of virtue: to let oneself be well directed would be to obey in everything — waiting for orders for the smallest details, deciding nothing alone, handing over to the guide not only one's interior life but one's entire will. Docility is then confused with submission, and one believes one does all the better the more one effaces oneself. The error is attractive because it flatters the desire for security: it is restful to offload every decision onto another.

But this submission is not docility: it is an abdication, and it opens the door to undue influence. The director's role is not to command but to enlighten; he is not the master of the soul but the servant of God's action within it. This is the whole meaning of the Ignatian rule of the "balance at equilibrium"^[10]: the guide opens the door, but it is God who enters. A director who demands absolute submission, who creates dependency, who punishes any flicker of autonomy, betrays exactly what tradition asks of him. The directee must know that docility is not servility: to receive advice, to test it, to put it into practice, is docility; to blindly execute everything one is told, even what is undue, is servility. Between the closedness of him who never obeys and the servility of him who always obeys, the virtue of the directee lies in a free docility — that just mean detailed in How to Grow in Spiritual Direction.

"One Must First Find the Perfect Director"

An error of demanding souls, and a great pretext for inaction: one would not begin direction until one has found the ideal guide — holy enough, learned enough, available enough, perfectly attuned to oneself. Failing that five-legged sheep, one prefers to wait, and waits for years. The error is attractive because it rests on a truth — the good guide is rare — but it draws a false conclusion: since he is rare, one might as well give up.

It is true that the true guide is rare. Saint Francis de Sales does not hide it, taking up and hardening a saying of Saint John of Avila:

"And for this, choose one among a thousand, says Avila; and I say among ten thousand, for there are fewer than can be said capable of this office." — Saint Francis de Sales, Introduction to the Devout Life, I, 4^[11]

But this rarity, for Francis de Sales, does not dispense from seeking: it obliges to seek better, and above all to seek by praying. The director is a gift of God: he is asked of God "with great insistence," and God, the saint promises, "even if He had to send an angel from heaven, as He did to young Tobias, He will give you a good and faithful one"^[12]. To wait passively for the perfect guide is to condemn oneself to never having one; to seek humbly is to enter the path where God provides. A good and faithful guide, even imperfect, is infinitely better than the absence of any guide on the pretext of an ideal. Here, the best is the enemy of the good. On the qualities actually required — charity, knowledge, prudence, experience — and how to seek, see How to Choose a Spiritual Director?.

"One Changes Guide as Soon as Advice Becomes Uncomfortable"

An error of fickleness, and a stealthy enemy of fruitfulness: one would keep a director as long as he pleases, and change as soon as he displeases — as soon as he corrects, contradicts, puts his finger on a fault one preferred to ignore. One "flits" from one guide to another, each time choosing the one who will say what one hopes to hear. The error is attractive because it disguises itself as freedom or as a quest for the "best," when it is often only flight from correction.

But direction bears fruit only in duration and fidelity. Constantly changing guide prevents any in-depth work, for the newcomer must each time rediscover everything, and the soul never lets itself be taken up where it resists. Saint Francis de Sales posits fidelity as the condition of fruitfulness: once the good guide is found, "remain firm and seek no other"^[13]. The moment when the guide displeases is often the moment when he becomes useful: it is the truth-test of direction, where one ceases to be approved to be finally straightened. The soul that flees at the first contradiction deprives itself of the very good it sought. Fickleness is not freedom: it is self-love evading. On the perseverance that makes direction mature, see How to Grow in Perseverance.

"With Books, Videos and Podcasts, I Can Direct Myself"

A very modern error, and the most seductive in the digital age: what need for a director when one has access to everything — the works of the saints, online conferences, spiritual podcasts, prayer apps? One would make oneself one's own guide, picking advice as needed, without having to open oneself to anyone. The error is attractive because it is convenient, free, and flatters autonomy: one profits from the masters' wisdom without the subjection of a relationship.

But no book sees what I do not see in myself. Spiritual resources are precious — they must be read, and abundantly — but they speak to all and know no one; they can neither correct me, nor unmask my illusions, nor discern my singular case. To direct oneself is precisely to fall back into the blindness about oneself that direction is meant to heal. Saint Bernard of Clairvaux struck this bent with a formula that has remained famous:

"He who makes himself his own master makes himself the disciple of a fool." — Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, Letter 87^[14]

The word is harsh, but just: left to his own judgment, man takes himself for master when he is only the pupil of a blind guide — himself. John of the Cross moreover counts the soul itself, through self-sufficiency, among the three blind guides who can divert it from God's path^[15]: it evades the light another would offer it. The same doctor summed up in an image the fate of one who wants to grow without a gardener: he who wishes to remain alone, without the support of a master and a guide, is like a solitary tree, without a master in the middle of a field — its fruits, however many, will be picked by passers-by before reaching maturity^[16].

The tree without a gardener bears fruit, but it is stolen or rots before ripening. Books and videos nourish direction; they do not replace it. The master who speaks in a book will never know that I misunderstood him, nor that I use him to justify what suits me. The living word of a guide, on the other hand, reaches me where I hide.

"Direction Is for Moments of Crisis or Psychological Problems"

An error of reduction, frequent among those who are "doing well": one would go to see a director only when things go wrong — a trial, a doubt, a heavy temptation, a wrenching decision — as one consults a doctor when one falls ill. Direction would be an emergency service, to be mobilized in the storm and set aside in fair weather. The error is attractive because it seems reasonable: why a guide when all is calm?

But direction is not crisis medicine: it is an accompaniment of growth, which counts most in ordinary times. It is in duration, not in urgency, that it unfolds its fruits — discernment, peace, stable progress in virtues. The soul that has a guide only in the storm presents itself to him without his knowing it, at the worst moment to discern well; while the soul followed for a long time is already known, and finds in its director a proven support when trial comes. Above all, direction does not serve only to repair: it serves to advance. Its end is not to settle problems but to lead to God, to make prayer and charity grow, to carve little by little "the effigy of Jesus" in the soul:

"Much obedience to one's director and much docility to grace are needed. For if one does not let the grace of God and the director act, the sculpture, the effigy of Jesus, which the saint becomes, will never appear." — Saint Josemaría Escrivá, The Way, no. 56^[17]

To reduce direction to crisis management is to ignore its proper object: not to heal a passing ill, but to make a soul grow toward holiness, day after day.

"Spiritual Direction Is Dangerous: Better to Do Without It"

An error opposite to all the previous ones, and symmetrical to the one that opened the article: for fear of abuse, one would conclude that it is better to give up all direction. Since guides have manipulated and enslaved souls, since the risk of undue influence is real, prudence would command sticking to the sacraments, personal prayer, and mistrusting all accompaniment. The error is attractive because it rests on a real danger and on real scandals — it wears the colors of wisdom.

But to give up the good because of its counterfeits is to deprive oneself of the remedy for fear of the poison. Abuse is not direction: it is its perversion, and tradition has always given the criterion that makes it possible to recognize and avoid it. The true guide stands "like a balance at equilibrium," letting "the Creator act immediately with the creature"^[18]; he never substitutes himself for conscience, never asks for blind trust, and always leads toward God, not toward himself. The bad guide does the opposite: he creates dependency, isolates, demands submission, puts himself in God's place. These signs are known and make it possible to flee the impostor without condemning the ministry. Moreover, the soul without a guide is not safer: it is only delivered to another blind guide, itself, and to its own illusions. Conversely, a sure guide gives the soul a peace that solitude does not know — as Saint Teresa of Avila, who long suffered from bad directors, testifies better than anyone:

Saint Teresa of Avila, who long suffered from bad directors, testifies better than anyone: it is extremely important that the master be prudent — of solid mind — and experienced, and if he adds learning to that, it is the height of good^[19].

Wisdom is therefore not to renounce direction, but to choose its minister well and to know its limits. On the marks of the bad guide and how to guard against him, see How to Choose a Spiritual Director?; on the mechanism of undue influence, abuse in the Church.

The table below recaps the misconceptions covered: on the left, the error in its common formulation; in the center, what makes it false; on the right, what the Church really teaches, with its source. It reads line by line, as a quick antidote to received ideas.

At the end of this journey, true direction can be defined by contrast with all that it is not. It is not psychotherapy but guidance toward God; not coaching but a gift of the Spirit; not confession but an accompaniment that prolongs it; not a privilege of mystics but the ordinary way of every Christian; not an abdication of freedom but a docility that keeps its conscience sovereign; not blind submission but a free reception of counsel; not waiting for a perfect guide but the prayerful search for a faithful guide; not a fickleness that flees correction but a fidelity that matures; not self-formation through books but a living word that reaches me where I hide; not an emergency service but a path of growth; not a danger to flee but a treasure to choose well. In a word of John of the Cross (Ascent of Mount Carmel, II, 22): God wills man led by another man^[30]. All the rest — the counterfeits this article has reviewed — are only its counterfeits.

Letting oneself be led is therefore not abdicating: it is becoming free — humble enough to let oneself be seen, confident enough to let oneself be corrected, docile enough to let oneself, by the hand of a man, be led all the way to God.

• What the Saints Say About Spiritual Direction — the anthology: Scripture, Desert Fathers, John of the Cross, Teresa of Avila, Francis de Sales, Ignatius, the saints' own voice on accompaniment.
• How to Grow in Spiritual Direction — the practical guide: the dispositions of the directee (transparency, docility, humility, perseverance), the two counterfeits and the limit of conscience.
• How to Choose a Spiritual Director? — the upstream article: what a director is, his qualities, how to find him and how to recognize a bad guide.
• Common Mistakes About Interior Silence — the twin article, same method applied to interior silence.
• Common Mistakes About Regular Confession — misconceptions about the sacrament that direction prolongs and illumines.