If we make a long time commitment to contemplative prayer, we need help to discern the resulting movement of God’s Spirit in our lives. This accompanying can be through one-to-one direction or it could be through group spiritual direction.
Fr Thomas Keating has the following to say about this need.
The old-fashioned guidance systems to keep airplanes on course during flight might help us to understand the art of listening to the divine guidance of the Holy Spirit. When the pilot is on course, he will not hear anything on his headphones. If he veers a little to the right, he will get a beep. If he goes too far the other way, he will pick up a different signal. By correcting his course, his headphones return to silence. In the moment by moment process of daily life, similar indications of being on or off course are available. Any sign that you are upset is an invitation to ask yourself why you are upset and not to project the blame on another person or the situation. Even if they are to blame, it won't do you any good until you solve the real problem which resides in you. The fundamental work of a spiritual accompanier (director) of contemplatives is to encourage and to guide them to submit to the divine therapy which allows the unconscious emotional material of early life that led to the drive for security, esteem and affection, and power symbols in the culture to be evacuated. Each of us has a significant dose of the human condition. In Catholic theology we call it the consequences of original sin. We come into the world not knowing what true happiness is but needing it; not knowing what true affection is but needing it; not knowing what true freedom is, but needing it. We bring with us into adult life the way we as children coped with impossible situations, either through repression of feeling or by compensatory programs for happiness that can not possibly work. The stronger those needs, the more the frustration when they are not fulfilled.
Into this universal human situation Jesus comes saying, "Repent" which means "change the direction in which you are looking for happiness." Human happiness is found in the growth of unconditional love. The work of spiritual direction is to help us to become aware of the obstacles to divine love and the free circulation of that love within us. This requires the cultivation of a non-possessive attitude toward ourselves and other people. Gradually we learn that God is the true security, God truly loves us and with this love, we can make it even if no one else seems to care.
Spiritual direction should primarily be directed to ordinary life. True freedom is God's gift to us, enabling us to serve. Jesus said to his disciples, "You have to learn how to serve people." The greatest in the kingdom are the persons who are truly serving - not necessarily some great cause, but just the ordinary needs of family and the people with whom they live and work. Service is something anyone can do. We can smile at somebody we do not like. We can send a note of condolence when we would rather not be bothered. We can provide meals without grumbling. We can put up with the children running under our feet, putting chocolate fingerprints on newly plastered walls. This ordinary kind of service and love is what Jesus seems to mean by learning to love as he loved us. He loves us in the details of our lives, puts up with our misguided ways and above all, shares with us the suffering that comes our way as a result.
Every now and then because of damaged or unprocessed emotions contained in the unconscious, we may enter a place of long term dryness in our prayer or avalanches of thoughts and feelings that are disturbing. Sometimes attitudes or desires arise that we did not even know existed in us, or sometimes we recycle a bad relationship that we thought we had resolved once and for all. This is a place where we need to be reassured and encouraged. It is not so much being told what to do as being encouraged to do what we know God and our conscience are asking us to do. A spiritual companion can contribute to that conviction. On the other hand, when you are in one of the dark nights and your spiritual director or soul friend says you are doing fine-that the unloading of the unconscious is a great grace, and that you will soon come to the bottom of the pile of the emotional junk-you will not believe him or her. If you do, you may say, "Oh thank you, I am so relieved." But as soon as you go out the door, the same heavy dark cloud descends and you start replaying the old commentaries: "This director never understood me anyway. What does he/she know?" And so, one of the things you have to "non-possess" as the journey continues is dependency on a spiritual director. Sometimes God fixes it so there isn't anybody around who has the remotest idea of what you are going through. Hopefully that could be minimised by developing referrals but as I said, even when you have the most expert person to refer to, you may not believe him or her either.
There is only a limited amount of help that spiritual direction can bring us. In the beginning, it can start us on the path by providing good readings, a rule of life and what is most important, a regular practice of prayer. It is prayer that gives us access to our centre. As we approach that centre where the divine Spirit dwells, the Spirit dismantles our emotional programs for happiness and relativises them so that we begin to act not from a self-centred point of reference-from a perspective of fear or self-protection - but from a centre of pure love.
As we progress we need advice when we come into some particular dilemma or double bind. In fact, as is the case with some serious medical problems, you may need a second or a third opinion. In a crisis of choice when you are perplexed and do not know which way to go, it might be good to consult several persons. God can communicate at this point through anything. The Spirit uses something concrete, like a word or a book, to enlighten the person reading it or hearing it. A good director can sometimes tell by your doubts, by your feelings, by a certain grace that you have had, how God is trying to lead you, and can point that out to you. But he or she cannot tell you what to do on all occasions. The real success of the spiritual director is to become gradually less of a director and more of a spiritual friend.
What do you do in a hopeless dilemma when you have asked all the spiritual directors you can find in the classified ads and you cannot get any answer? You offer a prayer surrendering to God's will and do the best you can. If you are wrong, it does not make any difference because you did the best you could as far as God is concerned. The very mistake you might make may be a useful or even necessary means to move you to a deeper self-knowledge that could not have happened unless you were totally frustrated in finding a clear answer.
The contemplative journey that we have enlisted in through a commitment to Centering Prayer is an adventure in faith and a trip into the unknown. If we think we know what is going to happen or if we expect to arrive at certain goals, we are on the wrong road. The chief comfort that our security system, which is so deeply biologically rooted, does not want to give up is certitude. That is the ultimate security, especially certitude that we are advancing on the spiritual journey. The moment that you surrender yourself to God, you are surrendering to an unknown future and destiny. You are letting yourself become the person whom God always intended you to be. Thus, you learn through the Spirit's guidance and through difficult or impossible situations, to relinquish your hold on every level of your being, allowing God to take total possession of it so that you can manifest the pure love of God in daily life without even thinking of it. The noise and frenetic character of modern life, the excessive chatter, so much information, so much entertainment - all of this has to quiet down inside of us. The greatest teacher is silence. To come out of interior silence and to practice its radiance, its love, its concern for others, its submission to God's will, its trust in God even in tragic situations is the fruit of living from your inmost centre, from the contemplative space within. The signs of coming from this space are a peace that is rarely upset by events, other people and our reactions to them, and a calm that is a stabilizing force in whatever environment you may be in. God gives us everything we need to be happy in the present moment, no matter what the evidence to the contrary may be. A good spiritual director helps us to sustain that trust.
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