Spiritual Direction in the Carmelite Tradition: What Shapes the Way Carmelites Accompany Others?

A Shared Gaze Toward God

C. S. Lewis said that lovers look at each other, but friends look in the same direction.^[1] That kind of friendship is what the spiritual direction relationship is about. It is conversations that seek the same truth in one’s life. So it is not about agreement in answers, but it is about being fellow searchers, disciples, seekers of the truth of God’s impact in our lives. For us Carmelites, this shared gaze is shaped by a life steeped in silence, prayer, and the slow work of God. Spiritual direction becomes an extension of the way we ourselves have been taught to listen.

Quinn R. Conners, O.Carm., Ph.D.

Spiritual direction in the Carmelite tradition, among other traditions, is the search for God in one’s life. St. Teresa of Avila writes about spending time with a friend. She famously defined prayer as ‘being on terms of friendship with God,’ or ‘an intimate sharing between friends.’^[2] Spiritual direction explores those experiences within that friendship. Carmelites accompany people in that search whether it is when they preach, hear Confessions, assist couples to prepare for the Sacrament of Marriage, help them heal from a difficult divorce, or listen in spiritual direction; they are listening for that restless search and the multitude of ways in which it gets expressed over the course of one’s life. This has certainly been my own experience: again and again I find that the conversations I have with people echo the very movements of prayer that shape my own Carmelite life.

Spiritual direction is working with people particularly in the affective dimension of their experience of God. The Ignatian tradition offers a more systematic and cognitive approach to understanding the movement of God in a person’s life, though it does not entirely ignore the affective. The focus of this affective kind of spiritual direction in our tradition is the relationship itself between God and the person. The person is helped not so much to understand the relationship better, but to engage in it, to enter into dialogue with God, to listen to God and to be open to the movement of God’s love touching them. This resonates deeply with my own formation, where we were taught not simply to analyse prayer but to surrender to it — to let God’s love do its quiet work.

Where Life and Prayer Meet

Spiritual direction of this affective type is directly concerned with a person’s actual experience of his or her relationship with God. As Barry and Connelly point out in their very helpful writing on spiritual direction: ‘…Christian spiritual direction…as help given by one Christian to another which enables that person to pay attention to God’s personal communication to him or her, to respond to this personally communicating God, to grow in intimacy with this God, and to live out the consequences of the relationship.’^[3] In my own Carmelite journey, this has meant learning to trust the subtle movements of the heart — the very places where God often speaks first. The focus, then, is the experience of God in prayer. It is not necessarily ideas about God and about prayer, but the process, the experience itself.

What happens when a person prays? What do they notice about God and about themselves when they try to put themselves in the presence of God? What ideas and experiences do they bring to God? What do they take away from their experience of God in prayer? Such questions are explored in the spiritual direction relationship.

As indicated above, the affective experience of God is central in the Carmelite tradition of spiritual direction. Knowledge about God, deepened self-understanding, and increased generativity are important aspects of the experience, but it is the deepening of the experience of God that is the fruit of this spiritual exercise in the Carmelite tradition. How do I experience the depth of God’s love for me? What happens to me affectively? What feelings do I notice: love? fear? anger? joy? Do I allow such feelings to surface in my prayer and how do I experience God when that happens in me? Do I avoid analysing the feelings and simply hold them in the presence of God? What is my response to that love in the context of my behaviour, my prayer, my outreach to other people? In other words, how does that fruit of my prayer show up in my interior life and external behaviour?

Silence as the Ground of Listening

The process of spiritual direction is intended to help us explore this impact. Affectively and behaviourally, how am I changed by the experience of God’s love? How does it manifest itself in my behaviour and in the quality of my interactions with others? Am I more empathic? Am I more generous? In other words, am I less self-focused and more attentive to others, including God? If I am not less self-focused, what is it in me that is preventing that change? Am I willing to acknowledge what prevents me from changing and working with it?

Formed by Silence, Sent to Listen

Our Carmelite tradition has always insisted that genuine listening begins in silence — the silence we cultivate daily in prayer. It is from that silence that our listening in spiritual direction takes shape. Much of what follows flows from the contemplative posture we try to cultivate in Carmel — a way of listening shaped by silence, humility, and the desire to meet the other where God is already at work. This process requires the development of deep listening skills, which then get explored in the spiritual direction time. Such listening skills require paying attention, appreciating, and affirming the person to whom I am listening, including myself.

In terms of paying attention to the person, do I set aside what might distract me from actually listening to them? Do I let go of my agenda, for example, thinking what I want to say in response, noting and letting go of pre-conceived notions of what I expect the person to say, etc.? Do I interrupt as little as possible? However, if I do interrupt, do I do it to encourage the speaker to say more (e.g., ‘Tell me more’ or ‘What else happened?’).

How do I show appreciation for the person and what they are saying? For example, do I respond to more than just the words being said? Do I validate feelings and underlying ideas? Empathy is usually the best and first response to what a person says. I communicate to them that I have heard not only their words, but I have paid attention to the emotional dimension of what they have said. That emotional dimension carries important information too and is often a gateway to deeper prayer to which the spiritual director calls them back. ‘Go back to that feeling of gratitude or fear and hold it in the presence of God. Do not analyse it. Just hold it and be with the feeling. What do you notice about God? About yourself?’

How do I affirm the person? Do I let the speaker know that I heard and understood them by using reassuring comments, like ‘I understand.’? Do I try to paraphrase what the person has said? Do I maintain eye contact? Do I give the person my undivided attention by not looking at the clock or the phone or other material or thinking of the next thing I want to say? These sound like obvious practices, but it can be surprising what can distract us at times, especially in the early days of offering spiritual direction. Thus, it is important that I do an emotional ‘scan’ of myself before entering into a helping conversation like spiritual direction. That ‘emotional scan’ might include noting any anxieties I might be carrying into the conversation, any preoccupations I am carrying from the day or previous or future conversations, any feelings of anger or sadness or fear or joy that might distract me from actually being fully present to the person presenting their concerns to me. This habit was impressed on me early in my Carmelite formation: unless I am aware of what I bring into the room, I cannot truly be present to the person before me.

The Humility That Opens the Heart

At times, conflicts can arise in conversations. It is important that at the first sign of a conflict, we manage the impulse to ‘argue back’ or correct them. The person has come to us for some kind of help. We are not there to prove ourselves, but to listen attentively to the other to help them resolve the conflict or concern they carry. In Carmel we learn — often slowly — that silence and humility create the space where genuine encounters become possible. Our role is to invite and be receptive to the other person’s thoughts, feelings, and wishes without defending or disagreeing. It is usually helpful to repeat the other person’s position in our own words to let them know what you believe he or she is thinking and feeling. It is very important that they know you are trying to understand them. Oftentimes, that feedback helps them to clarify their own thinking and any confusion or lack of clarity gets resolved more easily.

One of the ways of communicating this openness is to ask the other person to elaborate on his or her point of view. If the matter is a minor one or if you think it can be managed or resolved in the present conversation, pause and ask if the other person would be willing to hear what you think. The point of responsive listening is not necessarily to reach some conclusion or to cut off the discussion or to prove a point. The point is to allow the person who comes to you to tell his or her side of the story and for them to feel that you have been listening to them. Sometimes conflicts do not get resolved, but it has a better chance using this method. If it does not seem to get resolved, then it usually means that there is more listening and ‘unpacking’ of the issue(s).

If the issue is significant or emotionally charged, it may be wise to pause and revisit the conversation after a day or so, allowing both parties to respond more thoughtfully. When giving your response, ask if you might respond completely without interruption in the same way you did with him or her, especially if that has been an issue. Sometimes people are very anxious, can get defensive, and interrupt. Active listening requires great patience, respect and time. These practices are not techniques so much as habits of the heart that grow out of a contemplative way of being. They are simply the ways I have found myself listening more deeply as a Carmelite.

Here are some basic principles of ‘good listening’:

It requires being genuinely interested in what the other person has to say. In other words, good listening is an ‘other-focused’ activity. It is not just to ‘get my point across.’
At the first sign of an argument, check the impulse to argue back and concentrate on listening to the other person’s side of the story. However, pay attention to the impulse. It can give you valuable information about the other person and yourself at the time.
It means deliberately suspending my self-interests and needs, e.g., to not say something akin to ‘me too,’ interrupt, argue, and communicate reactions like anxiety or fear.
Acknowledge that listening places a burden on the listener.
Acknowledge that initially listening is a one-sided activity and resist the need to say something.
Encourage the speaker to express and expand on their ideas and feelings.
Repeat the other person’s position in your own words to show what you believe he or she is thinking and feeling.
Ask the other person to correct your impression or elaborate on his or her point of view.
If the matter is minor or if you think it can be managed or resolved in the present conversation, pause and ask if the other person would be willing to hear what you think.
If it is an important or contentious issue, ask if it is possible to wait a day or so before giving your side of the issue so that it can be more effectively addressed and hopefully resolved. When giving a response, ask if you might respond completely without interruption in the same way you did with him or her.
The point of responsive listening is not to reach some conclusion or to cut off discussion, but to allow the person who comes to you to tell his or her side of the story and to feel that you are listening to it. Sometimes conflicts do not get resolved, but it has a better chance using this method. On the other hand, sometimes conflicts do get resolved in the ‘telling’ of the conflict.
Finally, people are usually more interested in you understanding their feelings than focusing on the outcome.

Our Carmelite tradition of contemplative prayer should help us to listen with greater patience, openness and respect. When we can catch those aspects of our personality that interfere with contemplative listening, then we are more likely to be able to manage them and to genuinely hear and understand what the other person is saying. Contemplative listening requires ongoing conversion of our personalities. I have found this to be one of the most humbling aspects of my Carmelite life: prayer reveals the very places where I resist listening, and spiritual direction becomes the space where those resistances are gently exposed. It means acknowledging and managing our instinct to be right, to argue back, to prove ourselves, etc. In doing this kind of contemplative listening, we are often challenged to look at these instincts and to notice when they get triggered, how we might defend against them, and how we can change so that they have less control over us. It is not so much a matter of getting rid of them, but of learning to manage them so that they interfere less with our lives. Such ‘management’ is challenging and is usually an ongoing issue that never gets fully resolved, because our inherent ‘sinfulness’ is continually coming to light.

We can notice these aspects of our personality when they surface in our relationship with God as well. We notice them when we resist change of heart and especially the change in behaviour that follows. Contemplative listening means that we can come to acknowledge these problematic parts of our personality, grow in our willingness to accept them, and cooperate with the grace to manage them. Such ‘problematic parts’ of our personality show up when we get defensive about ourselves, when we are arguing in our head about why the feedback is inaccurate or unfair. It can show up when we ‘conveniently’ forget about it, but it shows up in our prayer experience as we try to avoid or dismiss it. The irony, of course, is that we go to spiritual direction for feedback and do not always like getting it when it challenges us in certain ways, especially when it calls us to change and conversion.

The Slow Conversion of Listening

Our contemplative tradition offers us daily opportunities for this slow conversion of heart. Again and again, I discover that the simple fidelity to silence and prayer shapes the way I listen to others. It is the quiet work of grace, forming us into people who can accompany others with patience, reverence, and hope. ‘In silence and hope will be your strength.’^[4] Carmel forms the listener. Carmel forms the director. Carmel forms you.

^[1] C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves (New York: Harcourt, 1988), 66.

^[2] The Way of Perfection, chapter 6.

^[3] William A. Barry & William J. Connolly, The Practice of Spiritual Direction, New York: 1982, 9.

^[4] Isaiah 30:15 quoted in The Rule of Carmel, Chapter 21.