Yedidya Center

Spiritual direction is a process of guided attentiveness and deepening awareness of the presence of God in one’s everyday life. The guide and the seeker (director and directee) usually meet monthly. There is no set agenda nor is there an outcome that is particularly anticipated. The seeker is invited to use the lens of everyday experiences to examine and reflect upon the possibility and shape of God’s presence in his/her life. Through attentive listening, gentle questioning, and patient offering of a range of interpretations, the guide assists the directee in finding connections, in exploring his/her experience of God’s presence or absence in his/her life, and in taking steps to strengthen the connection between God and the directee… Through spiritual direction, one is potentially able to develop spiritual practices that lead to and sustain a more mature discernment of God and a deeper connection to that what is Divine.

- Billy Dennis, Presence: Journal of Spiritual Directors International, June 2000

How to Find a Spiritual Director

Where to look
You can contact the Yedidya office to see if there is a Jewish spiritual director in your area. You can also go to the Spiritual Directors International (SDI) web site and look in their “Seek and Find Directory” for names of directors in each city that are registered with SDI and accepting new directees. At the SDI website you can also look for spiritual direction training centers in your area and contact a center and ask for help finding a director.

Please note that suggestions of directors are not endorsements of the way these people practice spiritual direction, only information about who identifies as a spiritual director in your area. Particularly since the field of Jewish Spiritual Direction is so new, there is great variety in what people who call themselves “Jewish spiritual directors” actually do. The choice of the right director for you at a particular time in your life is a matter for personal reflection and prayer. The suggestions that follow may be helpful.

What to ask
Inquire about your potential directors’ training. Ask where they were trained to become a spiritual director, the nature of the training program, whether they are in direction themselves, and in supervision. Know that the standards of the field of spiritual direction require that everyone who practices spiritual direction meets regularly with his or her own spiritual director and supervisor or supervision group.

Ask them to describe their understanding of spiritual direction, its goals and its process. You can use the content of this article as well as your own reaction and feelings to what they say to determine whether this is someone with whom you might like to work. If they are not Jewish, ask whether they have worked with Jewish directees and/or have a working acquaintance with Judaism. You might ask what kind of issues they imagine would arise working across faith traditions and see how you respond to their answers.

In all cases, make a first appointment with the understanding that this is an exploration of the possibility of working together. Raise whatever concerns or questions you have at that first meeting. Ask about fees; the minhag (or custom) is different in different communities.

How to decide
Some people like to make appointments to see two or three directors before deciding; others stay with the first director they visit unless they begin to feel that the relationship is not what they need. The first measurement is your degree of comfort and your ability to explore anything you need to explore with complete freedom. If your director’s responses seem “off” to you, explore that with him or her; if you cannot do that, the relationship is definitely not the right one for this kind of work. If you are working with someone who is not Jewish, it may take some time to work out the differences in language and theology. If you feel that the director is imposing his or her views or constricting yours, search elsewhere. With some initial work, a non-Jewish director should be able to understand your Jewish perspectives and be able to support your Jewish search. He or she will not, of course, be able to provide you with Jewish resources and spiritual practices; you will need to find those resources through your rabbi and community. Working with a non-Jewish director requires an ongoing process of “translation.”

It is standard practice for the director and directee to step back and reflect on how the relationship and process are developing during the third or fourth session; if your spiritual director does not suggest this, you should. Relationships should be re-evaluated every six to twelve months. Sometimes, as wonderful as a relationship has been, the directee’s growth requires that she or he move on. In the field this is not considered in any way insulting to the director, simply an indication that this seeker is meant to work with someone else at this time.

The first meeting
Many spiritual directors like to begin a session in silence or contemplative prayer. Some will suggest this on a first meeting; still others will respond to your own need for quiet times to sit with your thoughts, feelings, or spiritual experience, but they will not initiate silence themselves. You may begin by talking about yourself – your reasons for seeking spiritual direction; your hopes for the spiritual direction relationship and your relationship with God; your questions about spiritual direction; a particularly pressing issue; or just how you are feeling at this very moment of beginning.

In the days between setting a first meeting and meeting your spiritual director, you might pay particular attention to spiritual experiences that arise for you. That may be a comfortable place to begin. You might ponder the question “for what does my soul yearn?” You might reflect back on times when you have been particularly aware of God’s presence.

Early Experiences in Spiritual Direction
(The following statements were written by Jewish directees who had been in spiritual direction for 4 - 6 months)

• In retelling my religious experience in the womb of spiritual direction, I not only remembered sensing the presence of God and other loved ones around me, I relived it and opened to internalizing that precious fleeting moment of hearing the still small voice say “I am always with you.”
• What I find in this work is how much I appreciate the respect for mystery. I find a great willingness to be stripped away in spiritual direction, as I desire to be before God. In some ways one is practicing the honesty and openness one wants to offer to God, as well as the uncertainty. After a session, I feel the deep plates of my being, like the continents, shift and move in relation to one another.
• I also didn’t realize when I first entered spiritual direction that I was having any spiritual conflict due to my concept of God. When I first started direction, God was distant and judging and removed from my personal experience. I wasn’t really aware that I had failed to update what I thought about God from when I was a young child. In direction, I was given the space to slowly explore my concept of God without having to prove it or get validation from anyone. This allowed me to dig down, explore, and comfortably talk about what I really felt I “knew” or didn’t “know” about God. Spiritual direction gives me the opportunity to look at my changing relationship with God and constantly see how I define God as well as myself in that relationship.
• I am amazed at the wisdom I discover in myself when I have the opportunity for narrative. When I say things from this deep place, there is a “knowing” about it being true for me. I have been struck by how often this happens and how deep some of my emotions and truths have been. When I talk things through in spiritual direction, I find that more discernment, clarity, and wisdom on how to proceed becomes available to me.