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There is a saying attributed to the Jewish tradition that offers a beautiful image for understanding the work of spiritual direction:
“A rabbi is a geologist of the soul. He can tell you where to dig and what to dig for, but the digging you must do yourself.”
Whether we speak of a rabbi, a spiritual director, a confessor, or a trusted spiritual companion, the image is a helpful one. There are treasures hidden within the landscape of our lives, places where God is already present, already speaking, already inviting us into something deeper. Yet there are also layers of rock and soil that can make those treasures difficult to recognize. We need someone who can help us learn where to dig.
This is one of the great gifts of spiritual direction.
Paying Attention to the All-Holy
Spiritual direction is not primarily about receiving advice. A spiritual director is not there to make our decisions for us, solve our problems, or tell us exactly what God wants us to do. Rather, the director accompanies us as we learn to pay attention to the presence and movement of the All Holy within the ordinary circumstances of our lives.
God is not confined to the moments we identify as particularly “spiritual.” The All-Holy may be encountered in prayer and worship, certainly, but also in relationships, work, restlessness, joy, disappointment, desire, grief, conflict, silence, and even those places within ourselves that we would rather avoid.
The spiritual director helps us become attentive.
Sometimes that means asking a question we have not thought to ask. Sometimes it means noticing a pattern that keeps appearing in our lives. Sometimes it means sitting with something rather than rushing to resolve it. And sometimes the director simply holds space for silence, allowing us to hear what has been present all along.
The director does not create God’s presence. The director helps us recognize it.
Learning the Landscape of the Soul
The image of the spiritual director as a “geologist of the soul” is especially powerful because a geologist learns to read the landscape. What might appear to an untrained eye as nothing more than ordinary stone may reveal an entire history to someone who knows what to look for.
Our spiritual lives are much the same.
We carry within us experiences, desires, wounds, memories, hopes, fears, relationships, and questions. Some lie close to the surface. Others have been buried for years. Through spiritual direction, we begin to notice how these different parts of our lives intersect with our relationship with God.
We may discover that something we have dismissed as insignificant is actually a place where God has been speaking to us. We may realize that a recurring frustration is revealing a deeper longing. We may discover that something we have called failure has actually become a place of grace.
The spiritual director helps us notice these things, but the director cannot do the work for us.
“The digging you must do yourself.”
That is an essential part of spiritual growth.
Spiritual Direction Requires Our Participation
There is no shortcut to a mature spiritual life.
Another person can pray with us, listen to us, encourage us, challenge us, and help us discern the movement of God. But no one else can pray our prayers, surrender our will, face our fears, forgive on our behalf, or say our “yes” to God.
The spiritual director may point toward the place where digging could be fruitful. We are the ones who must pick up the shovel.
This makes spiritual direction an intentional practice. It asks us to become active participants in our relationship with God. We begin paying attention between sessions. We notice what gives life and what drains it. We listen to our desires. We become curious about our resistance. We make room for prayer and silence. We begin asking, again and again, Where is God in this?
Over time, this attentiveness changes us.
A Relationship That Deepens Our Relationship with God
The ultimate purpose of spiritual direction is not dependence upon a spiritual director. In fact, good spiritual direction should gradually deepen our ability to recognize the movement of God for ourselves.
The director points beyond themselves.
The real relationship being cultivated is our relationship with God.
As that relationship deepens, we may discover that prayer becomes less about finding the right words and more about becoming present. We may become more comfortable with silence and mystery. We may recognize God’s grace in unexpected places. We may become more aware of the movements within our own hearts and better able to distinguish between fear, ego, desire, obligation, and the gentle invitation of the Holy Spirit.
Perhaps most importantly, we begin to understand that spiritual growth is not primarily about becoming more impressive, more religious, or even more certain. It is about becoming more available to God.
The Courage to Dig
Digging can be difficult work.
Sometimes we uncover beauty. Sometimes we encounter things we would rather have left buried. Spiritual direction may lead us toward gratitude and wonder, but it may also invite us to examine grief, resentment, fear, unhealthy patterns, or images of God that no longer give life.
Yet we do not dig simply for the sake of digging.
We dig because we believe there is something worth finding.
Beneath the accumulated layers of our lives, the All-Holy is already present. Grace has been working in places we may not yet recognize. God has been accompanying us through chapters we thought were empty. Even our questions can become holy ground when we are willing to explore them.
The spiritual director stands beside us as a companion in that exploration, not claiming to possess all the answers, but helping us recognize the terrain and asking questions that encourage us to go deeper.
“Here,” the director sometimes seems to say. “Pay attention here. There may be something beneath the surface.”
And then the shovel is placed back into our hands.
Because ultimately, the spiritual life belongs to each of us. No one can live it for us. No one can encounter God on our behalf.
But we do not have to explore it alone.
Through spiritual direction, we are given the gift of another person who walks beside us, listens with us, prays with us, and helps us recognize the traces of the Divine running through the landscape of our lives.
They can help us see where to dig.
They can help us understand what we might be looking for.
But the digging, the beautiful, difficult, lifelong work of opening ourselves more completely to the All-Holy, is ours to do.
