Navigating the Interior Life: Spiritual Direction and the Journey to God

I found this book in my collection after a software upgrade. Verbum should definitely not mainstream this one. There are some valuable insights in the book, such as "it is ideal to have a well-trained spiritual director that is also your confessor." Indeed. Elsewhere, however, the advice is confused or even misleading. The authors write that "it is up to the seeker to search out and find the soul that God has waiting for them." Spiritual direction, however, should not be approached in such a romanticized way. That could lead to a sense that the director speaks and directs for God, which seems to be the authors' position. The authors give some really questionable advice on docility and obedience in spiritual direction. To be clear, docility and obedience are suited to the clerical and spiritual life with qualifications, of course, but not to lay spiritual direction, at least not as the authors describe it. Especially in the laity's seeking spiritual direction, they owe no obedience to directors. Should a directee be obedient "even when we disagree or don’t completely understand"? The authors say they should. No, that is incorrect. A lay person should never follow spiritual counsel they disagree with. Understanding should precede action in the spiritual life. The spiritual director should be completely detached from whether the lay directee follows his or her counsel. Also, spiritual directors should not charge a fee. The author claims not to take a position, but roundaboutly does by encouraging it, saying, "our generosity is a reflection of the health of our souls, and for the health of our souls we should be particularly generous with anyone willing to invest their time in our spiritual well-being." I have increasingly found that directors are charging fees because of these reasons. What makes this book most deficient are its omissions: It gives very little guidance regarding the preservation of healthy boundaries, what sorts of limits the director should recognize, how to prevent spiritual co-dependencies, how to discern red flags (such as narcissism) in a potential spiritual director, nothing on whether there should be expectations of confidentiality, mandatory reporting (what if a directee admits child abuse, for example), level of theological education a director should have (in my opinion, S.T.L. or accredited Master's, at a minimum), etc. The authors suggest that seeking an educated director is an example of pride (p. 20); however, they forget that St. Teresa of Avila so strongly valued the erudition of her spiritual director that her director was the Spanish Dominican Domingo Báñez, professor at the famed Salamanca. Kudos to the authors for addressing a lacuna in the literature, and there are some goods here, such as appendix II, but I cannot recommend this text to anyone. Faithlife also needs to remove bad links (I see they took out the link in the book to Regnum Christi), as they need to remove the one to Fr. John McCloskey's website (do NOT click on that link!).