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Quote by William A. Barry

“It needs to be emphasized that directees are real people, and as such they are just as varied, just as ambivalent, just as attractive and unattractive as are, for example, directors themselves. Real people can be scintillating, and they can be boring, often within the same hour. They can be banal, and they can be inspired. They can be concerned about momentous and serious issues and about trivia. They can be sunny, and they can be gloomy. In their prayer life they will show all these dispositions and more. Spiritual directors who want to foster a relationship between such people and their God need to have a "surplus of warmth".”

Quote by William A. Barry

Book:The Practice of Spiritual Direction
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The Practice of Spiritual Direction

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William A. Barry

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“How does this "surplus of warmth," this love for people as they are, show itself in spiritual direction? It appears in three attitudes: commitment, effort to understand, and spontaneity. Commitment is the willingness of spiritual directors to help directees grow in union with God and to commit their time, their resources, and themselves to that end. Effort to understand means that spiritual directors try to maintain a contemplative attitude toward directees, try to perceive how the directees are experiencing God and life. Spontaneity means that spiritual directors are themselves, not controlled and inhibited by their role as spiritual directors, but able to express their own feelings, thoughts, and hopes when expressing them will be helpful to directees. Without spontaneity, "commitment and effort to understand will appear cold, impersonal, and stereotyped.”

Spiritual DirectionSelah
Book:The Practice of Spiritual Direction
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“You are sitting on a computer in the projector cabin of a unique cinema hall in which the screen is not made up of white cloth. Instead, there is a big transparent room full of white liquid. You click on a movie file on your computer, the projector starts throwing light on the room of white liquid, real characters start emerging from the white liquid. You get attached to the characters. You start feeling their pain and pleasures. That room of white liquid is Space-Time or Maya. You are a soul sitting on the computer. The movie file is Karma-Desires. If you don’t like the movie, you can change it and play a better movie.”

PhilosophyBuddhismEnlightenmentAwakeningHinduismAdvaitaSpiritual Knowledge
Author:Shunya
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“Then, coming to itself, the intellect recognizes its proper dignity - to be master of itself - and is able to see things as they truly are; for its eye, made blind by the devil through the tyranny of the passions, is opened. Then man is granted the grace to be buried spiritually with Christ, so that he is set free from the things of this world and no longer captivated by external beauty. He looks upon gold and silver and precious stones, and he knows that like other inanimate things such as wood and rock they are of the earth, and that man, too, is after death a bit of dust and mould in the tomb. Regarding all the delectations of this life as nothing, he looks upon their continual alteration with the judgment that comes from spiritual knowledge. Gladly he dies to the world, and the world becomes dead to him: he no longer has any violent feeling within him, but only calmness and detachment.”

WorldLifeGodDeathColorCalmnessDetachmentGemsSpiritual KnowledgeViolent Feeling
Author:St. Peter of Damascus
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