Spiritual Direction

Learn more about my approach to spiritual direction in the short video below.

Working with a spiritual director can offer several benefits, particularly if you’re seeking deeper insight into your spiritual journey or are exploring questions of meaning and purpose. Here’s how it might help you:

1. Guidance in Spiritual Growth: A spiritual director can help you discern your spiritual path, offering guidance on how to deepen your relationship with the divine or your sense of spirituality. They can help you identify spiritual practices that resonate with you, such as meditation, prayer, or contemplation.
2. Clarity and Insight: If you’re facing a spiritual crossroads or feeling stuck, a spiritual director can help you explore your feelings, experiences, and questions in a safe and non-judgmental space. They can assist in uncovering insights and gaining clarity about your spiritual beliefs and practices.
3. Support in Difficult Times: During challenging periods, such as loss, doubt, or major life transitions, a spiritual director can provide emotional and spiritual support. They can help you process your experiences from a spiritual perspective, offering comfort and a sense of connection.
4. Accountability: A spiritual director can help you stay accountable to your spiritual goals and intentions, encouraging you to stay committed to practices that nourish your soul and align with your values.
5. Deepening Awareness: Through regular sessions, a spiritual director can help you cultivate a deeper awareness of the sacred in everyday life, noticing how the divine or spiritual energy is present in your daily experiences.
6. Personalized Exploration: A spiritual director tailors their approach to your unique spiritual journey, allowing for a personalized exploration of your beliefs, doubts, and aspirations.

If you feel a pull toward exploring your spirituality in a more intentional and guided way, working with a spiritual director might be a meaningful next step.

I provide one-on-one and group spiritual direction, art and creative coaching, and guidance. I am a certified spiritual guide through the Spiritual Guidance Training Institute, a certified Interspiritual Meditation Mentor and Facilitator, and in my day job I work as the Creative Director for SDI – The Home of Spiritual Companionship.

Like Joseph Beuys famously said, I believe that “everyone is an artist.” For several years, I worked as a studio art instructor, and have developed a unique method of looking at and engaging art that is gentle and generative, and that anybody can learn. I have worked with all kinds of artists and creatives from many different backgrounds. Some have worked years at a rigorous studio practice. I can help you discern next steps in your work, and come up with a plan towards making the art you feel truly called to make. If you’d like some coaching around your artmaking and studio practice, I can help. If you have a creative heart that has been dormant for awhile, I can help you re-ignite it. I have worked with MBAs and other businesspeople and helped them get in touch with the creative spark within. Learn my method of art critique, and for the rest of your life you will be able to look at any artwork, of any so-called genre, in any museum or gallery, and engage it on your terms, find connection with the artist behind the work, and make sense of what you are experiencing in an empowering and enlightening way.

So, should you be interested in receiving one-on-one spiritual direction with me, facilitating a retreat or giving a talk – Please contact me with inquiries.

My approach is informal and welcoming – there’s no stuffiness or formality. The space is yours, and I try to offer you just what you need. There is no judgement in this space, only compassionate listening and soul friendship. If you need to cry, or swear, or scream – go for it. If you need to spend an hour sitting silently together, lets do it. If you have that one strange experience that you can’t imagine talking about with anybody – this is a space to courageously bring those experiences.

By doing so, you will realize you have integrated your experiences, deepened your engagement with life, and can walk your journey with more clarity, confidence, and authenticity.

Here’s what you can expect:

• Sessions last one hour, and occur roughly once a month.
• We can open with a 1-2 minute silence. This can be done with a prayer, a poem, a sacred text, or nothing at all. Some people have something they are resonating with that they like to open with, and others prefer me to guide this. It’s entirely up to you.
• The rest of the session is yours to explore the questions that are most stirring, resonating, or troubling you. My job is to listen deeply and to hold a safe, non-judgmental space for you to explore what matters to you.
• I am listening for ways you might be naming, or identifying, the answers you are seeking, and I will gently point these out to you. If I make suggestions or comments, they are intended to help you dig deeper and notice where your heart may be leading you. I’m not much for giving advice, but will share wisdom I’ve learned on the way if I think it will help you.
• In the days and weeks between sessions, I hope you will contemplate the stirrings that arise for you in a session – via meditation, journaling, and walking – or however you best integrate the deep wisdom that is always available to you.

Please take a look at the Intake Questionnaire linked here. It is meant to help us establish some ground rules for this journey, and to help you discern where you are at right now: Intake Questionnaire – Spiritual Guidance – 2021

I adhere to the Guidelines for Ethical Conduct by Spiritual Directors International. I also aspire to the hallmarks outlined in the Portrait of a Spiritual Director/Companion. As I seek to continually grow and be accountable to my practice, I myself have a spiritual director who I work with, and actively engage in spiritual direction supervision.

I’m available in person (coffee or tea in my studio), sitting in our backyards, at a park, or going for a walk. I can also connect over Zoom. Contact me via my Contact form to learn more or set up an appointment, or you can learn more on my spiritual direction website here.

What we can talk about

The list below includes some things that, when incorporated into our lives, help us to deal with all the challenges, uncertainties, and heartbreaks that inevitably come our way on the journey of life. Difficulty is unavoidable, I’m sorry to say. But how we encounter and understand these difficulties – and prepare for future ones – can make a tremendous difference in our lives. In fact, our wounding from these difficulties can actually become strengths. When we become grounded in solid practice and deep wisdom, we participate in and receive all of life with curiosity, wonder, and joy. Even the hard stuff becomes an adventure of discovery and growth.

Here’s a fairly exhaustive list of things we can work on together. If any of these resonates with you, then one-on-one guidance could be a path to improving your life and finding wholeness:

• Establish your core values and live by them
• Listen to, cultivate, and trust the inner light within you
• Create art and expressions that are connected to your truest self
• Be the artist you know you are, and develop new creative habits
• Create better, more impactful art
• Establish your values, and live by them – we call this ‘alignment’
• Learn to listen to, and act on, your deepest intuition
• Learn mindfulness – being present to each moment
• Learn how to pray (hint – prayer is happening more than you might think!)
• Learn breathwork – find calm and groundedness for any moment
• Learn how to meditate – learning is the easy part! 🙂
• Learn the wisdom of the great spiritual traditions, and its universality for our lives.
• Become more loving and compassionate
• Be a better healer to others
• Grow confident in who you are and your unique gifts, and how you have an important role to play in the healing of the world
• Learn how to effectively nurture a community
• Become a spiritual teacher
• Start a spiritual community
• Find and Join a spiritual community
• Make a pilgrimage
• Live life as pilgrimage
• Practice forgiveness
• Practice gratitude
• Deepen spiritually
• Grow closer to God
• Discover and practice spirituality in nature
• Do shadow work
• Be of service to others
• Explore Mystery
• Practice mysticism
• Learn the art and power of giving blessings
• Read books chosen to help you achieve your goals, and share in a book club
• Eliminate bad debt, stop living paycheck to paycheck, and practice sound personal finance.
• Learn the power of practicing generosity
• Break the scarcity mindset, live in abundance, make more money and flourish financially
• Learn how to grieve – loss is unbelievably painful, but we can heal these wounds and even grow from them.
• Learn how to be compassionate towards your own suffering
• Learn to be with the suffering of others
• Set intentions – we can co-create our reality and it begins with intention
• Learn the art of Letting Go – nothing is permanent. Realize this and you are going to find a lot more peace
• Consciously partner and participate in the Universal Flow of All Things
• Understand your True Self – the Being that is participating in the Flow of the previous item.

Testimonials:

Spiritual Guidance Testimonials

“There aren’t words to describe the preciousness of my monthly sessions with Matt.”

“Matt is such a thoughtful and wise spiritual companion. His kind listening and perceptive questions helped me deepen my reflection and insights. I’ve been able to process the emotional and spiritual fallout from my experiences of religious wounding and faith transition through the spaciousness and safety he provides. Our sessions have been a vital support as I’ve journeyed into greater spiritual peace, well-being, and integration.”

“Matt is an incredibly compassionate spiritual guide. In his one-on-one sessions, he establishes a safe place for me to share and stay focused on my spiritual path. I highly recommend Matt for anyone who is seeking spiritual direction or companionship.”

Art Coaching Testimonials

“I reached out to Matt for help reconnecting with my creativity. He really helped me move through my anxiety about art making. As an amateur it was initially challenging for me to share the pieces I was working on, but his support and encouragement made it so much easier. With his wisdom and guidance I was able to build not only a creative habit, but an identity as an artist, which has felt invaluable. I highly recommend working with Matt.”

What does this cost?

Our first session is complementary (totally free no obligation). After that, I invite you to set a rate on my scale, based on your financial circumstances.

$95 a session for resourced folks (this is considered my normal rate), to $55 for starving artists. I consider resourced as gainfully employed, able to afford vacations, with ability to save for retirement.