For some they discover the desire within their relationships, through their yearning to develop or deepen the quality of these relationships, whether with individuals, within groups or within the wider global community.

Others desire is born out of their commitment to bring about justice within the social systems in which they live and work.

While it seems, another group discover in their passion for the natural world the desire to ground their deep concern for the well-being of the environment in a spiritual context.

Traditionally the desire for spiritual direction is a means to reflect on their inner-self, through meditation or the search for deeper meaning in their lives.

It's different for each of us and whatever the presenting factor, a director helps the person to explore their human experience to encounter their spirituality within their lives.

In spiritual direction spiritual accompaniers companion people to attend to the life-giving presence of what is ultimate in their life as they perceive it and it is in this sense that we know spiritual direction by many names: spiritual accompaniment, spiritual companioning, spiritual guidance, spiritual mentoring, etc.

Finding a spiritual director

Traditionally a person seeking spiritual direction meets in-person with a local person but these days that's less necessary.

Knowing where to start looking a spiritual director is probably just as difficult as finding one.

Then again, for some people who have enjoyed a long association with their spiritual director, either they or their director is shifted. The tyranny of distance now makes it too difficult to continue meeting. What might they do?

Alternatively, either through the onset of illness or disability, it becomes too hard to travel for spiritual direction.

Another possibility is people might transfer overseas where local directors neither speak their language nor understand their culture. Whom might they approach as a spiritual director?

These questions assume spiritual direction can only happen in-person, in a face-to-face environment. Once that was true but no more.

So where do they find a director?

The traditional face-to-face environment within which people seeking spiritual direction is changing.

Spiritual seekers, young people in particular live in the Digital Age which has modernised communication processes.

Internet that has issued in unimaginable possibilities of connectivity.

The potential of this radical communication's platform has penetrated every part of society and this connectivity offers those seeking spiritual direction a virtual meeting place.

Local means global

In the digital age, the global is the new local.

Location no longer limits the time and place in which people meet a spiritual director.

Global services are as accessible as local services.

The Internet opens endless choices for everything, including spiritual direction.

Supervision, counselling even making a retreat is possible over the Internet

Privacy

While meeting with a spiritual director in a virtual environment is convenient, is it safe? Is it confidential?

Some spiritual directors use a range of popular and free services, however we all know that nothing is free.

When something is offered free to us we know we are the product. Our data, our information, our friends, our location are some of the elements free solutions put up for sale.

But wait, there's more!

Some major solutions actually record what is said and these recordings are available to society surveillance agencies and the like.

Opening ourselves is a relationship of trust. Opening ourselves to our self is often hard enough, however it is unwise to share our souls with the world.

Making wise choices

The Digital Age makes it much easier to search for a spiritual director; the person can be in across town, in another city, even in another country. The world's our oyster.

However, when looking online for a spiritual director as well as getting the right person be sure to ask if they meet over a 256bit encrypted video solution.

Failure to use a highly encrypted communication solution means it is most likely means others will know as much about you as you do.

It is like engaging in spiritual direction with a microphone at the local shopping mall.

If a spiritual director doesn't advertise their video communication solution is secure, it's probably not and if they don't know or have scant regard for online security, keep looking.

The experienced and skilled spiritual directors at the Fullness of Life Centre Perth offer a secure, encrypted service.

Please consider visiting www.fullnessoflife.org for further information.

• Stephen Truscott SM, PhD is the Director of the Fullness of Life Centre (Inc.) Perth, Western Australia www.fullnessoflife.org.

One friend rushes anxiously across, beating the oncoming cars.

Out of self-preservation, another stands steadfast on the curb.

The third fearfully steps backwards.

They look at one another and laugh; they know each other so well. The first took ground, the second held ground, and the third gave ground.

The friends can stand for distinctive stances within us. Do we recognise and befriend these inner stances as the friends did?

While we might have a nodding acquaintance with the stances, often we default to one approach, particularly in a crisis. What is your unconscious preference? Do you take ground, hold ground or give ground?

To exercise true human freedom is to choose how we respond instead of our responses choosing as with the three friends.

While we easily default to a preferred stance, freedom involves choosing not to stay stuck in our default position.

This is not a one-off choice; it is a daily struggle. A tussle to keep returning to a place of interior freedom.

Such freedom invites us to embrace our frail humanity instead of deceptively assuming we can be free from our humanness.

After Jesus resurrected, he appeared to his disciples bearing the wounds from his crucifixion. Jesus was not so much free from his wounds but free within his woundedness.

To experience ongoing resurrection in our life is to find true freedom within our wounded humanity not to seek to be free from our humanness.

• Fr Stephen Truscott SM, PhD is a spiritual director, counsellor and professional supervisor at the Fullness of Life Centre www.fullnessoflife.org. where he provides a dual practice - in person and digital service.He meets with anyone interested in their spiritual journey or online by secure video conferencing.

Father Stephen Truscott SM PhD said the Enneagram is among the field of psychology that talks about personality profiles.

In his role as Fullness of Life Counsellor and Spiritual Director, Fr Truscott uses his training in the Enneagram to assist him to appreciate how better to accompany a person on their spiritual journey.

The Enneagram was part of Fr Truscott's formation as a spiritual director at the Institute for Spirituality Leadership in Chicago and he uses it in his 'dual practice - in person and digital' service at the Fullness of Life Centre.

To break it down, Fr Truscott explained to The eRecord how the psychological method is utilised to understand personality according to nine different typologies.

Those typologies are:

• Reformer (1)
• Helper (2)
• Achiever (3)
• Individualist (4)
• Investigator (5)
• Loyalist (6)
• Enthusiast (7)
• Challenger (8)
• Peacemaker (9).

"Each looks at different ways to understand some basic personality traits of a human being. Often, people find one typology holds their experience better than another," Fr Truscott said.

Three basic groupings are: helper-achiever-individualist (2-3-4), investigator-loyalist-enthusiast (5-6-7) and challenger-peacemaker-reformer (8-9-1).

"If we consider the post-Resurrection narratives in St John's Gospel; three stories describe how Jesus related to Mary Magdalene (a 234 personality), Peter (a 891 personality) and Thomas (a 567 personality)."

Fr Truscott said the Enneagram offers an insight into how Jesus called each disciple to deeper conversion in their lives.

234 personality

As an example of this type of personaliy, Fr Truscott says Mary of Magdala, was an anxious, energetic person.

Developing Mary's 234 personality Fr Truscott observes, she organised a group of her friends to get up very early the day after the Sabbath and go to Jesus' tomb to finish the burial rituals.

In her anxious insecurity, when she got there, she was so caught up in planning, she overlooked what was happening in the present moment and mistook Jesus for the gardener.

It was only when Jesus called her by name and said, ‘Mary!' did she come back to herself in the present moment. She realised that it was Jesus standing there before her.

Then, in her anxiety to reconnect with Jesus, she raced to touch him.

Jesus told her, ‘Don't touch me.'

In saying this, Jesus was not afraid of being touched, he was comfortable with physical affection. By saying, ‘Don't touch me.'

Jesus invited Mary to move from finding false security through getting her energy from people outside of herself to moving to a place within herself in which she could find a true interior source of security.

When she became re-centred within herself, Jesus then invited her to move back into action but from a centred place of security inside her; he told her to go and to tell the disciples in Jerusalem that he had risen.

891 personality

Peter the apostle was a very different person says Fr Truscott.

Fr Truscott calls him "a feisty character who often expressed strong emotions".

By way of example, Fr Truscotts says that before Jesus' death, Peter held his ground.

He declared that he would not reject Jesus.

For Peter, there was no way he would lose control, yet soon after, when put in a vulnerable situation and out of fear for his own self-preservation, Peter denied Jesus not once, but three times.

When Jesus meet Peter after the resurrection, he had to ask Peter three times did he love him before Peter dropped his protective mask of self-preservation.

Peter then acknowledged from within the raw pain of his vulnerability that, even though he had denied Jesus three times, he loved Jesus.

In this, Peter moved from a place of regret about the past to a place of no regret.

567 personality

Thomas, a 567 personality, was much quieter, Fr Truscott observed.

A more introverted person by nature, after Jesus' resurrection, even though he had heard Jesus had risen from the dead, Thomas, out of fear, he took refuge in the safety of distancing himself from what had occurred.

Thomas needed to make sense of things before he felt safe to take part which took him time.

When Thomas met Jesus, in the safe company of the other disciples, Jesus invited Thomas to touch his wounds, said Fr Truscott.

In this, Jesus invited Thomas to move out of the safety of his observations and perceptions about life and to take part in the emotional intimacy of life itself.

In reaching out and bridging the great divide between his thoughts and his ability to move into effective concrete action, Thomas shifted from dealing with life abstractly to engaging life in a concrete enfleshed way.

Enneagram as help to a full life

Fr Truscott says the Enneagram helps him better appreciate people.

"If I'm journeying with someone in the 891 space, I'm very aware their primary life question is: ‘Who am I?'.

"The 234's life question is: ‘How am I doing?'

"While for people in the 567 space, their life question is more about ‘Where am I?', looking to make sense of their life," he added.

"If I meet someone in a critical circumstance from the 891 space, they'll often describe their difficulty in terms of: ‘I don't know who I am any more'; 234 people will talk about themselves as: ‘I don't know what to do'; and 567 people often will say: ‘I can't make sense of my life any more'.

Different perspectives

Fr Truscott acknowledged that there are different views on how people perceive the Enneagram.

"Some treat it with suspicion", he said.

"Some say the Enneagram may not have biblical foundations to it. But we can see that when we study the history of the Christian tradition, part of our theological process is to adapt contemporary paradigms to talk about our faith.

"For instance, if we live in a post-modern secular world, how do we find a language that speaks into people's contemporary life in a way that's relevant to them?"

He is adamant that the Enneagram is one way among many ways of trying to speak into people's experience.

"People can find [the Enneagram] helpful to understand where the growth-points are in their own personal and spiritual journey.

Fullness of Life Centre

Fr Truscott and Celia Joyce MPS are the Spiritual Directors and Counsellors at the Fullness of Life Centre www.fullnessoflife.org.

They offer a dual practice - in person and digital service, meeting with anyone interested in their spiritual journey at the Fullness of Life Centre or online by secure video conference.

Sources

• Matthew Lau/The eRecord
• Photo of Stephen Truscott, by Matthew Lau