What is a Spiritual Mentor, and Do You Need One?
Photo by Radu Florin
I’ve been offering coaching services for over twenty-five years—primarily life coaching, creative coaching, and business coaching. My life coaching evolved to transformational coaching; my creative coaching evolved into book coaching, and I rarely do business coaching anymore.
Given the length and depth of my own spiritual journey, it would seem like the most natural step for me to offer spiritual coaching. In one sense, I do. My spiritual life is so integral to who I am, that it is woven into every aspect of my life and my business. However, the term “spiritual coach” just doesn’t sit well with me. Coaching is about supporting people to navigate the day-to-day stuff of their lives. Of course, a person’s belief systems, habits, feelings, decision making and behaviors are all part the coaching process. But when it comes to the spiritual path, the big picture of one’s life journey, the soul work that is an intrinsic part of that journey, the relationships and experiences that make up the evolutionary blueprint, coaching doesn’t go far enough. What’s needed, instead, is a spiritual mentor: someone with decades of experience cultivating intuition, doing spiritual practices, engaging in shadow work, exploring inner realms and studying the human experience. Ideally, someone who is grounded in this world and comfortable in the inner world enough to be able to serve as a travel guide and navigator through both.
How do you know if working with a spiritual mentor is right for you?
You’ve done your best studying and practicing on your own, but feel frustrated, confused, misunderstood and unseen.
You don’t resonate with most spiritual teachers you’ve encountered.
You’re finding it difficult to commit to regular spiritual practices.
You don’t fully trust of your inner guidance (intuition) and you’d like help cultivating it.
You feel alone in the world because of the level of awareness, sensitivity and intensity you experience things.
You have difficulty making decisions and feel paralyzed.
You know you have amazing creative and spiritual gifts but don’t feel confident sharing them.
You feel called to help humanity in some way but are unsure how to align with your soul work.
If anything on that list resonates, you’d probably benefit greatly from having a spiritual mentor.
The spiritual path is only as strong as your lived experience. Books and workshops, and even certification programs only go so far. Intellectual knowledge, while fascinating, cannot help you navigate through life’s daily challenges. It’s the regular practices, along with the cultivation of intuition, presence and awareness that will help you evolve spiritually.
Having someone share part of your journey can make it less daunting. Plus, it’s empowering to have someone in your life that cares deeply about your progress and holds you accountable.
This is why after some deep reflecting, I’ve decided to add spiritual mentoring to my offerings. This will include one-on-one mentoring as well as mentoring groups. One aspect of the groups will be something I’ve recently discovered that I call spiritual sponsorship. It’s a partnership agreement between two people to come together daily to share part of their spiritual practices with each other. I’ll write more on that in a future blog post.
If this piques your interest, and you want to be notified with more information about my one-on-one spiritual mentoring or my spiritual mentoring group, get in touch via my Contact Page.