Using Ignatian Spirituality in Spiritual Direction
Attention, Discernment, and Encounter in Practice
Ignatius of Loyola deeply believed something I have also seen to be true after years of walking with people in their spiritual lives: God is always present with the person in front of you.
Ignatius called this finding God in all things. It means believing that God is already present and active in every person’s life, often in ways they and we have not yet noticed. This includes our hopes, dreams, desires, and even our struggles. The role of Spiritual Direction is not to reveal God, but to help someone notice the God who is already there.
This shapes everything we do in Spiritual Direction and accompaniment.
It means we are not mainly advisers or problem-solvers. Instead, we are companions who listen together for what God is already doing in someone’s daily life. Ignatian spirituality gives us an effective framework: first, notice what is happening inside; next, name it honestly; and finally, respond. These three steps, when used well, can open someone’s life to God in powerful ways.
The Examen: Learning to Notice
The Examen is the starting point, and its main gift is not information but perception. Practising it daily helps us pay attention and slow down. We can then ask: Where did I feel life today? Where did I feel resistance? What moments stayed with me, and what did I rush past? What memories or feelings lingered or faded?
In Spiritual Direction, this same attentiveness guides each session. People often come in with conclusions like, I think God is telling me to do something, or God seems silent. There is nothing wrong with this, but it often skips a step. It moves to meaning before fully paying attention to the experience itself.
Ignatian practice invites us to return to our experiences, focusing on the moment rather than the answer. What really happened? What did you feel? Where in your week did something move you? Over time, I have seen people realise their inner world is not as confusing or random as they thought. It becomes a place of encounter that they can learn to understand.
Notice
Where did I feel most alive or drawn toward life? Where did I feel resistance, heaviness, or distance?
Pay attention without trying to explain. This is where God often begins.
Consolation and Desolation: Learning to Name
Once we start to notice, we need words to describe what we see. Ignatius gives us two very helpful terms for this: consolation and desolation.
Consolation is anything that draws us closer to God, to faith, hope, and love. Desolation is anything that pulls us away, making us feel isolated or distorting how we see ourselves and God. These are not quick labels, but patterns to notice over time. Sometimes, a fruitful season can hide insecurity, and a dry period may be God’s invitation to deeper trust.
The Director’s job is not to label these movements for the directee, but to help them stay with their experience long enough to see where it leads. I often ask, "Where does this take you?" How does it affect your relationship with God over time? Naming a movement honestly, without rushing to fix it, is an important step in growth.
Name
Which of these moments drew me toward faith, hope, or love?
Which pulled me away?
Do not rush. Let the pattern reveal itself over time.
Discernment: Learning to Respond
Discernment is where what we notice and name leads to action. But it is not mainly about making decisions. It is about learning to understand the deeper patterns of our inner life and to respond faithfully to what we find, with God’s help.
Ignatius teaches us to focus not on how strong a feeling is, but on where it leads. The key question is not how intense it feels, but where it is taking us. At this level, desire is important. Often, beneath the desire for clarity is a wish for control or certainty. Sometimes, wanting to serve God is mixed with wanting to be seen and known. Deeper still, there is a longing just to be with God, to receive life from him, and to rest in his purpose.
The goal is not to get rid of these mixed desires, but to let them be purified and reordered toward what Ignatius calls holy indifference. This is not cold detachment, but real freedom - the freedom to say with peace, I want this, but I want God more.
Discernment always leads to practical action. Ignatius calls this agere contra, which means acting in small, faithful ways against the patterns that pull us from God. This could be having a needed conversation, letting go of something, or doing a quiet act of love that no one else sees. Real change does not come from insight alone, but from acting on what we have noticed and named. Living toward God means moving, even in small steps, in his direction.
Discern
Where does this seem to be leading me?
What do I most deeply desire beneath it all?
The question is not how strong something feels, but where it is taking you.
A Word About the Director
Through all of this, the Director should hold their role lightly. We are not experts on someone else’s soul or the ones with all the answers. We are companions, listening to the directee, paying attention to their journey, and trusting that the Holy Spirit is the true Director in the room.
Ignatius insists that the Director should stay out of the way. From Annotation #15 of the Spiritual Exercises, this is often paraphrased as: "The Creator may deal directly with the creature, and the creature with its Creator and Lord."
To be truly Ignatian is to believe that God in Christ, through the Spirit, is always leading a person somewhere - toward greater freedom, deeper love, and their true self. The Director’s job is not to control this process or force a direction. Instead, we walk with someone as they open themselves, sometimes slowly or at great cost, to the God who always wants their good and never stops working for them.
This requires restraint and the willingness to hold back from rushing toward meaning, clarity, or quick answers. Often, God is doing something that neither the person with us nor we can fully see yet.
A note on Imaginative Prayer
One of the most powerful ways I know for a real encounter is Ignatius’s practice of imaginative prayer, which is central to the Spiritual Exercises. This involves placing someone in a Gospel scene and noticing what comes up. What emerges is rarely forced. Christ meets people there in a personal way, bringing up desires, fears, and invitations they had not yet named.
This is based on something we often overlook. Imagination is not unreliable or an escape from reality. It is one of the main ways we understand reality. We do not first meet God through abstract thinking, but through images, memories, desires, and experiences. When understood rightly, imagination is not where we avoid reality, but often at which reality first reaches us.
By the Holy Spirit, we are not just observers of these Gospel scenes; we are drawn into them. Jesus’s life, encounters, death, and resurrection are not distant events. They are being gathered into the story of our lives. In prayer, we do not just examine the story - we are met and quietly changed within it.
The question is not just, Did I imagine this? Instead, ask: What kind of encounter did it bring? Did it draw me closer to Christ? Did it deepen faith, hope, and love? If so, something real has happened. This is why imaginative prayer is not just invention, but participation - a space where the Spirit makes Christ present and gathers our lives into his.
Respond
What is one small, faithful step I sense I am being invited to take?
Stay simple. Grace often meets us in small acts of trust.
The Simple Movement Underneath It All
When you put everything together, the movement of Ignatian spirituality is simple, even if it takes a lifetime to practice. The Examen helps us see. Consolation and desolation help us name what we see. Discernment teaches us how to respond to what we have named.
This is a journey from control to attention, from reacting to discerning, from grasping to receiving. In the end, this is the same journey God has always invited his people into: learning to live openly, attentively, and trustingly in the presence of the One who is always at work.
Rest
Can I trust that God is already at work in me, even if I do not yet see clearly?
Closing Thought:
You are not trying to find God.
You are learning to notice the One who has already found you.
Dr Jason Clark
Dr Jason Clark is a trained Spiritual Director, having completed the Ignatian Spirituality Course, and serves as Director of the London Centre for Spiritual Direction. He is also a professor of leadership and lead mentor in the Doctor of Leadership programme at Portland Seminary. Initially working in finance in the City of London, Jason spent his twenties as a bi-vocational church planter. Together with his wife, Bev, he planted and pastored churches for over twenty-five years. Their current spiritual home is Waverley Abbey, where they both live, serve, and work. Jason’s primary interests lie in the Spiritual Exercises and Ignatian spirituality, particularly at the intersection of science, theology, identity formation, mental health, and Christian faith.