Ignatian Wisdom for the Journey: Practices for Desire, Discernment and Deep Encounter

What practical Ignatian tools can deepen your Direction practice? In an age of anxiety, fragmentation, and longing for meaning, Spiritual Direction offers a sacred space to listen for God and rediscover the self. This session explores how Ignatian spirituality, rooted in desire, discernment, and deep encounter, can enrich the practice of Spiritual Direction. We’ll draw on insights from neuro-theology and the science of identity formation to reflect on how God works through our minds, emotions, and embodied experiences. Drawing from the wisdom of Ignatius of Loyola and the Exercises, we’ll consider how practices like the Examen, discernment of spirits, and imaginative prayer can foster authentic encounters with God in daily life. We will also explore how desire can be more than a personal feeling, it is a spiritual compass that leads us into God’s transforming love.

​​We will reflect together on how God works through our minds, emotions, memories, and embodied experiences. Integrating insights from neuro-theology, identity psychology, and contemporary spirituality, this session offers a holistic and theological framework for understanding how people are formed and re-formed in Christ. This is a space to become more attuned to how God is already at work in those you accompany.

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.