D e s e r t E x p o s u r e
March
2009
The Pathfinder
Spiritual director Tyler Connoley helps others find and follow the markers along the way on their personal spiritual journey.
By Donna Clayton
"I like them as a symbol," says Tyler Connoley. "You look at the path up ahead and you see the marker. The hiking trails here in the southwest are wild sometimes! That's a good metaphor for life," he adds with a gentle laugh. "But you look ahead and you see the next one and that's how you know you are still on the path."
Cairns: simple piles of rock, placed with intention.
 |
Tyler Connoley, a Spiritual Director
in private practice in Silver City who guides others to find their unique
spiritual paths. |
They are scattered through the New Mexican mountains, marking the hiking trails. They are mentioned in the scriptures of many religions, sometimes referring to Awakened or Anointed Ones.
And to Connoley, a Silver City-based spiritual director in private practice, cairns also serve as a metaphor for guideposts — reassuring markers that say "this is the way" — as he guides others along their own personal spiritual journeys. With a master's degree in religion, nearly five years in seminary and working on his Master of Divinity degree, Connoley hung out his shingle as a personal spiritual director in August.
Finding his unique spiritual path, Connoley has done his own fair share of searching for the markers along the way.
Raised in a staunch Christian household, his parents both missionaries in the conservative Protestant Wesleyan Church, Connoley went on to Indiana Wesleyan University for his undergraduate studies.
"It was at Indiana Wesleyan that I first began to realize that God might be bigger than my narrowly Christian vision," he says.
At 22 years of age, Connoley moved out of his parents' home and had some personal revelations — including his own homosexual orientation. Connoley says he was in deep denial about his identity. In fact, he'd been praying for guidance over whether he should start dating a girl he knew. Guidance came, but not in the way he'd been imagining.
"It was like a voice from God, a literal voice that I actually heard," he says. The message, he recalls, was along the lines of, "You can't date her. You like boys!"
Describing himself as one not prone to visions, Connoley says the experience shocked him, but also brought reassurance.
"It was a mystical experience. It was a voice, literally speaking to me. It doesn't matter to me if it was God or my own subconscious," he says. "I needed something like that to wake me up. It was a complete shock, but also, suddenly, things made sense."
This unexpected revelation was the start of a "breaking open" process, Connoley says, giving him a new understanding of himself and putting him onto a journey of spiritual exploration.
"People can come to a new understanding of God because of circumstances that require they re-think things," he says.
His Christian counselors on campus pointed him in the direction of "ex-gay counseling," and he spent the next two years devoutly "trying to become straight." The experience shook his very foundation, he says. Feeling rejected, he wound up rejecting the idea of God.
Then began his real faith journey, Connoley says. He studied world religions, reading everything he could get his hands on. He delved into the works of the Jesus Seminar, a group of scholars he describes as peering through the lens of history to find the man, Jesus.
"I realized that I really liked Jesus," Connoley says with a disarming smile, as if talking about a good friend or colleague at work.
Still living in Indiana, and working in publishing, Connoley attended the Jesus Metropolitan Community Church, then went on to Quaker seminary at the Earlham School of Religion.
This turned out to be yet another cairn along his path. It was at Earlham that he first embraced Buddhist meditative practices — even as he accepted the label of "Christian" once again.
"I discovered that I am most comfortable with an image of God that is personal. I like metaphors of God as a 'person' who cares about us. God as mother, God as father; that's a metaphor that Jesus used," he says. "Referring to God as 'energy' or as 'a force,' even a benevolent one, that just leaves me cold. I'm not talking about God as a man in the sky with a big white beard, but someone intelligent, and caring for us."
Though he is a Christian, Connoley says that in his practice as a spiritual director he assists his "directees" to find whatever spiritual path and image of God that is right for them.
"A fear people naturally have is that a spiritual director who professes he is Christian will try to coerce them to Christianity," he says. "But that is not my goal or purpose. My purpose is to help them find their own spiritual path, the one that's right for them."
Connoley describes spiritual direction as a practice of spiritual companionship. "I don't completely like the word 'director' because it sounds like I am telling them how to go," he says. "I don't tell them what is the right way. I help them find it, you could say."
His role is to sit with the directee, to listen to him or her, and also to listen with the directee — listening for the voice of God, you might say. Listening and asking questions comes easily to him as a means of spiritual exploration, Connoley says, owing to his years among Quakers.
"I ask questions to clarify the directee's beliefs about the Divine," he says. These questions lead him and his client down paths of exploration, to new awareness and, sometimes, revelations.
In between sessions — which are about once a month, in person at his private office or by telephone — Connoley commits to "hold the person in the light," a Quaker phrase that describes supporting another person in prayer. And even that prayer is tailored to the directee.
"If they are a Buddhist, I am not going to pray to Jesus for them," he says. "I would probably do a compassion meditation for them. I would honor the metaphor that matters to them."
Connoley says spiritual direction is particularly useful for individuals who find that talking helps them sort through things. Careful to point out that spiritual direction is not a form of counseling, he says he does rely on his counseling skills in practice.
Having had to face many questions along his own journey, Connoley says he loves the opportunity that questions bring to spark new thought in his directees, to help them find what is already in their hearts.
"That's one of the really wonderful things — the surprises that come!" he says, his eyes wide with excitement. "Things come up that you had no idea would come up. There's no other way to put it than to say that the discovery of this thing, this idea or belief, feels sacred to the both of you."
And when something feels that right, Connoley says, there's no mistaking it for what it is — another cairn along the path.
Tyler Connoley offers his services as a spiritual director to individuals in any faith. Sessions are offered on a sliding-fee scale of $30-$50 per one-hour session, usually once a month. Phone sessions are available, and he places the call for long-distance clients. For more information or a confidential consultation, contact him at 956-3316 or johntyler@connoley.com, or see his web site, spirit.connoley.com