ABOUT ISL

ITS MISSION

       The Institute for Spiritual Leadership is a program which welcomes women and men who value and desire to explore the inner life. The Institute creates an environment where participants discover their unique self rooted in their deepest experience of the Sacred.

       The Institute for Spiritual Leadership encourages individuals to know their own hearts and to value their own life stories. By providing a vehicle for deepening self-knowledge, the Institute creates a safe place in which participants can reclaim their past in order to live freely in the present.

       At the same time, the Institute for Spiritual Leadership provides professional training for the ministry of spiritual direction. Course work, along with individual and group supervision, provides participants a rigorous professional preparation for companioning others in their personal and spiritual journeys.

       The Institute for Spiritual Leadership was founded in 1974 by Jesuit Paul Robb and Cenacle Sister Irene Dugan. Robb, as a clinical psychologist, and Dugan, as a well-known spiritual director, integrated the wisdom of psychology and spirituality. They offered the unique insight that accomplished spiritual directors must balance their professional training with attention to the on-going deepening of their own personal and spiritual lives. Through this process, the Institute forms competent, compassionate, and dynamic spiritual leaders.

       From its beginnings as a summer program, the Institute for Spiritual Leadership developed an intensive, nine-month program. During its 25th anniversary year, the Institute inaugurated a two-year weekend program, which presently is offered on the south side of Chicago and in Arlington Heights. In 2005, a part-time weekday program began in Wilmette.

       The Institute has more than 1,000 graduates whose leadership on every continent includes ministries of spiritual direction, retreats, counseling, spiritual and religious formation, education, pastoral care, administration, social justice, and health care. A worldwide network continues to encourage and support Institute graduates in their personal and professional endeavors..

ITS SPIRITUALITY

• Deeply rooted in Christianity and open to the oneness of all faiths,
• sees psychological and spiritual growth happening together,
• incorporates current understanding of evolutionary and developmental patterns as part of the transformation process,
• engages the present day reality of life,
• believes that God is present in whatever is most real in a person's life,
• and challenges the spiritual leader to be serious about his/her own call to continual transformation.

In light of our commitment to the mission and spirituality of ISL:

Board and Staff are encouraged to:

• Provide a safe and supportive environment in order to attend to life experiences
• Invite participants into the process of personal transformation
• Teach a process of self-reflection and self-revelation which leads to deeper affective self-knowledge
• Model a contemplative attitude toward all of life

Program Participants are encouraged to:

• Acquire an ability to name, accept and integrate their personal experience
• Grow in deeper appreciation of their own life stories
• Gain an understanding of the dynamics of the transformative process
• Integrate the conscious and unconscious elements of their own personality
• Explore the myths and symbols that have power in their lives and the inner dynamics that have driven their behaviors
• Develop a contemplative attitude toward life
• Learn to trust the process of life
• Develop a capacity for living in full and present awareness
• Learn to companion themselves and others
• Live more holistically
• Become familiar with the sacred space within where God dwells