The concept of being a good person and doing what is right for both you and the community around you is something nearly everyone has, regardless of belief or disbelief in religion, God, or other spiritual forms. For many people, getting an outside point of view on their actions is extremely helpful. For lack of a better term, the people who offer these outside points of view are often called spiritual counselors, spiritual consultants, or spiritual leaders. If you've decided you need a spiritual consultant, you need to know what you're really looking for to find the best match.

Do You Want Someone Who Focuses on a Particular Religion?

Spiritual consultants, leaders, and advisors can focus on a particular religion (e.g., Christianity), religion in general (your relationship to a deity and community), or general spiritual well-being (your attempt to define what a good person is and whether or not your life is meeting your expectations for that definition). It can be very jarring for someone looking for general religious guidance, for example, to work with someone focused on more humanistic systems; it would also be unhelpful for someone who's an atheist to work with a consultant who insisted on discussing God. This is one of the easier decisions to make as spiritual guidance tends to openly display its focus.

Are You Looking for Advice or Direction?

Spiritual counseling and leadership can be advisory, such as helping you work through how your decisions and actions bring you closer to or push you farther away from whatever spiritual life you ascribe to. For example, your counselor or leader may meet with you a couple of times a month to regard how your daily life has lived up to your spiritual expectations for yourself. They can also be more of a directional form of leadership, where the spiritual leader may help guide you in living within a certain spiritual framework.

For example, a leader might be more of a teacher who discusses the tenets of a spiritual system with you and helps you modify your life to mesh with the expectations of the spiritual system in question. You have to be very clear about which one you want because one relies more on your active decisions and how they match with what you believe in general while the other relies on your active attempts to stay within a spiritual system.

Should You Look for Certification?

It is possible to be certified in spiritual counseling. This is a voluntary certification and is offered through different organizations (the American Institute of Health Care Professionals is one example). While a good spiritual consultant doesn't have to be certified, these certifications do show that the person you're talking to has pursued training, rather than just calling themselves a spiritual consultant with little knowledge. Again, this is voluntary, so someone who does not have a certification can still be the best spiritual consultant you've ever worked with.

Keep these tips in mind when looking for a spiritual consultant service, such as New Element Consultants.