ABSTRACT
Writers from spiritual and religious traditions often use the language of a spiritual journey to help people identify how their beliefs and experiences have changed over time. This chapter gives an overview of ideas about stages and other aspects of the spiritual journey. I suggest that it is more helpful to use these ideas to think about aspects or ways of being in the spiritual journey rather than expecting a linear trajectory. This provides ways of thinking about these so that workers can see how these apply to their own journey and those they work with. I also make explicit that change over time is to be expected, the inevitability of both challenging and joyful experiences and the subjectivity of this journey. This might include, for example, understanding the relative simplicity of understanding of a new convert to a religion compared to the more nuanced experience of someone towards the end of their life. Case studies at the end of the chapter illustrate how social workers might use this in practice to more fully understand the issues for and expectations of those they work with.
