Diplomová práce "Duchovní vedení v životě sv. Terezie z Avily" má za cíl poukázat na místo duchovního vedení v životě této světice a její vztah k duchovním vůdcům. Nejdříve se stručně zabýváme poznatky o jejím životě a dobou, do které své charisma přinesla. Dále se věnuje duchovnímu vedení obecně a různým dilematům, na které v této době můžeme narazit. Největší část se však zaobírá duchovním vedením v životě světice. Tato mystička na své duchovní cestě považovala duchovní vedení za velmi důležitou a nezbytnou složku života a i její texty obsahují celou řadu pastoračních doporučení, jak má toto vedení probíhat.

This thesis explores concept of mentoring among pastors of the Church of the Brethren denomination in the Czech republic. The text is divided into four chapters. Individual chapters first introduce the basic terminology, theoretical and historical definition of mentoring, participants, key principles and forms of mentoring. Subsequently, attention is focused on the analogues of mentoring in church history, on medieval spiritual accompaniment, on the role of the spiritual and finally on mentoring among preachers, pastors and vicars nowadays. The text also deals with the issue of roles and competencies of the mentor with a focus on the mentor of spiritual workers. Part of this thesis is a quantitative research survey, which examines the practice of mentoring among preachers and vicars of the Church of the Brethren, identifies competences of their mentors and also the key topics of mentoring meetings. Key words: mentoring, mentor, competence, pastor, vicar, spiritual accompaniment

This research has been a study in amazement. Initially an agnostic physics graduate, the researcher undertook training in the person-centred approach (pca) to self-development and counselling, during which she came to experience strange personal experiences which she could neither gainsay nor fit into her then worldview. Sketching these briefly, exceptional human experiences (EHEs) and synchronicities increasingly happened until (shockingly) they declared a seeming spirit guide (Mungo) to her, also juxtaposed in time with her first-ever chance encounter with dowsing. Thereafter these phenomena, combined with randomisable image-cards, tutored her into a physically observable method of 'discussion' with them (alone or with another) conducted with pca values. This PhD involved researching that phenomenon-complex through 'discussions' with 35 participants. The methodology used was heuristics and its heuristic self-search inquiry specialism (HSSI) whose attention to personal experiencing, indwelling to contact tacit knowledge, and incubatory rest phases to foster illuminatory new 'ahaa!' apprehensions suited this nascent mysterious subject. Both participants and researcher experienced coincidences weaving the 'discussions' and their wider lives together. Thus synchronicity became equal-partner research-topic, being studied as it occurred and, through affecting certain choices, becoming part of the methodology itself. The phenomenon-complex was experienced as fostering ethical living, creativity, personal development and science-spirituality interconnection in ways wellpitched and paced for each experiencer. The phenomena were also experienced as synergizing with each other, and as fostering integration within and between persons. After work on the participant sessions was completed, the writings of further thesis chapters were 'butted into' by in-the-moment relevant synchronicities, not just singly but in flows and patterns in which the researcher found herself discerning overarching meanings. Given this exceptional opportunity the researcher (in effect doing a bonus research-section) tracked her experiencing of these synchronistic flows and her responses thereto wherever they led, using Sela-Smith's first-person heuristic self-search inquiry (HSSI) methodology. Each synchronistically-influenced chapter was experienced as exploring certain themes, with themes building as the thesis progressed. Heuristics and HSSI are usually transformative. This researcher was transformed from the ground up from agnosticism to credence in 'something more' through her experiencings (both alone and inter-relationally with participants). Their 'package deal' presented personal shadow-work alongside help in life difficulties, and great fascination but darker times too. In total she came to feel part of an interconnected, spiritually-intelligent and compassionate cosmic domain, and existentially happier.

This thesis takes as its point of departure the question "is there a connection between ordinary Swedish Christianity and the extreme forms of various examples?". As a way of concidering possible connections, a "normal" spiritual context in the Swedish setting is studied: the Christian magazine "Pilgrim. A magazine for spiritual guidance". The book presents an investigation of the magazine and its notion of spirituality over a period of twelve years (1994-2006). Questions that guide the investigation are: Which are the fundamental notions of spirituality in the magazine? How can someone be spiritual due to the magazine? Which are the bodily norms which are assumed when it comes to gender, sexuality, ethnicity and class? Which connections between the normal and the extreme in contemporary Swedish spirituality can an investigation of Pilgrim as an example of "ordinary" spirituality reveal? The work is carried out as a discursive reading of Pilgrim with the help of Michel Foucault and his notion of "discourse". Furthermore some of the insights from the feminist discussion on so called "intersectionality" are used to widen the methodological scope. More specifically, the magazine is approached as a single textual surface. After qualification of the rules of the discourse, they are applied to identify the discursive formation of Pilgrim. By analyzing the strategies which constitute spiritual guidance, the forms of spirituality (subject positions) that the magazine constructs are revealed. The way that social categories - gender, sexuality, ethinicity, class - are characterized in the magazine reinforce heteronormativity, orientalism and a class-structure. Through the magazine social categories function together with other vital categories in a way that the outcome is one and only construction of the ordinary subject: i.e. the western rich man as a spiritual subject. In conclusion this study suggest that ideas about spiritual growth that flourish in an ordinary Christian cultural and intellectual environment (exemplified by the magazine Pilgrim), like ideas of resistance against the postmodern world and society's superficiality, might have a structure that can be found also in more extreme Christian contexts, and, more importantly, as a part of the problematic of these extreme examples. The extreme resides in the ordinary, and the ordinary resides in the extreme. There seems to be an order of notions, of subjects and of bodies: the Order of Spirituality.