You asked whether it is “recommended as part of the spiritual Way to seek guidance regarding all areas of one’s life”. The answer to this question is actually closely linked to what I said in a little post last week entitled “My Starets is Best for Me“. For it depends at least in part on the degree of affinity one has with one’s spiritual teacher.

There are in any case no formulas or recipes here; we are talking after all about human souls, not machines—the usefulness of the Gurdjieffian metaphor notwithstanding—and it is simply not possible to predict in advance what direction a spiritual relationship will take. Here again I might quote from His Grace Metropolitan Kallistos: “The relation between child and spiritual father varies widely. Some visit a starets perhaps only once or twice in a lifetime, at a moment of special crisis, while others are in regular contact with their starets, seeing him monthly or even daily. No rules can be laid down in advance; the association grows of itself under the immediate guidance of the Spirit” (The Orthodox Way, p. 96).

So you see, the real issue here is not “how much” or “in what detail” one speaks with a guide, but rather whether you as a particular person feel free to give voice to whatever is of concern to you, and also whether you are prepared in turn to let your starets or murshid—also a particular person—put to you whatever questions he feels he must and give you whatever directions seem required in order to understand and guide you better.