Positive Energy Guide

The following story describes an awkward but ultimately victorious effort, several decades ago, to confirm something that came up in a session with a client. Since this took a long time and was embarrassing I will add that I was doing bodywork throughout the conversation instead of just sitting there jabbering.

Ernie and the Bathtub:

My client was an octogenarian. Let’s call him Ernie. His neck was more locked up than anyone I had ever seen. Rigidly tilted to one side, it responded marginally to treatment. Ernie said it had been that way “for a couple of years”. Accustomed to more dramatic results, I tried a new technique for unlocking emotional tension from muscles. This technique relies on identifying the initial incident.

I tested organs with reference to Ernie’s neck. Liver showed as relevant. Then I tested a list of liver-related emotions and came up with “rage” as the related emotion. Ernie’s neck held locked up rage. Now I had to get to the related incident. I checked whether the incident was related to every imaginable life arena until I hit the wall. Then I got creative and started guessing.

Using the process of elimination like playing ‘twenty questions’ I pared the issue down to something that had happened in Ernie’s home. Nothing at all came to mind for him. And he was a total unbeliever in what I was trying to do. I felt tense. I had a dogged sense that following through was important. I wanted to make a difference if I could. I was becoming embarrassed but I wanted to give the technique a chance.

Ernie gave not a clue; listening to him, everything at home was and had always been peachy. He lived alone and had a placid personality. At last I visualized and tested his house room by room. His bathroom came up as the room in question. No, Ernie insisted, the bathroom was just fine! Curious by now, with no more face to lose, I tested everything I could think of in the bathroom. I held up my hands at a loss and said, “It’s about an appliance. That’s all I can tell you.”

Ernie’s expression began to morph. His habitual kindly expression went all quizzical and twisted as he barked with laughter. “It was that damn bathtub!” he cried out. “That was three years ago: I measured twice and remodeled the whole damn room to fit it in. Paid through the nose to have them send it to me! Hired a couple of guys to help me move it in and it was two inches too long! Two inches! And this was the second time! The first tub they sent me didn’t fit either!” I completed the technique and his neck was much more responsive.

Using a chain of reasoning or deduction to pair down what you are trying to find out and becoming more and more specific is a useful skill. A number of different methods of healing begin with algorithms or charts that contain sets of questions that go from the general to the specific to help narrow down the field and get to the particular information you’re tracking down.

This type of technique can be quite useful, particularly if memorized. I would add, however, that all systems contain limitations. Also, you can stay in your head and use them, which is not, strictly speaking, Guidance even though the process can get to highly useful information. I started with these systems and began stretching and reshaping them, and speeding them up with intuition.

If you use some kind of a system, pay attention to whether you are using it as a mind-based tool or a jump-off point for intuition. It’s perfectly okay to begin with the mind until you begin to pick up the information more directly.

Learning to use your mind and intuition at the same time is useful to confirmation.

When YOU use logic, do you get locked into it, or can you jump freely between logic and intuition?
When you are in an intuitive mode how open are you to logic?

“Always check your intuitions out against the stark realities of everyday fact.” –Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan

The above piece of guidance is the cornerstone of my practice, both spiritually and in my business. I use the byline “Results-Based Intuitive Work” based on a long history of putting this suggestion into practice on a daily basis.

The quote is from one of my first spiritual teachers. He gave me this advice when I was twenty-two, after looking into my Being with the intention of bringing forward the one thing that would most serve my life to hear. For those who are interested in real Guidance, I aim to pass on the fruits of this ongoing exploration.

Validating, verifying or confirming intuition involves using both sides of your brain. It takes courage to find out whether or not you are on the right track.

Confirmation is essential not to prove anything to anyone but to increase your confidence, clarity, accuracy, and precision. An atmosphere of lingering doubt about the accuracy of your insights takes the joy from sharing.

Absolute certainty without verification is worse than having doubts because it is generally a defensive and closed stance and prevents learning. Humility remains open.

Being reasonably certain, open to being wrong, and actively in process to be sure you are getting useful results is a positive outcome that develops from a consistent habit of confirming your intuitions.

If you give others guidance, confirmation is an important part of your service. The point is not to prove yourself. That is about you, not them. The point is for your clients to sense inside themselves or know from their experience that what you are saying is accurate and useful.

If you have the opportunity to compare what you receive to the perceptions of a skilled guide, this is a fast way to learn. Comparing notes and experiences about what we perceive is an essential part of learning to recognize the difference between intuition and imagination.

Confirmation is an exciting process; intimate and fulfilling. There is nothing quite like putting intuitive minds together and working in concert, especially at a high level of skill. People tend to ‘get’ different slices of the perceptual pie. Accurate perceptions often overlap instead of being identical, and each person’s bias can extend the other person’s reach.

Anchoring intuitive work into practical reality gives the work value. We seek direct correspondence between Guidance we receive and what we experience in our bodies, hearts, and lives.

Confirmation looks different according to what is being addressed. Here are some clues that you are on the right track.

• Emotional relief
• Gratitude
• Feeling clear and solid
• The body relaxes significantly
• Shifts in the energy systems of the body change
• Sudden reduction or elimination of pain
• Increased range of motion
• Sense of meaning or purpose
• Feeling of being on track
• Ability to move forward with clarity

Lab tests can be excellent confirmation of anything with a medical basis.

When you don’t know what is going on, sometimes it is helpful to make up a theory or hypothesis and then test it out to see if it holds water. When I do this my guess is a mental process, not intuition, and I am using energy based methods to test it out. You can use an intuitive hunch and seek to confirm it with client response in the same way.

When I start with a theory I have learned to enjoy being wrong. Why do I enjoy being wrong? Because when I’m guessing–based on what I think in my head–and I use various means to discover that the guess is not correct, I know I am doing a better job than I would if I used knowledge alone. I also have a clear opportunity to advance my intuitive skills by paying keen attention to the signals I am receiving when I check things out and discard my initial theory.

Using knowledge and intuition together improves the ability to confirm results.

How do YOU determine whether or not your intuitions are correct?
What do you tell yourself if you find out that a hunch was incorrect?
What attitudes make it easier for you to verify your intuition?

“Ours is not to seek love, but to transform the barriers that keep us from loving.” ~ Rumi

If we wish to receive guidance and especially if we intend to function as a guide, sincerity is an essential skill. Yes, sincerity is generally considered a trait. I am calling sincerity a skill because it can be cultivated and is quite useful.

Sincerity is the foundation of self-development and true service.

What is sincerity? Sincerity is defined as a state of being genuine, honest, and free from hypocrisy and pretense. It is a clean, open state that invites gentle self-reflection.

Sincerity in a student or client attracts and inspires a guide to give their very best. In a guide, sincerity has a special power. A sincere guide also mirrors the spark of sincerity in those they guide, making this precious trait more recognizable and available.

Seeking inside for ever-greater sincerity invites profound and meaningful life experience.

Advantages of sincerity:

• Helps keep the heart open
• Sweetens truthfulness
• Supports genuine appreciation
• Allows for joy
• Helps prioritize in favor of what really matters
• Supports the feeling side of authenticity
• Supports ongoing commitment to positive values
• Assists others to trust you, especially if you also get results
• Assists you to trust yourself
• Encourages others to invest in you
• Attracts the assistance of developed guides
• Supports ethical behavior and helps avoid endless drama

How do you develop sincerity?

Developing sincerity is a genuine practice. Getting to it requires scraping the heart off and polishing it by having the courage to feel your real feelings and face positive vulnerability [link post]. Sarcasm, intellectualism, being guarded, acting cool, trying to look good, and all that kind of stuff are states of defense. These reflex-like defenses remove us from heart-to-heart connection with others.

The same kinds of inner emotional hardening or closure can operate when we are by ourselves and just think about talking or being close to others. Recognizing and relaxing this type of defense is the first step in developing sincerity.

Sincerity goes a long way on its own, but it is not enough on its own. We have all been exposed to people who rely on sincerity to carry their connections with others without troubling themselves to learn accuracy and effectiveness. Sincerity without realism is a recipe for disappointment–usually for other people.

Look at sincerity as a heart skill to be balanced with the mental disciplines that develop clarity and accuracy. [Link to post on Clarity and Discernment] Aim for wholeness.

These types of behaviors increase sincerity:

• Practice saying heart-felt things to others
• If the above is hard, carefully observe what comes up inside you when you hear and see other people making kind and loving remarks
• Explore any discomfort you feel about sincere expression of feeling
• Notice the way hardness or defense distance you from people and experiences you care about and how that works inside
• Notice what moves you and practice giving sincere experience more time and space inside when you feel it
• Pay attention to what moves the people you care about
• Listen to beautiful and joyful music
• Express appreciation, intentionally
• Do not polarize truth-telling with kindness as if they are opposites
• Learn to consistently speak your truth with genuine compassion
• Practice expressing anger with care, constructive intention, and respect so you are not backed up in your emotional waste from holding back communication
• Watch how people respond when you express appreciation and take note of whether you get uncomfortable or can allow yourself to enjoy it
• Allow yourself to enjoy sincerity in others
• Open yourself sincerely as fully as you are able in situations where you can feel safe
• Learn to create for yourself a feeling of inner safety in more and more situations
• Pay keen, compassionate and courageous attention any time you feel shame or the inclination to hide something
• Read things written by sincere people
• Chose friends who are capable of sincerity and minimize contact with defensive, pretentious, and hypocritical people
• Practice being loving without compromising your authenticity
• Attend Dances of Universal Peace or other group practices that create safe, non-denominational opportunities for heart-centered expression

How comfortable do YOU feel with sincere expression?
In what situations do you find yourself the least sincere?
What do you need to give yourself in these situations?

Let’s look into approaches and intentions that support us to develop Guidance skills.

There are two basic approaches to any type of self-development:

• Work to strengthen your weaknesses
• Work to strengthen your strengths

Education is often focused on strengthening weaknesses. This is not always the best path to mastery. Building from what we are already capable of brings satisfaction more quickly and can build from a foundation of strength.

The best path may not be to either strengthen weaknesses or strengths but to create an intelligent hybrid approach. You can strengthen skills that come naturally and use these skills while gently rounding yourself out by developing weak functions. Some big marketers say to stick with the strengths. Let someone else do the things you’re weak at. This can work in business. From a personal development and brain function standpoint, working with weaknesses has far-reaching advantages. I believe Guidance to sense which approach is best in any given moment.

My mode of perceiving has always been considerably more kinesthetic (sensory, feeling and movement) and auditory, and less visual. First I strengthened my ability to recognize and access intuition through sensation. Strengthening this strength made me highly effective in clinical practice, especially with body therapies, intuitive coaching, and matching nutrients to client’s individual requirements via body reflexes and changes in energy.

Then I took up the photography as a hobby in order to develop visual perception and the related parts of my brain. Strengthening this weakness has increased my ability to pick up images intuitively, and makes me feel more balanced and whole. I am certain that strengthening visual skills makes my brain work better.

When it comes to increasing intuition I always want to know the motivation. Intuition and Guidance can only go as far as we are able to trust ourselves. I have observed that as we develop and grow in self-trust, our range of Guidance grows organically. Those who manage to develop skills without self-trust and emotional balance tend to get into problems. Developing integrity, wisdom and clarity naturally evoke Guidance skills.

Giving yourself good cause to trust yourself and cultivating sincerity prove in the long run to be of greater value than intuitive skills alone. Self-trust and sincerity support effective service.

The above being said, this entire post series is full of countless recommendations and exercises that will increase your range of guidance if you practice them. To get the most from this series let descriptions of experiences you do not relate to roll over you and work with strengths unless you are fairly experienced. I am speaking to a whole range of guidance skills. Whether you are just learning or rounding out your experience,consider the following:

• Allow your skills to grow gradually, within your comfort level
• Latch onto suggestions that resonate with you and put them into practice
• Remember that simple things done consistently are of much greater value in the long run than becoming overextended
• Do not try to get yourself to believe anything that doesn’t sit well with you
• Respect but do not take your lack of belief in things very seriously
• Let your beliefs change in response to direct experience
• Rely neither on belief nor disbelief but relax your opinions and stay open to experience
• Remember that being open to getting something wrong allows you the space and grace to learn real accuracy
• Do things your own way–but not from ego
• Do not manipulate yourself or others; invite instead
• Never criticize the level you are at now
• Cultivate honesty and value your authenticity
• Seek to remain sincere in your efforts
• Always verify or confirm intuition with factual means or alterations in sensation and experience

Remember that skill with guidance is an art. It is cultivated in the soil of your values. This art depends on your personal level of integration. Every time you successfully confront internal conflict by choosing your Highest Option or support yourself kindly in the face of a frightening emotion or work with your own energy you are developing your capacity for insight and guidance.

Verifying or confirming intuitive hits with actual fact is an excellent way to give yourself cause for self-trust. We will cover confirmation of Guidance after first looking into sincerity–which proves to be foundational and to offer surprising practical utility!

How do YOU feel about your current range of guidance?
Why do you want to extend this range?
What do you think it will do for you?
How do these motivations feel in your body?

Ideas, beliefs, concepts and assumptions interfere with Guidance. They make head-noise that crowds out Guidance or makes it hard to track. Taking in Guidance is a receptive act. Staying tuned and waiting for Guidance to pop in or arise from within requires willingness to release what’s in your mind.

Internal Guidance surfaces as a clear, sound sense of Inner Knowing. The resonance of Inner Knowing is utterly different than making assumptions or being smug about something you learned. Internal Guidance comes up as if from an inner spring like the mystery it truly is.

Inner Knowing is enhanced by being able to BE WITH Not Knowing. Accepting that we do not know something creates space for something more. Creating this space is like holding a bowl for Guidance to drop into. Not Knowing is a big part of how we create this space.

Not Knowing is a zone free from opinions, beliefs, preconceptions, assumptions, the need to control, and from reactive emotion. Not Knowing removes the limitation of rigid or habitual rational thought. In this zone Guidance can show up with depth and richness like a poem, not a report or dictionary definition.

Guidance that pops in from what seem to be external sources and Guidance from sources we experience as internal are both enhanced by receptivity, humility, surrendering the cognitive mind, and remaining open.

Not Knowing is a very Zen process. Being present in the moment with a clear, quiet mind is an ideal environment for recognizing Guidance. If you cannot still your mind all is not lost. I have a busy busy mind and I recognize Guidance. Skill at differentiating between different ‘energy signatures’ or frequencies and surrender to the Highest Option are good work-arounds if you can’t quiet your mind. We’ll explore Spiritual Surrender and the Highest Option in subsequent posts.

A quiet mind has all kinds of bonus advantages:

• Increased inner peace
• Improved health
• Freedom from conflict and confusion
• Easier to tune in to spiritually developed people
• Easier to notice what is going on with yourself
• Clearer, more accurate observation of others
• Difficult to manipulate
• Greater access to states of meditative awareness

By a quiet mind I am not talking about a mind forced into silence by suppressing thought and feeling but freed from strife through genuine self-acceptance. I have seen a few people who had attained a false sense of quiet through control rather than acceptance. Eventually, when and if they had the benefit of an experience powerful enough to break into this fortress, the shock of freeing previously suppressed inner material was traumatic. Smug hyper-confidence doesn’t crumble pretty.

Being able to clear your mind assists but is not absolutely essential to the skill of Not Knowing. You can Not Know without inner quiet by being open and rigorously avoiding assumptions and presuppositions.

Because I prize and rely on Not Knowing, I habitually make what I think I know unimportant while I explore. In clinical practice, if I think I will probably find a certain thing and I discover something different, I am happy to be finding the actual cause instead of validating an opinion.

Openness to Guidance allows us to discover things we initially know nothing about. Intentionally Not Knowing invites new insights and solutions. Prefabricated interventions are rarely as powerful and may not exist for the issues we are addressing.

What things do YOU think, know, or believe that distract you from clear Guidance?

How do you sense the difference between random thoughts and real Guidance?

Each of us has a general range of guidance. This range refers to the breadth, depth and scope that our perception can run.

Range varies with circumstance, who our energy is linked with, state of mind and heart, brain function, our current internal biochemical cocktail, and so forth. If you’re exhausted, hung over and your mother is in the hospital, your guidance may have a narrower range than it does when you feel good. Or your range of guidance may actually improve under some types of adversity.

The flow of Guidance is not necessarily consistent. I’ve noticed when I am too tired or compromised to function logically my intuition kicks in without being squashed by too much thinking. This began after I intentionally cultivated intuitive arts while my brain was compromised during an extended illness.

I followed an excellent piece of generally-applicable guidance. It comes with a story: My brother studied internal martial arts with the only caucasian to have won the Chinese championship. During prolonged sparring sessions body and mind tired. Students were taught, “When one resource is compromised, use another.”

In the context of martial arts, application would mean that if your legs are tired you use your arms more, if your body is tired you use your mind, if your mind and body are tired you use your energy or your emotions, and so forth. Practicing this principle in circumstances that call for Guidance extends effectiveness and broadens your range by using your best resource in any particular moment.

An unimaginable universe of insight is available to those who can tune in and access it. Recipients of Guidance, however, receive viable Guidance about some aspects of life but not about others. We are better at tracking down or drawing in some types of information than we are at others. With the exception of a truly enlightened being, no one person can access all available Guidance in all dimensions. We each have a slice of the pie of all possible perception.

These considerations help to explore Range and various modes of Guidance:

• How many different aspects and arenas of life does it address?
• What is the reach? Is it just about relationships, or is it about relationships, health, spiritual life, finance, other-dimensional energies, and so forth?
• What is the detail and depth? If it’s about relationships, is it just about getting along, or is it about who you can become through the relationship, how it relates to your life purpose, and how to manage your energy optimally within it?
• How many senses does information come through? Does Guidance show up through sight, sound, scent, body sensation, energy perception, movement, or taste?
• Does Guidance come in as Direct Knowing, where it just shows up in your head whole? Some people excel at this mode and do not recognize that they are receiving Guidance because they do not get images or voices.
• How many levels of experience does the Guidance address? Does it impact just your mind, or your emotions, body, mind, spirit, afterlife, past and parallel lifetimes, displaced energy or parts, energy that doesn’t belong with you, energy grid systems and fields, etc?
• Does it address future or draw from the past when necessary? Does it simply report what is occurring here and now, or take place with respect to the past and future when useful?

• Does it involve perception of unusual energies or dimensions when these have a significant influence?
• Does Guidance reference things about which you have had no prior experience or exposure?

While it is true that an excellent guide often has greater range, range of guidance does not directly equate with quality. Some Guides have a narrow range but operate superbly within that range, with good accuracy and utility. As in any other life arena, specialism has its uses. A trance medium, for example, may have stellar accuracy with the departed–and be clueless or useless with health or relationship guidance.

Some guides have a wide range of guidance yet have patchy quality and accuracy. It is unusual but quite possible to have a very wide range of guidance and excellent quality and accuracy.

These factors increase Range of Guidance:

• Skill with self-observation
• Recognition and acceptance of personal biases
• Ability to make adjustments for our emotional biases to see life more openly, without projecting
• Openness to a wide range of belief systems without necessarily buying in to them
• Courage to explore different realities
• Willingness to admit and correct errors in judgment
• Freedom from needing the approval of others
• Exposure to multiple cultures or systems of thought
• Presence in the moment
• Personal clarity and discernment
• Being in touch with body sensations
• Sensitivity to energy
• Ability to notice and release assumptions
• Compassionate detachment
• Desire to be of service

What is YOUR range of guidance?

How do YOU respond when you receive internal Guidance that touches on things outside of what you normally believe?

“A man’s most valuable trait is a judicious sense of what not to believe.” ~Greek playwright Euripides (485-406 B.C.)

Yes we all receive internal Guidance but we need help unmasking it and learning to “read” it.

Modern life drowns out many of the conditions that foster healthy intuitive development. Living in nature promotes:

• Being grounded in the body
• Listening
• Silence
• Introspection
• Attending to small signals that indicate other life close by
• Anticipating weather changes
• Noticing exactly which influences strengthen plants or draw animals
• Sensing the importance of timing
• Breathing fully
• Noticing expressions of energy
• Experiencing directly the interconnected nature of all life

Expecting to be adept at accessing Guidance without some type of on-going training and practice is unrealistic. If you were born with innate tracking skills, you would still need to learn the prints and marks of animal activity and how signs show up in various terrain and weather and how much time that had passed since tracks or signs were made. Even those with inborn intuitive skills need life experience and practice.

Intuitive development calls for aptitude, training, and confirmation. Aptitude means being born with or acquiring in childhood neurological software that supports the skill. Training may be formal, or an outcome of committed personal attention. Confirmation is the process of receiving impressions, energy, or information and consistently checking your accuracy.

Intuitive aptitude and training are rarely across-the-board. This means that most of us perceive better in some realms of experience than in others. We’ll go into Confirmation and Range of Guidance in following posts.

Life consists of many different arenas of potential experience and dimensions. Intuitive perception can be applied to world situations, health, relationships, spiritual experience, clearing energy from rooms or buildings, your next step in personal development, and so forth.

Perception can be focused on body energy systems like chakras, and fields, for example, or on the fields that are much farther out from the body. I’ve had a few clients whose health required an adjustment 300 feet out from their bodies!

Confirmation and practice are necessary in each new arena of attention and experience in which we aspire to perceive clearly.

You may be far more intuitive than you know. If you have not spent a significant amount of time with someone who applies advanced intuitive skills you may not know your own level.

I practiced body therapies for years without any idea of my aptitude. Eventually I met an intensely powerful clairvoyant, clairaudient healer. By tuning in to exactly what he was perceiving as he worked I discovered that I could perceive almost all of it. I found myself working side by side with him with healing clients. Through focus and practice I discovered a vast world of and energy experience outside of my previous scope of vision and my beliefs. Immediate changes in clients served as confirmation.

This healer later disclosed that he had participated in a remote viewing program with the CIA. It is a known if unsavory fact that government agencies have applied psychic skills and remote viewing in military applications.

Some years later I also met a spiritual teacher with unnerving psychic skills who had been in a similar government program. In my observation government training distorts Guidance. The skills have not developed naturally alongside Heart, in a context of respectful ethics.

Before these and other encounters I hadn’t been focusing my attention in the ways that pull forth different types of information. I didn’t know what I was looking for–or that there was anything TO look for, or any reason to look.

Since then I have participated as other people awaken to their capacities by being in environments where energy is noticed and discussed. Comparing notes and experiences about perception is essential to learning to recognize and confirm intuition versus imagination.

In addition to aptitude, training and confirmation, these traits and conditions are conducive to developing skillful Guidance:

• An open mind
• Motivation toward personal development
• Adequate freedom from personal issues that obscure Guidance
• Good self-observation skills
• Courage to confront the unknown
• Courage to confront the hidden recesses of your inner world
• Willingness to welcome knowing it when you are mistaken
• Discipline to maintain a consistent practice throughout different life conditions
• The need or desire to apply your skills in daily life
• Motivation to be of service
• Association with others who have similar or more-developed skills

We will address obstacles to Guidance in detail as we go along in the series.

What experiences, practices, or people have increased YOUR ability to receive and recognize Guidance?

How comfortable do YOU feel with your current level of Guidance?

In a very real sense all Guidance is energy and all energy is a form of guidance. Energy is the form Guidance arrives in, its parcel or packet. Energy is the way information is transmitted from source to source.

If you think about the way email arrives through a wireless channel, it becomes evident that your email also arrives via energy. Energy is more elaborate, specific, and diverse than matter. In addition to the energy that makes up the atoms comprising matter, a number of different dimensions have been identified–so far. Since energy makes up matter and also has non-material expressions, the world of energy is vaster than the material world.

The fact that information arrives via energy is not occult. Various devices read diverse types of information from different sources. Radios, FAX, geiger counters, and instruments that assess electromagnetic frequencies are examples. Similarly, people with different intuitive skills are sensitive to and learn to recognize and read a range of frequencies.

Energy is direct information. It is relevant, immediate, specific, fluid, constantly available, and accurately represents what is going on.

I am not saying that everyone always reads energy accurately. Everyone cannot read blood tests, correctly interpret complex informational manuals, understand all spoken languages, or recognize microbes under a microscope either.

Plenty of accounts show that many animals know when an earthquake or tsunami will come. Dogs and other animals have less on their minds than we do. They read people’s energy and respond accordingly. This extension from instinct is the most rudimentary form of guidance.

Everyone does have an instinctual response to energy. Whether or not we pay attention to these responses, we are able to sense other people’s emotions, motivations, and other energies just like dogs and animals do. It takes practice. We’re usually thinking too much or busy enacting partly-automatic social behaviors instead of attending to energy signals. To assume that if it exists one will be able to access it personally is an error.

Some people are quite good at reading others at a purely instinctual level. In addition to those who serve others, a skilled con or high-level criminal develops these skills. This example serves to break down the artificial walls between intuitive development and ordinary life. You will have seen examples in the media.

If we extend attention into the energy of a place, we can actually tell whether or not a dark alley is safe at the moment, or if sounds we hear on the porch at night are raccoon and possum escapades or an intruder. This skill relies on relaxing fear enough to access the intuitive processes that receive Guidance.

In Part 7 I mentioned that “Good guidance makes immediate changes in the energy in and around us” and “A skilled energy healer can can see or feel a client’s energy changing in response to his or her verbal input.” The energy in our fields, chakras, meridians etc. shift and change in response to Guidance.

Guidance IS energy. It comes in, from, and with specific energy frequencies. The energy arrives with a unique signature that holds clues about its origins, spiritual level, and application.

Just as a skilled acupuncturist can recognize complex patterns of energy imbalance related to organ dysfunction, skilled guides learn to identify different types of energy and understand what they mean, how they originate, and how they are expressed in symptoms, behavior, and life circumstance.

Any form of energy practice accelerates the development of Guidance skills by exercising your ability to recognize and receive different types of energy. Qi Gong, internal martial arts, acupuncture, Touch for Health, silence, grounded meditation, and Dances of Universal Peace are a few examples.

Learn to attend to energy.

How do YOU perceive incoming information?

How do YOU recognize the difference between Guidance and energy that is just information?

Intuition and Guidance are always accurate: If it’s not accurate it is not Guidance or intuition but conjecture, guessing, projection, interpretation, or belief.

Learning to tell the difference between Guidance and personal opinion is a foremost task of an ethical person in the role of guide.

“Guidance” that does not resonate with personal meaning or change our energy and the way we live our lives is merely information, no matter how obscure, spiritual, or esoteric, and regardless of its source.

Sensing changes in the body’s energy systems (chakras, meridians, fields, etc.) can provide direct and immediate feedback for the effectiveness of guidance.

Most of us can access some degree of Guidance some of the time. We may or may not be able to differentiate it from our general welter of thoughts, feelings, sensations, and input from external sources.

Learning to sense the ways it impacts our energy is a skill that magnifies the effects of Guidance. Energy feedback trains us to recognize Guidance with greater confidence. Guidance can direct energy work while energy work enhances Guidance.

Giving or recognizing genuine Guidance requires being deeply in touch with yourself. Since energy reflects our actualities rather than our conceits, paying attention to energy aids self-awareness. Energy mirrors us. Authenticity is a huge advantage in the world of energy.

What is Good Guidance?

Good guidance makes immediate, healthful changes in the body’s energy systems. It is directly applicable to current life themes. If Guidance is used to look into the past, its usefulness comes from the past’s relevance to current goals, needs, and directions.

The most important guidance assists us to align directly with who we really are inside, and to bring forth hidden qualities and inspiration.

Good guidance helps us to clarify and anchor what we learn through life experience and inspires us to move into new territory. A point of view aligned with purpose and free flowing energy eases us and helps us to adjust positively to our circumstances.

A good guide identifies, supports and refines the most constructive direction in which we are just beginning to move. We are ready for and able to apply this guidance.

Good guidance fits like an ideal shoe for your foot shape and size. Words that guide one person may rub another raw, slop around in their life without providing support, or leave them unbalanced as they walk forward. Concepts, directions, inspiration, ideas, or instructions for something as significant as guiding your life should fit well. You don’t want blisters on your dharma (life walk).

A good guide is like a tug boat. Tugs bring huge ocean liners into dock or set them out to sea, safely and reliably. A tug serves the liner, which has its own power but allows the tug to navigate in tight spaces. The tug is not the focus or the point, but the movement of the liner.

A skilled energy healer can can see or feel a client’s energy changing in response to verbal input. Skilled energy healers often become effective guides: If you can see the energy change as you talk, you refine your skill by seeing what is actually working.

In my healing practice I used to do more direct energy work and less discussion. Now I discuss the issues that will allow the client’s energy to shift as I begin to address energy symptoms–and accomplish more in the course of a session. Done accurately, the discussion IS direct energy work.

Energy work and effective guidance accelerate one another. Appropriate shifts and changes in your energy systems advance the speed at which you can respond to guidance and put it into practice.

Energy interventions and Guidance work together when you work on your self too. Working with your energy assists intuition. For example, you may practice Qi Gong, visualize cleansing your fields, or balance your chakras and find that you get strong intuitive hits during or after your practice. Your intuition will also assist you in directing your energy practice.

What have YOU noticed about the way energy practice or therapies impact your intuition and your ability to apply your insights in daily life?

What makes YOU trust your intuition when you do?

Distress is a call for Guidance. Use distress as a signal. Use distress to awaken yourself to your true needs. Use distress as an alert and a call to action.

Then gently find ways to notice and manage your needs before distress must arise.

Distress is a form of guidance to those who are willing to respond to their needs. It may not be anybody’s favorite form of guidance, but we can learn to use it well when it shows up. Distress alerts us that we need to do something kind for ourselves or make more loving choices.

Intestinal distress encourages more enlightened eating. The distress of feeling invaded invites better boundaries. Distress about situations suggests positive action toward change.

Turning distress toward benefit is a highly positive skill. The skill works much better when we allow ourselves to feel and explore our distress long enough to understand what is actually called for. Learning to attend to the origins and sources of discomfort is crucial.

Turning away from distress before discovering the underlying need can lead to numbness, dissociation, compartmentalization, artificiality, or superficiality. It is important to honor distress. I am not saying wallow in it, just take a careful look and use it constructively. That is the most positive way to handle it.

Here is a funny little example of using distress as guidance: Once I began coughing as a client entered my office. I could not stop. I left the room for water. The moment I left, the coughing stopped. The moment I went back to my office coughing came back. I figured out that the client had toxic energy in his fields. The moment I cleared the energy I was fine. For some years now I get an odd cough if I’m not noticing energy that needs to be addressed.

Loss, prolonged pain, betrayal, and disillusionment are more complicated than mere distress. This kind of intensity can uproot our belief systems until we don’t even know what we believe any more. [link to related Post on Disillusionment.] During difficult life transitions when core beliefs are in question ill-fitting or overly-directive guidance can cause complications. The more intense our distress the greater the call for comprehensive and effective guidance.

We tend to live as if we expect to be the same person from day to day, able to control who we will become over time. When life shakes down the pillars of temporary consistency we discover that our responses to life change in the face of different pressures, circumstances and energies.

New situations, events, and collisions of emotion bring forward fresh and untried self expression. Guidance allows us to use our responses to circumstances and conditions toward our highest good, in partnership with life.

The energies that evoke earthquakes, tsunamis, and world-rocking change also restructure our personal lives. While things we took to be stabile are shifting and coming apart it is important to consider how we might use disruption itself to bring about positive outcomes.

We can use upheaval to help restructure relationships, health, finances, living situations, communities, and global structures. We transform ourselves in the process of doing so.

Here’s a fun quote from the end of a friend’s email: That is my plan –If chaos does not poke its lovely head into my affairs – I will be here.

As we careen into an uncertain future many feel frustrated, confused, overwhelmed, or unclear about how to harness motivation. Motivation can be difficult when we cannot see a clear path or need to alter our goals. Guidance is interaction that assists us to select a meaningful path or purpose with greater clarity and confidence.

These questions may be useful in learning to take guidance from distress:

• How well do you listen to your distress?
• How much distress is required to get your attention?
• Do you respond better to some types of distress than others?
• What do you need learn to respond with compassion to the kinds of distress you try to ignore?
• What changes are supported by any disruption you may be experiencing?
• Do you develop strategies for change or resist change?
• How does your response to change increase or reduce your distress?