Positive Energy Guide

We begin this sub-series about authority and power with the topic of self-esteem because the way we feel about ourselves forms the foundation of our relationship with authority and power.

Self esteem is essential to all intuitive work, particularly Guidance.

We hear the term self-esteem until it becomes a concept or an abstraction. The following practices and skills are nuts-and-bolts for actually developing self-esteem:

• Being true to your self
• Doing whatever you need to do to trust yourself
• Addressing your needs with compassion
• Learning to embrace your inner wounds
• Learning how to connect with others through your heart

Developing intuition without a solid sense of self (true self-knowledge, good boundaries and clear values) can create complications. 

My aim in this series is to help provoke an integrated state that invites intuitive experience and operates smoothly in daily life as well as spiritual endeavors.

Self-esteem makes it possible to avoid dramas and to sort ourselves out as we begin to take in Guidance, or to have mystic experiences that challenge our current understanding.

Self-esteem makes it possible to accept our flaws, see ourselves in our wholeness, acknowledge genuine positive traits, and stay open enough to invite and respond positively to feedback.

Actually hearing what we need to know via Guidance means acknowledging that we do not know everything, and that we stand willing to correct our course in life. Self-esteem supports the deep humility required to integrate Guidance that requires change.

Self-esteem and genuine humility work in harmony. They form perhaps the only shield a Guide has from undesirable, unintended consequences that can result from the things we say to others. The self-esteem helps prevent dramas. Humility allows us to relate to others from sincerity, in service. Together these states of Being help to keep Guidance clear and clean.

Tapping in to true Guidance is amazing and inspiring. In contrast, advice offered from our egos is far more likely to lead to unintended consequences and cause problems.

Self-esteem generates resilience. Resilience and the authenticity that self-esteem fosters go a long way in preventing situations that set unintended consequences in motion. They prevent introducing the erratic energies that cause problems.

Self-esteem makes it possible make effective corrections and to recover quickly if something is not working well.

Mixed motivations underlie almost all glitches and issues that arise with Guidance. Arguably, the most common source of mixed motivation is the desire to influence others for personal gain. I am not talking about a clean and direct exchange of services for money. I am talking about false “gains” such as:

• Seeking approval or validation
• Wanting to look like you know things you don’t know
• Need to feel special and different
• Desire for power of any sort over another person
• Attempting to influence for personal gain rather than predominantly in service

The second most common cause of distorted Guidance is probably resistance to seeing something about one’s self.

Developing self-esteem slims down and takes the energy out of most of these patterns over time.

How do you improve self-esteem?

Work through the practices and questions in the Inner Work Series (under Personal Development on top tab)

• In all instances of internal conflict, clearly view all sides of the conflict, listening carefully to each inner voice and identifying their age, gender, and emotional nature when possible
• Chose a course of action that expresses your most important value in the face of your conflict and be loyal to this choice
• Never suppress anything–so you’re not blind to your issues
• Practice the Highest Possible Option (see Life Guidance Series Part 18)
• Practice real Spiritual Surrender (see previous post, LG Series Part 35)

Exactly how do YOU feel inside when some part of you desires control or power over another? How easily can you recognize the sensations?

How do the results of acting on these urges make you feel as events play out?

“The only pain we can spare ourselves is the pain of our resistance.”         ~Source Unknown

Aligning with Life Purpose through inner Guidance requires a special type of active participation. This participation can be called Spiritual Surrender.

Spiritual Surrender is not capitulation (giving up), giving over, or giving in. It is an active and willing decision to participate with grace.

Spiritual Surrender is an internal ACTION. It is not passive. It requires intention. It requires will.

Many associate surrender with being forced by a situation to give up. The point of Spiritual Surrender is that it is voluntary. This means that we are in no way diminished by doing it. It is a powerful act, like being able to float instead of thrashing and struggling. Spiritual Surrender leads to release; a form of freedom. It is about freeing ourselves to pursue what we know to be of the greatest importance.

What do you need to give up to do it?

Spiritual Surrender requires relaxing any and all resistance to What Actually Is. Relaxing resistance allows us to be Present with a situation without making anything up about it. We enter willingly into the unknown, fully open to Guidance, free to respond.

What we are surrendering is resistance based on personal problems. Resistance is futile. Resisting resistance strengthens it. Surrendering resistance magically evaporates futility.

What we are surrendering TO is actuality/reality–without assumptions and resistance. We are also surrendering to positive influence.

In Surrender we release denial. Releasing denial means giving up a chunk of ignorance to receive information about how things really are and how they can work. Surrendering ignorance for enlightenment begins right where we are NOW, as we ARE, in our current circumstances.

Spiritual Surrender is an antidote for vanity and other forms of egotism. This type of surrender is not associated with shame. Shame is one more thing to surrender. Humility means we do not have to feel better or worse than anyone and remain open to discovery. This undefended, natural and balanced state invites compassionate insight and Guidance.

Spiritual Surrender is also a method of purification. Releasing resistance, denial, shame, and assumptions cleans up our energy considerably.

On the third day of a spiritual camp I noticed that I felt uneasy around those who were just arriving. They were dragging along their street selves and were less present and clear than those who had been with us from the start. I did not like this feeling. That night I dreamed I was washing the feet of the late arrivals, wholeheartedly. Bringing them into the camp clean and ready instead of resisting or judging them evoked a powerful and very beautiful feeling of Spiritual Surrender. I was fully embracing the situation and finding a way to create grace. This dream shattered the notions that created a sense of separation with the newcomers, who I then readily welcomed. This attitude felt so much better!

Receiving Guidance requires unbiased receptivity. In the realm of Guidance, Spiritual Surrender is a tremendous asset. Practicing it allows us to get opinions, beliefs, judgements, reactions, and other obstructions to pure Guidance out of the way so we can allow new information to reach us.

What do YOU resist?

How does this resistance impact your ability to receive Guidance?

Have you ever practiced Spiritual Surrender?

What have you discovered by learning to get out of the way?

We continue exploring the way we as intuitives may blur boundaries as we seek to sense what is real when other people are giving us inaccurate information.

Crossing the line between seeing others in their own context and insisting that they perform at a different level can be very subtle. I had crossed it myself–blatantly–less than a month earlier. I told my Betty the following story of my personal worst, to form common ground, take my point deeper, and make certain she did not feel criticized by my remarks:

A woman I had never spoken with approached me at a spiritual gathering. I asked how she was doing. She said she was doing really well. Her body and energy were screaming that she wasn’t doing well at all.

I had just emerged from a jarring incident. While I was using the bathroom a man with abominable boundaries came in. He stood their staring at me while I asked him to leave three times, getting louder each time.

Cagey after this odd invasion, I handled this new exchange with the woman poorly. The glaring discrepancy between the woman’s words and energy threw me. Mostly to myself I muttered, “Liar,” under my breath. I meant this as a jokey goad, intended to bring her forward. The ploy might have worked with a close friend. In this context it was way off base. She wandered off perplexed.

Later, the woman mentioned this odd interaction to the spiritual director of the event, who checked in with me by phone to see where I was coming from and whether I was okay.

In the atmosphere of our shared attention to this incident I immediately realized that it was not my place either to bring forth a stranger’s inconsistencies or to expect intuitively congruent information. Precisely AS a seer, I could certainly practice extending insight to recognize and accept her state and her current capacity.

I told Betty that she could do the same thing with Paul. Yes, she did feel a valid need for congruent information, and deserved to receive it. Her need and her worthiness did not, however, make him ABLE to give it to her right that moment. His own patterns were fragmenting him too brutally. Demanding congruence only cast him more deeply into self-reproach and resulting fragmentation.

Helping Paul to step out of his defensive posture allowed him to get in touch with himself and communicate clearly. He had been telling Betty the things he had been telling himself–which were true from an out-of-touch perspective, but twisted because he did not know what was driving him. The driving force that had opened a breach in their relationship turned out to be his almost constant feeling that Betty was better than he was; that he was not good enough. Her constant demands for him to step up to the plate spawned a longing for easy company. This relational impasse was at the core of his potential affair. Now it showed up in our session.

Spiritual awareness confers personal responsibility. This does not mean we are continuously obliged to take responsibility for other people. We must, however, learn to be accountable for our own reactions to their issues.

Even if the world would be a better place if they did, others cannot jettison their own points of view to make our perception work for us. Communication and relationship flow more smoothly when we view others in their own context, not from how WE would do things. It is healthy to ask for what we want, but we need to pay attention to whether or not the person we are asking is able to provide it. Otherwise we perpetuate our own pain.

This challenging lesson comes as a sidecar to Guidance: As tough as it is to take responsibility for our reactions when we are in pain, it still cannot fall on others to rescue us from our reactions to them. If we choose to remain in relationship with someone who cannot step up to our standards for interaction, we need to do what we can for ourselves when they are having trouble, and bring forth compassion for their limitations even if we hurt.

How do YOU keep your balance when what someone is telling you goes against the grain of your Guidance?

What would it take to extend your insight to see why?

Can you allow understanding to increase your acceptance and expand your options in such situations, or do you get too mired in your needs to respond?

Be sure to read the comments on this post as they are very much on point and contribute to the conversation.

The next two posts explore the what happens when Guidance we receive is out of kilter with what other people are telling us.

I’d like to share (with permission) part of a session with a couple who wanted to talk with me after the man kissed another woman. I’ll call them Betty and Paul.

Highly intuitive, Betty was and overwrought because what Paul was telling her about what had happened did not line up with her intuition. I told Betty, “It will help you if you get out of this mental place of trying to force him to fill in all the facts and look to the underlying issues that caused the affair in the first place.”

Quite understandably, she said, “But I need to KNOW to make myself feel sane! I am getting Guidance about what is going on with him, and it doesn’t fit with what he is saying. He is not telling me The Truth! I’m a SEER. I feel crazy when it doesn’t fit!”

I said, “Of course you need to know! I get it. You need the events and what he says to line up and fit so your intuition isn’t screaming about the difference.” She was nodding. “But you’re not going to get that from him by hammering on it. He can’t do it under pressure.”

“What am I supposed to do, shut down my Guidance and act like it isn’t there?” She began to sob.

“Avoid thinking in either/or here. This is not a choice between having Guidance or shutting it down. You are a seer like you say. As a seer, use your same skill to see why he isn’t able to tell you clearly.”

I had been just been talking with Paul. Paul was sincerely doing his level best to be fully present in their relationship and in our conversation. He could not be. His emotions, mind and spirit were not talking with one another. We had ascertained that when he was acting out, his behavior was not directed by his intentions and values. He did not know what was driving him.

Paul was also being flooded with Betty’s angry energy, which activated his defenses. As I assisted him to feel safe and to reflect, Paul began to identify his issues. He was more than willing to address them–but he could only move at his own pace. He could not validate Marty’s perceptions on demand, as deeply as he respected her need for this, and her insight. He told her so lovingly.

Being a seer does not give us license to insist that others operate at the same level of personal insight that we do. If they cannot step up, they flounder. The next step in personal development is to learn to use the gift to sense into and accept where others are coming from and what they are capable of in a given moment.

Knowing what people need, of course, can become a kind of trap–if we neglect our own needs and we feel we must personally address theirs.

Compassionate observation allows us to appreciate the needs of those we encounter without having to DO anything ABOUT their needs ourselves. The same vision allows us to do what we can FOR OURSELVES to alleviate our own distress. This shift of attention supports allowing others their own process and finding ways to self-sooth in the face of their limitations rather than insisting that they live up to our standards for communication.

In Part 2 I share an incident in which I made the same mistake. As we continue the story from this post, we explore more about meeting others in their own contexts.

How much do YOU need to have your perceptions validated to stay in balance?

How does this need impact your relationships with others?

Transformation can bring on a new set of Guides. This change-over can feel strange.

We’ll go into changing Guides shortly. First I’d like to respond to a request to unpack this comment from the post before last: “Undue focus on Guides is a distraction from your process and can turn your focus to phenomenalism instead of getting on with life.”

Getting all wrapped up in what a particular Guide looks like or trying to make that into a personal relationship can distract from the Guidance itself. Fascination can become phenomenalism. Staying open to the task at hand or your next step is a more advantageous process. View interactions with Guides as Service toward a common goal.

Since our Guides change as we grow and transform, becoming attached to them is not an advantage. Yes we may be committed and excited by the fact that we HAVE Guidance. Personifying Guidance is unimportant. If it is important to you personally, that is okay. You can see from the comments in Part 30 that Guidance works fine for many of us without making it “about” particular Guides. There are occasional exceptions, which is why I described a specific Being in the role of a Guide in Part 31.

Let’s move on: A change of Guides may initially feel like they are gone, or like one cannot access Guidance. I came back from my last spiritual intensive feeling rearranged through my crown and third eye centers. Too grounded to feel disoriented, I had an odd sense of being without Guidance. That didn’t feel exactly right though. Scanning myself, I noticed that Guidance was indeed present, but not in the manner to which I was accustomed. I was quite strong but not easily accessible.

The first time this happened it took me a few weeks to sort it out. I was quite concerned until I spoke with my main healer, who told me that I had different Guides. After a few days I dialed them in and my Guidance functions were keener and clearer than ever. One has to get used to new Guides and learn how to interface with them effectively. This period of adjustment varies depending on your relationship with Guides, how fast you pick up on what is going on, and how you respond.

My personal experience is less literal than this description, but this is the type of difference one may notice if paying attention:

• New Guides may be located in different places in relation to your body, or in different dimensions than you are used to
• Their voices or core resonance has a different quality or frequency
• The particular state of awareness you enter, which serves as a bridge to sensing them, may have changed
• Modes of awareness they get your attention through–hearing, sensing, seeing, direct knowing–may be different, or the balance of these elements of perception is not the same
• (Presumably–sense I don’t see them) the new Guides look different

With experience, we can get quicker at realizing what is going on and intentionally make adjustments in perception to synch with the new Guides. It is important to relax any sense of fear or uneasiness when the initial feeling of missing your previous Guides arises. When Guides change the energy around you is usually pleasant and open, and feels different than being out of touch with Guidance owing to energy blockage, interference, or emotional issues.

Notice that when your Guides change your life direction may have changed to some extent as well. This is a good time to contemplate your innermost goals and your intentions, and to make sure you take actions that lead toward your Highest Option.

Have YOU noticed that your Guides have changed over time?

What was the experience like for you?

Now that I have protested for several posts about the unimportance of knowing exactly who or what Guides are and satisfied my assorted concerns I will share a staggering, vivid experience with a particular Guide! This man existed historically and is considered a saint. My ongoing desire to maintain a non-partisan approach leads me to withhold his name. I’ll call him SG. I had heard about SG and felt somewhat drawn to him, but I wasn’t motivated to study about him.

The following experience startled me and touched me deeply:

I had set up time out of town to concentrate on writing. When the date finally arrived I had been feeling uninspired, unspiritual, wrung out and exhausted for several months. Unable to produce anything of value, I to listened via web to a woman sharing about her extensive inner contact with SG. Still useless, I went for a walk in the hills. Everything was perfectly normal. Suddenly SG nearly appeared to my left, walking toward me.

His appearance was more sensation than sight, but size, shape and location were clear. I reacted as if I were being approached by a man. He told me to sit. I sat under a pine tree and–rather stupidly–asked why he said to sit. He said, “I just want to hold you.”

I didn’t even know that was possible! Fear surfaced. The experience was so lucid that I felt tentative and vulnerable, as I might have felt alone in the hills with an actual, unknown man. Oddly, I felt as if the issue of sex could come up . . . or . . . abandonment!

My heart had suddenly let him in so deeply that I wanted him to hold me forever. So I feared I could be hurt, all the while realizing that none of this made sense in real time. I was glad to be sitting down!

SG acknowledged my fear graciously. Laughing gently he reminded me that spiritual joy can go far beyond the joys of sex, and that spiritual contact is not bound by time. He communed with me only for a minute, during which he essentially told me that I needed better self esteem. This communication was not about words and concepts; he was activating an experience inside me. Then he simply faded.

I got up a few minutes later and continued my walk, reflecting about what makes life worthwhile. We endure losses. Relationships can end. The one thing that remains with us, that makes life worthwhile is developing our ability to love. Every act done with genuine love stays with us and sticks to our soul.

This experience left me inspired, not in a giddy way, but quite naturally. I did not indulge over-concern about what to make of it.

Two days later back in my office it came to me that the client in front of me had a significant connection with SG. Since I happened to have one, I put a vial charged with his energy into her hand to see how she would respond. She did not know what I handed her. I said, “Just FEEL it.” She began to literally cry with relief as SG’s energy flooded through her.

I directed her to an internet site focused on SG where she sensed the same quality of love I received on my walk. She recognized him internally, as I had, even though she had no knowledge who he was historically. She had a connection, but had never activated it through any sort of contact.

I began to ‘see’ images of meeting together with a group, including the woman before me. We were both men at that point in history. We met with the group in a salon, in a wooden building up a noisy flight of stairs. SG met with the group on several occasions. I shared these images with my client. She laughed and said it was in France, which felt right.

We each felt that our past contact with this saint had been intellectual, and that at this point in time we were experiencing a more mystical and energy-based connection.

Did I pursue this and get “into” it and obsess myself trying to nail down the details? No. I hold an abiding respect and appreciation, and have not encountered SG for the past few years since my experience. I am fairly sure that I could engineer some kind of contact, but I do not feel guided to do so. I believe it is important to stay open to experience without trying to make it mean things that it doesn’t mean, or getting too intellectual about it. Making experiences into a trip or treating them like entertainment often devalues them.

In contrast, have had one other direct and intense experience with a deceased spiritual master, in my twenties. That experience altered my life course and informs my daily life, not necessarily via mystical experience.

Do YOU feel able to accept your experiences, or do you explain and dissect them?

Have you had mystical experiences with Guides?

Are you willing to take in Guidance through the way you bring your attention to ordinary life experiences?

Now that we have laid some important groundwork, lets loop back into the question: If there is Guidance, does this mean we must have Guides?

Yes and no. All of life is a guide. Your body is a guide. Intuition is a guide. Sensation and emotion are guides–if you use them as such. Guidance can come through all of life, which is Divine. If your preference is to view Guidance as coming from a universal source you can do that. If you prefer to view Guidance as coming from an internal source, that works too. And if personifying Guidance works better for you, that works as well. I do all three at different times.

Note that our options for viewing Guidance is paralleled by similar options for how we choose to consider the Divine. We can see God as the Source energy of, through, behind, and beyond the Universe. This would be God in the impersonal form. We can see God as an experience from within. We can see God represented in personal form, such Christ or Buddha. We can see God in Every Being.

What about spiritual guides or spirit guides?

A spiritual guide is a guide who is spiritual. Could be a person. A spirit guide means a guide that is ‘a spirit;’ non-physical. Could be almost any type of benign, non-physical Being.

People tend to want to make this easy to understand by assuming that a spirit Guide is or has been a person, or an angel, or something definable but it’s not that simple.

So what IS a Guide?

I’m really trying to tell you but I’m still working against valid hesitations. Please bear with me. . . .

Undue focus on Guides is a distraction from your process and can turn your focus to phenomenalism instead of getting on with life.

The more you seek to define particulars the odder this topic becomes. I like to keep things clear and simple. You really don’t need to define a Guide or name it or have an image of it in order to allow yourself to be facilitated, but since some of you will get hung on the details, asked my main healer her experience of Guides, to make it easier for me to talk about. She’s more visual than I am.

Here is our rather odd conversation:

“What are guides?”

“Everyone has their guides. They are a group and work as a team to help out,” she said, almost stopping and seeing that I was waiting for more. “You know about lower astral beings or entities, that attach themselves to human beings to pull them down. Guides are the light side, that help us out.”

“What do they look like?”

“They can look like just about anything. Often they have a humanoid shape, but they can be pretty strange looking if you expect them to look like people. Most humans want them to look like humans, so they can show up as if they are human. Some of them are geometric shapes, or colors. One of yours is like a green triangle with gold things coming out of it. But it has Guide consciousness. That one could look like a female if you wanted it to.”

Another advanced healer once told me his guide was the color orange. It spoke to him–and had a rip-roaring sense of humor.

“Why do people want them to look human?” I asked, just to see what she would say.

“They are just more comfortable with that. Their higher selves know what the guides actually look like, but if they don’t want to see it they don’t. But part of them does anyway.”

“What do the Guides get out of it?” I wondered aloud.

“They get to win when we do. Winning means bringing in more light; more consciousness, and being able to ground it,” she told me. “They are just part of the team. They are like the people who change the tires and fill the tank and get people in and out and fix the car at a racetrack. When the driver wins, it’s a win for the whole team.”

“Or like seeing our clients have tremendous life changes and feeling satisfaction knowing we participated,” I added.

“Yes.”

Guides and Guidance come through other Beings in many different ways. In the next post I will share a full-on mystical experience with a recognizable Guide.

How comfortable or uncomfortable are YOU if people wax on about their Guides in a self-involved way without letting you in on what they are actually talking about?

Does your reaction to the way people talk about Guides bias your own openness to experience?

Basic guidance, such as what to eat or avoid, can be called “instinctual” rather than “intuitive.” This does not make it less important. Look at it as foundational.

One of the main tenets of this series is that Guidance shows up in a myriad of ways, from the most basic to the most advanced. The more we can access, recognize and integrate the different kinds of guidance the more developed we become.

Being open to Guidance and finding it at all levels and from all types of input is a pathway in itself. It is a path of Presence.

Recognizing Guidance can be a function of “direct knowing,” in which case the fact that it is Guidance rather than ordinary thought is simply self evident. Recognizing Guidance can also be a literal function of recognition. Literal recognition means we sense and essentially match the character and quality of energy that the Guidance arrives in with an inner repertoire of vibrations. This is like a musician recognizing a G note or chord and knowing it is not C or A. It is like smell recognition or knowing the texture of something if you touch it with your eyes closed.

The energy signature carries its own truth. It thrums with the intention or motivation of its source.

The ability to recognize and match energy signatures is developed over time and experience. Your repertoire expands as you get better and better at recognizing different types of energy. You learn to classify and memorize patterns of vibration, and call them up for matching. You also begin to get a greater and greater range of information about the source of the energy you experience.

Now back to Guides: If the source of incoming information is not consistent with light and love or does not feel good or right to me I have no interest in it whatsoever and shut down to it. You should too.

The gnarly question, “How do you shut down incoming that you don’t want?” will have to wait for a later post. Start with intention in the meantime. I will say now that it does take experience to learn to manage these skills, and that all of it is not initially pleasant. There is a learning curve.

My personal standpoint about non-substantial Guides is that I usually don’t need to know who, what, or where they are. I’ve been trying to choke this out since I opened the topic, but I had to qualify first to fill in background for some readers. For me accessing Guidance like being a busy doctor performing surgery. Whether or not the doctor knows the nurse, s/he can tell whether s/he is performing correctly. The doctor accepts a needed tool from an offered tray. If something is not right with the nurse, the tray or the tools the doctor will intervene and call forth what is needed to complete the job.

Guidance is more important than Guides are. Good Guides know that it’s not about them.

If you are not clear and balanced it is possible for something unhelpful, distracting, or even nasty to pose as a helpful agent and attempt to influence you. Guidance requires alert attention, free from assumptions.

I have been told independently by several other advanced healers that when asked directly, “Are you of the light?” entities cannot lie about it. I’ve tested this out and it does work– although the issue has only arisen a few times because I’m not open to interference. In general, non-helpful energies will slink off when you check them out. It IS very weird to see or feel something that was just posing as bright and good revert to its actual image or energy as this technique unmasks it.

Use your instincts, and never indulge curiosity about something that is not of the light. That would make you open to it.

By the way: Guides generally don’t hang around if you’re not listening to them. In fact you can alienate excellent Guidance by refusing to attend to it.

What are YOUR strongest modes or channels through which Guidance shows up?

How do YOU experience Guides, if you do?

“Mind creates the abyss – the heart crosses it.”  -Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

In response to LG Series Part 20, Impulse as Guidance, my friend Greg made a comment I would like to paraphrase and address:

When impulses really to do not resonate from my heart it is a great indicator for me that they are not intuitive messages. Impulses from other areas like the brain and the stomach with no resonate quality other than ego are suspect for me. If they were intuitive hits they would have a heart connection, maybe with the brain and stomach too. I could test the hit and see if it really was intuitive or ego centered. That may include just going with the hit and seeing where it led me.

I will elaborate on Greg’s implied questions:

Does intuitive Guidance always require heart?
We cannot say, for example, that a psychic who is not in his or her heart is not intuitive. Heart and intuition are not necessarily linked. It is not unusual to become psychic after being abused and becoming hyper-vigilant about energy.

Like all intuitive people, a psychic may be drawing Guidance from beneficial sources or getting what seems like it might be guidance from questionable sources. The question here is not just whether it is true, but whether it serves. Information can be true without being useful on your path.

True psychic input sometimes provokes confusion instead of guidance. If a psychic or intuitive is personally developed and spiritually attuned, Guidance they bring through will serve better. It is more likely to have heart.

Heart expansion and attention to the heart enhances our experience of being connected with others and with life itself. We DO become more intuitive and sensitive to the energies of others by developing the heart. Valid Guidance, however, moves through many varied sources in addition to the heart.

Basic guidance such as guidance from the body rests more on sensation than on intuition. Guidance based on the impulse to move, as in Post 20, comes through kinesthetic pathways, just as auditory guidance shows up through what we hear inside. We may be guided by impulse or an inner voice to avoid an accident. As useful as this is, it does not have to do with heart.

Even “higher” Guidance can come in through something simple like an impulse–particularly if the heart is open. Guidance can come in through whatever our mode of operation happens to be at any particular moment, to show up where we will notice it. It’s like a friend who puts a note where you will see it. The particular channels of attention that are open to us in each moment determine the path Guidance must take to reach us. Of course, as we train these pathways they become more pronounced.

Guidance comes in more when one is in the heart because we have less resistance to it and mind chatter or external details are not in the foreground of our awareness. When we are NOT in our hearts and would resist Guidance we NEED IT MORE, but are less available to it. In these times accessing guidance through sensation or impulse are excellent ways to return to Presence–and to heart.

Ego and self-concept are agents that can obliterate higher guidance, because we identify with our patterns and fear what may come through.

In unified consciousness, we are not EITHER in the ego OR in the heart; we may be anywhere along the range of experience between these states and their related ways of responding to life.

We may also have an open heart yet be attending to sensation. This type of focus can be good for doing body work. Or we might attend to sound, like a skilled musician simply allowing his fingers to execute what he is hearing internally.

This exploration continues and deepens in Post 29.

What types of Guidance have YOU been living with and taking for granted because it is such a natural part of your experience?

How would it impact your Presence and receptivity to move beyond thinking “heart OR mind” into an all-channels-open relationship with Guidance?

Real intuitive and spiritual experiences have their own internal validity. When they are obvious and clear, whatever we think we know or believe is not relevant. Later we conveniently ‘forget’ or compartmentalize our experience, or let it slide off to the place dreams live. Then it rarely even pops up when we sift through day-to-day experience or memories. Even if we accept it fully, the experience is not necessarily integrated in with the rest of our identity.

That’s how it was for me regarding the stories I am about to share. I rarely had a reason to think about the events. In the same way, many people are quite intuitive and simply haven’t put together the evidence of their own experience in order to realize it.

Here are two experiences of (direct auditory) Guidance:

At eight years old I was lying in bed and a voice/presence showed up. I realized I was in communication with a presence. The voice told me clearly that I had the option of being aware of every breath for the rest of my life. If I said ‘yes’ the experience would begin. I thought about this option with my tired child’s mind and was afraid I would never be able to sleep again so I declined and the presence withdrew. I never aimed to define what was speaking to me.

Decades later, when I learned that awareness of every breath promotes and reflects advanced spiritual states, I was absolutely aghast that I had not accepted this staggering offer. As a child, without adult responsibilities, I could have gone through any necessary adjustment without intensive effort and practice. I count this failure to even ask questions about the offer as a major life error–although I am compassionate about this and do not feel self-blame.

Why do I take the offer seriously and think this was a real thing? Because later experiences began to form a pattern. A somewhat similar experience in my early twenties was verifiable through ongoing experience.

Long story short I had been reading about journeys out of the body and various topics when an incident occurred that shocked me so intensely that I was nearly forced out of my body in a full wakeful state.

A woman in my course at school was visiting. As a show or demonstration at a party she intentionally allowed some kind of reptilian entity to take over her body movement for a several minutes. She had told me in confidence that she planned to tell people it was an act–which she did–but I sensed the energy directly. As she had intimated to me, this was no act.

Terrified and in shock, I retreated to my room. A voice like the one that offered breath-awareness showed up and told me that when people are ready to do out-of-body service (such as helping the newly departed souls) they are called to it. My work at this point was to get more connected WITH my body. I began to sense or almost see a shade-like thing creeping up the wall of my room. It gave me a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach.The clear voice asked whether or not I chose to be able to see whatever these things were. I was fully aware that my choice would become operative.

This time I considered more wisely. Mind to mind with this voice, I said I wanted to be aware of the dark energies somewhat, sensing them but not seeing them clearly so it would creep me out. I wanted to be aware of them only when doing so would have direct practical value.

From this point on I was UNaware of creepy energy forms–until I had practiced healing and developed enough to notice and remove energies that do not belong with people. Then I rather suddenly became aware of such energies. I still did not get clear visuals. Eventually I remembered that this was exactly what I had asked for. I saw them vaguely when I could do something about them. My decision spared me terror and probably social shame. I find it fascinating that I was given a clear choice and allowed to have a conditional response.

This particular type of direct Guidance stands aside, in my mind, from ordinary day-to-day Guidance. It is more like direct intervention from the non-physical world rather than suggested routes through difficulty or toward achievement. Still and all, I do not feel inclined to theorize or speculate about what or who intervened. I know that it served me.

Have YOU had an experience with unexpected Guidance from what seemed to be an external source?

What did you tell yourself about it?

How does your belief about it bias your openness to experience?