Be Receptive To the Guidance of Your Soul
– Connecting with Your Higher Self for Life Advice
Recently in a discussion with one of my coaching clients, we explored how to access the guidance and wisdom of your Soul for practical advice.
She was seeking revelation about the life challenges she was currently facing. She thought to receive this kind of clear information was the practical application of spirituality. My client insisted this desire is the reason that spirituality has relevance.
This conversation made me consider her point of view. Particularly, I wondered, what can you do to enhance and empower receiving guidance and direction from your Higher Self? Of equal importance, is the question what can interfere with receiving Soul guidance in your life? That led me to consider the process of receiving guidance and direction from your Soul as a practical real-life issue.
I believe your Soul is not only a part of you but it also a partner in your life. It has a vested interest in helping you learn and grow. However, from the perspective of your personality, the way that it provides the situations and circumstances from which you learn and grow are often not what you want. It is not always clear what is right or best to do.
You learn and grow in so many different ways. This issue seems to need some clarification. In my many years of life coaching, I have led individuals through many meditations in which they reached their Soul for guidance. There are some patterns I have observed. What is most revealing is how much of the preparation for the meditation is just a litany of what the seeker wants or more importantly what they don’t want.
I find it significant that often the answer that emerges as received in meditation is just a repetition of their hopes and desires that were expressed while preparing to meditate. That seems to be a clear signal that it is not the direction of the Soul they received, but rather their desires and their attachments speaking. In considering this result, I am reminded of the words of My Fair Lady, “she’ll listen very nicely then go out and do precisely what she wants.” It is all too easy to project your attachment and desire and then, because you meditated, assume that you have contacted and listened to the wisdom of your Soul.
Not only is this true but in the process of having asked for guidance, it is easy to have the expectation that your Soul is now responsible for what happens. The logical conclusion of this “magical thinking” is that the role of the Soul is to be a kind of “Fairy God Mother” who manipulates the world of matter to make your life easier and more compatible with your desires. I believe this is simply not true.
You can see this kind of “magical thinking” all over the internet and especially on Facebook with the number of abundance posts in which you are asked to type “Yes” to a positive meme graphic about prosperity or miracles. The implication is that by simply typing “Yes” you need only to sit back and receptively wait for the miracle you desire to happen.
This kind of “magical thinking” is a misunderstanding of the Law of Abundance and the principle that “energy follows thought.” It is no wonder that people become discouraged and confused.
What is missing in this kind of “magical thinking” is the role and responsibility of the personality. Whereas it is true that “energy follows thought” it is important to understand that this vital principle is not something you just turn on when you type “Yes” or “Amen” in response to a photo with an inspirational statement; then turn off all of the other thoughts in your mind.
What you do makes a difference. Your dreams, your thoughts, your plans and your goals are all an integral part of success.
Cherish your visions and your dreams, as they are the children of your soul, the blueprints of your ultimate achievements.
– Napoleon Hill
Indeed, meditation helps you to harness the power of your mind. Likewise, the “Law of Attraction” is activated and enhanced by all of the “Positive Mental Attitude” techniques you may use and employ. However, if you do these things only intermittently; that is exactly how they will work, intermittently.
If you ask, affirm or pray for abundance because you are afraid, you are using these principles to fuel the manifestation of what you fear. This is true even when you pray if what is in your mind while you are praying is fear. Worrying, I have often said, is like praying for what you don’t want. Saying a prayer in desperation without surrendering to Divine Will is an attempt to manipulate God. I don’t think that is how it works.
Likewise, typing “yes” for abundance while thinking about your fears and what is lacking in your life sends a mixed message. That mixed message is most often what you most often see manifesting in your life.
Asking For Guidance
This same principle is involved when you ask for guidance from your Higher Self. You have to stop your negative thoughts, your fear, and your worries. Otherwise, your personality will create from its litany of your concerns what you don’t want. You will not be able to hear anything at all from your Higher Self. Your mind chatter drowns out the still soft prompting of the voice of your Soul. To open yourself to the wisdom and guidance of your Soul or God in prayer requires surrender and a willingness to receive direction and guidance that may be very different from what you want.
To become more aware of how your fears and worries are controlling your unconscious requests is important. The power of your mind automatically responds to all of your thoughts. It responds to your wishes, and it responds to your fears. “The Law of Attraction” and the principle that “energy follows thought” do not have a shut-off valve. It is on 24-7.
That energy follows your thought works with every positive affirmation. It also works with every meditation of intention. However, it also engages with every fear and worry that crosses your mind. Therefore, it is important to understand that what you are thinking is constantly creating what is manifesting in your life.
For this reason, it is crucial for you to be aware of your thoughts and value and respect the co-creative power that they have.
Meditation is a powerful tool to help you use your mind to live the life you desire by gaining mastery over your mind. To help you increase your awareness of what you are asking the universe to provide, I recommend that you do a technique I call the “detached observer.” If you follow my work and my writings you that will note that this is not the first time that I have recommended this technique. This technique is not a meditation but what I call a meditative technique.
Detached Observer Technique
One technique that I have found valuable in my own practice and in my years of coaching and counseling people is that you begin just by self-observation.
I recommend starting with committing just 3 minutes a day to consciously observe your thoughts. When you observe a negative or fear-based thought flash through your mind, edit it, correct it and replace it with a conscious thought of what you want and are striving to manifest in your life.
This self-observation, edit, correct (with intention) and replace technique is most important and empowering when what crosses your mind is a fear. To do this consciously and with intention is best achieved in a meditative state while aligning with your Higher Self and focusing on your life’s purpose. In this alignment, you have a greater vision.
This technique is best done free of self-judgment or criticism (each of which works against achieving positive thoughts to replace the negative and fear-based chatter of the “Monkey Mind.”)
I refer to this as a meditative state because it is not really meditation, but as you are seeking to consciously align with your Soul and your Soul purpose in life you are in a higher state of consciousness and keener awareness than just thinking. So this exercise of observation from the perspective of the “detached observer” is a bridge between normal uncontrolled and casual thinking and meditation.
This can be a powerful and transforming technique. As I mentioned I recommend starting with this technique 3 minutes every day. That may seem very short but if you really consider and catch most of your negative thoughts to edit, and revise and replace the thought, you will have made a huge step forward in your ability to harness the power of your mind and learn to quiet the chattering mind. This simple (although sometimes not easy) step is important in learning to meditate and to empower your life.
In teaching this technique to my coaching clients, most have observed that a daily practice of this technique begins major transformation in their lives.
I suggest that you start out using this method for 3 minutes a day for 30 days. Three minutes of your day is not very much. However, three minutes is enough to demonstrate my point. Three minutes is sufficient to describe the energy you are sending out.
Harnessing the power of your thoughts and making them serve you, while very simple is not always easy. Your mind functions in a multilevel way with ideas so rapid and diverse it is like catching quicksilver.
Throughout the eons of teaching meditation, helping the student gain control of what is often called “The Monkey Mind” or the “Chattering Mind” has been the goal.
In fact, the extended periods of meditating on the ‘no thing,’ ‘the void,’ ‘the sound of one hand clapping’ and other techniques that I learned in my early days of meditation, all seemed to be focused on learning to quiet your chattering mind.
Likewise, mantras repeated serve the same purpose. Similarly, the repetitive phrases of awareness that are taught in mindfulness meditations serve the same goal; they teach you to focus your thoughts and wrestle control from the chatter. Using guided meditations serve the same purpose. They are certainly easier than focusing on the “no-thing” or “the void.”
Check out my Awaken to Success CD or MP3’s, which give you 21 positive affirmations for abundance. Use these to empower yourself to create the life of your dreams.
All are techniques to focus your thoughts in the desired direction you choose for your consciousness. Guided meditations are an effective and efficient way to harness the power of your mind to help you create the life and experiences you desire. Focusing on a problem with a focused intention on a daily basis can be transforming. The issue of regularity and repetition are key elements in using meditation to change your life.
Daily meditation need not be an arduous process. Moreover, although in my early days of meditating I was instructed to meditate for 30 minutes to an hour daily, I have found over the last 48 years that daily meditation consistently applied with intention is more important than the time spent.
When I create a guided meditation experience, I strive to capture the essence of the subject that I focus on in a 10 to 20-minute session. In meditation, it is quality rather than quality that counts.
The process of quieting your mind chatter enables you to receive the still prompting guidance of your Higher Self. Likewise, to be receptive to the wisdom of your Soul, it is important to cease your attachment to what you desire or expect in order to open your heart and your mind. Ponder on this.
This dual process of quieting your mind as much as possible and surrendering your personal will and desires to be receptive to the guidance you are receiving are crucial steps in receiving advice from your Higher Self.
We must let go of the life we have planned,
so as to accept the one that is waiting for us.
– Joseph Campbell
I also recommend that if you are seeking the wisdom and direction of your Soul in your life that you set aside at least 10 minutes a day, regularly to meditate on that very subject. Then apply the technique of the detached observer by revising and reframing every negative thought, aligning it with what you feel your Higher Self is directing you to. Do these meditations with as much of an attitude of surrender to Divine Will as you are able.
I further recommend that you follow your “asking” time with a reflective and receptive time that you write in a spiritual journal. This combination of meditation and journal entry will increase the effectiveness of your request.
You Higher Self, your Soul, is available to you. When you can quiet your desires, your fears and listen to your Souls wisdom and guidance, it becomes a partner on your life journey, and your life journey becomes your spiritual journey.
Namaste,
Genevieve
The blessing of love on all that you do!
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Last updated 2-04-2018
Copyright © 2016-2018 Genevieve Gerard and Touch of the Soul LLC, All Rights Reserved.
This is a nice and helpful piece of info on the Soul. Thank you for sharing this useful info with us.
Thank you Lorenza! Using the technique of the detached observer can make a dramatic difference in your life.