Seeking a Clearer Connection

28 Feb Seeking a Clearer Connection

My friend, Ginger, welcomed me at the door of her newly purchased condominium with a slight concern.

“Pay no mind to that musty smell,” she said, pointing to her kitchen.

“I haven’t been able to figure it out yet. But it seems to be coming from a cabinet under the kitchen sink.”
Ever resourceful, Ginger had concocted a plan.

But I was shocked by it.

“I’ve talked to Jesus and asked for guidance to the solution.”

That was Ginger’s plan! Ask for Higher Source to intervene in her very ordinary trouble?

She seemed completely confident that some unseen GPS kind of system would lead her to discern answers that I assumed would lie only in an external source—that of a plumber.

The conversation with Ginger occurred more than a decade ago and it hit me right in a place of substantial insecurity.

I wanted my own clear connection!

For years, I had been plagued with the recurring question:

Time and again, I begged for answers:

What’s my purpose in life?

Is this really the right job for me?

This man’s the one for me, Right?

All big decisions.

Almost without exception, as I waded into such questions, I did so with a cluttered, scattered mind smothered with ideas about how those questions might be answered.

“This is your major problem now. You still make up your mind and then decide to ask what you should do.”

–A Course in Miracles

Gulp. Well, yes. There’s that as well.

In those big decisions, I always DID have an opinion. So often, I realized, I pretended that I didn’t. But, I could see that my prayers for assistance were ways of asking for Source to agree with me and bring me what my ego and I had decided I needed in my life.

The interchange with Ginger made me envy her confident connection. But, it also gave me hope.

I began to wonder whether discerning divine guidance could be learned, like any other skill?

Could it be similar to training the muscles of the body to become stronger by lifting weights? If so, my demand for immediate guidance on the largest questions in my life was like expecting that I could successfully and safely run a 10K race without ever having built up to it.

I speculated that practicing with “non-spiritual” everyday dilemmas as Ginger had might develop in me a way of discerning and receiving my own GPS signals.

Excitedly, I hatched a plan to experiment with looking for divine nudges. I could do this in situations where I had not made any decisions already. Or, in which I was not invested in an outcome. Not insisting on a specific result, I hoped, might allow me to notice subtle nudges or impressions arising from beyond my normal self. In such a case, my regular opinionated inner voice might not drown out subtleties from the divine. I could just wait to see what, if anything, might happen.

What would be the clues to receiving guidance?

“Peace and joy are the voices of God…that have long been forgotten in the din of human passions.”

–Paramahansa Yogananda

To that, the fable The Alchemist, written by Paulo Coelho suggests that “The Soul of the World is nourished by people’s happiness.“

Peace, joy, happiness? Quite the contrary, the din of voices in my head had clustered in negative, doubtful, and critical chatter.

Taking this as a clue, I constructed my experiment in learning to receive divine impulses or urges based on those two ideas:

I would

Ignore the negative, doubting voices and ideas that are my same-old same-old

and instead would

Pay attention to surprise, delight, and things that made me laugh.

So, years after Ginger provided the model approach, I decided to try it out.

Follow me on my next blog post where I reveal the results of my experiment in discerning.

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Disclaimer: Although the content here relates to well-being, it does not constitute the practice of psychology and is not designed to be a replacement for receiving professional mental health advice or services. Although medical and health information may be presented, it does not constitute medical advice and is not a substitute for proper medical advice or care. The information is designed solely to be educational for those who might be interested in the subject matter. Use this information as you see fit, and at your own risk. We recommend consulting a qualified mental health professional to better understand the most appropriate actions for the reader to take for their own unique circumstances, as appropriate.