S2 EP175 – Connecting with Your Spiritual Guidance

Transcription:

Hi everyone. Dr. Margaret Paul here with the Inner Bonding podcast. Today I’m speaking to the issue of connecting with your spiritual guidance, an issue which is dear to my heart.

Did you know that connecting with spirit – with your personal spiritual guidance – is a natural process? We are all born with the ability to connect, but since this ability was rarely fostered as we were growing up, many of us have forgotten how. The saying, “Use it or lose it” applies here: If we don’t use it, we don’t support the neural pathways that make it easy for us to attain this connection.

The good news is that, with practice, you can always re-establish these neural pathways. It’s all about your intention.

Connecting with your guidance is actually quite simple, but it’s not always easy, as you can hear from the following statements from my clients.

“I keep asking my guidance questions, but I just don’t hear anything.”

“I’m trying every day to connect with my guidance, but nothing is happening.”

“I think I just don’t have a knack for this connection thing.”

“Aren’t I supposed to hear something?”

Every day, I work with clients who struggle with accessing their spiritual guidance. What is the problem? Is it supposed to be this hard? 

Actually, it’s not hard at all!

As I said, we all have the built-in wiring to connect with spirit. It’s our birthright to have this connection, just as it is a baby’s birthright to have a parent’s connection and guidance. The problem lies in the subtlety of intent.

It’s a matter of frequency. When you have a pure intent to learn about what is loving to yourself, and the frequency of your body is high due to eating clean, unprocessed foods, you will experience two-way communication with your guidance. You may hear it in words, see it in pictures, feel it through your feelings, get it in a dream, read it in a book that someone “happened” to send you, hear it through your own mouth as you’re helping someone else, or hear it through someone else. However it comes, it will come – when your intent to learn about loving yourself is pure and your frequency is high.

But the wounded self is very tricky.

It can trick us into thinking we are really open to learning, when, in fact, it has a very different intent, which is to control something. Do you want to know what is loving to yourself because you want to be loving, or so that you can get rid of pain? Do you want to learn in order to get something – love, approval, money, a new job, a partner – or do you truly long to evolve in lovingness with yourself and others?

The wounded self always has an agenda in mind and thinks it can trick spirit into giving guidance for that agenda by acting open. But spirit cannot be tricked. The problem is that our guidance can’t communicate with us unless we are truly open. When the wounded self is in charge, our frequency is not high enough for us to access spirit, or for spirit to access us. There is no opening through which our guidance can communicate with us unless we are in a true intent to learn about loving ourselves, and we are not putting toxins into our body from food, drugs, alcohol, nicotine, and so on. 

Spirit’s job is to guide us in our highest good. Our guidance is always here, just waiting for the opportunity to help us. But, because we have free will, spirit cannot do anything about our intent. We are 100% in charge of our intent to love or our intent to control.

So, while connecting with spirit is simple when we are truly open to learning, what is not at all easy is having a pure intent to learn, or even knowing exactly what our intent is. This is where practicing Inner Bonding is so powerful. The more you practice the process on a daily basis, the more aware you are of your intent in the moment. You will begin to feel the difference in your body when you are controlling and when you are open to learning.

Part of the Inner Bonding journey is about becoming aware of our intent, so that we have a conscious choice every moment. It’s about embracing and moving into compassion for the wounded parts of us that want to control. It’s about moving out of judgment for our wounded selves and moving into curiosity for the very good reasons our wounded selves have for wanting to control. The more you practice this, the higher your frequency goes and the easier time you will have connecting with spirit. When you can truly be in an intent to learn about your own protections and methods of control, that’s when it becomes easier and easier to maintain an intent to learn with your guidance.

Don’t forget, your guidance never leaves you. If you are not connecting, it’s you who have left. So when you can’t connect, move into exploring your wounded self and your need to control getting love and avoiding pain, and you will find yourself open to learning.

When you are having problems connecting with your guidance, then you need to become more aware of your intent. When you have an intent to learn about and support what is both physically and emotionally loving to yourself and what is in your highest good, you will receive help from your guidance. Your intent to learn to love yourself physically and emotionally becomes an invitation to spirit and opens your mind, heart, and soul to receiving the love and wisdom of your guidance.

In examining your intent, you might want to ask yourself these questions:

• Am I reaching to spirit to have control over getting love and avoiding pain, or to learn what it means to be loving to myself and to others?
• Am I reaching to spirit in the hopes of controlling the outcome of something, or to understand what is in my highest good?
• Do I have an agenda, or am I in true surrender?
• Do I eat, get enough sleep, and exercise for my health and wellbeing, or to avoid pain?

Years ago, when I was questioning why human beings are on the planet, my guidance gave me this answer:

“You are on this planet to evolve your soul in your ability to love and to fully manifest the gifts you have been given. This is the soul’s journey. Your soul, and everyone’s soul, knows this, and if you open and look deep inside, you will remember that this is why you came here. You are here to learn more and more about loving, and it has to start with loving yourself.”

If you believe you really are open to learning, ask yourself: do you want to learn purely to evolve as a loving human being, starting with yourself? Or is there some other outcome you have in mind, such as getting more money, meeting the perfect partner, and so on? It is easy to trick ourselves when it comes to our intent. Our wounded self is a trickster and often masks as being open, when what is really happening is that we are trying to control something or avoid something, rather than learn about loving ourselves.

Your intent determines everything else that occurs for you. Connecting with spirit is not a difficult thing to do, but if your intent is compromised by a desire to be in control, you may find it challenging to truly open to learning about loving yourself, emotionally, physically and in every other way. Our automatic, programmed, unconscious choice is often to try to get love and avoid pain, in order to feel safe, yet it is our committed, conscious intent to learn about what is true and loving, that opens the door to spiritual connection. 

A major aspect of the Inner Bonding process is being able to access the love and truth of spirit. We are being a loving adult only when we are in connection with our spiritual guidance. Since most of us did not have adequate role models for learning to take loving actions toward ourselves and others, our guidance is our role model. It is, therefore, imperative that we are able to easily and quickly connect with our guidance throughout the day.

But the challenge is that it is easy for all of us to think we are open to learning when we are not.

As I said, the wounded self is very clever at appearing open when the real intent is to control. Yet one way of knowing that you are not open to learning is not being able to connect with the love and truth of your guidance.

When I work with people, I can often help them move past their wounded self and into a deep intent to learn. In this state, they easily access the truth about their beliefs and about loving actions. In fact, sometimes it is so easy for them that they wonder why they struggle so much with it when they are doing their own Inner Bonding process.

One main reason for not accessing guidance is just forgetting to do it. The other major reason is the lack of a real intent to learn.

An interesting question is, who is in charge of your intent? We are beings of free will. This means that we get to choose who we want to be, each and every moment. You, as a being of free will, are in charge of your intent. In each moment you are choosing to control or to learn about truth and love. No one can make this choice for you, not even your higher power. When you consciously or unconsciously put your wounded mind in charge of this choice – with all your programmed false beliefs – you are operating from your wounded self. When you consciously choose to put your heart and soul in charge of this choice, then you are operating from your loving adult. It is your will – your free will – that chooses.

As long as you believe that your programmed mind knows what it is doing, you will be operating from the intent to control and will not be able to access your guidance. When you start to ignore the chatter of your ego wounded self and instead open to learning with your higher self, you will discover how easy it is to access the love and truth that guides you in your highest good.

Living without your spiritual connection is a very painful way to live. Start today – practicing opening to learning about loving yourself, both emotionally and physically, and you will see that your life will soon improve dramatically!

I hope it’s obvious by now that you cannot experience spirit with a closed heart.

A member of our website put up a very astute comment: “Perhaps you can’t have faith if your heart isn’t truly open.”

I didn’t grow up with any faith. For most of their lives, my parents didn’t believe in anything they couldn’t see or touch. My father was a master organic gardener, and in his later years he learned of Findhorn, where they grow huge vegetables as a result of the positive spiritual energy they bring daily to their gardens. This impressed him, as he could see with his own eyes the results of prayer and positive energy. This one thing opened him a bit to the possibility of faith in something greater than himself – at least when it came to his garden! 

What does it mean to have faith?

I’ve had the opportunity to work with numerous religious leaders, from ministers to gurus. It has deeply saddened me to experience many of these leaders lacking in a personal connection with their spiritual guidance. They talk it and preach it, but they don’t experience it. They say they have faith, but their controlling behavior indicates that they don’t. They would not have a need to play God if they had faith that they were being guided by an intelligence greater than their own wounded selves.

We read about so many of the leaders of religious groups getting caught in sex scandals. What this is about is that they don’t feel full inside, due to not having a personal spiritual connection, so they try to get full from outside. If their hearts were open, they would feel the fullness of the love that is God in their hearts. They would KNOW the love that is God and feel full inside – and would therefore have faith.  

Each one of the lost, empty religious leaders with whom I’ve worked operated from a closed, protective heart. Their wounded self was in charge of their life. They TALKED faith, but they didn’t FEEL faith.

It is through our open heart that we experience the love, truth, comfort and wisdom of spirit. When we consistently have this profound experience, we have no need to avoid our feelings with drugs, alcohol, food, or sex.

For me, this is a very tangible experience – just as tangible as my father seeing the huge vegetables. For me, the profound FEELINGS of the fullness in my heart, and the joy in my soul that are there when my heart is open, is not something I could make up or pretend. These feelings are as real for me as the huge vegetables of Findhorn were to my father.

Faith, then, is the result of learning to keep your heart open, which is what occurs when you consistently practice Inner Bonding.

There is a way to quickly open your heart.

Sometimes we find ourselves down in the dumps, stuck in a dark place. We do our Inner Bonding process, and it helps somewhat, yet we feel something is missing. We pray and feel a little better, but we can’t seem to find our joy, that wonderful state of grace where we are filled with light and peace.

During one of these times I asked Erika what she does to move herself into her joy. Erika is often joyful, one of the most joyful people I’ve ever known, even with her abusive background and her many health challenges.

“Gratitude,” she answered. “I find the many things I can be thankful for – my friends, my home, my horses, my wonderful dog, my sweet cat, a great meal, a funny joke, my warm bed, the magnificent views, and our companionship. As soon as I move into gratitude, my heart lightens.”
 
Do you focus on what you have or on what you don’t have?

As usual, Erika proves to be right. I have discovered that choosing gratitude instantly opens my heart and fills me with peace and joy. There are so many big and little things to be grateful for, yet many of us fill our time thinking about what we don’t have and what is not going right. “If only I had this or that, then I would be happy. If only I were richer or thinner. If only I had a different job. If only I could find my soulmate,” and on and on.

How often do you thank your higher power for the sacred privilege of life on this planet – the sacred privilege of having the opportunity to evolve your soul through your challenges here? How often do you thank the love that is God for your body, the house of your soul? How often do you thank life for the many opportunities that come your way to challenge you in your soul’s journey on this planet?

Life here is a great gift. In the spiritual realm, we do not come up against darkness and so we are not challenged to grow our light. By coming up against our own and others’ woundedness here on planet earth, we can discover how to heal it. By facing our fears, we can discover love. The love that is God has given us this gift of life on the planet so we can recreate ourselves each moment as we evolve in our journey toward oneness with Love.

Often, the very things that we feel victimized by are the opportunities for our soul’s growth.

If we looked at all the challenges in our life as opportunities to evolve our soul, rather than as bad things happening to us, we would respond completely differently to them. If we moved into gratitude rather than into anger and fear, we would have totally different experiences of our lives.

Eckhart Tolle said, “Accept-then act. Whatever the present moment contains, accept it as if you had chosen it. Always work with it, not against it. Make it your friend and ally, not your enemy. This will miraculously transform your whole life.” 

The only way you will know that this is true is to try it. Next time something bad happens, see if you can find the lesson in it and move into gratitude for the lesson. Next time you are down in the dumps, and nothing seems to work to get you out of it and you can’t connect with your guidance, think of all the things there are to be grateful for. The more you practice this, the more it becomes natural until one day you find yourself connecting more and more with your guidance and thanking the love that is God all day for the great and small wonderful things that happen.

As you know, your thoughts affect your feelings, and when your thoughts are of gratitude instead of fear and lack, you will feel the peace and joy you seek, and be able to easily connect with your guidance. As your thoughts of gratitude radiate out into the world, your peaceful, loving energy will have a positive effect on others. We all love being around people who radiate a loving and peaceful energy. You will be doing your part in creating peace in the world by creating it within yourself. You will be fulfilling the words of the song, “Let there be peace on earth, and let it begin with me.”

An important aspect in connecting with your guidance is learning to trust your imagination. Carl Sagan, Astrophysicist and Author, said that “Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere.”

Albert Einstein said, “The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.”

And this is my favorite quote, which is by William Blake, “Imagination is evidence of the divine.”

When I was growing up, imagination was given a bad rap. I heard over and over, when I stated what felt like the truth to me, “Don’t be ridiculous – it’s JUST your imagination.”

The message, of course, was that if something came from my imagination, it had no validity.

 However, we can imagine from two totally different places.

When I allow my wounded self to imagine, then what I imagine has no validity at all. My wounded self makes things up all the time that have no basis in truth, because my wounded self has no access to truth. My wounded self wants to control everything, and making things up is one way it tries to control.

So I don’t indulge my wounded self – my limited ego mind – in making things up. I know the minute it does this because I immediately feel anxiety. Then I say to my wounded self, “Please be quiet – we are not going there. You are mistaken,” and I turn to my guidance for the truth.

When I turn to my guidance, I’m using my imagination, but in a completely different way than how my wounded self uses it.

The difference is in my intent. When my wounded self imagines, I want to control, but when my loving adult imagines, I want to learn about love and truth, or I want to open to my authentic creativity. As a loving adult, I use my imagination to raise my frequency so I can tap into the vast information that is available to all of us. I imagine my guidance bringing me the truth I need to know. I don’t worry about whether or not I’m making it up, because I’ve learned through my experience that when my intent is to learn, what comes through is coming from a source of truth. 

When my intent is to learn, I imagine a vast and eternal space that is filled with love and truth.

I don’t try to populate that space with words and images from my own mind. Instead, I allow the words and images to come through my mind from this vastness. I let go and wait, listening for the subtle voice of spirit that speaks to me through words that form in my mind and images that pop into my mind.

When I first started to practice Inner Bonding, I had no trust at all in these words and images. I thought they were in the same category as what I had been making up from my mind. I wasn’t experienced in feeling the subtle difference in frequency between the words and images that came FROM my mind and those that came THROUGH my mind. Now, after much practice, I can feel this difference. I also trust my feelings to tell me the difference, as those words and images that come from my mind feel bad while those that come through my mind feel good.

Imagination is a gift from the love that is God – a tool we have been given that enables us to access the wisdom and love that is God.

I’ve come to trust my imagination to take me where I need to go. I know that I first have to be able to imagine and feel the joy of something before I can manifest it, so I give my imagination free reign as long as I know that my intent is to learn about what is loving to me and to others.

I invite you to learn to connect with your spiritual guidance with my 30-Day video home-study course, Unlocking Your Inner Wisdom.

And you can learn so much about loving yourself and creating loving relationships from my recent books:

• Diet for Divine Connection: Beyond Junk Foods and Junk Thoughts to At-Will Spiritual Connection

• The Inner Bonding Workbook: Six Steps to Healing Yourself and Connecting With Your Divine Guidance

• 6 Steps to Total Self-Healing: The Inner Bonding Process

• And, How to Become Strong Enough to Love: Creating Loving Relationships Through the Six-Step Pathway of Inner Bonding

And we have so much to offer you at our website at https://www.innerbonding.com.

If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, please tell your friends about it and review it where you hear it.

I’m sending you my love and my blessings.