S2 EP80 – The Courage to Listen to Your Higher Guidance

Transcript

One of the challenging aspects of Inner Bonding is learning to trust your Guidance. I often hear my clients say, “I hear my Guidance, but I don’t believe it is my Guidance,” or “I hear my Guidance, but I don’t trust that what I’m hearing is true or right.”

I understand this issue well, as it took me years after starting to practice Inner Bonding to fully trust my Guidance. I tested it over and over again until I finally had enough positive experiences to stop questioning it. 

I’ve learned that my Guidance never gives me thoughts that create anxiety, so now, if I have a thought that creates anxiety, I immediately know that the thought is being made up by my wounded self. I also know that definitive thoughts about the future – about what will or won’t happen – are generally made-up thoughts from my wounded self. The wounded self loves to predict the future, while the loving adult stays in this present moment, connected with the truth of the moment.

But my Guidance does often tell me what to do in the present that will greatly affect the future – like when she told me to slow down on the freeway and seconds later a drunk driver careened across the freeway inches in front of me. If I had not listened my Guidance, I would have been broadsided and perhaps killed. Or when she told me to get everything of value out of my house a week before the house closed escrow in 2001 – a week before I was supposed to move. I didn’t know why she told me this, but I’m grateful that I listened, because the day after I moved everything that was important to me out of the house, construction workers working on termite damage burned my house down. What a lesson that was in listening to and trusting my Guidance!

My Guidance often tells me little things, too – such as something I am forgetting to take on a trip. It’s so reassuring to experience her watching out for me. 

It’s amazing to me how often our arrogant ego wounded self believes that it knows better than our Guidance does.

Often, when I’m working with a client, they tell me what their wounded self is saying. Then I ask them to go to their Guidance and ask for the truth about that. Even though the truth that they receive from their Guidance makes them feel much better than what their wounded self is telling them, they frequently don’t trust it, saying, “But how can I be sure this is true?”

“How does it make you feel?”

“Great! But maybe I’m just making it up.”

“How do you know you are not making up what your wounded self is telling you, that is making you feel bad?” I ask them.

Half of trusting your Guidance is trusting your feelings – your inner Guidance. Your Guidance speaks to you through your feelings – your soul within – and through thoughts and images that pop into your mind from your soul that is all around you.

“The fact that it makes you feel great is letting you know that it is the truth,” I tell my clients.

I see over and over with my clients that they are afraid to trust their guidance. 

“How do I know that what I think my guidance is telling me is the truth? How do I know it’s really my guidance and not my own mind?”

There are two ways to determine what is true:

• Tune in to your feelings. Your feelings of fear, anxiety, depression, anger, guilt, shame, jealousy, aloneness, emptiness, and so on are letting you know that what you are telling yourself is not true for you – not loving to you and not in your highest good. Your feelings of lightness, relief, fullness, peace, and joy are letting you know that you are hearing the truth. And some people experience goose bumps when hearing the truth.
  
  
• Test it out. Follow what your wounded self is telling you and see what happens and how you feel. Follow what you think your guidance is telling you and see what happens and how you feel.

With time and practice, you will gradually shift your allegiance from your wounded self to your guidance. Life may continue to include challenges, but it’s so much easier when you know that you are always being guided by an unconditional source of love and truth.

When you trust that your wounded feelings are telling you that you are off track in your thinking and behavior, and that the thoughts and images from your Guidance – that make you feel peaceful within – are telling you that you are on track, then you will begin to feel so much safer and empowered in your life!

Throughout the day, I thank my feelings – my Inner child – for keeping me on track, and I thank my Guidance for all the wonderful love and wisdom she gives to me. Staying in gratitude for my Guidance keeps me stay open to the truth and wisdom that is always here.

However, it took me a long time before I trusted my guidance more than my wounded self and there were many good reasons for this.

• My parents were atheists and anything to do with ‘God’ was considered to be fantasy. The mind was king and anything religious or spiritual was a ‘crutch.’ 
  
  
  On the other hand, my grandmother, who lived with us, was very religious, and her God was judgmental and controlling – not a God that I wanted anything to do with

So I learned to rely on my programmed wounded self for my beliefs and decisions. My left-brain mind ran my life.

• Given that I wasn’t happy, it was obvious that this was not working well. After years and years of many different kinds of therapies and workshops, I realized that there was a vast difference between spirituality and religion, and that neither my parents nor my grandmother had any idea of the truth.

Being deeply rooted in traditional psychotherapy, and not happy with the results with my clients, I began my spiritual search. After practicing for seventeen years as a traditional psychotherapist, I met Dr. Erika Chopich and we co-created Inner Bonding which was downloaded to us from spirit. She helped me to access my personal source of spiritual guidance, and I started to diligently practice Inner Bonding.

• I wanted desperately to trust that there really was a source of love, strength, and wisdom available for me, but my unhealed shame got in the way. As long as I was abandoning myself and perpetuating the lack of love I experienced as I was growing up, I didn’t feel deserving of God’s love.

As I gradually stopped abandoning myself and learned to love myself, the shame healed, and I was more often able to stay open to learning. With this came the deep knowing that I, along with everyone on the planet, am never alone – that the love and wisdom that is Spirit is always here for me.

• Still, I needed to test it out. How could I be sure that what I was hearing coming through my mind was truer than what came from my mind? How could I be sure it really was spirit? I tested and tested. I noticed what happened when I didn’t listen, and what happened when I did. Finally, I was able to fully accept that my guidance is really here for me, and that she knows what is good and right for me. Finally, I fully accepted that my wounded self is a programmed survival part of me that has no access to truth or love.

Learning to fully trust my guidance has been a long process and took a lot of courage. It takes courage to trust something you can’t even see, and it takes courage to trust the quiet voice of spirit rather than the loud voice of the wounded self. And for some people who have no spiritual belief system, it takes courage to face the fear of being duped.

Do you have a fear of being duped? Some of my clients have been afraid to open to their guidance or trust their guidance for the fear of being duped into believing that spirit is really there.

No one likes being duped. It feels awful to realize that someone has pulled the wool over our eyes – that we were so naïve that we didn’t see we were being duped, lied to, or taken advantage of.

However, since this painful experience happens to most of us at one time or another, we each have a choice – will we make protecting ourselves from being duped our highest priority, or will we make connecting with our source of love and truth, and being open and loving more important than whether we get duped?

I have found in my work with clients that the fear of being duped or controlled is often in the way of opening to their guidance and learning to be loving to themselves and others. They are so afraid of being duped or controlled, that they close their heart, keeping their walls up to protect themselves from the possibility of being duped.

“What if nothing is there? What if I’m making it all up? What if it’s just a fantasy that people rely on because they can’t face reality?”

I often wonder, when people say things like this, why they believe that what they make up in their minds – the story they are telling themselves that is causing this fear and mistrust – has more validity than does a spiritual Source of love and truth. And how are they going to know whether there really is something there unless they open to learning, follow what they are hearing, and see what happens?

As I previously said, the only way I discovered that my spiritual Guidance is really there, was to take the risk of opening to learning – then doing what my I thought my Guidance was telling me was in my highest good – and then seeing what happened. As I said, I tested and tested until finally I felt 100% certain that ‘something’ was really there. But to take this risk, I needed to have the courage to be willing to be duped, to be wrong.

So here is the issue. What are you telling yourself that makes it so awful to be duped? Are you telling yourself that if you get duped you are stupid to have let it happen?

You can keep your heart open to others and to Spirit only if you make it okay to be duped.

For me, it’s more important to be open and loving than to be concerned with whether I get duped. I just don’t see it as such a big deal. I would far rather be on my soul’s journey than spend my time protecting myself against the possibility of being wrong about my experience of my Guidance.

Another reason people might not open to their Guidance is the fear that their Guidance will try to control them. Do you believe that your spiritual Guidance is controlling?

Anne was raised by two very controlling parents. Her parents were harsh, judgmental, and punishing. She could never be perfect enough to avoid their wrath.

When Anne first consulted me, she had a deep connection with God, but it was a one-way connection. She felt that she connected to God, but she did not feel that God connected with her. She would often send prayers regarding others’ wellbeing, as well as prayers of gratitude, and these were very fulfilling for her. Yet she never asked God for information regarding her own highest good. She never asked for a two-way conversation with her spiritual Guidance.

Anne was very tuned in to others’ feelings and needs and was very caring and giving with others. Yet she was rarely aware of her own feelings. Her inner child, feeling abandoned by her and unimportant to her, was often sad and angry. Yet Anne consistently forgot to practice Inner Bonding when she was feeling sad and angry. She claimed that she just did not know how to take care of herself.

In our sessions, we explored Anne’s resistance to taking loving care of herself:

“Anne,” I asked, “there must be some good reasons that you are so connected with God, yet you do not ask God how to take care of your own inner child. What do you think this is about?”

“I just don’t want God telling me what to do.”

“So even though you love God and pray to God, you believe that God is controlling?”

“Well, I guess I do. At least my wounded self does. I know that God is love, but I guess I don’t actually believe that when it comes to me.”

“And does your wounded self believe that God is judgmental and punishing?”

“Again, I know that God is unconditional love, but I do believe that God is judgmental and punishing when it comes to me.”

“So, in the mind of your wounded self, God is just like your parents? You have projected your parents onto God?”

“Yes! I think that is exactly what I do! I don’t want to hear what God has to say to me because I think that God is going to judge and control me like my parents did.”

“And the last thing you want is to be judged and controlled.”

“Yes, I hate it. I’m very sensitive to anyone judging me and trying to control me. I think this is the biggest issue I have with Mark (her husband). I get angry or just vanish if I think he is the least bit judgmental or controlling.”

“So the moment there is any judgment or other controlling behavior, your wounded self takes over and you just react. There is no loving adult.”

“Yes, and I don’t want to keep doing this. I want to respond as a loving adult.”

“In order to respond as a loving adult, you need to open to learning with God regarding what would be loving to you. But you are completely resistant to opening to God for fear of being controlled, which makes it impossible to be a loving adult for your inner child. This is what’s keeping you stuck in your healing process.”

“Yes, I see this, but I don’t know what to do.”

“Anne, in order to learn to be a loving adult, you would need to decide that you are willing to risk being controlled by God. You cannot open to God until you are willing to experience the truth about God. I know that this is very challenging, given your experience of your parents, yet unless you are willing to open and learn the truth about God, you have no way of developing your loving adult.”

It took much courage and practice for Anne to establish a two-way communication with her spiritual Guidance. Through diligent practice, her experience of God gradually changed, and she was finally able to access information regarding the loving actions on behalf of her inner child. Not only did her relationship with her husband improve, but her lifelong sadness and anger gradually healed.

In order to have the courage to open to your Guidance, you need to have the courage to learn about your wounded self, because you will learn much about your wounded self when you practice Inner Bonding and you open to learning with your inner Guidance – your feelings, and your higher Guidance.

I’d had three sessions with Anika when I decided it was time to approach her about her intent. In my experience, she believed she was open to learning, but was completely closed to learning about herself and connecting with her Guidance. We were getting stuck because when I would reflect something to her about herself, she would get defensive, obviously feeling attacked by me.

“Anika, there must be a good reason that you are not open to learning.”

“I am open to learning. I love to learn. I’m always learning, and I feel very unseen by you that you don’t get I’m open to learning.”

“Well, in my definition of being open to learning, you would be curious regarding why I don’t think you are open, rather than getting defensive and upset with me.”

“Well, okay. What do you mean by open to learning and why don’t you think I’m open?”

“Anika, you are obviously interested in learning lots of things. You are very interested in learning everything you can about training dogs and flying planes. But when it comes to learning about yourself—especially about your wounded self and the various ways you control, and opening to learning with your Guidance, you close up and get defensive. Do you have a judgment about being controlling?”

“Yes, it’s wrong to try to control.”

“Well then, that’s the problem. In my experience, we’ve all learned many ways of trying to control others, outcomes, and our own painful feelings. We needed to learn these strategies as we were growing up to survive, but now these controlling behaviors are causing us problems. From what I see, they are causing lots of problems between you and your husband and you and your son. And it’s preventing you from being able to access your spiritual Guidance. Are you willing to open to learning about your own controlling behaviors?”

“Oh, now I see why you experience me as closed. I have been closed to learning about this because I’ve always thought it was wrong to control, and I’m afraid my Guidance will judge me for being controlling.” Anika then opened and we had a wonderful session.

What are you afraid of finding out about yourself? These are some of the things clients have told me about their fear of learning about themselves:

• I will find out something awful about myself—something that proves I’m bad, not good enough, inadequate, unlovable or unworthy.
• I will find out about something that happened to me as I was growing up that I can’t handle.
• If I open to my Guidance, I will discover that I have to completely change my life—my work, my relationship, everything.
• I will have to feel feelings that are too scary to feel.
• I will find out that there is nothing to find out—that I’m empty inside, and that there is no Guidance.

When we talk about learning about ourselves, we need to define which ‘self’ we are talking about. It is important to differentiate between our ego wounded self and our true, soul Self. Avoiding learning about our wounded self prevents us from discovering our incredible soul Self, and from accessing our higher guidance.

If you want to experience freedom, joy, and loving relationships, you need to have the courage to learn about and heal your controlling, protective, addictive behaviors and false beliefs. The only way to do this is to put your judgments of these behaviors and beliefs on the table and open to learning about them with your inner and higher Guidance.

I hope you have the courage to open to learning with your higher guidance and start to listen to your guidance about loving yourself, so that you can experience the incredible joy of sharing love with others.

Take advantage of all we offer at https://www.innerbonding.com.

Learn to connect with your spiritual Guidance with SelfQuest. 

Learn to connect with your guidance with Dr. Margaret’s workbook, “The Inner Bonding Workbook: Six Steps to Healing Yourself and Connecting With Your Divine Guidance.”