Guidance can come in many ways. It can start through the silent voice or inner feeling or intuition but the upper mind must be used to sort out the real from the real.
The inner voice is a quiet voice inside which can be like an imagination, inner thoughts or feelings of thoughts. These thoughts if you get them have to be distinguished from those of your own mind. God talks to us all in many ways but this inner voice is something which is most helpful and nearly everyone will have it if they can become quiet enough in the Mind.
The upper mind can be used to try to distinguish this inner guidance from your own mind and mental thoughts and emotional feelings.
Inner feelings of direction can back this inner voice up but sometimes can also give conflicting directions and guidance. Sometimes the inner feelings can be ahead of the inner voice. The inner feelings can give more of a complete picture but not always the way to get there.
Then of course there are the guides if you are clairvoyant from the Astral planes which again are different and this is not what I am describing. The guidance I want is from the light of God, not spirits in the Astral realm. Spirits in the Astral are minds devoid of bodies and having released their attachment to life and the body temporarily are freer but not close to God.
It is difficult to interpret and distinguish these inner subtle and gentle paths of guidance from the force of mind, instincts or mental patterns. This does not even cover the forces of fear which can overlay and crush the mind. These feelings of fear have a clamping effect of intense pressure on the mind drowning out all sense of reason and guidance. Fear, worry and anxiety obscure the guidance of the light and so these obstacles must be worked through and distinguished for what they are to progress further.
Dismissing fear & anxiety in the face of God’s will is indeed a very difficult task as you are going against deeply intrenched feelings of fear, worry and discomfort to follow a very vague voice of inner spiritual guidance.
On this matter one point I would like to clarify before looking further. This guidance is difficult to interpret and follow and is not so clear. But I am sure that it never involves harming anyone or anything. The fear you must go against is your own and that of loosing face, control, self righteousness is a more normal outcome than causing upset or harm to anyone else. It’s to humble you, not anyone else.
Mind works fast and likes definition rational fixed points, ends and beginnings. It loves completions, clarity. It talks in the language of definite yes and no. Its paranoid about loosing face, humblings and lack of purpose. Mind likes a quick solution, an instant fix, a riddle solved. War, hate, violence they are all creations of the mind seeking a quick solution. But these quick fixes only create another problem due to Karma, duality and cause and reaction. Spiritual guidance prefers to steer you around the objects of conflict and isn’t troubled if it increases or decreases your status.
If the Mind thinks it has won then the spiritual guidance may have lost. That’s the conflicts of the path. To win is to loose and to loose all is to win.
Guidance is slower, less sure, less defined more continuous rather than fixed points of the mind. Yet this guidance is analysed through the mind which makes the whole process so confusing.
If Mind is a straight line from point to point then inner guidance is a very curvy road where you can only see to the next corner. Mind thinks it can see further ahead, but guidance knows you can’t.
When you see the start the mind thinks to draw a straight line to where it expects the end to be with nothing in between and a total complete solution and completion of the task at the end. It maps out what will be at the end of the line and what it imagines will be after that.
Guidance’s curvy road stretches long into the distance from the start to the end which is God. Each corner is only as far as you can see or as much as the mind can comprehend. This corner is not far enough along the road for the Mind to see the solution so it frustrates the Mind. The solution when it eventually arrives may not even be the one you thought of in the first place.
Mind projects your past learning, inherited characteristics and patterns into the future to achieve its wants and desires.
Guidance takes all from God to direct you along the path with the path as its guide.
You can see there are great differences here to overcome and accept between the opposites of Mind and inner spiritual guidance.
Guidance is more like a curved ball or a road of endless twists and turns. The path is narrow. It only goes to a single point beyond the mind out of sight of the Mind, but the guidance to find it rests only in the now. Its the path. The curves are the mind sitting in the way and the path has to endlessly turn to steer round the mind.
This curved road means you can never see far ahead so overtaking is dangerous and constant awareness is needed to see what is coming round the next corner. Careful to slow down on the corners and don’t be tempted to jump further than you can see. Every now and again a hairpin or cross roads appears and great care and is needed here.
Mind listens to the guidance and relates it to past experience and projects a straight line a tangent to the curve ahead with a definite end of accomplishments or failures wherever its patterns take it. But after a short moment guidance has already moved along it’s curvy path while mind is still sprinting along the straight line to achieve the goal as quickly as possible taking you off the path. But guidance knows what is on the way is also the end and follows God’s will to the end.
If you do get used to this game you start to notice the stark choice that is made time and time again.
The thinking Mind is in the opposite direction to the listening to the direction of the inner guidance. The outer life of possessions, achievements and money lie in the opposite direction to the direction of inner listening.
As time passes a gulf starts to open between the 2 choices. Can you let go of bits of who you are, what you have achieved and want to achieve to keep looking the opposite way to move closer to oneness which is devoid of the individual mind and ego. How long can you give up your individual thoughts to look the other way along the path ?