I’m in Boulder, Colorado right now with Trevor Hart, leading a Sounds True event about trusting the invisible forces of love to guide you in your life.
Yesterday, we spent all day talking about how we can invoke spiritual guidance, the tools and practices that can help you receive guidance, and what gets in the way of opening to this kind of guidance. Today, we’ll be focusing on the tricky topic of discernment.
As Sounds True founder Tami Simon pointed out yesterday, without discernment, we can become flat out delusional in our efforts to seek out spiritual guidance. “What if someone sees seven butterflies,” she asked, “and he assumes that means he’s supposed to get seven wives?” We laughed at her example, but seriously — Hitler thought he was being spiritually guided to purify his race.
Discernment is key. Without clear tools of discernment, an attempt to seek out and follow spiritual guidance can turn psychotic. After all, many schizophrenics think the television is talking only to them! The only thing that separates the mystics from the sociopaths and psychotics is discernment.
In short, there’s no simple answer to the question, “How can you tell if you’re being spiritually guided?” In fact, the very question calls to mind a story Rabbi Reb Zalman told about an enlightened master whose disciples were concerned about choosing another spiritual teacher after he died.
The master told them to ask any prospective teachers a question. “Ask him what we should do with our thoughts that interrupt us in meditation, that drag us away. If he answers you, don’t take him as a teacher. It’s too facile to give such an answer.” In some ways, discerning whether you’re receiving accurate spiritual guidance is similar. If anyone tries to tell you they know for sure when they’re receiving clear guidance, be skeptical.
With that disclaimer, here are some key questions you can use to double-check yourself when you think you might be receiving spiritual guidance. Keep in mind that no single one of these questions is adequate for discernment. Don’t interpret your answers to all these questions literally. Use these questions as a prompt for your own intuition and discernment.
Recommended: 7 Things That Are Blocking Your Spirit Guides
Discernment Questions
Does it feel like ‘’shackles on’ or ‘shackles off’?
Does this make you feel like you’re in prison, or unfettered? Is the cage door open or closed? Do you feel the heaviness of the shackles or the lightness of being that comes with freedom. Martha Beck writes, “The Buddha often said that wherever you find water, you can tell if it’s the ocean because the ocean always tastes of salt.”
By the same token, anywhere you find enlightenment—whatever improbable or unfamiliar shape it may have assumed—you can tell it’s enlightenment because enlightenment always tastes of freedom. Not comfort. Not ease. Freedom.” If you feel like you’re being guided, does it feel like freedom?
Is it kind?
If you think you’re being guided to do something overtly cruel, insensitive or unkind, think again. Don’t mistake kindness for people-pleasing though. Trustworthy spiritual guidance is kind at heart, but it can also be tough love — complete with strict boundary setting and ferocious love.
You may be guided to break a people-pleasing co-dependence pattern that may feel to someone else like your new boundary setting isn’t as kind as usual. Check the kindness meter in your own heart. Your heart will know.
Recommended: 4 Telling Signs That Your Spirit Guide Is Trying To Help You
Is there Aliveness here?
This is a vitality check. True spiritual guidance rarely tells you to do something that makes you feel dead inside. The rational mind, the fear-based inner critic or the task-master superego may order you to do something that feels deadening, but spiritual guidance will not.
Does it exhaust me or fill me with dread?
Your true nature may ask you to complete tasks that require you to hunker down and focus. You may even feel a certain weariness after saying yes to a calling that puts you on the front line of something big and scary. But even if your body is tired, you will also feel a certain excitement, a rightness and lightness of being, and positive flow of energy through your body.
You may feel scared. You may have butterflies in your solar plexus. But if you feel dread, you can be pretty certain the guidance isn’t pure.
Does it nourish or deplete me?
Even when spiritual guidance asks you to do something that requires a lot of energy, true guidance will only ask you to do things that fill you with spiritual energy and do not require you to give away all of you own personal energy.
Does it feel natural, efficient, easeful, peaceful and graceful?
This question, from Joan Borysenko and Gordon Dveirin’s wonderful book Your Soul’s Compass, always help me breathe more easily when I’m discerning whether guidance is real. As they discovered by interviewing priests, rabbis, Sufi masters, Christian mystics, sages, intuitives, and gurus, spiritual guidance usually feels natural, efficient, easeful, peaceful and graceful.
Recommended: 5 Easy Ways To Make A Psychic Connection With Your Spirit Guide
Does it make sense?
While spiritual guidance may often ask you to do things that feel crazy, common sense is still a useful discernment tool. It certainly didn’t make sense when my spiritual guidance told me to leave my job as a doctor ten years ago. So as with all the questions, this question doesn’t work on its own.
But if spiritual guidance is asking you to do something that violates your common sense, slow down. Ask for clarification and confirmation. If you’re not sure, it’s OK to ask for more guidance.
Will it hurt anyone?
As with the “Is it kind?” question, this doesn’t mean your irresponsible 30-year-old son won’t get his feelings hurt when you set a boundary and tell him he has to move out of the house if he can’t contribute to the household as a mature adult. It also doesn’t mean you may not be guided to hurt someone who breaks into your house and is threatening your kids. It’s simply a prompt to remind you that if your guidance is potentially dangerous or hurtful to someone else, double check yourself.
Would Love do this?
This is one of my favorite questions because it’s so expansive. What would love do? Sometimes love forgives unforgivable acts. Sometimes love leaves. But there’s nothing more powerful in the universe.
How does this feel in my body?
Does your body feel contracted or expansive? Is it saying “Hell yeah” or “Hell no?” When you consider what you feel you are guided to do, do you get a headache or feel nauseous? Do you feel exhausted or enlivened? Does your heart light up? Check in. Let your body be your compass.
In my experience, trustworthy spiritual guidance doesn’t rush you unless someone’s life is at risk. If you’re not clear, you can always ask the invisible forces of love for confirmation. Pray for another sign, a dream, a clear knowing or seeing or gut instinct.
Slow down and get quiet. Listen deeply. Pay attention. You will get your answer. You just may not get your answer on someone else’s deadline. If you feel pressured to rush, the answer is probably “Not yet.” Urgency usually stems from fear and scarcity. But true guidance isn’t afraid and it’s ever-plentiful. There’s always enough.
Is it coercive or controlling?
If what you feel guided to do is coercive or controlling of someone else, pause. Love doesn’t coerce or control.
Is it ethical and aligned with my core values?
This one is so important that I could write a whole blog post just about this. I met a shaman who defended his sexual molestation of a client because he said, “I was being spiritually guided to give her a sexual healing.” Bullshit. I’m not saying that ethics are black and white or that you might be led into grey territory from time to time, but if you think you’re being guided to do something that might be a blatant ethics violation, think again.
Will this cultivate the stillness in me?
This one is HUGE and it’s not often emphasized in our busy, rushed culture. So many things you might enjoy leave you feeling hyped up, manic, and on edge. As one guy who lived on a wild game reserve in Africa told me when he was breaking up with his girlfriend, “I used to think that the excited feeling I got when I was with her was love. But then I realized it was actually the feeling I get when I’m with an unpredictable wild animal.”
Sometimes what we interpret as excitement is actually a physiological stress response. Choose the people, work, and experiences that cultivate relaxation responses in your nervous system.
What’s true and not true about this situation?
Sometimes we get confused because we think it’s a black or white answer we’re seeking. But maybe it’s both/and. Sometimes the solution that resonates in your heart is a paradox.
Are you being guided? Do you have what the Quakers would call a “leading?” Run through these questions and see if they help. Also, don’t be afraid to seek out trustworthy guidance from therapists, spiritual counselors, and reputable intuitives, energy healers and shamans. Often, they can help confirm what you already know in your heart of hearts.
This was originally published by Conscious Reminder.
About the author: Lissa Rankin, MD is a mind-body medicine physician on a grass roots mission to heal healthcare, while empowering you to heal yourself. She is the founder of the Whole Health Medicine Institute training program for physicians and healthcare providers, and the New York Times bestselling author of the books Mind Over Medicine: Scientific Proof That You Can Heal Yourself (2013), The Fear Cure (2014), and The Anatomy of a Calling (2015).
Lissa blogs at LissaRankin.com and created the online community HealHealthCareNow.com. She is also the author of several other books, a speaker, a professional artist, an amateur ski bum, and an avid hiker. She lives in the San Francisco Bay area.
I’m really enjoying the theme/design of your site.
Do you ever run into any web browser compatibility problems?
A number of my blog readers have complained about
my blog not working correctly in Explorer but looks great in Chrome.
Do you have any advice to help fix this problem?
If you desire to improve your familiarity only keep visiting this web page and be
updated with the latest news posted here.
I’ll immediately take hold of your rss feed as I can not in finding your e-mail subscription link
or e-newsletter service. Do you have any? Please permit me
recognise in order that I could subscribe. Thanks.
A motivating discussion is definitely worth comment.
I think that you ought to publish more on this topic, it might not be a taboo subject
but generally people do not speak about such topics.
To the next! All the best!!
Very energetic article, I liked that a lot. Will there be a
part 2?
Appreciate the recommendation. Let me try it out.
This page really has all the info I wanted about this
subject and didn’t know who to ask.
An impressive share! I have just forwarded this onto a colleague who has been conducting a little research on this.
And he actually bought me lunch due to the fact that I found it for him…
lol. So allow me to reword this…. Thank YOU for the meal!!
But yeah, thanks for spending the time to
talk about this issue here on your web page.
Link exchange is nothing else however it is just placing the other
person’s web site link on your page at proper place and other person will also do
similar in favor of you.
Good answers in return of this query with firm arguments and explaining everything on the
topic of that.
I’m not sure where you’re getting your info, but good topic.
I needs to spend some time learning much more or understanding more.
Thanks for wonderful info I was looking for this information for
my mission.
Magnificent items from you, man. I have keep in mind your stuff previous to and you’re simply extremely excellent.
I really like what you’ve acquired here, certainly like what you are stating and
the best way by which you say it. You are making
it entertaining and you still care for to keep it sensible.
I cant wait to learn far more from you. That is really a tremendous web site.
Excellent post. I was checking constantly this
blog and I’m impressed! Very useful information specifically the last part :
) I care for such information a lot. I was looking for this certain information for a long time.
Thank you and best of luck.
Your method of telling everything in this article is in fact nice,
every one can without difficulty understand it, Thanks a
lot.
What’s Going down i am new to this, I stumbled upon this
I’ve discovered It positively helpful and it has aided me out loads.
I’m hoping to give a contribution & aid different customers
like its helped me. Good job.
Wow, that’s what I was looking for, what a material!
existing here at this blog, thanks admin of this web site.
I love it when folks get together and share views.
Great site, keep it up!
Hey this is kinda of off topic but I was wanting to know if blogs
use WYSIWYG editors or if you have to manually code with
HTML. I’m starting a blog soon but have no coding experience so I wanted
to get guidance from someone with experience. Any help would be
greatly appreciated!
Hi, just wanted to mention, I enjoyed this blog post. It was funny.
Keep on posting!
Wow, that’s what I was seeking for, what a data! present here at this webpage, thanks
admin of this web page.
Excellent beat ! I wish to apprentice even as you amend your web site, how can i subscribe for a weblog site?
The account aided me a applicable deal. I have been tiny bit acquainted of this your broadcast offered brilliant transparent idea
It’s difficult to find knowledgeable people on this subject, but you sound
like you know what you’re talking about! Thanks
Does your blog have a contact page? I’m having problems locating it but, I’d like
to send you an email. I’ve got some recommendations for
your blog you might be interested in hearing. Either way, great website and I look forward to seeing it
grow over time.
Hi everybody, here every person is sharing these kinds of experience, so it’s nice to read this webpage,
and I used to pay a quick visit this webpage all the time.
Heya i’m for the first time here. I came across this board and I find It
really helpful & it helped me out a lot. I am hoping to give one thing again and aid others such as you helped
me.
You made some really good points there. I looked on the web
for additional information about the issue and found most individuals will go along with your views on this site.
Good way of describing, and good article to get information concerning my presentation topic, which i am going to present
in academy.
I enjoy reading through an article that will make men and women think.
Also, thanks for allowing for me to comment!
Thanks for ones marvelous posting! I really enjoyed reading it,
you will be a great author.I will ensure that I bookmark
your blog and will eventually come back later in life. I want to encourage you continue your great posts, have a nice
weekend!
Hi, I do think this is a great blog. I stumbledupon it
😉 I’m going to return yet again since I book-marked
it. Money and freedom is the best way to change, may you
be rich and continue to guide others.