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.
Definitely consider that which you stated. Your favorite justification seemed to be on the net the simplest thing to take note of.
I say to you, I definitely get annoyed while people consider issues that
they just don’t recognize about. You managed to hit
the nail upon the top as well as outlined out the whole thing
with no need side-effects , other people can take a
signal. Will likely be again to get more. Thank you
Greetings! Very useful advice within this post! It is the
little changes that make the largest changes.
Thanks a lot for sharing!
This article is actually a pleasant one it assists new internet viewers, who are wishing for blogging.
Hi there, You have done a fantastic job. I’ll certainly digg
it and personally recommend to my friends.
I’m confident they will be benefited from this website.
An impressive share! I’ve just forwarded this onto a colleague who was doing a little
research on this. And he in fact ordered me lunch because I found it for him…
lol. So let me reword this…. Thanks for the meal!!
But yeah, thanks for spending some time to discuss this issue here
on your site.
Very nice post. I simply stumbled upon your weblog and wanted
to say that I’ve truly loved surfing around your blog posts.
After all I’ll be subscribing on your rss feed and I hope
you write once more soon!
Since the admin of this site is working, no question very soon it will be renowned, due
to its feature contents.
Hi there! I simply wish to offer you a huge thumbs up
for the excellent info you’ve got right here on this post.
I am coming back to your website for more soon.
Thank you for the good writeup. It in fact was
a amusement account it. Look advanced to more added agreeable from you!
However, how can we communicate?
I was able to find good information from your content.
Good post. I learn something new and challenging on sites I
stumbleupon everyday. It’s always interesting to read
articles from other authors and practice something from their sites.
No matter if some one searches for his vital thing, thus he/she wants to
be available that in detail, thus that thing is maintained over here.
My programmer is trying to persuade me to move to .net from PHP.
I have always disliked the idea because of the costs. But he’s tryiong none the
less. I’ve been using WordPress on several websites for about a year and am anxious
about switching to another platform. I have heard good things about blogengine.net.
Is there a way I can import all my wordpress posts
into it? Any help would be really appreciated!
I’ve been surfing on-line more than three hours as of late,
yet I never discovered any attention-grabbing article like yours.
It is pretty worth enough for me. In my view,
if all website owners and bloggers made good content as you probably did,
the internet might be a lot more useful than ever
before.
I get pleasure from, lead to I discovered exactly what
I was taking a look for. You have ended my 4 day lengthy
hunt! God Bless you man. Have a nice day. Bye
Great blog here! Also your website loads up very fast!
What web host are you using? Can I get your affiliate link to your host?
I wish my site loaded up as quickly as yours lol
It’s going to be finish of mine day, but before end
I am reading this impressive post to increase my know-how.
Hello, I desire to subscribe for this webpage to obtain most up-to-date updates, so where
can i do it please help.
I have read several excellent stuff here. Certainly value
bookmarking for revisiting. I wonder how much attempt you put to make
this type of magnificent informative website.
I read this paragraph fully on the topic of the comparison of most up-to-date and preceding technologies, it’s awesome article.
Hi, i think that i saw you visited my blog so i
got here to return the choose?.I am trying to
to find things to improve my site!I suppose its
good enough to make use of a few of your concepts!!
bookmarked!!, I love your blog!
Greetings! Very helpful advice in this particular post!
It’s the little changes which will make the biggest changes.
Many thanks for sharing!
Your style is very unique compared to other folks I’ve read stuff from.
Thanks for posting when you have the opportunity, Guess I will
just book mark this web site.
Thank you, I’ve just been searching for information approximately
this topic for a while and yours is the best I have discovered till now.
But, what concerning the bottom line? Are you positive about the source?
If you wish for to grow your experience simply keep visiting this site and be updated with the
latest news posted here.
Thanks for the marvelous posting! I truly enjoyed reading it, you may be a
great author.I will always bookmark your blog and will come back down the
road. I want to encourage yourself to continue your great writing, have a nice day!
Excellent blog you have here but I was wondering if you knew of any
discussion boards that cover the same topics talked about here?
I’d really love to be a part of online community where I can get advice from other knowledgeable individuals that share the same interest.
If you have any recommendations, please let me know.
Thank you!
Great blog here! Additionally your site rather
a lot up very fast! What web host are you the usage of?
Can I get your associate hyperlink to your host? I desire my
web site loaded up as fast as yours lol
It’s fantastic that you are getting ideas from this piece of writing as well as from our dialogue
made here.