Spiritual guidance is not miraculous, nor is it restricted to a few special individuals; it is simply the natural result of living in an intelligent universe. As such, guidance is available to you as you need it—but not always when you want it! In order to feel secure you (and most everyone else) may want to know what will happen in the future; unfortunately universal intelligence is not concerned with feeling secure—but it can provide you with what you truly need to know, when you need it. The only reality you will ever experience is in this present moment. Universal intelligence is real--and it knows only this moment. It may not reveal the future so that you can impress your friends or comfort your ego, but it can warn you of future events or conditions if you can do something about it in the present moment. Spiritual guidance arrives as needed, when needed, and in the form that is most appropriate. The best way to be access this guidance is to live fully in the present with a clear mind and an open heart, knowing that what you need to know will present itself to you at the right time and in the right way.
A quote from the poet Rainer Maria Rilke:
“Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books written in a foreign language. Do not now look for answers. They cannot be given to you because you could not live them. It is a question of experiencing everything. At present you need to live the question. Perhaps you will gradually, without even noticing it, find yourself experiencing the answer, some distant day.”
Guidance is as natural as breathing and is available to everyone; however, many of us have been “educated” out of the open-mind and heart that is so natural to young children. Many of us have been taught that only facts, logic and rational thinking is valid; intuition, hunches, and “gut knowing” is largely dismissed as “unreliable.”
Guidance is always available but the mind that is fixated on facts and figures alone will not recognize it. Guidance is an organic process that is often revealed in subtle, and sometimes unrecognized, ways. Much of our dreaming is a form of guidance--and the process of dreaming does not stop when we wake up, any more than the stars disappear when the sun rises; the light of the sun simply overrides our recognition of the stars’ presence. In much the same way our everyday mind obscures the subtle guidance that may appear as a dream during the night hours.
That which I am calling “guidance” is often called “intuition” or “inspiration”. It has been used by creative individuals in virtually every arena of human life. Many individuals in the creative arts are familiar with this organic process of creativity, but leaders in science and business may also rely on intuitive insight as much as they do rational thinking. We may think of science and business as fact-based and pragmatic and not amenable to imagination or feeling; but that is not necessarily so. Successful leaders in both of these disciplines areas have spoken unabashedly about their use of intuition.
Albert Einstein: "All great achievements of science must start from intuitive knowledge. I believe in intuition and inspiration.... At times I feel certain I am right while not knowing the reason."
Steve Jobs: “Intuition is a very powerful thing, more powerful than intellect. Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”
By whatever name we give it: guidance, intuition, or inspiration, it is a natural outcome of living in an intelligent universe. We need but to recognize, cultivate, and listen to this universal intelligence present in each one of us, and we will then discover a rich goldmine of insight and understanding!