For a long time, I was afraid of my own Higher Self. That sounds strange, given how overjoyed I had been to discover it. But somewhere along the way I developed an idea of what it was going to say: that I was doing everything wrong, that putting things right would mean being generous to people who had wronged me, doing things I didn’t want to do for others and, frankly, giving myself up.
So I sabotaged my efforts to hear it. I kept the distractions going for as long as I could.
It wasn’t until I finally made space for my Higher Self to speak that I realised I had it backwards. It would never make me wrong. It didn’t demand that I sacrifice myself for everybody else. It only ever found ways to support me. It loved me unconditionally and, if I was absolutely set on making a mistake, it would even let me make it.
That changed everything.
Perhaps one of the reasons we keep ourselves so mentally busy isn’t simply that modern life is noisy. Sometimes we are frightened of what we might hear if we become quiet.
Making Space
You don’t need to search for some dramatic spiritual state. You simply need moments when nothing else is demanding your attention.
Meditation is one way of creating those moments, but it isn’t the only one. My first foray into meditation was to help me sleep, which it did perfectly. A couple of minutes in and I would be asleep until morning! It wasn’t until I attended a Buddhist retreat many years later that I fully appreciated the benefits of stilling the mind.
But not everyone connects that way. Walking in nature, swimming, gardening, painting, or simply sitting with a cup of tea without reaching for your phone can create the same kind of mental space. The practice isn’t the point. The space is.
Start a Conversation with Yourself
Journaling has been another important route for me. When I first began, I didn’t know what to write until I realised it didn’t matter. You just have to start.
A client once told me he felt completely blocked when faced with the blank page. I advised him to start there, write “I feel blocked”. And keep going.
What we ask ourselves matters too. Asking why is this happening to me? keeps us circling a problem. Asking what can this teach me? or how would my Higher Self see this? opens the possibility of another perspective.
Let Wisdom Find You
The ideas we return to inevitably shape the way we think, and sometimes the right teaching arrives at exactly the right point in our lives.
I owned A Course in Miracles for almost eight years before I felt able to study it. It sat on my shelf through several house moves. Every so often I would take it down, read a page and put it back. It wasn’t until I reached a time when I felt totally stuck that I seriously decided to discover what it was teaching.
Around that time I sought counselling, and the counsellor suggested I was feeling guilty about something and that this was blocking me. I couldn’t identify with that at all. Only later, as the lessons of the Course came into full view, did I begin to understand what guilt and forgiveness meant within its teachings.
Looking back, the timing was exactly right. Growth cannot always be hurried. Sometimes something can sit quietly beside us for years until we are ready to see it differently.
Notice What Is Already Happening
Guidance doesn’t only arrive while we’re meditating or journalling. It appears in ordinary life. A person repeatedly comes to mind. A conversation makes you see something differently. You notice a recurring pattern in a dream, or the same idea seems to meet you from several directions.
I don’t think we need to decide immediately whether such things are coincidence, psychology, intuition or something more. We can simply notice them.
One of the questions I find most useful is: What is life trying to show me? Asked without forcing an answer, it turns ordinary experiences into information. You may discover you’ve been receiving useful clues for years without paying much attention to them.
You don’t need to search for some dramatic spiritual state. You simply need moments when nothing else is demanding your attention
Try This: Choose One, for One Week
Don’t overhaul your life. Choose one way of making a little more mental space: five quiet minutes, a walk without your phone, a journal, a swim or sitting with a cup of tea doing absolutely nothing else.
Try it for a week.
Some days you may feel connected. Other days nothing whatsoever will happen. Both count.
You aren’t trying to manufacture your Higher Self. You’re simply becoming quiet enough to notice what happens when you stop talking over yourself.
Once you hear that guidance, what happens when you actually start following it? What changes in your decisions, your work, your relationships, your sense of direction? Next, we look at what it is like to live a guided life.
Articles in The Higher Self
Connecting to Your Higher Self: Discovering the Wisest Part of Who You Are
- The Quiet Voice You Keep Talking Over
- You Are More Than Your Busy Mind
- When Intuition Speaks: How to Recognise Your Higher Self
- How To Quiet Your Mind So Your Higher Self Can Be Heard
- Living a Guided Life
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