4 Tips to Help You Listen to Your Inner Guide

I had a wild experience one morning.

Lately, I've been diving deeper into meditation and asking the Universe and my Inner Guide for guidance through life lately. I've had a lot of intense tingly sensations come over my body and I've been able to "flip the switch" back to love when I have gotten into hard situations. Gabby Bernstein and A Course in Miracles calls this The Holy Instant. In Gabby's book Spirit Junkie, she explains that your happiness is a direct reflection of how quickly you can come back to love. A new personal favorite mantra of mine has been, Your power is in your capacity to lead through love. 

These instances are surely nothing to take lightly and I'm not. I personally feel giggly and excited over them! I mean, how crazy is it that in the midst of an argument with my partner I suddenly remember to listen and be aware of what's going on in my body and not react to anything, let alone speak calmly, collectively, and clearly? To feel myself start to get agitated in a bustling restaurant setting, excuse myself to the restroom, and be able to not only talk myself into a better mood, but have a wave of goodness come over me to the point that I am smiling in the mirror at myself and feeling regenerated by the time I walk out? I even think it sounds crazy, but these are the experiences I've been having! I just can't chalk it up to a coincidence and wash my hands of it. I have deliberately been meditating and asking for this kind of guidance, to be able to come back to love and feel good when I want to. The ability to switch my perspective on what's going on around me is an incredible feeling. There's a quote somewhere about how our problems don't actually exist, we are the ones that create them. With the experiences I have been living through recently, I have to full heartedly agree.

But there's a critic. 

There always is. I have this other tiny voice in the back of my head that you could maybe say "grounds me". I think it's coming more from fear. Fear of judgement and what others will think of me, because I realize this shit sounds "waaay woooo"

So let me get back to the wild experience I had one morning. I was sitting on my meditation pillow, before meditating, and had was writing a little blurb in my journal. I noticed something I had written down the day before, after meditation, that had just come through me from my Inner Guide. It said something along the lines of me being a superstar and needing to have patience with myself and everyone else. I smiled at it, loved the advice, but I heard that critic say You sound totally full of yourself. I didn't feed into it, I barely even thought about. I just finished writing my own blurb for the day, said a tiny prayer to ask my Inner Guide for guidance and I sat and listened through deep breathing. 

My mind started to wander a bit and I was thinking How can I tell people how to listen to their Inner Guide? I imagined myself writing this blog post for a second before I caught myself wandering away and brought myself back to the deep breathing. When I came out of this meditation I started shuffling my intuitive animal guidance card deck. I wanted to ask the cards for a little tip to hold onto, perhaps a mantra, to help me stay centered at my upcoming finals weekend ahead. Usually as I shuffle I think about what it is that I want to ask the cards about, kind of putting my energy into them so to speak. I didn't even have a chance to think about much before one of the cards just kind of flew out of the shuffling and onto the ground in front of me. Again, little critic, you could say it was a mishap of shuffling. However, when a single card flies out and lands face up right in front of me, I smile, and say thank you, and read what it has to say.

It was the Spider. The Spider in my deck represents storytelling. It spoke of a not-so-unfamiliar creative spark that I was feeling and to write about it. Immediately my mind came back to share with others how to listen to their inner guide. The booklet that came with the deck expanded, telling me not to be distracted, not to worry about judgement, just write, get it out, it's a form of healing and I have a good story to share. 

This resonated with me deeply on many levels. The thing is, I love telling stories. I've always loved writing throughout my life I have had people tell me that I am a good writer. So, I can't just not listen to something like this when I have had all these crazy experiences adding up lately. So here we are. 

How to Listen to Your Inner Guide

I have read several books and heard from several teachers that you will know when you hear it. Elizabeth Gilbert, in her book Eat Pray Love, explains it quite well. It sounds like your own tiny little voice, talking to you. It can come to you in meditation or yoga, but I think you might be more likely to hear it when you are in the midst of some super duper challenging hardship. As I've drawn my awareness to it, I realize that my Inner Guide has been whispering to me my entire life. Sometimes I've listened more than others, but no doubt it has been there all along.

Our Western, busy, monkey minds have a super hard time grasping this. We become hyper aware of what's going on, we get excited and skeptical about hearing some sort of "inner guidance" that can help us through our problems and lead us out of fear. It's not quite that simple.

Patience is Key

​​You must have patience and that might be the most challenging part of all. It's practically like a riddle. You can't force it and if you go looking for it you're not going to find it. The mind is super clever too, oh she's a clever girl. That mind will play tricks on you. If you search hard enough for something, you'll find it. That's the difference between the spiritual path and others. People on a spiritual path simply trust, practice, and experience. They don't go looking or forcing anything to happen. 

You Must Practice

Practice draws awareness. If you have been ignoring your inner guide for your entire life, do you think it's just going to pop up and say hello the moment you suddenly decide you want to know if it's actually real? No way! It's probably scared of you and it has a right to be so. The mean mind, that critic, your ego - is just waiting to pounce all over it. Waiting to convince you that it's not real, that it's just a coincidence, that this shit is made up. That is why you must practice. As I said, practice draws awareness, the more you practice the more you can separate yourself from that mean, critical, mind. Most people find great success through yoga, because you are in a moving meditation, others do it simply from deep breathing - not even sitting, just remembering to take deep breaths during the day. Try asking for guidance and it might happen sooner, no guarantees. It sure as heck will feel silly, but it will most definitely heighten your awareness.

Don't Beat Yourself Up

​Just don't beat yourself up about it. That's the mean mind again, that bully. Can you see yourself asking for guidance, waiting to see if you hear something, and then just telling yourself this is stupid? It's going to take time and that's probably another reason why this concept is so hard to grasp. Our society is hooked on the quick fix and just like everything else I teach and preach, they don't exist. 

Believe in Yourself

You don't have to be strong to hear your inner guide, but you have to be strong in order to listen to it. Therefore, believe in yourself. Through your practice and in hand with not beating yourself up, start incorporating some positive self talk. This will let your inner guide know that you are getting serious, because you're not willing to take all the shit your mean mind has been piling on you for who knows how long. If you don't believe in yourself, if you can't listen when your Inner Guide does peep up, that mean mind is going to tell you it's all a bunch of baloney, and you might just believe it. 

Okay, but HOW will I know?

You'll know because it will catch you off guard. It might catch you off guard so much that you don't even realize something happened until you're falling asleep at night and you suddenly remember something that came to you in your yoga class earlier that day that you didn't even notice at the time. 

It will be a wave of warm words. It will be up-lifting. It will feel special. If you're not ready your mean mind might try to convince you it's just you talking to yourself, but listen, I promise you you'll know better than that. 

After my meditation a couple days ago, when I got up and did a quick ten minute yoga sequence, and lifted my arms over head, brought my hands together down through heart center, closing out my tiny practice, I was taken aback to hear You are a Superstar come through my mind. I've learned how to listen and accept though. Yeah, my critic was all What the heck? A SUPERSTAR? I never even use that word, ever, let alone on myself. It is laughable! But I embraced it and I kept listening and that is when the guidance to be patient with myself and with others  came through. That is why I wrote it all down immediately after, because if you don't hold onto the tiny little moments like this, then they'll only ever be tiny little moments. 

I'm personally ready for all these tiny little moments to mean something more, because I know that they do. I was just never in a place in my life before to truly listen and tune in the way I am now. Oh my gosh, all the synchronicity that is surfacing looks pretty magical right now. Have you ever experienced something like this? Think about, somewhere in your life you had to have had at least one moment. Maybe as a child? 

I hope this post helps guide you to your Inner Guide. From my heart to yours, sending love and light.

​~Court

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