Q&A: Understanding Divine Guidance

July 11, 2020 · by · in All Posts, Food for Thought, Suggested Reading

Yesterday I spent a long time on phone with a woman who told me she had seen God. She had regular visions of Shiva and he guided her for every little thing in life. She was trying to understand the purpose of her life and had contacted some healers, one of which told her this is not God but a mess created by mischievous spirits, and this woman blocked her.

I am grateful she was more open to me… probably because I was genuinely open to all possibilities and sincerely hearing h her out. Eventually we figured out this was a full blown psychic attack, right up to her having marks on her body when waking up, etc. You have no idea how many people reach out to me believing they are fully enlightened. There’s so much nonsense that happens these days, and most of what people ‘see’ is mostly just gimmicks created by the mind. Our minds are terribly over-stimulated and a lot of illusion is possible.

I share this for you to simply maintain this in your awareness. It is important to learn to discern beneficial and harmful messages, and harmful messages can frequently masquerade as positive ones. Here also she asked me – why will negative forces tell me to read the scriptures, why will they boost my morale? Precisely because it makes you more sure that this is great guidance. In all cases I remember so far, when people say they are seeing deities, they have been under psychic attack. If genuine guidance comes, you rarely ‘see’ them and it is few and far in between and usually action specific – ‘do this’ or to reinforce something you need to remember in order to heal.

Q: Can you please share some experiences of people where they encountered genuine guidance

See genuine guidance often comes without the label of ‘divine’. If you are seeking sincerely the right thing to do, then it will be someone you love or respect telling you something. And when you follow that, things fall into place. They key is to want to do the right thing, instead of giving your power to some ‘higher’ being. It is one thing to be in surrender to the divine. It is quite another to give away one’s responsibility to learn to take the right decisions and wait for some eternal parent to tell you what to do. The universe will almost never tell you ‘what to do’ in terms of taking a decision. It might give you a nudge sometimes to take some action which will change the course of things, but big decisions in life are learning points which we have to learn to navigate ourselves for growth.

So real guidance could be a dream or say, two friends insisting you must go to this specific temple. (If this is too difficult or not possible, then it is likely not divine at all). Guidance could be, a friend who out of character gives you advice that actually applies. It could be in a book that you’re reading and shifts you deeply.