What You’re Hoping to Hear

I received an excellent question last week from one of my readers who’s also a participant in my Circle workshop:

I’ve been talking to my spirit guides but wondering if I’m over-analyzing the experience. Perhaps on some level I’m thinking a lot about the questions I’m asking, so my mind is well aware of the answers I want to hear. Am I really tuned in to my guides, or am I just really good at channeling the messages I want to hear? Am I supposed to hear something different from what I am hoping to hear?

You may indeed hear something different once in awhile — it might even be easier to accept guidance that challenges you a bit — but, no, I do not feel you’re necessarily supposed to hear something different from your guides than what you might hope or expect to hear, at all.

The thinking mind, or ego-driven interior voices, are based in fear and always motivated by maintaining a sense of safety (whether practical, realistic, or illusory).

It may well be common sense that characterizes divine guidance, more than any other type of information.

Here’s what I find most often happens to me when I communicate with my guides:

The answer I get is not a “surprise” but it often has a brevity, a succinctness, that I would not normally have articulated on my own. Let’s say I’ve been worrying about something, over-analyzing it, running an inner monologue about it for pages and pages, day after day… Or I feel truly inspired by an idea or an intuitive impulse, excited about it, but seeking a lot of extra confirmation and attempting to get assurance.

Then, when I ask my spirit guides to weigh in, a single sentence will pop out that kind of trims away all the “fat.”

Often, that simple, direct response could be some part of what I might “expect” but it’s often surprisingly clear or blunt. And even though the answer is not a “surprise” it’s often put together in a no-nonsense kind of way that makes all my thinking processes seem overwrought and complex by comparison.

It’s not unlike asking a really blunt person, a man of few words, who doesn’t like to talk much, but one you trust to listen to you and offer sound insight. He simply drops this one sentence on the table that makes you think “Duh. I guess it is kind of obvious.”

Once you “have” one of these responses, even if it sounds like “what you’re hoping to hear,” how can you test it in the real world?

At this point, you need to set your intentions and follow through on some action, with faith. Until you have actual results from taking action on your intuition, faith feels like a Question Mark. But, there’s no need to have blind faith — why demand faith be blind?

We believe when we see results. Our faith is based on the positive results of past experience. When you follow these responses, that’s how you will arrive at a result that you can better trust.

Bob Makransky Magical Almanac

As for not thinking about your question too much before-hand, try this:

Write down the questions you want to present to your spirit guides, as they come up throughout the day or over the course of a week, but don’t engage them at that moment.
Collect your questions and “schedule a meeting” with your guides. Choose a specific time and place, a part of your day or your week you can set aside just for communicating with your guides, and sit down and tackle the questions all at once.

Scheduled sessions will give you some additional emotional and analytical distance from the moment of worrying or over-thinking about a particular topic, so that your asking and listening for the response is not married to the moment that you contemplate the question.

Keep in mind that the impulse to create change in your life is an intuitive impulse — your Higher Self, your concept of God, or your spirit guides and guardians inspire positive changes that push you beyond your comfort zone.

Ask yourself if courage is really the one thing you require.

Slade's signature

Do you have a question like this you’d like me to answer? I guarantee you that whatever you may be wondering about, others are wondering about as well. From my perspective, question and answer sessions like this often produce the best articles. I encourage you to contact me and submit your question

June 22, 2008 | by Slade Roberson | Filed Under Angels, Channeling, Clairaudience, Courage & Fear, Intuition, Spirit Guides

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Comments

8 Responses to “What You’re Hoping to Hear”

Patricia Singleton - Spiritual Journey Of A Lightworker on June 22nd, 2008 5:24 pm

Slade, I liked the writing exercise much better than last week’s assignment. You already know I am a writer so this exercise was much easier for me to do. Much of my writing, even on my blog, I just start writing and don’t screen the words. After I stop, then I go back and really read what came out of me and edit the writing.
Andrea Hess|Empowered Soul on June 22nd, 2008 5:38 pm

Great advice, Slade!

I often say to my clients and students that intuition doesn’t explain itself. It just comes in as a single impulse or sentence or thought - “Go do this” or “Now is not the right time.”

The mind tends to try and convince us that it is right. It persuades, it justifies, it reasons. Intuition just tells us. It doesn’t compel us with reasons, because our Guides fully acknowledge the role of free will. We are just told, and then the choice is ours.

I always think it’s funny when I tell clients to meet with their Guides - and the meeting lasts all of a minute, because the Guides are so succinct!

I agree also that the ONLY way to know that intuitive impulses are “right” is to take action. The only “proof” we get is in the outcome.

Wonderful post! You rock!
Blessings,
Andrea
Julie Fransisco on June 22nd, 2008 9:43 pm

Hi Slade,

I believe that the answer we receive from spirit may well be what we expect to hear, but surely our intution (higher self) will have given us the answer already. I would describe an answer given from spirit in response to a question as being in as few words as possible. I find it is never elaborated upon. But rather this is how it is. And I know there is no way that this is my own mind (lower self) giving me the response because I go on and on and on when I talk! I would also add that the words used by spirit are not words I would normally use myself. We all have our own ’style’ when talking and when we are given a message from spirit it will be given in a completely different style. Another clue is to listen to whom the response is aimed at. A message from spirit would refer to ourself as ‘you’. Our own mind would surely refer to ourself as ‘I’.

With love,

Julie Fransisco
Julie on June 22nd, 2008 9:47 pm

Slade,

Thank you (again!) for this wonderful post. This has been one of my fears for a long time (hearing only what I want to hear instead of what I need to hear). I think this fear has really held me back from communicating more fully with my Guides because sometimes I doubt what I hear/feel. You are absolutely right about taking action in a direction in order to determine if the information I get is what I need instead of just what I want. I will keep all this in mind when I seek guidance, and I bet it will make a difference in the quality of my communication as I learn to trust my own interpretations more and more.

Thanks again!

Love & Light,
Jewels
Julie Fransisco on June 22nd, 2008 11:42 pm

With regards to Jewels’ comment. I believe it’s only normal to doubt what we hear and feel. After all we are only human. In my own experience when I have been given a message from my guides or feel something intuitively, I know deep down what I am being told is true. But then my mind comes into play and logic tells me what I have been told cannot possibly be true. I have had this experience countless times but it is always my guides and my intution that have been correct.

With love,

Julie Fransisco
Irene | Light Beckons on June 23rd, 2008 6:42 am

Yes Slade … in the end, courage is definitely the one BIG thing I require!

Everytime my Guides tell me things and start pushing me out of my comfort zone, my mind turns into a mad house. “Scheduling a meeting” with my team and giving them just 5 minutes to answer my list of questions is like allowing them to grab me by my etheric shoulders and say “Irene, read my lips”. And then my mind calms down and I meekly go, “Oooh … ok”. Of couse soon enough my mind will start to miss its mad house, but it’s wonderful to know that there are great exercises such as this one that helps us reaffirm our intuition beyond the mind clutter.

Excellent post Slade! And did I ever tell you that your Summer Circle rocks?
Bob Makransky on June 23rd, 2008 7:42 pm

Cool website. I guess we’re all fighting the good fight, which is to get as many people as possible channeling for themselves so that they don’t have to depend upon “experts” (i.e. liars) to tell them what to do. This will be more and more important in the future as society starts falling apart and people lose their faith in the “experts”.

Have you ever heard of a book entitled “Private Dowding”? It was written by a soldier in World War I who foresaw at that time that someday channeling would become as common a phenomenon as reading or going to church (to obtain spiritual information) was at that time. Remarkably prescient.

You might tell your readers about my free monthly ezine (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MagicalAlmanac). If you want me to include a notice about this site in Magical Almanac’s Bulletin Board, let me know the text you would like me to use.

xoxo,
Bob
Slade | Shift Your Spirits on June 23rd, 2008 9:30 pm

Patricia,

I’m so glad the automatic writing exercises have really clicked with you — your participation is a true blessing to me and to everyone in the group.

Andrea,

Thanks, as always, for your wonderful words of support, encouragement, and your top-notch participation — you are the true definition of an ally and colleague in my book.

Intuition doesn’t explain itself is an absolute gem! I’m sure I will be quoting you on that one in the future.

I must tell you that one of the things our group has discovered doing exercises and meeting sessions with our guides — is how quickly that happens! So brief, beyond most people’s expectations. The speed and the brevity have been recurring lessons.

Julie F,

Thank you for those personal insights about how you tell the difference between your guidance and your ego — the use of words that you wouldn’t normally use is indeed a major clue!

Jewels,

Keep in mind also that you the impulses you hear to begin with may be divinely guided, even before you begin to question them. At a certain level, anything worth meeting with your guides over is already percolating up into your conscious awareness. That in itself is powerful.

Irene,

I am totally with you on the image you describe — taking me by the shoulders and saying Read my lips — yes! We are seeking moments of clarity and insight that cut through the regular noise of our minds — unfortunately, I don’t have any exercises for that kind of total quiet. I don’t know that I would desire that anyway. My mind and my spirit is an extremely chatty place, so I just work with that…

I am SO glad to hear that you are having such a positive experience with our group work — and thank you for telling me! That makes my day.

Bob,

Thank you for stopping by and for sharing your link — your newsletter is wonderful.

Forgive me for not already including your link (I normally display better editing and online etiquette than that!). I have added your link to the post, just beneath your quote. I’m also live-linking the post in your comment, as I do have a Do-follow policy on my comments here. I have also submitted and reviewed your newsletter sign up page in StumbleUpon for some added link love.

Thank for the offer of a reciprocal link — I’ll email you a blurb.

Now, the book you mentioned, I have NOT heard of before, however I was just speaking to a group recently about this very concept — that channeling and being aware of divine guidance is something I believe may one day prove to be entirely biological or at least an inherent ability that more and more people will be able to use. I actually don’t believe there’s any such thing as supernatural. I prefer to think of meta-sensory abilities as the super common divine.

I feel it is truly emergent in humanity and a part of conscious evolution.