Once we start looking for inner guidance, we naturally wonder how to tell when that guidance is right or if it is indeed “higher guidance.” How can we tell the difference between what comes from clear discernment or divine intuition and ego-driven ideas? What is the proof of authority or authenticity? Truth itself is the authority. When guidance is revealed that is aligned with Truth, we know it. It really is that simple.
Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote in his essay on the Oversoul: The soul is the perceiver and revealer of truth. We know truth when we see it, let skeptic and scoffer say what they choose. Foolish people ask you, when you have spoken what they do not wish to hear, 'How do you know it is truth, and not an error of your own?' We know truth when we see it, from opinion, as we know when we are awake that we are awake…
We recognize truth by what it is itself. It comes to us wholly, with a sense of peace and completeness. We inwardly sense the rightness of it. We may not know with specificity what the guidance means, where it will lead us, or exactly how what we are facing will be resolved, but we know that guidance has been received. If we can trust it, and live according to what know is true, we will find that all unfolds in graceful harmony, in a divine order.
Knowing how to follow divine guidance may falter this point for those who don’t understand how it works. They receive higher guidance but they don’t trust it to unfold as influence. Instead they keep stirring up the mind with questions like what should I say or what should I do? They don’t understand the oneness of things—how the change in consciousness will impact the situation. Instead, they keep looking at the situation, and ignoring the source where real change occurs.
As Emerson observed, The soul answers never by words, but by the thing itself that is inquired after. Soul guidance always comes as the sense of fulfillment itself, a sense of completeness, or of knowing. Rarely does such divine guidance appear as mundane instruction about what to do. Instead, it comes as peace. It comes as love. It comes as truth. It comes bearing our divine nature itself. It comes as an invitation to abide in our essential wholeness and to let right action naturally unfold. Here, it says. Here. Abide here. And if we will but abide there, in that answer which is Truth, the rest of the guidance comes exactly when it is needed. Paramahansa Yogananda reflected on how his experiences of superconscious meditation provided guidance in this way. He wrote: I do realize now that I have found god, for whenever the joy of meditation has returned subconsciously during my active hours, I have been subtly directed to adopt the right course in everything, even in minor details.
Abiding in divine consciousness we know what to say when it is time to say it. We know where to go when it is time to go. We know what to do when it is time to do it. We already know.
Think About It: The difference between intuition and will-power is this: intuition sees the Truth; will-power wants to become the Truth…Imagination is not intuition. Inspiration is not intuition. Aspiration is not intuition. But when intuition presents imagination with the Truth, imagination expands the Truth. When intuition presents inspiration with the Truth, inspiration soulfully embraces the Truth. When intuition presents aspiration with the Truth, aspiration devotedly devours the Truth.
–Sri Chinmoy, from yogaofsrichinmoy.com
Be Inspired: Intuition is soul guidance, appearing naturally in man during those instants when his mind is calm....The goal of yoga science is to calm the mind, that without distortion it may hear the infallible counsel of the Inner Voice.
–Paramahansa Yogananda
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