Day Thirty Nine: How to Receive Divine Guidance

Paramahansa Yogananda’s guru, Sri Yukteswar, counseled him, “Human life is beset with sorrow until we know how to tune in with the Divine Will, whose ‘right course’ is often baffling to the egoistic intelligence.” It is useful to consider how we can “tune in with divine will.” What obscures inner guidance? What supports our receptivity to it?

Because God, the Supreme Reality, is our life and expresses through us, at the core of our being, we always know what is necessary, what is right, what is good, what is loving, what is true, what is highest and best. “Instant guidance” for right thought and right action is ever available to us but we do not always connect with it.

What interferes with our ability to receive higher guidance? The primary obstacle to accessing divine guidance is clinging to the mistaken sense that we are separate from the source of existence. Approaching our search for divine guidance while clinging to an ego-based identity sets up a barrier to receiving what we seek. To effectively receive divine guidance we must be able to search within our own consciousness, not seek outside of ourselves. Higher guidance comes from within.

When our awareness is identified with the ego, various impediments to receiving divine guidance arise. They are:

• Attachment or aversion to certain outcomes. When we mentally cling to what we want or reject what we believe is undesirable there is not sufficient openness for new guidance to arise. We must be completely willing to be guided to a new outcome. The premise is simple: we can’t experience guidance when we aren’t really open to it.
• Egotism, or an inflated sense of self-importance. Egotism differs from, but is an extension of, egoism, the illusional sense of separate existence. When egotism comes into play in our search for guidance, we already think we know best and are generally looking for confirmation of our predetermined ideas. There is no sense in asking for guidance when we are convinced we already know what is best.
• Fear or lack of courage to change. Fear or worry produces restless thoughts that cloud the mental field. This obscures the subtle perception of inner wisdom. To successfully access inner guidance we must be able to let our thoughts subside and allow the mental field to become clear. We must also have the courage to make any necessary changes.
• Impatience. While inner guidance does occur “instantly” as soon as we abide in superconsciousness, it may take a little time and practice to experience that level of clear knowing. It is helpful to assume that guidance is already given. Affirm that it is imminent. Then wait with expectation while becoming more inwardly focused.

Our receptivity to inner guidance rests on our ability to meditate deeply, to access our innate wholeness and sense of complete well-being. Several factors which are supportive of deep meditation also assist us with becoming more receptive to guidance. They are:

• Surrender of the illusional belief that we are separate from the Source. Once we discern and experience the Reality called God as our life, we recognize that it must offer the highest good for us. Sometimes people fear divine guidance because they imagine that God’s will may not be the best for them. The one Reality called God cannot be in opposition to our essential Self because it cannot oppose itself. It cannot be divided against itself.
• Willingness. To receive divine guidance requires us to be fully open to change, to be curious about the good, to be willing to inquire into what is really true, and to seek God’s will for our lives.
• Trust. Guidance comes most readily when we expect it, when we trust that it is already present. Our part is simply to improve our listening, and to affirm that we have the capacity to know what is true when it is revealed and we experience it for ourselves.
• Contentment. The ability to be patient and to be content with the way that things are while we open ourselves to new possibilities helps to keep the mental field calm and receptive to new inspiration.
• Steady practice. When we meditate daily, frequently use our discriminative wisdom to inquire about right action and open ourselves to new insights, we become familiar with accessing our inner resources. Guidance may then arise more quickly. Our ability to discern it also improves.

Once we decide we are ready to live our lives in harmony with divine will and cultivate the necessary openness to receive it, the activity of divine grace will support us. What we need will be revealed to us as it is needed. Life becomes infused with joy.

Think About It: Only the habit of mind-body identification keeps us from awareness of omnipresence. We are, as spiritual being, as omnipresent as God is omnipresent. Omnipresence can be reclaimed by contemplative meditation and spontaneous episodes of cosmic consciousness which may unfold at any time. Every soul eventually has awareness restored to absolute freedom because of the innate urge to realize it, and the contributing influences of evolution and grace.
–Roy Eugene Davis, from A Master Guide to Meditation

Be Inspired: After the mind has been cleared by Kriya Yoga of sensory obstacles, meditation furnishes a twofold proof of God. Ever-new joy is evidence of God’s existence, convincing to our very atoms. Also, in meditation one finds instant guidance, God’s adequate response to every difficulty.
–Sri Yukteswar