Questions and Answers and Our Own Spiritual Guidance
--For Deb?
by Peter Farley

It is often said that each one of us inherently knows the answer to any question or problem that is bothering us. The real problem we have is finding this answer and tapping into our own understanding of what it is we know. Often, like a Jeopardy parody, it is the question that eludes us more than the answer. What questions do we really want answered about our own lives? That is the truly difficult part of the problem.

Finding the answers to the questions of our own lives is the reason why mankind in the past has always turned to some type of divination tool to help him. Whether it be tarot cards, runes, the I Ching, or any one of the other multitude of means by which we can access our own inner guidance, their purpose is ultimately the same. Some, unfortunately, have a dark connotation simply because of the symbolism they use.

Waking dreams are those answers that appear to us as the small incidents in our lives. They are really our own spiritual guidance working to keep us on track 24/7 and come from our own inner or Higher Selves. They are easily translated by us with very little practice at all for the true spiritual language is in metaphors, and that is how spiritual guidance most often appears to us in the experiences of our own daily lives. By learning to notice and interpret them correctly we are freed from the need to be the recipients of someone else?s possibly skewed readings of what is ultimately a message from us to our very own selves.

Where our attention goes, however, the energy follows. This is the reason why if our attention is too scattered or unfocused we might not at the time be able to bring forward the ?most correct? answers to our questions, and thus not receive the Highest guidance of which we are then capable.

As we become more familiar with the ways in which our inner guidance operates, we also begin to understand that every answer is not supposed to be just handed to us on a silver platter. If it was, then there would be little or no point in having our own free will and the God-given right to charter our own course of action in any given situation. There would also be little opportunity for any true learning to take place, and therefore little chance for personal spiritual growth.

If we ever had a period in our lives when we were under the control of a teacher, a parent, or somebody who always tried to tell us exactly what to do and when to do it, then we should find it easy to imagine how boring life would become if we were always simply given the right answers. None of us was born to have that kind of control placed on our lives. Nor were any of us ever born to control others in this kind of fashion. Our inner and outer guidance is exactly that?guidance. The choice to follow it or not is one that only we should have to make. Lessons are more often learned from not following our guidance rather than from following it -until the day, that is, that we come to trust our own inner guidance. It is then that we can surrender our free will to the Higher Will to be used with discretion and for a Higher Purpose.
This exercising of our free will is what stimulates our creativity. In almost every religion there is some reference to a Creator, some form of original cause in the universe. If we believe in any way, shape, or form, that we are a small part of that energy of creation, or that we were created in Its image, then our creativity and the imagination we use to create, are probably the greatest God-like attributes we have. Imagination and creativity are our birthright, a right that allows us to be all that we can be, and to be cause rather than effect in directing our own external actions.

This is why we need to find the system of guidance that suits us best, rather than to live life under the constant pressure of somebody always telling us what to do. Dreams and waking dreams are simply that, guidance, and nothing more. What we choose to do or not do is always up to us. The responsibility for these decisions, however, is also up to us. Even the decision to do nothing bears with it a certain responsibility that no rational person can deny.

Carlos Barrios, a historian, anthropologist and investigator reiterates the common knowledge that this is a crucially important moment for humanity, and for earth. Each person is important. If you have incarnated into this era, he says, you have spiritual work to do in helping to balance the planet. In my own healing work it is a greater percentage of people who are already walking their paths and doing their ?missions?, just honing their skills or waiting for the time when they are most needed. As has been said to me time and time again, people do not appreciate the fact that just being here and being ?awake? is a great gift to humanity. Spirit works THOUGH people who are awake and alight.

As Mr. Barrios also says, ?it?s not complex or elaborate. The real knowledge is free. It?s encoded in your DNA. All you need is within you. Great teachers have said that from the beginning. Find your heart, and you will find your way.?

The God-like attributes of creativity and imagination are what it takes to recognize and interpret waking dreams. This is using the divine aspect of ourselves to interpret the guidance we are getting from divine sources. The mind, being something that was created as a tool for use by the Soul, cannot perform this function for us. That would be like asking the first computer program ever written to understand its creator. It just would not be possible. However, mind is the tool through which Soul works, especially the higher aspect of the mind known as the intuition. This is the level of the mind closest to the divine self, and also that part of us which knows best how to translate the messages of our dreams.

Waking dreams are just one of the ways in which our guidance speaks to us, but they are, perhaps, the most common. Since most of us spend twice as much time in the waking state as we do in sleeping, our guidance has twice as much time to provide us with the waking kind of dreams during our day-to-day lives. All our guidance can do, however, is to wait for us to recognize these occasions, for in recognizing them we activate their energy and imbue them with the element of guidance they were originally meant to convey. All life is a waking dream. Every moment of our lives Spirit or our Guidance is working with us -communicating Its (or our own) wisdom.

Remember, however, higher guidance will never interfere in our lives unless we give it permission to do so. We need to remember to ask it for help, or at least grant permission for its help to be offered. This is the same as admitting that sometimes there are problems that seem too big for us to handle. By turning these kind of problems over to our own Higher Power, we release them to a higher will than ours.

2006-12-12