How Can You Tell If You’re Being Spiritually Guided? 15 Discernment Tools

April 11th, 2017

By Lissa Rankin

Guest writer for Wake Up World

I’m in Boulder, Colorado right now with Trevor Hart, leading a Sounds True event about trusting the invisible forces of love to guide you in your life. Yesterday, we spent all day talking about how we can invoke spiritual guidance, the tools and practices that can help you receive guidance, and what gets in the way of opening to this kind of guidance. Today, we’ll be focusing on the tricky topic of discernment.

As Sounds True founder Tami Simon pointed out yesterday, without discernment, we can become flat out delusional in our efforts to seek out spiritual guidance. “What if someone sees seven butterflies,” she asked, “and he assumes that means he’s supposed to get seven wives?” We laughed at her example, but seriously — Hitler thought he was being spiritually guided to purify his race. Discernment is key. Without clear tools of discernment, an attempt to seek out and follow spiritual guidance can turn psychotic. After all, many schizophrenics think the television is talking only to them! The only thing that separates the mystics from the sociopaths and psychotics is discernment.

We’ll be talking about many tools for discernment in today’s Sounds True program, as well as in the 10 month Mystery School immersion Trevor and I will be teaching this year. (You can listen to Trevor and I teaching our free teleclass here.)

In short, there’s no simple answer to the question, “How can you tell if you’re being spiritually guided?” In fact, the very question calls to mind a story Rabbi Reb Zalman told about an enlightened master whose disciples were concerned about choosing another spiritual teacher after he died. The master told them to ask any prospective teachers a question. “Ask him what we should do with our thoughts that interrupt us in meditation, that drag us away. If he answers you, don’t take him as a teacher. It’s too facile to give such an answer.” In some ways, discerning whether you’re receiving accurate spiritual guidance is similar. If anyone tries to tell you they know for sure when they’re receiving clear guidance, be skeptical.

CONTINUE READING:

Recommended articles by Lissa Rankin:

• Holding Space When Someone Is In Pain
• Relationships on the Spiritual Path
• The “Space Between Stories”
• How to Make Your Body Ripe for Miracles
• Are You “Spiritual But Not Religious?”
• 10 Tips for Fully Feeling What Hurts Right Now, Without Going Insane
• 9 Practical Tips to Help You Find Your Calling
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• 6 Stories To Make You Believe In The Power Of The Mind To Heal You
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• 10 Surprising Things That Trigger “Fight-Or-Flight”
• 8 Signs You’ve Lost Touch with Your Intuition – and 10 Tips to Help You Reconnect
• Medical Error is Still the #3 Cause of Death in the U.S. – Are We Really Okay With This?

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