Guidance FAQ
"In spiritually oriented work, integrity is just as important as deep insight. Happily, Diane has both in abundance. I was in denial when I went to Diane for guidance about a relationship. It took some time for me to transcend my 'That's not me' reaction and accept the truth of her words. The more self-honesty you bring to Diane's work, the sooner you'll see the changes you want."
- How Can This Guidance Help Me?
- Why Do We Need Spiritual Guidance?
- How Can I Access This Power?
- Can't I Choose To Do This On My Own?
- What Exactly Is Spiritual Guidance?
- What Guidance Doesn't Do
- How Does Diane Receive This Guidance?
- Where Does This Information Originate?
- Diane's First Experience
- Getting To Who You're Meant To Be
- How and When To Use Guidance
- Two Examples of Guidance
- How Can This Guidance Help Me?
-
If you are ready to give yourself permission to see spiritual guidance as an ally – whether your quest is to reclaim your own inner wisdom, discover your life purpose, or just better navigate life's ever-changing topography, you will receive the following from guidance (all that is listed here may be spread out over more than a single reading):
- Insight into your fears, what role they play in your life, and how to start letting go of the power you are giving to them.
- Information about your strengths, your gifts, and how to develop them.
- Clarification of the dynamics of any relationship so you can make the highest choices for all involved.
- What you need to focus on right now in order to bring what you are seeking, if it is right for you, into your life.
- Redirection and gentle support when what you are trying to make real is not the best choice, seen from a higher perspective.
- Why Do We Need Spiritual Guidance?
-
We are collectively experiencing a historically unprecedented time of transformation on Earth. Our media outlets tend to focus on negative trends, so the most important trend has yet to be reported: more and more humans are now waking up to the reality foreseen by the late philosopher and paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin when he said, "We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience." (Sometimes wrongly attributed to Wayne Dyer)
For ages we have chosen to allow the ego – our personality self – to manage our daily lives on all levels, only to discover that its engine is inadequate to propel us into the fulfilling life more and more of us now seek.
Only Spirit – our non-physical self that is infinitely wise – has that power, because of its unlimited nature.
- How Can I Access This Power?
-
It turns out that it is our intuitive knowing – our gut hunch that something is so – that opens the door to the soul's power.
Intuition has great power in its own right. It functions as an information retrieval system, one with which each of us is hardwired at birth. Look at it this way: You come into the world with your own personal search engine. This particular search engine is so comprehensive that it offers every possible insight into who you really are, what your life lessons are, and what your life purpose is. As if that weren't enough, also included are all the choices you can make in any given moment to activate that life purpose.
Every single one of us is so intuitive that we often experience spontaneous flashes of this data. However, because so much of it directs us to do things outside the norm, the vast majority of us make a life-altering choice early in life: We choose to ignore the data.
This is not a conscious choice. It begins early in childhood when, for example, we may start getting parental messages that our invisible playmates have to be put aside for good, and two spontaneity-deadening words enter our vocabulary: "Not practical."
We are thus set upon a "default" path, where suffering and feeling a disconnect between our inner intentions and the life we seem to be living are accepted as "normal." The good news is, we can always choose again.
- Can't I Choose To Do This On My Own?
-
Now we are moving rapidly into an era of whole-brain functioning. (See "It's Time To Use Our Whole Brain" in Daily Tools). Right now, although everyone shares an innate ability to hear and/or feel their own guidance clearly, most turn away from it. At some point we will all develop the trust and will to act on this powerful inner guidance system. The services offered by spiritual guides will then be obsolete.
- What Exactly Is Spiritual Guidance?
-
Those who become guides see with clarity the beauty of our true nature and reflect that greatness back to us from the level of the heart. They return us again and again to the greater perspective of our soul when we lose our center amidst daily conflicting demands on our emotional energies.
- What Guidance Doesn't Do
-
It's important to know what you won't find here. Spiritual guidance does NOT:
- Replace therapeutic counseling
- Provide medical advice
- Make future predictions
- How Does Diane Receive This Guidance?
-
Receiving the guidance provided for you on this web site is central to my own life purpose. I receive spiritual guidance in much the same way as does Neale Donald Walsch, author of the Conversations with God book series. I first received written guidance in 1992 as I focused on writing down some of the important guidelines that seemed to be healing what had been until recently a life full of sadness, anger, and futile attempts to control my life in order to bring a temporary sense of safety.
- Where Does This Information Originate?
-
The question "Who is doing the guiding?" cannot be shoehorned into a quick sound bite answer. It's like asking, "Who are we?" Or "Why are we here?" in that it addresses the very nature of reality. The following are the truths that together form my answer:
- We each receive guidance, and we each have our own personal guides.
- Some guides help us navigate specific situations or life transitions; some guides accompany us always.
- Guidance may come from our own higher self (inner wisdom), deceased relatives, ascended masters, all the way to God/Goddess/All That Is.
- Guides usually communicate with us through our intuitive knowing; you could describe it as
- Hearing without the sound waves.
- Direct cognition: a deep knowing that arrives suddenly without having analyzed or figured it out, or
- A body-centered response that ranges from a barely perceptible twinge to stomach flips, even sobs.
Accessing unadulterated information requires time, trust, and some skill at separating out the messages that originate in our ego. The ego voice tells us what we want to hear, speaks to us in a punitive, parental way, or is simply felt as fear and/or anxiety. Those messages contaminate any clearly heard ones from a higher perspective.
I have multiple non-physical guides whose identities are known to me but who choose to remain anonymous to the public in order to keep the spotlight on the guidance itself.
If the life guidance we receive proves to have replicable, life-enhancing outcomes, does it matter whether its source is material or spiritual? My own experience leads me to answer "no."
- Diane's First Experience
-
I will share with you an excerpt from my first message from Spirit in hopes that it will give you a sense of how we all suffer until we begin to honor our own inner voice, something I didn't begin to do until I was forty years old.
Your fear of expressing yourself in a big way comes from restrictions you felt in early childhood. These no longer apply. Now you restrict yourself daily in your thoughts, feelings and actions only out of habit and ingrained belief that you would be "bad" or "wrong" or rejected for really acting out your deepest impulses.
This is wrong. Your impulses are of the highest creative and healing order and must not be kept inside or you will only harm yourself more and continue to be angry and unfulfilled and frightened and sick and a stranger to yourself.
I remember breaking down and crying as these words came out of my pen, because while it seemed unbelievable, a deeper part of me knew it was all true. It took me awhile to perfect a reliable technique for calling upon this higher perspective for myself, but following the suggestions and gentle urgings slowly and steadily brought the flowering of true purpose and something new to me – self-love.
Then one day I knew I was ready to use this gift for others' life challenges. Presently, a typical answer for a client's question is detailed, practical, and averages one page in length ("The Whole Picture") unless the "Brief Overview" is selected.
- Getting To Who You're Meant To Be
-
Each time we act on the guidance we receive we remove another barrier to living in alignment with the unique gifts that are ours alone to give to the world. As we begin to move more steadily in that direction, our life purpose inevitably unfolds.
Whether we are at the stage of following our guidance as we receive it or choose to make use of another person who receives spiritual guidance for us, the act of following guidance is central to our ability to become who we were meant to be. Lacking these gentle teachings from the soul we cling to the unreliable direction of the personality, only to feel subject to the forces of chaos when things seem to fall apart. This need not be our experience.
- How and When To Use Guidance
-
If guidance is so important, why do so many of us, upon receiving it say, "Oh, that's amazing!" Then we go on as before, as if we were still unaware. There are three great challenges we face once we jump the initial hurdle and ask for spiritual guidance. They are:
- To not only hear, but accept what we hear as missing data necessary to build the life we desire.
- To be willing to ask "Why?" when we notice we are choosing to not follow guidance.
- To follow our guidance even when the answer to No. 2 is "I don't have time" or "It probably won't make any difference" or even "It might make too big a difference – then what happens?"
That said, it's never in our best interest to force ourselves. If you're like me, you'll just rebel against yourself, so go easy. Guidance may describe your life in ways you cannot relate to right now. Why is that? Guidance is timeless; Spirit exists outside the boundaries of linear time. Therefore all your possibilities, including your life purpose, can be seen clearly.
We are each scheduled to flower and become our truest, most lovable selves. The only question is – sooner, with less suffering? Or later, with unnecessary suffering?
- Two Examples of Guidance
-
Here are real-life examples of the spiritual guidance available to you at The Soul Garage. They are in the "Brief Overview" form (up to half a page in length). You can read an example of the standard form, "The Whole Picture," by going to Guidance of The Month.
- Q: Where do I need to look for clues as to my life purpose?
-
A: You will do well to look at and understand your never-ending struggle with perfectionism versus a laid-back attitude toward completing tasks. Your desire is always to enjoy yourself but your block is in your choice to pile more "things" up that "should" be done. And they often do not get done because of your energy being too scattered and your heart just not being in the work.
Your heart truly opens to nature and the metaphysical world. You are therefore bored and feel empty often because your time is not spent doing or even thinking about what you love. You must learn to follow your heart in terms of taking time daily to align with it, hear its desires and impulses, honor them and act on them. In doing so and also in just being with yourself in a more forgiving, caring way will you see unfolding in your life what you came here to do.
- Q: Please help me to understand what happened last night when Phil and I argued and he withdrew.
-
A: Your pain is due to the accuracy with which Phil pinpointed your anger issue, is it not? To have your own Achille's heel pointed out to you so clearly can be devastating. Allow for your feelings of fear and despair to move through you now at their own pace. Your temptation is to try to move them out too soon by attempting to replace them with other, more positive feelings. This is never in your best interest, as it gives you a false sense of being free of the pain and/or negativity.
Why do you think people are disappointed and ultimately drift apart so often? The disillusionment they feel when they discover their mate's feet of clay can often undermine and corrode the original love feelings. Phil only withdraws to protect his own heart, which has been hurt greatly and often. He does love you, but feels threatened.
Be aware that disillusionment really heralds the beginning of a much deeper alliance with each other – if you both see clearly its true meaning – letting go of your illusions about each other.