Spiritual Guidance or Wishful Thinking? How I Tell The Difference

I once decided I was going to stop travelling and adopt an old dog from a rescue centre.

It felt like a good decision. More than good, actually. It felt morally right.

I love travelling, but perhaps, I thought, it was time to stop. Travelling was something I did for myself. Giving an elderly dog a home, especially one who might otherwise spend its last years in a shelter, seemed compassionate and unselfish.

I had pretty much made up my mind. And I hadn’t asked my angels about it.

Why would I? Surely kindness was always the right choice.

Or so I thought.

Within the next few minutes, something rather extraordinary happened. I suddenly seemed to be surrounded by messages about travel.

Internet searches that had nothing to do with it unexpectedly brought up things about travelling. A magazine fell down and opened to something about travel. Then a friend who knew nothing about my decision suddenly messaged me about travelling.

It became almost overwhelming.

For whatever reason, the universe was telling me I wasn’t finished with travelling yet. So I listened.

Of course kindness is never wrong. I just read it as “not yet”.

Can spiritual guidance really be that direct?

Yes, it can. I know this from my own experience.

Over many decades I’ve received guidance, messages and moments when my angels showed me something directly, either through events in my life, through signs, or by plainly telling me, in a voice I can hear inside myself.

But there’s an obvious problem with saying that.

How do you know? How do you know that something is genuinely spiritual guidance rather than your imagination?

How do you know that the voice saying, Do this, isn’t simply the part of you that wants to do it, or at least hopes for this answer? How do you distinguish intuition from wishful thinking?

I think this is one of the most important questions we can ask on a spiritual path.

Because believing in spiritual guidance doesn’t mean believing every thought that enters our head. Quite the opposite. The more seriously we take our spiritual perception, the more seriously we need to take discernment.

How spiritual guidance comes through signs

The dog story is one of the easier kinds of guidance for me to trust because I wasn’t looking for confirmation.

I wasn’t asking, Should I keep travelling? Please give me a sign. In fact, I had already decided the opposite. The messages interrupted my decision.

That matters.

Sometimes something appears in our life when we aren’t searching for it at all. But we also have to be able to read the signs. We have to be open enough to let “coincidences” catch our attention when they seem strangely specific, repeated or completely unexpected.

Some signs arrive unasked, as they did in my dog story. Others can become part of a kind of private language between you and your angels, your spiritual guidance, the universe, Source, whatever word feels right to you.

Because our angels want to help us. But asking matters.

We have free will, and our angels will not override it. When we ask for their help they can reach out in all sorts of ways until something actually “lands”, something we see, hear or notice.

And it doesn’t have to be an angel feather floating serenely onto your meditation cushion.

It might be an unexpected advert or internet result. A particular song turning up at exactly the right moment. A phrase you hear several times from completely unrelated people. A certain number, animal or symbol. A peacock appearing after you’ve specifically agreed that a peacock will mean something to you.

The point isn’t that a peacock universally means yes. Over time, you begin to recognise the ways your guidance manages to get through to you. Those moments can be easier to trust because there’s less opportunity for our conscious wishes to interfere.

Spiritual guidance or wishful thinking: how I tell the difference

But most spiritual guidance isn’t quite that convenient.

Usually I have a question. And once I have asked the question, discernment becomes much more important, because now I have a preferred answer. Even if I tell myself I don’t.

So I ask inwardly for guidance and an answer comes. But I don’t simply accept the first message I hear.

There’s a second step.

I become even stiller, go inside and quiet the mind, because this isn’t an intellectual process. I don’t make a list of pros and cons, I don’t argue one side against the other, and I don’t ask which choice seems more sensible.

I leave the ordinary thinking mind out of the process. I stop trying to work it out.

When I reach a state of quietude, I open myself to the possibility that the answer I’m getting is wishful thinking. I just feel into the question: Is this simply what I want to hear? Is this just me talking?

And then I consciously feel into the opposite answer.

If one answer says, Yes, go ahead, I allow myself to feel the possibility of No. If the message seems to say, Leave, I also sit with what Stay feels like. If I hear, This is right for you, I allow myself to sit with what it would be like if it weren’t.

Not because the unpleasant answer must be the spiritual one. It isn’t.

But deliberately feeling into the answer I don’t want creates some distance between me and my bias or subconscious preference. It’s a kind of surrender. A trust.

What alignment actually feels like

I sit with one possibility. Then the other. Quietly. Without trying to make either of them win.

And after a while I begin to notice a difference. With one possibility, there can be a subtle sensation of pushing against something.

The closest comparison I can give is the difference between moving your hand through air and moving it through water. You can move through the water, but there is a resistance there.

Once I acknowledge the resistance, I often begin to feel a presence. It can start very subtly. Then it spreads.

There can be a sense of warmth inside me, around me and above me. And there is a feeling of alignment.

Alignment feels like flow, or a quiet yes that spreads everywhere inside me. A sense of All is well. This is right. Or simply a sense of knowing.

These are examples of how alignment feels to me. Your way of recognising it may be quite different, and part of the process is discovering your own language.

It isn’t excitement. It isn’t, Yes! That’s the answer I wanted!

In fact, sometimes it is the opposite. My ego may actually dislike the answer. Or fear the consequences. Or think, I have no idea how I’m going to do this.

But underneath my personal reaction there’s a deeper sense of rightness. And this knowing also knows that I’ll be shown how to implement the answer. Step by step.

Why discernment starts with knowing yourself

This is why I think self-awareness and spiritual practice belong together.

Otherwise we might let our fears overrule our listening. We may be getting a sense of the answer, but because of fear, confusion or aversion, we don’t allow ourselves to hear it.

Or we may go a step further and call desire intuition. Or allow fear to masquerade as a warning. Or, if we have learned that spirituality is supposed to involve sacrifice, we may even assume that the most painful option must be the holiest one.

Those distortions come from us, from our fears, attachments and ego.

So to be able to ask, Is this my intuition?, there is another question underneath it: how well do I know myself, the person doing the listening?

The clearer I become about my own wishes, fears, beliefs and patterns, the easier it becomes to recognise something that does not seem to arise from me.

So if you want to investigate this for yourself, begin by asking.

Become still and quiet the thinking mind. Notice the answer you hope to receive, then consciously allow yourself to feel into the opposite answer too. Sit with both without trying to make either of them win.

Notice where there is resistance. Notice where there is alignment. And pay attention to the unexpected signs that find you when you weren’t looking for them at all.