Tag: divine guidance

Final Day: From Ego to Divine Guidance in 36 Days

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On 2014-04-08

In Guidance & Inspiration

An ongoing personal exploration of Divine Guidance and distinguishing between the voice of fear and the voice of love reflecting on the article, How to Distinguish Between Divine Guidance and Fear/Ego/Imagination, on Sir Froggie’s PositiveNews Network .

Today’s pairing is:

Bottom line, Divine Guidance is LOVE.
Ego is FEAR, false evidence appearing real.

Eeee!!! I did it. Um…WE did it!!! 36 consecutive blogs on Divine Guidance.

Rather than comment on this last pairing directly, I think I’d like to spend some time reviewing what I’ve learned through this 36-day virtual adventure:

1. For me, Divine guidance speaks in a language beyond words. If I’m hearing a loving language, I am hearing the Voice of Love, which is still pretty much ego…just a kinder, gentler, somewhat “reformed” version of it.

2. Divine guidance guides me toward acceptance of what is without destroying the miracle of what can be.

3. Ego is relentless, cunning, deceptive, and had the desire to survive at any cost. In any moment, I can be 100% sure that I do not perceive my own best interests.

4. If I’m feeling bad or beginning to suffer over anything, it is a sure sign my ego has pulled the wool (or veil) over my eyes. I am focused on the wrong things.

5. The best way for me to discern Divine guidance from ego is to stop doing, stop thinking, and simply sit and observe myself and situation quietly.

6. It isn’t nearly as complicated or mysterious as I make it out. Divine guidance is simple and elegant. It does, however, require a great deal of both courage and trust to listen.

How do you distinguish between Divine guidance and ego?

Day 22: Realign

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On 2014-03-25

In Guidance & Inspiration

An ongoing personal exploration of Divine Guidance and distinguishing between the voice of fear and the voice of love reflecting on the article, How to Distinguish Between Divine Guidance and Fear/Ego/Imagination, on Sir Froggie’s PositiveNews Network .

Today’s pairing is:

Divine Guidance brings you closer to truth, love, healing and your life purpose.  It lifts you up and gives you peace or enthusiasm about yourself and the truth, love, healing or life purpose you are working toward.
Ego tries to block you from your truth, love, healing and life purpose.  It may try to disguise these blocks as “necessary” or “logical” even though they appear out of the blue and have a fear based feeling to them.  Ego drains you, discredits you and makes you feel like “what’s the use?”  The closer you get to your goal, the more ego will object!

This is only one pairing, but several things seem to be mashed together. What stands out? For me, it’s the last line: the closer you get to your goal, the more ego will object. I’ve found that to be very true.

It’s quite ironic. My ego is often more invested in my failure than in my success. You think it would be the other way around. You think ego would want to puff itself all up with us getting what we wanted. Instead, it always keeps the goal out of reach. Is it because it fears the end of its usefulness should the goal be met? And why does it try to prevent change? Wouldn’t it feel more useful if it were having to help a person navigate novel experiences and challenges? Who needs a mind when one lives by rote? Yet, ego seems to prefer the familiar…or at least making things so complicated it gets to work overtime to never, ever reach a solution. It’s quite ridiculous and a sign of just how demented the ancient program is. This alone makes me want to cry out, “What’s the use?”

In fact, what’s the use of catering to the ego’s fearful, limiting perspectives? If the damn thing is going to block us from love, truth and purpose, why give it any airtime whatsoever? Why not devote every ounce of energy into freeing ourselves from its insidious tricks and plots? Since I started working with these ideas 22 days ago, egos ways are certainly becoming more and more obvious and transparent.

So I question every feeling of fear. I question everything that feels impossible. I question every voice that says, “never” or “can’t.” I question the completely rational. I realign with all that brings peace, enthusiasm, and excitement. I realign with my gifts and everything I love. I realign with joy. The closer I get to the goal, the more important it becomes to sing louder to drown out the useless noise!

Day 19: The Right Track

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On 2014-03-22

In Guidance & Inspiration

An ongoing personal exploration of Divine Guidance and distinguishing between the voice of fear and the voice of love reflecting on the article, How to Distinguish Between Divine Guidance and Fear/Ego/Imagination, on Sir Froggie’s PositiveNews Network .

Today’s pairing is:

Divine Guidance is always respectful, even when dealing with a truthful situation
that may need your attention to change.
Ego is disrespectful…to yourself, others and even to God but tries to convince you otherwise.

I guess that voice that says, “Stop it, you idiot! What the f*&$ are you doing?” isn’t Divine guidance, then? Joking aside, and as I’ve said before, I don’t think Divine guidance speaks to us in words, though it can certainly influence them. I think Divine guidance is more apt to use the emotional body to get its message across though. It can show us how we have misaligned and stepped out of integrity by bringing into our awareness those subtle or even not so subtle turns in the gut. We know we are misinterpreting reality somehow…not facing up to something…because we just don’t feel at peace…we know we’re not on the right track.

Everything that ego stirs up…confusion, frustration, attachment…these uncomfortable things become the sign posts that we’ve been on the wrong track. It’s a built-in mechanism within the illusion to let us know when we are identifying too strongly with illusion: suffering. There is no accusation. There is no judgment. There is just an increased feeling of separation. If we can just train ourselves to see it, trust it, and instantly realign, we’re back on track. Easier said than done, perhaps. But like anything, it just takes practice.

Once we wake up to the message, then we can ask for more information. Maybe this is the trickier bit. The mind will want to interpret the message and bend it to its preconceptions and habits. It will want to blame someone that we haven’t yet been able to change what needs changing. It will play its usual role. Maybe the best approach, at this point, is a prayer:

I know something must change, but I don’t know what or how. Please guide me to take the next step.

Day 9: Goals and Purpose

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On 2014-03-12

In Blog, Guidance & Inspiration

An ongoing personal exploration of Divine Guidance and distinguishing between the voice of fear and the voice of love reflecting on the article, How to Distinguish Between Divine Guidance and Fear/Ego/Imagination, on Sir Froggie’s PositiveNews Network .

Today’s pairing is:

Divine Guidance is repetitive and straight forward.
Ego throws things at you out of the blue and tries to derail you from your original divinely inspired goals and purpose.

This is certainly an interesting pairing. In my experience, Life does an equal portion of throwing things at me from out of the blue, sometimes altering my sense of goals and purpose, sometimes reinforcing them. Maybe the key phrase above is “original divinely inspired.” But this idea that we can live anything but our purpose makes no sense to me…that we can take a “wrong” turn and end up on the “wrong” path. How can there be anything but reality, as Byron Katie might say. Seriously, how can something that is meant to happen not happen? Isn’t the repetitive and straight forward nature of Divine guidance just because it is what is? Or is Divine guidance something else entirely?

I feel like I’m walking a labyrinth with this exploration. Sometimes, I feel so close to nailing Divine guidance, and other times I feel like I couldn’t be further away.

Day 7: Divine Guidance

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On 2014-03-10

In Blog, Guidance & Inspiration, Self-care

An ongoing personal exploration of Divine Guidance and distinguishing between the voice of fear and the voice of love reflecting on the article, How to Distinguish Between Divine Guidance and Fear/Ego/Imagination, on Sir Froggie’s PositiveNews Network .

Today’s pairing is:

Divine Guidance will help you improve areas which will bring you peace and take you closer to your purpose by giving you doable step by step instructions, one piece at a time. Ego causes discord and wreaks havoc on your thoughts and emotions.  Instead of helping you take proactive steps, it paralyzes you in fear with an all or nothing approach.  Instead of baby steps, Ego says you have to jump off the cliff to make it happen.

Now that I’ve come to the conclusion that Divine Guidance doesn’t rely on language to communicate with me, I want to tweak today’s pairing to read that it will “…take you closer to your purpose by revealing one doable step at a time toward the goal.” Divine Guidance isn’t going to hand me an outline to execute. It isn’t going to expect anything from me, either.

Ego, on the other hand, can take the information from my guidance and then run with it. It might decide to be helpful and create something totally practical and achievable, bringing to mind past accomplishments that can bolster my thoughts about it all…or it may play its tricks, making me feel like it all has to be done at once, the surest road to chaos and failure. And for good measure, it can remind me that I’m not good enough, but that if I don’t get it done NOW, everything will be ruined. So get to it!

So, Ego may assume the voice of love or the voice of fear. This is the premise I’m now working from, rather than thinking these two things come from two different sources. They are both language driven…they just tell two different stories. Divine guidance, on the other hand, transcends all that. That’s my take.

 

About the Author:

Beth Ciesco is your Selfcare Specialist, a certified yoga teacher and meditation facilitator. Check out the rest of the website to learn more about Restorative Healing Yoga, Mirror Meditation, E-Motion Alchemy, and Voicework as capital S Selfcare tools. You can also follow her on these sites:

❤ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/divinemetime/
❤ Insight Timer: https://insighttimer.com/tranquilliving
❤ Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@DivineMeTime

Day 6: Divine Guidance vs. The Voice of Love?

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On 2014-03-09

In Blog, Guidance & Inspiration

An ongoing personal exploration of Divine Guidance and distinguishing between the voice of fear and the voice of love reflecting on the article, How to Distinguish Between Divine Guidance and Fear/Ego/Imagination, on Sir Froggie’s PositiveNews Network .

Today’s pairing is:

Divine Guidance gives you positive feedback, yet lovingly helps you in specific areas if needed.
Ego lashes out criticism (and can do so either in-your-face or so subtle it’s hard to recognize, you just know you feel like you’ve been deflated).  Ego also makes generic and pointless criticisms you can do nothing about.

My husband is an amazing landscape artist. He’s encouraging me to paint, something I’ve always wanted to do. My ego is all over the process. It compares my work to the work of others. It judges the flaws and miscalculations. It tells me not only that I am not good enough now but that I never will be. The judge can be incredibly subtle, though. It can say, “That’s pretty good…for a beginner,” and while it pats with one hand, the way it says “beginner” is a dig. Yeah, yeah. Thank you very much. Move along. When it comes to creativity, I learned to ignore the judge long ago.

I also hear another voice. It compares my initial work to my advancing work and gives me a sense of accomplishment. It looks at the “mistakes” I’ve made and takes in the information for next time. It finds what it likes in what I’ve done and makes me feel good about the risks I’ve taken or the discovery I’ve made. It propels me forward. Now that’s the voice of love! But it is still a voice, if you know what I mean. I don’t think this is Divine guidance.

Because they share a common language, the ego can easily masquerade as the voice of love, not to say that the voice of love isn’t authentic. Maybe there is an assumption at the root of my confusion over what is and isn’t Divine guidance. If ego relies on us to consult the voices in our heads for Divine guidance in order for it to pretend to be our guidance, then maybe the key is finding a language that only Divine guidance speaks.

Divine guidance is what gives me the inspiration to paint in the first place. Divine guidance is what takes my hand and eyes, the paints and brushes, and creates something unique and colorful and surprising. Divine guidance is simple and transcends language. Knowing this, how can I confuse it ever again?

 

About the Author:

Beth Ciesco is your Selfcare Specialist, a certified yoga teacher and meditation facilitator. Check out the rest of the website to learn more about Restorative Healing Yoga, Mirror Meditation, E-Motion Alchemy, and Voicework as capital S Selfcare tools. You can also follow her on these sites:

❤ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/divinemetime/
❤ Insight Timer: https://insighttimer.com/tranquilliving
❤ Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@DivineMeTime

Day 4: The Voice of Love in a World of Fear

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On 2014-03-07

In Blog, Guidance & Inspiration

I am in a personal exploration of Divine Guidance and distinguishing between the voice of fear and the voice of love. My inspiration came from the article, How to Distinguish Between Divine Guidance and Fear/Ego/Imagination, on Sir Froggie’s PositiveNews Network. In it, the author shares 36 descriptors to help us realize the differences between the voices of love and fear. I am taking one pairing each day, meditating and working with it, and then sharing my discoveries here.

Today’s pairing is:

Divine Guidance helps you manifest your heart’s truest
desires and abundance in every realm.
Ego blocks you or tells you that you’ll never get what you want.
It works from a reference point of lack.

My thoughts around this pairing went immediately to two questions: what are my heart’s truest desires and what does my ego have to say about them?

But to start, I want to take a moment to consider the word “abundance” and what it means to me. Typically, people think of abundance in terms of money or material goods. I certainly did for most of my life. That…and food! And if you’re lucky enough to have monetary abundance, maybe that is all that matters; I don’t know. But coming from a different background, what I’ve come to know abundance as is in terms of grace, opportunity, creativity, and possibility.

We often hear, “We live in an abundant universe,” which is evident everywhere you look. Some would argue though that we also live in a world where distribution of that abundance has gotten extremely off balance!

Regardless, I am all too familiar with what the ego has to say. “You don’t have enough money to do that (and you never will)”, “You will never get what you want!”, “You might as well forget it!”, and “That’s not gonna happen in a million years.” It’s all very interesting, especially when I consider that the desire might arise out of ego in the first place. Perhaps it generates a desire for something that wouldn’t serve me anyway and then tells me I can’t have it, reinforcing its position. Maybe.

The voice of my divine guidance says, “Relax. Take it easy. If it comes, it comes. If it doesn’t, it doesn’t. Move toward without expectation. Move toward with a light attachment.”

But on to my first questions. What is it that my heart desires? To answer this question, there are many directions I can look. What it desires in terms of health, wealth, creativity, relationship, travel, etc? And are these things the desires of my heart or the desires of my soul or the desires of my ego? The ego masquerades as divine guidance a lot, I’m finding. It likes to pretend we have (or should have) control over everything.

But does the voice of my divine guidance say I can have anything I want? Absolutely not. And maybe this is where a lot of people make a mistake and end up beating themselves up when they find that “thing” hasn’t manifested.

I think our truest desires are very light and ethereal. They naturally guide us toward what we want, effortlessly and without control. They aren’t something we have to think about. If we simply live our lives in trust, divine guidance can’t help but lead the way.

About the Author:

Beth Ciesco is your Selfcare Specialist, a certified yoga teacher and meditation facilitator. Check out the rest of the website to learn more about Restorative Healing Yoga, Mirror Meditation, E-Motion Alchemy, and Voicework as capital S Selfcare tools. You can also follow her on these sites:

❤ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/divinemetime/
❤ Insight Timer: https://insighttimer.com/tranquilliving
❤ Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@DivineMeTime

Day 2: The Voice of Love in a World of Fear

By

On 2014-03-05

In Blog, Guidance & Inspiration

Yesterday, I started a personal exploration of Divine Guidance and distinguishing between the voice of fear and the voice of love. My inspiration came from the article, How to Distinguish Between Divine Guidance and Fear/Ego/Imagination, on Sir Froggie’s PositiveNews Network. In it, the author shares 36 descriptors to help us realize the differences between the voices of love and fear. I am taking one pairing each day, meditating and working with it, and then sharing my discoveries here.

Today’s pairing is:

Divine Guidance will always lift you up, and leave you feeling empowered.
Ego/Fear/Imagination DIS-empowers you.

Lately, I’ve been feeling disempowered by bureaucracy. Bureaucracy reflects so well the voices of fear, ego, and perhaps lack of rather than  imagination itself. I’ve been up against so many walls as of late and told, “That’s just he way it is,” or “Sorry, there’s nothing we can do.” And if I’m not careful, I swallow and internalize those voices until they become my own telling me a situation is impossible and leading me down a road of “my only option” instead of “my best option.” Everything becomes fixed and inflexible.

What does it mean to me to be empowered? It means I am open to discovering new options and that I can make choices toward happiness rather than “this is the best we can do.” It means, in the blink of an eye, I can change my perspective and see the world differently. It means that I can remember I may be in this world and subject to its insanity at the moment, but that I am not ultimately of this world nor subject to react to it in a way that keeps me from being content. Besides, I have, at my disposal, The Great Unknown.

 

About the Author:

Beth Ciesco is your Selfcare Specialist, a certified yoga teacher and meditation facilitator. Check out the rest of the website to learn more about Restorative Healing Yoga, Mirror Meditation, E-Motion Alchemy, and Voicework as capital S Selfcare tools. You can also follow her on these sites:

❤ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/divinemetime/
❤ Insight Timer: https://insighttimer.com/tranquilliving
❤ Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@DivineMeTime

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