Perhaps you’re like me, just back from holidays and settling back into a work routine? How is that for you?
For me, it includes checking in with my coaching clients and over the past while, it feels the most significant question that is arising is how to know when Spirit is speaking to us?
We use the phrase a lot here in my blog and in my workshops that ‘we are spiritual beings having a human experience’. Are you on board with that concept by now? If you’re still receiving my emails, I can only assume that you are or at least that it is not an antagonistic suggestion for you.
Maybe you are feeling like many of my clients… you’d love to communicate more and better with Spirit but don’t know exactly how to do that and how to know when Spirit is speaking to you?
Again, before we dive into today’s blog, I acknowledge that we all have our own ways of relating to a power greater than ourselves. For me, I typically use the words Spirit or Source, sometimes God or Infinite Intelligence. For you, it could be the same or you may relate more to Buddha, Mohammad or Krishna? Or perhaps you connect more with Nature, Life, the Universe, Love? The most important thing is that you have language that is meaningful for you and through which you can create or deepen your connection.
Here are some suggestions for tuning more into your inner knowing, the divine inspiration that is available to you always. And, at the end, there are details of a special opportunity for those of you living in the Cork Area or willing to travel, if you’d love to join me for a special way to tune to ‘Your Rhythm Within’.
🧭 Be Intentional
I think the first thing we can do to improve our relationship and communication with Spirit is to be more intentional about it. If you want to have a bigger faith and believing in how Spirit speaks to you and how much you can trust what you hear, you have to commit some time to building your relationship. What would that look like for you? Do you have a morning or evening practice of prayer or meditation or simply for reflecting on your day? Would you be willing to explore same?
Part of how you could do that would be to create a space in your home or bedroom or office where you have space for meditation and contemplation. It could be a space where you have an alter or kneeling stool and mat (I recommend either or both!). Or simply just a quiet corner where you can be undisturbed by others for periods of time.
Personally, I have an alter where I light a candle for my intentions and clients’ intentions. It has some pieces gathered from the natural world – stones, crystals, feathers, water, or other items that are meaningful to me. Sometimes I have fresh flowers there or have the different elements represented: earth, fire, water, air. I don’t follow any particular system, just what feels right, what’s in season and anything that helps me to feel connected with Spirit. It is a kind of sacred space in the midst of an otherwise ordinary and busy office. But it has a powerful purpose! I see it throughout my day and it gives me pause to stop, connect, remember several times per day. I also have my kneeling stool and mat there as an open invitation to actually ‘hit the mat’ and meditate regularly.
👂Ask and Listen
You may have heard it said that
I can’t be the only one who learned to pray this way, right?
That’s not the approach I advocate nor do I think it is effective. Instead, we ask for guidance for the outcome we’d love to create, knowing we have to make our own contribution also. So ask a highly calibrated question – what’s a great step for me to take? Who’s a great person for me to talk with? Where is a great location – for our holiday, our new home, my business etc?
And then you must wait for the answer!
Photo by Sander Sammy on Unsplash
Are you willing to listen or are you more focused on what you are asking for?
We have two ears and one mouth. I believe that in our communication with Spirit, no less than with our fellow human beings, we need to be listening twice as much as we are talking, at least most of the time!
You must be willing to listen for the response because Spirit’s answer is typically subtle, seldom linear and sometimes not even obviously connected to the question, at least for the logical mind.
And assuming you decide to dedicate some time to listening, here’s what I suggest. Make space for silence in your day. Spirit speaks to us in calm and gentle ways. I think we often miss out on the flashes of insight because of the noise in our heads as well as in our days. So in the moments when you ask for guidance, allow some quiet time in your days for the answer to emerge.
🤔 Stay in the Question
Communicating with Spirit is not just like a conversation with a friend in terms of the answers coming in direct, immediate response. That’s not to preclude an immediate response, you might immediately have an image of you doing something or going someplace and it feels just right, perhaps causes you to smile – that’s your answer there and then. Have a read of one of my recent blogs on the Spirituality of Smiling for more on this topic!
If you don’t feel you get an immediate response, I encourage you to stay curious about your question. You may feel the answers coming to you over several days – in a dream, in a chance overheard conversation, in an advert or billboard, in the words of a song or a line you read in a book or glimpsed in a newspaper or magazine.
✅ Implement the guidance you receive
In order to build your trust in the communication and guidance you receive you need to implement it! I can’t tell you how many times in my life I’ve had guidance that didn’t feel like it was what I wanted to hear in the moment, but I trusted it was Spirit-given and abided by it and it absolutely led me in the right direction. This is true both for little questions – should I sign up for that free training? And for the very big ones, e.g., is this the right time for me to leave my job?
For me, it was leaning in to unwanted/unpreferred guidance in some big decisions, that I knew was Spirit-inspired, that really caused me to develop my believing! But you don’t have to start there, you can simply start with smaller decisions around which you want guidance and build it up your confidence from there.
🌀 Get curious about all the ways Spirit can speak to you
For sure, the typical ways we think of for communicating with Spirit are through prayer and meditation, perhaps through participation in religious or spiritual ceremonies or through reading sacred texts or going to sacred places or on pilgrimage. These all work.
Photo by K. Mitch Hodge on Unsplash
And, you can also find ways of creatively communicating with Spirit, through time in nature, through being around art, music, and craft that inspires awe in you, and any other ways you touch awe and an awareness of being part of something bigger than yourself.
You can also invite Spirit’s communications, through asking a question and finding all the ways that an answer can be communicated
✦ On a ‘wisdom walk’ in nature – walking with a question in mind and seeing what you are guided to notice and the possible meaning it has for you
✦ Using a Card Deck to inspire, guide or activate your thinking and/or action
✦ Using a book for guidance – opening a random page and finding a word or phrase that answers your question
✦ Noticing words or guidance that show up through the lines of a song or poem, something you hear on the radio or in other people’s overheard conversations at the bus or café
✦ Engaging with animate or inanimate objects and asking ‘What message do you have for me?’
Taking things a step further…
If you’d love to have some support to connect with your inner guidance and feel more confident in how to interpret what you’re noticing, I’d love to invite you to join the Your Rhythm Within workshop at Nano Nagle Birthplace on 22 September.
Working with the amazing Fergal O’ Connor, composer, musician and drumming circle facilitator, together we have designed a workshop to empower you to access your own rhythm and intuition so you can create and live your best life.
A powerful fusion of life coaching and Fergal’s unique style, this workshop provides a somatic, meditative and sensory approach to rhythms and music that makes drumming easy and accessible for all and shows how rhythm can be a portal into our deeper selves.
Fergal has composed for TV and Radio and has worked with leading directors and musicians as well as performing for Amritanandamayi Ma, renowned Indian spiritual teacher and humanitarian and leading trauma and addiction expert Gabor Mate amongst others.
Join us for this unique opportunity to tune to your rhythm within and develop your relationship with your own intuitive guidance in a small supportive community.
All the details and bookings are at the link here and we’d love to see you there!
Photo by KAL VISUALS on Unsplash