I'm of the mind that we're never done growing, never done learning. I've been on my path since the spring of 1987 and, if I've discovered anything over that time period, it's that my personal growth is best served if I approach each educational opportunity as if I were new to paganism. With the variety of perspectives and the richness of diversity represented in the pagan community, there are countless paths down which I've never explored, there are roads on which I never thought to tread.
But if we allow ourselves to simply be blown along from one moment to the next, we'll never learn discernment, we'll never garner wisdom. Both are acquired through making choices and living with and learning from the outcomes of those choices, regardless of whether the result is a positive or negative outcome.
For instance, I'm currently studying with a teacher who appears to be everything that I've ever wanted in a spiritual guide. She's patient, yet gently demanding. She's both knowledgeable and wise. And she's teaching me things and providing me with techniques that I not only lacked, but would have never considered if left to my own devices.
After having come through a very difficult transformative experience, I find that my path is thriving. The energy and resources to complete projects within the Craft that I had considered for years but never accomplished has suddenly fallen into place. The implements for increasing my own growth, knowledge and wisdom exponentially are appearing as if they are following a cosmic script. While the entire process demands an incredible amount of work, commitment and energy, the blessings are immeasurable.
Which raises the question, "How did I arrive at this point of my life where all of the pieces are falling into place?"
Transformative periods are really good for two things. First, they kick you in butt and continue kicking until you end up where you need to be, no matter how much you resist. There is no better - and more painful way - to rapidly grow. Second, they are such a horrendous period of time that you'll do everything you can not to have to repeat the experience.
So you learn to listen. You pay attention to the spirit world. And in the process, you learn a couple of techniques for navigating your spiritual path and directing your spiritual growth. It's my humble honor to share with you what I've learned and, hopefully, spare you the pain of learning the techniques on your own.
1. Speak Your Intention
The process outlined here only works if you speak your intention. It can be a vocal announcement or just something you do inside your head. The process can be simple, something to the effect of, "I'm ready to learn," or as complex as a ritual where you manifest energy for a specific outcome. What's key is that the spirit world typically won't guide you unless you ask for guidance. The request doesn't have to be elaborate and it's entirely appropriate for it to be quite subtle. The key is to clearly place your intent into the energy around you.
2. Your Inner Voice
I have an inner voice. It doesn't audibly speak in my head. It isn't intuition (which is more subtle). It's like intuition on steroids. I think of my inner voice as a sort of early warning system. It tends to kick in when I'm about to stray from my path or make a wrong decision.
Right before I act, at the moment of the actual intention of taking one path over another, I will get a sudden sense that maybe this isn't the way to go. Most of the time, it's very subtle and could easily be explained away as nervousness or a lack of self-confidence, only the thought process occurs in a different portion of my energy field.
(One of the key things that I learned when studying shamanism was to pay attention to where a thought process or feeling was taking place. The easiest way for me to explain this is for you to try a simple experiment. Think of a math problem, say 3 multiplied by four. Now subtract 3 and add seven to that number. As you think about that process, you can actually feel the thoughts taking place in the upper right hand portion of your brain. Now visualize yourself painting a watercolor painting of your living room. Don't think about how you would do it - actually visualize the brush strokes, paint it in your mind. As you do this, you'll feel the thoughts taking place in the upper left hand portion of your brain. If you don't actually feel either process, you may discover that your eyes naturally look in the direction where the thought process is taking place. Start paying attention to the sensations that accompany those experiences. Awakening to those sensations will key you into a number of internal processes).
When I'm nervous or lacking self-confidence, the energy associated with the thoughts is typically focused somewhere in my skull. If my inner voice is speaking, the sensation comes from just outside my skin, about the level of the back of my neck and the top of my shoulders.
Almost everyone that I have pointed this out to has suddenly discovered that they have an inner voice of their own. Call it your spirit guide, your guardian angel - the title doesn't matter. It will, however, guide you toward whatever intent you have spoken.
3. Intuition
Intuition is much more subtle than your inner voice. You'll also discover that the sensation that accompanies it takes place in a different area of your energy field. Mine actually occurs exactly opposite of where my inner voice speaks. (It's just outside of my skin on the front side of my body, stretching from about my third eye to my heart chakra).
Where your inner voice is kind of psychic warning light, your intuition is more of a map. Instead of waving you away from somewhere you shouldn't go, it will present choices that would be beneficial for you to make. It's much more subtle than your inner voice, most likely because the energy associated with the positive choices we make is less acute than the energy associated with negative choices.
4. Synchronicity
The key idea here is to be careful what you ask for - you might just get it. Synchronicity occurs when reality unfolds to present us with exactly what we were hoping to find. For instance, I was looking for material to study more advanced energy work and, two weeks later, that's exactly what I'm working on with my teacher at her suggestion.
More than anything else, synchronicity (much like deja vu), is a confirmation that we're making choices that are resulting in our positive growth and personal evolution. That doesn't mean that the journey is going to be an easy one, only that it offers us the opportunity to grow. Where intuitions serves to say, "You know, maybe you should go back to school," synchronicity has your course catalog fall open to a class you had been thinking about taking, but wasn't aware that the college offered. It's much more focused than intuition and occurs outside of our personal energy field, so there isn't often an accompanying sensation (although it will occasionally trigger a response from your kundalini nervous system as a sort of chill without an accompanying sense of temperature that courses down your back).
5. The Physical World
The least favorite of the guidance that I've learned is manifestations in the physical world. I'm not sure if this happens to anyone else, but the basic concept is pretty simple. If I'm where I need to be by following the four techniques listed above, my body is in balance with the energy that's guiding me. Should I make a decision that throws me out of balance, it manifests in a physical way.
For instance, I'll be walking along and will make a decision to skip class and instead spend time with a friend when all of a sudden, wham!, I walk into a wall, trip and fall, knock over a glass full of water, drop what I'm carrying, or some variation of the theme.
Now, it could be argued that I'm just naturally klutzy - which, strangely, isn't the case. These moments differ from mundane clumsiness by the fact that they occur the instant that the thought is completed. There should be literally less than a half-second between the completion of the thought and the occurrence. It's the response of the energy around you to the energy behind the thought. Your decision isn't in synch with the energy you've been manifesting that has been guiding you, so there's a reaction, much like dropping a pebble into a still pool of water.
I hope that you find this insight useful. It has guided me well over the years.