How can we learn to listen to our soul, so that we can be guided by our own unique, divine GPS?
To manifest our soul’s dreams we need to take the time to truly get to know our soul, by tuning into its divine energy, wisdom and love. Doing this, we allow our soul to become our own spiritual coach, who can answer our questions and help us solve any problems which we face. This sounds easy enough, but how do we actually do this in real life?
Well, fortunately our soul has a highly refined way of communicating with us, and that is through our feelings. And not only our positive, happy and loving feelings, but through the whole spectrum of emotions.
Have you ever experienced trying to create a positive attitude, where you repeat several positive affirmations per day, yet despite your best efforts your negative emotions will eventually surface? When that has happened, have you assumed that you were doing something wrong or that positive thinking just isn’t working? Some of us may even have believed that a spiritually-evolved person never suffers negativity, and that a spiritual master should be a loving, compassionate angel at all times who is never frustrated, angry, sad, worried or anxious.
But how long can we sustain this angelic state whilst still in a human form? And at what price?
How true are we actually being to ourselves if we deny ourselves the experience of the whole emotional spectrum of feelings available to us in this human body – from love, happiness and light, to darkness, sadness and anger?
“I personally believe our emotions are our divine guidance system that helps us navigate the roller-coaster ride that we call life.”
Let me explain what I mean by starting with the way in which we focus our thoughts.
Of course it works to change negative thoughts into positive ones, as we naturally feel happier and lighter when we choose to say to ourselves: ‘I love life and life loves me’, instead of saying, ‘I hate life and life is just too difficult for me to handle’.
This is because when we choose to focus on the positive we initiate an inner healing process, where we begin to let go of old, stagnated, heavy energy, and this release makes us feel so much better and lighter. We literally change our energy and start to vibrate at a higher frequency, which causes us to feel happier and more hopeful. Our expanding energy (love and positivity expand our energy, whilst fear and negativity contract our energy) allows us to open up to receiving even more of our soul’s amazing life-enhancing, healing energy, which strengthens our connection with the divine even more. We become filled with light and we start to radiate and glow, as if we have flicked an inner switch.
But what happens when we switch on a light in a previously dark space? It lights up, allowing us to see more clearly – including everything that needs cleaning out. It is important here not to become overwhelmed by the task at hand, and instead enjoy this divine spring-cleaning, because our soul wants us to become aware of what is blocking us from living our life fully in light, happiness and love. So, with much compassion for us, our soul directs our attention to all the heavy, dark and old energy that needs to be purged, so that this too can be transformed into light.
This is an ongoing process: as we focus on being positive, we start to shine with an inner light, which causes us to become more aware of the next layer that needs to be cleaned out. We transform again and start to shine with even more light, causing us to become aware of the next layer to be healed, and so it continues.
One of the ways our soul draws our attention to what needs to be transformed is through our feelings. Perhaps we start to feel low, worried or irritable. We might be feeling that something just isn’t right, that something is off. What is important here is to not react to this feeling by blaming it on others or on circumstances: rather, we should reflect upon what this feeling is trying to tell us.
Where is this feeling coming from? What is it this feeling wants us to learn and know so it can heal? What does it want us to pay attention to? Is this feeling connected with a pattern in our life? And if so, which pattern, and what are the positive learnings here for us so we can heal and let go of this pattern?
When I feel sad, I know that this feeling is a message from my soul that my life is out of balance, so I don’t try to immediately change my sad thoughts into positive thoughts.
Instead, I first listen to what it is my sadness is trying to communicate. Often I feel sad if I have been working too much, and the feeling is then an attempt from my soul to get my attention so I can address this imbalance. In the past my sadness was more about healing childhood wounds, whilst these days it is more about living in the here and now.
So I know my sad feeling is not the problem; instead it is a messenger from my soul, wanting to help me live a happy and fulfilling life.
When we learn to listen to the guidance from our soul we become more aware, and we then realise that our emotions are not our enemies. Instead, they are an effective way for our soul to communicate with us whether we are in balance with life and fully connected with our soul’s energy – such as when we feel happy, inspired, enthusiastic, hopeful, trusting and loving – or whether we are out of balance with life and disconnected from our soul, such as when we feel depressed, low, fatigued, anxious, worried or sad.
When we do not listen to our negative feelings we miss this amazing opportunity to learn to become more aware of whether we are in alignment with our soul, or out of alignment, and then our soul only has one option – it has to strengthen the signal. It will then draw us to more circumstances that cause us to feel even more negative, until eventually we stop resisting, and start paying attention to what it is we need to know and learn so we can fall back into alignment.
When I was young, I never listened to this inner sadness; instead I had an uncanny ability to always be happy and cheerful, no matter what was going on in my life. In the end my soul increased this inner sadness to the point I ended up in a severe depression and started to have suicidal thoughts. I suffered from bulimia – a clear indicator I was out of balance.
Eventually, at the age of 24, my inner pain brought me to my knees and I prayed to something bigger than myself and stated I was willing to change. The next day my soul started communicating with me, in the form of guiding me to various books to read, meditations to listen to, and step-by-step I began to heal.
After six weeks my depression had gone and after four months my bulimia was healed. My soul continued to guide me on my path forward and a year after having reached rock bottom, I started studying osteopathy and naturopathy, and many other healing modalities and esoteric traditions. But none of that would have happened had I not been willing to listen to what my emotions were trying to tell me.
These emotions stemmed from when I was a young child, but at that time I did not have the resources to know how to deal with them. What happened in my childhood was that I had a father I totally adored, but he had been brain-damaged in a car accident before I was born. This injury caused him to lack impulse control and he became angry at the slightest thing. I could see that he was deeply troubled, but I did not know how to help him. In order to subdue his inner pain he turned to drinking, which caused him to become violent. When I saw him go into a rage, I would feel helpless as there was nothing I could do.
As a teenager I rebelled, which in many ways made the situation worse, as my father then directed his anger towards me. But even though the abuse escalated, my own anger towards what was happening was actually good for me. I was no longer helpless: my anger fuelled my actions to get me out of that situation, and as soon as I could I left home. I even left the country. I travelled around Asia for over five years, which gave me the time and the space I needed to feel all the negative emotions I had bottled up when I was younger. I knew I wanted to give my future children a different childhood than the one I myself had experienced, and I dreamed of one day meeting a man with whom I could share a happy and healthy relationship.
“This dream became my own guiding light, where my divine GPS started to bring people, situations, books and courses to me, to help me heal my fears surrounding love.”
Initially I healed my depression and bulimia, then I healed various dysfunctional relationship patterns, and four years after having reached rock bottom, when I had finally surrendered and asked my soul for help, I had a new clinic tutor walk into my
treatment room. As soon as I saw this tutor I heard a voice in my head say: ‘That’s your husband!’
As Mr Williams asked me what was wrong with my patient, I could not say a word. All I could think was: ‘I am going to marry you!’ My soul’s voice was certainly coming through loud and clear!
My divine GPS then went into full throttle, guiding me towards all sorts of therapy sessions and courses over the following months – there were goddess retreats, past-life regression, hypnosis, body harmony; you name it, I did it! I knew I did not want to mess up this relationship – and we still had not even been out together!
A few months later we went on our first date, and we both knew we were meant to marry. I remember how I, on that first date, told him about all the bad things I had done in my life, because I really wanted him to know me, warts and all. I could not look at him as I told him, but my divine GPS urged me to be truthful with him, and to trust him.
After I had finished, I anxiously asked: ‘What are you thinking?’ And I will never forget his words. Full of compassion he said: ‘I think you are really brave for telling me this.’ That set the tone for our relationship, where we could be totally honest with each other, and he has taught me so much about total acceptance, commitment and love.
We moved in together three weeks later, and were married six months after our first date, and we have now been married for 18 years. We have two beautiful daughters, who have an amazing dad, and I am so grateful that I learnt to listen to my emotions and my divine GPS, so I could be guided towards manifesting the dream I had of finally living in a really happy family unit.
By finding the dreams our soul wants us to manifest, and learning to listen to our own divine GPS, our soul can guide us to the manifestation of our dream. Our job is not to figure out the whole process, but to stay tuned in, and listen, so we can become aware of the steps we need to take, as well as become conscious of what may be blocking our dream from becoming reality. Usually these blocks are the wounds, limiting beliefs and old patterns we have, but our soul knows how we can heal these, and will send us tools, people and insights that can help us transform and shift.
We also have to pay attention to the choices we make, and ask ourselves: ‘Will this choice move me in the direction of my dream, or away from my dream?’ Sometimes we just know the answer to that question, but at other times we may not know it logically, but we can feel it: where one choice makes us feel lighter and freer, and the other choice makes us feel heavy and blocked.
“Trust your feelings, because they will always guide you in the right direction.”
When I look back at my life I can see that when I trusted my feelings and listened to my divine GPS, even though I could not understand logically why I made a particular choice then, I can now see that those choices were instrumental to my being able to manifest my dream. And I can see how a divine intelligence has been watching over me my whole life, nudging me forward, cheering me on, supporting me when I felt at my lowest.
This is true for all of us. We are so loved by the universe and we are meant to manifest our soul’s dreams and wishes, because these dreams are not just for us, they are meant to be gifts to others. They are simply flowing through us, on their way to be expressed in this physical reality. The universe wants us to grow and expand, because as we do, so does the universe.
And so, dream big; plant the seeds of your soul’s longing and wishes; nourish these seeds; give them time, love and light; and have faith that when the time has come, they will blossom.
And know that you have many, many dreams that are waiting to be born through you, and enjoy each step: the dreaming, the planting, the fertilising, the waiting, and the blossoming.
The journey never, ever ends. We are eternal beings, constantly wanting to express the next grandest version of ourselves we can possibly imagine ourselves to be. How amazing is that!