4.9
April 9, 2012

Are You Listening to Your Higher Self? ~ Dr. Margaret Paul

Do you trust your ego programmed wounded mind—or other people—more than your higher self?

Do you find it challenging to trust your own higher self?

Your higher self is the part of your soul that is all around you. The energy of our soul is way too big to fit inside our body. Part of it is inside and communicates with us through our feelings. The other part is outside and communicates through our mind—through the third eye.

My clients often hear their higher self—their spiritual guidance, but they say to themselves, “That’s not really my guidance speaking,” or “I don’t think I’m hearing this right.”

I understand this issue well, as it took me years of inner work to fully access and trust the guidance of my higher self. I tested it over and over again until I finally had enough positive experiences to stop questioning it.

Frequency and Intent

I discovered many years ago that accessing my higher self—which I picture as an older, wiser part of myself—is about my frequency. To understand the difference between a high or low frequency:

  • -Think of a room full of people who are angry and blaming. This dark heavy feeling is a low frequency.
  • -Think of a room full of loving, peaceful and joyous people. This light feeling is a high frequency.

The only way my frequency is high enough to access higher wisdom is when my intent is to learn about what is true and what is most loving to myself and others. I discovered there are only two intents possible at any given moment:

  • -The intent to learn, with my higher self, about loving myself and others
  • -The intent to get love and avoid pain with some form of controlling behavior

If my intent is to protect against pain, or try to control others and outcomes, I can’t access my higher self. My intent to protect/control lowers my frequency, while my intent to learn about love and truth raises it.

Feelings: Our Inner Guidance

I also discovered that my feelings are a profound source of inner guidance, letting me know if I’m loving or abandoning myself, or if others are open and loving, or closed and controlling.

All feelings are informational. There are two kinds of feelings:

  • -Wounded feelings are the feelings that I’m creating with my own thoughts and actions: anxiety, depression, guilt, shame, anger, jealousy and so on.

These feelings let me know that I’m abandoning myself in one of four ways:

  • -I’m judging myself
  • -I’m focused in my head, avoiding my feelings, rather than focused in my heart and soul, aware of and wanting responsibility for my feelings
  • -I’m turning to various addictions, such as substances or activities, to numb out my feelings
  • -I’m making others responsible for my feelings and trying to control them to make me feel lovable and worthy
  • -Core feelings are the feelings that result from others’ behavior or from situations: loneliness, heartache, heartbreak, grief, sorrow, helplessness over others, and fear of real and present danger. These feelings let me know that I need to attend to what is happening between me and another, or about a situation.

Taking responsibility for my feelings means that I attend to all feelings with compassion toward myself, opening to learning about what the feelings are telling me.

If I have a thought that creates anxiety, I immediately dismiss the thought as being made up by my ego wounded self. I know that my higher self never gives me thoughts that create anxiety.

I also know that definitive thoughts about the future—about what will or won’t happen—are generally made-up thoughts from my wounded self. My wounded self loves to predict the future, while my loving adult self—who I am when I’m connected with my higher self—stays in this present moment, connected with the truth of the moment.

The Wisdom of the Higher Self

My higher self often tells me what to do in the present that will greatly affect the future—like when she told me to slow down on the freeway.

I didn’t know why she told me to slow down, but seconds later a drunk driver careened across the freeway inches in front of me. If I had not listened my guidance, I would have been broadsided.

Or when she told me to get everything of value out of my house a week before the house closed escrow in 2001—a week before I was supposed to move.

 

I didn’t know why she told me this, but I’m grateful that I listened, because the day after I moved everything that was important to me out of the house, construction workers working on termite damage burned it down. What a lesson that was in listening to my higher self!

My guidance often tells me little things, too—such as something I am forgetting to take on a trip. It’s reassuring to experience her watching out for me. I’m constantly thanking her for all the guidance, love and wisdom she offers me, but I know that she keeps guiding me because I listen to her.

How often does your arrogant ego wounded self believe it knows better than your guidance? Or that others know better what is right or wrong for you than your guidance knows? Often, when I’m working with a client, they tell me what their wounded self is saying. Then I ask them to go to their higher self and ask for the truth. Even though the truth they receive makes them feel much better than what their wounded self is telling them, they frequently don’t trust it, saying, “But how can I be sure this is true?”

“How does it make you feel?”

“Great! But maybe I’m just making it up.”

“How do you know you are not making up what your wounded self is telling you that is making you feel bad?”

Half of trusting your higher self is about trusting your feelings. Your guidance speaks to you through your feelings—your soul within—and through thoughts and images that pop into your mind from your soul that is all around you.

“The fact that it makes you feel great is letting you know that it is the truth,” I tell my clients.

When you trust that your wounded feelings are telling you that you are off track in your thinking and behavior, and that the thoughts and images from your higher self that make you feel peaceful within are telling you that you are on track, then you will begin to feel so much safer and empowered in your life!

Throughout the day, I thank my feelings for keeping me on track, and I thank my higher self for all the wonderful love and wisdom she gives to me. Staying in gratitude for my guidance keeps me open to the truth and wisdom that is always here.

~

Editor: Hayley Samuelson

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Margaret Paul, Ph.D. is a best-selling author of 8 books, relationship expert, and co-creator of the powerful Inner Bonding® process – featured on Oprah, and recommended by actress Lindsay Wagner and singer Alanis Morissette. Are you are ready to heal your pain and discover your joy? Click here for a FREE Inner Bonding course: http://www.innerbonding.com/welcome and visit our website at http://www.innerbonding.com for more articles and help.

 

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