The limits to guidance

In January 2006, while I was in the middle of receiving lots of information from the other side, several things happened that once again shook my confidence — for in this whole process, I have never been certain that I was right or even that I knew what I was doing. Much closer to say the opposite. (If you cannot stand ambiguity or uncertainty and if you cannot stand the feeling of being lost, exploring probably is not for you.)

Not only was I unable to obtain verification of Joseph Smallwood’s story as I went along, but when a friend asked me to obtain information from the other side, and I did, it turned out that what I had brought back was smoke. It didn’t match the case at all. Yet the information that I was bringing back — and promptly posting to a Monroe Institute group — was proving helpful to people. How could I sometimes be receiving information that was helpful and at other times receive information that was wrong? It never made sense to me. A little discussion with the guys upstairs shed light on the question.

* * *

January 6, 2006

(2:30 pm.) So on the one hand, wonderful material and it resonates with people. On the second hand, Mary Ann sets me a blind question and you guys strike out entirely but with utter confidence. How does all this come together and – mostly – how can you guys be wrong?

We know a sincere troubled question when we hear it, and the sincerity deserves an answer regardless other things. 

If you were to be sure that anything you said was true – this is different from Psychics’ Disease – how? 

Ouch. I hadn’t thought of that.

Over-reliance on intuitive powers, we remind you, is something we did warn you against.

What I’m getting between the lines – and I can hear you saying “exactly!” before I even finish writing it – I get that I can’t get certain kinds of information from you.

It is a delicate balance on our end. On the one hand, not to put any barrier to access. On the other, not to encourage dead-ends. Your choice, always, but we do not need to, nor intend to, facilitate the making of what we see as bad choices. And this moves us into deeper waters than first appeared. As you see, we are continually needing to open a topic with a greatly over-simplified bird’s-eye view so that, once you have oriented yourself, we may proceed to enter qualifiers, contradictions, caveats, and swirls and eddies. 

But we can explore conscience, and the choosing among paths, and our nudgings, and free will, at another time. Too bad you don’t have more acquaintance with theology.

I can hear a hint. I bought the books. I just can’t make them read themselves. 

I get this: This is expanded access, and it is real access. But nothing obtained in this way is to be taken on faith any more than information obtained any other way.

Exactly! Exactly. No less – but no more. It is a question of resonance, and willingness to go one way rather than another – and of guidance considered at a whole new level. 

I begin to see.

* * *

Perhaps you do too. I began this process of developing access to guidance assuming that anyone on the other side would have access to all knowledge. I assumed therefore that I would have access to all knowledge, secondhand. That doesn’t seem to be the way it works. But how it does work remains to be seen. Or rather, remains to be experienced.

 

2 thoughts on “The limits to guidance

  1. Frank,

    Very interesting. I just read something that resonates as I read your thoughts — that the answer we receive from guidance is contingent in part of the level from which we ask it. Would the over reliance on intuitive prowess hinder the purpose of the physical existence — take away from our finding the balance between the here-now and the there-now that often seems so precarious?

    And I agree with the idea that, intially, guidance is sought for the purpose of gaining knowledge of all, only to be humbled by finding less than that which you sought. Ask a question and if the answer you receive is incorrect, do you denounce the whole process? As I am led to understand it, there is a distinction between intuition and revelation. When someone asks a question of you — or you of yourself — do you seek to follow intuition that encourages growth and creativity or revelation — the answer to the question without effort? Some would say they want the answer, which would be hindering their free will, I think, because they did not learn the access the information they sought, there was no growth, there was just “here’s the answer.” Also, often people are more willing to admit to accepting their own intuitive guidance than answers from others — I think it involves trust and being honest with oneself. If my neighbor tells me they received a “divine” message for me, I am apt to analyze the infomration and disregard it if it does not feel right — it may not even be considered. However, if my guidance says: listen….. I am darn well going to pay attention.

    I had a good Carl Jung quote [Where love rules, there is no will to power, and where power predominates, love is lacking. The one is the shadow of the other.] but my reply lept into a different direction.

  2. You raise interesting questions.

    I think that over-reliance upon guidance would be likely to turn us into cocksure know-it-alls. When I discussed this years ago with my friend Rita Warren, who was a professional psychologist as well as the person in charge of Bob Monroe’s laboratory for four years after she retired from her academic career, I said to her that when we were doing sessions with the guys upstairs, I often just felt like a know-it-all, because she would ask a question and I would glibly answer — that is, I would let the answer flow through me, but it felt like me answering — even though I didn’t know what I was talking about. She smiled and said that is practically a definition of what it is to be an intuitive.

    Well, I think the world can get along without a whole new crop of intuitive know-it-alls. On the other hand, it also can get along without a new crop of know-it-alls who are certain (in the teeth of the evidence) that psychic abilities do not exist, who therefore conscientiously make no use of abilities that they have been given, strictly because they don’t believe they ought to be real.

    I suppose the answer, as in so many things about life, lies in maintaining a balance.

    I would be interested in hearing other people’s opinions about the relationship between guidance and revelation. it is an interesting thought, but this reply is long enough already.

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