Examples of divine guidance (part 1/3): patterns, visions, and signs

Here, I share some stories examples of guidance from my journey.

Slaps on the wrist

One day, I was in an angry mood again. In earlier times in my journey, burned out light bulbs would have been the consequence for hanging on to anger for too long.

But this time, I got something different. I was out doing some gardening work, when I accidentally scratched myself on the rosebush. A bleeding scratch on my left wrist. Later that same day, I tried to pull my fighting children apart and was hit accidentally on the right wrist by one of them. So, two slaps on the wrists on the same day. That was a pattern.

Message: I need to let go of the anger, otherwise spirit will need to remind me by giving me some warnings.

Meeting my guide

We all have spirit guides.

I got an image of mine in a dream. A tall slim guy with short curly blond hair and blue eyes.

Then I asked for his name. In the time between sleep and waking up, I received the name as an image of type written letters – “Aaron”.

The ladybug

One day (back in 2006), my 3-year old child asked me, “Mommy, are angels real?”

I hesitated a moment, trying to figure out an answer. Then I replied, “Yes, they are real, but they are very shy, you know. And we must be very still if we want to be able to hear them.”

Afterwards, we went into the kid’s room and opened the door to the balcony. It was a cold winter night. A little lady bug came in and landed on my chest right over my heart area. A ladybug in winter!

I interpreted this synchronicity as a ‘well done’ message from spirit.

Various features of divine guidance

Guidance can…

• … come even if we have not asked before
• … come via multiple input channels about a single topic
• … be a gentle whisper or a stern yelling
• … be short term and long term guidance
• … be ahead of where we are
• … come from Source (inner voice) or from the result of our resistance to Source (for example, sickness)

Guidance can come in a variety of forms, from the inside and the outside, as I have discussed above. But it can also have a variety of other characteristics.

Usually it is advisable to ask for guidance, if we want to get it. But it can also come unbidden.

In the previous blogposts, I have artificially divided guidance up in terms of which input channel is used. But, for me, the usual case is that guidance for one topic comes via multiple input channels. For example, a dream followed by an interpretation by the inner voice and a matching message in an online advertisement.

Guidance isn’t always soft, sweet, and fluffy pink. It can be gentle, of course. But it can also be stern. It depends on how well we listen and how much resistance we have.

I was surprised to find my guide yelling at me when I did not pay enough attention. Really interesting how that ‘still small voiceless voice’ can sound stern and yelling!

Guidance can be short term for the near future or long term. And if it is long-term guidance, it can be ahead of where we are.

For example, in 2012, which was still fairly at the beginning of my spiritual journey, I had a dream which seemed to tell me to ‘teach something about midlife crisis’.

At that point, I did not know what to make of it. I had just barely dealt with some major forgiveness issues at work and just started to settle into inner peace again. And then I got this dream. Was it an immediate assignment? I did not know what to make of it and filed it away under ‘strange dreams’.

A couple of years later, I could see much more clearly that I had been through a transformational crisis and that I was synchronistically meeting many people who were going through a personal transformation. From these experiences, I saw that I was being trained to understand the process and its phases. So, the message in this dream in 2012 was far ahead of my situation back then.

Guidance can come from the wise inner voice of Source (or the signs we get), but it can also come from our resistance to this (like sickness). (Not that every sickness is a sign of resistance. But it can be.)

The direction given by Source is like a river. We are either in the river going with the flow, or we are clinging to a branch on the riverbank or even trying to swim upstream (resisting). If the river is moving slowly, it will not feel unpleasant to stay on the riverbank or to swim upstream. But once the river is moving fast, any resistance will hurt or become exhausting. And then that feeling of being hurt will be the guiding sign indicating to let go and surrender to the stream.

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If you are interested in reading more about the topic of divine guidance, you can download the pdf-script of my divine guidance workshop from 2017 here .

Divine guidance through visions

I once asked how long I would be doing the work at my day job. As an answer, I got a vision of an eagle leaving his nest.

Divine guidance can come in many forms, as an inner voice, dreams, signs, and also as visions. Visions can show up in different forms. For me, they mostly come like a picture in the mind’s eye. Some people also see them as if outside of themselves. Recently, I sometimes get images behind closed eyes that are much like an afterimage on the retina.

In order to notice them, it is helpful to develop a habit of paying attention to these phenomena.

The interpretation can be tricky, as usual. If it is metaphorical, it has to be interpreted. And then one needs to decide. Is it descriptive of what is? Or is it a prediction about the future?

In the above example of the eagle leaving his nest, I wasn’t sure at all what it meant. Now (2022) many years later, I am still working at this same job. In retrospect, I think it could have referred to the fact that our department did a company outing to a raptor flight show where you could watch hawks, owls, and eagles. And some time after that flight show event, a significant chunk of my obligations at work fell away. So, the eagle leaving his nest in my vision could have had a literal instead of a metaphorical meaning.

Mental images

So, what is it like to get information in visions? There are several ways. One way is a simple mental image. For example, if you think back to what your bedroom looked like when you got up this morning, what comes to your mind? This is what a mental image or vision feels like for me. Note that you are probably able to have this mental image even though your physical eyes are getting a different image at the same time ( – for example, the image of your computer screen on which you are reading this text).

Images on the inside of closed eye-lids

But there are other ways to get guidance through the visual input channel. One other way is to observe the moving lights, shadows, and maybe even colors behind closed eyelids. When I close my eyes, the degree of darkness depends of the light in the room. But even in a dark room with a sleep mask over my face, it is never totally black. Sometimes, there might be an inverse afterimage on my retina because I stared for a long time at one picture with high contrast ( – an example is this black and white inverse Jesus image ). At other times, I might notice phosphenes (random light firing of cells on the retina) or simply moving shadowy forms.

Here is a story with an example of such a vision on closed eyelids. Several years ago (in January, 2015), I had purchased a past-life reading. I had payed the money and now waited for the reading. However, it didn’t arrive. Then I saw that the channeler wrote on her blog about how busy she was as a single mom with her little baby child and her day job on top. She no longer could do readings for people because it was too much for her. She wrote about this on her blog only, but she didn’t tell me directly that she wouldn’t be able to do the reading for me.

Then I wondered what to do. One morning during the receptive time between sleep and waking up, I had a vision as a picture on my closed eyelids. It wasn’t in full color or with much detail or contrast, but rather a shadowy figure stretching her arms over a fence and opening her arms out to me. And several circles or round dots fell out of her hands, reminding me of coins.

I interpreted this as a woman throwing money (coins) back to me over the fence and thought it might relate to the question what to do about the past-life reading.

So, I contacted her and told her that I read her blogpost about her overwhelm and that I understood how overwhelmed one can feel with a little child because I have kids, too. And that she could always choose to just refund the money and not do the reading. She was very relieved about this solution and sent me the refund.

So, that was an example of a vision on closed eyelids.

Pareidolia

Sometimes, I see images or patterns emerging when I stare on things like asphalt (which has little pebble stones in it) or a bathroom rug when its ‘hair’ looks a bit ruffled. This is called pareidolia and is defined as “the tendency for perception to impose a meaningful interpretation on a nebulous stimulus, usually visual, so that one sees an object, pattern, or meaning where there is none” (Source). This is a bit different from the two types of vision mentioned above because it depends on an external stimulus. So, it is not as blunt and clear of a visual input as if one would see a t-shirt saying, “Here comes God’s message for you for today…”. But it is more in the middle between an external and an internal input channel for guidance.

There are even more ways to get visions. Some people see spirits when they focus their attention on the periphery of their visual field. Others see auras. Some see ghosts, spirits, or balls of light (orbs) or travel out-of-body and therefore get another type of information into their visual field. But personally, I have no experiences with these types of vision (except for a lucid dream every now and then).

Know Thyself: Enneagram, North and South Nodes of the Moon, and Human Design

The spiritual journey is a shift from the identification with the personality self to the consciousness or awareness that is the substratum of everything. Therefore, part of this journey is a ripping off of the attachments to the former personality. Any unconscious blind spots are mercilessly brought into awareness. The lessons will appear again and again until we get it.

Therefore, it is helpful to know about one’s blind spots. Then, this process will be less arduous.

Now, one could argue that the personality is not what we are. We are consciousness which is behind everything and which contains everything. So, why bother with the personality?

In my experience, waking up to the fact that we are awareness and that everything happens in awareness is not enough. Afterwards this understanding has to come back into the body and it must be lived in everyday life. This means looking at all formerly unconscious attitudes and habits and letting them go if they are based in fear, for example.

In connection with the topic of divine guidance, it can be helpful to look into personality type systems.

There are many different systems (like Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, MBTI) which try to put personalities into categories like into neat little boxes, too many systems to list them here. I just want to briefly mention three systems (or aspects of systems) which I found eye-opening in my case, that is the Enneagram, the North and South moon nodes in astrology, and Human Design.

The Enneagram

I have tried a few personality type systems, but I have never felt as X-rayed as when I came upon a book about the Enneagram by Richard Rohr and Andreas Ebert. The Enneagram describes 9 personality types. One finds his own type by answering a questionnaire.

In the Enneagram system, for example, my personality is type 5, which is ‘the observer/investigator’. This is the type who likes to be alone and read and think a lot.

Enneagram type 5 can stay forever in the comfort zone of the student position, reading one book after another or taking class after class, never feeling ready to go out into the world and share something of his insights. Additionally, this type has a high fear that his privacy is violated.

During my journey, I find that I had to battle with both of these character traits. I had to learn that I don’t need to read another book in order to be able to share what I have experienced. And I had to overcome the fear of being vulnerable when I share personal stories. I am grateful that I came upon the Enneagram and that these traps were brought to my awareness.

What the Enneagram also offers is a ‘good’ vs ‘bad’ direction of development ( or rather growth vs stress development). In my case of type 5, the system tells me that when I am moving towards the type 7 (becoming scattered), this is an unhealthy stress reaction. On the other hand, moving towards type 8 (decisiveness and self-confidence) would be a sign of healthy development in the direction of growth.

If you are curious and want to explore this further, there are plenty of websites and books about the Enneagram out there. A starting point for an overview could be this site https://www.enneagraminstitute.com/how-the-enneagram-system-works/

The North and South Nodes of the Moon

Another other eye-opening insight for me came after I had my first astrology reading (by fellow WordPress blogger Linda), more specifically, from the part about the North and South Moon Nodes.

I have Aries North Node and Libra South Node. That means that my comfort zone (South Node) is being the peacekeeper, but that the area of growth (North Node) is prioritizing my own goals first and that this lifetime is an assertiveness training.

That was eye-opening. Suddenly, I could make better sense of all the instances where people had told me, “You better behave as I expect you to, or else…”. I was wondering why I seemed to attract so many bullies into my life. But they were probably just part of my assertiveness training in this lifetime.

If you want to look up your North and South Nodes based on your date of birth, here is a useful link http://astrostyle.com/learn-astrology/north-south-nodes/ .

Human Design

Thanks to several in-depth WordPress blogposts by Dayna about her discoveries in the Human Design system, I also looked into that. The Human Design chart is generated based on the date and time of birth.

My type is a 1/3 Generator. From what I’ve read so far, this means something along the lines of going through several areas of challenges or new experiences in life and always doing one’s own in-depth research and figuring things out for oneself. And I can relate to that.

One eye-opening thing I’ve learned from my Human Design chart is that I have an open Root Center (- the Human Design centers can be either ‘defined’, ‘undefined’, or ‘open’). This explains why I have a hard time to relax when there are things on my todo list. If I know that I have many obligations, I feel a tremendous pressure to get it all done, always hoping to reach a state of an empty todo list so that I can relax. Good to know that this is one of my challenges in this life with which I was born and need to learn how to cope.

There is more to discover. The whole Human Design topic is complex and requires a lot of reading. I have yet to dive into that more.

If you want to dig in further into this topic, you can get your free Human Design chart at jovianarchive.com.