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Receiving Internal Guidance on My Career

Experience submitted by Roy Scheffers
Experience submitted by Roy Scheffers

A Difficult Work Situation

At work things were going badly since our department was about to close down except for a few positions. Everyone’s job was on the line, including mine. A colleague tipped me off about an open position outside of the company with fairly good career prospects, so I went for it.

The interview process was pretty thorough. Nevertheless, I tried and passed the first interview with a good feeling. I was invited for a second interview which was challenging, but soon after I received a call to join an online conference to meet the owner for the third one. That went well too and I found myself with a job offer to sign within the next 15 days.

Photo by Bench Accounting via unsplash
Photo by Bench Accounting via unsplash

Although I was glad, something did not feel quite right. I wasn’t sure why I felt strange about the outcome and after making a pro and con list, things still felt odd despite the good prospects of the new job. I quit my current job and had two weeks left in the company.

However, that did not change my gut feeling about the situation I was in. I did several meditation on an ego practices to gain insights on the inner states that came up in the interview process, and about my current job situation, and the doubts related to it. I first came across the meditation on an ego practice through the work of Belsebuub on one of his courses.

Receiving Guidance during a Meditation

One morning before work, I set aside time for a meditation. My mind was still fairly quiet from the night and I managed to get into a very relaxing and clear state. In front of my eyes, I visualized both situations. First, I placed myself in the situation of my current job and watched which feelings and thoughts related to it came up.

When my mind was still again, I would just watch the scenes before me and learn from them by observing objectively. I did the same for the new job as far as I could visualize the new workplace based on the people I’ve met and the tour through the building. I got some glimpses here and there, although I was longing for more guidance.

I cleared my mind, focused on my heart and appealed to my divine mother again for guidance. I kept asking, which I followed by a quiet moment to hear her answer. I wanted to know which situation would be best for my learning and I wanted to understand my doubts. It looked like the practice wasn’t going anywhere, but I kept going with it.

I asked again if my divine mother would have a preference between these two situations and which one would be the most beneficial to my inner work.

I was astounded to hear in the next moment a soft voice with an overwhelming sweetness say “Maybe keep your current one?” Soon after my mind started to react to the suggestion and came up with many excuses why this would not be good for my career. The way my mind spoke was very forceful and demanding compared to the voice I heard that made the suggestion. I felt I needed to trust the answer I was given.

This led me to taking back my old job and rejecting the job offer. From that day on at work, thoughts or feelings related this choice would often come up. They were complaining about my choice and the current situation as due to the reorganization things were quite messy at the workplace.

Nevertheless, they were similar to the forceful thoughts and feelings in my meditation and I used the technique to eliminate the ego to get rid of them. I had trust in the guidance I received from within, even though it did not make full sense to me at the time. At least I felt this was the right thing to do and the right situation to be in for my own inner learning.

Only a few years later things became clearer as to why this choice turned out to be the better one. I was given a lot of personal learning opportunities by making this choice.

Over time my manager, myself, and another colleague turned a team in chaos into a well-established department. Also several things opened up that I had not expected to be possible. All of a sudden I was able to switch to a new job within the company which also made it possible to work remotely. I was even allowed to move to a different branch in another country when I asked and eventually did.

Looking Back

Looking back at that choice, I think it was one of the most unexpected ones I’ve made. It was a challenging circumstance that helped me a lot in understanding myself better.

Regardless of the mess at work, it was exactly what I needed personally as it was an ideal environment to learn about persevering through negativity and other lower states.

However, the most surprising thing to me is that I was guided in this direction with the help of my own divine mother through the practice of meditation in a way that still amazes me.

25 comments
  • Wow Roy, that is a very inspiring account. You have highlighted really well the need to persist with these particular practices and that asking can be used not only for things directly related to our spiritual development, but for those things that we seem to think at times are mundane, like a job. But you mentioned that you were seeking guidance as you wanted to know which job would offer you better learning opportunities for your own spiritual development. Clearly when one focuses on that then everything else can fall into place – we just need to make the right decisions.

    thank you!

  • What a wonderful story Roy. We can spend so much time stuck in our mind, going back and forward about decisions and never really getting clear, yet when we ask for and are lucky enough to receive guidance, and then act on it, everything works out for the best.

    It’s so great that you had the courage to act on that intelligence, even though it might have seemed a struggle at the time. But your intuition was also indicating that the move was not the best course of action. Great outcome.

  • What a lovely experience Roy and so great to read about how your choices unfolded and why. I think most times we’re torn between the the ‘to’s and thro’s’ of the mind and like you said on paper anything can seem right but when that uneasy feeling arises its incredible how much it shows up the limitation of our mind when making a decision about the unknown.

    I found your experience very inspiring not only in your asking and receiving that gentle suggestive guidance from your divine mother, but also your perseverance and how you went about using those great practices.

  • Hi Roy,

    I agree with others that this was quite a direct answer! And how sweet and beautiful too, now you know the voice of your Divine Mother! 😀

    I really like how you were able to identify the forceful and pushy thoughts, to recognize their nature and not to go along with them. I think this is a great knowledge to have, to be able to distinguish between true intuitive guidance and those pushy, ego-driven thoughts that have different subjective agendas behind them.

  • Roy, I would not have thought you’d have her voice speak to you in answer! Very inspiring! I can imagine just how beautiful her voice was. And I think your sincere asking helped precipitate such a clear supra-auditory message. That would have been a challenge to follow that guidance as all other things seem to point to the new job as the best option. But your faith seems to have rewarded you. Nice to have that ‘case study’ of following the challenging, not-what-we-want-to-hear internal guidance and seeing it give just what is needed for the inner work and advancement.

  • How incredible Roy. It shows such a different way of living than through the mind and its logic, which can very often just lead you around in circles.
    I was really inspired by your account of taking the time to sit with the question and ask your divine mother if she has a preference, and then how you were able to act on the surprise voice of hers. It must have taken some courage. It makes me think how many areas of my life I could ‘clean up’ through this method. Some decisions that I have left, some actions that I haven’t the confidence in making because don’t feel like it’s ‘clear’ – basically because I haven’t been through a similar dialogue with my inner mother as the one you describe.
    I’ve had similar ‘cross roads’, or times when they way ahead is open and yet obscure, and enough experiences of going with the ‘right feeling’, which often has no logic behind it, only for it to take me to better circumstances.
    It makes me long to do a practise of an ‘inner appraisal’, to enter into a dialogue with my divine mother about my inner work and life. These practises periodically make me feel ‘realigned’ with her, and relaxed that I am doing my best to walk in the direction that she knows is best for me. Sometimes life seems to reveal itself so obviously as a shifting stage for our learning – maybe in the action of speaking to her with such earnestness and making the steps to follow out what you percieved as her guidance, you were rewarded with beneficial circumstances…

    • Hi Ella, in relation to breaking out of circles, making this decision surely brought me unexpected circumstances 🙂

  • Hi again Roy,

    I wanted to share how remembering your experience helped my practice today. I was praying to my Divine Mother about the usual things, but felt like I could go deeper, and started to tell her things more honestly and spontaneously instead. Then I felt like I was doing it too much from the mind, so I tried to go in my heart instead and feel the prayer from there. I could feel how my Divine Mother’s presence got stronger and closer, like my mind had been an obstacle between us. I could perceive the things I had been trying to say from my mind as a bit harsh and pushy, like in you said about your thoughts, so I felt like I want to let them go and focus on her presence instead. I’m not sure but I thought I could feel her caressing my cheek, not as a physical touch but in the way the energy felt, and I’ve never felt that before. Then my thoughts wanted to pull me back to the things I had planned to do next, but I tried to stay with her instead. Usually I would just go back to my day and say oh well, the practice is over.

    This was really inspiring to keep praying from the heart and reaching out to her, so thanks very much again for helping me in this indirect way : )

    • That’s wonderful Laura. It’s amazing when we can sense her presence in an almost tangible, physical way. I’m really glad for you that you felt this tenderness from your divine mother.

    • That sounds very nice Laura, thanks.

      I feel I often don’t make the effort to have the sustained enough concentration to connect to her in a deeper way, so it stays sort of at the level of the mind and the level of the inner state I was at before, but not really breaking through into that connection. And if you multiply that in time then those deeper moments of connection simply don’t happen.

      I want to find that way as well, though simply sitting down just now for example I’m not sure if that will allow me to break through. Perhaps in a meditation practice later today I can find the way.

    • I’m really happy to read this Laura and thanks for sharing it! Your persistence to stay a little longer with her brought its rewards 🙂 Reading your comment makes me want to make a special effort to stay close to my divine mother today!

  • What a lovely experience. How amazing it must have been to actually hear your Divine Mother speaking to you. Such a beautiful thing that you listened to your intuition and meditated to receive guidance, and just kept pushing until you had an answer instead of just going with the more ‘obvious’ choice of taking that new job.

    • Yes, it was! I never thought it would be possible to actually hear her, she had such a gentle voice.

  • Thanks for sharing your experience Roy. I remember this scenario at the time it happened and thought it was a good example of following inner guidance. It’s funny how logically the decision to decline the new job offer made no sense, based on the information you knew at the time. And yet there were additional factors at play, which you couldn’t have possibly predicted and which made it a wise choice to stay where you were.

    I also had a strong “gut feeling” shortly before I made a significant life choice that affected my career. I’d been studying a particular course for five years and was close to completing it, after which I would be qualified to work in that field professionally. But unfortunately, some unexpected circumstances came up that altered the sequence of events and I had to make a decision about whether I would continue pushing forward to get the qualification I’d been working towards, or decide to cut my losses at that point and move onto new things.

    On the one hand, it seemed a pity just to let go of something that I’d been building up for so long, especially as I was so close to reaching its completion. Yet, I could see that there were additional factors at play that would have made it a very risky decision to try and continue on that track. Because of those factors, I immediately had a strong feeling that it would be a wrong move to try and push forward to achieve my original goal of working in that profession.

    Previously, I’d used various strategies to try to overcome the different obstacles that had come up along the way, and had made quite a lot of sacrifices and efforts to get to that point. But despite being someone who likes to weigh up the pros and cons and take time over important decisions, I decided to leave behind what I’d been working towards within the space of a few minutes. Somehow it just didn’t feel right to continue with that goal.

    Soon after that, new opportunities opened up in other areas of my life, which gave me a lot of strength to move forwards. But as well as that, some other issues in my personal life developed, which I couldn’t have possibly predicted. I realised that if I hadn’t have cut my losses when I did, I would have missed out on the new learning opportunities that I received, as those other issues in my life would have made it very difficult, if not impossible to receive those same opportunities again. Moreover, the qualification that I would have received would have been pretty much useless, as the unexpected issues would have made it very difficult to work in that field anyway.

    So, like you, I’m glad that I followed my initial hunch. Thanks again for highlighting the importance of inner guidance in our lives.

    • Hey Michael,

      thanks for sharing your story of how to chose to leave something you’d invested a lot of time and effort into, knowing you’d not be able to reap the particular benefits from all your work. It can be very difficult to let something go, even if we know it’s good for us, when we know it will give us social standing and make life ‘easier’. But I’ve found in particular I’ve been presented with the option of choosing either ‘professional development’ or spiritual, and I’ve never regretted putting more time towards the spiritual. In fact, it’s noticably been that when I’ve made a choice to prioritise my spiritual work over other things, that I make a step forwards in some way.

      • Yes, I found the same thing Ella. I didn’t say specifically what the other opportunities were in connection with, but they were mainly in relation to spiritual development and gaining self-knowledge.

        Although I made the decision to put aside my studies within a matter of minutes, after events reached a crucial turning point, it took a while to let go of the feelings that I’d been cheated out of reaping the rewards for my efforts, as there was a degree of unfairness surrounding the events that had occurred around that time, which were complex and involved a number of people.

        However, I eventually came to realise that leaving those particular academic studies behind was a pivotal turning point in my spiritual life, as the unexpected events that occurred within the next year would have changed the course of my life in a spiritually detrimental way, if I hadn’t already made a clean break from that way of life.

        Whereas, leaving behind what had a major goal for five years actually freed me up to get involved in other spiritual activities with a group of friends, which gave me a huge boost spiritually and psychologically. However, those opportunities were for a limited period of time and I would have very likely missed the boat if I’d continued with my previous goal. Although there were still difficulties to overcome, the lifestyle change came as a massive contrast to the isolated academic life I’d been living previously.

        By making the move when I did, I gained a lot of spiritual strength and was therefore able face the other challenges that came along in my personal life in a much better way. Without this, I think my spiritual drive could have very easily just faded into the background and become lost among the pressures and challenges that came my way, as I would have again found myself in an isolated position, but lacking the strength to pull myself out of the quicksand of the mundane life and push forward towards a spiritual one.

    • Thanks for sharing your story, Michael. It really brought back the feeling of how wonderful it is to follow our inner guidance and make choices in favor of our spiritual development. Yes, it can bring uncertainty but isn’t life full of it anyway? And the outcome and gains along the way often surpassed that of not following it. I’m glad you chose to go with the initial hunch and that things worked out for the better.

      I like how you abandoned the pros and cons list in favor of the guidance you felt. Our lists can make perfect sense at the time, and weighing options or making lists is something that I picked up at school. It has helped me to an extent, but without any guidance, I’m still limited to what the mind can come up with.

  • This is very inspiring Roy. How you made those super efforts to persist in trying to get answers to your situation and didn’t just give up at a point, saying it isn’t working and going with what felt best. That your divine mother showed her love and care in such an amazing and unexpected way.

    Maybe the subtle way we usually receive answers in the physical (like intuition for example like Karim said) can make us think that’s just how it is, but your experience proves there is a way for such a direct communication with the divine to exist. This inspires me to make the efforts needed to get closer to them and deal with things better in my life. I feel like there are so many open ended situations and questions and I don’t know what to do with it all but I realise I have to be active and try to find out and the answers are out there, I just have to get to them.

    Thank you for sharing!

    • Hi Laura,

      As you and Karim mentioned, the guidance during the day is often more subtle because of all the things going on and the mind being engaged in all of that, I found the same thing. That’s why I used the morning to meditate as I still felt that stillness from just waking up.

      I know you will be able to have a deeper connection with the divine Laura! We all can if we place enough importance on that relationship. I do have to admit that I reach out to my divine mother more often when I’m in need of help or situations are difficult. In the “easy” times, I have to honor that relationship and communicate more with her during the day. I feel that’s one way for me to be closer to her.

  • That’s so cool you received guidance in the physical from your Divine Mother. Maybe you tapped into clairaudience at the time to hear her voice?

    Thanks for sharing your experience. It reminds me how important it is to ask the Divine for guidance in tricky situations and that the guidance can be so clear! I often forget I don’t have to face the uncertainty and confusion all on my own.

    I’m glad you made the right decision in keeping your old job, despite the uncertainty, and that you learned a lot from it.

    • That’s a good reminder of the importance of asking, Mike! That experience would not have happened if I didn’t ask.

  • Wow that’s some direct way of getting guidance 🙂

    In general I find seeking guidance or answers in physical everyday life a bit tricky, as the mind can be so sneaky. So I personally prefer to refer to dream guidance in such situations as I feel I can be more certain and objective about it. But sometimes for some reason it doesn’t always seem to come to us on the subjects we want or in the way we want it. 🙂 Perhaps to test us a bit, see how we’ll deal with it all?

    Also when doing meditation practices and asking for help and guidance I personally would probably expect it more to come in the form of intuition, or a string of reflections in the practice that lead to a clear insight of things etc.

    Saying all that it’s amazing to me to hear you received such direct guidance by hearing this beautiful voice! It just seems incredibly kind to receive help in that way when you wanted it so badly. I’m sure that dedication and faith by you to search for an answer from your Divine Mother was appreciated and you got this special help.

    I also like how you mention, if I understand correctly, that one way of distinguishing between the spiritual ‘voice’ and subconscious was the unpleasant nature that the forceful thoughts and emotions brought with them.

    I can relate to making a choice and only seeing the benefits of it more properly when considering it in hindsight.

    Thanks for the inspiration that answers can be found within! and I also got the sense that much more is possible in meditation practices like this if we do our best, so it seems good for me to keep an open mind.

    • Hoi Karim,

      In that experience, I felt a distinct difference between my egos and the spiritual guidance I was given. The egos were of a forceful nature and wanted something. There was no choice. I think the feeling comes close to when a child wants candy and it is not given to them and they keep at it. In contrast, the guidance I received was suggestive and left me with a choice to follow it or not.

      Even though in that situation I was a very clear guidance, I too find it challenging to determine if something is from the mind or the heart at times. Like you mentioned, the guidance we receive may not always apply to the things we think we need help with. More often than not, I found that guidance is related to inner states then to a specific situation.

      Good luck in your meditations and wishing you many breakthroughs!

  • What an incredible way to hear your Divine Mother. Up until you heard her voice I was with you, then I was amazed as I never persevered enough to clearly hear her voice. It must have been beautiful. I can also relate to making choices based on what’s good for the inner work. These choices may not make sense, and we may not want to do them, but inside something is pushing for that decision. Going along with that choice can give a lot of inner freedom and much more valuable opportunities.

    • I’m with you, Aleks! At the time the choice did not make much sense and I only had the guidance I was given to go by. It was a choice I had to actively push for and follow it through as a part of me did not want to go this direction, but I knew it was the right thing to do.

      What stood out too, was that I have made important choices before that felt good at the time but later turned out to be not favorable, so in a way that was a motivation to take a different route this time and follow that guidance 🙂

Belsebuub

Belsebuub is a British-born author who writes about out-of-body and other types of mystical experiences. He withdrew from public life in 2010. Read more here.

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