Title: Accessing Your Spiritual Guidance Author: Margaret Paul, Ph.D. E-mail: margaret@innerbonding.com Copyright: © 2003 by Margaret Paul Web Address: http://www.innerbonding.com Word Count: 1128 Category: Self Help/Spirituality

ACCESSING YOUR SPIRITUAL GUIDANCE By Margaret Paul, Ph.D.

For last 35 years, I have been working with individuals, couples and families, as well as business relationships. I have 8 published books on relationships and healing, some of them best-sellers. In first half of my career, I worked as a traditional psychotherapist, and was not happy with results. In last 18 years I have worked with a process called Inner Bonding, which is a powerful six step psychological and spiritual healing process. I discovered that there is no real healing without a personal connection with a source of spiritual guidance.

Everyone in recovery - whether from alcohol, drugs, food, spending, gambling, sex, TV, codependency, or any other addiction - knows that they cannot heal without a connection with their Higher Power, yet for many, this connection is illusive. It is a common experience for me to work with people who have been in Twelve Steps for years yet still don't have a direct, personal experience of their Higher Power. All of us want a direct line to our spiritual Guidance. We need this help in maintaining abstinence and taking responsibility for ourselves. We want to know what is in our highest good, what is right decision in different situations, how to set appropriate boundaries, and how to manifest what we want.

It is birthright of each of us to have a direct line to God, whatever God is for you. Yet few of us have learned how to do this at will on a daily basis. Surprisingly however, it is not hard to do.

The spiritual realm exists at a higher frequency than we do here on physical plane of Planet Earth. In order to access spiritual realm, we need to know how to raise our "frequency".

One way to understand "frequency" is to imagine a room filled with people who are sharing love and joy with each other. This room has a feeling of lightness--a high frequency--whereas a room filled with angry, tense people has a feeling of heaviness--a low frequency.

So, how do we raise our frequency? There are numerous things you can do to help yourself raise your frequency, but none of them will work unless you have intent to learn with Spirit about loving yourself and others. Our intent is most powerful tool we have for raising our frequency. There are only two possible intents in any given moment: to learn with God/Spirit about loving yourself and others, or to protect against your pain and avoid responsibility for your feelings. When our intent is to protect and avoid we seek to control - through our various addictions - our feelings, others' feelings and behavior, and outcome of things. When our intent is to learn, we seek to take responsibility for our own feelings and behavior by discovering what we may be thinking or doing that is unloving to ourselves and others, and what would be loving.