Hello. When meditating on a question, how do I know when I receive the right answer? How do I know the answer is expressed by my heart and not just my brain? Is there a certain way of telling whether the answer comes from the heart or the brain?
—Jessica, Sweden
Dear Jessica,
True guidance comes from our superconsciousness level of awareness. We may access this level of awareness when the mind and heart become still in meditation.
We have three levels of consciousness understood from the eastern perspective. Our conscious mind is engaged in the senses and the world. It seeks to solve problems by collecting data and weighing out the pros and cons in a rational way. We can refer to this level as the logical, rational brain. The conscious mind is good at generating a list of options but not so good at showing us the right direction for us right now. In fact, the right direction might be something the conscious mind did not even think of.
Then there is the subconscious. This is our history of old reactions, old habits, and old experiences. Our subconscious powerfully influences our conscious mind keeping us locked in old patterns. We might get ‘guidance’ from the subconscious but this material is emotionally charged, lacks clarity, and feels contractive and limiting. We can think of it as the heart’s energy turned toward desires, attachments and stuck in old ruts of response.
Our superconscious level of awareness tunes into higher realities. It is not conditioned by the senses or by the past. The heart is essential to access Superconsciousness. It is the receiving station for Divine guidance. To receive the heart must be still, open and uplifted. We still the heart and mind in meditation. When we receive guidance from the Divine, it comes with a sense of peace and expansion. There is a sense of rightness but not emotional reaction.
The best time to offer up a question for guidance is at the end of meditation. We offer it at the point between the eyebrows, our ‘sending station’ to the Divine. We offer it without attachment to a particular result. We feel in the heart center, our ‘receiving station’, for the answer. The answer may not come immediately. You may feel it suddenly ‘there’ at some later moment. You may need to ask several times as the heart might not have been quiet enough to receive the answer. The answer may need to wait because another area must be addressed first.
There is an excellent book on this subject Intuition for Starters by Swami Kriyananda. You can order this book at www.crystalclarity.com.
Many blessings to you,
Nayaswami Mukti
