For a while now, I’ve been thinking about this video where Steve Jobs talks about connecting the dots from your past so you can understand your life.
The quote goes like this: “You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.”
But exploring spirituality has given me the opportunity to become aware of the dots ahead of me and, through spirituality, I’ve learned how to trust the unknown of the road ahead.
That’s what this article is about and I’ll start with a metaphor.
Imagine you are at the bottom of a mountain and there are a few routes that you could take to reach its top. Some routes are very difficult and, since you are not an experienced hiker and you’ve never climbed this mountain before, you want to stay away from them. Ideally, you would like to choose the easiest route.
At the bottom of the mountain, you see a sign that leads to the Adventurer’s Path and, below that sign, there’s written “BEST LANDSCAPES”. You tell yourself that you would like to see some beautiful landscapes and you forget about what you initially set yourself: that you want to get to the top of the mountain through the easiest route.
Therefore, you decide to walk the Adventurer’s Path and find yourself, after 2 hours of hiking, in a difficult scenario: you have to climb a steep cliff. You have no experience, no equipment, and your body and mind are telling you that you made a big mistake and you’ll never get to reach the top of the mountain.
You accept the situation, enjoy the landscape for a few more minutes, and then you turn around and go back. Two days later, you leave the city without experiencing the top of that mountain.
So, what happened?
- You set yourself you want to reach the top of the mountain
- You got distracted by a route that was too difficult for you
- You never got to the top of the mountain
When it comes to spirituality, there’s a concept called The Higher Mind and there are different ways to describe it.
The Higher Mind is the future version of you who has already done the thing you want to do. The Higher Mind is the spiritual guide who is sitting at the top of the mountain and has a bird’s eye view of all the routes of the mountain. The Higher Mind is the energy and frequency connected to the experience you want to have.
How to listen to The Higher Mind
When there’s coherence between you and The Higher Mind, you don’t get distracted and you trust that whatever you believe you should do, is the thing that you should do.
The previous example has a lot of flexibility in it and it may be difficult to understand The Higher Mind in that scenario. After all, you climbed a part of that mountain and you saw some beautiful landscapes.
And while that’s the right attitude, it’s difficult to have the same attitude when, let’s say, you are looking for a job.
For example, imagine you want to change your job. The current job doesn’t satisfy you anymore and you want a new one.
You may feel like becoming a magician, a writer, or a digital marketer. But after 10 years as a doctor, you don’t want to risk everything and you try to pick something as close as possible to what you’ve been doing. But you don’t know what that thing is and you are experiencing a lot of uncertainty. That uncertainty, if you keep your energy and thoughts positive, will show you the way.
Behind that uncertainty is your Higher Mind, guiding you from the top of the mountain, telling you which way to go.
You just have to trust your gut!
Trust your feelings and sense what is good for you. That’s the real challenge.
If you don’t know how trusting your gut feels, your Higher Mind can’t reach you
Your Higher Mind can’t communicate with you through words. Instead, it does its best to point you in the right direction and it makes you feel different emotions, based on the steps that you should take.
If you want to change your career and you don’t know what to do next, but one night you scroll on Facebook and discover a post about Camino de Santiago, you get excited, and feel like you should do that, then maybe that’s what you should do.
Let’s say you put away the idea of Camino de Santiago but it keeps coming back to you, then that’s what you should do.
When things keep coming back to you, it’s no coincidence. Instead, there’s something (your Higher Mind) that’s trying to communicate to you.
If you never trusted your gut before and you don’t know how it feels, it will probably be impossible for you to accept the guidance from The Higher Mind. But because you can’t accept it, it doesn’t mean it isn’t there. The guidance will always be there. You just have to trust that whatever guidance exists in your life from your Higher Mind, it will always benefit you.
With love and optimism,
David
