I couldn’t find the check. For forty-five minutes, I searched everywhere—my desk, the floor, other rooms. I was getting increasingly frustrated, running late for the bank, and accomplishing nothing.
Then I heard my Higher Holy Spirit Self speak: “Jennifer, ask for guidance.”
Did I ask? No. I kept looking. Again the message came: “Ask for guidance.” Again, I ignored it, continuing my fruitless search through the world of effects instead of going to the source of all answers.
Finally, exhausted by my own stubbornness, I stopped. I got still. I asked: “Where’s the check?”
Instantly—and I mean instantly—I saw in my mind’s eye exactly where it was: in the pocket of a jacket I’d worn days before. I went to the closet, found the jacket, reached into the pocket. There was the check.
Here’s what this experience taught me about the nature of the mind: when we’re operating from ego-consciousness, we’re always “seeking but not finding,” as A Course in Miracles puts it. We labor in vain because we’re looking for solutions in the world instead of going to the Mind that contains all solutions.
The ego keeps us trapped in what I call the “museum of the past.” Every time we try to solve a problem using only our personal history and limited perspective, we’re essentially rummaging through old exhibits, hoping to find something new.
But true intelligence—divine intelligence—exists in the eternal now – and that’s where we are. It sees all directions of time and space. It knows things we couldn’t possibly figure out with our personality-level awareness.
This is why highly educated, accomplished people often struggle just as much as anyone else with major life decisions. Intelligence without spiritual connection is like having a powerful computer that’s not connected to the internet. It can run complex programs, but it can’t access the infinite database of wisdom that’s available to every spiritual being
The shift from ego-thinking to Holy Spirit-thinking isn’t about becoming “more spiritual.” It’s about becoming more practical.
Why waste forty-five minutes searching when the answer is available in two seconds?
But here’s what blocks us: the ego-identified, small selfish self is terrified of surrendering control. It would rather spend hours in frustrating, futile effort than admit it needs help from a source beyond itself. The ego would rather be “right” about its methodology than be efficient about getting results.
This is why developing trust is so crucial to spiritual growth. We have to be willing to experiment with a different way of knowing. We have to be willing to ask questions like: “What’s the highest choice here?” or “Show me what I’m not seeing” or “Help me understand what this situation is really for.”
We have to be willing to release our attachment to our opinions about life in order to understand what’s really going on.
When we genuinely ask these questions and then pause long enough to receive an answer, something magical happens. The same Mind that orchestrates sunsets and seasons, that beats your heart and grows your hair, that knows how to turn acorns into oak trees—that Mind is your mind and is unlimited.
You don’t have to figure everything out on your own, at the level of the personality. You never did. The illusion that you’re separated from infinite intelligence is just that—an illusion.
The check was never really lost. I just wasn’t looking in the right place. And the guidance I needed was never absent. I just wasn’t ready to receive it until I exhausted every other option.
Don’t wait until you’re exhausted.
Ask now. Listen now. Trust now. Your Higher Self has been waiting patiently to help you all along.
SATURDAY – Activate Your Intuition Deep Dive Workshop – by popular request – this was the #1 topic people asked me to do a workshop on and here it is this Saturday, August 31. If you’d like to start hearing your guidance more clearly, and choosing to listen and follow, while also feeling like you can really trust that Voice for God, consider joining me for this workshop on Saturday! Click here now for more info.
It may be hidden, but it’s there—because God’s will for us is perfect happiness, and that will is never absent from any moment. Yay for that!
NEW ACIM PODCAST EPISODE: my topic is The Two Voices in Your Head (And Why Only One Tells the Truth) We carry two conflicting evaluations of ourselves – the Holy Spirit’s loving truth that sees our perfection and the ego’s distorted perception that sees only lack and unworthiness. According to numerology, we’re in a completion year where unhealed patterns are surfacing for final healing before we enter a new cycle and this means we’re all being pushed to let go of the patterns of pain. In this episode, drawing from A Course in Miracles Chapter 9, Section 7, the core message is that the Holy Spirit never forgets our true nature while the ego keeps us trapped in littleness, and our only path to freedom is choosing which evaluation we’ll align with through our willingness to value what’s truly valuable.
