Q&A 13 – Where can I go for guidance?

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When we have problems and challenges in life, where can we turn for guidance?

What if there was a source of pure, clear wisdom that was 100% reliable and could guide you under any circumstances?

The good news is this source of answers is available and it’s within you.

You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below. 

Show Notes

• How our minds innocently get involved in problem-solving
• What to do when we feel a lot of fearful thining
• What does wisdom feel like?
• When does wisdom show up?

Resources Mentioned in this Episode

• Tania Elfersy, author of The Wisdom of Menopause and Perimenopause
• Episode 4 of Unbroken with Tania Elfersy

Transcript of episode

Hello, explorers, and welcome back to another Q&A episode of Unbroken. I’m your host, Alexandra Amor. Today the question is:

Where can I go for guidance?

I love this question so much. And I’m going to use a personal story that’s going on for me this week to illustrate what I mean by this. And then I’m going to move into a brilliant thing that I heard from my friend Tania Elfersy the other day that really ties in well. 

So the personal story is that I live in a condo, apartment, and I’m renting it. And additionally, I live in a town where it’s really hard to find housing. Now I lucked out when I moved here, five and a half years ago, in that this was the first apartment I looked at, it was perfect. For me, it was the perfect price, perfect size, the building is nicely maintained, all that stuff. So I was thrilled, beyond thrilled and snatched it up right away.

Housing in this town where I live is really, really an issue to the point that the vacancy rate is well below zero, I would say. People live in camper vans, in the summer there’s lots of tourists around, and many of them live on the back roads, in vans, but in addition to that, there’s people who actually live here and work here and have jobs who do the same thing, because there just aren’t a lot of places to rent.

There’s a variety of reasons for that and I won’t get into it all, because that’s not the point of this podcast. So you’ll just have to believe me, it’s tough to find a place to rent, when you live in the little town where I live.

It came about recently that my landlord was thinking of selling the condo that I’m renting.

She had a buyer lined up. In the last week or so I guess I would say there’s been a lot of upheaval around here with inspectors coming and going and that kind of thing.

When I first heard the news that the place might be sold, I was really really quite stirred up and anxious. And not the least of which, because we’re coming into the high season. I’m recording this in early May. And between May and October if it’s hard to find housing in the winter, then it’s basically impossible in the summer. This is not the ideal time for me to be having to look for a new place to live.

So when I got that news, my stomach was really churned up. I could feel my thinking go into overdrive, and just having lots and lots of busy thoughts about what I should do.

My mind was trying to solve the problem, which is what minds do.

They’re always trying to protect us and help us and keep us safe. And that’s their job. And they take it very seriously. So definitely my mind got to work trying to fix this problem. And make it go away, essentially.

What I knew, thankfully, when all this was happening was that all that busy thinking and all that all those butterflies in my stomach, those weren’t the places to look for guidance about this issue about what I should do, if anything, who I should talk to, any actions that I should take, any investigation that I should make all that stuff. Thankfully, because of the three principles, understanding, I knew enough to just let that happen.

The busy mind and the butterflies in my stomach, knowing that it would settle down after a period of time, I didn’t know how long that would be. And also knowing that that as I said, that was not the place to go to look for answers. And so that’s what I’ve been doing. I’ve really just been sitting with my feelings just letting them happen.

At some moments, I feel really churned up and anxious. And other moments I don’t. I’m very much at peace and just going about my day and reminding myself that in the grand scheme of things having to move is a pretty small problem. But that logic, that’s a logical thought. And our emotions don’t always respond to those kinds of things.

What I’ve been doing is waiting for wisdom and insight when they’re ready to speak about any action that I need to be taking.

And I should say, too, that things are still a bit up in the air. If the people who are interested in buying this apartment do that, the date of final sale wouldn’t be for about 10 days from as the day that I’m recording this. So logically to there isn’t a lot for me to do right now. It’s all unresolved and there’s still more information that needs to be conveyed.

As this was happening, I had a zoom call with my friend Tania. As I mentioned on the top of the call, Tania is the author of The Wisdom of Menopause and Perimenopause. She’s been on Unbroken, I believe she was episode four. And she works with women who are in midlife, and who are experiencing symptoms of menopause, and perimenopause, and just is a beautiful soul. I’m so grateful for her friendship. She’s so wise.

So I was sharing what was happening with her a few days ago. And we were talking about this lovely, amazing resource that we have, being able to rely on wisdom and insight, and not have to operate at the whim of our busy, fearful thinking. And she just had this lovely rhetorical question that she said that she tends to ask herself.

The question is this: where does the truth live?

And at first, I didn’t quite know what she was referring to. And then she expanded on it a little bit. And she said, the truth lies in the calm, quiet, wise center of ourselves. That’s where we can go when we need answers to something. Always. We can always rely on that. And that’s where we can go to receive wisdom or to wait for wisdom, because it doesn’t always come on our schedule.

She pointed out to that the truth doesn’t lie in fear. I really loved that. She said that as well. So fear was all all those butterflies that were in my stomach and my busy, busy thinking, that panicking about what should I do? What’s going to happen? Where am I going to end up? What if I have to move out of town? All that thinking.

The truth doesn’t live there. There’s such a distinct difference between that feeling and the calm, quiet place where the truth lies. And when we know this, it’s so powerful and reassuring. And so I wanted to, to share those two questions that that Tanya rhetorically posed to me the other day, because when we can remember to ask these questions of ourselves when we’re in a situation that is bothering us or making us upset.

This week, I’ve been asking myself those questions. It’s really been helping to calm me down, but even when I don’t feel calm, there’s a part of me that that just knows Oh, right.

I have this resource that I can rely on.

That’s number one. Number two, I don’t need to listen to the fearful, anxious thoughts and feelings that are going on inside me. Those butterflies in my stomach, were simply a reflection of the state of my mind in that moment. So that fearful thinking right away, creates feedback. It creates butterflies in my stomach, which is really uncomfortable. It’s not a feeling I’ve ever enjoyed. And when I feel that and then I remember Oh, right. Yes. Okay. My thinking is really stirred up and fearful. And the butterflies are telling me that so I don’t need to go there. I don’t need to look in that place for answers to my problems.

What I can instead do is remember that the truth lives where I’m feeling really calm and settled. I find that the answers that come from that really calm, wise place that exists within all of us are clear. They are very easily distinguished from the fearful thinking that I have. And they do just have this essence of calmness to them. I don’t know what other word to use. This essence of calm and clarity and wisdom for lack of any other better words to use.

So those are the questions that I wanted to share with you today. Where does the truth live? It lives in that calm, clear place, and is the truth in in the fearful, anxious stirred up feelings we have? No, it’s never there never. Even though those fearful, anxious feelings are so compelling.

I can just speak personally and say that, until I learned about this understanding, I always acted out of that place. Or almost always I guess, I should say. I took that fearful information that really stirred up crazy frightened thinking as the truth and acted more often than not out of that place, which inevitably just ended up creating more problems for me then, than I needed.

What Tania and I discussed the other day was that instead, when we listen, and wait for the answers from that very calm place, things work themselves out, it’s a much smoother journey.

I’ll just give you a quick example.

I recently bought a new sofa. And so I had the old sofa in my house, and I needed to get rid of it, I didn’t want both of them in here wanted to find a place for the old one.

My brain came up with a bunch of answers about how to do that. And they were useful things to do. Like I posted a picture of the sofa and description of it on the local buy, sell, trade, barter Facebook group. I was just giving it away so I posted it on there. And I mentioned it to a couple of people. Somebody suggested check in with the fire chief in this town, because he often has new recruits coming in and they don’t have any furniture, wherever they’re staying. So I did that. I sent this guy an email.

But at the same time, I really had this sense in that calm, quiet place inside myself, that the problem would work itself out.

The new sofa arrived and I put that in place. I still didn’t have a home for the old one. So I just put it in the dining room, which was a little bit awkward. And for a couple days, I was walking around it all the time and was thinking about other actions that I should take to try to get rid of this thing. Maybe I should hire somebody to drive it to a different town. Maybe I should contact a woman’s shelter. Maybe there’s somebody who needed it there. And those are great ideas.

Again, I’m not saying these are these are not good ideas. But additionally, just the wisdom within myself was having me wait.

Just wait and and something will turn up.

So a day or two went by a neighbor came up she wanted to see the new sofa. And as she came into my apartment she noticed, of course, the old sofa in the middle of the dining room. And she said, Well, what are you going to do with this? And I said, I don’t know. I’m looking for a new home for it. And she said oh put it in our community room.

You know how sometimes in condo buildings, there’s a room that you can rent or sign out out? Ours has a little kitchen setup. So fridge, stove, counter. It’s got tables and chairs and windows that look out onto the back of the building. And it’s a place where we have potluck dinners there for example. So she said put it in there because we whenever we have a little social gathering there’s never anywhere for anybody to sit, other than the dining table. So that’s what we did.

I recruited a couple of big, strong strapping neighbors, and they carried it down the walkway, and now the old sofa is in the community room where hopefully it can be of service to some other people.

That might seem like a silly example but I really liked it because of the way that I kept checking back in with wisdom, with the place where truth exists, just to see if I had got an answer and, and continue to wait until something that felt right came up. And like I said, I could have taken lots of other actions. And that would have been fine, too. I mean, really, it’s just an old sofa.

It taught me something important about how connected we all are to wisdom, and how we can rely on it.

And more and more, I’m just wanting to experiment with that, and make a point of not acting out of the place of fear, and panic and insecure thinking. And it doesn’t mean that those feelings don’t come up; they certainly do. And that’s fine. I can notice them and not react to them. I can notice how fearful I am and concerned about a given situation like now, this housing situation. And then just wait.

I know for sure that answers will come from the wise place, the calm, quiet place.

And they won’t necessarily be magical answers about the complete end result of this situation. In other words, it’s not like someone’s just going to come and bang on my door and say, Hey, I’ve got an apartment, would you like to rent it? But what I know wisdom will do is show up and with an idea about a next step that I could take. I don’t know what that will be at this point. And I don’t know how it will show up. But what I do know is that it will. And I will, at some point, find some truth.

The truth lives in that calm, quiet place. Something will come to me, that will enable me to take a next step in this housing situation, if necessary. Like I say, it’s still a bit up in the air. And we’ll just see how things unfold.

I wanted to share that with you today. It’s been one of the most powerful things that I’ve learned about the three principles understanding is this idea that I can rely on the wisdom within me. It’s entirely 100% reliable, it never lets us down and the universe is so much wiser than my little brain.

I love my brain, it’s a great problem solver. And the universe is just a whole lot smarter than that. That universal life energy that is flowing through all of us at all times is the thing that I am learning to be more reliant on when I’m trying to solve problems, or think of things to do or take a new direction or anything like that.

So I hope that’s helpful for you. That’s always the objective here on these Q&A episodes.

I hope you were doing well and I am sending you lots of love and just a reminder, if you want to submit a question about your life, about your overeating habit or any unwanted habit, please do so.

You can do that at alexandraamor.com/question.

I will see you again next week. Take care. Bye bye.

Featured image photo by Lili Popper on Unsplash