The biggest complaint I hear from my clients and from others who email me is: "I can't hear my guidance," or "I can't connect with my guidance."

Hearing our own guidance is always a challenge. I find it much easier to hear my guidance when it relates to my clients than when it relates to me. Nevertheless, I do hear or feel my guidance most of the time.

The thing that gets in the way of experiencing guidance is the mind.

Thinking is what the mind does, and thinking is a barrier to knowing. Various spiritual teachers tell us that we can hear guidance when we hang out in the space between our thoughts. Contemplative prayer and meditation are about moving beyond thinking so that we can hear our guidance - through words, pictures, and/or feelings.

Yet I have known many people who have meditated and prayed for years and still have not been able to consistently hear their guidance. The reason for this has to do with intention.

If you are praying and meditating to get something or avoid something, your frequency will not be high enough to hear your guidance. In order to get your frequency high enough, your entire deep intention needs to be about being loving to yourself and others. If you are focused at all on the earthly journey of getting what you want and avoiding what you don't want, you will have problems accessing your guidance.

When you are focused on your spiritual journey of learning about love - about what is loving to yourself and to others - and you are willing to take the loving action that you are guided to take, you will hear or feel your guidance. When your deepest intent is experiencing love, joy, and fully manifesting the gifts of your being, you will be guided toward the loving actions that you need to take.

When you take the loving action that you are guided to take, you are letting your guidance know that you are available.

When you hear your guidance but do not take the loving action, you are telling your guidance that you are not available. You will find it much harder to access your guidance until you are fully willing to take the loving actions.

Just because you open to your guidance and take the loving action, does not mean that things will always turn out the way you thought they would. Don't forget, you are on a spiritual journey, not just an earthly journey. On the earthly level, it may seem that you made the wrong choice, yet if you were to see things from the broader perspective of your guidance, you would see that taking the loving action you are guided to take generally turns out well in the long run - in terms of your spiritual journey and the evolution of your soul.

You are here to learn more about love.

You are here to experience joy, share love, and fully manifest the gifts you have been given. If you keep in mind why you, as a soul, are here, it will be easier to stay open to learning about the highest good of your soul.

Cellular biologist Bruce Lipton, in "The Biology of Belief," proves that the brain of a cell is in the membrane, not in the nucleus. He proves that the cell is being informed from outside itself. He shows us that we, being made up of trillions of cells, are always being informed from outside ourselves. So why rely on our programmed thoughts to inform us regarding our actions? Why not allow the information that is always coming in from our guidance to inform us regarding the actions that are in our highest good?

I guarantee that far more joy will come into your life when you allow your guidance to inform your actions than if you allow your mind, coming from your wounded self, to inform your actions. But you won't know this until you try it.

Learn to connect with your spiritual guidance with Unlocking Your Inner Wisdom, A 30-Day at-home Experience with Dr. Margaret Paul.