I've largely had little success trying to connect to a spirit guide/my higher self. I'm no good at visual visualisations (I tend to think using abstract concepts, not visual images), and usually any "voice" or "spoken" auditory guidance sounds very much like my own thinking and usually isn't helpful. I find that if I try to listen for something and “force” it to come through, my mind just creates what I want to hear (which generally isn’t helpful, haha).
_______________________________________________
Breaking away from “methods” and “processes”
_______________________________________________
I’m seeing a big pattern in personal development, and the pattern I see is that people learn a way of doing things that is extremely relevant to them (and their desires, preferences, disposition, strengths, weaknesses, etc), and then they try to teach that process to others.
Of course, this usually doesn’t work. They are good intentioned and all, but I think instead of teaching a specific process, people should focus on empowering people to create what they want/what is suited to them. Examples of the specific methods and process the “teacher” uses can still be shared with the “student”, however that is primarily for the purpose of example – to give a state of being to reach for, not a process to follow.
Honestly, I think if you want to do anything -- and yes, I do mean *anything* -- you need to find do what meets your preferences and desires.
_______________________________________________
How I go about receiving “guidance”
_______________________________________________
The title of this point is a bit misleading, since I find guidance isn’t something you receive or can “listen” for. For me, it’s always there, and I don’t need to do anything to hear it – I just need to “allow” it to come through by not trying to “effort” it out of wherever it comes from.
What I've instead learned is that I'm extremely intuitive in terms of feeling, and I seem to be able to interpret conceptual guidance from what I feel. I can usually put it into words as well, although the words are more so a translation of the vibration/feeling that I feel. Essentially, it goes:
"a sense of knowing" -> "a feeling" -> abstract concepts that contain a lot of data -> translation of those base thought-concepts to more granular data such as words, images, audio, and lower level thought.
_______________________________________________
Side tangent - Thinking without translation
_______________________________________________
It'd be nice if I could think without feeling the need to translate concepts into language and lower level thoughts (it greatly streamlines the thinking process), but it's not really something I've explored, and I think it'd be pretty difficult because we are so used to putting our thoughts into language with things like writing, speaking, etc.
Of course, I'm sure it'd be possible, it's just a matter of meeting certain conditions and training yourself to think more naturally as opposed to adapting to your language conditioning. Steve mentioned that he experienced something similar to this when he adapted to polyphasic sleep. I've no idea if that's a benefit that stayed with him after he went back to monophasic, but you can
read about it here under the heading of "Nonverbal Thinking".
_______________________________________________
What you can do
_______________________________________________
I suggest you learn to use your emotions and your OWN guidance. Stop listening to other people so much and listen to yourself. There’s a good chance that you know what to do. And this type of guidance goes beyond things like “common sense” and “but what if I don’t know what to do and I do the wrong thing”.
Intuitively, at least for me, I pretty much know exactly what to do in every situation. The only challenge is breaking free from my conditioning that tells me I need to do this and that to get things to work and instead focusing on accepting my inner guidance and aligning myself with it.
Funny enough, our main challenges in life seem to come not from the innate difficulty of life, but from conditioning ourselve to act/behave/function in a manner that goes against our own nature, and then trying to break free of that conditioning so we may once again return to our natural state where we function most effectively.