by Lynn Grabhorn

But you don't have to be starting a new business to have ideas, or hunches, or insights. Whether your Want is to find the fastest way around the traffic downtown or to find a new mate, all you have to do is pay attention to the signs that will come to make it happen ... and learn to trust them!

A phone call that comes out of the blue from an old friend, a TV show you normally don't watch, a feeling you got to read something, or call someone, or take that other road instead. These are all gentle little shoves from your Expanded Self, your Inner/Outer Guidance helping you stay on course towards your joy, even if it's just a better parking place in the rain. You've blasted Feel Good energy out there, mixed it with Wants, created corridors of energy flowing into massive vortexes, and now as you step into those vortexes, the Guidance comes. Your impulses to act -- to do this, go there, call them -- are coming from the magnetic activity initiated by your focused energy.

Shortly after embarking on this new path of deliberate creation, I was on my way to Portland in my beloved old '77 Mercury Monarch, a car that had been rebirthed many times since I'd had it because I loved the thing. New engines, new this's, new that's. But because of its age, my mechanics had recommended I start using a synthetic oil to reduce wear and tear. That was fine, except not only were synthetic oils somewhat rare at that time, this was some weirdo brand that had to be special ordered out of town.

I hadn't been out of the house farther than the grocery store for ages, and the two-hour drive to Portland was more than welcomed. I put on some of my soaring music and was just about on the edge of high-frequency bliss an hour later, flowing energy to this and that, when I remembered I hadn't put in the much-needed oil. I usually carried a couple of quarts of the oddball stuff in the car, but had forgotten that, too, and the prospect of finding this kind of oil -- that was never to be mixed with any other kind, of course -- was between zip and forget it along that farmland stretch of freeway in southern Washington.

I drove a few more miles, wondering what to do, when I got a hit to pull off at the next exit. Since I was pretty much following my hunches without hesitation by then, I shrugged my shoulders and pulled off onto a desolate country road not more than a quarter mile from the freeway.

What I found looked like an old abandoned mining town, or ghost town, replete with cockeyed, broken-down buildings all boarded up and so dilapidated they were tilting. I didn't see signs of life anywhere, but for some reason I stopped the car and got out, strangely aware that I was not questioning my decision to pull off the freeway, or thinking things like "what in the hell am I doing here," but just going along with the strange lead.

Then I saw it and couldn't believe my eyes. Not fifty feet in front of the car was another broken down building with a hastily hand-painted sign that said "Auto Shop."

I don't know how I'd missed it when I stopped, yet there it was, right smack in front of me. Dumbfounded, I walked in and asked if they carried any synthetic oil. Yes, they did, but they were sorry that the only kind they carried was Blurp, just the kind I needed. "Yes, Ma'am, our last two quarts, right over there!"

My head was whirling when I got back to the car. Sure, I was thrilled and excited beyond words. Sure, I was overjoyed to see the Law of Attraction so blatantly in action. But truthfully, I was numb. It was all so bloody obvious, so indisputable. My vibrations had been at an all-time peak. Then came a pressing requirement, but without an ounce of resistance such as, "I'm in trouble, I'll never find it, what'll I do?" With my vibrations at that pitch, I had instantly magnetized the solution, receiving loud and clear directions from my Expanded Self in the form of a super-strong hunch which I decided to follow. But man alive, how melodramatic can you get?

How did it happen? Who knows. Who cares! I got the hit, trusted it, acted on it, and it worked.

The point is to get off auto pilot and pay attention. Listen! Stay alert for that little push, watch for signs, tune in to hunches. If it feels good, it's Guidance.

Most of us don't let ourselves believe something can happen unless we can see ahead of time how all the pieces are going to fit together. So start watching for clues. Watch for the masterful coming together as all the missing parts take form and start dropping into place like magic. Now you've entered the uncanny world of synchronicity, you're plugged in, connected to your Source energy, going with the flow. But you'll never see it, or learn to trust it, if you're not watching for it.

With the possible exception of prayer, which is more often a plea from a closed rather than opened valve, precious few of us were ever taught to go inside, shut up and listen, much less follow! Follow what? Listen to whom? Nonsense! Take a pill. That's just imagination. It has no substance, no intellectual empirical data to back it up.

I love how we pretend that something doesn't exist, then turn right around and name it. We turn our noses up at "divine guidance," but curiously give it this wide range of names like gut-feeling, motivation, hit, intuition, sense, inspiration, impulse, urge, premonition, desire, imagination. It's all Guidance, the real You sending messages from the infinite intelligence You are, doing everything in Its power to pass on some ideas or direction before you shut down again.

Guidance is Soul-talk, God-talk, Inner Being-talk, Expanded Self-talk, Cosmic Escort-talk. Guidance does whatever is necessary to get our attention and help us step into our Wants, be it oil for the car or new hair for a shining head. But to make it work, we've got to learn to trust what we're picking up on that station.

A couple who were mortgage clients of mine -- I'll call them George and Sally -- were a little shaken when I got to their home one evening to take their loan application. When I asked what was wrong, George said he and his wife had just missed being in a serious eight-car pile up on the freeway, and they were still feeling "really spooked," as he put it.

They worked at different places, but commuted together. Seems they were coming home from work on the freeway as usual, and George was beginning to get antsy being stuck behind a large, red, wobbly truck in front of them, so he decided to change lanes. Out of nowhere Sally said, "Honey, don't do that! We've got to get off this freeway right now!" There was the customary explosion about how silly that was, then finally, to keep the peace, George turned off at the next exit and headed for some very out-of-the-way back roads.

When they got home, George switched on the local TV news as usual, and saw his wobbly red truck in the middle of a pile up, squashed between two cars not a mile down the freeway from where they had exited. There were two fatalities.

That was one tuned-in lady who followed her Guidance without hesitation. How many of us would have listened, much less acted by taking another road?

The cosmic joke is that we were designed to do just that, to live by our senses, not by our brains. But over the eons we've learned to think our responses instead of feel them, totally backwards from the way all the rest of nature lives. Animals and plants do it (live by their senses), while all of us closed-down, disconnected humans snicker at it. But when you really start playing the Feel Good game, I promise, it's better than an all-day ticket to Disneyland. You listen and do, listen and do, listen and do, trusting your Guidance without hesitation.

So if you have five dozen friends and family telling you to do "this," but your deepest impulse is to do "that," always, always follow your impulse (provided it feels good!). Why? Just do it a few times and you'll see why. Your Guidance system is doing all it knows how to get you where you want to go to follow your Original Intent. So give it a chance. Tune in and listen up; that Expanded Self knows what it's doing.