Written by Elisabeth Kuhn 

As a professional intuitive and tarot card reader, I work with a wide variety of clients. Some show up on a regular basis looking for guidance. Some live their lives in a “tuned in” state but periodically request a reading for clarity. Lately, I have seen more clients just come wandering in with a rather dazed look on their face explaining that they are not sure why they are in a metaphysical shop – they have never had any interest in it but inexplicably walked in the door. As would be expected, each client has very different guidance come through in readings. What I find the most intriguing, however, is what similarities they have. Common threads seem to weave through our collective unconsciousness. When I see these surface it always feels profound, a connection to unity and in need of examining what role these commonalities play in our lives. I also feel guided to share this information with others.

One of the themes that has been coming through lately identifies some common blocks in manifesting what we want in our lives. When I do readings I feel my spirit guides send information through to me at different “volumes” when the volume goes up it indicates either urgency or a block where the client is resisting something in their lives. This message has repeatedly been loud, clear and unmistakable! When experts talk about manifestation, the suggestion to be specific and clear about what one desires is one of the main pieces of advice offered. My spirit guides are telling me that this is of utmost importance but can also be a trap that makes us feel stuck and does not allow our manifestation to come to fruition.

In addition to being a tarot card reader I am also a school teacher and throughout the year we place a great importance on setting goals for ourselves – teachers and students alike. Each time we set goals I talk about what makes for an appropriate goal and how to work your goal from the initial idea to a final draft. I often work with middle school students and a common initial idea for a goal is “make new friends,” which is a great initial idea but an unacceptable goal. We need to look deeper, what is blocking you from making new friends? Are you shy? Do your current friends get jealous? Have you been acting like a jerk? If you are shy, where did that originate? Have you been picked on in the past? Do you place too much emphasis on what a few people have said? If so, then your goal might be: “Take more risks in sharing who I am with others and work hard to ignore those few people that try to put me down.” This is a great goal to start us on our journey towards making new friends.

This goal-setting gives us a strong framework, a starting point, some internal work to focus on and an ultimate outcome we are heading to. What would you say to a 13-year-old if they came to you with this goal and explained how it was all going to play out. “I see how my shyness has held me back. I am now going to not care what others say about me, and I will be hanging out with the popular crowd.” You know the “popular crowd” this student is referring to are three students that are seldom nice to anyone else and are into some self-destructive behavior. I imagine you are thinking this is not a good idea. This does however meet the criteria of the student’s very worthy goal. If we went back to the goal we can fix this problem quite easily by just adding in the statement “for my highest good.” But, what if the 13 year old thinks their plan is for their highest good. As an adult you might say you have a better vantage point, a higher perspective from which to see the situation. The question is clear to you: why would anybody want to hang out with a clique that is nasty to others and don’t even treat themselves well? Wouldn’t it be nice if this teenager upon being offered your advice said, “Thank you. I know that you can see my life more clearly than I can myself and you know what is for my highest good. If I followed this idea I had, I would have been straying from my life purpose, following my ego and would have needed the lessons it provided to redirect me. I’m so happy I can just trust and listen to you all-knowing and all-seeing adult. You can guide me towards my life purpose, all I need to do is listen.” Often as adults we do feel like we can see how a situation will play out for teenagers. Teenagers often don’t want to listen to adults even if they recognize deep down that adults do know in a lot of cases what is good for them. A teenager’s ego is a powerful thing. It drives them to ignore advice and make mistakes, ones they ultimately learn and mature from. Their egos won’t have it any other way and when we were teenagers our egos ran our lives as well. That is a major contributor to what makes the teenage years so difficult and often filled with frustrations and disappointments.

As adults we have finally made it! We know what is for our highest good; we don’t need to keep straying from our life path and learning those very important and often painful lessons that redirect us back on track, right?

Yes, that was sarcasm and yes that was a rhetorical question. I am suggesting that we have not evolved quite as much as our egos would have us believe. In fact, if we were to compare how much we have evolved from birth through childhood, adolescence and into adulthood with the vantage point and higher perspective of our Spirit Guides, Angels and Ascended Masters, our Egos might not seem like such big players in the whole game.

This is where our block to manifesting our dreams comes in. Let’s say a woman named Beth has a lifelong passion for animals and a dream of working to help them and keep them safe. She decides to manifest this dream by creating a shelter where no animals will be euthanized and to do her part to help any animals that are suffering and homeless. She lists out all her ideas for the project and creates a board with pictures of the animals and shelter. She sees the perfect building for her shelter on her way to a friend’s house. It needs work she can’t do, but, she knows she can manifest somebody to come into her life that can do the work. She envisions the building all fixed up with a new sign on the front. She sees it full of animals, all healthy and safe. Beth feels how impressed people will be and how good she will feel. Her Ego is swelling with pride. A few weeks go by and she starts to get worried, a few months and she can’t figure out why this isn’t happening. Beth started out by setting intention with The Creator. She was specific and clear about what she wanted but all she has so far is a bunch of ideas in her head, fantasies she has been telling herself, fantasies she has become attached to. “This makes no sense” she says “all I want to do is help animals and keep them safe. Why would Spirit not help me with this?”

To help animals and keep them safe is ultimately her overall goal, a divinely inspired goal, her ego wants it to manifest in the form of a shelter. Her ego has been telling her how this should manifest, not The Creator. A realization is coming over Beth, in hindsight she is seeing so many missed opportunities, so many times Spirit tried to redirect her, so many times her ego kept her from seeing and listening. The first day she set her intentions for the shelter she received an e-mail from a group looking for volunteers to take a training to help educate others on spaying and neutering pets. She received a phone call from a similar group a few days later asking for a donation. That same week, after looking at the building she planned to use for her shelter, Beth had a flyer on her car windshield with an invitation to an informational meeting on how to help with feral cats in the neighborhood. Beth’s ego thought, oh no, competition, I really need to get this shelter moving before somebody else steals my idea. How human of her. She thought she was following divine guidance, and initially she was but then her ego stole the project and tried to dictate just how it should be. What if The Creator was calling on her to help animals through educating humans, the place where the problem is originating. She was trying to treat the symptoms. This story is a combination of similar themes, situations and ideas I have heard from various clients.   While the story itself is not real it is a reflection and compilation of other real stories.

How can we tell if our ego is taking over a divine idea and blocking manifestation? You can ask yourself, have I lost touch with the ultimate goal? Am I ignoring opportunities that would help me reach my goal because they are not how I imagined they would manifest? Am I seeing myself as the most important factor in the success or failure of the venture? Do I have faith that this idea is originating from Spirit?

Faith and trust are silly things! From a spiritual perspective we say they are of utmost importance. Our behavior often does not reflect this. In fact, we have a bad habit of placing our trust in our ego. Then, when things don’t work out we say, no wonder this didn’t work, my ego got involved. Not once have I heard somebody say, I can’t believe I let my trust in Spirit guide me again, no wonder it didn’t work! Maybe, humans are silly things and faith and trust are divine!

My Spirit Guides are telling me that so often an idea that originates from the Divine is hijacked by the ego. The ego tells us stories about how we should manifest the idea. Stories we become attached to, while losing track of the divine goal. We start locking in details that must happen for the manifestation to fulfill rather than allowing spirit to guide us into details. Each time we do this we limit possibilities. Eventually we block so many possibilities that manifestation is also blocked, and a divine idea is kept from manifesting through us.

So, what is the solution? Faith and trust in Spirit. Recognizing that we often don’t know what is for our highest good. We don’t have the vantage point and higher perspective of our Spirit Guides, Angels and Ascended Masters. When we truly believe and trust in this, we can listen and receive guidance (guidance from a higher vantage point.)