But as my spiritual journey deepened, and I reached middle age, my desire and ability to create on sheer will disappeared. When I no longer believed my master assessment, "I'm not smart enough," the challenge to prove myself became meaningless. I was left feeling flat and lost, without another way to create my list of projects and desires. How would I move forward?

I was in the midst (and perhaps for a long time) of the classic spiritual journey: moving from creating and living from ego-mind, that easily exhausted small "I," to creating and living from the vast, unknowable inexhaustible "All." I was learning to access to the deeper well of creativity and meaning. I had certainly observed this same shift in many of my coaching clients and retreat participants, and I came to see it as part of everyone’s essential journey.

I began to build a bridge from where I was stranded to where I wanted to live (not just visit from time to time), by beginning to regularly listen to something larger than myself. By beginning to understand the spiritual principle, "Thy Will Be Done," does not mean, "If I am good enough, pious enough, the Divine will grant me what I want." Rather, it means surrendering and being willing to do what God leads me to do, and being willing to really listen to guidance, without any guarantees of success or comfort or even doing what I want.

Many of us might complain, "But I listen and I don’t hear anything."

My personal bridge began to include a stronger dedication to regular practices that dissolve the blocks to the guidance that Myss assures us is right here, right now – and I know she is correct. And dedication to practices that help me remember what I hear, for I’ve noticed that when I do allow guidance through, I can forget it within a nanosecond.

The wisdom traditions offer us thousands of physical, emotional, and mental practices to choose from to help us hear past the ego-mind’s chatter, past our fears and stories. What’s important is to find practices that work for you – not what you think you should be doing, but what you are naturally drawn to – and then commit to regular practice. The guidance is always available, right now, and you and I don’t need to go to graduate school in contemplative religion to access it, but we do need to train the mind to get out of the way. Mindfulness meditation, yoga asanas, contemplative prayer, sacred mantras, and silent meditation retreats are excellent examples.

The insights and guidance come and are probably coming to you even as you read this article. Your next responsibility is to remember to pull the gold from the human sea of forgetfulness. Devise or adopt a system to help you remember and use it weekly – or even daily. My favorite way is to use mindful questions and journaling. Examples of a mindful question include, "What does my body need in this moment?" or "What am I resisting right now?" or "What am I afraid of?" and "How is that fear shaping my choices today?" I use a few mindful questions each week to stay on track with listening and remembering, and to stay out of pushing and willing. Combined with hatha yoga, spiritual reading, meditation, and raising a nine-year-old, it all helps to keep me in the sweet spot of listening and surrendering – most of the time!

In the end, we must "proceed at the pace of guidance," as spiritual teacher and writer Christina Baldwin says in "The Seven Whispers." We can only hear as much guidance as our bodies and our minds can bear. Let yourself move at the pace that is right for you – because there is no final goal to reach, no big payoff. It’s all right here, right now! The unique path of your life is being revealed to you, one step at a time, right now. Gently tell your mind to get out of the way and allow yourself to listen. I’ll join you.