This guide is based upon three of my most important beliefs: (1) each one of us can personally receive guidance directly from the Divine, (2) Divine guidance is not only a universal cure-all which can help you solve your problems, it will prevent you from getting into them in the first place, and (3) this kind of energy can also enrich your life in ways you never thought possible. So how can you bring this blessing into your life? Here are the steps:

In your daily prayers, you need to ask the Divine to help you. This is the first thing you must do: set aside a certain time every day to pray for Divine assistance. Mind you, you should not try to make any kind of gimme prayer, such as asking the Almighty to help you acquire a new Ferrari. But if you need help with relationships, health, addictions, or messes in general, go ahead and ask for help. I keep an ever-evolving list of the problems I am currently dealing with and ask for assistance about each one of them in my daily communion with the eternal. The nice thing about prayer is that once you get into the habit of it, your time with the Divine will turn into the most precious part of your day.

Next, you must give permission for the Divine or the angels to help you. This second step is the most important of them all. As I discuss in Chapter 5 of The Compleat Psychic, you can ask for help as much as you can, but the Divine will seldom assist you unless you also specifically give permission for the assistance to happen. Permission is necessary since the most important Divine law in our universe seems to be that of free will. The notion about giving permission has never been recorded in any scripture I have ever come across, but my own experience tells me that it is crucial if you wish to receive Divine assistance. I've noticed that asking and giving permission works most noticeably when the petitioner is dealing with what seems to be an insoluble problem such as chemical addiction or a life-threatening illness. However, it can also work with any other kind of difficulty.

Focus on your most important issues. When you formulate your prayers, you will probably realize that there are hundreds of ways your life can be improved. However, it is best to focus on the most important areas of your life where you need assistance, such as the following:

• If you want to release negative energies, you need to ask/give permission for the Divine to help you free yourself from whatever you realize is harming you, such as bad habits, addictions, obsessions, money or status desires, self-pity, depression, past traumas, or illness. It is also a good idea to ask for protection from any kind of negative external energy, including accidents, natural or man-made disasters, malevolent human beings, and all the toxic chemicals which are currently poisoning our society.
• If certain aspects of your life are currently working, you should ask/give permission to continue in this state of being, including preserving your current weight, maintaining harmonious relationships, remaining in your present employment, or continuing to experience a sound mind in a sound body.
• If you want to bring new and beneficial energies into your life, you need to ask/give permission to acquire energies such as self-discipline, courage, gratitude, self-reliance, creativity, interpersonal skills, and psychic ability.

It never hurts to ask/give permission for planetary problems as well. In an interconnected universe, you have as much right to ask/give permission for the well-being of your fellow sentient beings as anyone else. This means that along with your personal prayers, it is a good idea to ask/give permission for the Divine to help create earthly betterment, as follows:

• Ask/give permission for the Divine to help release negative planetary energies such as violence, greed, racism, tyranny, status-seeking, cruelty to any kind of sentient being including animals, and those illusions called separateness and inequality.
• Ask/give permission for the Divine to help increase positive planetary energies such as harmony, joy, benevolence, communion, and balance. Most importantly, ask/give permission that all sentient beings can learn how to sense and utilize Divine energy.

Make sure you include the idea of the summum bonum (which is Latin for "the supreme good") in your prayers for assistance. Whenever you ask the Divine for help, it matters very much that you ask not only for yourself, but also for the well-being of all sentient beings. If you focus only on your own personal needs, the less likely you will receive Divine assistance. And if there is anything unethical about your request for help, you may as well forget it. A man who asks/gives permission for the recovery of his health, in order that he can return to his customary habits of robbing widows and orphans, is going to stay very much sick.

You then need to do everything in your power to improve your situation. Asking/giving permission is never enough. You should then start doing your best to practice the idea that God helps those who help themselves, which is a notion that has been around since classical antiquity. So don't ever think about sitting back and waiting for miracles to start happening in your life. You must also do everything in your power to improve your situation. This does not necessarily mean running off to some kind of expert to be handed a palliative, which in today's addled culture usually does more harm than good. You must begin to practice the kind of self-reliance necessary bring about positive changes in your life, including (for example) changing your diet, trying a new type of exercise, releasing your various ego-gratification scenarios, acquiring new skills, or discarding whatever negative energies which have been poisoning your psyche. Recommendations about how you can exercise yourself out of your bad habits are given in Chapters 14-19 of The Compleat Psychic.

Learn the noble art of divination. It will be noted that the preceding step, trying to help yourself, is the most difficult. How can you know what needs to be changed in your life? Or how can you tell that some kind of dietary or exercise change will actually improve your health? Questions like these can be answered very easily when you learn how to work with an oracular tool. So not only do you need to set aside time for prayer each day, you also need to make time for divination. And if you don't know which oracular tool to use, I recommend the Pamela Colman Smith tarot deck, which is more commonly known as the Rider-Waite deck. If you need help in learning how to work with tarot, you can either read The Compleat Psychic or my shorter Ten-Minute Guide to Reading Tarot Cards.

Bring rta into your life. Rta is a Proto-Indo-European word which refers both to the Godhead as well as to the manifestation of Divine energy. It is the ancestor of contemporary words such as create, harmony, art, ritual, karma, and dharma. Once upon a time all these very different terms meant the same thing: Divine energy. Whenever ancient people created art or music, ritualized their existence, or tried to live in harmony with cosmic law (also known as practicing the dharma), they filled themselves with the energies of the Divine. This is something which can still be done today by anyone at any time. All you need to do is start living the kind of existence where what matters is creation, spiritual energies, and the pursuit of wisdom. Then you should try to ritualize your everyday habits so that your life is constantly filled with harmonious patterns. Most importantly, you should start to practice that rta word known as create. Let us not forget that the world's most sacred scriptures are mostly in agreement about one thing, namely that the primal energy of the Divine is creation. It happened in the beginning, and it continues to happen all the time. Have you ever wished you could live like a god? Well, forget about building yourself a magnificent marble palace on top of Mt. Olympus. You simply need to start doing what the Divine does: create. See Chapter 18 of The Compleat Psychic for more suggestions about creation.

Finally, you need to thank the Divine and the angels for the help that you receive. Once you get the hang of all of the above, I guarantee that you will start to see improvements in your life. I've noticed that as time goes on, not only do most of my problems seem to resolve themselves, but the number of troublesome issues in my life is constantly diminishing. Along with my list of my current problems, I also keep a list of issues which have been resolved over the years, so I will never forget how the Divine has helped me. All of which means that every day of your life you also need to express your gratitude to the Divine for the assistance you receive, even when the assistance is not immediately evident. It just so happens that the word gratitude is descended from the same Proto-Indo-European word for grace (gwere), and this means, as far as I'm concerned, that when you thank the Divine for the assistance you have received, you are filling yourself with Divine grace.

April, 2016