Signs and Signposts

A signpost is a message from the universe to help you move forward. Some are subtle. Some are about as subtle as a brick. They come all day and every day, especially once you are on a spiritual path, and the only real question is whether you notice them.

Life is a video game

The easiest way I have found to explain it is a video game.

If you have ever played one, you know the game is full of clues placed to help you get to the next level. You learn to open doors, open cupboards, read the letters left lying about. Miss the clues and you do not pass the checkpoint, so you play the level again. And again. Sometimes you repeat it so often you can predict it to the second and know exactly what is around the next corner.

Life on earth works the same way. You have quests to complete, lessons to learn, and a great many clues to help you move up a level. Once you have played it a few times you get better and better at finding the clues and passing the levels.

Where they turn up

Signposts come in every form you can imagine, and some you cannot. I could never list them all, but here are the usual ones.

A song on the radio at exactly the right moment, or the lyrics of one that will not leave your head.

A random magazine you pick up in a waiting room. Do they still have those?

A conversation you overhear in a café that lands so hard it could have been meant for you.

The writing on the side of a bus.

A book, a film, a television series, talkback radio.

A chance meeting.

A dream you remember when you wake. The Dreams page has more on that.

Some people get them through events in their lives that look random. They are not random.

One I am fond of: when you are looking for an answer, pick up a random book, close your eyes and hold your question in your mind. While you hold it, open the book to any page and read the first thing in front of you. You will often find what you were looking for. Just do not use a dictionary, a phone book or a recipe book. Baking scones is hard to interpret.

From a whisper to thermonuclear

We all ignore signposts. Every one of us.

It usually happens when we are in a situation we want, hope, believe and wish will change for the better, even though we know deep down it will not. We want to believe that this time it might be different. I think everybody reading this can relate to that.

So the universe starts with a whisper. If you ignore the whisper, the message comes back a little louder. Ignore that and it gets louder again. Keep ignoring it and it eventually reaches thermonuclear levels, and by then you should have listened a long time ago. The Life Lessons page follows that through, because the same pattern runs through every lesson you came here to learn.

When it looks like bad luck

Sometimes the signposts do not look like help at all.

Imagine a run of a few weeks where you fall over and skin your knees, you get hit with expenses you never planned for, you accidentally break something you need for work, and you have an argument with someone you care about.

It would be very easy to call that a run of bad luck.

Look at it again as guidance. You are being nudged to shift direction so you can walk through a door that leads to much greater things. Knowing you are being guided lets you see each of those events as a learning curve and a small change of course.

There are plenty of clichés about it seeming darkest just before it gets better. Life has a way of giving us the gift of staying true to our path. If you go with it, you will soon see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Becoming the observer

So how do you find the clues?

You start listening. You start watching. You start observing. You look for consistent messages, the same thing turning up from different directions.

Be the observer in your own life. Change your focus to taking notice. If you can, start a journal and put down your daily events, what happened, who you ran into, what you heard. Pretty soon you will see a pattern emerge.

And the more you see, the more you WILL see.

Once you start looking for them, you will find an abundance of messages. They might be a warning. They might be a reward. They might be a new path to explore, new people to meet, or old people to catch up with. In time you will realise the guidance is there all the time, in subtle and not so subtle ways.

It is also a lot of fun. There is a particular pleasure in getting a message and then watching it be verified.

Looking back

Here is a gentle place to start. Go back through your memory and look for the signposts you have already had. You will be able to identify past signposts in your life, some you took and some you did not.

When a sign matters, when it is pointing you at a decision you have to make, it helps to check it. The Three Source Rule page is how I do that. The Your Guides page is where you meet the helpers sending a good many of them.

What is a signpost life has shown you recently, and did you take it?

If you would like this read against your own chart, my readings are here.