Well Guided: Introduction

One person’s weird is another person’s normal.

In 2009, God asked me to write a book. This is not that book. It’s so much more.

This book started out as the backstory of that book. How and why it was written. The meta, if you will. When I wrote that first book, back in 2009, I had no writing expert to guide me on the craft of writing. I knew nothing of pacing, suspense, and when to dig deeper.

All I had to help me with craft was one university-level class in Technical Writing and twenty years of writing technical reports in a corporate job. Admittedly, a few of those reports made their way into conference proceedings. And one made its way into a textbook as a real-life example of the topic at hand.

If you were to read my 2009 book today (don’t bother), you would say it sounded like it was written by an engineer who was also a preacher. Because it was. Well, a mathematician to be precise. No matter. Let’s just call it practice.

This time, when God led me to write another book, I was also led to a writing mentor. The upshot is, you’ll like this book a lot better, trust me. 

This book starts from the beginning—when I first started talking to God. I want to give you the highlights of the surprising experiences that marked the first twenty-ish years of keeping a spiritual journal in which I record my conversations with God.

You Talk to God?

One person's weird is another person's normal.

For a long time, I thought I was weird because I have conversations with God on a regular basis. But the more I research this practice, the more I see this is not weird. It’s just that not many people go public about their experiences. I hope to change that.

To start with, there are books on the subject, such as God Calling and Conversations with God and Jesus Calling. Plenty of other books include descriptions of talking with God. You just have to read carefully to find them. Think of The Artist's Way or The Wisdom Jesus.

This is just my physical collection. I have even more on Kindle.

A year after I began this book (in 2023), Julia Cameron, author of the beloved classic, The Artist’s Way, came out with Living the Artist’s Way: An Intuitive Path to Creativity. This work explains exactly the sort of conversations I’ve been having for over 30 years. She calls it Guidance. I would agree with that term.

What I'm talking about here is writing a letter to God and having God respond. No, God doesn't send email or snail mail. But God does put words into my head. And as those words flow, I write them down.

So, before we look at how this works, let’s define some terms. Here’s what Ronald Klug says about journaling in How to Keep a Spiritual Journal:

A journal is … a place to record daily happenings. [It is] also a tool for self-discovery, an aid to concentration, a mirror for the soul, a place to generate and capture ideas, a safety valve for the emotions, a training ground for the writer, and a good friend and confidant.

He adds that a spiritual journal is one kept specifically for the purpose of spiritual growth. He explains that spiritual growth means “our lives are increasingly directed by the Holy Spirit.” Klug is writing from a Christian perspective, and a fairly traditional, conservative Christian perspective. 

I am a progressive Christian. And, I don’t believe it’s necessary to be any kind of Christian to engage in this little-known, undervalued, but life-changing spiritual practice.

A spiritual practice is an activity you engage in to get in touch with your spiritual side. Often these become habits—a foundation of our spiritual life. Examples include meditation, prayer, some forms of yoga, gratitude, reflection, chanting, generosity, and, of course, journaling.

So, given that this book is about my early, trial-and-error experiences with spiritual journaling, and given Klug’s definitions, I imagine you’ll expect that my life has been increasingly directed by the Holy Spirit. And it has.

In fact, I have been directed and taught.

As I was writing that first book, back in 2009, I came across a Bible verse that sparked my imagination. In John 6:45, Jesus says, “It is written in the prophets, ‘And they shall all be taught by God.’” In mulling over that verse, I began to see my experience as one long example of being taught by God. I even invented a name for it: the International Academy of God.

My story uses Christian language to describe my journey. Your world and your spiritual references might be completely different. 

I would not expect you, dear reader, to think about your life being directed by the Holy Spirit if your life is directed by Yahweh, Jehovah, Allah, Krishna, the Buddha, the Divine Feminine, Ahura Mazda, or any other deity, Spirit, or Source, including the Universe, or even your own inner voice.

This book identifies the source of guidance as God, Lord, the Holy Spirit, the Spirit, or the Creator. Whatever you want to call it/her/him/them is your business. I’m here to say that if you aren’t tapping into the guidance within, you’re missing some really amazing FREE help.

I Didn’t Make This Up

As I say, this practice isn’t often written about openly. There are a lot of reasons why that is. But the practice has an influential history. For example, it was integral to the teachings of the Oxford Group. You might recognize the reach of that group. A few of its members brought the world the Twelve-Step Program of Alcoholics Anonymous. 

Way back in the early 1930's (before AA was created), the Oxford Group encouraged entire families (including children) to engage in a daily morning routine they called Quiet Time. The main element of Quiet Time involved asking God for guidance for the day, with the intent to follow it, and then writing down God's response.

There are a number of resources that explain the process of listening for guidance, known to the Oxford Group as two-way prayer. I particularly like the directions provided in a resource from the 1930s entitled How to Listen to God: An Original Oxford Group Pamphlet by Chaplain John Batterson (available at twowayprayer.org/resources).

By contrast, Julia Cameron’s 2024 book explores the process from the perspective of the creative/artistic life. She describes the process, shows us how it fits into her life (and her friends’ lives), and offers exercises to help her readers get started. As I said, she calls it, simply, Guidance.

Minister/teachers Mark and Patti Virkler call it two-way journaling. They have been offering books and courses on the topic from a Christian point of view since the 1980s. They are a good resource for the scriptural basis of the practice.

And there are other authors, as well. Once you start looking, you’ll discover descriptions of various forms of Listening for Guidance all over the place, under many different names, linked to a variety of spiritual philosophies.

Until now, I have simply called my practice spiritual journaling. However, Klug would say that’s an umbrella term for all sorts of journals, including prayer journals, gratitude journals, Examen journals, and others. So after learning more about others’ practices, I now call it Listening for Guidance.

Here’s what Father Bill W (on twowayprayer.org) says about the practice:

Sometimes people ask me, “How do you know it’s really God’s Voice you’re hearing? How do you know it’s not just you?” My answer is I really don’t know— and in the end, it really doesn’t matter. If it’s me, it’s the best part of me I’ve ever found and it’s the part I need to start listening to more and more. 

It’s the small, still Voice that quiets the raucous “ego voices” of guilt and shame, anger and fear, addiction and self-destruction. Those are voices I’ve known and listened to all of my life. At 20 years sober, it was time for a major change to my program and not just a little tweaking around its edges. 

What I discovered through Two Way Prayer was yet another Promise of the [AA] Big Book coming true: “When we draw near to Him, He discloses Himself to us!” (Big Book p. 57)

While not officially a part of contemporary Twelve-Step programs, the practice still has its adherents. In 2017, Alcoholism Treatment Quarterly published, ”Two Way Prayer: A Lost Tool for Practicing the 11th Step.” The paper’s abstract summarizes the authors’ conclusions about the value of two-way prayer:

Initial evaluation suggests promising outcomes among a sampling of youth and adults engaged in a peer-support group for drug and alcohol recovery. 

The paper includes a brief history of the practice in the Oxford Group and AA. Although the authors are speaking from a Christian perspective, they do recommend adopting a more spiritually inclusive approach:

Broadening the concept of God from the more traditional Oxford Group model to one allowing greater self-definition of a higher power opens the prayer practice to individuals not having a religious conception of spirituality.

I was glad to see this observation. I believe this practice works regardless of someone’s personal image of the entity or force giving the guidance.

Julia Cameron also agrees:

Guidance is direction that comes from a higher source of wisdom than we ordinarily encounter. It is the response of the universe to a question, “What about X?” Guidance is available to all of us. It is not the specialty of an elite few. Rather, anyone can ask for guidance and receive it. All that is required is an open mind…

“What about X?” we pose the question, and we find our query being answered. Something or somebody responds to us. We “hear” information that satisfies our wondering. Guidance is simple and direct, yet powerful.

A Word About Wording

I have taken the liberty of assuming God’s pronouns are They/Their, although I was raised to use He/Him. You may notice me still using male pronouns when I quote from my journal, because I wrote it long before being conscious of gendered language. Even now, when I address God, I am likely to fall into the old habit of calling Them Father or Lord, even though I really think about God as a parent, mentor, presence, and as energy and light.

So, naturally, with journal writing, language is an issue. I’ve tried to be candid about how my thinking has changed, and what I’ve learned, not just from the practice but from reflecting on the process and trying to share it with others, aka, you.

As you read the journal entries, you will notice the wording of God’s responses sometimes sound like an older form of English. Here’s my take on that, and I hope you can relate. Let me start with a couple of friendly analogies.

When my eldest son was in college, he listened to the Harry Potter books on his iPod as he walked to and from class. Having grown up with Harry, he knew those stories intimately. He even adopted British slang words from the books (like sketchy and dodgy) that hadn't been in his vocabulary previously. He would frequently refer to incidents or characters or Latin charms from the books, and expect his listener to understand. Which I did, having read the books right alongside him. 

Same with Disney. We were embarking on a walk one day, approaching the woods. He looked up into the trees and said, "How high does a sycamore grow?" I responded, without even thinking, "If you cut it down, you'll never know." He smiled. "I was wondering if you'd get that." Of course I had. I speak Disney.

It's the same with me and God. God knows I speak King James Bible. I was raised as a Christian before the days of the Easy-to-Read-type proliferation of popular Bibles. So sometimes God uses that archaic language, knowing full well that I'll understand. Had I spent my childhood immersed in the Tao, I have no doubt God would speak Tao to me.

My point is, so long as messages are coming through the conscious brain, they must be understandable and meaningful. Otherwise, we’ll miss the messages entirely.

Why This Book?

You already know God asked me to write this book. There’s more to that, of course.

In my faith tradition, we like to say the path of the disciple travels inward and outward.

Inward refers to deepening our relationship with God and reflecting on life’s events from a spiritual perspective. Back in 2009, I was all about the outward path. I didn’t understand the part about reflection. I wasn’t even that clear about the value of reflection when I started on this book. But my writing mentor challenged me to look deeper, and when I did, I gained a whole new understanding of my own history and how God has helped to shape my life. 

Using writing to look back now helps me find the deeper meaning in, well, everything. I can see the wisdom at work in ways I could not see at the time. Writing this book has taken me to unexpected places in my understanding. I’ve come away with a whole new level of appreciation for how God works in people’s lives. 

This shift was unexpected and invaluable. I now take every opportunity to encourage others to try writing their own spiritual life stories.

As for the outward path I spoke of a moment ago: outward refers to sharing our faith—what some would call our testimonies or witness—with others, i.e., our stories of how God has worked in our lives.

In my faith tradition, we have a long history of sharing how God is working in our lives. We often do this as a planned part of our gatherings—sharing openly, verbally. We set aside time to tell the sacred stories of our lives. Unfortunately, only a small group of trusted church friends usually get to hear those stories.

I don’t think that’s enough. Not anymore.

I’m writing this book for that huge cohort of people who might be missing out. Folks who are spiritual but not religious—SBNRs, they’re called—are those who have exited the churches, and are finding meaning outside the confines of religion. People who aren’t going to church, or who don’t have a sacred circle for sharing openly and freely, are not likely to hear those incredibly moving stories. 

Even in churches, you aren’t likely to hear such stories. There’s a stigma attached to putting this truth out there. People are afraid others will think they’re weird, deluded. It all sounds very woo-woo, right up there with talking about being abducted by aliens. You get the idea.

Cameron acknowledges this reluctance. She spent three decades talking about her first three tools (including the famous Morning Pages), but had barely mentioned Guidance. Until her book from early 2024:

I have a fear of having departed from our accepted rational path. Guidance, after all, lays out a spiritual path, an intuitive path, one taking us to believe in what we cannot, rationally, know. Is it any wonder we feel fearful, lest we be judged a little “touched,” a little “crazy”?

As I age and change, I find that people are more willing to talk about intuition and the role it plays in living life to the fullest. They’re more willing to seek guidance or take up a spiritually oriented practice. Heck, some folks are even coming around to taking alien abductions seriously. Maybe it’s time we took seriously one another’s stories about our relationship with God.

I want you to hear my story. Maybe my telling will encourage you to tell your stories, and yours will help others tell their stories. The more we reflect on our spiritual life stories, the sooner we’ll recognize the truth. Guidance is our birthright. We are not alone.

I’m trying an experiment with feedback and comments. I plan to start separate chat threads for each chapter. The intent is to provide a place for substantive CONSTRUCTIVE feedback.

Once you join chat, you’ll need to look for the relevant thread. In this case, it’s the one beginning: FEEDBACK THREAD -- Well Guided: Introduction

On the other hand, if you just want to leave a quick message not intended to encourage me to re-think this whole writer thing (not that you’d say anything like that, even in the chat) then please just leave the love in the Comments.

If you aren’t getting these chapters in your inbox each week, but you’d like to get them hot off the presses every Friday morning, subscribe here. (It’s free!)