How Do You Know When The Universe Is Communicating With You?

During a recent retreat, Susan and Joseph were asked “How do you know when the Universe is communicating with you?” This discussion is the result.

Susan: There’s an assumption in that question that we need to get out of the way first; How do you know it’s the Universe? That’s another good question. I guess I choose to believe in something with more knowledge than me and I chose to call that thing “The Universe”. How do you know?

Joseph: For me it’s a specific and unique experience. Not unique in the sense of “it happens once and never again”, unique in the sense of “I have no experiences that are similar to it.”

Susan: For me it’s a stronger, more “sure”, definitive feeling than just intuition. It’s a strong statement in my own voice in my head giving me an answer to a question I didn’t even know I asked. Maybe I do nonconsciously ask a question, and even before I could think on it or realize the question was in there, the answer came to me. Or when I go to do something, I will physically stop the action so that it’s not completed and realize it’s not time to do whatever I wanted to do. Or I will be stopped from saying something.

Joseph: What is the sensation of being stopped or knowing it’s not time like?

Susan: Sometimes it’s as simple as a website not working that I wanted to do something with. I don’t have a physical sense of somebody stopping me, it’s just, I guess, I get a sense of “not yet”. Or if I want to say something, I’ll open my mouth to say it and just shake my head and go “no” to myself. Or, the other way to be stopped, is when something distracts me and I don’t seem to get back to what I want to do for days and then it’s either not important any more or I’ll realize it wasn’t and isn’t the time to do whatever it was I was going to do. And sometimes an alternative solution has presented itself.

Joseph: Is it like a vibration or something?

Susan: No. If it’s anything, it’s like – I can’t even say it’s like hitting a wall – it’s not that I hear a “no”, I sense “not yet”. I mean, in certain instances I hear a definitive “this is what it means” and at other times I sense it is or isn’t time to do something.

Joseph: Do you ever see anything?

Susan: No. Sometimes and I know this works with us, when we’re wanting to do something, we’ll know we’re missing a piece of information or how to do it and then we’ll get that information that we needed from someone we talk to or something we read and we’ll go “aHA! That’s why I didn’t do that thing earlier.”

Joseph: So you have faith that it’s The Universe…

Susan: … communicating to me in a way I’ll understand. Sometimes it’ll be in a dream.

Joseph: Any examples?

Susan: When I knew it was okay for me to get a horse. I love penny candy and I had a dream where I walked into a penny candy store with a credit card meaning I could have what I wanted. I’ve dreamt that my father, who passed, was happy and on a golf course. And that one of our dogs, Fenris, was okay on the other side. And not in a dream, but I knew, looking at my horse, in her eyes, that it was time, that she was tired and ready to go.

How do you know it’s the Universe?

Joseph: I have a sense that I would call a “shutting down”. It’s very obvious to me, it’s something that has happened all my life although at times I ignored it or…I’m tempted to use the phrase “betrayed it”…because I actively chose not to listen. It’s also distinctly “not me”, in the sense that it’s not my voice. I have a very definite sense that whatever is communicating with me is not my own conscious or nonconscious. There’s a sense of “otherness” about it and all my normal processing (if you will) stops until the communication is complete. Thankfully these communications are instantaneous, time-wise. People don’t see me stop moving or having a seizure or going into a fugue state. At least no one’s told me so, anyway. But people who are familiar with me, people who work and study with me, have witnessed it, I’m sure. You’ve told me that I often look away, a look of concentration or attention on my face, like I’m focused or paying attention to something nobody else is aware of. Except sometimes others are aware of it, too, and then we can compare notes on our experiences (very helpful, that).

Susan: Yeah, that’s a good thing.

Joseph: And that “recognizing otherness” is one reason why we train to know the differences between ourselves and others, to know when something that is not us is communicating with us.

The “shutting down” itself is a combined auditory, kinesthetic, tactile sensation. Sometimes visual, depending on the message and it’s meaning. For example, I recently saw a shark surfacing, much like the poster on “Jaws”, while I eating dinner on a patio at the lodge. At the same time, I knew a friend was having a difficult experience because that friend has many water entities associated with him. So I don’t think it was really a shark on the porch of the lodge, I mean I realize what I was staring at was a chair by a table, but some part of me somehow knew that friend was having a moment and the way the Universe communicated it to me was by showing me something that I would consider a threat in the water.

Susan: But that interpretation was specific to you.

Joseph: Correct. That message and it’s meaning were specific to my experiences and understandings. I consider a shark in the water a threat but I knew the threat wasn’t directed at me.

Susan: How did you know?

Joseph: Ah. I guess I’d add olfactory and gustatory to the list of sensations to answer that. Somatosensory, too. I smelled and tasted my friend and I could feel my body shift into — more like “adopt” — his body for a second. But I’ve never actually smelled or tasted my friend. It’s more like a “knowing” and that knowing is communicated through sensory experience.

Susan: Right, but I wouldn’t have had that experience even though I could have received the same information.

Joseph: Correct. The same message may have been given to someone else using completely different symbology that would communicate the same meaning to them. That’s also why we study things like information mechanics and semiotics. It’s not “what” is communicated, it’s the meaning behind the communication.

Susan: It’s like the candy store. I knew the meaning of that dream was that I could get the horse. Penny candy is special to me so I knew the penny candy equated to the horse which I’ve always wanted since I was four years old. We’d been talking about if it was okay for me to get my own horse and that’s how I got my answer.

Joseph: Yes, exactly. Often two or more people in the Practice will have a simultaneous experience and it’s communicated to them completely differently. Usually what each learns augments what the other learns, so there’s a reason more than one person is involved in the communication. That happens to us a lot.

Susan: Right. Sometimes we’ll each get a part of something and have to put them together to understand what’s being communicated. Or I’ll get something and you’ll understand the meaning or you’ll get something and I’ll understand the meaning but we won’t understand the meanings ourselves.

Joseph: True. That happens a lot.

Susan: Can you give some examples of situations where you knew it was the Universe? Has it helped you make decisions? Like when you knew it was time to get a dog?

Joseph: Correct. I had a dream where I was at a crossroads, an intersection, and there were three crop fields and one uncleared field that still had stones and trees, almost a woods, and wasn’t leveled, it wasn’t ready for planting. Even though the other fields were cleared they weren’t planted. It was as if there had been one huge field and the crossroads divided it into four fields.

Anyway, I remember that I took the road that was between a cleared field and the wooded one, and eventually had to go over some boulders and through the woods, but I also knew my dog was there. I could hear him calling me by name. I couldn’t find the dog but I knew it was time to start looking and that there was a dog waiting for us, but not time to actually go pick out a dog. We were being given time to get all sorts of dog things together – food, bowls, toys, beds, stuff like that.

We got a call that a dog was coming up from the south (we adopt rescues) and both of us felt, “No, not yet”, so getting that call was confusing. Then we found out that that dog got sick and couldn’t come up on the transport. About a week later we got a call that another dog was coming up and we both felt “Yes”. We went to the shelter when he was there and he promptly came out of his crate, sat in my lap and peed on me. We laughed and said, “Yep, he’s marked us, this is our dog.”

Susan: Like he was saying, “You’re mine, Two-Legger.” How about another example?

Joseph: Well, we knew it was getting time to get a new car — and this is something that’s happened to both of us — and I’m very finicky when it comes to the kinds of cars I’ll drive. They have to be standards, SUV types, not trucks, with certain extras but not lots of stuff. We knew it was getting to be time and yet never had a definite “Go look for a car” or “Your care is here” sensation.

Then one day, I’m not sure what I was doing other than getting dressed or what I was thinking about, I looked up because I knew clear as a bell that it was time to start looking for a car. We didn’t have lots of spare funds at the time so I said out loud, “Okay, Universe, you say it’s time, you make it happen.” Even then I knew it was time, just “not now”. That “now” sensation came the next afternoon when we were relaxing on the porch.

I picked up my tablet and spent about an hour searching on line. I found a few cars that were close but nothing that said, “Yes”. I was ready to give up. Then I looked at a site for a dealer that we didn’t like (they were high pressure salespeople and that’s not our style) but knew I had to check out. I found a car, no, found another car, no, then boom! There it was. I printed out the info and went to the dealer the next day. I wanted to go that day but I was getting a firm “Not yet”. I didn’t call or anything. I told the Universe, “Okay, if that’s our car, you’ll make sure it’s there for me.”

Well, it turned out the dealership had been bought and a new team was in place. They were very nice, very patient, and I gave the saleguy the printout and he looked at it oddly. “Good day to come in,” he said. “We just lowered the price $2k from what’s listed here.”

We had a similar experience with your car.

Susan: I knew that it was time to find a new shell for my car — we call her “Beatrice”. Joseph’s car is “Esmerelda” — and all the cars we test drove seemed okay but didn’t feel right until we sat in her current shell and there was just a sense of rightness, “this is the one”, it was a sense, a feeling.

It’s almost as if the other shells were shells, hollow steel, and the one we ended up getting was complete, more, I don’t know how to say it. “Home”? And I knew this was the right one.

There’s also the times we know it’s time to contact people or not. I would ask you, “Should we contact, should we call a person, either in a business situation or personal.” And you would pause and say “No, not yet” and then a few days later you’d say, “Okay, it’s time.” And inevitably that person would say “I was just thinking about you and I was going to give you a call.”

As I’m working the yarn, I’ll want to spin up yarn and I’ll go to pick it up and I’ll just have a sense of “Not yet” or if I’ve spun some yarn and want to work with it, I’ll start a pattern and have all kinds of difficulties with it because I didn’t listen and it wasn’t time to work with it. And then later I’ll go to pick it up and it’s time and everything works out.

My first clue that it wasn’t time to work with it is that it shouldn’t be difficult. I shouldn’t have to fight the yarn.

Joseph: That’s a major piece, really. When you’re doing something that the Universe wants or is okay, whatever you’re doing is effortless. A lot of times I’ll have a sense of what to do or not do, not pay attention, sometimes not even realizing I’m not paying attention, and hit wall after wall after wall to getting it done. And sometimes following the Universe’s instructions is so simple, something like “Don’t go to that restaurant today”, deciding “No, I want to go there”, and discovering there’s new waitstaff who aren’t well trained, your food doesn’t come out the way you ordered it, and all of it could be easily avoided if I’d only listened instead of letting my desire — or maybe it’s my ego — get in the way. Another example is being with someone and they’ll say or do something and I’ll see into their Core, their soul, so clearly, and know what they’re really like and what they’ll really do. I’ve definitely learned to pay attention to those. The Universe knows people lots better than I do.

And there are other things. It’s not something I can duplicate on my own. And you have to be open to it. It’s like hearing the phone ringing and deciding whether or not to take the call. You know the phone is ringing, you have to be willing to answer it.

But we’re wandering around a bit from the original purpose of your question: How do you know it’s the Universe communicating with you? Or how do you know when it’s not the Universe?

Susan: I guess because when I chose to listen, the feelings are always correct and provide me with more information to make the best decision. It’s still my choice to listen or not. And in those instances when I chose not to listen, I wish I had.

Joseph: I can know when it is the Universe because of the type of experience it is. Like I said before, it’s like all my other sensory systems and thinking and experiences shut down so nothing else exists but that experience. One of the things I’m working on now is perfecting that ability to have those experiences, to honor them, to open myself more to them, to trust them.

I can’t fool myself that something that wasn’t the Universe was. I can lie to myself, tell myself the Universe wants something or communicated something that I know it didn’t. Those always end up in some kind of painful situation.

Susan: The Universe, god, a god, my inner self, some being, whatever people chose to call this wisdom, and I chose to call it “The Universe”, somehow my subconscious is calling on knowledge I didn’t have or had access to at the time so I chose to call it “The Universe is talking to me.”

Joseph: I think what’s most important is that we’re not describing anything new. People have been having these kinds of experiences since before recorded history. It was the culture they were in that defined the experiences as positive or negative. Depending on where or when you lived, you’d either be honored or burned. Most recently you’d be burned. That’s probably why people who know this stuff don’t talk about it much.

Save

Save