Communication with the soul is rarely a clear inner voice. The answer arrives sideways, in a symbol or a book opened at random, and you can learn to invite it.
By Roberto Assagioli
Assagioli Archive, Florence
Original title: Come Decide? (How to Decide)
Translated by Gordon Symons
Editorial Note
The abstract and contextual subtitle in this online edition have been added by the editor, Kenneth Sørensen, to support readability, navigation, and archival consistency. The original wording has not been altered.
Abstract
In this essay, Assagioli treats the soul as an inner teacher and shows how its guidance actually reaches us. Answers may come directly, through symbols, or from outside, in a stranger’s words or a book opened at random, often when least expected. He offers a simple practice: grow quiet, pose the question clearly, and imagine how a wise sage would reply, letting that staged voice slip past the personality’s resistance.
The Soul, the spiritual “I” is the first Master. It is like a Sage, like an Instructor ready to guide, instruct and illuminate. I recommend doing distinct exercises, that is, to propose to the Soul, to the spiritual “I”, a specific, precise problem; preferably an unimportant problem, so that it does not raise concerns or other emotional resonances.
Therefore, the interest will be more focused on the exercise itself than on the importance and usefulness of the response. Then ask for the answer and try to catch it. There are various ways of receiving. What would seem more natural and simpler, that is, an immediate response, is often less easy. Less easy precisely because many psychological elements stand between the ordinary and the spiritual self: the work of the mind, the tumult of emotions, desires, impulses, the influx of sensations from the body and from the outside world. “The line is not clear”, to use a telephone image. So not infrequently the reception is delayed, that is, the message “gets through” little by little, when it finds a crack, to the illuminated area of consciousness. Therefore, if you do not receive an immediate response, there should be no discouragement; this is predictable. Furthermore, it can come in the most unexpected moments, when we least expect it.
As for the manner of the responses, they can be of three types: direct responses, both expressed in words and as clear impressions, and clear spurs to act. Symbolic answers: these are frequent, since the natural “language” of the unconscious is symbolic. It will be an image or a scene that must be interpreted. Finally, responses from outside: it is not easy to understand their way of acting, but in many cases they are so evident that their reality cannot be doubted. They can come through speeches, “messages” from other people, in which we recognize the answer to our question, while the “messenger” is not aware of it. Or we find the answer in a book that we open “at random”, in a publication that falls under our eyes or that is sent to us. In other cases, these are events, circumstances, sometimes sudden changes, in which we can recognize the “responses”. Then there is a special “exercise” by which the answers can be fostered, indeed provoked. It is an exercise that I do in psychosynthetic treatments and that has given and gives good results. It is a question of putting oneself in a state of internal recollection, of calm, then of clearly formulating the problem, the question; finally, to try to imagine what a Master, a Sage, known to us or not, would tell us. Sometimes the answer is prompt, clear and convincing. This is not surprising because part of us, the spiritual self, already knows it. The “staging”, the imaginative “personification” helps to circumvent certain conscious or unconscious resistances of our personality, to create an “objectification”, a detachment that allows us to “see clearly”.
