Today I talk about practical ways that you can turn your search for love into an adventure of growth. Perhaps you are not yet certain if you can learn to date in a way that generates a sense of mystery, possibility, and empowerment. I am here to tell you that the answer is yes — but only once you have learned to tap into the fount of your own inner guidance. In this episode, I teach you the steps you need to take to discover your inner guidance system. I also share The Inner Mentor Process, a spiritual practice that you can implement to enhance your experience of dating.

Listen in to learn why it is important to listen to your instinct in dating, what to do when you don’t feel guiding insights in your quest for love, and how to turn dating into an adventure.

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Show Notes:

• Discovering your inner guidance system
• What is the sense of inner guidance
• The Inner Mentor Process
• Dating and intuition
• Spiritual practice for dating
• Why it’s important to listen to your instinct in dating
• What to do when you don’t feel guiding insights in your quest for love
• Learning self-love
• Turn dating into an adventure

Important Links:

• Listen to The Deeper Dating® Show Episode 3: The Greatest Practice To Speed Your Path to Love
• Get a copy of Deeper Dating® by Ken Page
• Join the Coaching and Mentorship Intensive with Ken Page
• Connect with us on Instagram

 

 

How do you turn your search for love into something that truly feels like a positive adventure? Where you can sense that you are moving closer to finding the love that you want, and that something is going on that’s even bigger than you? It’s by discovering and following your guiding insights in your dating life. In this episode, I will teach you how to do that, so stay tuned.

Hello, and welcome to the Deeper Dating® Podcast. I’m Ken Page, and I’m a psychotherapist, I’m the author of the best-selling book, Deeper Dating®, and the host of your show. Today, I’m going to be speaking about the power of discovering your own internal guidance system in your search for love. And in this episode, and every episode, I’m committed to sharing the greatest tools and insights that I know, to help you find love and keep it flourishing, while healing your life in the process because the skills of dating are the skills of love. And those are the greatest skills of all, for a life that has meaning and joy.

And if you want to learn more about the Deeper Dating® path to real intimacy, just go to deeperdatingpodcast.com, and you can sign up for my mailing list, get free gifts, and tons of resources to help you transform your own intimacy journey. And you’ll also find transcripts of this and every other episode.

And by the way, if you like what you learn in this podcast, I would love it if you could give a thanks by subscribing and leaving me a review. So thank you so much in advance for that. Okay, let’s jump in.

When you follow these kinds of lessons your luck changes. Click To Tweet

 

It’s hard to overestimate the power and the importance of the search for love as a mission in our lives, a critical mission. There are so few things that are going to determine the quality of our life as much as the partner we find, or not finding a partner. It just matters so much. But it’s a kind of perilous journey up a scary mountain because there’s so much heartbreak which is possible, but there’s also so much joy and meaning that can come out of your search for love. Door number one, and you don’t know what’s behind it, you could end up with someone in a relationship that’s filled with terrible surprises, addiction, untreated mental illness, cruelty.

 

 

Or door number two, again, all you see is the door, a relationship that feels stable and consistent, but doesn’t give you a sense of magic, that doesn’t really let you feel reflected in the deepest ways. Or door number three. A relationship that’s sexy and alive, and kind, and wonderful, and invites you to the shore of the sea of possibilities that real love can have.

This wild chance of finding somebody who’s probably, right now, a stranger, and who’s going to become your primary home in the world, it’s just kind of huge. And if you add to that all the challenges that are out there, it really is a hero’s journey. But it’s a journey that a lot of people succeed in, and that almost all people don’t succeed in without a lot of learning, a lot of growth, and a pretty good amount of heartbreak. So it’s easy to feel helpless, or hopeless, or just bewildered, or paralyzed, or just plain exhausted.

And add to that the incredible lack of training that we get in wise, research-based methods, in looking for and finding love. Not to mention the way that online dating is skewed to impersonality, unkindness, and the delirium and the numbness that comes with unimaginably vast numbers of possibilities. We are talking about an adventure here, and not an easy one, as you know, as I know. And that’s why we need the training that I and so many others try to give.

But please, don’t choose a training that teaches you that you have to scurry and scamper, and stress and fix yourself, and learn tricks and gimmicks, and force yourself into gender expectations that are supposed to be the only way to find happiness or get the person to love you. In this hero’s journey, those are pitfalls that could take away years of possibility, or even an entire life. So in this episode, I want to offer one of the sweetest and most powerful, and empowering, and self-soothing, and exciting, positive resources that I know.

 

Discovering your inner guidance system:

And it involves accessing your inner guidance, and letting it kind of be a GPS, albeit an imperfect one that goes out a lot, to help you find the love that you’re seeking. So what is this sense of inner guidance? It’s that state, that place, where you get an insight or a feeling that carries a sense of excitement, or hope, or peace, that feels kind of stronger than usual, a sense of next step, a sense of possibilities.

But that kind of space, that inner guidance space, you also feel this sense of solidity, or rightness, or hope, or goodness, all these things together, when you get that little light bulb going off, that’s your gold, that’s your gold. That’s where you have just learned an intimacy lesson, or gotten a drop of guidance or wisdom.

Maybe you feel a sense of softness, a softening in your heart that’s an indication of something shifting. Or maybe you have an insight that changes the way you think about things. Maybe it comes out as an inner prompt, that tells you to go somewhere, or do something, or call someone, or try something.

 

Listen for those whispers. Click To Tweet

 

Specifically, what we wait for is this sense of insight that touches our heart and feels real. It doesn’t usually have a sense of desperation, there’s some feeling of solidity in it. It doesn’t have that addictive feeling, it doesn’t have that sense of dopamine thrill, overlaying a sense of emptiness. And all of us can find these messages.

And when you add that ingredient into your search for love, your search for love becomes a spiritual adventure, a life adventure, it becomes more inspiring, and you begin to see it more as your hero’s journey, a journey of bravery, and truth, and growth, because that is what this is meant to be. And I’m going to teach you a few practices for that. But I want to start with a story from my own life. My dear wise, friend, Michael Clemente, who passed away in 1991, was a real teacher of mine. And boy, did I have a lot to learn, and he was very gentle.

But I remember dating someone who I was really attracted to and the interest was mutual, and this guy did not know how to listen. And it was really annoying and frustrating to me. So I wanted to end it. And Michael said to me something that sparked that sense of rightness and kindness, and that softening of the heart. It had that feeling. And maybe it’s one of the first ones I ever remember feeling in this morass of blindly looking for a relationship.

This was like a light that went off inside my heart. And that, in a way, it’s like that light going off in your heart and in your head, even if it’s subtle or little, those are your gold, those are your next steps. So I had that. So this is what Michael said to me, he said, “Ken, this guy wants to be a good boyfriend.” That really hit me when he said that. He said, “His intention is there. And what you’re asking for is something that he doesn’t really know how to do. Why don’t you just ask him?” And that was when I experienced those signs of a guiding insight.

My heart softened, I felt warmer, I felt like a better person. I can actually remember that moment because it had that guiding insight feeling, which is one of the best and most important feelings of all. I think of this search for love as like parkour. And if you ever saw somebody doing parkour, it’s just wild. They leap into space, they leap from one building, to a fire hydrant, to God knows what. They leap from thing to thing, in ways that seem just absolutely impossible.

But their genius is they pick out the spot that’s safe and solid, and then they leap through space to get there. And so in parkour, you’re always looking for that next space. And in conscious dating, it’s the same. You are looking for the next guiding insight. You’re leaping from guiding insight into scary, unknown space, to land, when you land, on your next guiding insight, which you then follow.

 

 

And that, when we live that way, starts to make our search for love into a journey of healing, not a journey of learning the tricks to get the person to love you, or to become irresistible, but a journey of healing and growth, which is a wonderful thing. And it’s what you want, I believe. So in that moment when Michael said that to me, I found the next ledge to jump onto, and it felt solid and right.

And I felt a heart, which was the heart of a sensitive gay man, growing up in a culture that taught me that it was stupid and embarrassing to be soft and kind. And I felt that frozen brittleness of my heart begin to soften. But it was a leap. But the fact that I knew I was leaping, onto something that felt like goodness and truth, to me, made all the difference in the world, and made the search for love just feel a little less cold and dark.

I had something to land on that felt good and right and I believed in. So I did that. And this guy heard me. I could see in his face that he heard me, and I heard in his words that he felt bad and he wanted to do this differently. Ultimately, it was just completely beyond him to be able to have that kind of conversation, completely beyond him. But I left the relationship with that sense of deep healing, which is another mark, a fabulous mark of that inner guidance.

So I would love you now to just take a moment and see if you can remember any time that, in your intimacy journey, you had something that felt like that pop, or glow of warmth, or wisdom inside you about a relationship. It may not have landed you exactly where you needed to go, but it landed you to a step that was growth, you learned something. Just take a minute and think about that. Sometimes it’s kind of mystical.

I remember, at one point, I was going to go on a trip to Hawaii with my sister. And then something said to me, “That’s probably not the best idea.” And I had always dreamed of going to Venezuela, this was many years ago. And I lay down in bed and I thought, “I need guidance. I need guidance. I’m going to really disappoint my sister, who is amazing, but I’m really going to disappoint her. Is this just some kind of just crazy and immature impulsive idea, that is the opposite of intimacy because I’m not going to do this trip my sister and I had talked about?” And I got an answer. And the answer, it was just a feeling of, “You need to go to Venezuela.” I’ve almost never had that, but I’ve had it a few times and it has often ended up leading me to the next step in my relationship life.

And in this case, it actually did that. And I met a very serious and very wonderful partner, which became the most important, serious relationship in my life to that point. Let me share a technique with you. It’s a technique that I also speak about in episode three in great detail, and it’s a technique that I adore, and I lean on, and I rely on and I teach in my classes, I teach my clients, I teach it in my intensive, and it’s the Inner Mentor process. I love this process because it creates a sense of safety and home and goodness. And it’s a process I use for all my relationships, and for my life in general.

But I just want to acknowledge that in the dating journey, somehow there’s this sense of aloneness, at its worst moments, when things are not working or we feel exhausted, or hurt, or we’re going out again into total stranger land, looking for a home and love. And it just feels like a perilous, parentless, scary journey.

These moments of insight are what light the way for us to heal that feeling and to give us a feeling of guidance and direction. And in fact, in the Sufi tradition, one of the names of God is the spirit of guidance. And when we feel that, we just feel less alone on this journey and in the world. So the Inner Mentor process is a simple process and I’m going to lead you in it right now. And you can pause the recording to take the steps that I’m going to invite you in. And I’ll just lead it really briefly. And you can find many places where I teach the Inner Mentor process in a longer way, specifically in episode three of my podcast.

But what you do is you just picture, you remember times that, actually, you might want to do this right now, remember a time that you had a guiding insight, a time that you felt connected to maybe an extra piece of wisdom that lit your heart or illumined things for you. And it felt good, and it led you somewhere good. And just remember that you.

 

The Inner Mentor Process:

And now picture a you that is that you, but fully, you with your goodness and your wisdom unfolded, essence of unfolded, empowered, wings open, you. Just imagine that, it’s just an imagination exercise. You don’t have to instantly earn it to be able to do this process. Just imagine that you, just get a glimpse in your imagination of that beautiful, beautiful you. What do your eyes look like? What does your face show? What’s it like to live in your heart and beam this out?

And now, imagine stepping into that you. You become that you, you don’t have to earn it, it’s an imagination. Just jump in, just imagine. Because even though it’s not the you you are yet, it’s you know what this kind of tastes like and feels like. So just imagine jumping into this much more enlightened, empowered, flowing, integrated, fabulous you. You’re in there now and look at the you of today and just call out guidance.

Find the words, form the words that come from this space and take a few moments to do that now. You can pause the recording. Good. Now that, you might not have had much of an experience, you might have an experience where that voice told you something of significance, that’s a guiding insight. They don’t all have to be big and dramatic, but that’s a guiding insight. And if you didn’t, keep doing this and you almost definitely will.

You’ll find your own tweaks and variations to make this be able to work for you. But it bypasses the critical inner voice, which I am a master at having a critical inner voice. And this bypasses it for me, which is a very, very wonderful thing. And it leads you to your native wisdom. I see this kind of journey when you do it in this way, you follow your guiding insights, as like a treasure hunt.

You don’t ever get the message of, just in the beginning, you don’t get the message of, “Go here,” and that’s where the treasure lies. It tells you to go down five streets and then make a left and look under a rock. And then you do that and you get your next message and that tells you to do something else.

And it’s that process of following those messages that make you feel like you’re on an adventure, help you know that it’s an adventure toward goodness and intimacy, light your heart up a little bit, and give you some pretty fabulous tasks that you then need to do. I know people whose inner mentor tells them sometimes, “Take a walk,” or, “Do this,” or, “Do that.” That inner mentor told me to go to Venezuela. It’s told me other things too, that have led directly to deeper intimacy, and in some cases, well, specifically, to my husband.

I think of this search for love as kind of like parkour. Click To Tweet

 

So here’s another spiritual practice that you can do. And that is, it’s an asking. And this is something I’ve talked about before, but it’s a fabulous adaptation of an ancient contemplative prayer practice, which is you just find words that touch your heart, prick your eyes, bring a tear to your eyes, move you, make you feel longing and desire. And you say that, and then you ride the feelings that come. And when that wave has passed and ebbs, you say it again.

And maybe this time you think about your shopping list or someone who annoyed you, so you say it again. Maybe this time you’re bored, so you say it again. Maybe the next time you’re like, “When can I stop this?” but you say it again. And something grabs and hits you, and something happens inside your being. And these are the things that create these deep downloads that shift our circuitry.

So you do it again and again and again, but don’t find some phrase that is what you’re supposed to say, find one that touches your heart. And as you do that, you might not get any anything conscious about what to do next. But when you feel that feeling that something is moving inside your deeper being, that’s your gold. That’s something that’s below the mind, that is shifting and opening for you. Something’s being planted. Some sea change is beginning to happen.

And then, the next thing you do is you listen. You listen like in your day-to-day life, you listen for whispers. Usually we feel this when our hearts are a little more open or there’s a sense of space, I don’t pretty much ever feel guiding insights when I’m rushing, or really stuck in the mundane, or the practical or stressed. Guiding insights, I don’t know if they ever come my way at those times. But they do when I meditate, they do when I take a walk, they do at times when there’s a bit of a resting, a catching of breath. That’s for me, for you, it might be while you exercise.

 

 

But what you do is you listen for those whispers. And when they come, you follow them. And the more your deep psyche knows that you’re going to follow these messages, the more cool you feel toward yourself, the more you feel like you’re doing something special, you’re on a path that has specialness, you’re on a path that has hope. In other words, the more it feels like a positive adventure. And in this strange and perilous and mysterious journey to find love, we need that kind of beautiful guidance.

And there are still going to be times when you feel no guiding insights, over things that feel really dark and hard, and you just don’t know what to do. And I want to share a story about that. It was a little thing, but it was a really triggering thing, and it was a gorgeous guiding insight, that translated into something very physical and graphic. So I’d love to share this with you.

So I was in the Gay Pride March years ago, and I was marching, I don’t know, with some group, but everybody kept getting ahead of me, and I didn’t want to rush ahead, but I definitely didn’t want to be left back continuously. And this had deep ripples for me because that’s always how I felt in my family. I was too slow, I wasn’t strong enough, I wasn’t directed enough in this very strong and directed family that I grew up in.

And so it was kind of an, a being gay, it was kind of an age-old feeling of ineptitude and weakness, and what the hell? Even here in this parade, with other queer people, I’m the one who lags behind. So I mean, it wasn’t quite as terrible as I’m describing, but it hurt. It hurt. And it had ripples and repercussions for me. So somehow, I found a guiding insight because my thing was, how can I not be an asshole and step on people’s feet and annoy them and embarrass myself?

Because I don’t want to get lost and get pushed back. How can I not be an asshole, but not lose my spot? So the answer came to me in a really beautiful way. And what it was was that I noticed, that in a consistent kind of way, there were pockets of space that would open up in front of me. And what I had to do was go walk ahead and occupy that space.

And by doing that, I could either move ahead or stay with the group, but I wasn’t stepping on anybody’s toes, I wasn’t insulting anybody, I wasn’t being a jerk, but I also wasn’t lagging behind, I was keeping my place. And this was such a metaphor for me. And the metaphor was when an opportunity, or an opening, or an insight opens in front of me, that’s the one I should walk into. That’s my path, my path is to occupy that little puddle of abundance, that space of opening in front of me, and to keep doing that.

 

Turn dating into an adventure:

And that’s just an image that I encourage you to think about in this wild and strange journey of dating because it’s not a needle in a haystack, there are forces at work, and I believe this down to my bones, after decades and decades of work, with thousands of people. There’s a deeper physics here. When you follow these kind of lessons, your luck changes. And this is a beautiful way for your luck to change. And it’s a beautiful way to learn self-love, and to grow, and claim your search for love as a true intimacy adventure. So give this a try, let me know in the comments what you experience doing it. Thank you so much for listening, and I look forward to connecting with you on the next episode of the Deeper Dating® Podcast.

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