Divination (per Lexico): 'The practice of seeking knowledge of the future or the unknown by supernatural means.'
Sometimes, people use divination to try to determine God's will. Bad move. We'll look at a good way of trying to determine God's will, and then what can go wrong.
In the programme, we're interesting only in knowledge of God's will for us and the power to carry that out. Largely, that concerns today's actions. When large decisions have to be made, God's will for us appears to be to take actions to prepare for that decision but not to make the decision until the moment that the decision absolutely must be made (as Stephen C told me in a Chinese restaurant in Gerrard Street in the late 1990s). Until then, one must absolutely refrain from making the decision, resolving, instead, to gather and assess evidence with discernment but without judgement.
How are decisions made?
- Gather the facts
- Assemble them into a picture
- Analyse the picture
- Understand the picture
- Identify whether a change is needed
- Frame the question
- Identify options
- Assess the pros and cons
- Weigh up the options
- Make the decision
What is this guided or facilitated by?
- Detachment
- Observation
- Intelligence
- Knowledge
- Experience
- Principles
- Consultation
- Prayer
- Meditation
- Distance
There are a few traps people in recovery fall into in this regard.
The right decision is not determined by:
- What it feels like
- Being 'comfortable' with something
- Whether something is intrinsically 'hard or easy'
- Whether 'the world' makes it 'hard or easy'
Many wrong things 'feel right', are bang in the comfort zone, require no effort, and are facilitated by the world. Many right things 'feel wrong', are way out of the comfort zone, require gargantuan effort, and are obstructed by the world. What is required is real vision, and that requires work (see the materials on Concept IX here).
Beware, in particular, 'coincidences', or rather the meaning projected onto coincidences. There are no signs. The sign is in your mind. It's not out there. There are no shortcuts. There is no way to hustle God to give you one, even with prayer and meditation. Prayer and meditation facilitate the process, but we're not looking for truth through actual or a modern equivalent of spirit writing, and certainly not by taking a sledgehammer to brain processes by using psilocybin or ayahuasca, even when accommodated under the 'therapeutic' or 'spiritual' heading. Your neuroreceptors do not know that it is a so-called shaman who is presiding over the procedure: for all your brain knows, it could be your barman or your dealer. If a gold-toothed lunatic with a hunting knife down a backstreet in Dalston at three o'clock in the morning offered you a pill so you could meet God, would you take it?
The most important factor in determining God's will is clearing a channel to God by surrendering self, through the Twelve Steps, Traditions, and Concepts, which removes personal investment in outcomes, and then years and years of work to understand how the world works, in order to operate effectively in it. There are no shortcuts.