The message is that you are your own guru, and it is aimed squarely at the hearts of everyone with self-help, spiritual seeking and/or therapy fatigue.  If you have been rushing around from workshop to workshop, therapy session to astrological reading, in search of inner peace and 'signs' as to your direction, or purpose, feeling more and more frantic as you try to fit all these things into your schedule, concerned to 'get it right' at all costs and optimise your life - this is for you from a fellow-traveller, and it should give you a few good hearty chuckles at yourself.

The search for inner peace from an external source is pretty absurd when you think about it. But the pull is quite strong and there are plenty of gurus available to tell you what to do - the spiritual marketplace is thriving on our striving. Yet the times when contact with a teacher, or a method, or a guru, has a real effect, are moments of attunement, when you can truly hear what is being said because it resonates with what you know already. It has not been given to you from somewhere else.

I would say that the central problem facing most of the people who have come to me for help over the years can be boiled down to an inability to feel their own internal compass. My job as I see it is to help people get in touch with precisely this, the sense of 'yes, this' and 'not that' that can practically guide you, step by step - and then the rest, the strong emotions, the tenacious confusions, the big questions, tend to fall into place. For hard-core 'users' in the area of spiritual seeking, Laporte has a sensible recommendation:

'Start with going on an “input fast.” Give yourself three months, maybe six months of, say, no “readings” of any kind (unless they’re poetry readings). No predictive astrology readings, ixnay on the psychics, nada on the tarot cards. If you’re not in crisis mode right now, you might even considertaking a hiatus from your coach and/or your therapist. You could cut all external advice out of your daily diet. Might do wonders for your skin.

The silence of the advice-free zone may be deafening for a while, but do you hear that? It’s you speaking. Directly to…you. It’s your body telling you what it immediately knew and has known for a long time (because your body always knows). It’s your very own perceptivity rising to the surface of your life. And it knows what it’s talking about.

So maybe you’re not channeling Spirit Guides verbatim every morning. And so what if you don’t know what past-life karma is playing out in your business, or what the next lunar eclipse portends? You’ll probably know enough to decide what’s best for you on that given day. And you can keep flexing your own intuition (because it’s just like a muscle) to feel into the next right step. Of course you’re going to take wrong turns and get yourself into big shit-pickles. But an even bigger mistake would be to deny the power within you for the rest of your life'.