Here I'm going to discuss how to get the benefits, and avoid the dangers, of exploring the idea of a 'Higher Power' or 'Divine Patron'. Sometimes the leap from a mindset of 'scarcity/conflict/victim' conditioning to one of 'abundance/self-actualisation' is just too much. Working within the paradigm of the 'Higher Power' can help enormously.

Does this mean we need to 'get Religion'?

No, in fact I strongly recommend you keep this 'thought experiment' just as a kind of 'personal mysticism-spirituality' - or whatever descriptive term you'd be happier with.

So I need to be a 'Believer'?

Well... No. There's a lot of stuff written about Belief that is vague, confusing, contradictory and even dangerous. I would ask you to neatly avoid this issue of where and how this 'belief' should appear by instead considering the idea of not dis-believing.

The idea is to just do the exercises, to see what happens - to be open to positive changes in your life, while avoiding the initial temptation to 'rubbish' or to dismiss what you are doing.

You do not need to 'force' or 'pretend' belief - you do not need to fall back on blind faith. What is 'faith' anyway, if not just believing in something that you have no evidence for? That is not what we want.

The kind of belief we want to cultivate is one based on experience - of having the personal evidence of seeing how your life improves when you consistently and patiently work with various images and concepts of a Higher Power.

It is much more robust than a belief that is 'forced' - There is no need to feel offended or 'attacked' if someone chooses to disbelieve. (In fact the only thing you might feel is a little sorry for this person who has chosen to cut themselves off from this reality.) And because this belief is grounded in actual events, rather than wishful thinking, it is more helpful in decision-making.

It's almost as if modern society conditions people to have 2 boxes in their head: one for things that 'are True' and must be defended - and another for things that 'are False' and must be attacked. Working with the 'Divine Ally' Paradigm requires taking a step back from this knee-jerk habit of premature certainty - because sometimes whether something 'is True' or 'is False' can actually be irrelevant when compared with how Useful it is.

As for your choice of how to 'conceptualise' this Higher Power, I might recommend focusing mainly on mythologies that have some concept of 'the Universe working as it should' at their core - and which are compatible with the assisted evolution and development of the Human Race. The Hindu, Taoist and Ancient Egyptian mythologies are all suitable, but at the end of the day it's what makes sense to you that's most important.

As a general rule the more complicated the mythology is, the more room for expansion and nuanced self-development it will afford. By contrast, mythologies that have regressed to a simple 'Goodies vs Baddies' might not be as useful in navigating the complexities of life.

If you like, you can see working with ‘The Good Goddess’ as appealing to the ‘Lowest Common Denominator’ in your life and being. No matter how toxic someone’s sense of self-worth may be, The Good Goddess will always respond to a request for help with unconditional nurturing, support and love. Isis, Quan Yin or the Blessed Virgin Mary would all be excellent choices for a Good Goddess role. Research them all and see which you’re happiest working with, try all three or construct your own image of the 'Good Goddess' with those three as inspiration.

In order to build a relationship with The Good Goddess, sit yourself down for half an hour, and imagine that the Good Goddess is with you, and protecting you - perhaps in some 'sphere of energy' or something. The traditional position for Isis is standing behind you with winged arms held around you. The important thing, the driver, is the questions you ask yourself (you have read the article on Questions, right?) whilst you are doing this imagining:

- "How safe and at ease could I feel when I am guided and protected by [the Good Goddess]?"
- "How good would it feel to be loved and accepted by [the Good Goddess]?"
- "How would it feel, to be restored and rejuvenated by [the Good Goddess]?"

And then when you've finished, get up, continue with the rest of your day and forget about it - let your subconscious mind get on with it.

I would suggest spending half an hour a day doing this - for maybe a couple of weeks - until you are sure that the kind of influence and feelings generated by these questions is something that you welcome in your life.

To clarify - we are asking our subconscious to imagine what it might be like to live in a hypothetical situation where it is guided and protected by some benevolent manifestation of 'Divine Wisdom'... and because we now know all about the goal-seeking nature of the mind and about 'self-fulfilling prophecy' we need not be especially surprised when these benefits that our subconscious is imagining begin to spontaneously appear in real life.

Next, an example of working with the Good Goddess to remove limiting beliefs / old life-scripts. It is an ‘age regression’ in which you imagine travelling back to an age before these deleterious directives took root and instead accept some suggestions that are more useful.

Age Regression Exercise

Before attempting this exercise you should spend some time doing a ‘brainstorming’ session: listing the beliefs that would be beneficial – or even necessary – to reach your desired goal. It might also be useful to list your opinions about people who have failed to reach this goal – as well as people who have succeeded. You’re not going to be very successful in any wealth-building goal if you think that all rich people are corrupt and selfish whilst all poor people are ‘spiritually blessed’ by their relative poverty.

The exercise itself often takes from 20-60 minutes to complete. It may need to be repeated several times over several weeks for each targeted issue.

Firstly you’d sit or lie yourself down and perform whatever breathing and muscle relaxation exercises you would normally do to relax yourself.

Now imagine that you’re sat in a cinema watching a film of your life and on the screen is The Present – Right Now – and indeed you can see yourself on the movie screen doing this exercise.

Now imagine that you can stop the movie and ‘rewind’ it, so you see yourself doing what you did yesterday, last week, last month, last year and so on. Imagine seeing yourself getting younger and younger, until finally the film stops; showing you as an infant in a cot. Imagine seeing the Good Goddess standing there, besides your cot, looking down at the ‘Baby You’.

Then you imagine your point of view drifting ‘into the movie’ - switching over into your infant self, so that you now imagine yourself, as an infant in a cot, looking up at the Good Goddess. The Good Goddess reaches down into the cot, picks you up and smiles down at you. She speaks to you, gently and yet firmly.

“It’s okay for you to be who you are. I will always love you.”
“It’s okay if some people disagree with you. I will always be here for you.”
“It’s okay for you to have your own opinions. I will always support you.”

Obviously the exact wording here depends on the specifics of any 'self-esteem issues' or limiting belief that you want to disperse.

After spending however long you want to immersed in this experience, finally you detach your point-of-view from your infant self and are again standing in the cinema, watching the Good Goddess holding ‘you’ as an infant.

Now the film heads forwards in time, and you see yourself growing up through the years up until there you are again in the present.

Go into the movie screen again – this time you merge your point-of-view with your present-day self.

And there you go.

There are a few variations worth mentioning. Most obviously you don’t always have to go right back to when you were an infant. Maybe just head back to your childhood self and imagine yourself sat on the knee of the Good Goddess. On the other hand, if you’ve had a really bad time during your adult life then by all means go back just a few years and go give the Good Goddess a hug, and come back to the present ready to re-engage life with new vigour and determination.

Another possibility is to ‘stop off’ at key points in your life. So you start off by going back to your infancy and following the exercise through as given, but instead of moving straight back to the present you would move forward to some other time in your childhood and stop there for more pep talk from the Good Goddess. And then forward again to some other time, and some other, until after a few stops here and there throughout your life you finally return to the present.

This ‘Age Regression’ visualisation is derived from the exercises in the book ‘Homecoming’ by John Bradshaw. If you find that this process has a strong emotional effect on you and would like to explore why and what to do about it then I would certainly recommend picking up a copy.

While that's all well and good, at some point there will come a time when the limitations of working solely with the Good Goddess come to light. As you make your way through the various limiting 'life scripts' and beliefs that you may have picked up in your life - releasing those that no longer serve you - there may well be people around you that still hold on to these life scripts themselves or are in the habit of interacting with those beliefs in you. Unfortunately these people can be caused some distress by your personal development. If they are not 'ready' to discard these limiting beliefs as well then the Good Goddess will be much less useful in assisting with this particular type of change.

You now need to 'add to the mix' a Higher Power that places a higher priority on sorting your life out than it does on respecting dysfunctional beliefs, no matter how well-intentioned these beliefs might be, and will not stand for any 'subconscious' attempts to re-install the old life-scripts back into you. St. Michael and Thor suggest themselves as possibilities here, though if you have an interest in continuing exploration of this idea of 'working with your Divine Allies' then I would suggest at least some work with Horus - and if you were working with Isis as the Good Goddess then so much the better.

This addition of a new 'Divine Ally' figure does not mean that the 'Good Goddess' is now invalidated or should be ignored from now on - what it means is that you are beginning to learn how different 'archetypal figures' are more useful in certain situations than others.

The questions remain similar, as does the procedure. Half an hour a day, moving onto a 'Self-Image' after a couple of weeks. Practise the questions each day then forget about it - continue with the rest of your day and just let your subconscious mind get on with it.

- "How would it feel to be guided and protected by [your Divine Ally]?"
- "What would it be like to be guided to greater happiness and success by [your Divine Ally]?"

After a while developing the relationship with this new figure you could productively spend some time wondering what it would mean to help bring some (much needed) Divine Wisdom into the world, or how this Divine Ally might improve the lot of the Human Race.

"How happier and more effective might people be if the Human Race was guided and inspired by [your Divine Ally]?"