What Do Spiritual Signs Mean?
For many people, spiritual unfolding doesn’t begin with a dramatic experience. It begins with noticing.
You start seeing the same number over and over. You think about someone and they suddenly call. A song comes on at exactly the right moment. Someone says something in conversation that answers a question you were quietly thinking about. You get goosebumps when you hear something that feels deeply true.
And eventually you start asking, “What is happening to me?”
This is one of the reasons people have walked through the doors of the Healing in Harmony Center for years. Something is happening that they can’t quite explain. They are noticing signs, symbols, synchronicities or intuitive experiences, and they want to understand why.
I don’t necessarily believe Spirit suddenly started communicating with them.
I think they became ready to notice.
Those experiences may have been happening all along, but something has shifted. Their awareness is different. Their intuition is opening. Their energy is changing. Their soul may be nudging them toward a different way of experiencing their human life.
The signs get their attention.
But the signs are only the beginning.
Spiritual Signs Can Be Part of Your Own Language With Spirit
When someone first begins noticing signs, I usually encourage them not to immediately assign a big meaning to everything.
Start by noticing.
You might simply say, “Okay. I noticed that.”
If you had been asking a question and an answer seems to appear, you can acknowledge it. Asked and answered.
Then start paying attention to whether patterns develop.
One of the things I teach students is to create their own dictionary of signs and symbols. Instead of immediately going online to find out what a feather, number, bird or dream supposedly means for everyone, start asking what it means to you.
Your spiritual language is personal.
A particular song may remind you of your grandmother. Someone else can hear the same song and have no emotional response to it at all.
You may associate a certain flower with a loved one who has died. Someone else simply sees a flower.
That personal reference point matters.
Create Your Own Dictionary of Signs and Symbols
You don’t need an elaborate system. Start writing down what you notice and consider a few simple questions:
- What happened?
- What had I been thinking about or asking before it happened?
- Was I actively looking for an answer, or did this appear randomly?
- Did I notice anything in my body, such as goosebumps, warmth, electricity or another physical response?
- Has this same sign or symbol appeared before?
- What does this symbol already mean to me personally?
Over time, you may begin seeing your own patterns.
You may even start recognizing whether certain signs seem connected to a particular guide, loved one, Angel or other spiritual relationship you have developed.
You are learning a language.
And like any relationship, that language can become clearer with time.
Guidance Usually Doesn’t Need to Chase You Down
One of the things I notice about spiritual guidance is that it often comes when we are not forcing it.
You may ask a question and not receive an answer immediately.
Then you’re driving to work three days later, taking a shower, walking outside or having a completely unrelated conversation, and something lands.
There it is.
Your mind was quieter. You weren’t working so hard to make something happen.
That randomness can be part of what makes the experience stand out.
Guidance also does not need to feel judgmental or threatening. In my experience, genuine spiritual guidance comes from a place of love and supports your best and highest good. It may challenge you. It may show you something you would rather not look at. But it does not need to shame or frighten you into doing something.
And it doesn’t need to run your life.
That distinction becomes important as your spiritual awareness develops.
When Everything Starts Becoming a Sign
There can be another stage of spiritual unfolding where suddenly everything means something.
You see three crows sitting in a tree.
Now you look up the spiritual meaning of a crow. Then you look up the meaning of the number three. Then you search for the spiritual meaning of three crows together.
Twenty minutes later, you have constructed an entire message around three birds sitting in a tree.
Could those crows have meaning for you?
Sure.
But here is the question I would ask:
What were you doing with your life while you were analyzing the crows?
Spiritual awareness is supposed to complement your life. It is not supposed to become your entire life.
If every number, bird, song, feather, dream and conversation has to be analyzed, you can become so focused on receiving spiritual information that you stop having the human experience the information was meant to help you with.
You don’t need to spend your day looking for signs.
If guidance is needed, trust that it can come.
Notice it. Be curious about it. Journal about it if you want to understand it more deeply.
And then keep living.
What Is Spiritual Guidance Actually For?
This is where I think the conversation about signs needs to go deeper.
What is the point of receiving all of this information?
It is not simply to become better at seeing signs.
It is to help you live.
As spiritual awareness develops, I believe the questions we ask can begin to change too.
Imagine that you are struggling financially.
An older, fear-based question might sound like:
“How can I make money quickly so I can pay my rent?”
There is a lot of fear and urgency in that question.
A different question could be:
“What would be the best plan for me to create a healthier flow of income over time?”
Now you are asking for guidance that you can apply to your human life.
You are still acknowledging reality. The bills exist. The rent is due. Being spiritual does not remove those things.
But instead of asking Spirit to rescue you from being human, you are inviting a higher perspective into the human problem.
That is integration.
Your Soul May Know the Direction Before Your Mind Understands It
I believe our souls come into this physical life already carrying information about what we are here to experience, learn and contribute.
I think of it as an encoding.
The soul knows.
The human mind has to catch up.
This is similar to what I tell people when I teach mediumship or healing. I don’t believe I am giving you abilities you didn’t have. I am helping your human mind understand how to work with something that already exists naturally within you.
Sometimes people feel this long before they understand it.
They will say, “I know something is coming.”
Or, “I feel like I’m supposed to be doing something bigger, but I don’t know what it is.”
I understand that feeling personally.
Throughout my twenties and thirties, I used to say that I wasn’t going to make it past 40.
I had no idea what that meant.
From my human perspective, there were times when I wondered whether that meant I was going to die at 40.
Then I turned 40.
My father died, and the spiritual part of my life opened dramatically.
Eventually I understood what I had been sensing all those years.
I wasn’t physically dying.
An old version of me was.
A different Priscilla was emerging, and my life was beginning to move in a direction that my human mind could not have understood years earlier.
My soul may have known there was a major transition ahead.
My mind interpreted it with the information it had available.
That difference is important.
Free Will Still Matters
If the soul knows the way, does that mean everything in your life has already been decided?
I don’t believe so.
I believe there can be experiences, people, lessons and opportunities that are part of the larger path, but we still have free will.
The path is not completely cemented.
You get to choose.
You can take the long route. You can take a different road. You can resist something for a while. You can change your mind.
That is part of being human too.
Signs and spiritual guidance can help validate a direction. They can get your attention. They can help you recognize possibilities that you might otherwise miss.
But they are not supposed to take free will away from you.
If your biggest challenge right now is not understanding spiritual guidance but being afraid that you will make the wrong choice, that is a different conversation. Learning to trust yourself when making a decision can help you separate fear from genuine intuitive guidance.
Knowing About Spirituality Is Not the Same as Living It
This is where spiritual development becomes spiritual integration.
For many years, I had a store at the Center filled with books, oracle cards and other holistic tools.
People would walk in, look at the shelves and say:
“Oh, I have that book.”
“I have that one too.”
“I’ve read all of those.”
And sometimes I wanted to say, “Great. Then why do you need me?”
Because if you read ten books about spirituality, personal development or consciousness and applied even one useful idea from each of them, something in your life should be different.
Information by itself doesn’t create transformation.
Application does.
I see the same thing with people who have tremendous spiritual knowledge.
Someone can understand consciousness at a very high level and still be completely unconscious of the pattern they are repeating in a relationship.
Someone can receive beautiful channeled information and still struggle with childhood programming around money, safety or love.
Someone can communicate with Spirit and still become reactive when a human being pushes one of their buttons.
None of that means the spiritual connection isn’t real.
It means they are still human.
The question is whether they are integrating what they know.
What Does Healthy Spiritual Integration Look Like?
Healthy spiritual development should begin showing up in the way you live.
You may become more observant instead of immediately reacting.
You may notice an old pattern sooner.
You may become more discerning about where you place your energy.
You may become more open to possibilities and opportunities instead of immediately telling yourself why something won’t work.
You may trust yourself more.
You may ask better questions.
You may feel calmer because you no longer believe you have to figure out every part of your life alone.
You may still have financial concerns, relationship struggles, family issues, career decisions and ordinary human challenges.
Spiritual development doesn’t eliminate being human.
It gives you another resource for navigating it.
That is the point.
And sometimes living your life by design begins by bringing all the things you already know—human and spiritual—into the choices you are making today.
Two Very Different Responses to Spiritual Unfolding
I tend to see two very different responses when people begin opening spiritually.
One person is excited.
They are like a child on Christmas morning.
Everything is interesting. They are noticing signs. They want to learn about their guides. They want to understand their intuition. They want to take classes and read books and explore all of it.
I love that excitement.
Explore.
Learn.
Build the relationships.
But stay grounded.
The danger comes when the experience becomes, “Look at me. Look what I can do. Look how special I am.”
That is where the ego can begin taking over something that was supposed to help you become more conscious.
On the opposite side is the person who wants nothing to do with any of it.
The experiences may conflict with their religion, culture, family beliefs or everything they have been taught about how the world works.
They resist it.
That is their free will too.
But sometimes the resistance itself is familiar. They may have spent much of their life resisting change, uncertainty or anything they couldn’t easily explain.
For that person, spiritual development does not have to mean becoming a professional medium, healer or spiritual teacher.
Maybe it simply means allowing yourself to have a personal relationship with something greater than you.
Maybe that relationship gives you comfort.
Maybe it helps you trust.
Maybe it reminds you that you don’t have to navigate every human experience by yourself.
That can be enough.
Spiritual Abilities Don’t Make You More Special Than Anyone Else
Humility is an important part of spiritual development.
I don’t believe intuitive or spiritual abilities make someone better or more important than another person.
I believe they are natural.
They may unfold differently for each of us, just like every other skill or ability we bring into this life.
The question is what you do with them.
Can they help you become a better human?
Can they help you serve someone?
Can they help you bring comfort, healing, understanding or compassion into the world?
Can they help you live your own life with greater awareness?
Healthy spiritual integration contains a little humility and a lot of application.
You don’t need to prove how spiritual you are.
Live it.
Spirituality Should Bring You More Fully Into Your Human Life
Your spiritual unfolding is not happening to take you out of your human experience.
It is not happening so that you can spend your entire day searching for signs.
And it is not happening to make you special.
It may simply be another part of you waking up.
Pay attention.
Create your personal dictionary.
Build a relationship with Spirit if that feels right for you.
Ask questions that help you live better.
Learn.
Explore.
And then apply what you are learning.
Healthy spirituality should make you more present in your relationships, more conscious of your patterns, more trusting of yourself, more open to possibility and more actively involved in your own life.
The signs may get your attention.
Integration is what changes you.
If you are experiencing signs, intuitive information or spiritual experiences that you don’t quite understand, an Intuitive Reading or Spiritual Counseling session can help you explore what is happening while keeping the focus on how the information applies to your life.
And if you want to hear more of my thoughts about signs, faith, guidance and why waiting for Spirit can sometimes put your human life on pause, listen to the full episode of This Life or Something Better: Are You Waiting for a Sign Before You Take Action?
Because ultimately, the goal isn’t to become better at looking for signs.
It is to become better at living your life.