When I Mistook My Desires for Divine Guidance: A lesson in Spiritual Discernment.

Spiritual maturity isn’t about eliminating the ego.
It’s about learning to recognise when it is speaking.
Have you ever experienced something so extraordinary that you became convinced it was destined to lead somewhere? Have you ever wanted something so deeply that you began interpreting your experiences as signs that it was meant to happen?
I have. And it taught me one of the most important lessons of my spiritual journey: discernment.
When extraordinary experiences become a story.
There was a time when I fell deeply in love with someone with whom I shared experiences that felt profoundly mystical and spiritual. I experienced what I understood to be spontaneous kundalini activations, with intense energy moving through my body and vivid perceptions of indigo and violet light. At times, it felt as though time & space stood still, as if we had entered a bubble beyond ordinary reality.
Through my exploration of the Akashic Records, I also experienced what I interpreted as a past-life connection between us, we were lovers in Divine Union. These experiences felt sacred, extraordinary and difficult to explain. I came to believe we were soulmates, perhaps even twin flames, connected by a history that extended beyond this lifetime.
At the time, I had only recently begun learning how to channel. I was developing my intuitive abilities at the Institute I was training at and had experienced moments of accuracy when exploring intuitive impressions for my spiritual sisters and for my teacher I was studying with.
But when it came to my own life, something was different.
I was deeply emotionally invested in the outcome. I wanted this person to choose me, and I wanted our connection to become a committed relationship. Somewhere along the way, I became convinced that God had shown me this was exactly what would happen.
I imagined him leaving his girlfriend, coming to my bodybuilding competition and declaring his love for me. I didn’t simply hope it would happen. I believed I had received divine confirmation.
Then came competition day.
I was sitting in the hairdresser’s chair, getting ready to step onstage, when I saw a social media story of him at Dragon Dreaming in New South Wales with his new girlfriend.
The future I had imagined so vividly collided with the reality in front of me.
I was devastated and heartbroken.
I reached out to my mentor for an emergency session, needing help to make sense of what had happened. That conversation became a turning point in my spiritual development.
I began to recognise something confronting: my ability to perceive intuitive impressions did not mean I was always interpreting them clearly.
When I was reading for someone else, I could approach the experience with a degree of distance. But when it came to my own desires, I was so attached to a particular outcome that my hopes and longing influenced the story I built around my experiences.
My ego didn’t necessarily need to invent the experiences themselves. It could take something deeply meaningful and weave it into a narrative that fulfilled my desires and soothed my wounds.
I had mistaken the strength of my conviction for the certainty of divine truth.
The ego isn’t the enemy.
This experience changed the way I understood spiritual growth.
I came to realise that having a profound spiritual experience & understanding what it means are two different things.
We can experience an intense connection without knowing what another person feels, what they will choose or whether we are meant to build a life together. We can receive an intuitive impression and still need to question whether our hopes, fears or unresolved wounds are influencing how we interpret it.
The ego isn’t something we can simply eliminate. It is part of being human. It can help protect us, but it can also shape our perceptions around what we desperately want to be true.
The work is to become aware of it.
I began asking myself questions I hadn’t always been willing to ask:
Am I interpreting this experience through what I genuinely perceive, or through what I desperately want to be true?
Am I seeking guidance, or am I seeking reassurance?
Can I remain open to the unknown, or am I trying to create certainty because uncertainty feels too painful?
These questions became an essential part of my spiritual practice.
I also came to appreciate the role of nervous system regulation. When we are emotionally activated, our fears and desires can feel incredibly compelling. We may feel an urgency to find answers, interpret signs or make decisions that will relieve our discomfort.
Pausing, breathing and becoming aware of what is happening within us creates space between an experience and our interpretation of it.
We can honour our intuition without treating every impression as unquestionable truth. We can remain open to spiritual experiences while acknowledging that our understanding of them may be incomplete.
For me, discernment isn’t about distrusting everything I experience. It’s about approaching those experiences with curiosity, humility and a willingness to question my own assumptions.
You can honour a connection without controlling its outcome
One of the hardest parts of letting go was accepting that a connection could be profoundly meaningful to me without becoming the relationship I had imagined.
I can acknowledge the extraordinary experiences I had. I can respect the spiritual meaning they hold in my life. I can remain open to my understanding of soul connections and past lives.
And I can also accept that, in this lifetime, he did not choose a romantic relationship with me.
I don’t need to dismiss everything that happened, nor do I need to hold on to a particular future to justify its significance.
That distinction helped me confront the wound of wanting to be chosen. It reminded me that no spiritual connection, however profound it feels, can replace another person’s actual choices, actions and willingness to build a relationship with us.
Sometimes, the lesson isn’t about whether a connection was destined to last. It’s about what we discover about ourselves through the experience, and whether we can allow reality to be what it is.
I no longer believe I need to know the ultimate meaning of every experience in order to grow from it.
The deeper invitation of the Crown Chakra
This is one of the reasons I find the Crown Chakra such a fascinating part of our spiritual journey.
Traditionally associated with higher consciousness, spiritual connection and our relationship with the Divine, the Crown Chakra invites us to explore what happens when we loosen our grip on certainty and become open to something greater than our individual perspective.
For me, this isn’t simply about receiving messages, experiencing energy or accessing mystical states. It’s also about the humility to recognise that we are human, that our perceptions can be influenced by our desires, and that spiritual maturity requires us to keep learning.
We can deepen our connection with the Divine while remaining grounded in everyday life. We can develop our intuition while cultivating discernment. We can surrender the need to control an outcome without surrendering our agency or our connection to what we hold sacred.
This is part of the work I share through Empowered Alchemy By Kat George: Awakening to deeper awareness, embodying what we learn and creating a more integrated relationship with ourselves, the Divine and others.
Because awareness alone isn’t the destination. The invitation is to bring that awareness into how we live, love, choose and relate.
With love,
Kat George xx
 Empowered Alchemy By Kat George 
Awaken • Embody • Union

About Kat George
Kat George is the founder of Empowered Alchemy By Kat George, where she brings together her background in science and education with spiritual exploration, intuitive practices and personal transformation. Through workshops and guided experiences, she supports people to deepen self-awareness, reconnect with their inner wisdom and embody meaningful change in their lives.