As long as I act upon my own intuition, I succeed, but whenever I follow the advice of others I go astray.

An eel would not do well to ask directions to the Sargasso Sea from a pike or a trout. Deep down in its viscera, it already knows the way. Its best course is to trust its instincts. The same is true of human beings.

A philosophizer asked a dervish what truth was. She pointed to his eyes. He asked what was falsehood. She tweaked his ear. Her point being: seeing is believing, and be wary of what you are told.

Whatever the question, the answer is already present. Only, it’s buried under a mass of fears and fancies. One needs to clear one’s mind to know what one knows.

Is counsel worthless then? Not necessarily. The Prophet Muhammad said, “The believer is a mirror of the believer.” A word or glance that confirms what one knows in one’s innermost core is a kind of light upon light.

For this reason, Guides in the Esoteric School do not give advice. They work instead to empower the murid’s intuition.