Examples are good because it allows us to see realities from a different perspective.
I am glad you listened to your higher self with the cola, I had a similar moment a couple of times when offered it. The first time I just rubbed it on my gums about 9 pm and couldn’t sleep for 14 hours lol, I didn’t like that.
Then a couple of weeks later was offered some again to snort, but like you, I thought, do I really want to start doing this knowing what the consequences could be, and didn’t.
I think a lot of people get to these life cross roads and have to make decisions on which path they will travel. Some make better choices than others but again you have karmic lessons to learn, so nothing we do is wasted time, if we can learn something from it that improves us spiritually.
Some people will follow the winding path around a mountain to its summit, some prefer to challenge themselves and make their own path straight up which is harder and a shorter distance to the top but it may take longer time than the long winding route in the end.
Neither is right or wrong because it’s about the experience and how ypu deal with it, not the time it takes, the view is always the same from the top of a mountain no matter which way you climb it.
I believe we up and download information from higher sources. There could be multiple sources or the same one with different names.
I would get downloads while meditating, voices telling me things, suddenly getting a clear understanding of particular information without even knowing anything about it prior. It would just come out of my mind and be correct when checked.
Was it a physical entity telepathically transmitting as I have had them tell me, or a discarnate entity like spiritual guides or guardian angels, which I believe in, or my higher self that is the sum of all my experience in many lives, known as an akashik record, that I am accessing for the info. I don’t know for sure and it doesn’t really matter so log as the information is correct for me.
A lot of what I do or react to is intuitional thoughts and feelings, I am trusting these more all the time and they mostly correct, sometimes the timing is off and it happens later or a bit earlier than expected.
Numerology is an iteresting subject, its proven itself to me time and time again and can be very specific. As soon as I get dates for something, I will look up that day or month to see what it says and compare it to what actually happens.
Is it coincidence, synchronicity, or destiny. Very difficult to distinguish them apart and so long as it helps that’s all that matters. There is a great book I read years ago called Coincidence or Coincidence. It’s full of true stories of incredible concidences or synchronicity as I call it, as I believe there is no such thing as coincidence, synchronicity is an intelligent force created by ourselves, where coincidence is random chance.
I love metaphors.
Forest Gump, Ground Hog Day, an old Peter Sellers film called, Being There, worth watching, are all great metaphor films. They teach without your conscious mind getting in the way.
There are lots of great Buddhist metaphor stories I enjoy re reading now and again. The frog in the well is a good one. Falling down a deep hole and The beggar and the Buddha in disguise are others.