SG as GPS

Most likely all of us have had the experience of wanting to help someone but having them ignore our advice, even when they solicited it. I can recall times myself when I know someone has a great suggestion for me, but I have some kind of block that prevents me from acting on it, at least right away. Or I mistakenly think it's not helpful, even though it would be if I tried it out. I suspect we are like that for the Buddhas, because they are so much wishing for us to head toward happiness but see us take so many wrong turns.
It's like they're sending us those postcards that say "Wish you were here," from a place like New Zealand, only nicer - far nicer than we can imagine - and we're living in a grimy city that's choked with pollution, and we think that's just another way of saying "Hello". Besides, we think, it's so far away - it would be so much trouble getting there, even if we could make it.
So our Spiritual Guide is inviting us to the Pure Land, and we're replying that we're busy with other engagements.
He's trying to steer us in the right direction, and we keep going astray. At first I was imaging my Guru as my driver, but it's probably more useful to see myself as the driver and him more like the navigator. Sometimes I listen to his directions and sometimes I don't; often I forget to even ask him, even though he's been there and I haven't. Then I pictured him as a GPS, like one of those navigation systems people put in their car that talks to them, giving them turn-by-turn instructions. Why do we trust our "navi", but not our personal Buddha?
As we're driving through our day, sometimes we're going too fast and miss our turn, or we just didn't see it even though our GPS told us it was coming up. The system patiently recalculates our route based on where we really are, as opposed to where we were supposed to be.
Our Guru GPS can be like an inner compass if we're willing to use it.
It has additional features not available in the commercial systems - directions to take an exit for a rest stop or to pull over to help someone, for example.
Let your Spiritual Guide do the job you hired him for, I tell myself.

P.S. When I got in the car today, "I'll Take You There" was playing : )