Spirit guide: a benevolent, spiritually advanced, disincarnate spirit who acts as a guide or protector for a living, incarnated human being.
Your spirit guides are with you at all times. You are their spiritual assignment. They are trainers, ready to assist your spiritual and emotional growth but you must believe they are real. They can’t help if you don’t first ask and then listen to their messages. How deep is your desire?
The asking part is the easiest, and yet many people do not know to ask. It is as simple as saying, “Hello, dear Spirit Guide(s). I’m confused (or sad, or afraid, or whatever) and I need your help and guidance.”
The trickier part is learning to listen to their guidance. You want to hear them, but may not know how. Because they are not embodied in earth suits, and they vibrate to a higher frequency than we do, we have to be still and receptive to catch the message. Sounds hard, yet it is a skill that can be learned by anyone.
Hint: They don’t walk right up and speak loudly to you.
While you may hear them speaking through a voice in your head, or out of a stranger’s mouth, they may come as a smell, a feeling, a dream or other way. This calls for your attention to detail and a willingness to be open to the creative ways they try to engage with you.
For instance, have you ever been distressed and asked for help? Then have you turned on the radio, and a song comes on that gives you guidance? On several occasions, while stressing over an elusive solution, I have heard Paul McCartney singing “Let It Be” on the radio and I know I will have an answer soon. Thank you, Guides.
On another occasion, my curiosity about my principal spirit guide was fulfilled through a massage therapist. A year before, I had asked my guide to reveal himself to me, and he replied in my head, “I am always standing behind you.” (I thought that he meant he has my back.) I glimpsed a tall male figure dressed in white. Scroll forward a year later, when the massage therapist was working on me. She said, “My goodness, your guide is so tall, and he’s standing right behind you.” Several others over the years have reported seeing him. He’s always behind me, both literally and figuratively.
There are other guides, too, who seem to come and go when the situation calls for it. I have a guide who presents herself to me as a plump, short, motherly woman and says her name is Margaret. I, on occasion, have a Native American guide who appears so very old that I have never been able to tell her or his sex. This being mostly communicates with grunts, and I cannot pronounce her or his name. Sometimes, I see an old Chinese medicine man who won’t give me his name. I know he is here when I see a flash of purple behind my eyelids.
The more often you ask and then listen for an answer, the more often the information comes through. These loving beings have a treasure trove of information for you and they are waiting to share it.
Here are a few ways to learn to communicate with your spirit guides:
- First of all, believe that they are not only with you, but are also there especially for YOU.
- Tell your spirit guides that you would like for them to reveal themselves to you. You can ask them to show up in your dreams, or in meditation, sitting in nature, or another way. But don’t be surprised if they choose a different way that better suits them.
- Spend time in your garden or a park or greenbelt – somewhere in nature where it is quiet. Calm your mind with a mantra, state your desire to communicate, ask a question, and then listen. A mantra is a positive phrase repeated over and over, so it could be as simple as, “I am at peace.”
- Be aware of interesting encounters with animals. I don’t mean ordinary sightings. In other words, not just seeing a mockingbird in the tree, but that you see something unusual like a coyote walking down the street in broad daylight or a snake slithers across your path. Then turn to a book like “Animal Speak” by Ted Andrews, or “Animal Spirit Guides” by Steven Farmer, or even go to the internet where you can find the symbolic meanings of these animals. Your guides may communicate with you in that manner. It seems a favorite way mine use.
- Write results in your journal so that you remember them. Sometimes, you get a lot of information quickly, and it can slip out of your head if not jotted down fairly soon afterward.
Good luck in working with your spirit guides. And let me hear about your successes. I’m excited for you.