chapter 13
Communicating with
Your Guides
Jim is curious about developing his awareness and wants to perceive communications from his spirit guide more clearly during meditations. He wants to create a closer friendship with his guide in a healthy, balanced manner, and to get a clearer understanding of his purpose.
Jim’s guide takes him through a series of lifetimes to give insight into the theme of lessons he is working on and what his next theme will be. He is used to order and comfortable following a chain of command due to his military background, which involved working with young recruits in situations designed to push them beyond their comfort zone.
As the All Lives Session began, Jim drifted through time, coming upon an ornately carved door with brass fixtures that opened to a scene in the European countryside. He saw himself wearing leather shoes and pants with a quilted shirt and vest on top. He had on a simple-looking, pointed leather cap, and he had calloused, dirty hands from working as a laborer known as Garin.
It was a pleasant day and the weather was mild on the hillside surrounded by rolling hills, woods, grassland, and cultivated fields on all sides. Garin carried his pitchfork in his hand as he walked along a pathway that had been made along the fence line. He was completely occupied with the task of taking the loose hay from the field and pitching it together so that it could be gathered up into sheaves.
The path came out to the road that ran along the field. Garin and another man loaded the hay into a big cart with wooden wheels. The two men pushed the cart along. After moving it to the next spot, they added more hay and continued this way down the fence line. Jim couldn’t help but notice that Garin had “a profound lack of curiosity … he’s not a deep thinker,” Jim said.
At the end of the day they went home, following a narrow road that led to the village down below. On the far corner of the village across from a stone wall was a row of little round houses with thatched roofs and eaves hanging over them. Outside the doorway of the place where Garin lived hung a bucket that he took down and flipped over to sit on in the shade under the eave. Garin was satisfied to sit in the shade and do nothing. Somehow, he wasn’t worried about the future.
Jim is taken by Garin’s simplistic outlook. There’s a peacefulness about him in spite of having “a profound disregard or concern for anything in the future, ANYTHING! He barely has a conception of eating, which will be in a few hours. It’s impossible for him to consider tomorrow, which is far into the future,” Jim said in disbelief. In fact, Garin’s next meal was too far away to concern himself with yet.
Garin may have been simpleminded, but that didn’t seem to matter because he got along well enough this way. He lived on the edge of the village in a room with its own door on the back side of a round stone hut. It was quiet here, which he preferred. His room was furnished with a simple rope bed made of a wooden frame filled with hay just wide enough for one person to sleep. He didn’t have a blanket; instead he covered himself in straw to stay warm when it got cold. This worked just fine for him.
When it was time for bed, Garin slept in his clothes. He took off his shoes and put on a pair of socks someone had made for him to keep his feet warm. He liked the feeling of lying on his bed at night when he was tired at the end of the day. He eventually dozed off and slept peacefully.
Each day Garin got up and did whatever people in the village needed him to do. In return, they fed him and looked after him. He was content, and the villagers accepted him this way. No one was mean or cruel to him. If someone needed a hand, he did whatever they needed. He didn’t have a close connection to other people, but he wasn’t lonely either. He really had no emotional depth. He spent his day carrying stuff and raking stuff and that was enough for him.
It wasn’t a complicated life. He just showed up when he smelled food cooking and people fed him. They didn’t mind; to them it was normal. Every once in a while, he went to the river to get cleaned up. By the time he did this, he was filthy with dirt. There was no soap. He simply took off his hat and washed his hands and face in the river, rinsing off as much dirt as he could.
As we moved along the life, this was it. No concern for the future or for money. Garin just did what odd jobs came his way, content to accept a meal as payment. He died at thirty years old: tired, gray, starving, and cold.
His spirit peacefully floats out of the body to where his guide greets him on the other side. His guide appears wearing white flowy robes with a mist coming off them. After a few moments of rest and rejuvenation, his spirit feels more like itself, having lifted the density of Garin off of it.
For Soul Reflection, he is led to an empty amphitheater with a fountain flowing like a waterfall. There is an object stuck in the middle of the fountain and everything flows around it. Feeling a little frustrated trying to understand what this means, Jim asks his guide, “Why can’t you just pull out a big whiteboard and make it simple?” He intuitively understands this is symbolic of Garin’s life, where he was the object stuck in the middle and life just flowed around him. His life lesson is about being in the present moment with absolute absence of future concern. Garin was content living this way. There was no joy, but there was no absence of joy either.
It is initially a bit uncomfortable for Jim’s soul to adjust to the absence of curiosity that Garin experiences. This is an example of a life in opposition to one’s soul’s nature, and in direct contrast to the life that Jim lives now. “Like black and white,” Jim says, amused by this. “I was the village idiot.”
The session ends with his past life self as Garin sharing a message with his current life self as Jim: “Appreciate the contentment of the moment, like socks on your feet for sleeping in.” As Jim leaves my office, this gives him pause to reflect on his own life, a life of order and well-thought-out plans for the future. “There is something admirable, almost, about being content with no thought beyond the current moment,” he says as he leaves.
On the drive over for another All Lives Session, Jim finds himself having a disagreement with his guide in the car. Although Jim can’t hear his guide, he knows that he is there and questions his guide’s qualifications to work with him. He asks to speak to his guide’s “supervisor” in our upcoming session so he can get a more competent guide to work with. Jim doesn’t tell me this until after the session, but it’s important that I point it out here.
The goal of today’s session is to continue strengthening Jim’s connection to his spiritual team. We discover another lifetime as Jim slips through a spirit door disguised as an elevator door that opens on the other side into a life as a retired schoolteacher named Adele. Adele was an elderly Caucasian lady dressed in a simple floral print dress and sitting in a wheelchair on the porch of the retirement home run by the Episcopal Church. It was 1920 in America in the Deep South.
Adele hadn’t always been confined to a wheelchair; she used to be mobile and walk just fine. During her lifetime the automobile was invented and it was becoming popular as an everyday mode of transportation. It’s ironic that this is how she came to be in the wheelchair. There was an accident with mixed traffic of automobiles and horses on the street at the same time. Adele was a pedestrian who got caught between a wall and a wagon when a horse got spooked. She was injured as it ran away.
Over the years, Adele became adept at maneuvering the wheelchair with her arms. At first, she disliked the daily routine without the use of her legs, but she adjusted to it. Her injuries had accelerated her retirement and left her confined to the home nearing the end of her life.
Whether it was snapping beans, prepping vegetables for soup, whisking a bowl of something, or wiping off the silverware, Adele continued to be active, helping out where she could. She enjoyed the time prepping food with Ida, the African American woman with the plumpish figure who cooked for them. Adele considered her to be a comfortable friend, whom Jim recognized as someone also in his current life.
Adele was pleased with the life that she led. She was a well-respected high school teacher, proud of herself for being strict to keep the young adults in line. She had never married or had children. She didn’t have any family anymore, but the folks at the home were close with each other and got along well. When Adele wasn’t helping prepare food, she read the newspaper and books to them.
Adele was seventy-nine years old when she died. The doctor was at her bedside with his black bag, but there was nothing else he could do for her. She wasn’t in pain, she was done. Her last thoughts as she died were “Ahh!”
Adele’s spirit lingers for a moment before passing into the spiritual realms, and is greeted by the same guide as before. This time he is dressed in business attire: trench coat, hat, and slacks, like a businessman going for a stroll. He takes Jim for a walk in the park, stopping at a bench where they have a seat. He tells Jim that he is dressed this way to appease him in response to his request in the car ride over to “speak to his supervisor” after doubting his capability. “I’m happy to do it … keep it professional,” his guide says. Jim is warmed by this gesture and recognizes there is already a close friendship between them. “If there wasn’t a level of trust there, I would never have been as direct with him as I was,” he says.
Jim asks how he can be of service to others in a more fun way. His guide responds by pulling out a big whiteboard with a big flower blooming from bud to bloom and places it between them. Jim laughs, recalling that in their last visit reviewing a lifetime, he had asked in frustration, “Why can’t you just pull out a big whiteboard and make it simple?” His guide doesn’t miss a thing! Jim intuitively understands that the deeper message is if a flower blooms, bees and people will come to it. People will enjoy the aesthetics of it, which occurs naturally. He’s to just allow it to happen and enjoy it.
He also understands that the purpose of Adele’s life was to develop teaching skills. Her special gift was her clarity of mind and it is because of Adele that Jim naturally knows how to teach. Jim sees Adele waving her hands in the air like a conductor as his guide shares that Adele was best at orchestrating things and people. She gained valuable experience orchestrating PTA meetings, the parents, principals, and the school boards and she was good at it.
Adele had a good understanding of people. She also had an absence of idealism that allowed her not to be bitter. This lifetime helps Jim with a piece he is missing. His guide is extremely pleased with the effectiveness of that life in helping Jim to learn balance, and tells him he needs idealism but in a balanced way.
Adele gives encouragement to Jim regarding having a closer relationship with his guide. She slaps a ruler on the palm of her hand and says, “Don’t let up,” like she is lecturing one of her students. Jim’s guide hugs him enthusiastically, pleased at the prospect. “Having a bonded relationship with the person they’re guiding is highly aspirational among guides,” Jim muses. The session ends here.
On the day of Jim’s SESR session, he is excited about what he will discover. We speak briefly about the other two sessions from the past couple of weeks before beginning the session. Today, Jim’s spirit door is a commercial door with a single metal handle, like a submarine hatch. He pushes it open and goes into a nautical scene. It was a foggy night out on the seas as the sub cut through the fog and over the ocean waves lit by the ambient light of the moon. He was an experienced captain commandeering a German naval supply submarine. The sub could go underwater when needed, but it was mostly driven above water like a ship. Only in extreme conditions was it necessary to dive.
The captain moved about the sub in a state of high alertness, as if waiting for something to happen. It was World War I in the waters of the northern Atlantic Ocean. There was always some level of alert because it was wartime. It was the nature of the vessel to go to a location and wait. He never knew if a sub would meet up with them or not. His instructions were to go to the designated point, sit, and wait. The foggy, rainy weather that had rolled in offered security, and allowed them to hide in it.
Captain von Bueling was competent at his job. For him, it wasn’t about war or winning; he was just trying to do what he was trained to do. Before the war he had been a ship captain and if there were no war, he’d still be one. It was a normal life and then war happened, and he found himself at sea for the navy. Being a native of Austria had insulated him from politics, not thinking of himself as being on either side; he possessed a strong knowledge of war based on experience. He accepted that his vessel would probably get sunk at some point. It was inevitable; the odds of not getting sunk were zero.
Suddenly there was frenetic activity: manually manipulating the dials, spinning them, and closing hatches to keep things secure. Everyone was moving quickly and purposefully. “Dive! Dive! Dive!” was the command Captain von Bueling gave as he threw on his long oilskin coat that hit around mid-calf.
The sub went into its descent, causing the floor to slant. The captain knew they wouldn’t make it; something wasn’t right. They were hit by explosives from another submarine that punctured the front third portion of their sub. Water began rushing in. Captain von Bueling and his men did what they could, but it was of no use. The infiltrating waters brought the angle of the deck to where it was vertical now.
There was no point trying to get away and there was nowhere to get away to. The captain accepted what everyone on the sub already knew. In fact, this was the reason that the crew members didn’t connect with one another on an emotional level. There was only one way it would all eventually end. They worked together to accomplish their job, but there was no sense suffering the heartache of connecting with one another.
The captain stayed with his crew until the final moments, when he confined himself in an isolated area in preparation for the waters to hit. As the waters came seeping in, he drowned. His spirit rose up, leaving his body, observing the scene from above the water littered with bodies and the sub’s debris. Captain von Bueling’s last thoughts of his life were “Oh, well, that’s the end of that.”
A guiding force pulls the captain’s spirit toward a transparent light where he immediately begins to feel lighter. He is greeted by a friend who takes him through an eye-shaped passageway. On the front side it is earthish, with palm trees and sand; on the other side an astounding light and a permeating sense of purity fill the air. The light comes out and envelops him like an incubator that is safe and healing. Jim reveals, “It’s like a conversion, like a retrograde, an undoing like you’re a baby. The submarine experience was adrenaline-packed at the end. This incubator is to release that.” A bluish-purple light restores an area near his heart that is dark and in need of extensive repair.
Next, Jim sees himself as a bluish figure with a human shape—similar to an Oscar statue, but blue—standing in the center of an oval space. Others like him are positioned around the oval. The space is open and misty in the middle with one side higher than the rest. Five Wise Beings sit on the higher part; one is holding a gold swirl-patterned robe. Jim is captivated by the being with the gold robe and speechless when he discovers the robe is for him. He puts the robe on with a great feeling of accomplishment describing this feeling as “beyond emotion.”
As he inspects the robe, he sees that the incredible pattern is made up of blues and greens, and is predominantly gold. It’s revealed that he can wrap himself in it and turn into anything. Whatever he turns into is then golden. His imagination takes him through the possibilities of far-out ideas, like a crazy bird dragon creature. These feelings are new for Jim as he revels in it. He folds it in and out of himself, bending, swirling, and flowing with the newness of it all. The Wise Beings delight in Jim’s enjoyment of his new gift of creativity, just as they have in watching his growth.
Once playtime is over, things become more solid. The mist clears from the center of the oval space and becomes a big reflecting mirror that turns and rises to face Jim. He pushes into its elasticity and through it to the other side onto a dark, dusty road in a fantastical landscape he likens to the surface of the moon. “It’s not something that is, but something that could be created … not bad for my first try,” he says. It’s a diorama, a representative of a larger story, that holds a naive, idealistic, and childlike scene with a castle, rainbow clouds, and lollipop trees. Lyrics to a song come into his mind carrying the message to go and create.
Next Jim is handed a package to open, with a mirror inside. As he peers into the mirror, he’s told, “It’s up to me to grade how I’m doing …” He pauses and replies, “I don’t feel I’ve missed many opportunities … and I’ve been open to the opportunities that have come my way.” His guide gives him a whiteboard with a flower blossoming and tells him that his purpose will be achieved if he just does what he is doing now.
The Wise Beings have been helping Jim with the lessons in authority for his last fifteen incarnations. They reveal there is learning in either accepting authority, or by wielding it; whether a navy captain, a school teacher, or even the village idiot. Jim is finishing up the theme of authority now. The next lesson—creativity—has already started with the gift of the robe. He’s advised it will be slow going in the beginning while learning about creativity. The gift of discernment learned in other lifetimes will benefit him now.
Upon further Soul Reflection, Jim recognizes that the life as the navy captain was about being comfortable with authority. As captain on a vessel, you’re in a position of authority every moment of every day. It becomes part of you. In that lifetime he learned that he didn’t have to lean on his authority, he just had to be comfortable being captain and having authority. His favorite thing about that life was the beauty of the openness out at sea, with no light except for the stars in the sky.
On final reflection, Jim smiles, sharing that his guide has been with him through the entire session whether speaking directly to him or not. Jim can see that they were in communication with one another during the quiet times as Captain von Bueling. “Now it’s a matter of quieting myself,” he says. “We’ve been communicating better than I think and … it will continue to grow from here.”
Jim’s guide reminds him to keep meditating to quiet the mind now that our sessions together have helped open up the link between them. Jim laughs, recalling the time when he started this journey into spiritual awareness with an attitude of “let me speak to your supervisor” when he didn’t like the answers his guide first gave. He says that his guide’s biggest help to him is with reminding him to lighten up and not be so serious. “I’m getting better,” Jim muses.
_ Soul-Minded Journaling _
Developing the Habit of Discerning
How do you improve your relationship with your soul? Your guide? Your spiritual team? Start by developing discernment in communicating with your guide.
You can do this exercise wherever you are; just find a quiet space for yourself and bring a journal and a pen. If you can, find an open spot outside with an expansive view, like under the stars at night or from a mountaintop. Feel the vastness opening you to communications from within.
Sit quietly and ponder a question or topic that’s on your mind. Choose just one item to focus on.
Listen as your intuition gives you answers. Be patient with yourself. Intuition is your soul’s way of speaking to you. Journal these responses. At first, don’t act on them yet, just observe while you develop a habit of discerning. Practice stepping back from the conscious mind, letting answers flow through you and not from you (or your mind).
Spiritual messages are softer, like a gentle nudging, not forceful like mind chatter can be. Learn to distinguish between conscious mind and soul mind responses. Learn when to listen and when it’s mind chatter. When conscious mind comes in, take a deep breath, and as you exhale, allow it to step back as an observer in the background. When chatter comes in, exhale and let it go like a breath of air being released.
After the end of each week/month, review these answers and notice where there’s consistency in the responses. After developing this skill you’ll recognize gentle guidance in the messages that come through.
Continue to journal what you discover as you develop a regular practice of this. Over time, notice who is speaking through you (your soul or a guide). If you’re not sure, ask and observe the response.
Let these communications become natural to you, strengthening your communications with your spiritual side.