Spirit Guides
and Helpers
One of the joys of being a medium is the privilege of working with spirit guides. Spirit guides are the unseen helpers in the spirit world who are dedicated to working with humanity in many different ways. All of us—regardless of whether we are psychic or spiritual—have spirit guides who help us with our lives, life lessons, and spiritual growth. Spirit guides are often referred to as guardian angels. Many people sense that a loving, caring being watches over them and protects them in potentially life-threatening situations. This sense very likely emanates from the presence of spirit guides, even for people who don’t believe in ghosts. Our spirit guides assist us whether or not we are aware of them.
If you want to develop your mediumship to the highest degree, I highly recommend working in collaboration with your spirit guides. They will supervise your development, guide you to the best teachers, and ensure that only the best-intentioned spirit visitors will come to you during meditation and mediumship practice.
There are two general categories of spirit guides: long-term spirit guides and situational spirit guides. From the perspective of developing your mediumship, your long-term guides would be of greatest importance. Situational guides, though, can provide wonderful specialized knowledge in any area of need as the occasion requires.
Long-Term Spirit Guides
Long-term guides are more highly evolved spiritual beings who have dedicated themselves to working with humanity. They know your life purpose and help keep you on track. They guide us and protect us. They also ensure that we are going to meet up with the right people and opportunities to move us along our path. They help open certain doors for us, but also make sure that some doors stay closed so we won’t stray too far.
Some of them have been with you since childhood. Others are drawn to you through the Law of Attraction, which states that like attracts like. As you grow spiritually, you will attract guides of a higher vibration.
All of us have a number of guides who work with us on a regular basis. Some play more prominent roles than others. It is not necessary for you to know your guides, and these guides are not necessarily individuals you have known in this physical life. The spirit helpers who are most relevant to your life will introduce themselves when they feel the time is appropriate and you are ready. I assure you that if you have a sincere desire to get to know your spirit guides, you will.
The most important spirit guides for mediums are: master teachers; gatekeepers; healing guides, such as chemists and spirit physicians; and spirit companions. Please realize that the division of labor implied by these names is a Euro-Western construct that our spirit helpers don’t necessarily subscribe to. I have to tell you straight off that spirit guide job descriptions are not as narrowly defined as those of the federal government. In fact, skillful guides are able to assume a broad variety of functions.
Master Teachers
Master teachers often focus on disseminating new knowledge, like White Eagle, who was channeled by the medium Grace Cooke, or Silver Birch, who spoke through British medium Maurice Barbanell. They care about humanity’s spiritual evolution and our cooperation with others. Their teachings always reflect this broader orientation.
Master teachers often work with many people at the same time. As you progress on your spiritual path, you could be brought into relationships with other spiritual people who share the same master teacher. As individuals, your life purposes, gifts, and talents may differ, but you probably share a common higher mission and were brought together for that purpose.
Master teachers are generally not particularly interested in the details of our lives. They bring us our life lessons, and they tend to show us how we fit into the big picture. They invariably challenge us to stretch beyond personal self-interest and to serve a higher spiritual purpose.
These guides often have a particularly high vibration. Beginning mediums can find it difficult to get in touch with master teachers, as these helpers can feel very distant and remote. Initially, you will probably find it much easier to communicate with one of your personal spirit guides instead of with your master teacher, even though your master teacher is still working with and through you.
We don’t get to choose our master teachers, though. They seek out those on the physical plane with whom they want to work. However, if we wish to attract a high-level master teacher, it helps if we make ourselves spiritually attractive. This involves living in alignment with natural law and trying to be the most conscientious and ethical person possible.
Gatekeepers
Gatekeepers can be compared to the marines who guard American embassies. They guard the access between the spirit world and the physical realm. If a medium desires contact with a person’s spirit loved one, the medium’s gatekeeper will send word to others who then find this person in the spirit world and bring him or her into contact with the medium.
Every medium has gatekeepers who control the spirit people who are permitted around the medium. Gatekeepers also ensure the spirit people who come into a reading are willing to provide the evidential information the medium requires. They also keep order in a reading or in a public demonstration, ensuring only one person speaks at a time so that a reading won’t turn into chaos.
Gatekeepers also take a leading role in spirit rescue. They help put us in touch with troubled spirits who are ready to accept our help in their struggle to move on with their path in the spirit world. In spirit rescue, the gatekeeper coordinates with the troubled spirit person’s guides and departed loved ones to facilitate escort to the higher realms.
We often have the same gatekeeper over long stretches of time until the gatekeeper feels that it is time for him or her to move on to other occupations or responsibilities in the spirit world. In such a situation, the medium’s other spirit guides coordinate the replacement with a new gatekeeper.
I occasionally visit my gatekeeper using process one, “Meet a Spirit Guide.” During these visits, I like to thank him for all the help that he is providing. If there has been a change in gatekeepers, I like to brief the new gatekeeper with the kind of information that I would like the spirit people to provide me with in my readings (chapter 11 , “Evidence and Spirit Messages” ).
Healing Guides
In the old Spiritualist writings, healing guides were often referred to as spirit doctors or spirit physicians. Spirit doctors are important to those who have a connection to the medical profession or who have the gift of healing mediumship. Spiritualist forerunner Andrew Jackson Davis, twentieth-century medical clairvoyant Edgar Cayce, and Brazilian healer John of God are examples of healing mediums with particularly skillful spirit physicians. Reiki teachers and practitioners, for example, work with the Reiki healing guides, including Mikao Usui, Dr. Chujiro Hayashi, and Hawayo Takata, who introduced the Reiki healing system to the Western world.
All of us have healing guides, even though we may not be involved in the medical profession or in healing mediumship. We can turn to them for help with our own health and healing issues. Whenever I face a health crisis, in addition to seeking proper medical care, I always turn to my healing guides and ask them to take the illness away. Thanks to their assistance, I have made amazing and rapid recoveries from pesky illnesses like the flu and shingles. I credit the help of my healing spirit helpers for the fact that I rarely get the common cold.
Spirit Companion
You might have one spirit helper who is closer to you and with whom you have a deep emotional affinity. This is your spirit companion, though he or she often fulfills other roles as well. I know that my spirit companion works with me in my mediumship. He often teaches through me, and I feel that he is in charge of who is allowed in the séance room.
Your spirit companion is often similar to you in some ways. There could even be similarities between your life struggles and the struggles that your spirit companion faced while on earth.
During life’s ups and downs, our spirit companions are wonderful sources of comfort. The spirit companion might not be a master teacher and might be reluctant to advise you on matters that are better addressed by your master teacher. However, a few words from him or her can give us the strength to keep on going. Knowing that they have struggled with the same challenges that we face can help us immeasurably in making it through a rough patch.
Situational Spirit Guides and Spirit Experts
Situational spirit guides, as the name implies, are spirit helpers who are with us for a short time to help us with specific tasks. Situational guides do not need to be highly evolved spiritual masters in order to assist us, and therefore can be recent arrivals to the spirit world. Their expertise in a given subject—the subject on which they are consulting for you—was acquired during their lifetimes on earth. Situational guides are wonderful resources, and all we have to do is ask for their assistance. When a particular task is completed, a situational guide moves on to the next challenge.
When I was studying the Morris Pratt Institute course on modern spiritualism to become an NSAC-certified medium, teacher, and ordained minister, a white-haired spirit gentleman with big wireframe glasses who asked me to call him Joe often helped me with my lesson essays. I could tell by the depth of Joe’s knowledge that he was an old Spiritualist, but without knowing more than the first name Joe, I wasn’t sure exactly who he was, although it didn’t really matter. I was about halfway through the course when I attended a seminar at Lakeside Assembly Hall in Lily Dale, New York, and found a photograph of my spirit helper hanging on the wall. I instantly recognized him. He looked exactly as he had appeared to me. It turns out Joe was late NSAC President Joseph Merrill! When I shared this with a friend who knew Joe during his lifetime, my friend laughed and said, “Of course, he told you to call him Joe. He told everyone to call him Joe!”
In the years since I have concluded my studies and have become certified and ordained, I have only had occasional contact with Joe, specifically when I was writing lectures and sermons on Spiritualism. No doubt, he helps all the students of Spiritualism from the other side.
My most recent experience with a situational spirit helper was when I needed help with search engine optimization for my website. An optimization company had contacted me and offered its services for a continuing monthly fee equivalent to a car payment. I declined, but asked my spirit guides to send me an expert who could help me understand the intricacies of search engine optimization. It took about seven months, but finally Spirit connected me to a search engine optimization specialist in the spirit world who cleared up a lot of my confusion. I’m sure the reason it took so long to find one is that most specialists in this line of work are still young, enjoying life on earth.
We can receive help from a situational guide at any time. If you are a college student studying a challenging subject, ask for a gifted expert teacher on the subject to assist you as you prepare for your exams. Now, you will still have to do your part and study, but the presence of the spirit teacher can help you grasp difficult concepts more readily and can help you understand subject interrelationships.
If your central heating unit stops on a particularly cold day of a three-day holiday weekend when no professional help is available, you can ask for an expert in heating units to help you figure out how to make your heater start up again.
You can also call upon situational helpers to assist you in your interpersonal relationships. For example, if you and your partner are struggling with communication, invite a marriage counselor from the spirit world to be with you when the two of you talk. Ask to be clearly guided so you can conduct your end of the conversation in the most productive way and truly hear your partner’s perspective.
To receive the help of a situational guide, simply say a prayer and ask that an expert in the spirit world with specialized knowledge in the area of your need be sent to you. If you have already been working with spirit guides, you may actually be able to perceive a situational guide. But even if you don’t, please be assured that the expert is there to help you. When we are working with a situational guide, we usually are guided to take the correct actions in the right order. Or we might just have a sudden knowing on how to proceed in a given situation. And of course, always thank your spirit guides for all their help!
Characteristics of Spirit Guides
Before you decide to fully trust a spirit person who purports to be a guide, be sure to use your discernment to evaluate the guidance that this being brings. The old Spiritualists always encouraged us to test the spirits. This is sage advice. Trust builds gradually, both in earth relationships and Earth-Spirit relationships. Your spirit guides will never hold it against you if you proceed cautiously and request proof. They will be happy to corroborate the information they provide through various avenues.
Sadly, there are spirit people stuck in the lower astral realm. They are known as earthbound spirits. These spirits are not spiritually advanced, and thus they are in no position to help anyone. However, they do get lonely and bored. They often like to feel empowered and important, so they might briefly try to pass themselves off as spirit guides.
If you conduct your spiritual work within the parameters of prayer and if you are not particularly desperate to connect with a spirit guide, this should not be an issue for you. Fortunately, it is easy to distinguish genuine spirit guides from imposters reaching out from the lower astral realm.
Genuine Spirit Guides:
Genuine Spirit Guides Never:
Lower Astral Plane or Earthbound Imposters:
One of my friends told me that her deceased mother had come to her saying she would be my friend’s spirit guide. During the following weeks, the purported spirit guide no longer looked or felt like her mother. Instead, she took on a frightening appearance. The “guide” had also taken to waking the person at all hours of the night with all sorts of nonsense that I no longer recall.
I told my friend that this so-called guide was neither her mother nor a spirit guide. In all likelihood this new medium had met up with an earthbound spirit who felt lonely and wanted to mess with her. It took a couple of coaching sessions, but eventually my friend summoned the courage to send this imposter away. The imposter was initially reluctant to leave, but when my friend kept insisting and did not waver, the imposter cleared out and didn’t return.
The moral of the story is: if contact with a so-called guide or any spirit person ever makes you feel threatened, uncomfortable, or restricted, tell that entity to leave! Be firm and tell him or her to go to the light. Ask the Great Spirit to send you a higher-level guide to assist you. Just as you don’t have to tolerate poor treatment from people in the physical world, you surely don’t have to accept it from anyone in the spirit world.
I have never known of a situation where firm insistence on the part of the medium did not work. However, should you ever notice that the same spirit person keeps coming around with the same sad story, realize that you are probably in contact with a spirit person who is stuck and in need of help (Appendix A, “Earthbound Spirits and Conducting Spirit Rescue”).
Important Things to Keep in Mind
Whether you work with situational guides or long-term guides, it is important that you have a realistic understanding of what to expect when you work with spirit guides.
How to Engage Your Spirit
Guides in Your Mediumship
Engaging your spirit guides in your mediumship is a simple four-step process. If you engage in this process every time you intend to communicate with the spirit world, then the process will become automatic and second nature.
Meeting Your Spirit Guides
It is best to attempt to connect with your spirit guides after you have established a spiritual practice based on regular meditation and prayer. If you are a complete novice to all things spiritual, I would suggest you give yourself several months of regular meditation and prayer practice before attempting the two processes below. During these months, it is okay to harbor the heartfelt desire to meet your spirit guides.
The reason I suggest waiting is that initially your vibration might not yet be high enough to connect with your guides, and your spiritual senses might not yet be acute enough to perceive your spirit helpers. I find that many people meet their spirit helpers quite naturally once they begin a regular spiritual practice and start practicing the application of the natural laws.
I met my favorite spirit guide organically some months after I had started a daily meditation practice. One day I simply noticed his presence. He was quiet and had a sweet little smile on his face, but he didn’t interact with me. However, I immediately liked him. There was just something very comforting and positive about him, and I felt drawn to him. I realized I had sensed his presence for a while, but I had been simply too busy to slow down and pay attention.
After our initial encounter I began to notice his presence more frequently. Because he didn’t say anything to me, I just assumed that he came with the house that I lived in. When I told my Spiritualist friends about him, they just smiled, but they didn’t venture any guesses. It never occurred to me that he could be a spirit guide.
When the time came to move out of the house, I was upset. I didn’t want to move, partly because I was afraid I wouldn’t encounter the spirit gentleman again. Imagine my surprise and joy when he showed up during the home inspection of the new house I was about to move to! That was the first time it began to dawn on me that he might be a spirit helper.
Gradually, he began to share small details of his life with me and help me with various large and small things in my life. However, for years he would not share his name, and he spoke of his ethnic background only in the most general of terms. About four to five years passed after our initial meeting before he finally shared his identity with me. Once he divulged his identity he brought an abundance of detailed corroborating evidence that left no doubt that he is indeed who he says he is.
Why did it take him so long to do this? I believe it is because he knows that mutual trust grows with time and should not be rushed. There were occasions where I might have turned my back on spirituality and Spiritualism. I also think he wanted to see whether I was serious in my commitment to working with the spirit world. After all, a lot of people dabble a little and give up when they don’t achieve the results they want as quickly as they had hoped.
Processes to Help You Meet Your Spirit Guides
Physically prepare yourself and your environment with the intention of performing a sacred spiritual ceremony in which you will meet your spirit guide. Take a shower or bath beforehand and put on fresh, clean clothes. Follow the guidelines for preparing a sacred space outlined in chapter 2, “Creating Sacred Space.”
Memorize or record the following processes, or a have friend read them to you to help guide you into meditation.
Process One: Meet a Spirit Guide
Go into a relaxed, meditative state and seek your full attunement with the Divine as outlined in steps 1 through 5. Please do not rush the attunement process in your eagerness to meet a spirit guide. After you’ve had a thorough and leisurely attunement period, extend your awareness into your energy field (step 6) and begin to send your love to the spirit people around you, as described in steps 7 and 8.
Now that you have enjoyed your communion with the Divine, ask the Great Mystery to take you to a sacred place of initiation, a place that is filled with all the love in the universe. It is in this space that you will meet your highest-vibration spirit guide. Gently notice how all of your senses suddenly become more acute. Spend a few moments adjusting your perception. Feel the love that fills this sacred space. Notice your surroundings: an altar has been prepared in anticipation of your arrival. The light of many candles lights up the altar and your surroundings. A master of ceremonies now comes forward and leads you into the center of a circle where a gathering of high-level spiritual beings begins to surround you.
Your highest-vibration spirit guide welcomes you. Open your heart, and sense and feel the energy signature of your spirit guide. Notice the visual impressions. You may or may not see every detail of your spirit guide’s face and appearance. Introduce yourself and wait for a reply. Ask what role this guide is going to play in your life. Ask how he or she will help you develop your mediumship. Ask if there is something your spirit guide would like to say to you and wait for a reply. Ask how you can call upon your spirit guide and receive the answer. When you feel your meeting with your spirit guide is complete, gently return your awareness to your physical surroundings. Wiggle your feet and legs, shake out your hands, and stretch.
Process Two: Thinning the Veils of Separation
This process is wonderful for people who have a hard time working with visualization. It can also be used any time you feel burdened or bogged down with whatever is going on in your life.
Go into a relaxed, meditative state and seek your full attunement with the Divine as outlined in steps 1 through 5.
Once you have attuned yourself to the divine energies, continue to enjoy the peace and calm of your meditation. Let external sounds take you to a deeper level of love, peace, and acceptance. Breathing deeply, call your highest-vibration spirit guides to come and gather around you. With each breath, let everything that stands between you and your guides fade away. Like sediment settling in a glass of water, the veils between the two worlds become clearer, cleaner, and more transparent. You might experience a physical sensation of energies lifting away as you become lighter and lighter. You do not need to know the nature of what is lifting away. As you stay relaxed, with your mind focused and clear, continue to let go, and let go, releasing veil after veil.
As you become clearer and more peaceful, your perception of the subtle energies around you becomes more acute. You begin to sense and feel the presence of your spirit helpers all around you. Start sending your love to your spirit guides. Mentally ask your spirit guides to draw closer so you can meet them. If you’d like, quietly affirm: “I am open and ready to perceive and meet my highest-vibration spirit guides.”
Notice the presence of your guides as you receive stronger, clearer impressions. Ask your spirit guide to send you love and to surround you with his or her love. Gently observe what is happening, staying calm and peaceful, maintaining an attitude of loving acceptance.
Introduce yourself and wait for a reply. Ask what role this guide is going to play in your life. Ask how he or she will help you develop your mediumship. Ask if there is something your spirit guide would like to say to you. Wait for a reply. Ask how you can call upon your spirit guide and receive the answer. When you feel that your meeting with your spirit guide is complete, gently return your awareness to your physical surroundings.
Practices to Deepen Your
Connection with Your Spirit Guides
The best way to establish a deeper, more purposeful connection with your spirit guides is to regularly enlist their help in your daily life. The practices below will help you experience frequent contact with your guides. Over a period of months you will come to realize that you have gotten into the habit of receiving regular high-quality insight and guidance for yourself.
Practice: Get in the Habit of Asking for Help
One of the laws of the universe is that we have to ask for help, because no one—not even our spirit loved ones or spirit helpers—has the right to interfere with the exercise of our free will. Our spirit helpers do what they can to be of assistance to us without crossing the boundaries of free will. However, I think they can help us even more when we specifically request their assistance.
I often ask for help finding a parking space in the famously congested downtown of Washington, DC, or in front of the entrance to my apartment building, especially when I come from a long trip with luggage to haul. I ask for help in taking the smoothest routes when I’m traveling, as well as with the purchase of airline tickets. I ask for assistance with writing, with teaching my workshops and circles, and with finding lost or misplaced items. When my kids are getting ready to take exams and they request it, I usually ask for spirit help on their behalf. I ask when I try to understand something, whether it is how to assemble a piece of furniture or an event that happened in my life years back. I find that since I’ve started asking my guides for help, a lot of things run much smoother and I don’t get nearly as frustrated as I used to.
Practice: Ask Your Spirit Guides for a Gift
This exercise is a wonderful opportunity to engage your spirit guides on a daily basis. It is also a great tool to help you deepen your understanding of how your guides use symbols in their communication with you. But most of all, it gives your guides the opportunity to convey higher spiritual philosophy to you.
At the end of your morning meditation, ask your spirit guides to bring you a gift that has relevance for the day ahead. By keeping your request broad, your guides will have room to work with you—and to surprise you in the process!
Please resist the temptation of asking for predictive gifts, such as “How is my day going to be?” or “Am I going to get that job offer today?” or “Is Andy going to call me today?” Requests for predictions are much too limited. Oftentimes they are simply based on ego or petty concerns that your spirit guides couldn’t care less about.
After you ask for the gift, wait a few minutes. If nothing happens, then continue to focus and restate your request. If still nothing happens, then imagine the gift. (That’s what I did the first time I did this exercise.) You may imagine a package wrapped in amethyst-colored paper, with a soft, silk bow of red and gold. Though initially you may feel as if you are making it up, very quickly you will come to recognize the hand of Spirit. The gift might come to you in your thoughts, especially when an image or an idea suddenly comes to you.
Pay close attention to every aspect of the gift. How is it presented? Is the gift wrapped? How is it wrapped? You will find that every tiny part of it has significance.
Whatever the gift is, accept the first one that comes, even if you have no clue what it could possibly mean. Accept the gift and thank your spirit guides. Be sure to note the details of your gift in your journal.
Before you go to sleep, think about your gift and examine your day to find the meaning of the gift. If you cannot see a connection between the gift and how your day went, ask your guides to help you understand the gift’s significance.
Practice: Ask Your Guides for
a Message from Your Environment
As you are out and about during your day, ask questions of your spirit guides and watch for the answers. Ask only one question at a time. Don’t ask: “Should I quit my job, move to Hawaii, and start a restaurant?” That’s three questions. Instead ask, “How can I tell that the time has come to quit my job?” or “Is it a good idea to move to Hawaii?”
The answer might appear in the phrase of a song that you hear on the radio. One of my clients had been divorced and had managed to stay on cordial terms with her ex-husband. One day she was wondering whether there was anything to his newfound attentiveness toward her. Just at that moment, a song came on the radio: Whitney Houston’s “I Will Always Love You.” My client realized that she, too, still loved her ex-husband. She took the message to heart, and they reunited.
Your answer might show up on someone’s vanity plate. I often receive messages from other people’s license plates. Several years ago, I really wanted to go to Shenandoah National Park, but kept putting it off in favor of what I considered more urgent priorities. During the course of an errand, I was driving on the Capital Beltway when a car merged in front of me. The license plate read “Shen&oa.” With that, I realized my desire to go to Shenandoah wasn’t just a whim; it was indeed something I needed to do. I took the next exit, went back home to grab my hiking boots and a bag lunch, and headed out to Shenandoah National Park. While there, I received the inspiration for an outdoor workshop that I have been teaching twice a year since then.
Another example occurred several years ago while I was stuck in the left-turn lane. I was wondering whether a friend I lost contact with would ever contact me again. In that moment a car drove past me on my right. The license plate read “He Will.” Sure enough, the friend contacted me two months later.
Yet another time I was driving and wondering whether someone told me the truth about something that was important to me. In that moment, a car passed me. Its license plate recommended “Trust.”
If you ask a question and you don’t notice anything special within the next few minutes, it could be that it’s not yet time to have the question answered, or perhaps you worded the question ambiguously. In my experience, straightforward questions tend to receive straightforward answers.
Practice: Ask Your Guides
for a Message from a Book
On occasion, ask your spirit guides to give you insight into a situation or problem by directing you to a passage in a book. The process is very simple, and can be done at home, at a bookstore, or at the library.
State the problem that you need help with, and let yourself be guided to a book on a shelf. Just go by your gut feeling. Don’t worry about the subject of the book that draws your attention. Whatever book you pull out, trust that it is the right one.
Pick up the book and let it open to whatever page it wants to open to. Let your eyes be drawn to a certain passage on the page. The print might stand out to you, or perhaps you will see a special light on the section that applies to you. Read the section and think about how it applies to your question. Now, act on the guidance you receive.
You will find that you will receive very direct and to-the-point instruction, insight, or guidance in this way. By acting on the help given, you let your guides know that you value their input. This encourages them to bring you more of it.
For example, when I was struggling with writing the natural law section of this book, I finally asked my guides to direct me to a passage in a book that would help me eliminate the difficulties. As soon as I made my request, I was drawn to the bookshelf in my bedroom. When I reached out, my hand was drawn to Edgar Cayce’s A Search for God, Book II.5 When I opened the book at random, my eyes were drawn to the following passage:
We should present ourselves as channels of blessings for others. To be a blessing may demand that we present ourselves as a living sacrifice, as a living example to others.
I immediately understood that I needed to introduce natural law within a framework that allows for a medium’s best and highest functioning. I also understood that I needed to make the chapter more engaging by adding practices drawn from my own experience.
Questions & Answers
I didn’t meet a spirit guide.
In my workshops, people usually succeed in making contact with their guides, but on rare occasions I have had students who don’t—at least, not on the first attempt. If you did not make contact the first time, give it time and repeat the process on subsequent days. If, in spite of your good-faith attempts, you are still not making contact, please reread chapter 1 , “How Mediumship Works,” to help you identify the particular block you are dealing with. Repeat the “Thinning the Veils of Separation” process on subsequent days and at regular intervals. Just like you didn’t learn to drive a car in just one afternoon, you can’t become a full-fledged medium in one sitting. Continue to practice.
I’m not receiving my guides’ names.
This is quite common. There are several reasons for this. First, names are just not as important in the spirit world, and second, some of our guides come from cultures where names were held sacred and were not shared casually. It’s important to remember that relationships with our spirit guides develop over time, just as relationships do in the physical. If you don’t receive a name, do not despair. Just know that as you do your best to live a spiritual life, your guides will reveal more about themselves. And when they do, you know that a high honor has been bestowed upon you.
I haven’t been able to contact a guide whom I met several weeks ago.
Don’t worry about it. Guides make their presence known when they want to. Usually they operate quietly in the background without our being aware of their presence. Sometimes entire months go by when I am not particularly aware of the presence of particular guides, so what you are experiencing is quite normal.
Is it possible that I don’t have any spirit guides?
No. Everyone has spirit guides, but not everyone is aware of them or knows a lot about them. There are plenty of competent mediums who don’t know who their spirit guides are—and that’s fine. You might never learn this information, so please don’t get hung up on knowing your guides.
How do I know which spirit guide to call upon?
Spirit guides are multitalented and multidimensional. With time you will learn the strengths of each your guides. Instead of worrying about whether to call upon a gatekeeper, master teacher, or spirit companion, I would suggest calling upon all of your guides when help is needed, and let them sort it out among themselves. I usually go to my favorite spirit guide first. If a situation falls completely out of his realm of expertise, then he will bring in others who are better suited to answer a particular question.
My spirit guide doesn’t seem to come around
anymore, but I am aware of new guides.
Your initial spirit guide could have been a transitional guide. When someone first begins spiritual development, his or her vibration might not yet be high enough to allow for the perception of spirit guides. In that case, a transitional guide might help in the spiritual progression, until the medium is ready to work with a higher-vibration guide. Please note that difference in vibration does not denote difference in quality.
Do our spirit guides hang around constantly?
No, they don’t, actually. Our guides live full lives in the spirit world. They are not hovering over us like helicopter parents. Often our guides are otherwise occupied; at other times they leave us alone as we go about our lives. This does not mean, however, they have abandoned us. I sometimes go through weeks when I am not aware of any special interaction with my guides. However, if I really needed them or if my life were threatened, they would be instantly with me.
5. Edgar Cayce, A Search for God, Book II (A.R.E. Press, 1996), 63.