‘Does everyone have a spirit guide?’ This is the question I’ve been asked more than any other when it comes to my work as a spiritual teacher. The answer I give is the only one I can, and that is, ‘Yes, most definitely.’
So many people in this physical world want to believe that there is a spiritual being watching over them somewhere out there in the vast universe. It’s easy to understand why they want to feel part of that bigger picture. If they knew that a spiritual guardian was guiding them from a higher place, instead of shrinking into insignificance when looking at the mighty heavens around them they might feel part of a more omnipotent force, full of purpose, potential and direction.
Mediums have always felt connected to spiritual teachers or guides from the ascended world of the spirit. I say ‘mediums’, but in that I include the shamans of the old cultures who would raise the vibration of their mind to talk to their ancestors or higher spirits to get guidance for their people. To all intents and purposes, they were the origin of what we call mediums today.
What I’m saying is that mediumship is a very old practice. Although Spiritualism, which was born in the middle of the 19th century and became a religion in Great Britain in the early 1950s, seems to be what many people associate with the practice of mediumship, it has really been around a whole lot longer than that.
Throughout the history of humanity there have been reports of people with the ability to talk to spirits or see visions and hear the voices of the departed. One thing common to them all, from any time, past or present, is that they talk of a guiding force. Joan of Arc had her council of saints who spoke to her and guided her mission. In the Bible there are many examples of holy men being visited by angelic beings who brought guidance from a higher level and so on. The same thing appears, in various forms, in most, if not all, cultures.
The thing is, guardians and spirit guides don’t only belong to the sacred and holy – everyone who is incarnated in this world has a ‘spiritual reflection’ in the higher realms. This is their guide. Though some people are born instinctively knowing this, everyone can get to know their guide if they know how, and by this I mean if they really know how!
In the first development circle that I attended there were so many people who invented an archetypal figure for a guide, like a Native American chief or a religious or holy person from Christianity, and so on. None of them seemed to have been ordinary people before they took up the role of spirit guide. Let’s see, we had John the Baptist and Mary, Queen of Scots, to name just two.
Historical figures like this just represent a type – the Baptist a great seer and prophet, for example, and Mary an innocent victim held in a tower. They aren’t an indication of what the person’s real spirit guide is like, more of where they are psychologically. If the person carries on with their development, though, they will come to learn something from the particular archetype they have chosen. They may even come to know their real guide.
One of my students, Steven, who now works with me, went through the experience of adopting an archetypal spirit guide only to find, several years later, that it was all just a lesson and his true guide was the opposite of his initial vision in almost every respect.
By the time that Steven came to me for help with his development he already had a strong idea of his spirit guide, as mediums had given him messages that suggested he had a Native American watching over him.
As he now admits, after being told this it became easy for him to create such an image in his imagination when he was meditating. No sooner had he tried this than a suitable picture formed in his mind: a proud Native American sitting on a white horse dressed in all the usual garb and so on.
Steven then took this further and asked this image if he was his guide. In his own head he heard a voice say, ‘Yes.’
He took it further still and asked the guide if he had a name. Once again a voice in his head answered him, saying, ‘Crazy Horse.’
So Steven took this to be the name of the guide. The only thing he wasn’t really sure of was whether the voice in his head was coming from the spirit guide or from himself.
At the time he wasn’t sitting in a regular circle and his only spiritual practice was when he attended seminars in places like the Arthur Findlay College in Stansted, UK, where budding mediums can go for lessons on how to develop mediumship. Other than these week-long seminars, he was meditating on his own at home with no teacher, so by the time he came to me his head was crammed with confusion and he had no idea what was real and what was his imagination.
It is for this very reason that I encourage all my students to take notes at the end of development sessions, but to ignore any images that flood into their mind when they first start to ask about guides. When we put out a question such as this from our mind, it’s normal to want to visualize the answer and maybe influence it with desire. I know that I saw many images in my mind during my early meditations, and if each one was a guide I’d honestly have a collection of every historical archetype from Atlantis onwards. It’s far better if you can work towards trying to sense the atmosphere around you and pick up any sign of a presence close to you. For me, it was never so much seeing that fed my belief in a spirit guide, it was more feeling the presence of spirit.
I had, however, already met my guide. When I was a small boy around the age of four or five, I remember seeing a little blonde-haired girl of the same age as me in my bedroom at night. Sometimes this child would be the last thing I’d see before I fell asleep. There were times when I’d be uncertain or even afraid of the things that were happening around me, as all children are at some point, and this beautiful little girl would bring a sense of peace and serenity that would immediately relax me.
I know that many children report seeing imaginary friends. It makes me wonder just how imaginary they actually are. I’m not saying that every child who claims they have an imaginary friend is seeing a spirit being; I just know what happened to me and how it was explained to me as I went through my own development.
Several years into my spiritual journey, I was in a development circle with a group of like-minded friends and had the chance to sit with a great trance medium, or channeller. A trance medium is one who goes into a trance state where they give up some of their conscious mind to the spirit who wishes to speak through them, and allow their spiritual guide to use their faculties.
I was told by this trance medium’s guide that my own guide would soon make himself known to me and that I should recall that when I was a child he had chosen to show himself to me as a girl child of the same age, as it was more suitable for a child to see that image than one of an older person from a different culture. The guide went on to give an exact description of the blonde-haired child and the effect her presence had had on me, and I know that I’d never shared that information with another living soul.
It actually made great sense to me that the spirit world, which is very wise and compassionate, would approach a small child like this, as it wouldn’t in any way scare me or make the experience feel paranormal, and it didn’t, ever.
My guide did reveal himself to me shortly afterwards, just as the trance medium’s guide had said, but before I reveal how and why to you, I’d like to explain how I reached this point in my progression.
By now I was several years into my development and was learning to trust the process that Mrs Primrose was teaching me. She was advising me to trust my feelings more than the images that appeared in my thinking mind or the internal conversations I heard. By this point I’d become much more sensitive to the atmosphere around me and when I was sitting in my class I could actually feel when a spirit being was in my auric field. Sometimes it felt as though someone was standing beside me and if I opened my eyes and turned my head I would have seen a person there, although I never did open my eyes.
There was one particular presence that I knew instinctively was my guide. Each time I felt this presence beside me I’d also have the overwhelming sense that fine wispy hair was forming around my mouth and chin, but it didn’t feel like my own hair, it felt as though it belonged to someone else. I came to understand that this sensation was my guide’s personal way of introducing himself to me and that the facial hair had been a distinct feature of his when he’d last been incarnate in the physical world. He was giving me a sign by which I would recognize him whenever I sat in my class or worked spiritually. It was his calling card, if you like.
How might you recognize the calling card of your own guide?
Begin this practice as you normally would with the meditation you’ve used to this point:
Bring yourself back as you normally would and take a moment to reflect on anything you experienced during that practice. If you are part of a circle, share it with your group. If you are sitting alone, write it down in a diary and date it. It’s always good to keep records of your spiritual journey. Even things that don’t seem important at the time should have some meaning at a later date.
Remember, the purpose of this exercise is to sense presence rather than try to understand it or imagine what it is. I know that it truly helped me in my development.
As I came to know my guide’s calling card, I would mentally ask him to remove the sensation from my face to show it was really him, and I would no sooner have sent out the thought than the feeling of wispy hair on my chin would disappear. Then I would ask him to bring it back and of course it would be there again. This feeling became our code. It’s one that I still experience today. It tells me that my guide is around me and usually after that something else is given to me – some information or a task to perform.
On one occasion I got a strong sense of the calling card followed by a vision of a dark-haired young man reaching out to an older woman, whom I instinctively knew to be his mother. He was holding a piece of paper in his hand that looked like a letter. Then I heard a voice in my head saying, ‘Alan is safe, Alan is free.’
I had no idea what this meant, as I didn’t recognize either person in the vision, but I had a strong feeling that it really meant something and I noted that it had happened right after I’d received the calling card from my guide.
It wasn’t long before the vision became a reality. Three nights later I was with Mrs Primrose in our healing clinic when a woman who looked like the lady from my vision came to us and asked if she could receive healing from someone.
At this point I was just a trainee healer, but my teacher told me to work with the woman and that she would oversee us. The healing was okay and I could sense warmth and a feeling of peace around the woman, but then I felt my guide again. His calling card told me he was close by and wanted to add something to the healing.
Then I saw and heard exactly what I’d seen and heard during my circle three days earlier, only now I felt impelled to talk about it or somehow unleash it from my inner self.
I finished the healing session quite abruptly and straight away spoke to Mrs Primrose in a whisper, telling her as quickly as I could manage about the vision. She looked at me and told me to tell the woman that the healing was over and conclude things as usual, but when I had, she took the lady into her office and called to me to follow them.
Mrs Primrose explained to the woman that I’d picked something up during my healing session with her and asked her whether she’d like me to explain what it was, as it sounded like a message from someone in the spirit world.
At that moment, I had no nerves or feeling of trepidation about giving this information because I felt the calling card of my guide again and knew that he wanted this to be done.
It turned out that the woman had a son called Alan who’d taken his own life and had left a letter to explain things to her, but she hadn’t been able to find solace in his words. She believed that he was stuck somewhere because of how he’d died and she was depressed and mentally exhausted.
When she heard the short message from her son in the spirit world, she told us it was really important to her and she looked much brighter at the end of the message than at the end of the healing.
I got to know her over the next few months, as she attended our church more regularly after that and it was good to see her grow in strength and confidence.
I too began to grow in confidence. This episode made it easier for me to know when to work as a medium and certainly to trust that the calling card was a true sign that the spirit world wanted to work with me.
Even today when I have doubts about certain things in my life, I send out a thought to my guide and ask, ‘If you are close, my friend, may I sense the calling card?’ Usually in an instant I get the sign.
My experience was of sensing my guide and then receiving a message for someone, and that’s the order it should work in. It’s always best to wait for the sign from your guide before you try to give messages to people.
It takes time to learn to sense the spirit world properly and to trust what you are picking up. If you wait for your spirit guide to give you a sign that you can trust, the whole process can be made much simpler.
My confused student Steven began to sit with me at a small private circle in my home shortly after I heard his story of how perplexing his development had been up to that point. I had a real sense that he had a true spiritual gift and I was just as certain that he had been influenced by people who really weren’t ready to teach this work.
I can still remember how baffled he looked when I offered him the chance to sit and do nothing and said that if he did nothing well, he could stay in my circle. I assume he thought that I’d be teaching him techniques of mediumship for the very advanced. How wrong he would be!
I must admit, though, that when Steven got into the idea of not trying to imagine things or get results for me, his mind really began to expand. Within the first year I could feel the power around him and knew that the spirit world was ready to introduce itself to him in a proper way. Having already experienced this myself, I couldn’t wait to see the reaction of my new student when all those years of confusion turned to bliss with the introduction of a simple calling card.
Over time, trust builds between you and your guide, and this becomes a true bond when they give you a task that provides proof that what they are telling you is true, as when I passed the spirit message to Alan’s mother. It means that there’s an intelligence working behind the presence you can feel, and any visions or messages that come with that presence will carry much more weight than random thoughts.
I kept records of what I experienced while sitting in the circle so that I could check the exact details later, and I was always amazed how meaningful my experiences became later on. This was so important to me in terms of trust and it also informed me that my guide seemed to have knowledge of things that hadn’t happened yet.
Once I happened to be sitting in my circle when I started to feel the presence of my guide really strongly around me. The calling card was so clear and pronounced that I honestly wanted to wipe the wispy hair from my face, such was the quality of the experience. I knew that something following would be important, so I tried not to lose my mindful state and to be ready to observe what came next.
Next came a stream of images of people and places that I couldn’t make out clearly – it was a bit like watching a television that wasn’t tuned in properly. Then the focus sharpened and I saw myself standing on a stage before what looked like a lot of people who were all looking at me with a real sense of expectancy, as though they were waiting for me to speak. I saw the outside of a theatre with the name ‘Mackintosh’ on the wall, then a single orange and then a monkey sitting on a rock. There was also a strong buzzing sensation around me, as there always was when I had a spiritual experience.
Together the pictures meant nothing at the time, but I wrote down everything I saw, heard and felt and dated it in the little diary that I kept for that purpose. Then I left it to see if it would somehow have meaning when the time was right.
Two years later I was asked to work in Gibraltar, where I gave a demonstration of mediumship in the John Mackintosh Hall to hundreds of people, and just before I walked on stage, I looked out of a window into a sparse little garden that faced the back of the hall and I saw a tree that was bare apart for one orange hanging from a branch.
The monkey turned out to be a very prominent symbol of the rock of Gibraltar. Many tourists go to see the amazing and quite cheeky little monkeys there, something I did myself.
It was episodes like this that made me trust my guide and also have patience and wait for the relevance of the information he gave me to make itself known.
The Gibraltar trip was amazing for me because it was the first time I’d worked in a theatre and it was a turning point in my work as a medium. The timing was special too, as it somehow gave me the power to overcome any worries when it came to working in front of large crowds. Being given knowledge of it in advance told me it would be all right on the night. All I really had to do was physically turn up and the spirit world would do the rest.
If you can learn to trust your guide as early on in your development as possible, then your journey will be much easier. It’s just a matter of learning the language of spirit.
For so much of our life we depend on our sight and hearing as well as our other human senses – smell, taste and physical touch – but we aren’t told that much about feeling or sensing.
I found that from a very early age I experienced feelings and emotions that my older siblings never seemed to mention or display, as far as I can remember. Being naturally sensitive in this way, I often reacted emotionally to what came to me. When I was as young as four or five, I remember picking up that some adults who had come to visit my parents were upset, and that made me upset too. I always felt connected to other people’s sadness or fear, and because of this I’d try to visualize solutions or just wish the people well from the deepest part of my young being. When I was growing up I had no one to tell me how to cope with this type of sensation and I just had to experience it and hope that someday in the future I’d be able to work it out.
If you think you were like this at any point in your life before you started on your spiritual journey it might turn out that you are naturally empathic. You might be sensitive to other people’s emotions and even physical pain. If this is the case then you have to learn how to use this ability and not be brought down by it. Some empathic people can be dragged down when they are in the company of depressed people, while others find it hard to be close to people or places where there is physical suffering.
One of the women who started her development at the same time as me found that she couldn’t watch the 10 o’clock news because she wouldn’t be able to sleep afterwards, as her mind would be full of the sadness and horror going on around the world. She would almost manifest the pain in her own body, her mind was so programmed to connect with the emotions of others. This was something she’d experienced all her life. (It is a misconception that if psychics feel someone’s suffering, they are removing it from them. Though this has happened, it doesn’t always have this effect.)
The thing that stands out in my mind about this woman is that she could feel so much pain, and not just from watching television. Her sensitivity was switched on to suffering, as is the case with so many people like this, because it would seem that this end of the emotional scale gets our attention more than the loving, happy side. Also, being in our healing class meant she was in the thick of things. She often would describe exactly what people were feeling when she was close to them.
For me, this was a revelation, because I could clearly see that a telepathic message was being passed between the sufferer and the empathic person. It suddenly dawned on me that the messages that came through from the spirit world, either from a spirit guide or a loved one, were being passed through the unspoken language of telepathy.
It was just the same when I sensed the facial hair of my guide – I was picking up on his memory of what he’d looked like in that physical body through pure telepathy!
This also meant that the pain I’d experienced when working with patients during my healing sessions was more a kind of telepathic phantom pain than real living pain. Any empathic healer knows that it’s quite common to pick up or mirror the pain of their patients. And more often than not, once you experience the pain and realize where it’s coming from, it ceases immediately.
Telepathy can and does also work very well between people who have a strong life connection. In my workshops, I’ve often used long-term partners or others with a strong love bond to show how it works. It’s not a matter of thought to thought, rather that the feelings or urges of one person affect the other person. These feelings can, however, sometimes appear in the mind like thoughts. This depends on how good the receiver is or on the strength of the feeling sent out.
On one occasion a couple who had been together for almost 30 years took part in one of my sessions. I asked them to sit in different rooms and then asked the man if he would go into a light meditation and take his mind to a very important memory in his emotional life. He did so immediately and his mind flashed back to the moment when his son was born. That had been before he was with his current partner.
She had no idea what she was to do, but I’d left a piece of paper and a pencil beside her so she might doodle if she got bored. The incredible thing was how quickly she started to draw a baby. And above its head, she wrote, ‘It’s a boy, it’s a boy.’
Although this woman knew that her partner had a son from a previous relationship, she’d never known how he’d felt at the time of his birth. But while she was drawing the baby, she wept slightly into her sleeve. That was precisely what her partner was doing in the other room while he was telling the group about his feelings at the moment of his son’s birth, so not only did his partner pick up on a feeling she couldn’t see, she actually felt it and reacted accordingly. Now that’s what I call telepathy.
If you would like to know more about telepathy, there are many books on the subject and some very good work has been done in the United States by Professor Gary Schwartz, who has conducted many scientific tests on telepathic subjects and had some very interesting results.
I would urge you to be alert for telepathy when you work spiritually and try to be aware of the source of the telepathic messages you receive. Remember, much of the information mediums and psychics work with is coming from people in this world, so you must learn to understand the mechanics of your mind as it picks up messages telepathically from this world and the next. How do these messages come to your mind? Is it through sight, sound or sense? We will look at all of these in the following chapter.
As you begin to get to know your guide and their calling card, you can start to use the telepathic connection between you to get answers. Your guide wants you to understand this language, so they will help you to expand spiritually each time you work with them. This isn’t a process to be rushed, but your guide will be there and will help you.
Eventually Steven gave up the idea of Crazy Horse being his guide and developed patience and the ability to sit in the power and just wait for his real teacher to appear.
I would see his guide’s image overshadowing his body and it was so clear to me what sort of person it was, but like a true teacher I said nothing until my student was ready to confirm it.
It was almost two years after he began sitting in my little circle that Steven began to recognize his guide’s calling card, which he described as ‘a sensation like an electrical charge’ running down his cheek.
I never reacted, but told him just to acknowledge it and wait until something else happened. What Steven didn’t know was that I could see that there was a very distinct scar-like line running all the way down his guide’s left cheek. I also could see that apart from that, this Asian-looking man seemed quite down to earth and ordinary. He gave me his name, which I kept secret until my student came to know it for himself.
The upshot of all of this was that one evening Steven had an experience in which his whole being lit up. Not only did he feel the calling card of his guide, he felt the whole person. He didn’t need visions or imaginings any more, because it was clear that the bond had been made between guide and student; in a moment he knew his guide’s name and where he had lived on Earth and when. It was like receiving a spiritual download of another being – the type of episode that turns belief into knowledge and certainty.
I knew that Steven was ready to work more closely with spirit because he’d given up the old ideas that had been put into his mind to impress him and decided to wait for the real thing.
Now, instead of his head being confused and chaotic with doubts and analyses, he was clear and certain and ready to move forwards with total trust, sure that the best was yet to come.