Spirit Guides
"If you talk to the animals
They will talk with you
and you will know each other
If you do not talk to them,
you will not know them,
And what you do not know
you will fear
What one fears one destroys."
-- Chief Dan George
There has never been a general consensus on spirit guides, everyone sees them differently.
What doesn't change however, are the questions people ask when they first come into touch with the concept of spirit guides.
Questions like "how do I get in touch with my guides?
Will they want to talk to me?
How do I talk with them?
What do they look like?
How many do I have?
Where do they come from?"
I'll endeavour to answer these questions based on my opinion on how spirit guides work and what they are.
I believe that we all come from one whole force, a life-force that encompasses everything in existance.
How it came to exist or what it's purpose is I don't pretend to fully understand, it's not something I
expect to be able to comprehend in this form. What I do know is that it is THERE and it does work with
us to create our realities and to learn about ourselves.
I also believe that within this life-force exists different dimensions of reality, different vibrational
dimensions which we can reach through raising our vibrations through meditation, ritual, and other energy
raising actions such as drumming, chanting, dancing... etc. I believe there is no limit to how many dimensions
there are, and that the more enlightened we become the easier it is to reach and move through these dimensions.
Where do they come from?
To my knowledge, spirit guides, among many other beings, reside in such dimensions.
Spirit guides generally don't have a physical form, therefore they tend to reside on higher vibrational planes (dimensions)
because they are not encumbered by the physical lower-vibration body. They work from these planes and move into ours
occasionally to offer guidance and insight. We can reach them through the above mentioned methods such as meditation,
by "tapping in" to the life-force and raising our vibrations that way.
What are they?
In my belief, spirit guides can be many things. You may have guides who are
souls of people who you knew in past lives, they could be ancestors of your present life (for eg. my aunt's guide is her
great grandmother), they could be simply souls who have decided to stay in the spiritual realms for a while and not
reincarnate to the physical plane and therefore volunteered to be a guide for you. They are essentially, like us,
energy-vibration which manifests in whatever form they choose... however, they do retain an identity because they are also
souls, and have usually led lives in the physical plane also, just like you.
What do they look like?
Whatever you want them to look like. Spirit guides will usually approach you in a
form which is most confortable and acceptable to you. For most people this is probably in the human form, though other people
might prefer to see an animal, a crystal, colours or stars etc. Most of my guides take on human forms because that is what
I'm familiar with and respond best to.
How many do I have?
This is greatly debated. Personally, I believe that you can have as many as you want.
Well, to be more precise, as many as are assigned to you. I believe we have one guide who joins with us at birth, and stays by
our sides right through our lives until we pass on. This isn't to say that this guide is our only guide. I also believe that at
different times in our lives, depending on the situation and lesson we have to learn, we have new guides join us to provide
guidance and insight into the situation. We can either choose to ignore this or use it. These guides can come in unexpected forms,
such as a stranger coming out of nowhere and giving you a tip on a new job position opening up near you. These guides can stay
with us for a long period of time, or a very brief period... depending on what the lesson is, and whether or not we're learning it.
How do I talk to them?
There is always a guide of yours nearby... whether it's your spirit guide,
animal guide or angel, someone will always hear what you say/think. So in effect you can talk to them any time you choose.
Just don't always expect an answer straight away :-) It's sort of like praying, you can ask them for assistance if you're
in a sticky situation or anything like that. Take for instance (real experience), you lost your wallet on the bus and no
one has seen it. All the bus drivers you talk to are rude and tell you to push off. That afternoon and night you ask your
angels and guides to help you find the purse with all the money and belongings still in it, that you promise to search if
they help to guide you in the right direction. The next day you're getting on the bus, the driver looks at you strangely,
then hands you your wallet, saying he recognised you from your license picture. Luck? Or divine intervention?
You be the judge.
How can I meet them?
Like I said above, there are many ways of meeting your guides.
Most children know their guides from birth, and can easily open up the channels to talking to them
(remember those imaginary play friends? Were they really imaginary?), but as they grow older they get
negative message from parents and other adults around them, "time to stop playing with imaginary friends Kate"
"No they don't really exist."
"That's nice dear, but shouldn't you be playing with some REAL friends?"
and messages to this like, so the children learn to cut off their connection
to their guides and forget about these wonderful beings.
Guides may also approach you in dreams, telling you messages and giving guidance from there,
where you are in a more open state to receive these messages.
There are also some really good books out there on meeting your guides, and also audio cassettes
or CDs which have "talk you through it" meditations to meet guides.
Are they the same as angels?
Some people say yes. In my opinion, not really. I believe they are
of the same "energy", being that of a higher vibrational force, but I don't believe they function in the same manner.
Yes, we do have an angel who also stays with us throughout our lives too, but this is not your spirit guide.
I base this on several beliefs of mine.
1. Spirit guides have usually lived in a physical body, on a physical plane like Earth, and have usually had some connection
to you from a past life of yours. Angels rarely incarnate on the physical plane, preferring to do their work from the angelic realms.
2. Spirit guides, though they can take on any form they choose, usually take a "gender". ie. they appear as male or female,
this is based mainly on the person/being they are presenting to you. For instance, my spirit guide Randy, who was my first husband,
takes the form of male and looks much the same as he did when he was alive. Angels on the other hand are genderless.
They may appear to you as more masculine or feminine if they appear to you, but they are in essence genderless... it's their energy
which lends them their more masculine or feminine attributes.
3. Angels function on a higher vibration than spirit guides, and in a higher dimension than spirit guides.
An encounter with an angel in it's full glory could very well scare someone more than assist them,
they are such beautiful beings with such love that their energy itself can bring too much truth to the person
and humans are fickle creatures, to much truth can be scary or even terrifying, that is why angels will usually
take on a form of lower stature when you meet them, someone on your level so you can interact with them without
the full-on experience of an angel. Spirit guides on the other hand have a lower energy and
aren't nearly as intimidating in their full form.
Are animal totems the same?
This isn't as easier a question to answer as above for me. I believe it's a little of both.
Spirit guides can take the form of animals and may always appear to you as an animal but I also believe that animal totems
are different. I will speak more about animal totems (I call them animal guides sometimes) later on in Duma, but in general I
believe that animal totems are the essence of the animal with it's message which appears in your life through various means such
as divination, dreams, physical appearance of the animal etc when you need to receive this message, similar to spirit guides who
come in and out of your life. But I also believe that we have several animal totems we learn about as we progress through life...
these animals and their essence protect different aspects of self and guide us in that area. Whereas the spirit guides tend to look
after our whole wellbeing. It seems very similar, but to me, there is a slight difference... because usually the messages are
from beings/animals on the physical plane.
You Are Vistitor # 
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