Spirit Guides & How to Work With Them

We are all blessed with Spirit Guides who surround us and support us. We usually have between four and seven guides in our inner circle. Our primary Spirit Guide is with us from birth. The rest of the guides tend to join our Spirit Guide team throughout childhood, teenage years and early twenties. Their assistance can be practical or spiritual in nature.

Here are some tips for getting to know your guides and working with them:

Know What Spirit Guides Can Help You With

We all go through the veil of amnesia when we incarnate. Most of us forget who we are as souls, where we’ve come from and what the heck we’re doing here. Spirit Guides know that it is challenging to be incarnated here at Earth school AND keep a connection to your higher self and your soul’s purpose.

The role of your guides is to gently but consistently guide you via intuitive nudges to stay on track with your soul’s purpose. In addition, if something is in your purpose to accomplish, you will find support from your Spirit Guides in that endeavour. They will hook you up with resources, people, money, books to help you reach your goals. They can offer insight and comfort when you feel lost.

But there is one important condition to the help they can give us and this condition serves us:

Your Spirit Guides will only help you to accomplish and achieve things that honour the purpose that YOU set for yourself before you incarnated.

I personally know it is not in my soul’s purpose to win a million pounds on the lottery. I don’t have a project to accomplish at this time in my life that requires that kind of money. Instead, I know I would benefit from the growth I would experience in utilizing my talents to tap into abundance. So if I asked my Spirit Guides to help me win the lottery, I’m pretty certain they wouldn’t oblige.

I also have a friend who wanted his guides to help him win betting on racing dogs! The guides really weren’t interested in helping him, for the same reason mine wouldn’t help me win on the lottery.

How to Begin Enlisting the Help of Your Guides

Contrary to what you’d think, you don’t need to have really well developed psychic abilities to begin working with your Spirit Guides. You may not be able to perceive them at all times but your guides can certainly perceive you. You only need to set an intention and they will pick up on it. Address them out loud and they will hear you.

One way of setting your guides to work is to request their help with specific goals.

I have got into the habit of doing this automatically by writing down my goals for the coming week and month and I ask my guides for help in achieving each of my goals.

So here’s an example list of goals:

I would like X amount of money to decorate my new home

I would like to work with X number of clients next month

I’d like to spend X more hours per week of quality time with my partner

I’d like to be a more tolerant mother to my children and remain calm when they are acting out

I’d like more fun and laughter in my life

Read this aloud:

“My Spirit Guides, my Spirit Guides, my Spirit Guides, I request your assistance in achieving the following goals, provided these goals are aligned with my highest path and purpose and in the highest good of all. Please impulse me so that I can recognize assistance and opportunities when they manifest. Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

Why do you have to do this? Surely guides should already know where and when they could provide assistance? In fact, your guides will not intervene until you ask them to because to do so would violate your free will. This is why consciously enlisting their help is powerful. It effectively transfers some of your vital life force to them that they can use on your behalf in the spiritual. And of course everything manifests from the spiritual (or energetic) plane into the physical, not the other way round.

Your Spirit Guides work to help you manifest your desires into the physical, often in ingenious ways! I recently realized that I have a particular guide who hooks me up with the clients who could benefit from a session with me. Clients often report being prompted to get a reading with me in their dreams.

It’s not usually a good idea to ask for assistance to come to you in a very specific format. The wrong way to do it would be to say ‘please send more overtime work my way so that I can pay off my mortgage’.

Instead, say:

‘I would like to pay off X% of my mortgage by the end of the year, please hook me up with the resources and opportunities to make this happen’.

Be open-ended and the Universe will send you the resources you need in ingenious and creative ways. If you are attached to receiving help through a particular channel, you may miss or discard the help that shows up in other ways.

According to the above list, you could be gifted with some money to decorate your home or be offered second-hand items for your new home. You might get invited to a party or meet a new friend who is fun and makes you laugh. You may come across a book about conscious parenting to help you with raising your children. There are so many possibilities! Be open to them all by seeing the opportunity in every experience that comes your way.

Instruct your Guides, Do Not Pray to Them or Supplicate

Many of us with a religious background have been taught that to invoke the spiritual means to pray, to ask very politely, or even to beg, stating one’s unworthiness. You do not have to do this with your Spirit Guides. They may be at a vantage point where they can see the bigger picture but they are no better or worse than you. See them as your helpers in spirit, rather than your superiors.

There really is no need to beg or to ask repeatedly. Begging or repeated requests may amuse the guides but it won’t set them to work faster!

Get to Know your Guides

Do you know what you guides’ names are? What they look like? What they do on your team? It can be helpful to know a bit about your guides before you begin developing a close relationship with them. You wouldn’t begin a relationship with a real person without knowing their name and what they do! Make the first move in your relationship with your guides. If you’re stuck with that first step of finding out that information, find someone who can tell you so that you can begin to get to know them.

My relationship with my guides began when I had a reading with a psychic medium, who told me about my primary guide, who calls herself The Raven. Once the psychic told me how this guide was helping me in my life, I saw how she had been helping me all along. And I began to take my spirit guides more seriously and consciously enlisted their help.

Know How Your Spirit Guides Impulse You

To communicate with you, your Spirit Guides often choose the intuitive vehicle(s) that you’re most adept at using.

There are many intuitive gifts, but the basic five – clairvoyance, clairaudience, clairsentience, claircognizance and dreaming cover most possibilities.

If you’re more visual, your Spirit Guide may pop into your mind’s eye with a message or an image that means something to you. If you’re clairaudient, you may become aware of an inner voice speaking to you or lines from songs which appear in your head. Those who are claircognizant can have their guides ‘downloading’ information to them in the form of thought. I have very developed clairsentience and my guides impulse me with a funny tingling sensation on the side of my head. Once this happens, I know to listen carefully because a message usually comes through to me. They also impulse me with a cold, prickling sensation on my right thigh and the back of my calf. It makes me shiver and the hairs on that part of my leg stand on end!

Learn How to Distinguish Between Input from Guides and Input from Other Places

Guides have our best interests at heart. Their behaviour is very different from how a negative entity would behave or how your ego would talk to you. Here are some key differences between how a negative entity or your ego would treat you and how a Spirit Guide would treat you:

  • Guidance from guides will always be uplifting and will raise your consciousness. It will honour the truth that you are the conscious creator of your life. It will hold you responsible for your life. By contrast, low-vibrational earthbound spirits may encourage you to abdicate responsibility.
  • Guides will not tell you what to do. They may recommend a course of action that aligns with your path, but they will ultimately leave it up to you.
  • Guides obviously never get angry with you, or threaten. Guides do not deride or berate you. They are ever-patient and loving. Your guides may think you’re great but they won’t flatter your ego or encourage you to place yourself above others. The guides understand that none of these serve their agenda or yours.
  • Spirit Guides have faith in your ability to get through issues and negative circumstances. They will be there for you and show great compassion for you, but they won’t throw you a pity party.

Understand the Guides’ Agenda and their Background

Spirit Guides are not that different from us. Obviously they’re not in a body but most of them have experienced a physical incarnation so they know what it’s like. Many of them have evolved beyond the point where they need to incarnate here and instead they are pursuing the next stage of their soul’s journey in the capacity of Spirit Guide. Assisting you serves them on their path of evolution, so they aren’t really doing you a favour as such. It’s a win-win situation for everyone involved. They do however love receiving gratitude for their work, so be sure to thank them.

Further Reading:

 

Meet Anna

Hi, I’m Anna Sayce! My purpose here on this website is to provide practical techniques and information to help empaths to understand, and fix the root of their energetic overwhelm & also to help sensitives to embrace and develop their intuitive gifts. I believe that developing our spiritual & intuitive side is very powerful and allows us to improve our own lives, and if we wish, even make the world a better place for others. Discover more >

20 Comments

  1. Yang

    Hey Anna

    Great article!

    “In addition, if something is in your purpose to accomplish, you will find support from your spirit guides in that endeavour. They will hook you up with resources, people, money, books to help you reach your goals. They can offer insight and comfort when you feel lost.”

    In this day and age I think it’s even easier for our guides to do that. Especially with the Internet and all! It must not be very hard being a guide nowadays – especially when we have Google, Amazon, Wikipedia, Facebook, Youtube and StevePavlina.com 😉

  2. Anna

    Yang – Yeah, the internet must be cool for the guides who work on hooking up us with the right resources. But I don’t know if spirit guides would agree that their job is easy!! Maybe it’s easy to point us in the right direction, but probably harder for us to actually act on the impulses and cues we get…

  3. Lasare

    Hi Anna, this is a great article and has been useful to me in helping me to consider the ways that I receive my guidance. Funny, for some reason I just didn’t connect the lines from songs with clairaudience, I know they were ‘guidance’ but making that link actually brought a tear to my eye as some par of me had long ago decided that I ‘couldn’t do that’. I look forward to developing my clairaudience more.

    I looked up this subject tonight in a stressful situation, knowing I needed help to get myself out of a panic state. I felt like getting help from anyone I could reach, but knew that I would really be best served if I could go within. I plan to do so after writing this. Thank you for the inspiration and support.

    Let me know if you like my website, maybe I could upload this article and link to you on it. I’d like my visitors to enjoy this resource, if you’d like.

    Much love, Lasare

  4. Qiana Pim

    Having completed a search for psychic mediums on Alltheweb I came across your site, and am I glad I did. I am impressed with the level of info I have obtained here, and I am certain that this will be not just helpful to me but to others too. I have added you to my list of favourite blogs and will be back on a regular basic

  5. Anna

    Hi Lasare, thanks for the feedback! Feel free to link to the article if you think it would benefit your readers…

  6. Alyssa

    I had a dream a couple of weeks ago about 2 people bringing me all around my yard and into these weird building that I’ve never seen before. Some had vines inside, and sometimes I was taken on thorny paths and things like that. Then at some point I was in a teleporter, and everything was spinning, and I vaguely remember saying “where are we going” and the people answering “We have to talk to Turnuca” and I said “What’s Turnuca?” and they replied “YOU’RE the Turnuca!” and then my dream ended there. What the hell is a Turnuca? (Turn-YOO-kah) It might just be a crazy nonsense dream, but I’ve never heard of a Turnuca! And the dream really stands out for some reason. Any idea what this might mean!??!

  7. Taylor

    I have an interesting thing to say…As much as this article is all well and nice, I don’t believe I have any spirit guides. Not one. I’ve lived around sensitives and psyshics my entire life–and I fancy myself to be somewhat of a sensitive, but neither I nor anyone around me has sensed any sort of presence around me–ever. Perhaps I haven’t found one yet? Perhaps they and I have always been one and the same?

  8. France

    I recently began to pursue this seeking of spirit guides. I noticed you didn’t mention that animal totems as guides. Why is that? Or is it relevant? I asked because I am almost positive that one of my guides is a Snake. I have seen him in a shadow form in my house and I have always been terrified of snakes. I have dreamed of them most of my life and Now I believe he trying to help me get rid of my fear so he can help me the way a Snake totem would help. Let me know what you think of that. Thanks.

  9. Wendy

    Anna, another spiritual teacher whose blog I read says that ALL ‘psychic guidance’ including Spirit Guides comes from ‘astral entities,’ most of whom may not have the same level of consciousness as ours i.e. they may have LOWER levels of consciousness. The implication being that we can be led astray by what we interpret as psychic guidance.
    I shrink from this, personally, because I feel comforted by believing that we can draw on support from the non physical world, but I wondered what you would make of this other teacher’s view?

  10. Wendy

    Thanks, Anna.

    That’s very helpful, I appreciate it.

  11. Anna

    Hi Wendy,

    It doesn’t align with what I’ve experienced.

    We are given spirit guides and they offer us guidance, just like our own soul does. They are not the CEO’s of our life path though. Our soul is. The Spirit Guides know this and the guidance they offer is in accordance with what we planned for ourselves before we got here, and what we plan for ourselves, in terms of learnings and experiences. Having spirit guides is like having a group of loving aunts and uncles, who offer comfort and advice from a higher perspective. They’re not setting the agenda. They’re not saying, here is what you should do. They’re saying, seeing as this is what you want to do, here’s one way I can see of getting there. They offer support for the paths YOU have chosen.

    You might like to read the books ‘Journey of Souls’ and ‘Destiny of Souls’ – those books are written by a hypnotherapist Michael Newton who regresses people to in between lifetimes. He wrote a book about it, because he kept finding that the way clients were describing the afterlife was very similar. So he wrote a book about what he knew. And one of the features of the spiritual world is that souls are given guides who can help us. We’re not given guides of a lower consciousness, as that would be totally pointless. A bit like going back to an old class you have already mastered. So no, our guides are not lower consciousness. They are always in a position to help us learn the lessons we chose for ourselves.

    And as for angels, they don’t tend to offer guidance so much. Their role is somewhat different. They have a protective and comforting influence.

    As for the beings to be avoided, well, we can’t always assume that other peoples’ guides have good advice for us. So anyone who channels a message from their guides, those guides might not have anything relevant or helpful to say. They’re not the beings who were assigned to you to help you along this path called life.

    Astral entities, or random spirits are also to be avoided.

    Hope that makes sense.

  12. Anna

    PS, Wendy.

    I think that in the end these are just ideas. My ideas, the ideas of another spiritual teacher. And spiritual teachers are coming up with new ideas all the time, sometimes just to differentiate themselves from other teachers or to be original.And I have often found it to be the case that one idea from a spiritual teacher resonates with me, but another of theirs doesn’t.

    You will know what resonates with you on a gut level, and what is your truth according to what feels right to you, and what your own experiences are.

    I love this passage:

    “Do not put your faith in traditions,
    even though they have been accepted for long generations and in many countries. Do not believe a thing because many repeat it.Do not accept a thing on the authority of one or another of the sages of old,
    nor on the grounds of statements as found in the books.

    Never believe anything because probability is in its favor.

    Do not believe in that which you yourself have imagined,
    thinking that a god has inspired it.

    Believe nothing merely on the authority of teachers or priests.

    After examination,
    believe that which you have tested for yourself and found reasonable,
    which is in conformity with your well being and that of others.”

    Kalama Sutta – Buddha

  13. Lloyd Street

    you see i am 16 and i want to begin growth early…i want to learn psychic abilities but i can’t find the time because of school and my parents are not so good when it comes to drinking and etc. i want to find my spiritual guides so i can help myself and others to achieve our goals. can you please help me?

  14. B Raymond

    I have many spirit guides, but the guide who is with me at all times, Pregi, keeps telling me that I and my hubby will soon have enough money to live comfortably the rest of my life. This has been going on for quite some time. Is there any way to have him pinpoint a timeline or do I just keep communicating with him?

  15. Cheyenne

    I am new at this and having diffuculty getting the name of my lead guide. I get tingles and buzzing in my ear and have heard ringing phones and singing. I know they are connecting with me but I need my messages to be more frequent and clear. How does that work?

  16. Carole

    Thank you Anna for this amazing article, it provided answers concerning guides, that I was searching for. :):).

  17. Kandi

    Hi Anna,
    At the age of 12 I was guided to find my missing dog after talking to her through telepathy. I did not get images but rather was lead to her. Just after talking to her I had a knowing to start riding my bike and just continued down the road until I came to a house and knocked on the door. The woman had picked up my dog on the highway one week prior. When she drove me home she asked me how I found her because it was many miles away. I did not answer her. I did not get images, I was guided directly to her house as if in a trance. I was in my body and knew this was happening at the time but just continued to move forward on my bike with the knowing that I was suppose to continue. A calm presence was with me. I have done this other times since then. My dog was very old and fragile and she died in my arms just after getting her home. It was a heart connection between her and I. I always wondered if it was a guide or my dog who lead me to her. It happened just after using telepathy.

  18. lynne cummins

    I found this artical so comforting.I know i was born to fulfill a role on this earth, but never felt it was my home.I have come through the depths of despair from my early years and left alone as a child to make my own way.I have experienced the very depths of despair,homelessness,hunger and loneliness.Somehow i have survived and at 50 yrs old, i now know why.I have never blamed anyone for my situation, but have always hoped i had spiritual guides to protect me.I remember as a young child being told to ‘BE GOOD, DO GOOD’.I have lived as best i can following this rule.I know my guides see the bigger picture and with their help i am on the verge of realising my lifes dream.Lynne

  19. ann fox

    Hi thank you for your article. I’m just begining my physic journey after being told so many times I’m losing my mind, but now I know everything I experience is real only. I only just came across this article even though it’s few years old. Thank you. Love and light.

  20. Michelle

    Hello, after years of sensing others, hearing and sometimes seeing others, I am now communicating not only with guides but with spirits. They either communicate telepathicly with me or actually through me… people can hear them and they say my features and expressions change. What am I? This is new territory for me. I am looking for an explanation…help.

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