Are Spirit Guides Real Or Am I Making Them Up?

I am a spiritual seeker trying to understand myself. I have been regularly doing divination and meditating for years. Some years ago while I was sitting in front of a big church in London, suddenly someone was telling me from inside myself “I am your spirit guide.” It is a well known person. It was hard to believe, but I was very excited by the message. Over the last few years this type of information came to me many times from the inside of me. Last time I asked, “Are you my only spirit guide?” The answer was “You have a total of five spirit guides including me.” I also hear from my guardian angels but never have seen them. I typically don’t hear any voice outside of me. My question to you is am I making it up? Is my mind fooling me? Or are all these real?

Tapan

“Is my mind fooling me or are all these real?” Ah, ans isn’t THAT the $64,000 question, Tapan! The answer is it COULD be either one.

First, here’s how I understand angels and spirit guides. All angels are spirit guides, but not all spirit guides are angels. So you can have both.

Our guardian angels are with us from birth to death; they do not change. But spirit guides are like our teachers. We don’t have the same ones from Kindergarten through our Ph.D. courses, because our needs change in terms of learning, complexity of lessons, and life direction. So, too, do our spirit guides change as we grow spiritually. They can come in many guises: human, animal, angelic, “ET,” Other (elf/faery/elemental), or even simply energy signatures.

In my own life, the original spirit guides who came in when my abilities “broke open” in 1994 were gentlemen with whom I was very close two incarnations ago. We were pilots together, had trusted each other with our lives in a very dangerous war, and it made sense that those I trusted then would help me through a tough “beginner’s learning curve” this time.

These guides have, if you will, stepped aside now. They remain as friends and I still have contact with them on a comforting level, but my main teacher now is my personal angel. My late father is also a spirit guide of sorts when it comes to assisting folks with medical challenges: Dad was a terrific and incisive internist/cardiologist beloved by all his patients, so he’s actually having a good time sticking with his former profession. One who came in more recently was a respected Arapaho chief in the late nineteenth century.

Now, how did I know I really “had” these people? Generally, they give me information I could not have myself. At the time of his contacting me, I knew virtually nothing about the Arapaho people and their history. Everything this guide told me about himself was on target and verifiable, as were the reasons he chose to come to me at that time. My father uses medical terminology that I would not know, and asks questions through me of my clients that I would not know to ask. So in these cases, I trust that I was making a true connection.

Conversely, for these same reasons I would urge caution you if you believe you are getting someone like Princess Diana or Whitney Houston or Robin Williams as a spirit guide. These figures are too well known, too much in people’s consciousnesses now, and in a great sense too much in people’s fantasy lives for you to be able to trust what you are getting. If the spirit guide said it was a famous person who is contemporary in any way, or someone you’re a “fan” of — living or dead — I would say it is highly unlikely that they are contacting you.

When you can’t truly recognize an angel or a guide, however — you have no “reference” as to who they are — it’s much harder to verify that they are real and benevolent in their contacts with you. In the beginning, it’s vital that you QUESTION what you get, look for logic behind what you hear, and keep detailed notes. What happens when you listen to what your guides say? What happens if you ignore the advice — were they right?

There are some very specific things, however, that a spirit guide or angel WILL NOT do. If you hear these kinds of things from that little voice in your head, put it on the Do Not Use shelf, because it’s NOT a guide or an angel:

• it chastises you in a sharp or mean fashion, “putting you down”
• it pumps up your ego at the expense of someone else
• it tries to “guilt” you into doing something
• it encourages you to do something that is illegal, immoral, harmful or against your highest good — something your gut knows is wrong or not in your best interests.

If you get anything like that, it’s your ego talking to you, and not anyone outside you. Ignore it!

If you want to get some concrete training, I highly recommend Opening to Channel by Sanaya Roman and Duane Packer. It’s the book I used when I was first learning, and it’s a great grounding source.

And always keep a journal of your communications. It will be not only a learning tool but a treasure trove of your spiritual growth in years to come.