Have you met your Spirit Guide Yet?

Yoga, the Moon & Me: One yogi's musings on travel, spirituality, the moon and life!

Have You Met Your Spirit Guides Yet?

Have you ever felt like something or someone was watching over you? Maybe you’ve heard a whisper or listened to that inner urging to take a different street or go on a different day only to be led away from danger or a terrible decision. If any of this resonates, then you’ve already had contact with your spirit guides.

A spirit guide is a nonphysical being assigned to assist you in reaching your greatest potential here on Earth. Some say that they sign a soul contract to assist you in the many processes and transformations as you navigate life.

Everyone has a spirit guide or two or three at any given time. That means you are never alone. You are being divinely guided through life. So take time to slow down and soften your gaze. Unplug from your devices and begin the communication with your helpers from the spiritual realm.

I have been on my spiritual journey really since my 30s. I was born and raised in the united church but I’m talking really go looking for the Creator of my understanding. Heaven and hell and the rules of the bible felt constricting to me. So I went looking for more.

I was drawn to yoga and loved how it made me feel..calm, relaxed and mentally quiet which was a rarity with two young boys and an imploding marriage. Yoga teacher training, lead to reiki, which lead to body talk, which lead to holistic hypnosis, which lead to the akashic records and past lives…I am thorough!!

Here I am now, this year I will be 53 and what a spiritual journey I have been on. Most of it has been amazing, exciting and refreshing…some of it hard to understand and frustrating…but that’s life isn’t it? If it was all easy, why would we bother?

I can’t exactly remember when the idea of spirit guides was presented to me. But I do know that when I realized I had a spiritual team supporting me, loving me and guiding me I felt amazing!

It started with practicing meditation to quiet the monkey mind enough to have a place for connection and communication. Then there came trusting myself enough to know that the thoughts in my head weren’t of me but were in fact messages from my guides.

In a little bit we will talk more about meeting your guides but I want to share with you one funny story about how I got to know my current ancestral guide Jane.

So I was well into my spiritual journey and I was working with my guides on a regular basis…watching for their signs and direction which can be tough since I’m a somewhat stubborn taurus. What I didn’t realize early on is that your guides change. When they have taught you everything that is agreed upon for them to teach you, well they move onto someone else and you get a new guide or guides. That first “changing of the guards”was tough for me. I felt like I lost a friend and I felt a little bit left in limbo. That wasn’t the case of course, but I figured out our communication technique and was sad to see her go.

As I mentioned we have more than one guide and so I have a second guide who continued to be there for me but he felt more in the background so to speak, the administrator not exactly my direct contact. But I thought well…whatever works. Maybe this is the way it is for me now.

In hindsight, I don’t know why I didn’t realize that Jane was one of my guides…I just thought she was a spirit looking for my attention. I got so caught up in my relationship with my first (known to me) guide that I just didn’t get it.

Anyways, she came to me in readings and meditations. She called me to Scotland and showed me many historical events there. I then traveled to Scotland several times personally and led Yoga Retreats and everytime I would go, she would make herself known to me. I have a favourite cemetery in Edinburgh (don’t we all?) called Greyfriars Kirkyard. I walk in and the first name I see on a stone that has a thousand names on it is of course Jane. I went to two more cemeteries and the name that also stood out to me was Jane. I went to visit a friend in her flat and I said what are you doing and she said…oh just watching Jane Eyre. I can’t even make this stuff up. My last visit to Scotland I was with my friend Anne in Stirling and we went to the cemetery of course which is beautiful. I said to my friend Anne…I think Jane might be done with me. She isn’t showing herself to me. We literally walked around a corner and the next 10 stones we saw had the name Jane on them. Okay…I’m listening.

Once home, I did some research regarding my maternal lineage. I had a wonderful woman funny enough named Jayne at the local library help me and we found out that my maternal grandmother’s family was from Inverness and Isle of Skye Scotland dating all the way back to the 1500’s and guess what we found in the census notes…Jane.

Poor Jane worked hard to get my attention and now we have a beautiful working relationship and it feels even more special to me knowing that we are distantly related.

Not every meet cute is quite so difficult. Like I said earlier I am a taurus and it seems even when I don’t consciously know I am being stubborn, I am being stubborn.

Other times for me (and I have heard similar experiences from others), a spirit guide connection is simply a beautiful meeting in meditation. It’s a realization that the soft messaging is not coming from your ego self…they are messages from outside of you.

So What is a Spirit Guide?

Spirit guides are nonhuman or human entities that reside in the spiritual realm and make their wisdom available to the living. They take a variety of forms, which we will touch on in a little bit. Spirit guides assist humans in their daily lives even though they are not aware of the guides' presence.

The idea of spirit guides is a belief system that spans many cultures and religions. And although different cultures may call their guides by different names, they all share undeniable similarities.

Your guides want you to win: They are your biggest supporter of your causes, the menders of your heartaches, the “spiritual siri” offering alternate directions when you’re stuck in traffic. And when you consider how messy life can be, wouldn’t it be crazy if we tried to do the whole thing alone?

Types of Spirit Guides

The reality is, all spirit guides are just that…spirits so they don’t have a physical form now, they are simply energy. However if they were at some point a physical being they will have that former presence, personality and history to draw upon.

1. Ancestors

This is one obviously that is near and dear to me. Ancestors are humans who have lived before you and are no longer with you in this physical plane. While your deceased loved ones might be near you and able to communicate with you, they are not in your spirit guide tribe.

If you have an ancestor as a spirit guide, it will be a relative that was not known to you in this lifetime. They would have lived in lifetimes before like a great aunt or great grandparent or even further back.

2. Ascended Masters

Ascended masters are humans that have gained the mastery needed to reach enlightenment. They are free from karma. They have merged with their higher selves and no longer need to incarnate on this earth plane. Instead they become our guides to assist us o...