“Every time you don’t follow your inner guidance, you feel a loss of energy, loss of power, a sense of spiritual deadness.”
~ Shakti Gawain, Author and Public Speaker
A few times throughout these pages I have explained that I have two guides whom I frequently use for my own spiritual growth and from which I get much of the information contained here.
With the readings that I do now being provided to the client in MP3 format, allowing them to hear the different changes in cadence and intonation that each specific spirit speaks with, I have had many curious clients email and ask me about these different spirits and how their connection to me works.
During a conversation with my lovely husband I realized that I had been meaning to write a post explaining the different types of guides as I have come to understand them.
Without a doubt the most important (and comparatively easiest to access) type of guide is the personal guide.
A personal guide is one whose “purpose” is to guide You and You specifically. Yes they can offer guidance to others THROUGH you, but their intent is to offer guidance to you and to help you grow and develop in your actions and perceptions.
The guide that I speak most often about is Maggie, she is my personal guide.
A person’s connection to their personal guide can be based on so many different levels and interpersonal factors.
The personal guide is always a reflection, in some form, of the higher self.
The higher self is the raw soul form, the true spiritual consciousness that is represented by the physical persona. It has access to levels of perception and vibration that cannot be experienced directly by the living being who resides in our limited 3-Dimensional plane.
So, I think we can agree that your “personal” guide is essentially an aspect of your higher self. But they can also have an additional level of interpersonal connection to you in the form of varying degrees of typical human relationships.
For example, my guide (who we have already determined is a representation of the higher self) is also a past incarnation of myself. She is my own past life. As time is not real and all things occur at once, I can drop in on her or she can drop in on me and we have conversations about both the past and the present realities.
This relationship is just one of an infinite number of connections that your personal guide can potentially have with you.
Most of our connections with the people in our lives, as well as with spirit energies, are multi-layered, serving more than one function.
I see no reason why guides should be any different.
Some personal guides may be connected to you based on energetic compatibility or based on family ties (ie. a great-great grandparent) or other past life activities. I also believe that future incarnations of yourself, or even your future children in this life can be expressions of guidance from within your own higher self.
Certainly, I would love to explain the whys or hows of these spirit and energy bodies but I am still learning the ins and outs of these realities myself. Perhaps I will post more in-depth explanations at a later date.
Personal guides can come to you in many ways, through reading, meditating, love or trauma. The opening experience is different for each person and usually occurs for you when you are least looking for it and least expecting it.
Though their main purpose is to offer you a glimpse of enlightenment and a further understanding of your own true self and your place in this world, guides can often be promoted to give information on any topic.
The true questioning process, asking pointed and general questions on your own or others behalf, can begin once initial contact has been made and some number of communications have passed between you, allowing the connection to be strengthened and explored.
Though I cannot speak for all guides, I know that my own personal guide is quite willing to attempt advice on “mundane” topics such as finances, jobs, romance etc… but she is also the first to admit that her perception of such everyday concerns (on our plane) is a little fuzzy and distorted (on her plane.) She tells me straight-out that her advice in these types of areas should be tempered with my own observations and conclusions about the situation at hand.
The best policy with any new materials or channels of communication is to take their input as very interesting but not necessarily 100% true. Not all planes of existence have the same perceptions or rules of reality as our living plane.
Working with a personal guide, whose ultimate goal is your own highest best interest is a gift that you carry within you at all times. Appreciate this simple fact and allow everything else that may transpire to be a beautiful gift.