Engaging with Your Spirit Guides
This week’s rhythm of loving evolution: Becoming
We engage in processes of becoming to deepen the transformative work and play of evolution, participating in our growth from divine being, as God is beckoning us here and now.
The Becoming offerings below invite us into personal and communal deepening in our divine becoming. They can be practiced in WeSpace groups and our daily lives today and throughout the week ahead. Rather than one-time experiences, we encourage ongoing and repeated practice to better support our growth and evolution.
If you missed it last week, we encourage you first to read the Beckoning article informing these processes:
“WeSpace with Spiritual Guides”
ICN Living Lineages Series – Beloved Community
Accessing the Presence of God, Jesus, and Your Spiritual Guides
This week, we invite you to explore how you might engage with spirit guides in a new way. If you already have experience and relationships with guides in your life, you might be drawn to open to a new presence, deepen your current relationships, or renew your commitment to engaging with them regularly.
If welcoming spirit guides is new for you—or even if it’s familiar—it can be an important practice, as you begin, to define your sacred space. Honoring the sovereignty of your being is crucial to any healthy relationship, met in mutuality and respect. It is in your power to create and hold to the boundaries you establish, especially when held in the sacred and loving community of intimate spiritual companions, like a WeSpace group.
It is up to you to give permission or not for a guide to come into your life. And you can end a relationship with a guide at any time you choose. Just like a new relationship in the human realm, you can start with introductions,
“Hello, my name is…” is often a good way to start.
You may find helpful the following guidance from George Worley, a professional hypnotherapist with years of experience working with guides,
I find guides wait to be asked, so ask! This is the choice function of the soul, which is the fundamental characteristic innate within everyone. This choice, or free will, allows for the infinite creation within all that is. As we converse with our Highest Level guides, if the answer is asked in the Light and of the Light, you will get a response. If the question is not of the Light and thus not in your highest good, you will get an answer that tells you so! If you ever get an answer that is not kind, loving…not in the Light, you are not connected to your highest level guide.
One thing to note, the guidance you get is always subject to free will from those involved. So one takes this guidance at a place in time and space, but one must be aware that once that guidance is given, fields are being impacted by other fields. It is a lovely, creative, organic dance.
Start with Jesus
“Where two or three are gathered together in my name, I am there among them” (Matt 18:20).
One does not “figure out” or “make up” a guide. It helps to be around Christians and others who regularly connect with their own guides. This can happen in our WeSpace groups. We both have often seen others’ guides in a group when we meet with the group for the first few times. We point them out so the group can get used to the presence of non-physical spiritual entities. A Christian’s primary spiritual guide is usually Jesus. He is the most easily accessed guide in the world because he has been connected with so many times, beginning 2000 years ago after the resurrection and constantly down throughout history to today. The pathway to him is wide open. We suggest you begin with him.
If you have had such an abusive background in the Christian tradition or with male figures that you cannot consider Jesus, then you might begin with Mary. Her pathway is also wide open, with her many appearances and millions of prayers to her. Or choose another saintly guide you feel drawn to who has a tradition of loving care.
If you have had such an abusive background in the Christian tradition or with male figures that you cannot consider Jesus, then you might begin with Mary. Her pathway is also wide open, with her many appearances and millions of prayers to her. Or choose another saintly guide you feel drawn to who has a tradition of loving care.
Opening up to the friendship of the presence of the Living Jesus is incredible. Jesus is not picky about what you believe about him or God. He comes to angry fundamentalists, traditional evangelicals, evolving postmoderns, believers, doubters, atheists, sinners, saints – absolutely anybody.
We will admit that atheists and Christians in the modern/postmodern deconstructed stage have a more difficult time. They may be intellectually hardened to the mystical and have dismissed the reality of non-physical spiritual beings, including Jesus. Or they may not accept an intimate, 2nd-person face of God, feeling all they have left, after extreme deconstruction, is the cosmic, the impersonal.
So, we’d like to offer an experiment. In a quiet moment, allow yourself to move into your heart. Let yourself ask, “If you are there, Jesus, let me sense your presence.” Honest seekers who will allow themselves to go into their heart space with that request are often blown away by what they discover.
Paul & Luke’s Stories of Welcoming Guides
My First Guide Beyond Jesus
For years I (Paul) had a weekly massage from a woman who also did energy healing work. She had guides and I was intrigued when she occasionally talked about them. One day, I asked her, “How would I find out if I had any guides besides Jesus?” She said, “Ask them!” I asked, “How does that work? Give me a starting place.” She said, “Who have you been drawn to as you read and study the Bible. I immediately said the Apostle John.
She said, “Ask him if he would be a guide for you.” This was getting more than my intellectually overgrown mind could take, so I said, “Okay, I will try that out tonight.” She said, “Why not try it out now?” I was caught! So I summoned up my courage, and said out loud, “John, would you be my spiritual guide?” I immediately “heard,” in my head but not audibly, the words, “I’ve been waiting for you to ask me.”
I instantly burst into tears, unusual for the emotionally out of touch, reserved me. I said to him, “I didn’t think you would have time. You must be busy.” His reply was, “Come on, you know the time-space stuff does not apply in my world, only yours.” So began a long, liberating relationship of many years with John. I wrote down what we talked about for several years. Now I mostly enjoy his loving presence and his hand on my right shoulder with occasional brief conversations.
The Divine Feminine
“Danu” – drawing by Heather Healy
I (Luke) had been open to receiving new guides for a little while. I tried to invite one, which led to a faint sense of presence, but nothing too palpable. I had also been wanting a more palpable experience of the divine feminine in my life. Then, right around the time of the birth of my daughter, a strong presence appeared to me in a way that was powerful and direct.
When I described the experience to my wife, she said, “That sounds like Danu.” Not being as well-versed in Celtic mythology as her, I had no idea who she was talking about. In a world with Google, mystery can sometimes be a little less mysterious. I found several images and immediately recognized her. I also learned that her name means “the Flowing One,” and not too much is known about her. Mystery after all. She is the mother goddess, often associated with rivers, fertility, and wisdom. She is a guiding presence, and I feel her hand on my right cheek. She is often portrayed with a triskele, which has become an important symbol for me.
Why Danu? Why a Celtic goddess? Why not someone from the Christian tradition? Someone I was more familiar with? I have some intuitions about why it has been her, but I’m still learning. While we often are drawn to guides we have studied or know something about, sometimes we need a presence who is free of associations and emotional/spiritual baggage. It may not be quite as “orthodox,” but that’s sometimes how it goes with evolving faith.
And I don’t need to know why. The experience of the presence of a guide is not one of rational, cognitive knowing. It is visionary and is often felt with the heart and the body.
I feel her hand on my cheek. I turn to her, “What do you want to say?”
“There are entire worlds to discover. Come, let yourself see. We are simply waiting for you.”
Your own way of welcoming the presence of a spirit guide will be unique. You can approach it in any way you feel comfortable!
Here are a few resources to support that process:
Seven Steps to Connecting with Your Spirit Companions –
An Introductory Practice of Meeting Our Spirit Guides
Sometimes we may be open to experiencing spirit guides in our lives but don’t always know how to. Usually, we can’t see them with our physical eyes and it can take time to recognize their voice. Learning to sense their presence is a mystical experience we can all open up to.
Here are seven sequential avenues for initially connecting with your spirit friends:
1. Become aware of your breathing to help move your mind away from thinking. Feel your breath entering your body.
2. Drop your awareness from your head down to your heart. To help with this, you can tap down from your head to your heart, place your hands on your heart space, or also think of someone you love. Then release them to focus on your heart space when the love is beginning to flow. Feeling love flowing from your heart is the most accessible way to enter this mystical, relational state.
3. Sense God’s presence in this intensified consciousness of love. God is with you to support and surround your experience. The love you feel in your heart is both your love and God’s love. God is love — and this is the Inner Face of God Being You. This is how God’s presence feels in the language of your mystical heart space.
4. Reflect on who you would like to meet and talk with. You may be drawn to a spiritual master such as Jesus or Mary, a spirit companion, a deceased friend or relative, or other beings of light and love.
“Place our Trust” – image by Dalmo Mendonça
5. If you are not drawn to any spiritual being in particular, you can do this: See yourself in your favorite resting place in nature. See a path leading up to where you are and notice someone coming up the path, too far away to identify. As they get closer, you recognize them as the guide you have been waiting for. Seeing in the eye of your mind and with the feelings of your heart isn’t just playful fantasy. Instead, it creates a space for non-physical beings to enter and participate in the conversation with you. The key is to let this picturing process happen spontaneously so that new information comes through.
6. Now begin the conversation. Assume your guide is present. Greet your spirit friend. Call them by name or ask their name if you don’t know it already. You might say why you want to meet. Ask how the other feels about it.
Learn about your spirit friend by asking them questions. Trust the first image, words, or feeling that come to you when you seek your spirit companion and talk with them. The first response is nearly always the most relevant. The more you know about your guide, the easier it is to feel close. When I feel any distance with Jesus, I think about his life and what he taught and did. I immediately feel heart-to-heart with him.
Bring up whatever you like with your guides.
7. When the conversation feels finished or has given you all you can handle, feel free to end the encounter. Say what it meant to you, thank the other, and say goodbye for the time being. Continue to sit quietly. Reflect on the encounter or review what you have journaled. What did you learn? When you feel complete, return to everyday consciousness, and resume the rest of your day in the glow of your luminous conversation.
Those who don’t see a vision of their spirit friend or hear an audible voice sometimes think they are not connecting with a guide. However, visionary experiences are the exceptions. Instead, this is usually a more internal knowing. We call it “spiritual knowing.” Spiritual knowing is not based on what we already know but on what we are about to know. Let go of any preconceived notions of what this should feel like or precisely who you need to meet as a spirit teacher, healer, and guide.
Our spirit teachers don’t always appear fully formed and coherent in our life. Treat your guide just as you would a new friend in the physical world. It takes time to get acquainted. Sometimes this begins less with conversation and just a receptivity of presence. If you don’t hear your guide speak, it doesn’t mean they aren’t there!
You may find it helpful to practice this introduction meditation several times.
You can also follow along a guided, audio version of this experience, choosing one of these two options:
8-minute meditation
17-minute meditation with more silence
“Love at Every Level” – image by Dalmo Mendonça
Welcoming our Guides in WeSpace
To whatever degree we are familiar with our Spirit Guides, we can enter into our WeSpace groups with a welcoming posture. We tend to focus on thinking about who is present in our group as the people we can see—but we are always supported and encouraged by the cloud of witnesses. They are always available.
Perhaps we have a posture that is open to guides, but there is room for growth in actively cultivating and seeking to sense the Guides with us and one another at any time.
Hanging around those who see or sense other people’s spirit companions can help in our own journey. Those in WeSpace groups can develop that awareness and introduce others to their guides.
Paul Smith had the gift of seeing guides for others. He introduced many to their spirit guides. Or, for many, he simply affirmed the presence they had already felt and knew was there, affirming their own knowing.
As Paul is now a presence on the other side himself, perhaps we are invited to further embrace our own seeing, our own recognition, and the gift of welcoming our guides actively into our lives and in our WeSpace groups.
We don’t want to force it, but if you feel the pull and inclination to develop in this area in your life or as a group, consider one of the following:
1. Set an intention to more directly and consciously look for spirit guides in your life and for others.
2. In your next WeSpace group (or spiritual group setting), choose collectively to practice together in sensing and engaging with the Guides who are present. You can use one of the ICN meditations specific to Guides to assist.
3. In addition to personal spirit guides, you might try to sense as a group who is present with you for this specific time. They may come to you as a group and have something for you in this particular moment, if we’re open to it!
“Angelic Presence with the Earth” – image by Dalmo Mendonça
Our Beloved Community incorporates how we are “together with all the saints.”
As we welcome spirit guides more into our conscious awareness and presence among us, we open to the ways we may be called to commit with one another not only amongst the people who are part of our spiritual community, but so too into levels of deepening commitment with those who are also with us in the great cloud of witnesses.
We may have fear, apprehension, or skepticism, and that is okay.
We may have confusion, uncertainty, or curiosity, and that is okay.
We may have desire or longing to experience this in deeper ways than we’ve been able to before. And this, too, is okay.
We are not alone in this. We are living into this evolution together. We can commit with one another, with both human and spirit, to growing and deepening in new ways as we take our steps of faith together.
Commitment action step:
Our Beloved Community, in divine reality, welcomes more than solely humans in this field of love.
How might you feel drawn, here and now, to commit with us, in this community, to open to the presence of spirit guides more in your life?
How might you be called to commit with a spirit guide in your life, either familiar or new?
In the freedom of our beloved community, there is no coercion or guilt—we are free to take the steps we are ready to take, and to release any pressure, guilt, or shame, if we are not called to commit with spirit guides at this time.
“Cloud of Witnesses” – image by Dalmo Mendonça
Looking for spaces to explore spirit guides communally?
Gather together in Morning Meditation, which seeks to deepen our experiences of what is brought forth in our weekly writing.
Monday–Friday | 7:30–8:00 a.m. U.S. Central Time
All are welcome to join our daily meditation, whenever you can.
This week, come join in communal practices of engaging with spirit guides!
Statement of WeCreating Authorship
This article was WeCreated with authoring by Paul Smith and Luke Healy, with editing support from Beth Biery.
All of the wisdom, creativity, and spiritual emergence in ICN comes from the communal field of wisdom and spirit speaking in and through the “We.”
All text in this article is human-authored without the use of AI, according to our AI policy: 0 out of 10
All Images are open-source, used with permission, or created by ICN using AI