We all have spirit guides whether we know it or not.  And guess what? They would love to help you, but they can't IF YOU'RE NOT AWARE THEY EXIST!                              

Your guides are constantly trying to get your attention.  They want you to know that they're here and that they'd be delighted to help, but you have to ASK FOR HELP.  This is because they are obligated to respect the number one law of the universe — FREE WILL.  Your guides honor your free will, and will not offer guidance and assistance you haven't asked for (consciously or unconsciously).  By asking for help you've exercised your free will and then they can assist.                  

Their help generally comes in the form of useful information, inspired ideas, and fortuitous opportunities.  It's your responsibility to seize the opportunities and apply the ideas that are offered.  The Universal Spiritual Law of Free Will demands that your guides let you make your own choices and do your own work.          

What are Spirit Guides?

Spirit Guides are non-physical beings (conscious entities) who watch, teach, and assist us on our physical journey into higher consciousness.  Some people use the term "spirit guides" to refer to one specific kind of guide.  I prefer to use "spirit guides" as an overarching term that includes any and all non-physical beings that are assisting us.          

A Spirit Guide's purpose is to assist your soul in its growth.  Whether you know it or not, your souls purpose for choosing to have a physical experience on Earth is for personal growth — a topic that I explored deeply in Whats the point of life, why are we here?  A guides job is to support, encourage, nudge, and advise us on our life path and soul mission.  Your spirit guides all work together in harmony with your higher self, to support you in life, and help keep you on track.          

There are many kinds of spirit guides and they perform many different roles.  In fact, guides and the roles they play are almost as diverse as people in the physical world.  Guides serve as teachers, gatekeepers, healers, protectors, joy bringers, and so on.          

Guides are not all perfect god-like beings — their level of consciousness varies greatly. Some may be highly ascended masters, and others might be less elevated beings who just happen to be knowledgeable and experienced in the area that we need help with.          

Some types of guides have had physical incarnations, and others have not. The conscious entities (beings) that many refer to as "angels" have not had physical incarnations.  Your Guardian Friend and any Ascended Masters you might have helping you most certainly have had physical lives.          

Some guides will be focusing solely on you, and others will be serving many people at the same time.  Your Guardians are typically only serving you, whereas guides that help you on an "as needed" basis are typically serving many people at the same time (yes, higher consciousness can do this).          

Your spirit guides have access to higher knowledge and your souls life-script (to learn more about life-scripts and reincarnation check out  What's the point of life, why are we here?).  They may have even participated in the design and creation of your life-script.  Some of them have known you through your many past lives, so they are very aware of where you are on your learning curve.  Having experienced human lives, they intimately understand your earthly challenges and can to empathize with the problems, fears, mistakes, weaknesses, and temptations that we experience.  Your guides know you deeply, and they have a higher perspective and this makes them very powerful allies.          

You have at least two guides with you for your entire life, and many others come and go as needed.  It is not uncommon to be guided by 20 or more beings over the course of your lifetime.  The guides that are with you from birth to death are known as Guardians.  One of your guardians is an Angelic being that was assigned to you before you incarnated — your Guardian Angel.  Another one of your guardians is a trusted friend who agreed to watch over you during your incarnation.  Your guardians are likely to have been intimately involved with the planning and creation of your life-script and life goals.  In addition to your guardians, many other guides  (Archangels, Ascended Masters, etc.) will come, as needed, to assist you with specific problems, tasks, or goals.          

How Your Guides Can Help You

Your guides can help you enhance your creative abilities, assist with your relationships, improve your finances, provide protection from accidents or other threats, heal your body or psyche, assist with your spiritual development, increase your joy and happiness, or help you with important projects or goals. BOTTON LINE; They want to help you to attain your dreams and fulfill the objectives that you set for yourself for this life (i.e., your soul purpose and mission, etc).  How do they achieve this?  They provide useful information, inspired ideas, and fortuitous opportunities.  The challenge is to notice, trust, and follow the leads and opportunities that they provide. If you do, your life will keep getting better and better.          

Types of Spirit Guides

Here are some of the types of beings that are typically guiding you.  There are many more than this, but these are the common ones.          

Angels

Angels are very high level of conscious entities that have never had physical lives. Their energy (qualities) are very close to that of source consciousness (god) — unconditional love.  They serve as delegates or messengers of Source — most of the work of day-to-day guiding of incarnated beings is handled by them.               

We all have one Angel that has agreed to watch over us during our entire life on Earth; this angel is commonly referred to as our Guardian Angel.  Other Angels will come to our assistance as needed or requested.             

Angels care deeply about humans, and all other incarnate beings throughout the galaxy and the Universe.  They respect human free will and usually only assist us upon request, or when we are in life-threatening danger.            

Angels have been depicted by artists as having a human form with wings.  But angels do not normally have human form since they are non-physical beings. Like all non-physical beings, as well as your soul and your higher-self, they are simply complex patterns of energy.  When they want to present themselves to us visually they have to lower their vibrational rate enough so we can see them — and even then only a few of us can.  They manipulate their energy bodies to appear vaguely like a human form just for our sake, so we will recognize them as some sort of being and because that’s what we expect.  The wings that have been depicted are just very brilliant white light that radiates from their energy body in a pattern reminiscent of wings.            

For more information on Angels and how to communicate and work with them, check out the book Angels 101.            

Archangels

Archangels are beings similar to angels but are much more powerful.  They were one of source consciousness's (god) first creations when it started dividing itself into sub-beings.  Each archangel represents a high level aspect of source consciousness.   They are responsible for overseeing mankind and the guardian angel    

Archangels serve a somewhat different role than angels.  Whereas angels can be considered generalists, archangels can be considered specialists and they generally only show up on a "as needed" basis.  When you are dealing with particularly challenging situations or working towards challenging goals you might attract one or more of them.  Or you can simply request their help.            

For more information and how connect with the Archangels for healing, protection, and guidance check out the book Archangels 101           

Ascended Masters

Ascended Masters are beings who have completed many lives on Earth and "graduated" the school of life.  They have attained a high degree of spiritual growth and self-mastery and no longer need to reincarnate.  These beings still have a personality but they have mastered their thoughts and emotions and are very positive and loving — no negativity, no fear.  Jesus and the Buddha are perhaps the two most famous beings that have achieved this state.  There are many more.            

Many of Earth's Ascended Masters dedicate themselves to serve as the Teachers of mankind.  They connect with all those souls on earth that have a strong desire to grow spiritually, master their thoughts and emotions, transcend the limitations of their egoic mind, and serve others.  They come to teach the skills of self-mastery and to encourage service to others.  Currently, there are many Ascended Masters working within the earth plane as guides to assist the evolution of humanity.  Their primary focus is that of helping all of humanity.            

The Ascended Masters generally only come to your assistance on an "as needed" basis.  If you are ready for spiritual growth or are engaged in an endeavor to help humanity you might attract one or more of them.  And, of course, they are always available by request — just ask.            

For more information and how communicate and work with the Ascended Masters check out the book Archangels & Ascended Masters   

Your Higher-Self

In a sense, your number one guide is your HIGHER-SELF.  Your higher-self is your higher levels of consciousness — your over-soul on up  to source consciousness itself.  To learn more about higher-self and cosmic consciousness, check out the following articles; Discovered Your God-Self,  The Multidimensional Self,  and Mind Over Matter - Consciousness and the Nature of Reality.            

Your higher-self has a strong vested interest in helping you — it is self-actualizing through your experiences!  You are one of the physical vehicles that it is using to explore its knowledge and selfhood.  Notice the I said you are "one" of its vehicles, believe it or not, your higher-self actually created more than one soul and associated physical vehicle (body) to experience through — it is parallel processing.  This is what your past lives are, they are your higher-self's many vehicles of experience.  And guess what, Your past lives are actually PARALLEL LIVES! It's all going on at the same time! Or more accurately, outside of time.  Past/future/parallel lives is a very interesting topic that I will discuss in more detail in a future article.            

Your spirit guides all work together in harmony with your higher-self and soul, to support you in life, and help keep you on track. They help to strengthen your conscious connection to your higher-self so that it directs your life, rather than the fearful and limited ego of your lesser-self. When you have a clear and strong connection to your higher-self, your ego's role in your life is greatly diminshed,  your heart expands, and you focus solely on how to be a more creative, joyful being.            

Trusted Friends

Often one of your spirit guides is a Trusted friend or colleague that your soul knew on the other side, or shared a past life with.  You may have even asked them to serve as one of your Guardians, and watch over you during your entire incarnation on Earth.            

Ancestors

You may have a guide who is an ancestor — someone from your family history who cares deeply about you.  This might be a grandparent, or a deceased relative, or even someone further back in your family history.  Sometimes a spirit ancestor will come to you without your request because they love you and want to help you.  Or you may have made a formal agreement with this being to watch over you for your entire life, making them one of your Guardians.             

Communicating With Your Spirit Guides

Even though we cannot see them, our spirit guides are all around us all the time.  The patterns of energy that make up their bodies are composed of much higher frequencies than our eyes can detect, so high in fact that their 'bodies' are not material, they are pure energy.  That's why spiritual beings are sometimes called 'energy beings' or 'light beings'.          

Our guides communicate with us by sending us "messages" in a variety of SUBTLE non-verbal ways.          

How Your Guides Send You Messages

Sometimes your guides send messages through your subconscious mind, your intuition, or your dreams.  It could be that voice in your head telling you to do something or warning you not to do something.  It could be that inspired idea that just popped into your head, or the vision that appeared in your dream or daydream.  What you have always assumed was your conscience, instinct, or insight are quite often messages from your guides          

Sometimes your guides send you a message by playing a song on the radio that has an important symbolic meaning, or "randomly" flipping to a certain page in a book you’re reading that has a very useful idea, or causing you to stumble upon a particular web page or web posting with highly relevant information.  At first, these all might seem like coincidences, but similar helpful things keep happening at a rate that seems impossible, and you can no longer deny that something meaningful and purposeful is happening.          

By now you've probably figured out how your guides communicate with you — they communicate with you telepathically.  They can inject thoughts and ideas into your mind, and they can "hear" your thoughts.  This is possible because we are all a part of the universal field of consciousness.          

If you'd like enhance your connection to your higher guidance consider The Higher Guidance Training program from The Shift Network.          

Repeating Numbers - The Wakeup Call

More and more people are noticing repeating numbers on clocks, on roadside billboards and signs, and other places -- there are many personal accounts of this phenomenon on the internet.  Have you been seeing the same number repeating a lot lately?  Maybe 11:11 on the clock, or 111 on license plates and elsewhere?  Or other repeating numbers like 222, 333, or 444?  Or maybe other number sequences that you've seen so many times that it's startling.  The number that first got my attention was '911'.  I was seeing this number on clocks, on license plates, on the sides of trucks, everywhere and so often that I knew it couldn't be random chance.          

These repeating numbers are your angels and other guides trying to get your attention and communicate with you. Numeric message codes are a very common way that they communicate with us.  Some people don't need to communicate via numbers because they can hear their guides "voices" in their heads loud and clear but for the rest of us this is a very viable communication strategy.  There are actually books that explain this topic in depth and list the numbers and their meanings.  The book that I've been using is Angel Numbers 101.  Or check out the website Angel Numbers - Joanne Sacred Scribes.          

Why You May Not Be Hearing Your Guides

When its time for your spirit guides to help you, they tune into your energy and attempt communicate to you via your subtle senses and intuition.  Are you hearing the guidance, if not here's why.          

The first and foremost reason is that you DON'T BELIEVE IN SPIRITS.  You probably aren't going to see or hear something that you don’t believe exists — it's that simple.          

Assuming you are open to the idea of spirit guides, then one of the reasons that you may not be hearing their subtle messages is the CONSTANT CHATTER OF YOUR MIND — your egoic and analytical mind running in over-drive, thinking and planning constantly.  This acts like noise that makes it very difficult to hear the subtle messages.  Your egoic mind is over-driving your analytical mind because it's SCARED, and because it's scared the choices it makes are usually fear based rather than love based, as your higher guidance always is.  Fear  is a very powerful emotion and drowns out your higher guidance.  Also, many of us are SO BUSY rushing around, doing, doing, doing non-stop.  Anything you can do to QUIET YOUR MIND, SLOW DOWN, and RELAX will help immensely.  Meditation and solo nature walks are a couple of the ways to quiet your mind and let the subtle messages from your guides come through.  Do anything that you enjoy that is relaxing and soothing — gardening, fishing, painting, whatever.  When you are in a relaxed flow of doing something you enjoy your subtle senses are more receptive.          

Another thing that blocks us from hearing our guidance is WORRY.  Many of us are holding a lot of stress, worry, and anxiety.  This state arises from thinking about past challenges and problems and projecting them into the future — imagining bad things happening.  Worry is mental noise that drowns out and interferes with hearing your guides.          

Anytime you find yourself worrying, focus on your desires instead.  Think about what you want and what you're going to do to get it, and dive into some of that work.  This keeps your mind busy on what it wants rather than idly worrying.          

Another thing you can do to overcome worry is to cultivate having more FAITH and TRUST that life is not "survival of the fittest".  Truly believe that your guides and the Universe have your back and that if you follow their guidance everything will work out fine.  Complete trust allows you to relax deeply, and as you do, you will start receiving and acting on your divine guidance far more accurately and soon everything will begin to go much smoother in your life.          

Another thing that blocks guidance is over-analyzing and over-planning everything.  Rather than carefully planning everything try just going with how you feel in the moment — BE MORE SPONTANEOUS and GO WITH THE FLOW.  When you let how you feel direct what you do in every moment, you are essentially surrendering to the higher wisdom of your guides and Universe — do this consistently and watch the magic start!          

Conversations With The Universe

I've only scratched the surface of how the beings of the non-physical (spirit) realms communicate and interact with us.  There is so much more to it.  Check out my article Improving Your Connection To The Divine for another look at how to connect both to your guides and higher self.  For a more comprehensive discussion, I recommend the book Ask Your Guides.          

There are more beings and levels of consciousness, in this vast and magnificent universe, than most of us can imagine.  And you can connect with all of them, even source consciousness (god).   In fact, Source is always communicating with you, you simply don't recognize it because it is highly symbolic and subtle.    A great book that dives deeply into this topic is Conversations with the Universe.          

Your highest consciousness, your highest-self, is actually source consciousness.  Source sub-divided itself into many smaller parts, and we (our consciousness) are some of those parts.  We are all connected thru the universal field of consciousness; we are all part of the one great being, the one consciousness that we call 'The Universe'.          

We are all one,