Spirit Guides
As isolated as we can get sometimes, we are far from alone as we walk through life. We all come here equipped with a team of spirit guides that come in many forms that support us and lead us through our time here on Earth, but who are they and what role do they play in our lives? First and foremost, our guides are not here to punish us nor are they here to do the work for us. Our guides are here to support us through our spiritual development found through the lessons we are faced with in this life and can be spiritual teachers in many ways. Some of our guides are with us for life, sticking with us through everything we are faced with during this lifetime (and possibly others, as well), but it’s also common to have certain guides come around through certain times in our life to support us through different phases in our life that tends to fall within their area of focus. Regardless of who they are and why they are around, connecting with our spirit guides offers us a support system without judgment or ill will, but not all of them are deity or spirit on the other side. Some are the earthly beings around us and the ones within us as well.
INTERNAL GUIDES
Our internal guides consist of our ego, inner critic, inner child/teen, higher self (kind of), and our emotions. Each of these aspects has something to teach us and guide us through our daily life, showing us where healing is needed and lessons lie. It’s impossible to ignore these aspects of us, but to try would be a way of robbing ourselves of important teachers and avoid an important aspect of the human experience. If we didn’t want to experience these aspects and just wanted to see life through a spiritual point of view, we would have just stayed in our spiritual form, but there’s very little way to evolve without the full spectrum of the human emotional and mental experience. Understanding our emotions and triggers, as well as their connection to inner child, the ego, the inner critic, etc., all provide insight to who we are and offer the opportunity for healing. Honoring them and allowing them to take up the space needed to guide you along your healing journey is an important tool in spiritual development, but letting them overwhelm you and rule you will keep you stuck in toxic habits in cycles until you take your power back. My best advice for working with your internal guides is to observe them without judgement and to question where these emotions, triggers, or limiting beliefs originated from. That will off you insight on what wound is triggering the inner critic, ego, or inner child and to offer the opportunity for you to heal it by practicing self compassion, understanding, and grace.
EARTHLY GUIDES
Our earthly guides are those that exist in our outer reality. This includes not only the people within our life, helpful and harmful, but also the earth and all of it’s inhabitants including the animals, the plants, the mountains, air, rain, ocean, everything. In terms of people, our earthly guides are not limited to those who we have positive experiences with or seek wisdom from, but also resides in those who are here to teach us the important lessons through the hardships we experience with them. This is what could be considered a “karmic” person, but that just simply means that they are here to teach us important lessons in life which is ultimately true for everyone we encounter. It’s not uncommon for us to be met with spirits from different lifetimes that have chosen to continue to work with us through different roles in our life as well. They all provide different lessons and situations in our life to help trigger and develop our internal guides to teach us different lessons and to promote healing in different ways which isn’t always through ease. When working with the earthly guides in our life, it will be important to have a strong relationship with yourself and your inner guides as well as your spirit team. It’s easy to get stuck in our ego or to project the opinions of our inner critic when working with our earthly guides, but when your able to come from a place of understanding and love over a place of defensiveness, you’re able to receive the lesson that is found in the situation more easily.
SPIRIT TEAM
This is the one that people tend to be more interested in, but I do suggest taking time to connect with yourself and your internal guides first to avoid projecting some of our insecurities onto them and building a codependency on them and their support. Our spiritual teams consist of Source/God/Universe, our ancestors, passed over loved ones, deities, and other entities that have either chosen to walk with us or have been asked to. All of them have different roles in our life with some being more protective, some leaning more into being teachers, and others just offering guidance and support along the way. These roles can definitely overlap as well. If you work with your ancestors, it’s common to have the entities that they worked with to work with you as well. Our spirit team doesn’t always just consist of entities that are already around us, but also can be entities that we reach out to for support. Every deity or entity has different preferences on how to approach them to ask for support, but regardless of who it is, it’s important to research how to do so respectfully and honorably, as is true for all of the entities that we feel is around. Building a relationship with these guides takes time and patience. It’s a learning process and can require research and spiritual/psychic development in order to learn how to connect and honor them respectfully, but this is apart of the fun. There’s no rush to learn who is around you but whenever connecting with the spiritual realm, be sure to go into it protected and set clear boundaries on what your comfortable with and what you’re not.
There are many times in our life where we may feel alone or isolated, but those are the moments when connecting with ourselves and the spirits/energies around us can be the most helpful (and could easily be the cause of the isolation in the first place). It’s easy to get distracted and miss lesson and guidance from our spirit guides, but there’s so much to learn if we slow down and connect with them. If you’re interested in learning more about your spirit guides or would like to learn how to connect with them on your own, I offer Spiritual Support readings that can help you with just that!
