Spirit guides are spirits that exist to watch over and protect humans living on earth. They are a significant part of Chinese, Egyptian, and Native American cultures as spirits of ancestors who appear to guide people through perilous times. The reason spirits guides are often associated with the Chinese, Egyptians, Native Americans and even Tibetans is perhaps due to the deep spirituality associated with these cultures.

A spirits guide exists for one purpose: to act as a mediator between the living and the spirit world. The spirit guide often talks to those who want to communicate with dead loved ones through a medium and, in some instances, may take over the body of the medium himself or herself to communicate.

Spirit guides may appear at different points in a person’s life. In some instances, spirit guides can be contacted by the efforts of the individual. In other instances, the presence of the spirit guide is automatically felt, often more strongly in times of spiritual distress and spiritual healing, during creative activities, or during life-threatening events. It is believed that a spirit guide can save individuals from harm by entering their bodies or by stopping time.

Difference between spirit guides and guardian angels

Guardian angels may often be confused with spirit guides, but the two are actually very different. Guardian angels have a Christian origin and are believed to be pure angel spirits assigned by God to each individual at the moment of birth. Spirit guides, on the other hand, were once humans who have been transformed into spirit guides after their deaths. A spirit guide is often an ancestor, someone the medium or the individual has known in his or her life such as a family member or a friend who has passed. Also, it is believed that a person can have more than one spirit guide, but only one guardian angel.

How to contact your spirit guide

There are various ways through which you can contact your spirit guide. Techniques can range from the very simple to the complex, such as mind visualization to astral projection and lucid dreaming. These techniques are usually conducted because the spirit guide exists on another plane that is separate from ours, so normal forms of communication will not apply. The plane inhabited by spirit guides is called ‘the Other Side,’ which has an atmosphere believed to be denser than the earthly atmosphere. These techniques for contacting your spirit guides are used to free the mind to be more receptive to the information being given to our spiritual guides from this plane. Other means of contacting your spirit guide are clairaudience (or clear hearing) and clairvoyance, both of which are observed through meditation. Some people call the whole process of trying to contact their spirit guide as ‘channeling.’

Individuals who need a guide in communicating with spirits can enlist the help of mediums and clairvoyants. Starting off by learning meditation and other techniques is also a good way to open one’s self to the influence of one’s spirit guides. It is believed that spirit guides are constantly with us, but we must attune ourselves to their influence in order to benefit from their directions.