Guides, Angels, Spirits, and Myth

Guides, Angels, Spirits, Myth and Archetype

As a mentor and coach I often work with people who listen to the abundant intuitive energy that surrounds us. They listen to the sources who are here to help and guide them, and that’s a wonderful ability that can offer support for their decisions when maybe the people around them aren’t in such a helpful place. What is distressing about this is that I also see them using their guides as a reason to play small, and to constrict when they’ve chosen to risk playing big.

Getting my guides into perspective. 

I once had a very unusual dream, so unusual that while I was still dreaming I turned to the other person in the dream and told them they were on their own, that I couldn’t wait to wake up to consult my guides, that I needed to do it right now. And I did. I walked out the door and down the street to where I knew my guide would be. 

I wasn’t actually prepared for who met me, or where I found him. 

Before this dream I had imagined my guides to be bathed in a shimmery, ethereal light, wearing draping clothes, with an overall purity of otherworldliness. Too many movies, I know. The guide I met that day couldn’t have been any further from what I’d imagined.  

The office was in an old tract home, down a nondescript suburban street, and was a confusion of walls covered with memos and sticky notes threatening to bury the old metal drawer desk haphazardly stacked with papers and books. I was sure I’d been sent to the wrong place. I was even more sure of this when a rugged, unshaven man burst in wearing a flannel shirt and levis. He slid  into the metal pedestal swivel chair, crossed his arms behind his head and planted his work boot covered feet on a bare corner of the cluttered desk. 

I asked him where my guide was (okay, maybe I demanded). He said my guide was busy but had sent him as this wasn’t really that important. Before I could speak he started laughing, out loud, total guffaw belly laughing, and said that the dream I’d come to him for didn’t mean at all what I thought it did. He laughed til the tears rolled down his face. I left, shaking my head and wondering, what then did it mean?

I did ultimately find out the answer, and I too had a total guffaw belly laugh over it all. He was right, it wasn’t even in the ballpark of what I originally thought it meant.

So what’s my point? It’s this. Everything we know, every decision we make, is informed by lifetimes of experiences. Our fears, our successes, our desires, and our insecurities are just a few of the things that shape our perceptions, and our perceptions are what we call REALITY. Our guides also use our experiences to communicate to us in a language we understand. We understand it, because we created it out of our experiences. That does not mean it’s reality. 

Guides, Angels, God and Spirit are not in our lives to take away our ability to practice free will, they are here to help us see what we might be missing, to broaden our horizons, and sometimes, to offer their protection.  

The question to ask yourself is: Do you still need the kind of protection you’re being offered? Or, is it time to say thank you for your wonderful guidance, you’ve helped me to become who I am, and, I've got this one.  

Your guides are not your parents. Even if they were, do you still listen to mom and dad when they tell you how to live your life?

The final question I will leave you with is: Why do you give your guides a level of control over your life you’d give to no one else? Are you steering your own ship, or having you given that power away?