Dear Julia: I've been wondering about spirit guides. I keep hearing about these amazing spirit guides that other people have, like Indian chiefs and such. While I can communicate with my own guides, I have never had a guide experience that is so real and personal like that. I've never even been shown what my guides look like, and I certainly haven't been given their names. It makes me wonder if I really do know my guides at all, or if I'm missing something here. What do you think?
- Becca

Dear Becca:

Thanks so much for this great question. I have never had a really exotic spirit guide either, and for a long time, I felt like I was missing out too. When I would read or hear about one person having a Native American Indian chief for a guide, and another person having a guide named Arielle with red hair and angel wings, my own guides seemed pretty dull.

You see, my spirit guides are sort of a nameless, faceless council. When I reach up to them mentally, I get the guidance I ask for, but it comes from an indistinct source. When I talk about getting messages from "Spirit," I'm referring to a broad range of possible sources. Sometimes information comes from my own guides; sometimes it comes from the guides of the person I'm reading for; sometimes it comes from my own higher self tuning in to another time and place. While I'm working, I usually don't take the time or make the effort to determine where the guidance is coming from; I just let it flow through me.

While I communicate with spirit guides every day in my work as a medium/clairvoyant, instead of talking to them like they are people with names and faces, I simply link to their energy and intelligence. Years of experience have left me pretty skeptical about spirit guides with exotic personalities, because when we're in the non-physical, we don't have bodies or faces or need to wear clothes. We communicate telepathically, and thus there really is no need for names or even words for that matter.

At this level, communication is more direct. In regular conversation, one person tries to find the words to convey what they want to say, then speaks them, and the listener then translates those words into a sense of "meaning." In spirit communication, non-physical entities send us the energy of their message directly. We then perceive the energy and translate it into words, images or gut feelings.

Imagine that you're trying to telepathically communicate with someone at a distance, to reassure them that everything will be okay. The energy of that communication is a feeling. You may send the words, but also images of well-being, and the feeling of reassurance. If they are able to perceive that telepathic energy, it's not likely that they would also be able to discern that it came from "Becca," who is blonde with blue eyes and wearing a tiara.

Now we have to imagine an even less tangible communicator. It's hard to mentally conceptualize guides' true nature as nameless, formless energies. While spirit guides sometimes provide us with these details to help us accept and understand them, usually our own minds create these details based on our beliefs and expectations.

Everything that comes to us from Spirit is filtered through our own consciousness. If something did not already exist in our consciousness, we would not be able to conceive of it. As every new idea and experience must be fit into our existing frame of reference, our mental impressions of our guides are ever influenced by our unique mental makeup. Any associations we've picked up from our cultures, past experiences, books we've read, etc., will affect our experiences of everything in life, including our impressions of spirit guides.

Further, when we're dealing with purely non-physical phenomena like spirit communication, our mental expectations and associations will be especially powerful influences. Thus if we expect or perhaps hope our spirit guide will be a Native American chief, then it's highly likely that one of two things will happen: our spirit guide will take that form so that we recognize him, accept him and feel comfortable with him, or our own minds will superimpose this Native American image on the guide. We will unconsciously create a mental picture that conforms to our expectations.

People who are primarily visual/ clairvoyant will tend to see a face or mental image, while those who are more auditory/ clairaudient will tend to "hear" names. Those who are more kinesthetic are perhaps least likely to need a name or a face, for they will simply recognize a guide based on the feeling of the guide's energy. It's especially hard for those of us who think in images or words try to conceive of something or someone without a mental picture or label.

Despite my skepticism about "exotic" guides, I'm certainly not ruling out any possibilities. Maybe there are different sorts of guides in Spirit. Who am I to say what is ultimately true and possible? I have experienced but a tiny slice of spiritual reality. Perhaps some spirit guides do have more personality because they've spent more time on Earth or incarnated more recently. Maybe those guides who are more abstract never incarnated on Earth, or haven't done so for a very long time.

This would fit with my experience that there is a very different feeling between loved ones who are now spirits and the guides who work with me in my reading work. Loved ones in Spirit are more like people; they come through with names, faces and personalities. Guides, on the other hand, are more abstract in their energy. They also send messages that are broader, deeper, and more "enlightened." Perhaps there is a progression in the afterlife from distinct personalities to the more abstract intelligence/energy that many mediums simply refer to as "Spirit."

It's also possible that I've never had an exotic spirit guide encounter because I've always been so skeptical about it. As we create our own realities, our beliefs and expectations generally define our experiences. Maybe there really are a whole lot of Native Americans spirit guides, because as a culture, they believe in the existence of spirit guides, and are perhaps more likely to choose to serve in this capacity on the other side. By contrast, the whole spirit guide notion is pretty new to the vast majority of us who have grown up in Christian, Jewish or Buddhist cultures.

While I have had a number of more distinct guides come to me for specific purposes over the years, none of them were far out, majestic figures. They were like interesting people we might meet here on Earth. On the whole, however, my guides remain vague in their identities, though their guidance is ever reliable and wise.

Long ago I let go of the notion that formless guides are somehow inferior to those striking figures some people are blessed with. At first I decided that the hazy guides must be from higher planes, and therefore superior. (It made me feel better, anyway!) Now, however, I feel no need to compare and rate spirit guides; in fact, the whole notion seems pretty ego-based and absurd.

I encourage all of you reading this to give thanks for all the spiritual guidance in your life, whether it comes to you through a distinct physical manifestation, a subtle gut feeling, or some variation in between. I trust that Spirit and your own inner being are working together to produce just what you most need in this area of your life, and will continue do so.

Besides, the most powerful way to manifest greater experiences of anything is to be profoundly grateful for what we've already been given.

- Julia