Who is My Spirit Guide?

All of us have a group of spirit guides supporting us, helping us, and loving us. They agreed to be our spirit guide in this life before we were officially born. While they serve us in many ways, their main goal is to help us remember and pursue our soul purpose. 

They do this by placing signs in our path and sending us messages in various ways. They’re infinitely patient and persistent. 

Throughout our lives, we will have multiple spirit guides. There will be a few that are with us from beginning to end, and there will be even more that show up as needed. 

Each devoted spirit guide has a specialty. And we have a connection with them, no matter how subtle. We likely have taken turns being guides to each other during our many incarnations! 

Spirit guides are beautiful entities. In this context, we’re referring to nonphysical beings of love and light that assist us in their own way, from the Other Side. They will never interfere with our free will. So we must be willing to ask them directly for help when we’re struggling. 

There are many different types of spirit guides we can have. We may or may not be their only charge currently. And there are other spirit guides out there we can invoke, but aren’t necessarily part of our particular team of guides (they’re helpful all the same!). 

Everyone has a team of spirit guides. Sometimes, they might feel far away, or you may feel like they’re not doing what they’re “supposed” to be doing. And that’s why I wanted to do this post. 

In this post, we’re going to talk about the duties of a spirit guide (and the spirit team as a whole), why they’re there, how they communicate with us, and how we can build a stronger connection with them.

Types of Spirit Guides

Not every single spirit we encounter will be an official Spirit Guide. Sometimes, they’re just friends or family members visiting us or sending their messages. This is equally as beautiful and welcomed! 

Within our team of spirit guides, there are specific roles to be filled. The type of being that is filling those roles will depend on a lot of factors, including your soul purpose, your energy type, your traumas, your natal chart, and many more things. 

Let’s first talk about some of the jobs our spirit guides take when supporting us throughout our lives. This list isn’t exhaustive by any means. And there will definitely be overlapping duties of your guides depending on your life and their experience: 

Guardian

This is the type of spirit guide we’re all inherently familiar with. Your guardian, or your guardian angel, is your lead spirit guide. They’re likely going to be with you from before birth to after death. They will wear many hats while acting as your spirit guardian. 

Our soul is intimately familiar with theirs, and the bond is unshakable. During this lifetime, they’re not acting as a guide to anyone else.

They’re always with you, always guiding you, always supporting you. If you’re open to them, you’ll likely perceive them everywhere, all the time. 

Guardians are also the mostly likely guide to materialize in our life in a tangible way. While brief, it will be powerful. When this happens, it’s for a magical, intense, and important purpose! Their loving angelic energy is astounding to behold. 

Teacher Guides

Depending on the depth of your soul purpose, you may have one or a few teacher guides during your life. They will act as teachers and mentors, guiding you down the path of your purpose/career, as well as helping you to learn the skills you need for it. 

Remember that your soul decided upon a soul purpose before being born in this life. In having done so, we’ve made soul agreements to work with specific spirit teachers while on the journey. 

Our career and purpose guides are supporting us on that journey. They may or may not stick around once the skills are mastered, depending on their agreed-upon role. But whenever one guide leaves, another arrives, so you’re never without the guidance you seek. 

Caretaker

These special spirit guides help us in our various types of relationships. Because we all have a team of spirit guides, they’re also working with other spirit guides. It’s like a giant web of spirit communication! 

Caretaker and relationship guides help guide us to the other souls we’ve agreed to meet up with in this life before we were born. In this way, they’re supporting our soul mission by ensuring we stay on the path we’ve laid out for ourselves. 

These guides may also offer advice when asked for it. They (or any other spirit guide) will never interfere with free will. So when you ask them for support around your relationships, you will freely receive it.

Gatekeeper

This is a very important role on a team of spirit guides. Our protector, our gatekeeper guide will offer us protection in a multitude of ways. Similar to the Guardian, the Gatekeeper will stay with us for our whole lives. However, they are likely serving many charges at once. 

Our Gatekeeper keeps us protected in the spiritual world as well as the physical. Have you ever gotten the sudden feeling that danger was imminent, so you made a snap decision that helped you avoid it? That is the type of work our Gatekeeper does! 

They will also protect our soul and our aura energetically. They may prevent unwanted entities from entering our field, especially if we specifically ask them to do this. 

Healing Guide

Similar to the Gatekeeper, our Healing Guide will help us with emotional, physical, and spiritual ailments. They may also lead us to healers or medical treatments that keep us healthy and safe. 

We experience the help of a Healing Guide whenever we’re in need of restoration. Especially during important medical procedures, or intensive therapies, or even just a low point in our lives. They help us heal on many different levels.

If your soul purpose happens to include helping others heal in some way, you likely have at least one Healing Guide always with you. They assist healers in many capacities. 

Ancestral

A special bond forms between us and our ancestral spirit guides. People who we are related to in the physical world can become part of our spirit guide team when they move onto the Other Side. 

Even ancestors from many generations ago can become ancestral guides. They may also become your Guardian, holding dual status. They offer all kinds of wisdom and love. They have a vested interest in you, as you are their kin. Our connection is mutually beneficial, and will also benefit future descendants. 

Archetypal 

Archetypal guides are like the gods and goddesses of old. They represent certain characteristics that we may benefit from during certain periods of growth or change. They help us embody these characteristics for ourselves. 

These types of guides certainly won’t be exclusively assisting you, and they certainly won’t arrive unless invoked. And you don’t need to worship them in order to work with them. What’s important in connecting with Archetypal guides is respecting their knowledge and insight. 

If you choose to work with this member of your spirit team, be ready to take their guidance to heart. You must be willing to build a relationship with them before you can expect anything consistent with them.

Messenger

Whenever we’re entering new chapters in our lives, we’re likely being accompanied by our messenger guide(s). They can help ease the transition and offer insight before any decisions get made. 

While this type of guide isn’t exclusively helping you, they will return to help you again and again. It’s likely the same Messenger guide will arrive to support you during each new life change. Once you’ve settled and most of the changes have taken place, they will be off to help others in their transitions. 

Animal Totem

I would love to do an entire series on totem animal spirit guides. I learned a lot in my childhood about spirit guides when my family was adopted into a Native American tribe. 

Animal totems are so special and sacred, and I find most people connect with their animal spirit guide easily. You could have one specific animal you connect with deeply, or you can have up to nine Animal Totems guiding you throughout your entire life. 

These guides represent our individual needs and desires. As well as characteristics we embody, or wish to embody. They can also be guides to your entire family system. Animal spirit guides are a great place to start if you’re new to connecting with spirit guides. 

Plant Guides

Plants have living souls just as much as any of us! The spirit of a plant that you’re drawn to may stay with you your whole life. Or you could find a specific plant, or ancient tree, that teaches you important lessons. 

Some of our soul purposes might even involve working directly with plant energy. In that case, Plant Guides will likely permeate all other roles on the spirit team. Plants offer yet another entry point to the spirit world, along with plenty of healing energies (physically, emotionally, and spiritually). 

Soul Mates and Families

You’ve heard of soul mates, no doubt. These are special kinds of soul connections that we will make at some point in our life, regardless of circumstances. Unlike other spirit guides, you cannot call on them for insights or guidance. 

They’re actually going to be another human or animal in our lives that brings us guidance through our relationship with them. And no, you don’t have “only one” soul mate. And they aren’t always going to turn into a romantic relationship.

It will be an intimate connection, manifested in a specific way representative of the lessons you’re teaching each other. 

Soul families are similar. They aren’t necessarily your ancestral family by default. They may be close friends, colleagues, animals, or anyone else that feels like family. Again, we cannot call upon these guides in the same way we can others. But they are part of our spirit team nonetheless. 

Connecting with Your Spirit Guides

Regardless of your level of spiritual awareness, you will always be connected to your spirit guides. It is part of the plan we make for ourselves before birth. The strength of that connection is what we work on when connecting with our guides. 

Connecting with your spirit guides is relatively simple. The first thing you need is an open heart and a willing mind, without any agenda. This doesn’t mean you can’t connect with them when you need help. That’s what they’re there for. But your intention needs to be pure. 

They can see and sense your intention regardless of what you deliberately express to them. Don’t try lying, they will see your true nature. So when you approach a spirit guide, simply be honest about why you’re wanting to strengthen the bond you have. 

There are lots of guided meditations and visualizations you can practice to connect with them. It’s pretty easy for our guides to provide insight when we’re in a meditative state because our vibration is higher during that time. 

In order to connect with our spirit guides energetically, we have to raise our vibration up, while they have to lower theirs temporarily, so we are a closer vibrational match to each other. This takes a lot of work for both of us! But it gets easier with practice. 

This is why we’re more likely to get bursts of insight, seemingly out of nowhere, from our spirit guides. It’s a lot easier for them to throw knowledge or feelings into our being rather than change their entire energy field. They’re willing to do it, but it’s not the only way. 

Spirit guides will also send physical signs for us to stumble upon. This is the most common form of connection and communication because it’s clearest for both parties. We can clearly see the sign before us, and it takes very little manipulation from the guide to place it there. 

Signs from Spirit

There are so many different signs Spirit can send you! Sometimes they’re meaningful to their personality, or yours, or representative of your connection. 

If you’re ever wondering if what you’re seeing is a sign from a spirit guide, ask your intuition. Does it feel different from other similar experiences? Did it pop up right in the middle of a crisis, a thought, a behavior, or anything else that would benefit from the insight of a Light Being? 

It’s okay to be skeptical of your signs. Spirit guides don’t take it personal. It’s better to be skeptical than to believe your guides are constantly sending you signs. 

The best way to receive a sign from Spirit is to simply ask for something specific. You could say something like, “Okay Spirit Guides, if this is something I should be doing, please send me a blue feather.” The feather could then appear on the ground before you, in a picture, or by someone else mentioning it. 

Here’s a few more examples of common signs you might experience from your team of spirit guides: 

Trinkets

It is very common for Spirit to send us “lucky” coins or trinkets as signs. We might have a belief that something is lucky when found “randomly,” such as a heads-up penny, a feather, a four leaf clover, or a charm of some kind. 

After my grandmother died, I was going through her things as we prepared the house for sale. I found hundreds of pennies everywhere! In every pocket, in every drawer, in every box. I had no idea she even had an interest in collecting lucky pennies. There were a few that even had fancy frames declaring their luckiness. 

It’s been years since she’s passed, and whenever I find a lucky penny, I know it’s from here and I always pick it up. I have my own collection of lucky pennies now! This common sign was made special by the connection I had with my grandmother. Perhaps you have something similar in your life. 

Song lyrics

Song lyrics are common signs from spirit as well. Musical artists often act as willing conduits for spirit messages. You might ask for a sign, then hear a very specific song lyric that addresses it. Or you might hear one song that makes you think of a passed on loved one. 

My great grandfather died when I was about six. The animated Tarzan movie had just come out, and one of my happiest memories of him involved us listening to the song “You’ll Be In My Heart.” After he died, that song always filled me with emotion because of that memory, and because I felt in my soul that he was using that song to express love. 

Inner knowledge

You might suddenly be struck with inspiration or knowledge that was exactly what you needed in that moment. Thank your spirit guides! Even if you didn’t expressly ask for guidance, you may receive it spontaneously in this way.

Spirit guides are excellent at seizing the moment. If they realize now is the time to share some insight, they will find a way. And often, an inner, instant knowing that can’t be ignored is the easiest, fastest way. 

It may take some practice to differentiate this type of guidance from your own thoughts, but usually it’s obvious. I often hear inner guidance like this in a voice other than my own. Or a familiar voice of a loved one passed on. 

Outer knowledge

A spirit message may also come through in the form of a moving book or story. This could be an actual book you’re reading, fiction or nonfiction, or it could be a movie or show. Or even words of wisdom spoken by someone else that stick with you. 

Everyone has the potential to be a conduit of spirit energy. We never know who is going to say or be just the thing we need at that moment.

Scents and smells

This one is very common! Scent is known for triggering specific memories and recalling knowledge. If you have loved ones on the Other Side, they may send you guidance through sending you a scent that reminds you of them. As confirmation or as a call to pay closer attention. 

You may also be triggered to take action after smelling a specific scent. Pleasant or unpleasant, scents provoke a reaction. Either to stop doing something, to start doing something, or to change the way something is being done. 

Body sensations

Another very common way for spirits to communicate is through the body. Words are quite limiting, and it might be more impactful to send you a feeling. You might feel your guidance somewhere within the body, or as an emotion. 

A spirit might do this to show you something they have felt themselves. Or they might be drawing your attention to or away from something else in the body. And you might even be able to feel the emotions of others when you’re near them. 

Animal visitors

A spirit guide might send you an animal messenger. Your totem animal(s) could be doing this too, showing itself to you in physical form, depending on the message. Not every single animal you see is a message from Spirit. But the unusual encounters likely are. 

Such as a fox crossing my path in broad daylight when I’ve literally never seen a fox in my suburban neighborhood before in the decade I’ve lived there. Or a hawk carrying a snake right over my head. Or a red cardinal flying by in the middle of a snow storm. Or a fleet of hummingbirds all arriving at the feeder at the same time. 

Spirit Guide Communication 

There are countless ways our spirit guides will communicate with us! Each of our bonds are unique and special, so the communication must be, too. 

A spirit guide isn’t meant to be a crutch, they are meant to be a support. They cannot live your life for you, or make decisions on your behalf. But they will give you guidance when it’s relevant and needed. 

If it seems like they’ve “abandoned” you or you’re not getting any insight from them, it may be their way of saying, “Hey, I love you, but you have to figure this one out on your own.”

It’s similar to parenting. A parent can’t do everything for their child their whole lives, can they? Eventually the parent has to become hands off if they ever want their child to be independent. But if the child genuinely needs help, or gets hurt, the parent is right there with a loving hug.

Just know that your spirit guides are only a thought away. They may not be present with you in every single moment. But they are willing to be if you need them to be. Especially during those particularly low times in our lives.