Ask Your Guides by Sonia Choquette is a very thorough book on all manner of spirit guides, including everything from archangels to animal guides. I quite enjoyed this book and got some fascinating results by applying Sonia’s advice.

For many years I’ve been familiar with the notion of spirit guides, and my Catholic upbringing taught me the concept of guardian angels. But I haven’t been very consistent in trying to make contact with them, outside of doing automatic writing or meditating.

Sonia’s book includes plenty of advice on how to get in contact with various non-physical entities. I followed her instructions and began receiving guidance almost immediately. The only problem was that I wasn’t sure if the guidance was actually coming from somewhere “out there” or if I was just subconsciously imagining it. I also couldn’t tell whether or not it was accurate. The initial guidance I received wasn’t really testable. I’ve already seen plenty of evidence that other people can receive valid information this way, but I was uncertain as to whether I could do it myself. Was I just imagining it, or was I actually receiving useful data I couldn’t have otherwise known? So I asked to receive guidance that I could actually test and verify, and that’s when things got interesting.

I soon started receiving plenty of guidance that turned out to be accurate and verifiable, but the guidance wasn’t usually for me. Mostly I was tuning into spirit guides who wanted me to pass messages along to my wife. Even when I thought the guidance was a little strange, I just reported it exactly as I was receiving it. Erin was able to tell me what a perfect piece of advice it was, even when I didn’t think it would score a hit.

In one case I tuned in to a young spirit guide who asked me to tell Erin to “go to the haunted house.” Erin and I figured that must be a metaphor for something, but we didn’t know what. A couple days later, Erin got a call out of the blue to appear as a guest on the Criss Angel Mindfreak TV show. She almost turned them down until she learned it was going to be filmed at… you guessed it… a haunted house. She quickly remembered the guide’s message, so she did the show, and it was one of the most amazing experiences of her life.

After seeing this kind of result over and over again, I’ve been tuning into spirit guides on a regular basis because I’m actually getting good information. If the results were useless or negative, I’d drop this in a second. But since it actually works for me, I’m keeping it as yet another empowering belief. I’ve even been doing readings for other people by tuning in to see if there are any guides that want me to deliver a message. So far I’ve felt that every reading has been a success — sometimes I’m even able to provide validation to the other person if the guide is a deceased relative, but not all guides care to provide such info. It’s difficult for both me and the guide to stay tuned in for long, usually just a few minutes at most, so they normally want to deliver the most important info quickly before we lose the connection. Convincing the other person that they’re real isn’t always at the top of their agenda.

I’m able to see most guides clairvoyantly, so I can even describe them visually. Guides don’t have physical bodies like we humans do, so how they chose to appear is largely up to them. I don’t see guides with my eyes — it’s as if I see them in my imagination. But these images are overlaid on my normal visual field, so I can usually pinpoint their locations in space. If you’re familiar with the chakra system, then I’ll simply say that I see them with my third eye. Sometimes guides don’t shift all the way into the physical plane though, so I have to direct my third eye to wherever they happen to be; often they create interesting places to show me, which are usually part of the message they wish to convey. I can see them with my physical eyes open or closed. I usually prefer to do it with my eyes open if they come into the physical plane and with my eyes closed if they remain on some other plane.

Most of the time I receive their messages in a claircognizant manner — complete thoughts simply pop into my head, as if via some sort of telepathic transmission, and I have to put them to words. That isn’t always easy to do, since pure thought is a much richer language than English, but it is an efficient way to get a message. My wife is clairaudient, so she actually hears the words in her head. I can sometimes get messages in auditory form, but that’s very unusual for me. Consequently, I’ve never had much success in picking up specific names like some people are able to do. However, in a matter of seconds I can sometimes receive a message that may take me 5-10 minutes to translate into words.

I am finding that just like human beings, spirit guides don’t all speak the same language. Some guides come in really clear and are very easy to understand; other guides come in more fuzzy. Just because you’re dead doesn’t mean you’re automatically capable of communicating well with living humans. Apparently it takes some practice for guides to be able to connect with us, so if you ask a deceased relative to give you a specific sign they’re around, they may simply lack the skills to pull it off. I find that during meditation or shortly thereafter is when I’m able to get the clearest reception, probably because my mind is clear of distracting thoughts.

Ask Your Guides describes a wide variety of guides: angels, guardian angels, archangels, spirit guides, runners, helpers, healers, teachers, animal guides, joy guides, and light beings. I find that most of the guides that contact me are humans that have passed over, but they usually aren’t relatives of anyone involved. I seem to be good at picking up runners and helper guides who just want to drop off a message. Most of the guides I see appear as children, and I find them very easy to understand because their thoughts are simple and uncluttered.

I also seem to have a penchant for picking up animal guides with messages for certain people, including myself. Animal guides often provide general guidance with respect to one’s life path, while deceased humans and other spirits tend to deliver more specific messages or instructions. Often the mere appearance of an animal is a message in itself, so take note if you keep seeing the same animal come up repeatedly over a short period of time. It’s probably an animal guide trying to grab your attention. (Animals cross over just as humans do, whether they’re your pets or your dinner.) The book Power Animals by Steven Farmer has a great explanation of what these messages are. I like the book because the quality is so much better than anything I’ve found online.

Ask Your Guides also includes a section on dealing with negative entities. I’ve seldom had much of a problem in that area, but my wife had major problems with negative entities when she was a teenager. I’d say the general rule of thumb is that you’ll attract spirits that resonate with your current level of consciousness, so if you’re in a depressed, stressful, or fearful state, there’s a good chance that any guidance you receive will be of poor quality and may even be harmful — another good reason for keeping your thoughts positive, regardless of circumstance. I find that the quality of the guidance that comes through is largely a function of my awareness level. I typically receive the most accurate and helpful guidance when I’m feeling my best. This is really no different than human-to-human communication. People are more receptive to guidance and coaching when they’re feeling good about themselves.

Contacting spirit guides is no substitute for rational thought of course, but it can provide an awesome supplement. If communicating with spirit guides is too much for your current belief system, I suggest you view the whole thing as a means of interacting with your subconscious (or superconscious) mind. Years ago I used such a belief system to enhance my creativity. It’s a good way to bypass stale thinking and tap into a source of greater inspiration. When I was developing a certain computer game, I would often channel some truly inspired level designs — they would pop into my head fully formed in every detail, and I would simply go to my computer and input them. To design such levels via conscious thought would typically take me anywhere from 3 hours to 3 days per level, but during those times when I could tune in to a deeper source of creativity, I’d complete an entire level in about 20-30 minutes. This method probably shaved weeks off my schedule just for this one game. So there’s a real practical application to receiving guidance that comes from outside your own conscious mind.

Guides are not omniscient. You can ask them anything you want, but sometimes they just don’t know the answers, so you may occasionally get bad advice or no advice at all. As non-physical entities, they have a different perspective than we do, which allows them to see and understand certain things we can’t, but they don’t know everything there is to know about the cosmos. I’d say the main theme of their messages is that they want us to really enjoy our lives — they want us to be happy and to embrace unconditional love for each other. They also take great joy in helping us whenever they can. They don’t have to worry about things like food, physical health, money, or other such earthly matters. They exist as pure thought and energy. I’ve found that through the process of connecting with them repeatedly, my thinking has become more aligned with theirs, so I’m far less concerned with matters that are strictly rooted in the physical — instead I think about their afterlife equivalents. Money concerns are replaced by thoughts of manifesting abundance. Physical health concerns are replaced by thoughts of feeling lively and energetic. Human friendships are replaced by soulful connections. This is basically a shift towards a less fear-based mode of thinking about life on earth, one I find immensely empowering.

Ask Your Guides is a very readable book with plenty of how-to info as well as Sonia’s delightful storytelling. If you want to expand your horizons and tap into a deeper wellspring of inspiration and support, there are plenty of non-physical entities out there who’d be happy to give you a leg up, but they won’t lift a dismembered finger unless you ask. Personally I think it would be fun to serve as a guide myself after I’m dead, since then I could continue the work I enjoy so much during my human life.