Embarking on a spiritual journey of any kind, including connecting with your spirit guides, always starts as an act of faith. Beginning to believe in and trust our connection to spirit requires us to throw logic out the window and suspend our disbelief. Because we are so accustomed to overusing our logical & analytical conscious mind, we often have a lot of resistance to letting logic take backseat, even for just a little while. It is easy to attempt to analyze our spirit guide experiences in search of proof and end up dismissing them entirely.
Our search for proof can lead to having preconceived ideas and expectations of our spirit guides in many ways, from how we think they are supposed to look like, how we assume they will communicate, and how we believe the experience will feel as a whole. We even build expectations around the messages we hope or expect to hear from them. This is why it is so important to release expectations and let go of logic, especially during the beginning phases of connecting with our guides.
When accessing the subconscious mind as the go-between to the spirit realm, there are two things that can hold us back more than anything else: overthinking it and trying too hard. Overthinking comes from holding tight to the preconceived ideas of what we think it is supposed to look and feel like, analyzing our experience against these expectations to the point of not allowing our connection to spirit to come through. Trying too hard is similar, yet slightly different – it’s trying to force one particular experience, rather than allowing the experience to be what it is…and each spirit guide experience may prove to be very different from the last.
Both of these come in the form of thoughts such as “Is this real? Did that really happen?” or “Am I doing this right? Did I say the right word? Did I miss part?” The fact is, even if consciously you miss something or don’t get a word in an invocation correct, your subconscious and superconscious are paying attention to everything and know what you mean!
When doubts come into our minds, in our very human desire to do things right and to succeed, our conscious mind takes control of the situation. But when connecting with your spirit guides, listening to your higher self, and developing your intuition, there is never one way for it to happen, a correct way to feel, or “right” thing to experience. There is no “should.” This is why throwing logic out for the time being is essential.
For years, this is exactly what held be back from fully connecting with my guides. I expected to to happen easily, instantly, and in a very specific way, as though my guides would show up in my living room and sit down for a cup of tea. It wasn’t until I let go of the urge to control the situation and stopped trying to manipulate it into what I thought should happen that I began to connect very clearly with my guides. It was then that I realized they had already been communicating with me for quite some time, but my analytical, logical mind was keeping me from receiving their messages.
Yet the question remains: how do we keep ourselves from overthinking and trying to hard? How to we let go of logic? The answer is not so simple. After all, most of us have been trained our entire lives to rely mainly on this part of our mind for just about everything we do in life.
So first, understand that it takes some time and some practice. The more you begin to see and feel the connections between you and your guides, the easier it will become. Don’t be hard on yourself with these thoughts show up. Rather, simply acknowledge them and return to your practice. This will keep you in the present moment, rooted in the experience you are currently having, rather than in anticipation of what to expect or analyzing what happened last time.
Next, allow your imagination to play a part. Pretending as though you are communicating with your guides can be the very thing that invites them in. It may feel a little silly at first, but it works. In fact, this is how I connected with my very first guide, Frank.
After nearly a year of trying to connect regularly, finally one day, I decided to just let myself pretend I was communicating with my guide, whose name I didn’t know yet. At some point, the experience changed entirely, and I knew without a doubt that the experience was no longer coming from my imagination, but was coming from my spirit guide. And that moment opened the flood gates of the spirit world for me!
Releasing expectations is without a doubt the most important aspect of preparing yourself to meet your guides, so allow yourself to have the experience for what it is. Allow it to flow. And allow yourself to have fun in the process!
Creative Alchemy with Melissa Conkling 