In the small hours one morning she hit bottom, in a crisis of despair.



"There has to be something more," she said out loud, even though no one was in the room with her.

"Are you asking?" a voice said clearly, outside of her head. She was too stunned to respond.

"Are you asking?" the voice repeated in an even more urgent tone.

"I guess I am," she answered finally, and from that moment on Lynn knew she was not alone in this world. She had just met one of her angels, also known as guides.

Even though at times we may feel isolated and bereft, none of us comes into this world entirely on our own. We always have help and friendship right by our sides in the form of loving, invisible mentors who want nothing more than to play an active role in supporting us before, during, and even after our physical sojourns on earth.

All we need do is ask for their help--and then be ready and open to receive their guidance.

In the days following that dramatic encounter, Lynn learned much about guides in general and her angels in particular. As vibrating eternal essences (also known as souls or spirits), we choose to experience each physical lifetime. We usually have a purpose for the life we have selected. Such purpose is general, such as teaching, healing, inspiring, creating, and so forth.

Our life purpose attracts to us other spirits who want to share that purpose but do not necessarily desire to do so in a physical body. We then select a group of souls to help us along the way. Often we make our choices based on the fact that we know these spirits already from other physical lifetimes on earth (or elsewhere). We trust these beings and they trust us. Sometimes we include souls who have a particular expertise that we believe will be especially helpful to us or because we just want to try something new while on earth.

Then we arrive in our physical bodies. As very young children, we interact with our spirit friends as the invisible companions we play with and who comfort us. Well-meaning adults, however, inform us that these friends are "not real." We start to distrust our intuitive senses, the means by which we communicate with our angels, and eventually give up our angels so that we may "grow up" and become "well adjusted."

Our angels remain with us anyway, sending us their love and guidance, hoping to reconnect in a more direct manner. In times of crisis, we call out for help, and they provide it to the extent we will allow ourselves to receive it. The voice Lynn heard, for example, was an angel who calls himself Yaqui.

Angels/guides have different functions on our behalf. Yaqui is Lynn's spiritual growth guide, the one who is most focused on her spiritual well-being. Another role for a guide is that of protector. In our world full of cars, buses, trains, planes, boats and other forms of mechanized travel, protectors put in plenty of overtime paying attention when we are distracted.

Many guides take on the function of jokester. Humor is the easiest and best way to tune into our own hearts' wisdom, so helping us find and appreciate the hilarity and absurdity in life also helps us keep our spiritual connection alive and healthy. Guides are also healers, teachers, legal experts, even business consultants! One of Lynn's guides is a handyman who invariably astonishes his physical counterparts, who cannot understand why Lynn is able to tell them the actual mechanical problem even before they inspect the broken machine.

Angels or guides present themselves to us usually in a form we can relate to--human--but some guides have shown themselves as comic book figures, like Wonder Woman or Rocky and Bullwinkle, if that's what helps us to connect with them. The forms and names they take on are simply a matter of making them, their love, and their guidance readily available to us by matching our needs and expectations.

Is it possible to for all of us to meet our guides, up close and personal? Yes, provided we are willing to relearn how to trust our intuition. Since guides/angels do not have physical bodies (except in rare cases of extreme emergencies), we cannot sit down with them for a cup of coffee and a chat. We need our intuition--our hunches, gut feelings, visions, and inner hearing--to be able to receive their messages and send ours in return.

The next step is taking the time and space to get to know our angels via a meet-your-guides meditation, which we can do on our own or with help if needed. The energy and effort we put into getting reacquainted with our angels will come back to us many times over in the form of increased feelings of love, acceptance, safety, and well-being.