Choosing Spirit Guides
DEAR JEANETTE: Before a person comes back in, do we make any agreements with those over there to guide us?
DEAR : Yes, those spirits who will be acting as our guides are selected before we “come back in”. As the soul, with the help of its guides, decides what kinds of karmic situations can be handled during this lifetime and what service can be given, the characteristics which the personality will need to be successful in the life become clear.
Then the types of help that will be needed throughout the lifetime or for individual situations can be seen. Spirits capable of giving the kinds of help needed are then located and arrangements made with them to be available during the particular time period.
Some of the guides will be close family and/or friends on the soul level. These are especially helpful when they can combine the level of knowledge needed with the loving support that can come from someone that loves the personality. Others will be unacquainted but will have the expertise that is needed.
Remember that Earth living is one of the classroom experiences that each soul must have. So our guides and teachers act very much as teachers and tutors do for a school child on Earth. The teacher gives the most help in learning the necessary lessons. Sometimes different teachers will come in for special subjects which are beyond the teaching experience of the main one (such as is often done for art and music in the school system).
Parents and siblings will give help often or occasionally as the need arises. Sometimes a tutor will be brought in to help. Teacher’s aides, grandparents and many others help at times. So it is with the lessons we are assigned during our time in this classroom called Earth.
Since our guides are arranged for before we are born, they cannot be anyone that we have known on the Earth during this lifetime. Sometimes they will be relatives however as our incarnate (earth living) relatives are often also cosmic family members. Even if they are not actually cosmic family members, a grandparent, aunt, etc., can maintain a very active interest in the Earth family he or she has left and therefore be readily available to act as a guide for the new team member.
Yes, I too know of persons who have a very close relationship with a parent or grandparent who is now in the spirit world but with whom those close ties between the incarnate and the excarnate are often used to make closer contact. The guides who have been serving throughout the lifetime recognize this bond between the two and make use of it to get messages onto a more conscious level than they have been able to do before the death of the loved one.
So in a sense they are guides even though they started their guiding services as incarnates and now are continuing as excarnates. Certainly if you have contact with such a spirit -- a former family member with whom you had a good relationship -- it is good to learn from the experience, but don’t hold on to them and prevent them from making their own progress in other schools.