Spirit Guides: The Illusion of Objectivity and How to Find True Inner Guidance

I don’t believe in or use ‘spirit guides,’ but I used to a lot. Now, I think the practice of using them is actually quite problematic and potentially harmful. I spent 8 years in a new-age spiritual cult, and the use of spirit guides was a core foundational practice of the group. So much so that we were expected to communicate with our guides 24/7 and consult with them for every decision we were making – down to which foot to step forward on first. This was an extreme use of communicating with spirit guides; however, I see striving for this type of commitment to consulting with guides pretty uniformly across different practices and religions. 

For reference, I use the term ‘spirit guides,’ but that term is meant to be all-inclusive of the general practice of using your intuition to connect and communicate with an out-of-body spirit or being who is perceived to have more awareness, objectivity, and enlightenment than you do – this might mean talking with God, Jesus, Mary, angels, ascended masters, fairies, aliens, ancestors or any other being without a body. 

As with most problematic spiritual beliefs and concepts, there's usually a nugget of truth, some benefit or helpful element of the practice, which is why people use them and they become popular. We can find and then discern a more ethical, healthy, and helpful way to use the practice within that element of truth, in my experience this is about the physiological state we need to be in to connect with guidance. But first, let’s jump into a few ways that using spirit guides can be harmful, and get you further from where you’d like to go. 

Spirit Guides Give the Illusion of Objectivity

It is a great practice to consult with people who know more than you, are smarter than you, are more experienced than you, or simply have a different viewpoint than you when you’re making big decisions in your life. It’s important to recognize that we don’t know everything and that others might have more information than we do and to trust and listen to them if their qualifications warrant it. 

Communicating with spirit guides feels enticing because we believe they are more enlightened than us, have a higher vibration, more awareness, or have a greater and more objective perspective on our lives than we do. The flaw in this logic is that spirit guides, and our communication with them is completely subjective. 

Your communication with your guides is 100% solely created and experienced in your mind, and no one can hear or experience exactly what you do. When we speak with another person, someone else can listen to what they say as well, they are objective simply because they are not you. 

Spirit guides are you, they are experienced and witnessed solely by you and you alone. So while it feels and seems like connecting with guides means gaining a neutral, objective, 3rd party input on something, in reality, it is anything but – it is a process of your subjective experience and your mind.

Emotional States Sway ‘Guided Information’

One of the more beneficial practices of the cult I was in was that to speak to your guides, you needed to be in a specific state. You couldn’t be activated, emotional, or panicked, you needed to be in a meditative state which I experienced as an alpha-theta brainwave state. 

Not everyone speaks to guidance with that much prep work, and often times when we are seeking guidance from spirit it is specifically because we are in an activated and stressed state. We’ve all experienced the differences in awareness and observation we have when we are in a heightened physiological state - if you are angry, sad, devastated, afraid, super excited even, your level of awareness is very narrow, and it’s hard to see outside what we are currently facing. 

If we aren’t committed to regulating our state, before connecting with our guides, we will most likely simply be hearing or perceiving whatever we already think is the answer, not gaining more awareness of the issue. 

Using Spirit Guides Erodes Self Trust & Decision-Making Capabilities

While it’s beneficial to seek objective third-party perspectives and information on some life decisions, it can also be problematic when we do this too frequently or rely on external sources to feel okay making a decision. Using spirit guides to guide our lives, choices, and decisions externalizes our locus of control. 

It centers our sense of ownership of responsibility and confidence in controlling our lives to external sources. This means we no longer feel we have agency or choice - it’s external to us, coming through our guide. I love to toe the line on the issue of control, and I see how we simultaneously have control and no control over our lives and the events that happen within them, but we need to remain centered there, not leaning too far in either direction. 

Relying on guides for all the answers eventually erodes self-trust, because to use guidance like this we have to internalize the belief that not only do we not know everything but we know nothing, and our external guide knows more than we do and all decision-making should be defaulted through them. 

Instead of learning to trust our own internal wisdom and our intuition, we externalize this to the outside source - spirit guide - and slowly break down our abilities to trust ourselves and our own capabilities. This stifles our decision-making abilities, and we may even begin to feel anxious or extremely confused about decision-making because of this externalized locus of control. 

Relying on Spirit Guides Sets Up a Fertile Ground for Spiritual Bypassing

While the internal self-harm caused by the use of spirit guides is in eroding self-trust and decision-making abilities, the external harm lies in spiritual bypassing. Spiritual bypassing is the act of dismissing harm or issues based on the context of spiritual belief, it also includes dismissing personal accountability and responsibility for actions and behaviors based on spiritual beliefs. 

In its worst, most potently harmful rendition spiritual bypassing looks something like “God told me to burn down that school.” But more commonly we see people turn to use their guides as scapegoats for poor choices, behaviors, and actions as a means to absolve themselves of personal accountability and responsibility. 

If you believe your guides are always correct, know more than you could ever know, and simply follow their guidance without question, it’s easy to start excusing yourself and using them as the reason why. Because even when things don’t work out, or cause someone harm we can lean into the undercurrent belief that ‘it’s all for the best because my guides know everything and this obviously must be for the greater good.’ 

People may skip important events, absolve themselves from making true apologies by ‘doing it in spirit’ instead of face to face, frighten people by sharing information no one asked for, or choose reckless actions based on their belief that guidance told them and it was ‘aligned.’ 

It’s easy to sit back and say ‘my guides told me not to do anything, it wasn’t my place’ and then send thoughts and prayers when you witness a crime you could have prevented. Guides and guided information are an easy way to excuse oneself from taking accountability for their actions, inciting true change, and taking action in meaningful ways. 

How to Listen to Our Inner Wisdom with Integrity

I think the golden nugget of truth within the practice of listening to spirit guides lies in the practice of regulating your nervous system and reaching that alpha-theta state before making decisions. Since listening to guidance is a 100% subjective experience because we are essentially just listening to our own mind, we can cut out the middle man – the guide. 

When we let go of the idea of speaking to an external being and lean into connecting with our own authentic voice while in a regulated nervous system state we now are not only bolstering our own ability to trust ourselves and our decision-making capabilities, but we are also doing it from a place of authenticity and integrity.  

How to do this? It’s a simple process, but one that takes practice and a commitment to being a little uncomfortable, especially when you’re in public. I like to refer to it as - ‘stop on a dime.’ 

1. I need to make a decision, respond to a question, or interact in any way with another

2. STOP ON A DIME

3. Take note of what I’m feeling in my body - am I in a calm state? Is there tension? Buzzing? Heat? Numbness? What am I physically feeling right now? 

4. Breathe - look down at your belly and watch your breath rise and fall until you feel a wave of calm wash over you

5. But I’m not feeling calm! - Great, keep going, no one said this was instant, it may take a while, and if that’s the case you may need to tell the other person you need a minute or need to circle back to the topic at a later time. 

6. Once you’re in a more regulated state take a moment to tune in to the right answer or response for this interaction.

7. Express and communicate as needed

Do you want to live your life with integrity and personal authority? To know yourself on all levels and trust yourself in any situation? That’s great to hear! And I’d love to help you find that spark of inner wisdom and live your authentic life – book a free discovery call today to see how we might work together!