Questions to Ask Your Spirit Guides
Twenty questions for sitting with your guides: a daily check-in, questions about who they are and how they signal, and harder ones about what you are avoiding. Includes notes on telling an impression apart from your own commentary, and when to set the practice down.
The questions
Open any question for the note
What do I most need to know today?
Why ask it
The standard daily opener, and the narrow window is what makes it work. Asking about today keeps the answer small enough to act on, while asking about your whole life tends to return something you have already read somewhere.
What should I be paying attention to this week?
Why ask it
A week is short enough to check. Write the answer down and look at it on Sunday, because comparing what came to what happened is how you learn to tell an impression from wishful thinking.
What name would you like me to use for you?
Why ask it
The answer may be a name, an image, or simply a quality rather than a word. Whatever arrives, using it consistently makes the practice feel less like talking into an empty room.
How long have you been with me?
Why ask it
Expect something tied to an age or an event rather than a date. If nothing comes, leave it and ask again another day instead of filling the gap in yourself.
What was happening in my life when you first came to me?
Why ask it
This usually points to a difficult stretch, which is worth sitting with. The useful part is noticing which era you were sent back to, whatever you make of the answer.
What sign will you give me so I know it's you?
Why ask it
Ask for something specific and slightly unusual, and settle it in advance. A common bird or a repeated number proves nothing, because you will start finding it whether or not you were looking.
What have you been showing me that I keep missing?
Why ask it
Assumes you have been ignoring something, which is usually true. The answer tends to be mundane and slightly irritating: a symptom, an unanswered message, someone you keep cancelling on.
What was last night's dream about?
Why ask it
Ask before you look up any symbols. Your first association is more useful than a dictionary meaning, and it ties the dream to whatever you were actually dealing with that week.
What am I ready to let go of?
Why ask it
Broad enough to answer and narrow enough to act on, which is more than can be said for asking what is blocking you. If a person's name comes up, the instruction is usually about a habit rather than the person.
Where am I giving my energy away?
Why ask it
Tends to produce a list rather than one answer: an obligation, an unpaid job, a friendship that only runs one direction. Notice which item makes you flinch, because that is the one you already knew.
What am I carrying that isn't mine?
Why ask it
A question about inherited weight: a parent's anxiety, a family's expectations, somebody else's shame. The answer often arrives as a scene from childhood rather than as a sentence.
What am I pretending not to know about the decision I'm avoiding?
Why ask it
The one question here that most reliably produces something uncomfortable, because you already hold the answer. Phrasing it this way removes the option of pretending otherwise.
What am I afraid of that I haven't admitted to myself?
Why ask it
The fear under a decision is usually more specific than the decision: being visible, being poor, being left, being ordinary. A general answer means you stopped one step short.
Which relationship needs my attention right now?
Why ask it
Expect a name you were not thinking about. It is often an easy relationship rather than a difficult one, which is the point, since the neglected ones are usually the low-maintenance ones.
What do I need to forgive, in myself or in someone else?
Why ask it
Take the first half first. An answer that goes straight to somebody else's behavior is usually a way around your own part, and the sitting loses its use at that point.
What gift of mine am I wasting?
Why ask it
Sharper than asking what your gifts are, because it presumes an answer you will not enjoy. What surfaces is normally something you are good at and have written off as impractical.
What does my work in this life look like from where you stand?
Why ask it
A calmer version of asking about your purpose, and it returns something smaller and more usable. Grand answers about saving the world are usually your own ambition talking back to you.
What would you have me do differently tomorrow morning?
Why ask it
Ends the sitting with an instruction rather than a theme. If what comes cannot be done before lunch, ask again for something you can actually carry out.
What should I stop asking you for?
Why ask it
Turns the practice back on itself. The honest answer is often certainty, permission, or a guarantee about an outcome, and no practice supplies any of the three.
What can I do for someone else this week?
Why ask it
Closes by pointing outward after a long stretch of looking inward. Keep the answer to one act you can finish this week, or it becomes another intention you never carried out.
Sitting with these questions
Practical guidance for the conversation itself
Setting up a sitting
- Same time, same place, ten minutes. Consistency does more for this practice than candles, crystals or any particular setting.
- Keep a pen and paper rather than a phone. Writing by hand slows you down enough to notice what arrives before you start editing it.
- Ask out loud if you are alone. Speaking a question commits you to its exact wording, which is harder to do silently.
- One question per sitting. Stacking four means the first answer colors the rest.
Asking so you get something usable
- Open questions only. Yes-or-no questions return whatever you were already leaning toward.
- Ask about now rather than later. Requests for predictions produce vague material that cannot be checked and cannot be acted on.
- If an answer is abstract, ask once more for the next concrete step. Themes are easy to receive and easy to ignore.
- Do not ask the same question repeatedly in one week. Repetition after a clear answer is bargaining rather than listening.
Telling an impression from your own commentary
- Date every question and answer, and read them back a month later. The ones that were right about something you did not yet know are the ones worth weight.
- Watch the tone. Anything contemptuous, or anything that keeps telling you that you are chosen, is usually your own voice on a bad day or a vain one.
- Be suspicious of answers that arrive in the exact vocabulary of whatever you read last night.
- Ambiguity that later resolves into what you wanted is not confirmation. Write the prediction down before you go looking for the sign.
When to set the practice down
- Any guidance telling you to hand over money, cut off your family, leave a job overnight or stop a prescribed treatment. Take it to a person you trust before you act.
- If the guidance has become commanding rather than suggesting, or you cannot stop the contact when you want to, that is worth raising with a doctor. It is a plain conversation to have and it commits you to nothing.
- If sittings leave you frightened or unable to sleep, stop for a few weeks. A practice that is doing you good does not cost you rest.
- Grief makes this practice more intense and more persuasive. If you have been recently bereaved, keep the sittings short and keep other people close.