Hi Rii. Hope you have had some luck contacting your spirit guides using some of these good suggestions above, or through other means you've discovered. And I hope you got a chance to read my post about
Connecting with My Spirit Guide in this forum. While doing a specific meditation or ritual is great, keep in mind that these spirits are always around you. It requires rituals to get in touch with them about as much as it requires rituals to talk to your good friends, which is my 'roundabout way of saying rituals are, in the end, unnecessary for this purpose.
They are really just for
our benefit, a way of helping us get
one-pointed, meaning "focused." (here's an article in my blog about different states of mind, including "one-pointedness":
States of Mind). Doesn't it irritate you when you're trying to talk to someone, and they keep staring at their computer screen, or off into the distance somewhere, or otherwise not focused on you? That's the normal state of our attention span on a normal day, scattered thoughts floppin' all over the place. So rituals, guided meditations, etc., are for
us to get us out of that distracted mode. They are not necessary to contact spirit guides. I know in the "Connecting...Spirit Guides" post above I mention a lot of ways to meditate. But again, it's not the act of meditating that's necessary to contact spirit beings. The meditation is for
us to train our minds to cease from basking in mental "monkey chatter," and instead be still and quiet so that we could actually "hear."
Meditation is a tool, not a necessity, for contacting our spirit guides.
Meditation is like a bra
...for your brain! When I feel
my thoughts are scattered,
unrestrained, hittin' me in
the face, just a-floppin'
around all over the place,
I know it's time for me to
put on a "brain bra."
Also in that post, I mentioned remaining in a state of
mindfulness, stressing that one should
pay attention to "the little things." These may be,for example, words you hear or read that trigger you to do something, something you see on a billboard, something you hear someone say, a thing you hear or see 20 times in one week and you intuitively just know that you should investigate it further, etc. To me, these are the number one ways that spirit guides speak to us. The problem with relying on rituals is it's so formal, like one is waiting for this booming, echoing voice to say, "I Am Your Spirit Guide, And Thus Saith Me...Well, Grab a Pen and Paper And Take Notes, Mortal, I'm About To Say Something...!"
If you rely on such formal means to connect with spirit beings, then ultimately, you set yourself up for a letdown. You might end up thinking, "Well, I didn't have time this week for my 'ritual,' so I guess my spirit guides will not be talking to me at all."
Like I said, communicating with spirit beings is as simple and natural as talking to your (incarnated) friends. It shouldn't be more difficult than that, unless we make it so. I'm inclined to agree with black dove's comment above. You don't need to call on friends who are
already right there in front of you, waiting for you to stop being so distracted and start paying attention to them.
Just talk to them, and pay attention when they talk back to you.
Special occasions like
Samhain,
Obon and
Dia de Los Muertos are times when departed spirits are "encouraged" to visit us. This is all very nice, but the reality is --and all you
mediumsreading this right now
know what I'm sayin'--
spirits of dead humans are around us 365 days a year, 24/7. This environment, this plane, is as much theirs as it is ours. They don't need our holidays to "visit" us, they usually don't wait for permission. Again, these holidays are really for
us, to, in my opinion, face and accept the fact that we're all just gonna' die one day. Death and taxes --can't avoid 'em. So if we make death this big party, and dress the dead up as our little party guests, then the hard, cold truth becomes much easier to accept psychologically. We're like little kids; when something's scary, we need mental "candy" to comfort us. We should all wear brain bras!
But hey, here's to holidays! They're a great excuse to eat, drink and be merry! In fact, I am in the process of making my own
yukata (summer kimono) for the upcoming Obon festival here in Sacramento (Japanese version of Halloween, I guess you could say). Every year I
say I'm going to make one, and now finally I am. In fact, I've been feeling
quite crafty lately. I posted pics of a recent project I worked on:
Making Meditation Cushions.
Try making some meditation cushions yourself, if you feel so inclined, and post pictures of the results in
the crafty forum here on Everything Under the Moon! Then meditate. Invite your dead loved ones to come hang out with you for a while, anytime.
Peace.
.