Times of great challenge are also times of great reclaiming:

Reclaiming our feelings of resilience, personal power, faith, magic, and healing wisdom.
Reclaiming old ways while adopting new.
Reclaiming our sense of purpose, and conviction in what truly matters.

It is often in times of challenge or recovery that we turn more deeply to Spirit - for guidance, understanding, support.

One could argue that it’s a sign of spiritual evolution when one turns more deeply to Spirit in times of ease, thriving, without need for overcoming great challenge.

One could also argue that we are always facing some great challenge, in one form or another, as we turn each bend in the labyrinth of our lives.

To me, Spirit encompasses many things: God/dess, the consciousness of the stones, ethereal spirits, nature spirits, spirit guides, spirits of the departed, our own spirits or souls.

It’s through being able to deeply listen to my own spirit, my own voice + truth, and that of my Guidance that has gently yet powerfully steered me through some of the hardest challenges in my life.

But I know from my own experience, and that which I witness in others, that being able to truly listen to + follow our own voice and Spirit can be a challenge in and of itself.

How do you listen deeply? How do you hear Spirit? How do you trust what you’re hearing enough to follow?

My friends: I know it takes an enormous amount of courage to surrender and follow Spirit, to say yes to the truth of your soul.

Many of us are neither conditioned nor encouraged to listen to anything other than outside authority.

But when we do take the time to listen to ourselves, to follow the guidance of Spirit, we tend to be richly rewarded.

How To Listen More Deeply

The word spirit come from the latin spiritus, meaning breath. In meditation work we are often first guided to listen to our breath, to become aware of our breathing. This helps drop us down into a place of centeredness, quiet, calm. An inner place where we can hear our own true spirit.

They say that God/dess or Great Spirit speaks to us in silence, and that everything else is just noise. Many people avoid silence through a myriad form of distractions. They’re afraid of the silence, afraid of what they might hear or feel. I have seen how this opens floodgates of trapped emotion or truth when they’re willing to drop down and be in the silence, anyway.

This is how you first begin to listen - not by trying to hear anything, but by embracing and being enveloped by inner silence.

It’s from this place that we hear Spirit, hear the whisperings of the stones or trees or winds, and those of our heart and soul.

If you find this challenging, here are a few crystal that can help support you in this working:

Amazonite helps connect us to our true feelings and honour them.

Blue kyanite acts like a filter to help us listen with greater clarity.

Nuummite is a stone of inner/outer mastery that brings us into our true soul essence.

Lapis helps us become more aware and aligned with our spirit.

Rose quartz helps us to honour our true selves and listen to our hearts.

Hold in meditation or wear over your heart whichever one(s) call to your attention.

How To Hear Spirit

Spirit speaks to us in many ways: it could be through sound, or vision, words that come to mind or are “randomly” spoken by another. Maybe it’s just a feeling, or a cool breeze that sparks a “Yes!” in your heart.

It’s not always literal, and messages can be interpreted by different people in different ways.

That may seem at first confusing - but when you’re in your silence, your soul always knows, and the messages will be made clear to you.

Where some people mess up in listening to Spirit is when they reject or block the messages they’re receiving because it’s not what they wanted to hear, or wasn’t what they expected to hear.

The mind loves to edit and censor, and this can be misleading.

Listening to Spirit requires an openness and a level of humility or surrender. Not surrendering your sovereignty or power, mind, but surrendering your expectation or desire for control. If you want to control the narrative, sit down and write a book. To hear Spirit you have to give it the freedom to speak.

Begin from your place of inner silence and inner trust. Speak or silently intend your question or purpose with feeling. Then quietly + compassionately stay open to the response.

It may happen in a matter of moments or minutes, it may take a few days. Keep a space open in your heart as you go about your day and the messages will come through.

Crystals that can support you in this working:

Congo citrine (aka. kundalini quartz) raises your frequency and helps you to connect with your light body, enabling all forms of clear Spirit communication.

Amethyst helps us to powerfully tune in to our intuition and the voice of our soul.

Lemurian seed crystal helps us to open to channel and receive messages from the Divine heart and Spirit.

Cathedral quartz powerfully connects us to the stone consciousness, the divine intelligence of Nature, and the Universal source of all creation and wisdom.

Cavansite helps us to hear Spirit and energy from a place of wisdom and clarity.

Hold in meditation or wear over your heart whichever one(s) call to your attention.

How To Trust And Follow Your Guidance

This is where the conversation gets trickier: How do you trust and follow Spirit?

First - trust should not be lightly given. Our 3D physical reality is really only one realm, and the Universe of Spirit is full of infinite realms (consistently multiplying). Just as there are predators and not-so-nice people in our realm, so too will you find predators and not-so-nice spirits in the ethers.

Some can even masquerade as light beings, or your late uncle Fred, or voices of wisdom.

But remember: in your silence, your soul always knows. Anything dark typically feels off, sounds negative, is guiding you to do something that sets off alarm bells inside.

There’s fear that holds you back, but there’s also fear that keeps you safe.

My general rule of thumb: If in doubt, do without.

You are never, ever under any obligation to follow guidance that doesn’t feel right to you, and no light being will ever ask you to submit to their will or power because all light beings honour the Law of Free Will. If you encounter anything that you suspect might be dark, pull back into your inner silence, say no thank you, and let it go.

If you receive guidance or messages that sink your spirit, feed your fear/hate/greed, or leave you feeling diminished instead of centered, joyful, certain, or grounded, then it’s likely dark.

Messages from Spirit that resonate as truth to your heart and soul (remember, your soul always knows) will feel right and feel like truth - yes even if it’s not what you wanted to hear. Loving guidance sometimes says no to what we really, really want to say yes to, because it knows we’re lined up for something better.

In this case, you can choose to trust.

What stops us most in listening to and following guidance is the voice of doubt in our minds. It always thinks it knows better, and will lead you to question yourself and turn away from your guidance over and over again. Start to pay attention to this, challenge it, cultivate a healthy distrust of the doubt-monger in your mind. This is part of the conditioning that leads you astray.

Practice saying yes to your intuition, or to a message or sign that feels right and hopeful, and risk seeing what happens.

I always tell my crystal healing + reading students: “Risk being wrong - this is the only way to find out if you’re right.”

Sometimes I can be feeling so lost, or upset, or fearful that it’s hard for me to quiet, centre, and listen. So I go through the steps as listed earlier in this article to help me drop into my place of centre and silence, and open to Spirit.

If you feel like you need help amplifying the open channel, clarifying what the messages you’re receiving (or even what you should ask), or if you need support in following your guidance, these crystals can help you: