Telling Others of Our Guides: Your Experiences

Gonna bookmark this myself if possible, I've only seriously been at this for about three months and have only told one friend, though I wonder if she doubts me at times.

She's been agnostic as long as I've known her, though she's been coming around to be more spiritual and we do agree on a lot of things in that vein. There's another friend with whom I was very close but lost contact with a while ago that would probably skewer me about it. He was a pretty firm atheist and constantly made fun of his family for believing in ghosts and spirits, despite being very interested in the topic from a fictional standpoint. I'm learning to thicken my skin up, so to speak, and we went head-on on the very few things we disagreed about anyway (he didn't mind when I told him about believing in God/a higher power at least)... If we were still talking it might hve been interesting to make spirituality a kind of on going thing, even if he never budged from his atheism until the day he died. What could have been, but no biggie.

As for my family, I know they believe in watchful deceased relatives and angels the way a lot of Christians in the US seem to, but as far as demons, possession, etc. go, some of them do fall into the belief people brought up earlier: anything but a detached God and a few miracles is probably the Devil's Work. Eh, at least my immediate family has an unspoken belief in something beyond all that and are less concerned with devils in the closet, which is OK with me... though I haven't actively shared anything about guides and what not. We seem to tiptoe around it in vague tones or with accepted phrases and terminology even behind closed doors. It's weird.

I want to be more open about it when I'm older, but I'm a pretty private person to begin with.

[kore_wa_sensou]

I'm with everyone else; I want to see the answers in this thread. I've told my mom about my developing spirituality and the signs and visions that I get and she believes me. She's amazing. <3 However, I told my friend about an experience I had and he was extremely logical about the situation. And sometimes logic isn't the answer to everything. Ever since he told me his "reason" for why I had that experience, my trust in him has wavered. Now I wonder if I can ever tell anyone. Sometimes you want to confide in someone about certain things because you need someone to talk to. The internet is great but sometimes you need a real-world connection with someone. Hopefully I'll find someone who understands what I'm going through soon. =)

I suppose I should share some personal tales myself, eh? A bit of background first. I got into this stuff as a teenager, and at that time I was ignorant of the various occult and metaphysical communities. Therefore, I had no vocabulary to describe any of the things I experienced; I just experienced them raw and came up with my own labels for them. When I developed a couple spirit contacts (or "spirit guides" as many of you like to call them), they became very important parts of my life. They were the best friends that were always there for me when people in this world couldn't be. They were also my most closely kept secret.

I think the first people I told about it were a couple of friends who I suspected would be more accepting of that sort of thing. Not only were they accepting, they became active participants with my contacts. Instant messaging was the next big thing, and we would get online and have conversations. I'd "channel" the response of my contacts and we'd play games with each other; before long my friends in the otherworlds were now also friends with a couple of my physical-world friends. I'm grateful that this "coming out" experience was a positive one. I think it helped that we were young; the minds of my friends weren't yet closed to certain ways of thinking. I haven't really had an experience like that since then. Part of it is lack of desire. I prefer to keep it personal now (or I do it under the context of role-playing), but I'm glad I had that experience.

I try to remember these experiences when other people tell me something that I'm tempted to dismiss as outlandish (I'm not sure I do a good job, mind you!). I remember how good it felt for me when someone would just accept what I told them, even though I knew it probably sounded crazy. That simple acceptance can evoke so much gratitude in us. This is probably true also, I imagine, of anyone else who has something they need to "come out" about, such as being gay or lesbian. As you tell them, your breath is catching in your throat as you fear a retributive backlash or rejection. When the other person says "I understand" you can not only breathe again, but you breathe a sign of relief and a smile perks across your face. You've been accepted. Crazy ideas and all. It's a wonderful feeling.