A tool I use with a lot of my clients when where doing therapeutic coaching, is having them go and meet a Wise Guide in their mind. It’s a practice I facilitate but the client fills in all the blanks themselves - the intuition, insights and advice they receive don’t actually come from a separate ‘wise guide’ - they come deep within.
It’s a beautiful practice that I’ve lent on over the years myself. My own wise guide looks like a South American shaman I once received a postcard of 15 years ago after a friend of mine died. Another friend sent me this postcard saying “This is what Callum would’ve looked like at 80 years old” and I agreed. The man on the postcard had grey linen trousers on with no top, long grey hair down to his waist, a beard with beads down to his slim belly, kind eyes, calm energy radiating from him and ceremonial paint on his face. I didn’t choose this wise guide exactly. No one really does choose their wise guide in a certain sense - they appear to us in our minds eye just as a thought does, rather involuntarily or autonimously.
Some of my clients wise guide is a public figure they know of like Michelle Obama. Gandalf and Dumbledore show up for others (often for people who don’t consider themselves fantasy story fans). For another client it was wise old woman with all the helpful collective wisdom that comes with our ancestors, for others it might be combination of faces merging together of the people the love and respect the most. My husband’s wise guide is not even a person, it’s a swirling galaxy-like presence of energy. One time someone had a golden retriever they grew up with appear to them.
I walk my client through this process while they sit with their eyes closed and follow a breathwork process I’ve taught them. The specifications I give them for finding their wise guide are:
Your wise guide is far wiser than you or I could ever imagine
They understand all of human history and have the perspective of time (they understand that humans are here for a short blip on the radar of time ultimately)
They have cosmic perspective and understand the rules of the universe that we could never dream of wrapping our heads around
They have had a sense of your existing ever since you were created, they feel deeply compassionate towards you and they see your deepest values upon meeting you
They are a presence you deeply respect and feel reverence for
It’s quite incredible to watch how people go through this process, calming themselves down with the breath to start, then before long they are communing with something wise that lives deep within them. From here we start to explore what the Wise Guide has come to share. They often have a message they want us to hear, something they think we need to know or a beneficial message of some sort for us in that exact moment of our life.
As they sit there in front of me, usually on my screen but sometimes in person if they’re doing the premium programme with me, I watch them with their eyes closed and they suddenly become congruent. They seem more in touch with themselves and less rattled by the stimulus they’re receiving from the world. It’s a privilege for me to watch this process unfold, as they begin to find what Carl Jung and more recently Internal Family Systems both refer to as “Self” with a capital S. It’s not ego, it’s not some fleeting state of being that rides on the emotion or mind stories of the moment. It’s something that is still and accessible always below all of the noise. What an incredible gift it is that we all have this compassionate observer on standby, waiting to be called on. This is a process that I love to take people through using a few beautiful body work practices that make this experience more easily accessible, and I’m not even afraid to say that it works every time - because I’ve worked with some extremely cynical people, and every time this practice is somehow intuitive for them - for all of us.
So who is your Wise Guide? And what is the message they bring for you?