Angels 101: how to talk to your angels

The most common question I get asked after mentioning my work with angels is: “Do I have guardian angels?” The second question is: “Can I talk to them?”

The answer to both questions is yes. Which is fantastic, because it means we are never alone (yay). It also means we can access wisdom and knowledge to guide us through any challenge.

No matter who you are, what choices you’ve made or what your spiritual beliefs are, you have guardian angels assigned to you. Their job is to give you guidance and help you find peace in your life. BUT they can’t help you unless you ask them to. That’s because we all have free will – in other words, the right to make our own life choices. The angels can’t violate that (unless, of course, your life is in danger, and it’s not your time to pass on), so if you need help with something, you have to actually ask them.

So how do you speak to your angels? 

Some people choose to pray or meditate, but you don’t *have* to communicate in a formal way – you just need to express what is on your mind. You don’t even need to speak out loud – I often chat to my angels in my head.

Sometimes people think they shouldn’t bother their angels with requests that seem trivial. But your angels are there to help you – that’s their job. There’s really nothing too small or too big for them to tackle.

As well as your own guardian angels, there’s also an angel squad waiting in the wings (pun intended) to deal with specific sitches you might be facing. They have the power to help everyone at the same time, so don’t fear that you are taking them away from a more important task. Try talking to:

Archangel Raphael

He’s in charge of healing, so call upon him for physical or emotional health concerns. When you ask for his help, visualise emerald green light (that’s his colour) surrounding the part of your body or the situation that you want healed. BTW if you find the problem isn’t alleviated after calling on Raphael, that could be because it’s the symptom of a deeper emotional problem you need to address – for example, digestion problems are often to do with fears and stress; lower back is about financial stress (not feeling supported). 

Raphael is also associated with travel, so you can ask him to protect and guide your plane and aircrew, for example, when you’re on vacation. Whenever I’m driving long distances, I ask him to help me and the other drivers on the road to make good decisions.

Archangel Gabriel

This is the archangel associated with creativity and motivation. I ask Gabriel for help when I have writers’ block (for example, when I need a brilliant blog post idea!) and when I lack motivation to complete a task. Maybe you need inspiration for your son’s birthday cake. Maybe you’ve got an essay to write. Whatever your project, Gabriel’s your go-to angel.

Parking angels

Yep, there are angels to help you find carparks! You might wonder why angels would be interested in helping you with something so mundane, but remember that the angels’ job is to help you find peace. If someone could reserve a perfect carpark for you when you go out, wouldn’t that make your life more peaceful? Yes, yes it would. A warning: you do need to call upon the parking angels BEFORE you reach your destination (and ideally before you leave home), so they have time to make a space for you.

Archangel Michael

As the patron saint of police officers and emergency-service workers, Michael is associated with protection and security. I call upon him when I’m feeling physically vulnerable, such as if I’m home alone at night and fearing for my physical safety. I also regularly ask him to protect my home and possessions – especially if I’ve got cause for concern (such as when we had people coming through for an open home). He’s also associated with courage and strength, so I ask him to shore up my reserves of those on the reg.

Romance angels

They can help you find love, or enhance your romantic relationship. Call on them to manifest a meeting with your soulmate, help you strengthen your relationship or provide clarity about whether your partnership is serving you.

If you are single, keep in mind that asking the romance angels for help manifesting a new relationship does not mean Ryan Gosling is going to knock on your door tomorrow (soz!). Because relationships are such a fundamental part of the way we learn and grow as humans, there is often work we need to do to prepare ourselves for healthy relationships. In other words: results may not be instant. So if you have been asking the Universe for some time to bring your soulmate into your life and are feeling disappointed, it might be time to switch your strategy from asking for help to one of actively taking charge of the situation. This doesn’t mean you have to get ‘out there’ more, it means you need to look at what might be going on in your subconscious that’s blocking you from what you are trying to attract. If you’re constantly attracting partners who are not respectful or emotionally available, for example, that’s a sign you’ve got some healing to do before you’ll be able to attract the right partner. Read more about that here.

I know I’ve gone off on a tangent here, but I wanted to make it clear that – no matter what some spiritual people say – manifesting healthy relationships isn’t as simple as putting in an order and just remaining positive. If you ask for their help, the romance angels will work with you, but you’ll have to leave the timing up to them – and meet them halfway in terms of making sure you’re really, truly, ready for a healthy partnership. Above all, do not give up hope. There is always hope.

Read more about how we can inadvertently block ourselves from achieving our goals here.

The takeaway message:

Talk to your angels whenever you need help, and trust their answers. They can help you make better decisions and move forward in the direction of your dreams. Connecting with your angels is easy and incredibly reassuring. A good time to start that?  Yesterday. The second-best time? Today. 

And they all lived uncertainly ever after

And they lived happily ever after.

These are the magical words that neatly wrap up a story. As a child, I would hear this sentence at the end of my bedtime story and know immediately that everything would be wonderful. No more disasters. No more deaths. No more ill-fitting shoes or evil stepmothers.

This set me up very poorly for dating in adulthood, I have to say.

If I know a movie has a disappointing ending, I don’t bother watching it. If I suspect the characters in a book are heading for a grim fate, I either skip to the end or just abandon the story completely. Essentially, I don’t want to invest time or energy into something if I don’t know how it will end. 

You can see how this is problematic when it comes to dating, that complicated dance in which the only certainty is uncertainty.

I’ve started seeing someone after many years flying solo. This was not planned. I did not decide that there was something missing in my life (there isn’t). I did not feel there I was failing at life because I was single (I wasn’t). I met someone and felt an instant attraction to him and, yes, it’s fun and exciting... but it’s also forcing me to confront a whole lot of old crap that's been lurking in my subconscious. My fear of rejection. My fear of becoming dependent on someone, at the cost of my independence. My fear that I’m not worthy of love.

None of this ever happened in the fairytales.

The fact that being with someone is triggering so many of my deepest fears is a good thing – it’s giving me the opportunity to clear them so I can move into a space of greater confidence and self-acceptance. As I’ve noted on this blog many times, when it comes to dealing with fear, the only way out is through. Hello, trust issues. Hello, fragility. Hello, guarded heart.

The challenge for me is to see all of these deeply imbedded fears, and to keep showing up and opening up anyway. To take the risk despite there being no guarantee of a good outcome with this guy, or any other guy, for that matter. To do this is to be vulnerable. To do this is to connect with another on a whole new level. To do this is to be the truest me I have ever been.

I’ve asked the angels to tell me whether this is a relationship worth delving into all these dark emotions for, and they won’t tell me. They aren’t saying it will end well, or badly, they will only tell me to keep going. That this is for my greatest good, and I don’t need to know what will happen. (I beg to differ, but experience has shown me that I am no expert in determining what is for my best interests.) I’m really not on board with this whole ‘let’s just see what happens’ sitch. I feel like if I knew how this will play out, I could make some smart life choices here – and, ideally, avoid emotional devastation. But despite having some ability to see the future, I’m not being shown the final page on this one. I can’t learn the lessons I need to learn without experiencing the middle chapters.

It would appear, in conclusion, that the Rolling Stones were right all along – you can’t always get what you want, but sometimes you get what you need. Which is pretty far from a fairytale, but it’s the best I’m going to get.

Maybe that’s the point – less focus on the happy ending, more on the new beginning.

And they all lived uncertainly ever after.

Money, money, money. How faith helps pay the bills (kinda)

Dire Straits got it for nothing, Sam Smith had it on his mind and Destiny’s Child used it to pay their automo’ bills. It’s money, and it – well, lack of it, to be precise – has brought my life to a screeching halt in recent weeks.

In a spiritual sense, money is regarded as an energy, rather than an entity in itself. In other words, it’s a means to an end, not an end point. It flows when we are in flow. So because it’s not flowing for me right now, I’ve had to ask myself how I might be contributing to that.

When you don’t know when you’ll get paid, or when your next job will appear, you are existing in a state of faith. Which is similar to a state of grace, I guess, but far less serene – more sweary, more weepy. You are relying on the Universe to supply you with what you need, when you need it. You are fumbling around in dark rooms, clawing under beds to find the proof that everything will be OK. There is no proof, there is only faith. In the past month, that faith has been tested to the max.

Having been self-employed for six years, I’m used to my income fluctuating, and this is always a slow time of year for work. However circumstances have conspired to put me in a rather precarious situation that’s left me very unstable – particularly since I don’t know how long this rough patch will last.

At the height of this crisis, I had a teary, hiccup-y convo with Archangel Michael, pleading for financial assistance. The message I got back was: “Trust me.” (Which is the case for almost every problem I present to the angels, actually.) On the way to the gym the next morning, I found a $2 coin on the pavement. This is not a great deal of money, obviously, but its discovery was symbolic rather than practical. It was a sign that I was going to be taken care of. I felt a weight lift off my shoulders, and gave the coin to a homeless man outside the train station as I knew I did not need it.

A few days later I went to the Rozelle Markets and did a market stall, something in which I typically make a loss, but which is valuable to me as a means of introducing people in the community to my services. The market management runs a lucky draw where stallholders can win back the cost of their stall. I got a very clear message from the angels that I would win. I am not, historically, very lucky at such things so I was sceptical. Well, I won. And abundance has continued to flow my way ever since, with more work opportunities opening up to me. Which is largely to do with me being able to hold onto faith (in a very ungraceful manner).

When we ask for money, we need to be open to how it will appear. We tend to think of financial support only in terms of our salary, but the Universe regards ‘abundance’ in a larger sense. You might win a free holiday. You might receive a tax refund you didn’t expect. You might be given a petrol card by your boss. Our requests for more money will always be answered, but the answer might not turn up the way we expect.

The best thing we can do in these situations is to keep focusing on the knowledge that the Universe will always provide for us, rather than focusing on what we are lacking – that’s what creates an energetic block that makes it harder for us to receive what we need. This is a bit shit, if you think about it – basically, when we’re on our knees, completely deplete of faith, we need it more than ever before. We are asked to have the belief that what’s in front of us right now will not be our future.

Still, when you think about it, faith is all we have. Learning to hold onto that is one of the best tools we have for navigating adversity. As they say, you can’t change the direction of the wind but you can adjust your sails.

Maybe I should offer my landlord faith in lieu of rent money. I’ll let you know how that works out for me.  

Goodbye holidays, hello real life

“I can’t say hello to you and risk another goodbye.”

Taylor Swift wrote that. I wish I had.

I flew back to Sydney last weekend after 2.5 weeks in New Zealand. It was a holiday full of connection, closure and rejuvenation. There were moments of peace that lifted me and moments of conflict that challenged me. Inevitably, it was a holiday full of goodbyes. Every time I return the farewells are harder. There’s more lost ground to cover and I feel the distance acutely. But I also feel closer to being me – the me that I was supposed to be all along. These things are not mutually exclusive, of course. It’s when I align my feet with old footprints that I can see how much distance I’ve covered. This has nothing to do with geography.

We’re not very good at goodbyes, as a species. 

We fear there might not be another hello. We don’t like to let go of what we have, even if it’s shit, because we’re attuned to the familiar. We recoil from new hellos because we suspect they will not be as good as the good we thought we had. We are scared of the spaces in between.

Saying goodbye creates space for new hellos. This is an act of faith, trusting that the Universe will deliver us something better. We think we know what better looks like. Nearly always, we are wrong. The Universe has a better imagination than any of us. We are slow to trust.

When I was a teenager there was a TV ad for a travel agency with a tagline that went something like this: “Holidays restore what everyday life steals from you.” Instead of feeling inspired, this ad made me feel vaguely depressed. Who on earth hates their life that much, I wondered, that the only good they can imagine is escaping it? If you think your job is taking from you more than what you’re getting (in terms of reward, satisfaction and challenge), you’re probably in the wrong job. Or perhaps you need a project to bring meaning to your evenings and weekends. If the goodbye you said to your summer self when you trudged into the office on the first working day of 2016 made you feel a sharp sense of loss, maybe you need to strive for a better hello. What would *that* look like? Your imagination might not be as good as the Universe’s, but you have magic in your fingertips and a wistful heart. You CAN conjure up something, anything, that doesn’t equate to a life that you 92 per cent hate.

Perhaps some people believe that their happiness only happens for four weeks of the year – i.e. during their annual leave – and that the remaining 92 per cent (excluding long weekends) are a murky wasteland of monotony and futility. Sure, I’d rather be doing crosswords in the hammock right now, as I was last week, a G&T within reach, than I would hunched in front of a computer with printer deadlines looming and only a mildly bitter green tea on hand, as I am right now. But our holiday selves are the evening gowns we borrow, not the pyjamas we settle in. We don’t grow and expand when our lives are on pause – the good stuff, the gritty and the pretty, happens when we hit play. Holidays are still very important, however.

If your everyday is not all you hoped it would be, what could you do to change that? And if you are not able to change it, are you willing to change the way you think about it? Letting go of what is no longer serving you is a brave and important goodbye.

The more we let go, the more room we have to grow and gain. Get ready to say hello from the other side. 

Believing in the happy ending when you're halfway through the scary book

When you Google the word ‘trust’, the fourth thing that comes up (behind ‘trust deeds’, ‘trust definition’and ‘trust tax return’) is ‘trust issues’. Oh Google, you know me so well. 

I’m one of those people who flips to the last page of a book when the drama gets intense, and Googles the plot summary of a movie if it gets too nail-bitey. You’d think that would reassure me. But, no. Even when I know the story’s going to end brilliantly, I still skim-read/skip through the uncomfortable parts. It’s as if I can’t quite believe that everything really is going to work out.

Despite years of reading metaphysical texts, communicating with angels and now working with energy, trusting the Universe to sort out my problems remains a major stumbling block for me. On the surface, this makes no sense – I’ve already seen proof that the Universe has my back, again and again and again. But even though I believe a perfect outcome is possible, there’s a part of me that doesn’t believe that it’s probable. 

Whenever I find myself on my knees in particularly difficult periods, the message I get from the angels, again and again and again, is along these lines: ‘Trust us. Let go. It’s going to be fine.’ I believe them, but I’m also doubtful. Which is normal. It’s not possible, I don’t think, to have a learning experience or challenge that isn’t accompanied by at least a small degree of fear. The trick is learning to let go of the fear so it doesn’t hold you back from living a big life. All I have to do is have faith and relinquish control over the outcome… if only it were that easy!

Here’s the problem – when I worry, fret and despair, I’m getting in my own way. My negative energy increases, blocking solutions and contributing to an adverse result.

There’s a quote that gets bashed about on social media all the time and it goes like this: ‘Everything will be OK in the end. If it’s not OK, it’s not the end.’ This is posted endlessly because it’s true – even though things may not work out exactly how you had imagined, they’ve worked out the way they were supposed to. And often that’s better than you had imagined, or there’s something better coming up. In either outcome, you will be OK. You are always OK. (I’m saying this to you guys, but I’m sure you realise I’m really saying it to myself.)

I dealt out the ‘trust’ card in an angel card reading the other day and I was told that that message was for me as well as the person I was reading for. That message was: trust it is all going to be OK.

And it will. I’ve already been told my business is going to thrive. I’ve already been told I’m going to meet the perfect man for me. Therefore, there’s nothing to worry about, right? Right? RIGHT?!

Everything is under control. Not my control, but that’s probably for the best. (It’s fair to say the Universe does a better job of running my life than I do.)

And then they all lived happily ever after.