Who exactly guides us when we need help?
Some surprising answers — which we’ve known all along
I recently had an interesting experience while meditating. A friend had set up an art project for local children. The goal was to have school kids aged 9 to 11 work together to paint flower designs on a fence.
My friend had organised for local businesses to provide free paint, brushes and clean up materials. She also brought in an art teacher to teach the children to identify different types of flowers, how to create designs and, importantly, how to work together, because each student was assigned two vertical panels to paint and needed to work with those on either side to ensure their work blended.
The night before the project began we did a meditation to clear the fence of any negative vibrations, so the kids would be working with a clean slate, energetically speaking.
As my contribution, I sent out a request for a being to come and clear the fence’s energy. In my mind, I perceived an energy being who made spiral gestures to clean the length of the fence and the work area inside it.
The being didn’t have a human form. I am conscious of how much we anthropomorphise the world around us — i.e. seeing faces in clouds, producing nature documentaries that view wild animals in human terms — so tried not to project my assumptions onto the being. What I perceived was simply a spherical presence that glowed with energy.
I had never before experienced a being answering my call so directly, or so quickly. It got me thinking about how much we ask for help from the spiritual world, then wondering who answers and what they are.
I then remembered a piece of channelling that a friend and colleague, Peter Calvert, did several years ago that at least partially answers this question. Peter’s guides introduced him to a multi-plexed being they called the Elder Cluster. The following is the channelled material that came through to Peter.
The Elder Cluster
We are waiting for a particular conglomerate to arrive. The conglomerate wishes that its existence be affirmed and that it be acknowledged as a multiple identity. Its presence can now be felt. [Peter’s comment: I felt pressure on the aura from in front of me.]
This conglomerate is comprised of multiple human identities banded together, as it were, for the purpose of assisting those who seek help. Thus it wishes to be portrayed as a friendly negotiator who can also assume the role of wrathful elder.
The mythologies of many cultures recognise particular spiritual identities who can be called on in times of crisis. Although seldom accurately identified, and usually labelled within the context of the belief system practised by the individual in need, the myth has the useful purpose of stimulating awareness that in the midst of human conflict certain principles apply, such as when help is asked for it will be given.
Known by many names, but needing none, this cluster identity remains on call. Responding to individuals who are sufficiently open, it can be the catalyst for flashes of awareness that, if recognised, bring about a better result and help resolve the dramas of existence.
This is the sense in which this conglomerate has been fashioned for the specific and invariably positive task of intervening in individuals’ lives.
From this I draw the conclusion that the many stories we tell about gods, angels, deceased sages, saints, grandparent-like people, animals, even lights, who come to the aid of distressed people, are actually manifestations of the elder cluster. Or some of them are, at least.
They may physically lead us to safety when they are in danger of dying. Or they inspire us not to give up, or to try a new direction. We may see them before us, sense their presence when praying or meditating, or they may appear to us in dreams.
What the guides are suggesting is that in whatever form we perceive them, the multiple identities that constitute the elder cluster respond to cries for help and offer support in many different ways.
One way is communicating with us is as the voice of conscience.
Conscience as guidance
In a spiritually inexperienced person the voice of conscience is undeveloped. This cluster identity serves the purpose of interrogator, confronting, adjudicating, and even coercing when that is possible.
The cluster responds to inexperienced individuals who require an authoritative interiorised role model, whether as a model or elder, to indicate how to achieve better outcomes.
In performing this function, the cluster brings wisdom to the dilemmas created by embodiment before the individual has personally acquired wisdom themselves.
With some individuals, in certain situations, this sensed presence can be the difference between surviving and dying. Influencing an individual who survives to reflect on a just-avoided potentially fatal hazard, the cluster stimulates recognition in the survivor that a realm of spirit exists, and that those in the spiritual domain supportively act in the individual’s best interests.
Accordingly, this class of cluster identity fulfils the role of educator and guide. Responding to requests, its task is to act as a free-ranging consultant and adjudicator.
By using inner prods, which we interpret as the voice of our conscience, those in the elder cluster offer us guidance within a widely accepted, non-controversial context.
This is an especially useful form of communication for those who haven’t yet developed the skill of consciously communicating with non-embodied identities, or who have been taught that spiritual entities are from the devil, or mere woo-woo fakery.
Presenting guidance as the proddings of conscience also enables those in the elder cluster to be helpful without scaring the recipient or distracting them from the message. After all, directly perceiving a spiritual being often evokes fear in the perceiver. Alternatively, if the cluster sends a message via a positively perceived identity, such as an angel, perceivers will likely be so overwhelmed at having seen an angel that they ignore the message the angel is there to convey.
The guides go on to comment on one other form of guidance: the guidance that comes to us from our own spiritual self. It is this self — which we could call our higher self, with its higher mind — that sends out part of itself to enter a foetus and be born as a unique human being —that being our current lower self, with its lower mind.
Guidance from our higher self
Any individual, whatever their level of experience, may be constructively influenced through the rounds of their lives via a combination of other factors. These include the influence of other identities who have been directed at the spiritual level to help. Particularly significant is the direct influence of your own higher self, awareness of which eventually involves remembering your own personal spiritual history.
This makes attending to your higher self level of general benefit. Doing so leads to the accrual of self-knowledge.
Breadth of knowledge is achieved when you possess self-knowledge at the level of your ordinary mind. This includes awareness of what Carl Jung has usefully called the shadow self.
Self-knowledge also requires distinguishing between the conscious and sub-conscious levels of the mind, including identifying what Jung has again usefully termed the collective unconscious.
Finally, self-knowledge depends on the degree to which the higher self has been acknowledged at the ordinary lower mind level, and the extent to which the lower mind has connected with the higher self. In this way the lower mind acquires a straightforward legitimisation of prior personal history.
That history, which is enriched progressively, life by life, gives the individual the ability to implement the wisdom accumulated by the higher self, which it uses to guide the current embodied self, whatever its current life circumstances.
Accordingly, any discussion of guides involves acknowledging the variety of guides, and identifying particular developed personalities contained within one’s own higher self.
Responses to requests made by the lower mind are normally focussed through a particular developed personality within the higher self. That personality’s different culture, voice, gender qualities and characteristics can give the impression that it is part of a cluster of spiritual identities, focussing their beneficial intent towards the embodied personality.
What is popularly misunderstood is that these are actually components of the individual’s own higher self.
Using this framework of thinking, we offer a simplified, demythologised and demystified understanding, appropriate to this century, of matters that are otherwise described and defined culturally and historically.
Not that it is wrong to adopt labels conceived within other cultures. In fact, all labels are useful, given they result from adapting ancient insights to contemporary conditions. It is only due to mismatches between labels used across various cultures that confusion rather than clarity occurs.
The material posted here has not previously been published. But other related material, channelled by Peter Calvert and Keith Hill, is contained in these books, which are available in all online stores:
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