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The Inner Guide Meditation: A Spiritual Technology for the 21st Century

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Anyone who is practicing meditation,yoga,magick or any other spiritual discipline should read this book. Occult texts are full of warnings of what could happen with unguided practices. Usually, one had to seek a teacher who could guide one through the dangers of occult excercises. However, according to the author, our best teachers are our own inner guides. He shows how to contact ones inner guide through visualization and gives advice on all aspects of working with inner guides. This book is not about channeling, but the only book I ever found on hermetism. Hermetism is the practice of magick using imagination alone without the need of drawing circles on the ground to control spiritual forces that are summoned forth. The author provides an invaluable service to all students of spirituality by writing this book. He proves that students here in the west, have a rich tradition they can use without having to travel to the east in search of a guru. You can be your own teacher and this book shows how to do it.

This book provides a journey into the self that can truly provide the kind of self knowledge that can set you free. The author is an astrologer. I have had my chart done many times and I always came away depressed about aspects in my chart that seemed to doom my life to struggles that I could not win. The author has worked out ways to deal effectively with the things that are a challenge to the individual. I had a marvelous experience with one of the meditation exercises when only a few pages into the book. This solved a health problem that I had for some time. This book has techniques that work for a person such as myself who have been into metaphysics for years and years, or people that are relatively new to meditation. The people I gave the book to said that it was the first book that worked for them right away. This is not a book just to read, it has techniques than, when practiced, are life changing.

I would recommend this book to all who are not in a position to interact directly with meditating groups and teachers. Especially the first section of the book is loaded with many important technical details on how to meditate, which usually are available only by interactions with live teachers (as opposed to purely book knowledge). The only weakness of the text is that the second part of it (questions and answers) strives at addressing too many different topics at the cost of loosing the instructive qualities of the first part.

I was first introduced to this book back in 1992. It changed my life. Having been raised Catholic, but being fortunate enough to have had exposure to the tenants of Buddhism, I was no stranger to the basic principles of prayer and meditation. The question was always what to do with this 'time alone with one self'. The Inner Guide Meditation was the answer I was looking for. It's a very powerful tool that, regardless of what your religious beliefs are, gives you access to the energies that make us who we are. If you read and follow the guidelines within, you will be able to ask questions of, and get answers from, the energies that drive our behavior, and you can resolve the tensions that naturally reside within all of us. It's a simple practice that once you get the hang of it will serve you very well.

The author is, sadly, now deceased, and the center he founded no longer exist. The recommendation of having a chart done to help you identify your trouble spots is not essential to successful meditation. Once you begin your practice, simply meet each of the energies and take notes on what positive thing they need from you in your everyday life. Check back regularly with them and your Guide and make adjustments as necessary until a harmony is developed between you and that energy. It's a lot of fun, although difficult at times, but very rewarding. The positive changes in your life will astound you.

If you approach this method with an open mind, and take the time to read the 1st 50 pages about 2 or three times, and actually try it, you will be pleasantly suprised at how much spiritual homework you'll be able to complete, and at the positive changes in your life. Please note that once you get into this, there will be times when it gets VERY difficult to get through a particular issue. It's as if you've been climbing a flight of stairs and with every step towards the next plateau, a 10 pound weight is added to your shoulders. Those last few steps can seem impossible to make. That weight is the resistance your ego presents to the challenge of change. Just stick to it. You will make it to that next plateau.

There really is nothing else out there like it (although someone recently wrote a VERY similar book but calls it something else and makes no reference to this piece of work). The beauty of this method is that it really transcends religion and, regardless of whether or not you can relate to the imagery or spiritual references, is a great tool for inner work.

Enjoy the book and good luck with your spritual growth.

OK - I'll admit it - even though I wouldn't use everything from this book verbatim and for my own personal use and in my hypnotherapy practice I have adapted some of the techniques from this book - I still find the book a worthwhile reading.

The following exerpt may give you an idea - a gist of this book:

"The following is a lovely example of transforming outer experiences by working with inner archetypes. The process engages "active imagination" and its purpose is to transform one's negative unconscious projections.

The example involves the assistance of an Inner Guide (you may as well just ask the unconscious/superconscious to bring up the appropriate image or just let it surface into your awareness).

Say, for instance, that your neighbor is trying to poison your dog. Ask your Guide to take you to or bring you the image of that neighbor as you know him to be in the outer world. Then give that image permission to take its true form as it lives in you. Say that it turns into Dracula. The Dracula image is a picture of the energy in your that projects out from you onto your neighbor and gets him to try to poison your dog.

Call on the Transformational Energies (these may be energies represented just as Light and Love, or angels, planetary forces, Tarot cards, etc.). If you are familiar with the Tarot cards, you can pick the images/energies of Sun, Fool and High Priestess.

Ask them to send their love into the figure (Dracula) to heal and transform it so that it reaches its highest possible form in you at this time. After they do this, say that the Dracula figure has turned into a King. Dracula and the King are the same energy, the King being its higher, more conscious form.

Ask the King what you have to do new in thought, action or behavior (having nothing to do with your neighbor), so that the energy the King represents in you will remain constant and not sink back into unconsciousness and its Dracula form.

When you have received this information, give the King energy form permission to enter your body. Feel what part of your body this energy lives in and where it radiates from. If the transformation is successful and you have really changed this part of yourself, the neighbor will either change dramatically or go out of your life immediately. Because you have changed your role needs and no longer need a dog poisoner in your reality, the neighbor's choices are to change as a role player for you or leave your reality.

Never work with images of known people from the outer world in the inner world. It tends to sustain rather than release negative unconscious projections. Always ask the image of the known outer world person that your Inner Guided brings you to take its true form AS IT LIVES AS AN ENERGY WITHIN YOU. This insures that you are, in fact, working on an aspect of yourself.

You can go to images of everyone you know and ask each of these outer world figures to take its true form as it lives in you. Here you will get the images of what you are projecting on each of them. It's both fascinating and revealing to do this and to discover just what we are projecting on those people we love best or least."

I have been talking with my own "inner guide" for about 8 years now. My guide has all of the "True Guide" qualities that the author describes. My first experience with my guide was very intense and it literally changed my life. This guide continued to be with me off in the corner of every single one of my meditations always there if I ever needed anything. My guide never offers any opinions and will never tell me what to do even if I ask directly. My guide is never judgemental and is the most peaceful being I've ever encountered.

My problem with this book, although it has some really great ideas, was that it says that your true guide can not be female. Nor can it have wings or appear angel like. The author also says that a true guide will always appear to you if you are open. I have found these things to be untrue in my own experience. My guide has always had a feminine presence and she rarely shows herself to me. Enstead she is more like a guiding voice, an energy that I very clearly feel in the top right side of my meditations. The time that she showed herself to me 8 years ago (this wasn't the only time but it was the most vivid and intense) I told her that I wanted to see her and she asked me to turn my palms up. As soon as i did she came right up to me. She was floating, almost fluttering in front of me. She appeared to be made of bright, white, glowing energy. She had the shape of a human face but she wasn't human. She smiled and she kissed my face and held my hands and I started crying uncontrolably. For this book to say that your guide can not be anything but a man was rather offensive to me. Perhaps becasue I am a woman but also simply because my guide is female. My mother's guide is a male so I do know that females can have male guides but I met my inner guide before I even knew that OTHER people had guides too. For awhile I thought I was insane!

Another problem I had with this book is that the author spent about one third of the book answering questions of people who wanted to know more about the Inner Guide Meditation. If you already have a guide and have been working with him/her then this whole section might be a little redundant. The author also gives alot of "have to's." For example, if you don't do it this one way then it won't work. In my personal experience there are so many ways to communicate with your guide. If you're confused just ask your guide. I can't imagine one man's way of working with his guide being the ONLY right way.

I think this book has very useful information for connecting to Holy Guardian Angel.
and this is related with hypnosis. but anyway this book is not bad. Thanks very much.
Have a good day.