This is the story of how I first connected, consciously, to my main guide. I hesitate to call him a ‘spirit guide’ even though he is not physical, at least not now – and he feels more like a friend than a ‘guide’ although he does guide me, or at least keeps me on the straight and narrow. He resides in the realms we all come from, the world of the soul. Home.

My first meeting with him happened when I did a meditation to meet my guide back in the early nineties. Like most people starting out, or who have never known who their guide was, I wanted to know too. I had been developing psychically for a couple of years, and had become a Reiki healer. My focus at that time was to connect with my soul so many of my meditations began with making that connection. When you first learn to work with your soul, you know you’ll only to get the right information because you have developed that channel.

Having got myself into the right depth of meditation, I asked my guide to show him/herself. At first nothing happened, then a grizzly bear appeared in my vision. It was standing beside a woodland on four feet.

OK, I thought. Maybe my guide is a bear. But then the bear stood up on two legs and I realised he was giving me a message. But I wasn’t getting it. So he did it again. Then I understood. But as usual, I gave my guide more status than he was comfortable with. At the time, I thought guides were somehow far superior to us mere humans, so I thought his name was ‘Great Standing Bear’.

His response? ‘No, it is just Standing Bear.’ Said in a voice of humility and grace.

For a few years, following that first conscious contact, he often arrived as a bear, and gave me bear-related messages. Such as one message where he opened his furry skin right down his middle and pulled me into it. It felt womb-like and safe and I knew he was giving me his protection. And I needed it. I was starting my healing journey, on a conscious level, and it was traumatic. To say the least.

But then things shifted and often, while lying in bed, preparing to sleep, I began to receive visions. A first nations warrior appeared in front of me, on his horse, telling me to climb up behind him. Together we rode across the plains to a lone teepee. I dismounted and was told to enter it.

A large fire lit up the interior and around it sat a circle of elders. My guide sat at the other side of the fire, at the twelve o’ clock position. I was instructed to sit at the one o’clock postion and then I had to do certain things. Sometimes, I was told to throw things into the fire, or I was given information, or a peace pipe, which meant I had to lay something to rest.

When the ceremony was finished, the other warrior would take me home, and then I could fall asleep.

This happened on a number of occasions over the years but each time, I noticed how my postion in the circle of elders changed. I was moving around the circle and soon was at the six o’clock position.

One night, I was taken to the teepee as usual, but this time as I entered, I saw Standing Bear clearly. He said to me, very loudly, from across the fire: “BLACK ELK SPEAKS“. Even though this was only a vision, it shocked me out of the vision space and I couldn’t find my way back to it.

For days afterwards I wondered what the message meant and then forgot all about it. We didn’t have the internet then so I couldn’t look it up online.

Then one day, a year later, I was in Waterstones book shop, when I suddenly asked the man behind the counter, ‘Have you ever hear of Black Elk Speaks?’

‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘We have a copy here.’ And he went to one of the shelves and picked out a book. On the cover were the words Black Elk Speaks. Once again, I was stunned. A book! I paid for it and brought it home, still shocked. It was as if my inner reality had met my waking reality and the collision had caused an earthquake.

The aftershocks were even bigger. In the book, there were photos of Standing Bear! MY Standing Bear! He had been a real, physical person and had only died a couple of decades before my own birth.

It took me weeks to get to grips with that. How could that be?

Once again, my understanding of what spirit guides really were was shifting, seismically.

I discovered that he had also been a writer and he wrote books about his childhood on the plains. He had also been a movie actor and had been part of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show. And he had even come to England. To say my mind was thoroughly blown would be an understatement. Incidentally, my Maternal grandmother’s surname was Coady and my Mother always told us we were related to Buffalo Bill. She had a wonderful imagination. But, in hindsight, it feels like it served as a reminder, a hint to remember that my soul could pick up on.

But slowly, it all began to make sense. Why, when I was a child, I thought I was born into the wrong body and should have been a Native American boy with black hair. Why I was obsessed with plains indians until my twenties, reading everything I could and getting angry at the way reservations were run and exploited. I’d even picked out future children’s names in the sioux language and had memories about sacred objects. For instance, when my children were born, I kept that little part of the umbilical that eventually drops off so I could put it in a bag for them for when they grew up. I knew exactly what that meant. It would be their medicine. I never actually did it, but I still have some of them.

Your guides are part of your consciousness. Their energy is so close to you, especially when you are younger, that you can feel like you are them. Their energy is so much a part of you. I noticed the same thing with an african guide when I first left home at nineteen. I became very interested in different tribes in Africa for a few years. Many years later, I discovered this African’s name. Mabusu. He is a zulu warrior, and my protector. He appears often when I need certain types of protection. I have had a number of African guides, both male and female throughout my life.

But no guide had ever blown me away quite like Standing Bear. As much as I am very grafteful to my Zulu guide for always being there. Although meeting Red Feather was also a huge surprise.

I ‘grew out of’ my Native American (First Nations) obsession in my twenties when I became a mother and I developed something of a more psychic need. But when I ended up in the UK and began my psychic development, I often heard a name come into my head. I thought it was ‘Kunta Kinte’, from the series ROOTS. Even though I heard this many times, it never seemed to mean anything significant. I looked for the meaning, watched Roots again, but gleaned nothing from it.

Until I read Standing Bear’s book. When he was a child, his name was Óta Kté. He had been giving me his name for years before I finally made contact with him. Preparing me.

My teepee visits continued until one night, when I entered the Teepee, I was at Ten O’ Clock. Standing Bear told me that I was nearly ready to sit beside him. When I did, I would have reached the place he too had reached and would be ready for the next phase.

Whatever that would be.

I eventually did because I never needed to visit the teepee again. Now I was ready to be my own guide, even though he has always been by my side and pops in when I need him. Especially when I am going through challenging growth. Now the teepee has come to represent growth and development, emotional, mental and spiritual, and is one of the energy symbols you can receive in an attunement. So much is tied into that symbol.

One of the things I am aware of from Standing Bear’s incarnation is his ability to adapt. He had to manage the changes the white man brought. He had his own native life stripped away and given a new name, Luther. He had his hair cut off and learned to read and write. He lived a very different life to what he had grown up with.. But he managed those changes. He adapted and made his life a success. He found a way.

I imagine that, as my guide, he was also helping me with similar challenges. I have also had to adapt to shifting sands in my life and to grow rather than remain in resentment about changes forced on me as a child. And, because I also write, I’m sure his influence has had a large part to play in that too. Acting, on the other hand, is never going to happen. I am far too self-conscious for that. But he has helped me navigate the stormy waters of childhood and, to be fair, the equally stormy waters of most of my life. He helped me to grow, to move past issues and to make my life mean something. He wrote books that showed people how he lived before he had to go to the white man’s school. Because he adapted, he survived, and he lived a good life as a result. A great lesson to learn and share.

My own life mirrored his, in an Irish way. I spent the first ten years of my life, minus the two that I lived in Australia which I cannot remember, in a river valley in southern Ireland. Some of it was tricky, with emotional family dynamics and accidents etc, but I lived in nature. It was my safe place. Until my family decided to move to Dublin and everything in my life changed. It also changed for my siblings. After that life became very difficult and we experienced years of challenge. Just as Standing Bear had to do, we learned to survive. I adapted and grew. His guidance gave me strength, even though I did not ‘remember’ him. But I dread to think how things might have been had he not been there all along.

The last shock of recognition I experienced with him was in one of his books. The copyright is held by one May Jones – which is also the name of my first grandaughter! So even when that blew me away again, I laughed when I read it. It was his way of saying that my writing would be taken care of.

I had finished writing this and decided to put a quote of his to finish this blog. I looked up one of his books for sake at Abe books and found a name that has been coming into my head for days. Houghton. Turns out it is the name of a publisher who published his book back in 1931. Standing Bear knew I’d be looking it up. I love that he’s still there, looking on at me with humour.

For more quotes from Standing Bear here is the link. https://www.azquotes.com/quote/667426