It is important to work with only high-level guides. These would be beings who are benevolent, kind, and have your well-being in mind. They have a deep caring for humanity, and a sincere desire to assist humanity in raising its consciousness. The same way that you pick your human friends is the way that you will pick your spirit friends. You pick your human friends by how you feel around them. If you feel good around them, enriched, and joyful, they become your friends. If you feel tired, depressed, unhappy, or otherwise negative, these people normally do not become your friends. This is how you can determine whether a guide is right for you or not. The heart always knows what is best, and the mind is not the one to trust when picking spirit friends. Let your emotional response to these spirit guides be your criteria for whether or not they are high-level guides or low level guides.

Another way to be sure that you are choosing a high-level entity rather than a low level entity is by the messages themselves. Do these messages ring true? Only accept messages that ring true to you, and if they do not ring true to you, this is not the guide for you.

One way to be sure you can attract a high level guide is to have integrity yourself. A person who operates from a state of non-purity will attract similar energies. If a person lives a balanced and benevolent life philosophy will attract like energies. Always look at what energies you are resonating with and make adjustments as you see you need to in order to attract higher and higher guides to yourself. Zoe Hagon says in Channeling: The Spiritual Connection (1988), "The most important aspect of channels is that they should have a heart centre that is open and flowing, where the energy is transformed into the power of unconditional love, the Christ Consciousness."

Always remember that you have the power to say no. You do not have to accept any guide that you do not wish to accept. Remember that you are the one who has the body, you are the one who is on the physical plane, and no one can control you unless you let them, not even spiritual beings. There are many levels of spiritual entities who would like to work with people on the earth plane. Some of these entities are more enlightened than others. It is up to you to be discerning about whether or not you would like to work with this guide or that guide. Choose wisely, for you will be that guide's representative on the earth plane, and the messages you deliver will be of the caliber that the guide itself resonates at.

The following are some guidelines to know whether a guide is a high-level guide or low level guide. These are some suggestions from Sanaya Roman and Duane Packer in their book Opening To Channel (1989):

High Level Guide:

1. wish for your higher good
2. source of love, light, wisdom, direction, clarity
3. feel good around them, happy
4. don't frighten you
5. don't stroke your ego
6. encourage you to follow your own discernment, not take everything they say blindly
7. express themselves with precision
8. speak in positive ways about others
9. rarely predict future events unless necessary
10. leave you feeling uplifted and supported
11. speak through you only with your permission
12. come from a higher plane than astral plane
13. attempt to help you find your own answers

Low Level Guide:

1. might have score to settle on Earth or with you
2. source of disharmony
3. feel unhappy
4. might frighten you
5. stroke your ego
6. want you to follow their advice blindly without question
7. might be disjointed in their expression
8. speak in negative ways
9. give disastrous predictions with no way out
10. leave you feeling worried about your life, depressed, powerless
11. have no commitment to your well-being
12. not give practical advice you can use
13. most likely from astral plane, want to come back to Earth
14. don't direct you to find your own answers

These are some guidelines to help you know whether this is a good guide for you to work with or not. However, there is something to know about guides. In the beginning, it is common that a guide comes to you for only a short time. This guide may train you for a while, but then move on and a new guide comes in. It may also be possible that a group of guides speak through you. My first experience with channeling was a group of twelve guides acting as one mind and one heart calling themselves Anwan (meaning In One to me). Later in my experience it seemed that they were a group of 1,000 beings when I was able to hold more energy. Then there came a time when the guides themselves became illusion and there was only the experience of a very vast empty space. They no longer had images or forms. They no longer had names. They became raw consciousness and the vastness of eternal self. I kept the name they gave me just for the sake of having a name for the energy, but my experience of channeling became quite different as my skills grew and time went on. Now I experience channeling as the presence of eternal self rather than individualized guides. I no longer differentiate guides from myself. It seems now that we are all part of the same sea of consciousness. Even the person asking the questions in a channeled session is part of this virtual sea of consciousness. The more I channeled, the more expansive my experience of channeling became. I realized that the idea of guides and spirits is a mental construct that was necessary in the beginning, but as I grew more aware, the need for the mental construct was no longer needed.

In the beginning, however, I recommend that you start with inviting one guide, or perhaps a small group, for your first channelings. The later version of my experience with channeling would have burned my body's circuits. This was something I needed to grow into rather than start with. You could liken it to a 110 volt wire holding 220 volts of electricity. A 110 volt wire is the kind of wire coming off your toaster, your TV, or a regular household appliance. A 220 volt wire is the kind that powers your dryer, and carries twice the amount of electricity than a 110 volt wire.

This is how it is with channeling. You will start as a 110 volt wire, and then later you will graduate to a 220 volt wire after you've had some practice and have learned how to carry this much energy. It simply will not work at the physical level in the beginning. You can hurt yourself if you try to do too much too fast. Becoming a 220 volt wire takes time and practice. Adjustments in the mental, emotional and physical bodies are necessary before you can carry 220 volts of spiritual energy. It takes much meditation and self-examination to be able to carry this amount of energy. There will be a certain amount of work on opening your awareness to your true self and becoming who you truly are. So start with 110 and move to 220 as you are able. In this era, you will move to 220 quite quickly, for the nature of reality is changing at lightspeed! Lightworkers, including channelers and helpers to humanity, are in great demand and there is much assistance on the inner planes in helping you become a most efficient lightworker on this plane of reality as quickly as possible.