Fear-Based Guides Part II
August 17th, 2006 by Erin Pavlina
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I want to clarify and add some information to the post I made yesterday about Fear-Based Guides. I received a lot of emails about it and there were some comments made that I want to address.
If you commit evil acts, do you automatically lose your spirit guides and get fear-based ones?
No. Just because you commit a few “evil” acts doesn’t mean you’re going to lose your guides. If that was the case, we’d all have fear-based guides. ;) It’s when you close yourself off to living a life of faith and love that your guides’ voices start to become harder to hear and the voices of fear-based guides become more dominant.
What has to happen in order for your guides to abandon you and get fear-based guides?
You have to decide that you’re going to live a life ruled by your ego and ignore your higher self. It’s not that your guides one day say, “Well, we lost her. It’s time to pack up boys and get out of here and make way for the Ego Guides.” What happens is that your guides stay with you but their voices and your intuition become almost impossible to hear.
Where do the Ego Guides come from?
The way I understand it, these are beings who use fear and control energy to evolve. Just as our guides evolve using love and faith and then are assigned to other humans who need guides, so these Ego Guides evolve using fear and control energy and then become available to guide others who want to use that strategy to evolve.
What is this fear and control strategy?
Apparently there are two methods to ascension that are available to us. The faith/love strategy, and the control/fear strategy. I want to stress that both are equally valid strategies to achieve evolution of your soul. As humans we have free will. We can decide to live our lives based on the fear/control model or the faith/love model. Both have advantages and disadvantages. I don’t feel right judging people who choose a control/fear strategy. It’s just not for me. I believe Steve will eventually be discussing more about this so I’m going to leave it at this for now.
Maybe the dark entity you encountered in your reading was just someone from that person’s life.
Nope. Believe me, I know the difference between a metaphorical image and a conscious entity trying to block me from helping this guy choose the faith/love strategy. He was quite adamant that I get gone. 
How can I know if I can trust my guides? What if I have fear-based guides and don’t know it?
To even ask that question tells me you probably have nothing to fear. People with fear-based guides get information telling them how to protect themselves and their egos even at the expense of others. If you feel compassion, kindness, and empathy, you have the faith and love based guides. If you are greedy, selfish, mean, cruel, etc., then you might have fear-based guides.
How can we help people who have adopted a fear/control strategy of evolving?
Well that presupposes that they need our help in the first place. Remember, free will and all. However, I do believe many people who intended on evolving using a faith/love strategy sometimes get derailed from that path due to overwhelming fear. I believe that’s what happened with the person I was doing the reading with. But once I explained to him what happened and we identified the point in time when the shift took place, he was able to see how he could get back to living a life of faith and love. Just not sure he will actually do it. Giving up the fear/control strategy takes a lot of courage and, well, faith. Plus he’s been living a life of fear/control for years now, so to adopt a whole new strategy might be too difficult for him.
What about angels? If we lose our guides do we lose the angels too?
You never lose the angels. Never. They are always there to help you and bring you back to love. And remember, you don’t lose your guides. Let me clarify. Some of the guides in your life right now came to you to help you with specific things, like becoming a better artist or helping you train for a marathon. Those are the guides you lose when you are no longer a vibrational match for their help. But your guardians, the ones assigned to you from birth, they stay with you. It’s part of the spiritual contract you made before you incarnated. It’s just that they become less able to get messages to you because you turn off the flow of their counsel.
You said in your first article that people can lose the guides they were born with. But now you’re saying we can’t. Can you explain?
What I meant to say was that we can lose the ability to hear the guides we were born with. I believe they are always there if we choose to return. But some people never choose that option.
What should we do if we suspect we have Ego Guides as you call them?
If you don’t want them, send them packing! Start listening to your heart and your intuition. Allow your life to unfold the way it needs to, not just the way you want it to. Stop using a control strategy on people and things to get what you want, and allow the universe to bring you the experiences it knows you need. Adopting a faith/love strategy to personal evolution means that you allow the universe, in its infinite wisdom, to bring you the experiences you need to have in order to grow. Adopting a control/fear strategy to personal evolution means that you use your will to force events to happen the way you want. You would seek to avoid pain at all costs, and benefit personally as much as possible. Helping others would take a back seat to helping yourself.
What should we do if we find ourselves in relationships with people we suspect have fear-based guides?
Pray. ;) But seriously, first accept that they have the right to adopt that strategy. But you can try to help them see the light and the benefits of allowing the universe to work its magic. Show them the benefits of compassion, empathy, harmony, justice, service to others, etc. And then make a choice for yourself as to whether or not you want to stay in that relationship.
In summary, don’t panic. Just because you found money on the ground and kept it or you swiped your husband’s leftover pizza, doesn’t mean you’re trucking with the Ego Guides. There’s a little bit of mischief and self-preservation in us all.
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August 17th, 2006 at 7:53 am
Hi Erin,
Are we ever able to get in touch with our guardians (our Angles)? Have you been in touch with yours? I would like to learn more about this. Why do we choose to turn off their flow of council when I can use so much of their council at the moment?
August 17th, 2006 at 8:45 am
You haven’t chosen to turn off their council, you’re just not hearing it. Or, if you are hearing it, you are not following their advice. They’re still broadcasting, you just need to turn your radio up to hear them.
You can get in touch with your guardian angels, sure. Meditation works great for this.
August 17th, 2006 at 12:59 pm
Hi Erin,
“It’s part of the spiritual contract you made before you incarnated.”
Do you really believe in reincarnation, or is it more along the lines of Maurice Cotterell’s interpretation of it? I think that Cotterell’s work is very interesting, but it still doesn’t explain why would there be a need for such an elaborate process. It just seems to fail occam’s razor test.
On another hand we have Zecharia Sitchin’s work. I’m probably dead wrong about this, but genetic manipulation, or some sort of “unnatural” tinkering with who we are, is what seems to make most sense. And his work compliments the bible nicely.
August 17th, 2006 at 2:55 pm
Where does someone “ascend” if they choose the fear control route? It can’t be the same place as the love route, can it? It sounds more like someone ascending to jail after commiting murder.
I don’t mean to be judgemental necessarily, just pragmatic. If love brings ascension to a place of greater love, fear and control sound like they would bring ascension to a place of total fear and control.
August 18th, 2006 at 8:49 pm
HI erin,
I don’t know if this falls into this discussion or not…
19 yrs ago, I had a daughter, and a very bad childbirth. I had to have an emergency C-section then nearly died from bleeders. I went in for emergency surgery and it took almost 6 hours before it was done. I spent a week in ICU, etc…I never felt completely like ‘me’ since then. For one thing, I’ve never been able to lose weight. I quickly gained alot of weight after that. I thought perhaps, during the time I was on the surgery table at deaths door (more than once), that perhaps I had picked up some residual energy from other spirits who were passing thru in the same hospital. NOw I’m wondering if during that state, that some of these guides found an easy way into my body.
I’m hoping that now, I’ve found this that I can really get rid of them now. Nothing I’ve done in the past has seemed to help
August 18th, 2006 at 10:32 pm
Dan, ever hear the idea that if some people knew what heaven entailed they wouldn’t want any part of it?
There are different types of ascension: just think about “moving up the corporate ladder,” or gaining worldly power, or the entire competitive, dualistic model of perception. If you’re not constantly fighting to get to the top, then someone else ascends faster. These are real goals in a real paradigm, and some people really do get where they want to go. Telling someone who values money, fame and power that they can only really ascend by generosity, humility and unconditional compassion would seem ludicrous to someone who has fully committed to that paradigm, in the same way that the proverbial rat race seems weird to someone valuing a more spiritual-focused life. Ascension occurs in both paradigms.
Fear and control don’t always feel like a bad thing to people who choose that paradigm: they feel safe. Faith is risky. It’s a gamble that I personally believe pays huge dividends, but I know a lot of people who wouldn’t want to trade places with Mother Teresa or Joan of Arc or Ghandi. It’s a different kind of hard work, and if people are not interested in the particular rewards offered, then it probably seems TOO hard.
August 19th, 2006 at 5:58 am
Thanks Erin, for this elaboration. It’s reassuring and you gave me something to think about as well.
August 20th, 2006 at 11:17 am
Laura,
That’s a good way to explain it, thanks. I’ve been there myself on occasion. But, in the last year or so I saw that no matter what I bought it didn’t making me any happier in and of itself. The only exceptions were things that helped me acheive greater goals.
The reason I question the word ascension as it’s used here talking about the control fear context is because ascension to me is something that happens after death, so worldly possessions, economic status, physical beauty, etc, don’t enter into it. I guess I question what happens to someone who uses this context until death.
This week, my boss told me that if I stayed with my company until I was in my forties (15 more years) I could be the director of IT or a vice president of a fortune 100 company. Go me. Although meant as a compliment, I really want to put in my two weeks notice =)
August 20th, 2006 at 8:39 pm
What if the word ascension IS the wrong word, not for the fear/control model but for the spiritual path model? What if people on the fear/control model continue to climb and climb and climb in whatever dimension they enter until they finally reach your conclusion (Dan) that it doesn’t make them happy anymore? That they’re worn out and that there MUST be some other way?
And what if the spiritual path isn’t about ascension (up=good, down=bad) at all but about embracing? Could it be that the preoccupation with judging and weighing things out creates barriers that separate us from an eternal sense of unity with the divine?
What if, as Jesus says, “the kingdom of god” really “is within you”? And what if the name of God/Source/Spirit/Oneness really is “I AM.” If we “are” THAT and embrace it, then why would we want to go up or down or break that blissful unity into good and bad/right and wrong? If we “are” all that was, is and ever will be, then why would we need to keep climbing? The only reason to keep climbing would be if we didn’t realize that that which we seek already lives and breathes our being.
So where do we draw the lines on what falls within the fear/control paradigm?
August 24th, 2006 at 11:12 am
It sounds kind of like she was using ascension in the context of Theosophy (a Western new age religion similar to Buddhism, with some important differences). Theosophic Ascension is the equivalent of Buddhist Enlightenment, except that is describes both the path and the goal instead of just the path. It is the beleif of both groups that an understanding of the universe can be obtained either by a life of Service-to-Self or Service-to-Others (although Buddhism uses different terms). STO sounds an aweful lot like love/faith and STS sounds an aweful lot like fear/control in the Erin Pavlina model.
Anyway, according to both Buddhism and Theosophy (both of which are very similar to what Erin beleives (or rather accepts), based on what she has written here), Ascension/Enlightenment is when one realizes the eternal truth of the universe and existance in their entirety and is able to return to God/the Universe (the Source is an equivalent term I have read Steve Pavlina use). This realization is the conclusion of either path, as neither path is wrong, just different ways of getting to same place.
Of course, these similarities make sense. The ultimate truth is truly universal and therefore all systems that approach the truth will be more and more similar until the truth is reached. Therefore, it makes sense that the the concepts differ practically in name only.
August 26th, 2006 at 6:09 am
I see the similarities Chef. I don’t think someone could ever accomplish full STS without STO, and vice versa. You can’t help yourself without helping others, and you can’t help others without helping yourself. Maybe the two perspectives are a lot more similar than one would think, especially at the advanced stages.
August 28th, 2006 at 11:11 am
That is probably true. The way I understand it, is that Enlightenment is only the first step in our development (or one of the first steps rather). Maybe Enlightenment is the realization that both paths are the same. Someone once said that there is no Enlightenment, but it takes an enlightened person to realize it.
Anyway, I think moderation is the key everywhere. We can’t follow the STO path without servicing ourselves sometimes (when would we eat?!?) nor can follow the STS path without benefiting others at least occasionally. Personally, I think it’s the most beneficial to include both in our lives with an emphasis on others but maybe I’m wrong. Maybe there should be no emphasis.