You Are Surrounded by Angels  

 By Doreen Virtue

As I paid for my purchase at a department store, I noticed three golden angel pins upon a nearby clerk’s sweater. I complimented the woman on her angel jewelry, and the clerk who was ringing-up my sale commented, “Maybe I should start wearing angel pins, too. Then I can be lucky like her!” 

“Luck!” I thought to myself as I caught the eye of the angel-wearing woman. She winked at me in mutual acknowledgment that “luck” plays no part in the miracles that come your way when you invite angels into your life. The woman explained that twice recently, she’d experienced miraculous protection at the department store from her angels. First, her stolen purse was recovered intact within an hour of the incident. Second, as a rack full of heavy clothing was falling on her, it miraculously changed direction and fell a different way. 

As the angel-clad clerk and I swapped angelic intervention stories, the eyes of the woman in front me grew large. “Do I have angels?” she wanted to know, and then asked, “How can I get them to help me, too?” We always benefit whenever we invite angels into our lives. To acquaint you better with the angels in your midst, let’s start by looking at the different roles angels can take. Three categories of angels help us here on earth:

1. Guardian angels. 
Everyone has a guardian angel, with no exceptions. I’ve met people who doubted whether they deserved to have a guardian angel. Please know that you have a guardian angel with you, guaranteed! This is the angel who constantly stays with you, from birth until your transition back to heaven. This angel’s love for you is unconditional and bigger than anything on this earth. Your guardian angel makes certain you are safe and guided always. 

Guardian angels are sometimes confused with “spirit guides.” A spirit guide is a loving being who has lived upon the earth in human form. This person then received special training in the afterlife about how to become a spirit guide. 

This training emphasizes that the guide is not to interfere with your free will or make decisions for you. The guide is there to give you general advice, comfort, and at times warning and protection. Most spirit guides are deceased loved ones, such as grandparents, siblings, beloved friends, and parents.

Your spirit guide may have passed-away in the physical life before you were born. However, this loving being was there at your birth and has been with you every day of your life since. Just as you will always take an interest in your family’s future offspring, so do the deceased family members whom we may have never encountered in physical form. 

Spirit guides act in the capacity of guardian angels, in that they bring many gifts to our lives. The main difference is that true guardian angels, who have never walked as mortals upon the earth, have a higher vibrating energy frequency. People who are empathic, who can “feel” the sensation of a spiritual presence, can tell the palpable difference between an angelic and a spirit guide appearance.

Clairvoyants see that angels’ aura is bright white, whereas a spirit guide’s aura is not quite as bright and may appear as a bluish-white. 

2. Angels.
These are the beings of light who respond to our calls for guidance, assistance, protection, and comfort. God’s thoughts of love create angels. The angels are here to help us, especially when our intent is to bring joy and healing to the world. Ask for as many angels as you want to surround you. Ask for angels to surround your loved ones, your home, and your business. Angels receive great joy at helping us, and they ask only that we occasionally remember to say, “Thank you” in gratitude for their help. 

3. Archangels.
These are the angels who supervise the guardian angels and angels upon the earth. You might think of archangels as the “managers” among the earthly angels’ hierarchy. You can call upon an archangel whenever you need powerful and immediate assistance. 

Since angels are purely spiritual beings, they have no time or space restrictions. An archangel can help many people in different geographical locations simultaneously. So, never worry about calling upon an angel because you fear that your need isn’t “big enough” or that the angel might be busy. Your call for help is sweet music to an angel’s ears. 

Because of the “Law of Free Will,” angels and archangels cannot intervene in our lives unless we specifically ask for their help. The only exception to this is a life-endangering situation, where we could die before our time. Otherwise, it’s up to us to remember to constantly invite angels and archangels into our lives.

Angels and archangels come to your assistance the moment you call them. You don’t need to say a formal invitation or invocation ritual, and you don’t even need to verbalize your call aloud. Just the thought, “Angels!” is enough. If your request for angelic assistance is sincere, the angels appear in response to your call, often before you’ve finished calling them! You Know That Angels Are Near When … You feel the angels’ presence. Perhaps you sense a warm brush across your face, shoulders, hands, or arms. You might feel their hug, or the brush of a wing across your skin. The air pressure changes when angels enter a room. There is a palpable thickening, as if a delicious cloud just rolled in to shield you from the heat. Too, the room temperature may seem to shift, or you might catch a whiff of a beautiful lilting fragrance that you can’t quite identify. When the angels hug you, you feel a deep warmth flow through your chest and your heart expands with unearthly love. 

You see the angels’ presence. The calling cards of angels are visible. A sparkle of white light out of the corner of your eye signals that an angel is near. A feather that mysteriously appears from out of nowhere. And the beautiful angels you see in a darkened room, or standing beside a beloved friend or teacher, confirm that the angelic kingdom visits you. 

You hear the angels’ prsences. A loving whisper in your ear that urges you to improve your life. Or an unmistakable shout warning you to, “Watch out!” A voice inside your mind counseling you to reach for the stars, and the sweet strains of music coming from out of nowhere. These are the sounds that angels make. 

You know the angels’ presence. When you suddenly get an idea that dramatically transforms your life, an angel has just delivered a message from God and tucked it safely within your heart. When you have an unmistakable knowingness that angels are near to you, trust that it is so. 

You experience the angels’ presence. When they miraculously avert a near-tragedy, or an opportune door “coincidentally” opens for you at just the right moment, you know that angels are helping you in the background. When you walk through nature and feel free and joy-filled, you can be sure that angels walk beside you along the way.

Hearing Your Angels’ Messages

By Doreen Virtue

“We’re aren’t that difficult to hear, if you will listen for us with an open heart. Most of the time, we are closer to you than you can imagine. A whisper, a thought, is the only signal we need from you to get a conversation started. We have enormous respect for what you’re going through here on planet Earth at this time. We never seek to interfere with your lives, only to bring you blessings of insights and new ways of looking at yourselves.”

Not everyone “hears” angelic voices as an audible sound. Many people receive divine messages through nonverbal means such as visions, feelings, or a knowingness

Hearing the voice of God and the angels is called “clairaudience,” which means “clear hearing.” The voice may sound like your own or it may sound different. The voice can emanate from within your body, within your mind, or sound as if it’s outside your head. When an angel warned me that my car was about to be stolen, his voice sounded as if he were talking through a paper towel tube, just outside my right ear. An hour later, when I found myself in the middle of a car-jacking, the same angel guided my life-saving actions by speaking to me through an inner voice. While receiving the angel messages in my book, “Angel Therapy,” I heard the words both inside and outside my mind.

 You might hear a faint voice and wonder what it said. In such cases, go ahead and ask your angels to repeat their message. Say to them, “A little louder, please.” The angels appreciate your feedback, as they want to deliver clear and understandable guidance.

 At first, you may believe that the voice is your imagination and wishful thinking. This is especially true when you begin consciously interacting with angels. You think, “This is a fantasy. I wish it were true that angels would help me, but I’m probably doing something wrong and the angels won’t notice me.” We heal this type of thinking through faith, trust, and practice. If your faith in angels is uncertain, ask God to help you. Pray, “Please help me to have more faith. I am willing to release all of my fears which keep me from having full faith.” The Divine universe always fulfills requests for more faith.

 Angelic voices are consistently loving and supportive, even when they warn us of impending dangers or wrong turns. As a psychotherapist, I was trained to believe that hearing voices was a sign of insanity. Yet, the voice of the ego is the only source of “insanity.” Ego voice messages are always destructive, abusive, and impulsive. For example, the ego may try to convince you that you’ll fail. The ego also changes its mind constantly, so it will tell you to do one thing Monday, another thing Tuesday, and a completely different thing Wednesday. If you listen to the voice of the ego, your life will be chaotic and fear-filled. Angelic voices, in contrast, patiently repeat the guidance to us day after day, until we finally follow it. You may hear your angels tell you for years that you would be a great healer or author, for example. Or your angels may repeatedly ask you to take better care of your body. You know that guidance comes from angels when it is loving, focused, not hurtful to you or your family, and consistent.

 Clairaudience is just one-fourth of the ways we receive angelic assistance, however. Your angels may speak to you in pictures and visual mental images. We call this “clairvoyance” or “clear seeing.” Angelic messages may come to you as single snapshot images, either in your mind or outside your mind. Or, you may see miniature scenes, as if from a movie. The images may be black-and-white or full color. Angelic visual messages can be symbolic, such as seeing a stop sign as a signal that you should take a rest, slow, or stop what you are doing.

 Intuitively, you might readily understand what the visual images mean. For instance, you might see an image of a trophy and instinctively, you know this means that success is ahead for you. If you have trouble understanding your angelic visual guidance, be sure to ask for assistance. Ask your angels to clarify their message, and continue asking for clarification until you are completely certain of their meaning.

 Sometimes we shut down our angelic channels of communication because of fear. You might see an image of your future that frightens you, and you turn off your clairvoyance by shutting the third eye’s eyelid.

 One of my clients shut down her clairvoyance when, as a young girl, she saw a visual image of her parents divorcing in the future. Another client closed her third eye because she foresaw herself having an affair with a married co-worker, and she wanted to continue her interactions with him while wearing blinders to the truth. One of my other clients was trying to ignore a steady angelic voice within which counseled, “It’s time to look for work at a different place,” because she didn’t trust God to fulfill her material needs during the job transition.

 You might also shut off your clairvoyance if you are afraid of what you might see. As much as you want to see your angels in person, you might harbor a deep-seated fear that seeing a “ghost” would be terrifying. Your angels honor such fears, and you won’t see angelic apparitions until you feel confident that such a vision would comfort