How spirit speaks through dreams, symbols and synchronicities is rarely the way we’ve been taught to expect it. Most of us are waiting for the clear yes-or-no. The whisper in the ear. The unmistakable GPS-style instruction. And when spirit doesn’t answer in those terms, we start to wonder if we’re doing something wrong, if we’re making it all up, or if spirit just isn’t communicating with us the way it seems to be communicating with everyone else.
I want to name something at the start: most people don’t struggle because spirit isn’t communicating. They struggle because they haven’t learned the language spirit is actually using. And the language of spirit is very different from the language of the school-taught, information-based mind we’ve all been trained inside of.
If you’ve asked spirit for guidance about a relationship, a decision, a next step — and you’ve prayed, meditated, journaled, watched for signs, and still felt like you couldn’t quite tell what you were receiving — this is for you.
Why Spirit Doesn’t Usually Speak in Words
One of the biggest misconceptions about intuition and spirit communication is that spirit will answer your questions the way a person would. We imagine asking, “Should I leave this relationship?” or “Am I on the right path?” — and expecting spirit to respond like a person on the other side of a conversation. Yes. No. Turn left. Take this opportunity.
Occasionally guidance does arrive that clearly. And when it does, you’ll usually feel it in your body first, before your mind even has a chance to override it. But in my experience, that’s the exception rather than the rule.
Most of the time, spirit doesn’t answer questions with information. Spirit answers with experiences.
That can feel frustrating at first, especially if you’re used to getting information quickly. But the reason spirit teaches this way is because experiences change us in a way information can’t. Information reaches a certain level. Experience embodies. That’s why someone can explain what a healthy relationship looks like, but that doesn’t automatically give you the ability to create one. Someone can explain confidence, boundaries, self-worth — but until life becomes the teacher, until you actually get to live the lesson, it doesn’t fully land.
A few years ago, I chose community as my word of the year. I wasn’t just asking for people. I wanted real community — the kind where people genuinely show up for one another. Throughout that year, I kept asking spirit to guide me toward it, show me what it looked like, help me build it.
Instead, almost the exact opposite happened. I kept meeting people who seemed excited to connect. They’d talk about collaborating, becoming friends, being part of what I was building. And then nothing. They’d ghost. They’d flake. They’d stay interested just long enough to make me think something was going to happen, and then quietly fade.
At first I was frustrated. It felt like the opposite of what I’d asked for. But eventually it clicked: the experience itself was the answer. Spirit wasn’t withholding guidance — spirit was teaching me something I couldn’t have learned through explanation. First, that I was still surprisingly naive about the gap between what people say and what people follow through on. Second, that I was often investing my energy in people before they’d actually earned that trust with their consistency.
If someone had simply told me “pay more attention to people’s follow-through,” I would have nodded and agreed and then kept doing exactly what I’d always done. Instead, I lived the lesson until it became part of who I am.
That’s what spirit does. It doesn’t tell you the answer. It lets you experience the answer until the answer becomes embodied. And within that overarching truth, spirit uses specific languages to deliver those experiences. There are many — but I want to focus on three primary ones today, because when you can recognize which language you’re inside of, you stop asking “what does this mean?” and start asking “what is this showing me?” That’s the shift that unlocks everything.
Language One: Symbols
The first language is symbols. This is the one most people are familiar with — dreams, animals, objects, places, songs, images that keep appearing. But it’s also the language I see misunderstood most often.
Most people work with symbols like they’re dictionaries. What does water mean? What does the snake mean? What do the 1111s mean? They look up the answer somewhere and try to cram that meaning into their life. But symbols aren’t dictionaries. They’re metaphors. And metaphors always live in relationship to the person receiving them.
Think about two people dreaming about a door. One is desperately trying to get through it. The other is frantically trying to unlock it. Same symbol — completely different story. The meaning isn’t the door itself. The meaning is your relationship with the door.
I learned this personally through a recurring dream of a tidal wave. For years I dreamt about an enormous wave rushing toward me. As a young person, I’d panic. I’d run. I’d try to get away before it hit. And then as I started doing inner work — real, layered inner work — the dream started changing. First I’d stop running. Then I’d hold my ground. Eventually, I learned to dive into it.
Looking back, it became obvious that spirit wasn’t predicting some terrible event. The wave wasn’t a prophecy. It was a mirror for how I was relating to overwhelm and intensity in my life. And as my relationship to overwhelm changed, the dream changed alongside me.
That’s what symbols do. They’re not fortune tellers — they’re living, breathing things that reflect what’s happening in you and around you. Signs of clairvoyance, clairvoyant signs, intuitive signs — however they arrive, they all follow this same rule. They’re mirrors, not verdicts. Once you stop asking “what does this mean?” and start asking “what is this showing me about myself?” — everything about how you work with symbols will change.
Language Two: Rhythm
The second language is the one people overlook most, and possibly the most potent one. Spirit speaks through rhythm.
When we ask spirit for guidance, we usually expect a sentence, a sign, a clear instruction. But rhythm doesn’t work that way. Rhythm doesn’t hand you the answer — rhythm changes the state you’re in so you can receive differently in the first place.
This is why rhythm shows up in spiritual traditions all over the world. Drumming, chanting, dancing, walking, breathwork, repetitive prayer, music, rocking, swaying, shaking. None of that is coincidence. Every one of those practices moves you out of ordinary thinking and into a different kind of awareness — usually a body-based awareness. In shamanic traditions, the drum is often understood as the heartbeat of the earth. When you follow that steady beat, your consciousness has something to ride on, and information you couldn’t access through thinking alone starts to become available.
But the most overlooked form of rhythm is the body itself.
We’re taught to suppress so many of our natural movements. Don’t fidget. Don’t rock. Don’t move strangely. Don’t let your body do what it wants unless it looks acceptable. And in that conditioning, we cut off one of the most direct channels of communication available to us.
I had this teaching land hard in ceremony once. I’d gone in with a simple intention — I wanted to feel freedom. I wanted to escape and play. I knew that wasn’t the most sophisticated intention, but it was honest. For most of the ceremony, I was trying to think my way into freedom. Asking myself what I needed to look at, what I needed to heal, what I needed to understand. Nothing was happening.
Eventually, I got tired. I gave up trying to solve it. And in that surrender, I just let my body move the way it wanted to move. Almost immediately, one arm stretched out. Then the other. I stayed there for a long time with my arms wide open, just letting my body do what it wanted to do instead of thinking about my question.
As my body expanded, my consciousness expanded with it. I started feeling concepts differently. I started reaching places in myself I couldn’t access through thought. I didn’t need another sign. I didn’t need information. I didn’t need a sentence. I just needed to move.
That’s what rhythm does. Sometimes spirit speaks through rhythm because your mind is not the part of you that can receive the message. Your body has to enter the state first, and then the information becomes available.
Rhythm also shows up as repetition. The same symbol showing up over and over. Three different people saying the same phrase to you in one week. Two people with the same unusual name crossing your path in a few days. When something repeats like that, the repetition itself is part of the message. Spirit is emphasizing something. Strong intuition signs often arrive this way — not as a single bolt of clarity, but as a pattern that only becomes obvious when you notice it repeating.
Language Three: Attraction
The third language is probably the most misunderstood, especially by sensitive people. Because we’re taught to be careful with our desires. We don’t want to be moving from ego. We want to make sure we’re doing good and not harming anyone. So when a pull arises, we often distrust it before we even feel it fully.
But the third language spirit uses is attraction. And to be clear — I don’t mean the Law of Attraction. I mean the things you’re naturally pulled toward. The desires that feel less like you wanting something and more like something wanting you.
Here’s how you know the difference between spirit-attraction and ego-desire: it won’t feel like you’re picking the thing. It’ll feel like the thing is picking you.
Have you ever noticed that certain interests just keep finding you? You walk through a bookstore and every time you leave you almost buy a book on dreams, but you talk yourself out of it. You can’t stop thinking about Ireland even though you’ve never been there and the timing makes no sense. You’re suddenly fascinated with herbal medicine, or bodywork, or a specific instrument, or a place, or an entire path. It’s not logical. It doesn’t seem practical. You dismiss it as random, or you assume it’s egoic wanting, and you move on.
That dismissal is where most people miss the language entirely.
I want to say this clearly: if you’re questioning yourself, if you’re wondering “is this ego? is this bad? am I supposed to want this?” — that questioning itself usually means you’re okay. People who are actually operating from distortion aren’t asking those questions. They’re chasing the mansion to prove they succeeded. The kind of pull we’re talking about isn’t like that. It’s quieter. It makes your heart feel happy rather than makes you feel you need to prove something.
I know this because it’s how my whole path found me. I didn’t set out to become a shaman. I wasn’t drawn to shamanic healing because I wanted to heal or help people — that’s the assumption most people make about anyone in this work. But for me, it started so simply. Shamanism was mentioned in a book I was reading and I thought, huh, what’s that? Then there happened to be a workshop nearby. I went. I loved it. Not because I was trying to solve something — because it made my heart happy. Even when it was hard. Even when I was a twenty-year-old sitting in rooms with fifty- and sixty-year-old psychics feeling completely inadequate. I kept going back because the thing was picking me.
If I’d missed those first languages — the book, the workshop nearby — I would have missed what turned out to be my entire calling. And here’s the deeper truth: the point was never becoming a shaman. The point was everything I got to experience, grow through, and become along the way to doing it.
That’s what spirit does with attraction. It plants breadcrumbs — not to force you down one correct path, but to invite you toward the experiences that will grow you.
And this applies to material things too, which trips up a lot of sensitive people. If you find yourself drawn to a beautiful home, a spacious life, a particular level of freedom — that’s not automatically ego. Ask what the pull is really about. If it’s “I want the mansion to prove I made it,” that’s ego. But if it’s “what would it feel like to have that much space, that much room to breathe?” — that’s a different energy entirely. Spirit uses attraction to invite you into becoming the person who could actually receive what you’re being drawn to. It’s not about the object. It’s about who you become on the way.
Signs psyche is calling you often arrive here — in these quiet, persistent pulls toward things that don’t quite make logical sense but won’t leave you alone. Instead of asking “why do I want this?” or “is it okay to want this?” — try asking “what is this opening in me? what part of me comes alive around this? where might it lead if I just let myself follow it?” Because spirit isn’t giving you an answer. It’s inviting you to take the next step.
The One Mistake Most People Make with Signs
Once you start recognizing these three languages, almost everyone makes the same mistake in the beginning. And honestly, it makes sense, because it’s how most of us have been trained.
The mistake is treating spirit like it’s sending secret codes that need to be decoded correctly in order for you to not make a mistake, or in order to get the thing you want.
You dream about water and immediately Google “what does water mean spiritually.” You get four different answers. Water represents emotions. Water represents intuition. Water represents cleansing. Water represents abundance. Which one is right? Maybe all of them. Maybe none. Because that’s not actually the question.
The better question is: how am I relating to the water in this dream? Am I standing peacefully beside it? Am I drowning in it? Am I afraid to get in? Am I floating effortlessly? What is it awakening in me?
The symbol itself isn’t the message. Your relationship to the symbol is the message. The symbol is just the doorway.
The same is true for animals, numbers, repeated encounters, anything. If hawks keep showing up, don’t ask “what does hawk mean?” Ask “what am I noticing when they appear? What was I just thinking about? What’s happening in my life every time one shows up? What qualities of a hawk stand out to me personally?” Those questions are where the message actually lives. Trusting your intuition spirituality is really about learning to sit with a signal and let it speak to your specific life, right now — rather than forcing someone else’s dictionary onto your experience.
And there’s something worth naming here that might take pressure off: there is no single correct path you’re supposed to be walking that requires perfect symbol-decoding to stay on. Spirit isn’t running a test where you fail if you misread one dream. Spirit is constantly sending invitations, not verdicts.
You Can’t Fuck It Up
Here’s something I find deeply comforting, and I want to leave you with it.
Spirit has never expected you to get every message right. This isn’t a scavenger hunt. It’s not a test. You’re not going to fail because you misunderstood one dream or missed one coincidence. Spirit is remarkably patient. If there’s something you genuinely need to learn, life has a way of bringing it back around. It might be through another dream, another conversation, another opportunity. It might be uncomfortable. It might be painful. But the message won’t disappear until you’ve received it. It’ll simply come back in a different form until you’re ready.
The more you understand the languages, the faster you get the message the first, second, or third time. But even if you miss it entirely, it doesn’t disappear. Spirit rarely drags us anywhere. It invites. It whispers. It sparks curiosity. If the messages start feeling harsh, it’s usually because they’ve been repeating for a while and you haven’t been catching them yet.
This week, try something different. Instead of asking spirit for a sign, ask spirit to help you recognize what’s already being shown to you. Because right now, in your ordinary life, the conversation is probably happening more than you realize. Pay attention to the dreams that stay with you. The symbols that keep catching your attention. The experiences that keep teaching you the same lesson. The thing you feel called to but keep dismissing. And rather than rushing to figure out what any of it means — spend some time asking what it’s inviting you to experience.
For a long time, I thought intuition meant getting answers. Getting clarity. Getting certainty. I wanted spirit to tell me exactly what to do. But over the years I’ve realized that’s almost never the relationship spirit is inviting us into. It’s inviting us into a relationship of curiosity. Instead of “what does this mean?” — ask “what is this showing me? what am I being invited into? how is this asking me to grow?” Those questions have changed my life far more than any dictionary of symbolic meanings ever could.
Because the goal isn’t to become excellent at interpreting dreams or memorizing what every animal or number means. The goal is to develop a personal relationship with spirit. That’s where guidance stops being a scavenger hunt and starts being a conversation.
How spirit speaks through dreams, symbols and synchronicities is, in the end, less a technique to master than a language to remember. And once you start hearing it, you’ll realize the conversation has been happening all along — in the dream that keeps coming back, in the pull you keep dismissing, in the drumbeat under your ordinary life. You don’t need more signs. You just need to recognize the ones already arriving.
🎧 Listen to the full episode: Leading With Spirit — How Spirit Speaks Through Dreams, Symbols & Synchronicities (And Why You’ve Been Missing It)