How a Simple Drawing Helped Me Connect With My Spirit Guides

I grew up being told I wasn’t good at art, and I believed it well into my adulthood.

When I stumbled upon art therapy as a modality in college, I was immediately fascinated by the permission it gave me to make bad art, so much so that I focused my final research project on it. What I didn’t know at the time was that only a year later, in 2023, I’d be using those same concepts to receive messages and connect with my spirit guides with a clarity I’d never experienced in the 14 years I’d already been working with them.

And it all started with the most basic drawing.

When Burnout and Spiritual Frustration Collided

That fall, I was stretching myself thin and working two jobs, setting me nicely on the road to an intense autistic burnout (that came only a few months later). Despite my exhaustion, I somehow found the time and energy to participate in a six-week art therapy and spirituality program.

I was so excited. It was everything I’d been looking for: the perfect melding of creativity, mental wellness, and spirituality.

At that time in my life, I’d been frustrated to the point of tears with my spirituality. Even though I’d been connecting with my guides for years, I still felt like I was navigating the world alone.

My spirituality felt surface-level.

I had never been able to get into traditional meditation, and something inside me knew there had to be other ways to connect. But in my search for them, I kept hitting the same brick wall over and over again.

Participating in this program felt like the universe was finally letting me catch a break and find the answers I was craving.

The Creative Prompt That Stopped Me in My Tracks

During the second session, our prompt was simple:

“How do you connect?”

It completely stumped me.

My conscious mind immediately found reasons to reject the question.

Is it literally how?

Am I supposed to draw something about failing meditations?

How am I supposed to know how I connect?

It just happens, I don’t really know what that looks like.

The panic started to rise. My body tensed, and I found myself getting defensive toward no one in particular as the blank page stared back at me expectantly.

This was a feeling I knew well: the fear of getting it wrong.

Even though I knew there was no wrong answer and no such thing as bad art.

I remembered the mantra that had stuck with me during my months of art therapy research in college:

It’s about the process, not the product.

It’s about the process, not the product.

It’s about the process, not the product.

So I simplified my expectations.

There would be no grand works of art here. And I wasn’t going to let fear stop me from participating in something that had already given me so much.

Instead, I shifted the prompt slightly:

“Who do you connect with?”

And suddenly, the answer came.

I grabbed my wax pastel crayons and spent the next 30 minutes drawing four circles on the page in front of me.

The image was simple, but the symbolism was strong.

The yellow circle captured the energy of my main spirit guide, the one I’ve been working with the longest. She’s warm and bright, deeply nurturing and will often do energy work on me.

Next was the blue circle, which tapped into my secondary guide’s energy: youthful and emotionally intelligent. His main role is helping me develop my intuitive abilities.

The green circle is me, an earthy Taurus grounded in the physical world on a lower plane than my guides and receiving their energy and wisdom.

Finally, the small black circle represented a spirit that, at the time, I thought was a ghost cat I had picked up while living in a hotel a couple of years earlier. He later revealed himself to be an animal guide who helped safely guide me home when my life began collapsing around me later on.

For the first time in a long time, my spirit team felt reachable, like I finally had a phone line instead of screaming into the void.

And the strangest part was how simple it was.

Four messy circles on a page.

No technical skill, perfect lines, or big spiritual rituals.

Just colour, symbolism, and a quiet moment where something real came through.

Looking back on what I had created, I realized something important.

The Moment My Self-Doubt Started to Soften

Unlearning years of criticism about creativity is no easy feat, but this piece began to silence the voice in my head that told me whatever I made wasn’t good enough.

I had the proof right in front of me that I didn’t have to be “good” at art to make powerful pieces.

In fact, abstract art seemed to work so much better for me.

My confidence began to grow.

I didn’t suddenly believe I was going to be the next Van Gogh or anything. But it felt like a small bud of hope pushing up through the soil.

I started to believe that maybe, just maybe, this could become a private doorway between me and my spirit team.

And when the initial excitement faded and self-doubt crept back in, I went back to the drawing.

As someone with AuDHD, the phrase “out of sight, out of mind” is very real for me. It’s part of why I struggle with traditional meditation. Even when I do experience something meaningful, the memory fades.

And journaling after meditation?

Forget it.

Executive dysfunction tells me that’s too much work, and I’ve fallen into plenty of shame spirals about it.

But with art, it’s different.

Looking at what I’ve created jogs my memory. It brings me back not just to that moment of pride and satisfaction of finishing the piece, but also to how I was feeling, what I was going through, and the wisdom and connection I found within the colours and textures.

Why Creativity Can Open the Door to Spirit Communication

At the time, my main focus during the program was simply allowing myself to develop a creative style without pressure or judgment.

It wasn’t until a few years later, when I started receiving mentorship to grow my psychic abilities, that I realized something fascinating:

Symbolism isn’t just the language of art.

It’s also the language of spirit.

Spirit guides communicate through signs, metaphors, and symbols, but so many of us miss these messages because we’re not used to paying attention to that language.

There’s also a neurological component.

When we engage in messy or “bad” art-making, it activates both sides of the brain and involves the body.

In simple terms, this keeps our conscious, critical mind busy, allowing our subconscious (the channel through which our spirit guides communicate) to express itself more freely.

By setting aside intentional time each month to create with your guides, without a plan or judgment, you open the door for guidance to come through in a playful, intuitive way.

Whether you’re drawing, finger painting, collaging, writing, or experimenting with something else entirely, creativity becomes a conversation.

Over time, you begin to:

• recognize the unique energy of your guides

• understand their symbols and language

• build real evidence that you’re capable of connecting with them

And perhaps most importantly, you begin to trust that connection.

One Drawing That Started It All

That simple drawing with four circles ended up becoming so much more than a one-time exercise for me.

It was the first piece of tangible evidence I had that my connection with my spirit guides was real and accessible in a way that worked for my brain and nervous system. Whenever self-doubt crept back in, I could look at it and remember what I experienced in that moment. Not as an abstract idea or a belief I was trying to hold onto, but as something I had actually felt and witnessed for myself.

And over time, those small moments of proof began stacking up.

The more I created, the more I learned how my spirit team communicates with me, with colour, symbolism, energy, and feeling.

If You Want to Explore This for Yourself

If you’ve been craving a deeper connection with your spirit guides but traditional practices like meditation have never quite worked for you, you’re not alone.

Creativity can offer another doorway.

It doesn’t require artistic talent, perfect stillness, or a quiet mind, just a little curiosity and the willingness to let the process unfold.

This is exactly the space I hold inside The Spirit Studio, a monthly creative circle where sensitive and intuitive people explore connecting with their spirit guides through art, symbolism, and intuitive practices.

It’s a gentle, low-pressure membership designed to help you build your own relationship with your spirit team and gather the kind of personal evidence that strengthens trust over time.

Because sometimes the most powerful spiritual breakthroughs don’t come from trying harder.

Sometimes they begin with something as simple as drawing a few messy circles on a page.