When I am most grounded in my thinking and have some issue or concern that I need help with, I seek direct guidance from my spirit guides. Before going to sleep at night:
1. I verbally ask my spirit guide(s) for help- I try and be as clear as possible as to what I am wondering about/need help with.
2. I ask them to please awaken me as soon as the message or information has been conveyed(in a dream)-this is critical to ask-otherwise I may not wake up or remember what I have been shown.

This little ritual usually produces results for me in a week or two of every night asking for guidance. It takes this long when I have been out of direct communication with them, usually because my life has been very full of other matters and I have been neglectful of my spiritual self. It also takes a while for me to kind of program myself to wake up and remember-thus that critical request for them to wake me up. Usually the first week I dream important things-I just don't wake up immediately and so when I do awaken I only remember I was told something important but can't remember what it was. That's always very frustrating. When the information comes it is much like how psychics get pieces of information or images that initially may not make sense or seem unrelated. I keep a journal of the bits of information. Eventually I begin to awaken immediately after the message has been shown to me and I awaken in an AHA! moment. I have received very valuable insights from my spirit guides this way, although one could also contribute it to one just working through a concern/issue by concentrating on it over time and dreaming up the answer. Both are plausible possibilities and it is up to the individual to attribute the source or the power of the information conveyed.

As for the everyday guidance of my spirit guides I take this to be more in the realm of intuition and/or psychic awareness. It is hard to tease out how these two things work both together and independently, because I think that in some instances it is just me knowing things about people I am connected to or awareness that I take note of. We are, after all, highly perceptible beings and the amount of information we are hit with every millisecond of the day is absolutely astonishing. Of course, different aspects of our bodies process this information differently and we have little actual awareness of it-it's primarily on an unconscious level. Which by the way, I do think is how most spirit guides communicate and guide us-that is we are not particularly conscious of it, even if we believe it to be so. However I do think that there have been times in my life where I have received direct albeit, unconscious guidance from my spirit guide(s) that is usually of a protective nature. Such as many instances when my life has been in jeopardy -driving in my car or other places where I seem to take an unexpected turn which I had not planned for which takes me out of dangers path or a nice near miss and or perceived danger up ahead and to be more cautious when there are no indicators from my 5 senses-just a feeling in my gut that screams DANGER! and danger always appears in one form or another which I am kept from harm. One might just call that good luck.

So, if spirit guides aren't your thing, just chalk up any such experiences to your body's ability to process an enormous amount of information from the 5 body senses-- visual, tactile, taste, auditory or olfactory and you can just leave out the pesky 6th sense if it makes you feel better. But honestly, we are beings of energy so to rule out the 6th sense is not particularly productive if you want to know yourself, your world and your spiritual self. So, I choose to believe, perceive and communicate with my spirit guides.