How do spirit guides help guide a living person?

I much prefer the word 'helper' as 'guide' is used in other ways.

The involvement of so-called spiritual guides is likely to be more closely defined in terms of assisting our spiritual development and their roles likely to be very different from those of helpers....

Maybe I just have a super bossy spirit guide but she does tell me what to do sometimes and what to say quite often.
Free will bit is being able to say NO.
I'd watch out for those 'spiritual guides' though. Any entity pontificating on spiritual matters should be taken with a very large pinch of salt indeed. At best your SBs,White Eagles et al are a sorry crew upon which to base any notion of personal spiritual development. That's for us to work out with Spirit's support and there's only one Spirit. The rest of the bunch, well you only need to listen to some of the garbage claimed as eternal wisdom stemming from those quarters.
Friend from spirit wants to pass on regards and evidence to someone on this side,yes please. That' what we'e fo. Entity from somewhere or other laying down the law, no ta.

Thanks Normy Mac and Leslie good recent discussion well worth having. I am aware of KK's views about the trance teachings from other threads but we know any trance teachings need discernment and treating with care. However, I feel that is a very different matter to the recent discussion on this thread which has a lot going for it.