The Apprentice Angel – A Spiritual Story by Guy Finley

One day, a little angel who wanted to be a big angel was spending some time with a more seasoned angel. They were invisibly walking down a busy city street, and the older angel said to the apprentice angel: “Would you like to hear something amazing?”

The little angel said, “I don’t know,” because he knew that whenever the older angel asked him things like this, he was about to receive a certain spiritual shock. The little angel finally said, “Well, all right, what is it?”

They proceeded down the street and into a little coffee shop, and in there was a man drinking his coffee. As the two angels took a seat, in walked a devil (also moving about invisibly). The devil sauntered in and sat right next to the man drinking his coffee.

The little angel knew that he was getting close to the lesson at this point, and the senior angel said, “Come on over here.”

Now, angels can see devils but devils can’t see angels, so this devil couldn’t see the two angels watching him. If he could have seen them, then he never would have done what he was about to do, because everything that angels learn about what devils are doing gives angels the opportunity to teach human beings how to be smarter than the devils.

So, this devil leans over to the man sitting there in the coffee shop, and the angels lean forward to hear something that the devil whispers into the man’s ear. The little angel falls back and says, “Ah ha! I see now. This explains so much.” The senior angel confirms, “That’s right.”

What the little angel heard the devil whisper in the man’s ear was this: “Take this pain and pass it along.” With those words, the devil gave that man a little bit of pain.

The angels followed the man as he walked down the street. When he got to his car, he found that somebody had parked his car too close to his, making it very hard for him to get out of his parking space. A string of oaths came out of the man’s mouth as he contemplated banging his car into the offending car.

Then, just as he lets out that stream of violent energy, a woman walking down the street nearby — who actually didn’t hear what the man said — did exactly what the devil had told the man to do, which was to “take this pain and pass it along. ” That woman picked up the man’s pain and never even knew it, never saw it, never felt it go into her.

The moment that pain entered into the woman walking down the street, she looked in a store window and saw a co-worker who had said something to her yesterday. Now she knew why she was in pain because there was “the idiot that made her feel that way.”

The woman in the shop looked out and saw the woman looking in with a scowl on her face (that she didn’t know she had on her face), and felt the pain that woman was passing along to her. The minute the woman in the store felt it, she began to think of her son who had gotten bad grades and who continued to resist the education that was necessary, and she made up her mind that when she got home, she was going to “ground him and really show him something” … and to the devil’s delight, the pain was passed along endlessly to unsuspecting human beings.

Guy Finley is the best-selling author of The Secret of Letting Go and more than 30 other books and audio albums that have sold over a million copies in 16 languages worldwide.

In addition, he has presented over 4,000 unique self-realization seminars to thousands of grateful students throughout North America and Europe over the past 20 years and has been a guest on over 400 television and radio shows, including national appearances on ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, NPR, Wisdom Network, and many others.

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The Spiritual Moral / Meaning of This Story

This story reveals one of the most important but invisible spiritual dynamics in everyday life: how pain, once introduced into the human experience, often multiplies—not because of its power, but because of our unconsciousness. The devil doesn’t need armies. He only needs one whisper: “Take this pain and pass it along.”

Pain is part of the human condition. We will all experience it. But what this story teaches is that the real danger lies not in the pain itself—but in how we handle it. Most of us don’t. We don’t sit with it, feel it, or inquire into its origins. Instead, we pass it along. We project it outward, we blame, we scowl, we punish, we withdraw, or we overreact. We pass pain to the next person like a baton in a race we never meant to run.

The senior angel’s lesson to the little angel is clear: the world doesn’t need more people pretending not to hurt. It needs more people willing to interrupt the chain. It needs people who can feel pain without transmitting it. Who can say, “This ends with me.” That is what true spiritual maturity looks like.

In the story, pain spreads invisibly, silently. The woman on the street doesn’t know why she suddenly scowls. The man with the car doesn’t realize he’s become an agent of pain. The co-worker, the son, the entire chain reacts without understanding. This is how most people live—unaware that they are not just feeling pain, but spreading it.

And this is the devil’s delight. He doesn’t need to inflict suffering directly. He only needs to nudge one unaware person. From there, the dominoes fall.

Yet, the beauty of the story lies in its subtle call to awaken. The angels don’t interfere. They observe. They learn. And their role is to teach us to see. Because once we see the pattern, we can break it. Awareness becomes the divine wedge that interrupts unconscious behavior.

This story also teaches that true spiritual power doesn’t come from grandeur or miraculous displays. It comes from a single moment of internal resistance. When someone feels pain and chooses not to pass it on. That moment becomes an act of love. A cosmic reset.

We are always at a fork in the road: Will I recycle this pain—or will I heal it? If we pause—truly pause—when we’re hurt, confused, or angry, we open a space where Grace can enter. And in that space, the devil loses his grip.

Personal Reflection Questions

Spiritual stories are an opportunity to reflect on your own life. Here are 10 questions you can use to go deeper with the teachings in this story:

Pause for a moment. Place your attention on your heart. These questions are not designed to shame or blame, but to gently bring awareness to your part in the invisible web we all live in. You are not alone in this—and you do have the power to change the pattern.

• When I feel emotional pain, do I tend to pass it along or hold space for it?
• What are my most common ways of transmitting pain—words, silence, sarcasm, blame?
• Can I remember a recent moment when someone passed their pain onto me? How did I respond?
• What does it feel like in my body when I unconsciously absorb someone else’s pain?
• How might I become more aware of when I’ve picked up energy that isn’t mine?
• What would it take for me to say, “This pain ends with me”?
• Who in my life regularly passes along pain—and how do I usually react to them?
• Can I recall a moment when I consciously chose not to pass pain onward? What helped?
• How might I build the spiritual strength to sit with discomfort instead of projecting it?
• What practices help me cleanse emotional energy rather than spread it?