Is It Spirit Communication
or Imagination?
Because mediums receive spirit impressions through the spiritual senses, beginners often find it difficult to recognize spirit communication. Beginners want to know how to tell the difference between spirit communications and their own thoughts, feelings, imagination, daydreams, self-talk, and so forth. The gift of discernment develops with time as you grow in your meditation practice and self-knowledge, and as you practice self-observation.
How to Distinguish Spirit
Communication from Your Thoughts
Luckily, it is rather easy to recognize a thought; its main characteristic is that its antecedent can be traced back to the thought’s origin in everyday life. That is, you can backtrack: “I was cleaning the car when I thought about my upcoming trip to the grocery store, which caused me to remember that I had forgotten my wallet.” Information from Spirit, on the other hand, tends to be completely unrelated to whatever we had just been thinking about. As one medium puts it, “When I suddenly find myself thinking about people, situations, or things that are completely unrelated to myself and my life, then I know that I am receiving Spirit communication.”
Spirit information has a fresh feel to it and typically runs counter to our habitual inclinations or preferences. For example, I was separated for two and a half years before I finally filed for divorce. Throughout this time, I kept having the recurring thought, “Go ahead and file for divorce. Don’t waste time. You need to take care of this now.” I wasn’t ready, though, so I dragged my feet and procrastinated. When I finally filed for divorce, an important matter went against me, in part because I had delayed for so long. My spirit people had done what they could to urge me to take action, so in the end I only had myself to blame.
Another characteristic of thoughts is that they come and go and tend to change over time. On the other hand, Spirit messages are consistent and repetitive. Spirit won’t suggest today that you file for divorce and backtrack tomorrow. A fellow medium puts it this way: “When I push a thought away, but it keeps coming back, I know it’s coming from Spirit, and I need to pay attention.”
Spirit will repeat the message in many different creative ways. You might not only hear the idea repeatedly in your mind, but also when you turn on the radio and suddenly a song tells you to go ahead and do what Spirit has suggested. When I was in denial of the need of filing for divorce, each time I turned on the car radio, I’d hear the Fleetwood Mac song “Go Your Own Way.”
How to Distinguish
Clairvoyance from Your Imagination
Observe how your clairvoyant images differ from your daydreams and regular imagination. For example, my clairvoyant images arrive with a very sharp and distinct energy. The image comes quickly, in very bright colors, and seems to gather toward an energetic center. Also, my clairvoyant scenes appear against a black background. Obviously, that is very different from my ordinary, everyday imagination. The images of my imagination arise more slowly, but are larger than life. They have a softer, fuzzier focus than my clairvoyant images, but they present in full view, as in the movies.
How to Distinguish Clairaudience from Self-Talk
During the next couple of days, become more self-observant; notice how you talk to yourself and what subjects your self-talk focuses on. In my experience, self-talk tends to be focused on the mundane. I have noticed that when I talk or think to myself, my thoughts are always in the first-person singular. “I should do this and that today.” “I have to remember to call so-and-so.” “I’ve got an appointment with the dentist at 3:30 p.m.” When I hear the voice of Spirit through my clairaudience, I’m addressed in the second-person singular, and there is fresh tone to the message. I hear things like, “Why don’t you try this?” or “Wouldn’t it be nice if you did that?”
Most people have a rather vocal, disapproving inner critic. The tone of the inner critic is usually judgmental and negative. The inner critic might say things like, “Who are you to write a book?” “What do you know about writing? Nothing!” or “You are too fat, too old, too inexperienced, not creative enough, not witty enough, yak, yak, yak!”
Spirit’s voice, on the other hand, is usually upbeat and positive. Spirit might say things like, “You won’t feel so sluggish in the morning if you eat fruit before bedtime instead of ice cream.” Or, “Go ahead and write your book. We’ll help you find the information you’ll need.” Or, “If you write a little every day, you’ll have a book by the end of the year.”
Also, pay attention to where you hear your thoughts. I have noticed that I hear clairaudiently in my left ear, so when I hear a voice on my left side, I know it’s my clairaudience and I better pay attention. If the voice is just in the center of my head, I know it is self-talk.
How to Distinguish
Clairsentience from Your Feelings
The best way to learn to distinguish your own feelings from clairsentience is through regularly monitoring your emotions and physical sensations. Several times a day, stop what you are doing and check in with your feelings. What are you feeling? How does your body feel? Are you tired, cranky, sad, vulnerable, happy, exuberant, and confident? Does your body feel relaxed and healthy? What aches and pains are typical for you?
When a person comes into your room, home, or cubicle at work, check your feelings again. How have they changed from the base feeling you’ve had throughout the day? Then, check back with your base feeling. If it is unchanged, but you are noticing feelings of sadness, depression, or perhaps achy knees, you might be picking up on someone else’s feelings.
If you are having a fine day and suddenly you notice that you are feeling unsettled, think back. When did the unsettled feeling begin? What triggered it? Did something upsetting or annoying happen that flipped your trigger? Whom did you talk to or interact with? When we trace the feeling back to its origin, we often discover that what we are feeling has nothing to do with us.
If you are very sensitive and you are easily affected by the moods of others, stop and ask yourself, “Whose feeling is this?” I always get a clear answer when I ask myself this question. If it’s not my own feeling, then I just let it go.
You can release the conditions and emotions of others through visualization. You can intend and imagine that earth’s natural magnetism is drawing all unwanted energy off of you, transmuting it into beauty and light. You can also splash cold water on your face or drink a glass of water to break an energetic connection, whether it is with a person in the physical realm or with a spirit person (see chapter 14, “Nurturing Your Mediumship Over the Long Haul”).
How to Recognize Your Intellectual Censor
Sometimes we don’t want to share information that we receive for another person because it reminds us so much of our own life that we don’t trust what we received. I call this the intellectual censor. This is an example of how it works: You are exchanging readings with another development-circle participant. You are relaxed, and spirit impressions come to you. In your mind’s eye you see your exercise partner driving in a red car on the freeway and suddenly getting hit by another car. Instead of accepting this image and describing it to your partner, you talk yourself out of it. “I’m making this up because on the way to the class I almost got hit by a red car!” Later on, you hear your exercise partner telling another circle participant about how a red car on the freeway hit her just a few days ago and how she’s now waiting for the insurance money.
Or perhaps you tripped on a rock during a recent hike and hurt your hip. Now you are sitting in a reading, and you experience hip pain. Is it your own hip that’s acting up, or is it that of a spirit communicator? My agreement with the Great Mystery and with my spirit helpers is that everything that I feel, hear, sense, smell, taste, or experience after the opening prayer is valid spirit communication, even if I happen to have the same physical conditions that the spirit communicator had.
So, if every person that comes through in reading after reading is a balding, big-bellied guy named George, then say it anyway. Just because you’ve brought three of them through in previous sittings does not preclude your current sitter from having a big-bellied George in her family tree. Relay the information that you receive. And remember, your spirit guides have a sense of humor. They might also just be putting you through an exercise in trust.
Exercise: How to Distinguish
True and False Information
Get together with a friend or establish a phone date with a friend. Ask him or her to read you a list of statements you prepared about yourself, your life, your likes, dislikes, or other aspects of yourself. Make sure that some of the statements are true, some are false, and some are ambiguous. Ask your friend to pause for a while between statements. During that pause, observe the differences among how true, false, and ambiguous statements feel to you.
For me, true statements generate the feeling of clarity, like clear, cool water running through my body. One of my students feels a tap on the shoulder when she correctly understands spirit information. Others experience a sense of expansion when they are receiving true information.
Many people experience false information as a tightening in the body, a contraction in the stomach, or a contraction in the throat. To me, false information feels flat and empty. Sometimes I experience false information as lips moving but there is no feeling behind it. One of my friends gets a sick feeling when hearing incorrect information. Another sees a traffic light turning green when he is given correct information and turning red with false information.
Ambiguous information for me has a vague, wishy-washy feel to it, like a set of scales that has a hard time coming into balance. Some people don’t get any feeling at all with ambiguous statements.