People often assume that you need to possess a special gift to be a medium. I believe that mediumship is a natural human skill, and that it can be developed just like you can learn how to read, write, calculate math, draw, drive a car, or play an instrument. None of us was born knowing any of these things, yet all of us managed to acquire most of these skills.
It is true: There are the Mozarts of this world who can compose music at the very tender age of five, and there are children who are naturally sensitive to spirit communication. Just as Mozart had to learn to play the piano and write music, the Mozarts of mediumship at some point must invest effort and discipline into unfolding their gifts.
Just because someone remembers being able to perceive the spirit world in childhood does not mean this person is going to be a better medium than those who discover their gifts at a later age. Someone who learned to play the guitar at age eight is not always going to be better or more gifted than someone who learned to play the instrument at age thirty-five or fifty-five.
In fact, I would say that the majority of mediums discover their gifts as adults. For example, one of my students is a neonatal intensive care nurse in a big hospital on the East Coast. One day, as she sat beside a premature infant in a coma, the baby’s spirit told her that everything would be okay and to just tell everyone to hang in there. The infant assured the nurse that she would make it—and she did! Another example involves a friend who took Reiki training. On day two of coaching, he realized that a spirit healer was standing next to him and was giving him information about the fellow student he was practicing on. A third medium discovered her gift during her career as a funeral director. All of these individuals turned into fine mediums, though none of them remember any outstanding abilities or experiences during their childhoods.
How This Book Will Help You
This book will teach you how to connect with the spirit world in a straightforward, step-by-step process. Each step builds on the previous one, and you are introduced to key concepts as you go. You will learn how to develop your own innate gift of spirit communication, how mediumship works, how the spiritual senses work, how to establish a spiritual foundation to support your mediumship, and what constitutes compelling evidence of the survival of consciousness beyond the change called death.
A key element of this book that sets it apart from others of this genre is its quantity of specific and useful detail—detail that allows insight into what mediums experience in their minds and bodies as they engage in spirit contact. By describing how mediums perceive the spirit people through the spiritual senses, I will help you begin to understand what to look for in your own development. I draw on not only my own experience, but also on the experience of typical student mediums.
Most people don’t think they have the ability to communicate with the spirit world, simply because they don’t know what to look for. They expect to see their deceased loved ones just as they would perceive a person in the physical realm. Once they are aware of what to look for—and they commit to regular practice—students are able to connect with the spirit people.
How to Use This Book
I recommend you read the book from start to finish instead of jumping into random individual chapters. The material progressively builds upon fundamental concepts, and it’s best to have the base knowledge before you skip around.
Take your time to become familiar with each of the steps involved in connecting with the spirit people. For easy reference, you might want to bookmark the pages with the individual steps as you go.
This book also includes a lot of techniques and exercises to help you sharpen your skills. Make these practices a part of your life, because they represent the spiritual foundation upon which mediumship is built. Repeat the exercises often.
Record each practice and exercise in a journal dedicated to the development of your mediumship. Throughout the months and years of its unfolding, record the impressions and communications you receive from the spirit world. On days when you feel that things just aren’t happening fast enough, your journal will help you look back and realize how far you’ve come.
If possible, sign up for a development circle with a qualified teacher and commit to attending each session (chapter 13, “Development Circles and Home Circles” ).
Remember all the practice you had to put into perfecting your ability to walk, talk, read, and write, and the many hours of practice involved in learning how to play your favorite instrument or whatever other skill you’ve developed. So practice, practice, practice! And, most of all, have a lighthearted attitude and have fun with it.
The Rewards of Mediumship
The rewards of mediumship development are manifold. They include:
A Few Things to Keep in Mind
Throughout the book I use the words “God,” “Great Mystery,” “Great Spirit,” and “Infinite Intelligence” to refer to the divine source of the universe. These terms are simply most comfortable to me. Please feel free, though, to substitute names that are most comfortable and familiar to you. For example, if you normally pray to the Divine Mother, or to the Goddess, or to Allah, or to the Source of All that Is, then use these forms of address instead of mine.
Also, as you start out on the honorable path of mediumship development, please realize that you are very much like an artist who is in the process of creating something beautiful. Under all circumstances, you must be gentle with yourself and refrain from negative self-criticism.
Please be patient. The path of the medium is full of thousands of baby steps that add up over time. And, as with everything else in life, it’s the journey of discovery that counts, not the final destination. In mediumship, there is no final destination or bed of laurels to stretch out and rest on.
My Path As a Medium
I was able to perceive the spirit people at a young age. And because this was natural to me, it took some years before I realized that I was seeing things other kids did not. After a particularly bruising morning at elementary school where one of my classmates started howling, “Konstanza sees dead people!” and the rest of the class hooligans joined in a cacophonous chorus, I had enough. I just wanted to be “normal.” And so the gift departed. I had sent it away, and Infinite Intelligence respected my free will.
It didn’t return for thirty-some years, when in 2001—on a Tuesday morning at four—my deceased grandmother stood by the foot of my bed. I was living in Conakry, Guinea, at the time. The odd thing was that my grandmother looked like a schoolgirl about eleven years old, yet I recognized her instantly. Years later, I would learn that the spirit people often assume the appearance they had at the time in their life when they were happiest. Spirit people also often show themselves to a medium in the form that their loved one on earth, also known as the sitter, would best remember them. If the medium described them at unfamiliar ages or in unfamiliar settings, the sitter would probably have no clue who they are.
I do not recall specific events that precipitated the encounter with my deceased grandmother, except that I had begun to read books on spirituality and felt increasingly drawn toward mysticism.
In the years after the encounter with my grandmother, I experienced other occasions of spontaneous spirit contact. Finally, one day in 2004 I decided that it was time to attend a Spiritualist church and learn more. A year later, in early August 2005, a church member introduced me to a development circle held by one of the ministers at the church. I was floored when three spirit people presented themselves to me during my very first day in the circle, and the sitters in the circle validated every piece of information the spirits provided.
At the time, though, I was unable to hold a spirit link for more than a few seconds at most. I had no clue how to go about receiving additional information from the spirit visitors or how to resolve the various problems that can occur during a mediumship session. Still, I was off to what I considered a glorious start, and I kept at it. I attended that circle every Monday night for three years. During this time I also attended private home circles. I have now sat in circles for more than a decade, and I know that I will do so for the rest of my physical life.
I am an ordained Spiritualist minister, national Spiritualist teacher, and certified medium through the National Spiritualist Association of Churches (NSAC). I have been teaching mediumship and psychic development classes and circles since 2009. This book grew from my own mediumship development experiences, from the thousands of readings that I have given, from my years of teaching circles and workshops, and from inspiration from my spirit helpers. It is my sincere wish that this book helps you open the door to your own connection with the spiritual realms.