Before beginning any mediumship training, it is my way to give an outline of the mind and how it can be prepared for working with the spirit world. I always share this information at the start of a new course and I’m sharing it with you now so that you can understand your own mind and how it can be affected by both the spirit world and your own emotions.
To start your spiritual development, I would always recommend finding a good teacher or spiritual group where you feel accepted and find it easy to trust those around you. There’s something about working as a group that I’ve always found helpful for my spiritual work. I know many mediums who don’t ‘sit in a circle’, as it is known, and some who never have, and often they’ll protest that you don’t need to develop your spiritual gifts ‘in circle’ and if the gift is natural, it will proceed on its own.
To some extent I’d have to agree that a natural medium would probably find a way to use their special abilities in their life, but I must say that it was my circle that really shaped me as a person and taught me to have great respect for the spirit world and the way that those who are there very lovingly guide us whenever we need them. One of the things I tell all my new students is that spiritual development is about making a better person for spirit to channel through, and that is what happened to me and has happened to so many I know who started with a group. There are many Spiritualist churches and other organizations that offer people the chance to develop in a circle and you should be able to find one in your area.
That isn’t to say that you can’t develop on your own. If you are going to do this, though, make it a special practice, just as you would if you were going to a development class. However you choose to start, try to be as committed as you can to your development. (For more on both circles and sitting alone, see Chapter 6.)
Whether you are on your own or in a group, the process is in fact the same: you begin your spiritual development by sitting quietly and trying to enter a meditative state. It is wise to sit where you feel comfortable and balanced. If you are in a room in your own home, then make sure it is a room you feel good in. Always try to start at the same time and to prepare the room first. Some people like to light a candle or burn incense, but whatever you do, it’s about turning your mind in a more spiritual direction before you begin your practice – and that means clearing the mind.
I look back now at what Mrs Primrose taught me about listening and observing without thought or judgement and understand its true value. The problem that most students have when they start out is they believe that they are getting more messages from the spirit world than they really are. They assume that when they sit and close their eyes every thought or conversation that passes through their mind is coming from a source other than their own thinking mind.
Like my teacher before me, I listen to each student and try to hear in the tone of their voice where they are truly speaking from. I’ve learned how important it is to take note of everything they tell me, even if I know that what they’re saying is nothing to do with the spirit world or has no bearing on their spiritual development. A good teacher should always observe and listen to their students.
Most people at this early stage are getting a tiny percentage of spirit messages through their mind and a large percentage of their own thoughts and imaginings, based on their emotional state before they began their practice. If you’ve come into your meditation with a mind full of things that are happening in your everyday life and you can’t switch from this kind of thinking, chances are your session will be focused on those situations and you’ll have no chance of getting any proper meditation done, let alone receiving any messages from the other side.
That’s why it is very wise in the early days to allow the day you’ve just come from to wind down in your mind before engaging in any meditation practice. It’s also good to talk to other people for a while, just to let go of anything that might be sitting at the front of your upper thinking mind. This is the part of your mind that you use in your normal waking day. Arriving a bit early to meditation class, even if only by 10 or 20 minutes, will give you time to let off steam, maybe share some of what has occurred in your day and relax into the idea of moving from an everyday situation into a meditation practice. You really don’t want to take your day into the quiet space of your meditative mind if you can help it.
One of the best things I remember doing before my own development class was deliberately walking to it after work, rather than getting on a bus. There was something about that early evening walk from the north to the west of Glasgow that cleared my mind and allowed me to release many of the confused thoughts that had gathered during my working day. I honestly think that the time I spent walking was my first real experience of mindfulness: I was just walking and observing without assessment or judgement. By the time I reached the church, my mind was almost empty.
It’s also good to take on board the notion that your development class is on a different level from the everyday stuff. The very idea that you’re going to a special place might take your mind to a higher vibration before you sit in your session. When you can do this, you’re getting into the right state of mind to begin your development.
Any form of spiritual connection is about raising your awareness to a higher state. Remember that spirits exist in that higher state, as they are part of the divine.
So many students come to me and tell me that they get amazing messages from the spirit world but they’re scared of the spirits who bring the messages. Or that they’d love to sit in a development group, but they’re afraid that they might go into ‘some sort of funny trance state’ and never come out of it. Or that they’re never sure of the spirits – some might be bad, etc.
It is because of ideas like this that I’ve devised a way of helping people to get over their fear of spirits and spiritual development and showing them that there’s nothing to fear but fear itself.
Take a look at the diagram below. The great thing about it is that it’s easy to see how the human mind works when affected by its own emotional states, both high and low, positive and negative.
A representation of the human mind
In the diagram you can see two triangles, one on top of the other. The lower triangle represents the lower, more human part of the mind, and you’ll notice that the word ‘fear’ is written across the base of it. This is there to remind you that our very lowest mental states, where we encounter depression, anger and jealousy, are born out of fear. It is also in this very heavy, dense part of our consciousness that we experience the most human desires, things like lust and greed and of course ego. It’s this part of the human mind that we want to move away from on our spiritual journey.
The word ‘balance’ runs through the part where the points of the two triangles touch, and this is where we want to have our awareness during our meditations. When we can reach this area, we’re getting into the proper frame of mind to open up to a higher source. That source is the spirit world, our spirit guides and teachers who watch over us and who can communicate with us and give us guidance once we have a clear, balanced mind for them to work with.
It’s so important to learn that negativity is a human thing and nothing to do with the spirit world. The sooner you learn this, the sooner you can make progress in your development.
Imagine for a moment a person who has a belief in the spirit world but whose awareness is constantly dragged down to the lower realms of thinking. The spirit world they experience in meditation might appear quite dark. Such people often refer to ‘bad’ or ‘dark’ spirits and ‘places where the spirit can get stuck’ and so on. But these descriptions come from their own fear, not from the spirit world.
I honestly feel that if your mind is full of fear and dread then you aren’t in the right place to develop mediumship.
Remember, a medium is someone who helps people who are afraid, not someone who projects their own negative imaginings onto others.
It’s quite easy to see this happening in the behaviour of a new student and it’s certainly easy to hear it in the things they describe. For me, a person like this is immersed in the lower part of their mind, the bottom triangle, where fear is controlling their thoughts.
Whenever I encounter someone who has psychic episodes and experiences but whose mind is filled with fear, I suggest that they start their development by attending relaxation groups and very gentle meditation classes where they aren’t expected to do any mediumship or psychic exercises, just relax the body and quieten the mind. Once they are able to lift their mind up, away from their own fearful thinking, then they are better prepared to make progress in self-awareness and meditation under the guidance of a good teacher.
One of the German students in a group I took several years ago would break down and cry during her meditations and shake with fear as if something terrible had happened to her, when in reality she’d only sat down with a small group of other students, closed her eyes and tried to quieten her thinking mind and sit in her own inner space. But her own inner space was filled with fear and dread.
This was something she’d been experiencing for many years and it kept her awake for long periods of time at night when she should have been sleeping.
She explained to me that she had a fear of letting go and that the idea of not being in control of her thoughts was very frightening to her. I found this fascinating, because she really was only being asked to sit quietly and learn how to meditate. It’s very interesting how some people see meditation as something mystical rather than relaxing or contemplative.
But I had to deal with my student, and I did, as it was important that she conquered this fear, otherwise she would never move on in her development, not to mention her life.
Instead of sitting her in the meditation group, I gave her guided meditations where I would suggest images, places and situations of a relaxing nature and talk her through each procedure step by step. She was easy to relax and she stayed focused, it seemed, on every suggestion I made. The only time I witnessed her brow furl with confusion or her body twitch was when I paused for a moment so she might process my words.
It became clear to me that this very nice woman didn’t want to be with her own thoughts unless they were controlled and guided. She really wasn’t happy in her own space or her own mind. I wondered what could possibly have caused this in an adult.
I spent some time talking to her and trying to encourage her to talk to me, explaining that if she could find the source of this fear, we could fix it, but she wasn’t ready. It was six months before I finally got her to open up. Then she spoke of how as a child she’d been told that if she was bad or didn’t go to sleep when asked, ghosts and demons would come and get her in the night.
How ridiculous! What were those people thinking? If you want a child to sleep, why on earth would you put fear into their small vulnerable mind before putting them to bed?
It’s also incredible how many people suffer from similar fearful thinking. This woman herself had other fears, which she realized came from a similar time in her young life. Again we were able to talk about them and I was able to help her to rationalize her thoughts and move into a more balanced place in her mind.
When she realized that she was in control of her thinking and not the other way round, it gave her the strength to change her thinking habits and build a stronger mind-set, which she then took into her meditation. Within the space of a year she was meditating without fears and tears, and more than this, she was truly learning to open up to her gift of mediumship and healing, which she now practises very successfully seven years on.
So many people come to my groups with similar hangups and setbacks and without the understanding that most fears like this can’t actually harm us, they’re just something we’ve been told. It is the teller’s intention that leaves the lasting scar on the young mind.
Here’s an exercise that I used successfully with this woman. You might like to try it too. Dealing with our fears and imbalanced emotions is the first real issue we face when we undertake any kind of spiritual development.
One of the questions I’m most frequently asked by new students is: ‘How will I know what is truly coming from the spirit world and what is coming from my own mind?’ The best way to know this is to know your own mind. This is so important for anyone who embarks on a spiritual path.
Take a look back at the diagram of the mind. All of us can move up and down through the different levels. Our life circumstances can propel us up to the very high end, where we find love, joy and laughter, and just as easily drop us down into the pits of pain and despair. When you are serious about developing your mediumship, you need to be able to put yourself in the middle of those two triangles and work from a point of perfect balance, even when everything in your own world is pulling you up and down. I always try to hold on to a message I once received from my spirit guide: ‘When all around you is in motion, be still, and in your stillness, control all that is around you.’
Start by asking yourself about your usual level of thinking. Are you a person who thinks negatively about yourself, your prospects or your life in general? Are you a person who is always full of hope and whose thinking lifts you up when you’ve been put down? Are you someone who can always take an optimistic view of life, past, present and future? Are you someone who finds a way to rationalize all of life’s ups and downs and who doesn’t often react emotionally to situations? Are you balanced?
Like most people, I always assumed I was a very balanced person, but when I began my development I found that I had a habit of being self-deprecating. I could applaud everyone else’s efforts, but never my own, for some reason. I also had a terrible habit of looking at things in my own life with doubt and fear. I found it hard to be positive about my future and spent far too much time worrying about death and dying when it came to my nearest and dearest.
Learning about my thinking mind gave me a much deeper insight into myself and my emotions. So I recommend taking the time to work on yourself in this manner and dedicating the early sessions of your meditation practice to observing what happens in your inner space when you sit quietly.
What happens to your thinking in these sessions? Do you immediately think of getting a message for someone else? If so, ask yourself why this is the first thing you want to do. Do you think that you’ll never reach a high level of meditation? If so, look at why you are set on defeating your purpose.
Questioning your thinking will enable you to grow appropriately and in a steady, balanced way. It will allow you to question things that are happening in your inner world and why they are happening. Thoughts don’t just happen on their own. What’s behind them – fears, judgements, emotions?
Examining your own mind shows that you want to develop mediumship for the right reasons and in a balanced way. If you can sit in your practice each time and simply get to know your own mind, rather than be in a hurry for instant success, then you’re in the right place to move on.
It is this balanced, contented state of mind that you need to reach each time you sit in meditation. It isn’t something to experience once, but every time. It’s part of your meditative practice to bring your mind into balance and hold it there, no matter what emotions or feelings pass through your being. Just be still and hold that balance, even if your imagination starts to light up with pictures or colours, or you hear internal conversations. Don’t get carried away and follow any of the impressions, thoughts or feelings that may come to you. You need to become an observer – a cameraman rather than the subject of the film. The whole idea of this process is to have control over your awareness and not be pulled up or down by your emotional thinking. Remember, your awareness is the stream, not the leaf that floats on top of it!
From this point of balance, you will have an overview of your thoughts, feelings and desires and can become truly discerning about the true you, the spiritual you that is about to flourish. Not only can you look down on the old you, but you can look up and see what lies above you. You can learn how to go up and let the higher energies influence your mind.
The upper part of our mind is where we experience the highs of life, such as joy, happiness, compassion and of course love. As nice as it would be, none of us can live here throughout our life, but as a spiritual student it is your aim to lift your thinking to a point where you can at least see the positive rather than the negative. You have to find ways to let love into your life!
I know that when I first began to sit in development I felt all the worries of my own world nagging at me, and fear was never too far away from my thoughts. After all, I was very young and had a wife and two young sons to look after, and any parent knows the weight of responsibility that can bear down on the mind at such times.
I wanted to grow spiritually and I knew in my heart that I was a medium, but the world I lived in was heavy and often short on positive goals to aim for. Nonetheless, I followed the drive that was in me and made myself face my fears and fight the urges that said life was too tough. Luckily I always had a kind of mental reflex that naturally found positive answers to problems.
One instance that comes to mind was when I was working as a hairdresser in a salon where every client had more need to discard emotional baggage than hair. One day I was faced with a woman in her late thirties who had lost her husband and her family home and was now living with her two teenage sons in cramped conditions in a friend’s house. She was having a terrible time of it and had come into the salon to have a dry haircut, the cheapest thing on our price list. I think she just needed to be with people who wouldn’t add to her troubles for a while.
It just so happened that there were no other clients in at that time and she told her story to me and the rest of the staff. She wasn’t asking for answers as much as unburdening herself, I suppose. It was hard to listen to a woman whose future was so bleak and who seemed to have no resolve or energy to go on, but something stirred in me and I knew that there were solutions to her problems. This stirring wasn’t coming from my psychic gift but my attitude, which I now realized had begun to change since I’d been sitting in my development class.
As I remember, I told the woman that she was looking at her whole life as one big episode and if she did that, she’d always be facing a mighty wall of hopelessness. I recall advising her to look at the first thing she needed and to make this her goal. Once she’d accomplished this, even if it was only a small success, she could celebrate it and progress from there. Her problems seemed too huge for her to even think about tackling, so it felt right to advise her to turn them into progressive steps to build up minor achievements until a sense of accomplishment replaced the feeling of hopelessness.
After that, she would pop into the salon for a cup of tea and a chat from time to time and inform us how she was getting on, and in a series of events over a six-month period her life began to move upwards. She first got herself and her boys a decent house from the authorities and shortly afterwards came a part-time job, followed by a reason to live.
I’m happy to say that this lady became my friend and still is today. She has a degree from the Open University and her work now is counselling women who are going through what she once did.
For me, this is what natural mediums do: they take darkness and turn it into light. Everyone knows life has ups and downs – a life has to contain both – but to develop spiritually you must find a way to move through your life and take some measure of control when you can. That is part of being a medium. So, when everything seems to be moving in a downward spiral, look up. Through this one action, directions can be changed.
Just as the word ‘balance’ runs between the tips of the two triangles and indicates to us where our awareness needs to be when we’re working with the spirit world, so the word ‘love’ runs across the top triangle and indicates what we’re working with. This triangle has its point facing downwards and the sides extending outwards, showing the expansion of the upper part of the mind. If you can learn to lift up your thinking, you’re preparing your mind to love and to feel love.
More often than not, a medium works in the energy of a person who is very down, sad or broken by life’s tragedies. Doing this work takes a lot of mental strength and a very positive attitude – a medium should always be able to look upwards when the recipient of their gift doesn’t know how to.
Teaching your mind to sit at a higher frequency also means you can truly begin to feel love for yourself. It is so important to know love in yourself before you share it with others, because the real work of a medium is about sharing love and reconnecting the ties of love that have been severed by physical death.
I don’t expect you to get a strong connection with spirit in the early part of your development process, but I do expect you to try. By this I mean you should dedicate yourself to a meditation group or practice and learn how to put the world aside and devote this sacred space and time to making your mind stronger, clearer and more balanced. With each attempt to do this, you will allow the spirit guides around you to build a connection with you at a higher level – a love level.
Once you’ve found that you can sit with a balanced mind, above your old fears and habitual thinking, you’re ready to proceed a little further down the road of spiritual development.