Category Archives: Mediumship

The Ouija Board

There’s a guy in Salem, Mass., who does some really nice videos I highly recommend. His videos are posted under the moniker MagickTv.

This week he tackled one of my pet peeves, the misconception about the safety of the Ouija Board. Enjoy.

Psychic Accuracy

“There are two ways to be fooled.
One is to believe what isn’t true;
the other is to refuse to believe what is true.”
-Soren Kierkegaard
As I mentioned in a previous post, I’m currently reading Crossing Over by John Edward. As a student of mediumship, the pearls of wisdom in this book are really a huge help. Crossing-Over-John-Edward

Something I read the other night drove home a very interesting point. Not one I had never thought of, but one I had never thought of with regard to my work as a medium.

Edward was talking to a scientist who was planning on doing some experiments on the accuracy of mediumship. Cautious, and rightfully so, Edward questioned the scientist to determine if he was nothing more than a skeptic trying to debunk the field.

To his surprise, the scientist gave this analogy:

“Michael Jordan is one of the all-time great basketball players. Do you know what his average accuracy is shooting from the floor? … Around 45 percent. In a good game he might get 60 – 70 percent.

So how can somebody who’s on the average missing more than 50 percent of his shots be a superstar? The answer is that he’s got to be better than everybody else. And just because he misses a lot of shots doesn’t mean you don’t count the ones he’s made. It doesn’t mean you chalk up his dazzling plays to luck.” –Photo courtesy of Steve Lipofsky

So it got me thinking a number of different things.

Confidence
This person was looking for the “Michael Jordan” of mediumship to do the experiment. So where does that leave us other poor slobs ( 😉 ) who are just the average professional players?

Well, what it means is that we, as mediums, can read with confidence. It’s part of the process. The important thing is to get enough right that your sitter fully understands that you have connected with their loved one, and that you have given them the comfort they seek in the process.

The Numbers
Why is it that if a baseball player consistently “hits” only three out of every ten balls as a baseball player, or a basketball player “hits” only 45% of their shots, they are lauded as one of the greatest players ever, yet psychics are looked at as kooks?the_love_potion As tarot readers, psychic/mediums, animal communicators, and any other type of telepathic practitioners, we are expected to be 100% accurate, 100% of the time. And, if we are not – which nobody could possibly be – then we are nothing more than charlatans and frauds.

So you have to ask yourself, “Am I buying into the skepticism and dogma?” As a person being read (known to psychics as a ‘sitter’ or a ‘querent,’) do you expect your psychic to be 100/100? As a psychic, do you find yourself sometimes putting that pressure on yourself?

Well, don’t. And I don’t mean, as a sitter, not to expect your psychic to give you good, accurate, helpful information, or as a reader, not to strive for 100% accuracy. What I mean is that you will lose out if your expectations are unrealistic. Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. When you get or give really accurate information, accept it for what it is and don’t discredit the ‘hits’ based on the fact that there will be inevitably be ‘misses,’ (ie: information that is either misinterpreted, or not validated for one reason or another.) In doing so, you are doing a great disservice to your yourself, and to the process.

The Dogma
All of this has made me think, once again, about the fact that people believe what they want to believe – or don’t want to believe, for that matter. I find it really interesting that Christians, or Muslims or Jews, etc., don’t need to defend or explain their belief that something greater than themselves exists. The rest of the world may or may not agree with the form that belief takes, but their faith itself is accepted and they are not called ‘nut jobs’ for believing that there is a big invisible man in the sky or that Noah built an ark and filled it with pairs of every animal, or that Moses actually parted a large body of water.

Now, personally, I have no problem with anyone believing anything they want as long as it works for them, and doesn’t harm other people, animals or the environment. But the irony here is that while organized religion is simply accepted as any given belief system, belief in the afterlife, and in the telepathic/psychic world, is not. It is, in fact, constantly under attack.

But whether people look at what we do as faith or as talent, science it is certainly not. Having done psychic work for many, many years, I feel no need to ‘prove’ my abilities to anyone but myself and my clients, because skeptics aren’t going to believe you no matter how good you are. I do find myself, however, sometimes falling into their trap of expectation. And I’m beginning to realize that the pressure put on individual skills many times speak to the larger issue of defending the belief system itself.

I think what we, as psychics (and those who go to psychics) need to do is fully embrace the “hits.” If the information is accurate, it is accurate, no matter the misses. What we do is hard work. And when you feel yourself falling into that trap of unrealistic expectation, just remember: even Michael Jordan only ‘hits’ 45 percent of the time. 😉

Learning to be a Medium

john_william_waterhouse_-_the_crystal_ballI’ve read tarot for more years than I’d like to admit. I’ve spoken with animals for more years than I regularly acknowledge, I am, however, somewhat new to mediumship. I’ve been ‘speaking to the human dead’ for about a year now.

That said, one of my big problems is not the reading itself, but my confidence when I run up against a “difficult read.” My tendency is to doubt myself when I don’t get the validation I’m looking for. I need to stop doing that.

I had a reading recently which really threw me for a loop — at first. The querent was pretty much saying no to everything I presented to her. I said, “I see four kids. three are alike, one is different. That could mean three are alive, one is dead, or three are girls and one is a boy …. ” Her response, “No.”

I said, “I’m getting an “T” name. Maybe Tanya, maybe Tina … I could be off by the name but not by the letter. It’s definitely an ‘T’ ” Her response: “No. Nobody.”

This went on and on. After I finished, she told me she had 4 children, one had died and one of her daughter’s names is Terri. (Names and letters have been changed.) It came out that she was mostly just interested in knowing what one specific person she lost said on her deathbed. This was a great source of frustration for me. I had initially allowed myself to feel I had done this terrible job, when in reality, I hadn’t. I woke up the next morning thinking about all of the things that I had gotten right, but that she denied during the reading, but somehow validated in the after talk, even though she never acknowledged that what I said was accurate.

crossingoverWell, last night, as I was reading Crossing Over by John Edward, all of it made sense:

He was talking about a reading he had gotten from a woman in England, Linda Williamson, after reading her book, Contacting the Spirit World. He had been waiting for three signs from his mother and was getting frustrated that he wasn’t getting the signs he wanted. She finally said something to him which made him realize that the signs aren’t always what you expect.

He talked about how when she first started reading him, he assumed something about her and, “I totally shut down. Instead of listening to what she was saying, thinking about it, I just write it down, for lack of anything better to do. She keeps talking, and in return, I offer only an occasional grunt of indifference.”

This was how I felt my querent was. She was a terribly difficult read, which is exactly what Linda Williamson called John Edward: a difficult read. However, after the penny dropped for Edward, it was a career changing moment for him, in the way he looked at his work.

“Here I was, a professional medium, who knew all the pitfalls, and I was doing the very human thing of holding out for that one nugget that I just had to hear, as if it contained the secrets of the universe, or at least the meaning of life. ….. I knew my mother was already around … look at all the stuff I let pass right by me because I didn’t want to miss the Big One. Stuff I can’t even remember — that’s how much I ignored it. Great gifts of validation from mediums who just weren’t delivering the packages I ordered. So I returned them. It was a ridiculous thing to do.

Still I know why I did it, I know why everybody does it. If you get that one thing you’re asking for, it seems like a slightly higher level of validation. … But what if you don’t get it? Does that mean they’re not there? … What if a medium can’t get that, but gets this? If it is solid, specific, factual validation, does it make it any less valuable? This is the inevitable trap of Great Expectation.

… She had come through to me many times, in wonderful ways. …. In my weaker moments, I could even fall back into the trap. But I offered myself as Exhibit A: Don’t lose the big picture. Appreciate the messages you get. (Emphasis added.)

Reading this was monumental for me. It made me realize, on a bigger level than I already had about my reading with this woman, that maybe what her loved one said on her death bed was not the message that she was intended to get. And that maybe — and unfortunately — there were many messages that she might have received, from not only that loved one but from others as well, which might have given her some comfort, if only she had been open enough to hear them, without expectation.

candle-starfilterEvery day I learn a little more about connecting with those who have crossed, but the pervasive message that keeps coming back is the last line I wrote of his: Appreciate the messages you get. But not only appreciate them, be open to them so that you may appreciate them.

What I need to do as a medium is to be able to recognize that in my clients and help them through it so they can open to the experience, instead of allowing myself to doubt the information I’m getting. I don’t doubt it when I read tarot for people; I don’t doubt it when I speak with the fur-babies. I guess it’s all in the process of learning.