This article was originally published in The Afterlife Magazine by The Otherside Press which is now part of the PDN family.
Why Personal Development is Crucial in Mediumship
The journey toward becoming a medium can be a very exciting one — full of first-time, mind and soul altering experiences. After all, coming to know the unseen world in very personal and passionate ways is incredibly fascinating and unique, and no one pathway is ever quite the same.
Along the road, we take classes, workshops, seek out mentors, read a plethora of books, and venture on many roads-less-travelled in search of a powerful connection to ourselves, the spirit world and the universe at large. One thing, however, that we can sometimes miss is the call from within to tend to personal blocks and wounds that may exist within our very selves.
We can sometimes be so motivated to help the other – to find ways to ease the suffering and spur the growth and healing of those who might need our help – that we miss the very first and most crucial aspect of any spiritual work, which is healing the self.
Getting It Right With Personal Development
As intermediaries between the worlds, Mediums have the honor and privilege of relaying messages of importance from those in spirit to those here in the living. But along with that ever-important task, the vocation carries with it tremendous responsibility to ‘get it right’. But what does ‘getting it right’ even mean?
It has been a fascinating journey over years of teaching and mentoring new mediums to develop and hone their skills. Skill development alone is a long-term commitment. It requires care, attention, focused learning, and practice.
Progressing from your first real contact with a spirit person to sitting as a professional in service to others (and being consistently good at it) can take years, indeed.
Development circles, classes and having peak spiritual experiences are all par-for-the-course in the unfoldment of a mediumship practice. And each of these aspects of development and learning are critical — absolutely required.
Expanding Soul Consciousness
In the teaching of hundreds of students, some of whom are excellent professional mediums, intuitives and healers, I have consistently found tremendous value, and necessity, in moving beyond just the skill development aspects of mediumship.
As much as understanding and mastering the ‘mechanics’ behind spirit communication is an essential part of the learning process, so too is the development of greater levels of one’s soul-consciousness (you could also think of this as becoming more spirit-like, or shifting into a greater identity of self as a soul rather than just a personality). This process of transformation of identity or level of consciousness usually has to be preceded by some level of healing within the personality or ego bodies.
Guiding students to enter into their own wounding, in search of meaning, purpose and eventual healing, should be as much a part of the long-term syllabus in mediumship development as exercises and experiences with the formless.
Personal Development and Healing
Healing is a big word, though, and it can get lost in a sentence quite easily. What exactly is meant by ‘healing’? I have always found the word itself needs to be understood more clearly, and in order to achieve that, we must anatomize it — we must unpack it a little.
Whether you are a student of mediumship or a soul journeyer, unpacking the term healing is all-important. For me, healing is about extracting the learning that is available to you out of a negative or wounding experience and then integrating that learning or growth into your life in a meaningful way.
The healing process really begins when we are able to assign or identify some meaning and purpose behind the challenges or the ache. When we are able to see what good can come out of it. Then we can step into the power to create our life out of what we are left with and make something meaningful out of it.
To discover meaning and purpose and eventually enter into the healing, we must touch the wound. We must find it. And we must come to know it honestly — deep as ever.
No Mud, No Lotus
This is the part of personal development that can be scary — because it can hurt. But with the right guidance or mentorship from a soul-based coach, counsellor, or other trusted and soul-conscious individual or professional, you can absolutely enter into the woundedness and shift into healing. It is a beautiful universal truth and promise that following the darkness, we will enter into light. The light, or the new version of ourselves, isn’t about restoring who or what we were before. Rather, it is a re-birthing of our new selves.
But we must truly and authentically walk through that darkness, taking with us all there is to learn and know about the experience — no by-passing, no puddle jumping.
Walking through the mud is a good way to think of it…and the mud will eventually lead you to solid ground if you keep going. This truth is also demonstrated through the phrase, “No mud, no lotus”.
We all have the choice to walk through the dark and make our way to the light, but conversely, we can also enter into the shadow and choose (consciously or unconsciously) to not walk through to the other side – into the learning, the freedom, and the growth. Each of us has free will choice to do as we please. And may we never judge the choices of others, but rather see them (and ourselves) as we are, with a heart full of love, compassion, and kindness.
Understanding Universal Truths
Within the context of mediumship, personal development involving shadow and wound work hold much relevance. When spirit people transmit messages, the mediumship messages are usually two-tiered in that they touch two levels of a reality; they touch the specific or particular and form aspects of a reality, and they are also steeped in the universal aspects of a reality – also referred to as a greater reality than what the form world so easily perceives.
Their messages at the surface can be specific and pertinent and often very resourceful in nature. For example: “Getting fired from your job was necessary for you, even though you can’t see how it’s beneficial from your current viewpoint. A new opportunity is sitting in the field of potentiality for you, once you have done a little more processing of the anger and fear that surfaced after you lost your job. Consider being open to opportunities presented to you by a close female friend”.
Behind (or more accurately, above) the resourceful message will be a universal truth being communicated. Strip away the details, and what is the spirit person saying?
Filtered upward into a universal nature or theme, this message is stating various universal realities that need to be communicated, some of which could include:
– All that we experience holds meaning and purpose, even if we can’t identify what they are right away
– Doors will close that are not meant for us
– Doors will open when the timing is right and appropriate for us, and not before or after
– There is no blame to be issued and the consciousness of blame is heavy and non-life-affirming
– While we have experiences within a life that are pre-planned by the soul, we also have free-will choice. This means that certain experiences will not come into our earthly life unless and until we have met other factors, which we reach through our own conscious choices to move forward and look at something with a deeper, more soul-infused lens
– Perceived negative experiences (wounds) highlight within us our own shadow – the parts of our soul consciousness that are not active, not identified with. In this way, woundedness is a powerful experience that points us in the direction of where we need to grow – it shows us our own shadow that is asking to be illuminated by the light of soul – it shows us parts of our soul that we are disconnected from and not identified with
– All woundedness teaches us to stop relying on others to fulfill the needs of our soul and empowers us to self-generate the qualities we want and need to experience. This puts us in a power position in our own life rather than in a victim consciousness. Because of this, we can and may eventually be grateful for the wound
Would you believe that in addition to the specific message about being fired from a job, spirit wanted you to say all of this stuff, too? Well, they did, indeed. Fully transitioned souls in the otherworld are conscious beyond what we can perpetually obtain while here in form — while we are still influenced by and expressing through the form bodies.
The vibrational frequency of a transitioned spirit person far exceeds what we can achieve for any appreciable length of time while in form.
Their consciousness or lens through which they ‘see’ things is always one of knowingness, lovingness and power, and as such, they want to impart this level of insight and wisdom to their loved ones here in the physical world. Why? Because they want to help in our personal development - our understanding, healing, and growth.
Honoring the Role of Messenger
This leads us to our own growth, personal development, healing, and understanding of the nature of spirit and the universe at large. Because spirit people wish to have universal truths and realities communicated to their loved ones here in the physical, and we as mediums have made a commitment to honor the role of messenger, then we must be equipped to share the messages: undistorted, unfiltered, unbiased.
If we do not tend to our own personal work throughout the journey of becoming intermediary between worlds, then we will have no personal understanding of universal truths because we will not have experienced the manifestation of those realities in our own lives. If we have no lived experience, then how will we be able to communicate these levels of truth to someone else?
Universal truths such as: our thoughts and beliefs create our experiences, consciousness or soul survives physical death, hard experiences are teachers for us, we have agreements with others souls in our life, everyone is doing the best they can from the level of consciousness they have, in the language of the universe there is no pass or fail, there are simply experiences, etc. are best known and expressed to others from a place of lived experience.
If we have not successfully walked through some level of wounding to healing ourselves, how can we help lead someone else there, authentically?
There is a case to be made for any individual who walks into their hurt and pain to emerge more empowered, more loving, more understanding, and more soul-conscious. Becoming greater versions of ourselves is one of the gifts we can give ourselves during the earth walks we choose. The case is of even greater importance for those who wish to be the messengers for the other side.
