I can see why Spiritualists got a bad rap. I recently
participated in a book club conversation that took an unexpected turn. The book
we read is called Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife by Mary Roach. This particular group meets in a cemetery and
selects non-fiction in this vein. Last time we read Smoke Gets In Your Eyes:
And Other Lessons from the Crematory so you get the scene.
In Spook the author seems to be looking for intelligent, believable,
trustworthy signs of life in the world of psychic phenomena and practitioners.
Unfortunately she begins in the Victorian Era where some of the greatest
psychic frauds were perpetuated – faked séances, spirit boxes, ectoplasm (gooey
faux ghost guts) pouring from orifices you’d rather not receive anything poured
from – definitely not our glory days. Her search continues through more recent
history. Her conclusion is that alleged psychic experiences are essentially a
bunch of crackpot hooey.
The first time I tried to read Spook years ago it made me
angry. As a practicing psychic medium I felt really dissed. Then the universe
gave me the gift of re-visiting it (because I love this book group) and I found
I felt kind of sad for Mary. My impression is she really wants to find someone
or something to believe in, but that her well developed logical mind and
perhaps deep seated old fears keep kicking in.
Have you ever felt that way yourself? Do you sense there is
knowledge, wisdom, inspiration, opportunity, answers, perhaps even miracles floating
around you in some sort of invisible force field you can’t break into? Does
everybody “get it” except you? Whatever “it”
may be?
I understand.
Completely. Deeply. I remember decades ago sitting in a car with a
friend on a starry night. “Make a wish?” Robert asked me. I imagine I gave him the look. “No,
really. If you knew I had the power to grant
you a wish what would it be?” Before my
big reveal, take a deep breath and ask yourself the same thing. “If I could grant myself just one wish what
would it be?”
Grab the impressions quickly. What was the first thing that
popped into your head? Don’t worry about it making sense or being a good enough
wish. Realize we don’t get only ONE wish
– the universe is so much more generous than that. Write it down if that helps.
Try again if you feel there are more unspoken wishes seeking your attention in
your secret hidden “What If?” treasure chest. If you hear someone telling you “This
is ridiculous” yay! You are learning to actually “hear” your internal
discourse.
If someone is telling you “This is fun!” yay! That’s another
inside voice that speaks to you sometimes. The key to connecting with and
empowering yourself to use your intuition is learning which voices are
speaking. As with any guidance you
listen to you may want to ask – “How does what I am hearing benefit me?” If you
aren’t feeling the love the next question may be – “How does what I’m hearing
limit me?” Even more simply – “Does this feel good? Does this feel bad?”
Because here’s the deal - we each have a raging internal
Greek chorus inside. The songs are all composed by us based on what we have
been exposed to all our lives. Every bit of well meaning advice we gleaned from
our parents, teachers, priests, politicians, and pundits of every sort have
steeped into an alphabet soup of endless, if often garbled, direction about how
life works. And from this we make our lives work, or not so much work, the way
we choose. Our choices are infinite and 100% our own.
At this moment you may feel liberated or terrified depending
on your perspective. You may even feel a bit touchy, like a woman I spoke with
recently who adamantly argued that she is not in control of “choosing” how she
feels about what happens to her. And you know what? She’s right! She isn't in control of her
responses to things. Her belief systems have her locked down in a way that she
feels at the effect of what is happening in her life rather than being in the
driver’s seat creating a life that makes her wishes come true.
This is where I think Mary missed the boat – at the
intersection of faith and proof. Although it would be fascinating to find
scientific “proof” of psychic phenomena, among other things, all that matters
in YOUR life is what YOU believe. Beliefs simply influence our ability to
produce what we want in our lives. Our beliefs open and close possibilities
that what we desire can manifest for us.
Now back to that starry night so many moons ago. I huffed
and puffed and grabbed what jumped into my generally unhappy, angry, skeptical consciousness
to declare, unbelieving “I wish just once I could believe in something and it
could come true!” Magically, he had
given me my wish, as a possibility. Once that unexpected answer shot out of me
I knew what I was looking to find – faith, hope, and the ability to craft my
life - instead of always wrestling with it and getting pinned down. Not in a
good way…
I can’t tell you everything was easy after that. It was one
of those first steps of a thousand mile journey I am still navigating my way
through. But I promise you your internal compass is completely attuned to the
destinations you most want to reach. Your guidance is speaking to you in every
moment – it’s simply a matter of tuning out the static and honing into the
signal #myheartsdesire. Try it! What
have you got to lose? I look forward to
hearing where that leads you.
