What is a Medium?

Mediums are often referred to as “Spiritualist Mediums.” This implies that they follow the Spiritualist Religion, many do, but others do not.

The medium has the abilities of the psychic but has attunement with and is able to link to the Spirit Realm under the right conditions. These abilities manifest themselves in the many forms of mediumship, such as Clairvoyance, clairsentience, clairaudience, healing, trance control etc. As the medium develops they will become attuned to one or more of these functions and able to control them better.

This link to the spirit realm comes through the subconscious mind of the medium and is translated by the conscious mind into sensing, seeing and hearing, enabling the medium to describe the things that the Spirit Communicator is trying to convey. This process can break down if the conscious mind gets in the way of the communication and that is why development and good practice are so essential.

As you can see, both psychic and mediumistic of functioning require you to be able to tune, control and limit the ability or communication to the appropriate times. Picking up psychic information when walking around the supermarket, for example, is not a good thing and can reveal a lack of discipline. Once a link has been established, Spirit communicators will often be very keen to work with the medium and this may be inappropriate and intrusive at times. This is usually over enthusiasm on their part and they may not be aware of their links own situation at the time. It can be a particular problem when they are relaxed prior to sleep, a time when the conscious barriers are at their lowest. If this is the case the communicator or influence must be told politely and firmly “Not now.”

This is why it is essential to be of sound mind and able to make balanced judgments and be able to exercise self-discipline when working in this way.

That is just a brief overview of mediumship. If you care to read on, we will look a little more closely at the many facets of mediumship, what might be going on and what can get in the way.

How might mediumship work?

It is believed that information of a psychic nature comes to us from the subconscious side of our minds and this is accepted as being a right brain hemisphere function. This information is then processed through the analytical left hand side so that it can be relayed to the person who desires the information or communication.

In the case of Spirit communication, Spirit tell us that they do this by drawing close and entering the aura when an influence (guide or communicator) wishes to impart some piece of information. As we know the aura is that field of energy that surrounds our bodies and all other living things.

The deeper the penetration into the aura, the greater the level of control and therefore the clearer and more precise the communication will become. Interestingly, we are told that the higher aspects of the aura are those closest to the body and around the head, rather like a dome. The further away, the more attuned they are to the physical being and therefore, ego. Taking this into consideration, it becomes clear that the more attuned that we can allow ourselves to become to the realm of Spirit and they to us, the quantity and quality of information will increase.

When a person in Spirit draws close it may be sensed as a presence or a feeling of someone entering the aura, such as coldness or heat in certain areas, a tightening around the head or the feeling of being pulled backwards. To begin with the medium may experience headaches or slight feelings of nausea when working that usually subside after a short period of time. In other words the medium may become aware of a number of unusual sensations when working and must be prepared for them if and when they occur.

Making it work

We have talked briefly about what processes may be at work when mediumistic functioning is taking place, what we have not discussed is how mediums make it work and what can be done to improve the way they work. To work mediumistically we must recognise the need to enhance our senses by training and practice so that we can become attuned to the influence of Spirit – that is to become attuned to the resonance of the vibration of Spirit. Spirit tells us that their vibrational rate is much higher than ours, so both parties have to work to harmonise and synchronise their vibrational rates. This is what is required on an esoteric level and it may appear to be a difficult concept to comprehend, but we must remember that physics now tells us that what we accept as being solid, is not solid at all, but in a constant state of vibration.

On a purely practical level, for anything to work we must be interested in what we are doing. We all know that if we are not interested in a piece of work the end result will not be as good as it could be. To be successful in anything we must have a desire to do it and believe that we are capable of doing what we desire. If we are interested, motivated and believe that we can do something, then it is reasonable that we can expect it to work. Matthew Manning refers to this as the dynamic of functioning. We are solely responsible for this aspect because it is a state of mind, the correct attitude for approaching what we do and how well we perform.

Do not be surprised by this statement, because it is exactly the same attitude of mind that any successful athlete most adopt to win a race and many of you will have come across it during motivational training courses at work.

The information stream

As the information is directed towards us by the resonance in the vibration, the thought from Spirit if you like, the medium then has to verbalise this information or “message” into something meaningful to the audience or enquirer. This is not necessarily an easy thing to do for yourself, as it arouses the interest of our conscious mind and therefore ego. This will demand conclusions and want to provide order to things that it does not understand which may be inappropriate and incorrect.

Making assumptions is completely wrong and should be avoided by the medium. With certain provisions, the information should be given off as it is received, as it is intended for the recipient, not the medium. Failure to do this will result in what is termed as an analytical overlay. That is an internally generated overlay that tries to make sense of what you are seeing or sensing by putting the bits and pieces together and filling in the gaps with information that is known or familiar. This will almost always be wrong. For example, if we are aware of something bright and reflective, but are unable to say exactly what it is, it would be wrong to call it anything other than what you are aware of. To assume that it glass or a mirror could be totally wrong, but it may have meaning to the sitter if it was how they saw the sunlight reflecting off the patio at their holiday villa in Spain. If the sitter does not accept the information or cannot understand it, then it would be appropriate to go back to the source and say “please give this to me another way because they don’t understand this.” If the information persists as given, it would also be appropriate to advise the sitter that the information cannot be withdrawn and that they should endeavour to make enquiries to establish its validity. In fact this is really the best sort of information that you could possibly give at times, because it eliminates telepathic links (wonderful in its own right) if the sitter does not know anything about the information and has to have it provided by a third party.

A very important point that we must consider when information is coming to the medium, especially with visual images, is that they may have no basis in reality. Or they may be familiar to themselves in some way. This is because it is given by Spirit as a means of conveying the message to the medium. Therefore, it is an image or feeling that is given to enable link to describe a person, scene or object to the sitter. This is not always true as in the case of psychic artists, but it must be considered.

A third party?

Just a small point, some times a person is presented from Spirit who is delivering a message for someone else. This can confuse the issue somewhat when the mediums description of the person does not have any meaning to the sitter, but the information does. This can and does happen if the person in Spirit wants to communicate, but is unable to do so personally for some reason. This may be due to them not being able to bring themselves to do so or lack of compatibility with the medium. A third party who is compatible, then acts as an intermediary to deliver the message. An interesting situation that does arise at times and one that we should be aware of before dismissing any information because the description does not match that of the deceased.

This article is part of our Mediumship series.

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