The Thermostat of Self

The long dark days of winter are at last receding as the sun climbs back toward the northern hemisphere.  Like most people, the march into autumn and the journey through winter is an opportunity to travel within and perhaps discover roads that you might otherwise miss were it not for the chance to hibernate with the season.  For me, I used it as an opportunity to learn more about myself, to understand better who I am and why I do what I do; a type of self-inventory.  It wasn’t my intention to cover more ideas or learn new ways of linking and connecting with spirit and my intuition – I wanted instead to address my “normal” everyday existence. 

 

However, what I discovered is that we cannot parcel ourselves out.  Let’s face it, we are holistic beings -- and everything we do is somehow interconnected with everything else about us.  As I worked to better understand myself, I ended up gaining a greater insight to that side of me which engages in spirit communication and the nature of myself as a multidimensional expression.  And as anybody who follows this blog knows, I am always looking to better understand that process.

When I set out to do this inner work, my goal was to understand my fears and limitations – why do I have them?  What are they?  What are the limiting beliefs behind them?  Though my work as a medium included some of the things I was examining, it wasn’t the full breadth or reason behind my inquiry.  You see, I view each of us like an iceberg – what we are seeing is really only the tip; what is below (or inside) may be huge, massive, and incredible, but we cannot engage it without first understanding the part of us we are already familiar with, which holds the keys to unlock the doors of the inner sanctum. 

 

The discovery I made was that the doors we keep locked to this greater self … are doors we built up throughout our lives.  In fact, I am starting to believe that when we were birthed into the world, there were very few (if any) doors we had to deal with.  But as we grew up – through indoctrinated training in childhood, to peer pressures and societal culturalism in adolescence and adulthood – we created our own closed doors and a hallway from which we remain pacing back-and-forth through most of our existence.  We see the closed doors we’ve built up and ASSUME they were put before us by someone else and we are powerless to open them, or lack the key to unlock what may be hiding behind them.  This corridor, this architecture, we allow to define our strengths and weaknesses, our joys and sorrows. 

 

It takes time and a willingness to face the Gatekeeper. 

 

When I encountered my own “closed door” I asked myself “Why can I not open this?”  The answer startled me.  It wasn’t that a voice came back and said “You can’t.”  Instead, that voice came back and said “You aren’t worth it.”  In fact, at each closed door I placed myself in front of, I heard the same rhetoric -- even to the point of this negative voice saying “Even if you were to open it, someday you will be gone and forgotten.  It won’t have made a difference or even mattered.”  To reflect back on this inner voice is indeed saddening, but it has been – in the end – a gift.  Because I knew on some level I created it; I instilled the demon; and if I created him, I could also excommunicate him and replace him. 

 

As anyone who has seen a hypnotist or studied hypnotherapy knows, the mind is malleable and thoughts – if given enough permission by an individual – can be altered and changed very very quickly, which inevitably creates new ways of thinking and being.  This has been my journey these last several months.  Though I have not seen a hypnotist, I have been working with similar tools – relaxation to calm the monkey mind, visualizations, affirmations, in combination with constant reminders of my own past successes.  Psychologists know that changing a habit takes anywhere from 21 to 30 days of repeating the newfound behavior, as it will also create new neural pathways. 

 

So where am I going with all of this? 

 

Well, if we are constantly telling ourselves such negative thoughts about who we are – why we cannot open closed doors – then we must admit that this same voice is going to sabotage us when it comes to our ultimate success.  This negative voice we have allowed to DEFINE our SELF-IMAGE.  And one of the greatest lessons I’ve learned in my journey is that the self-image acts like a thermostat – if things go too well and you have a negative voice like mine used to be, sabotage is certain to return things to status-quo normal.  In all areas.

 

Including one’s innate psychic or mediumship abilities. 

 

Think about it.  If you are always second-guessing yourself or knocking yourself down in other areas of your life, why would it be any different in something you are trying to excel at?  It wouldn’t.  The beliefs heralded by the Self-Image would not allow it, for it would force the Self-Image to be something it really can’t perceive itself as being … In other words – you cannot become what deep down you do not believe you can be, because you lack the Self-Image capable of making it happen. 

 

It is vitally important to examine your inner demons, face them, and understand where you are limiting yourself.  Then understand you are dealing with habits of thought … and begin to change them.  Start visualizing, affirming, and believing you can be the person you wish to be.  Try it for at least 21 to 30 days, taking only 5 to 10 minutes a day to do the visualizations and affirmations (try it as an experiment).  And really put your heart into it.  This isn’t about getting material stuff – like using the law of attraction in order to buy a new car – this is much greater: it’s about breaking an erroneous Self-Image which will only allow you to go so far in life, no matter what you do. 

 

Our negative messages we instilled in this exact way: one day, we started to tell ourselves something bad … then we repeated it … added some visualization to back it up … and then let it grow naturally into the door we keep locked before us. 

 

The same thing can happen in reverse.     

 

Now, you might be asking: how does this apply to intuition, psychic functioning, or mediumship?

 

Simply put, it’s one thing to believe the ability exists, it’s another to believe whether it exists or will work FOR YOU, based on your Self-Image.  And then you have to ask if you believe it can work PROPERLY and CLEARLY for you, as dictated by that same perception of Self.  Do you feel on some level you are CAPABLE?  WORTHY?  DESERVING?  Until this last winter, I believed in the ability and that I had it to a certain degree and could help others with it.  However, my Self-Image kept me from accepting that I was worthy or deserving of it fully.  Despite thousands of readings demonstrating a clarity to link with spirits, it has always been an inner battle if I could do it each and every time I sat with a client or stood in front of an audience.  Why this inner struggle with myself? 

 

Because a deep inner voice – without my real inspection – was getting away with the message “You can’t do it.  You’re not worthy.”

 

Since discovering and since ALTERING that, not only has my Self-Image changed, virtually everything else has, too.  My days are bright, I accept “fun” into my existence (I didn’t even give myself permission to have FUN), and my mediumship … I now trust.

 

And that’s what it’s all about.  Trust.  The Self-Image determines your magnitude of Trust.  When it comes to working with Spirit, the axiom is to Trust Spirit.  However, the foundation also has to be “Trust Thyself.”  If you cannot trust yourself, you will have an even harder time trusting spirit … And your development – as well as other parts of your life – will suffer for it. 

 

It’s only habits of thought … Give it 21 to 30 days, and habits can change.  Along with your life.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Resurrecting Leonora Piper - A Book Review

I have never done a book review before, but just had to do it for a tome I finished two weeks ago.  As many of my friends know, one of my hobbies is studying the history of parapsychology – in particular, Victorian-era psychical research and the mediums that were investigated.  My favorite medium from the period is Leonora Piper (1857-1950).  She came to prominence in the 1880’s – a demure Boston housewife who unwittingly became a trance medium quite accidentally after visiting a medium herself.  While in the presence of the medium, she lost complete consciousness, only to find out later she had been taken over by spirit.  Her mediumship was something which baffled her and she relented to tests most people would run away from in order to understand it and further the cause of psychical research.  Some of the things she had to deal with from researchers ranged from being followed by private investigators to see if she was gathering information about potential sitters fraudulently; she was denied sitter’s real names and instead introduced by pseudonyms; she was even harassed by some investigators who – while in trance – pricked her skin and scorched her tongue with acid.

The book “Resurrecting Leonora Piper: How Science Discovered the Afterlife” by Mark Tymn took on Piper’s mediumship from the standpoint of a lawyer arguing a case in court.  Now, I’ve read quite a bit on Piper’s work, but what made this book really stand out was that Tymn no doubt did his research.  He quoted the actual transcripts from various cases, as if we were right there in the room during the communication.  He then followed up with how the sitters responded and cross-examined the data points allegedly brought through by the spirits.  Through this lens, the author effectively argued against the typical accusations charged against Piper’s authenticity.  By careful consideration, Tymn was able to show that the supernormal information she received was not a form of ESP with her client, or SuperPsi (information from a cosmic mind) or anything representing fraud.  He followed her career from when she first began, utilizing a spirit control named Phinuit, then through the years of the Imperator regime, moving between trance mediumship and automatism -- allowing the reader to be a part of Piper’s evolution as a medium.  Other authors have outlined this same evolution, however it has usually been a dry and academic description, whereas Tymn brings a sense of humanity; a person who developed as a result of her condition and the demands of spirit.   

The other thing which really made this book stand out was that the author went into far more detail about cases already known about Piper’s mediumship, such as George Pellew and the Cross Correspondences, yet he didn’t stop there (as most pro-mediumship authors do).  He found several other noteworthy cases in the transcripts and cited them to again demonstrate the likelihood of spirit interaction as being the best evidence for the information she had received. 

But like any good lawyer, he was aware that not every sitting Piper conducted was a success.  As a practicing medium myself, the gem of the book came when the transcripts revealed the spirits explaining why communication wasn’t always easy – and why it sometimes out-and-out failed.  First, the information was introduced through George Pellew, a man that as a reader, we only knew was an acquaintance of Richard Hodgson, Piper’s investigator who researched her for 18 years.   Yet when Hodgson unexpectedly died and starting coming through Leonora a week after his passing, we began to see what the stumbling blocks for spirit communication were and still are today – plus, we are emotionally tied to Hodgson, having direct knowledge of his work with Piper.  As Hodgson’s spirit gained more ability and thus more confidence in communication, he was able to explain the difficulty from the spirit’s point-of-view.  This has helped me in understanding the two-way street that we as mediums drive on when linking with spirits.

The finale for spirit survival was when Tymn talked about (if only briefly) the Cross Correspondences.  This has got to be the most ignored or covered up piece of psychical research in history that – for most of the scientists who studied it – was scientific proof for life after death, based on the evidence.  Here, we have several cases where three (or more) mediums located thousands of miles apart from around the world (separated by oceans) received cryptic messages from the same spirit (or spirits, depending on the case) that only made sense once all the fragments were combined.  It is considered highly suggestive, if not definitive proof of intelligence surviving death.  In one case, the investigator requested the spirit of psychical researcher FWH Myers to draw a particular symbol when coming through the other mediums involved in the correspondence – which the spirit of Myers did accomplish.  

After reading this book, I am so amazed that the information is not more widely known.  The mediumship of Mrs. Piper turned many a skeptical inquirer -- physicists, psychologists, and lay-persons alike -- into believers.  William James, arguably considered one of the pioneers of modern psychology, considered her his “White Crow,” meaning that it only takes one white crow to prove not all crows are black – demonstrating that psychic and mediumship abilities can exist within the human condition.  Tymn convincingly demonstrates that there was no other explanation for the details and personalities that came through Piper other than spirit communication.  For me, Piper demonstrated details to a much greater extent than some of today’s most accurate and notable mediums and it baffles me that we still wrestle with the question of “Is it real”? 

Resurrecting Leonora Piper, if presented in a court of law, clearly answers that question in the affirmative.   

232 Pages

White Crow Publishing

Available at Amazon.com