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.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Information Processing and Retrieval

How do you receive the information from spirit?  This has been a recurring question over the years from those who have had private readings or watched mediumship being demonstrated on a public platform (whether the medium was myself or somebody else).  It’s a question which I – being the left-brained analytical kind of guy – have given a lot of examination to.  This post isn’t going to answer with the standard “It’s in the ‘clairs’ – clairvoyance, clairaudience, clairsentience” – though those do play a part.  My goal has always been to understand it from a larger perspective, to which the “clairs” then break it down.  As with anything, this is an ongoing process, a continuous journey, and no doubt perceptions will change as new information is brought to light.  Here’s what I have learned so far.  Though this may sound simple (which it is), there’s still a lot to it.

 Intuition is the process for which messages come into the context of one’s consciousness.  By paying attention to the inner sensations brought about by intuition, one can become “in tune” with energies and information not perceived outside in the objective world, nor rationalized by the logical mind. 

Historically, the mind has been where most confusion and inner struggle has been fought when it comes to spiritual communication.  It is a losing battle.  On some level, the desire to receive clear messages from the Other Side speaks to the brain being able to decode the packets of information sent by those in spirit.  Though this is a true statement, the error is in perceiving the mind as having the primary functionality within this process.  In reality, the mind is not the one in charge; rather, it is subordinate to the intuitive self.   

Indeed, the mind does unravel the images, sounds, and feelings which are piped through the intuitive self, but it is not in the focus of the mind where these ingredients originate.  Intuition goes much further than the brain and encompasses the aura and subtle bodies – something quite outside the scope of the physical matter lodged inside our skulls. 

When approaching readings, one needs to “get out of the head” for it is “in the head” where he or she most likely spends the bulk of one’s time navigating the jungles of time and space in the here and now objective world.  Thus, normal everyday “in the head” focus must, to a certain degree, be abandoned in order to “tune in” to other energies.  The shift is to move out of reliance on the brain and onto the reliance of the intuitive self. 

Intuition requires an entirely different set of faculties to be engaged than simply thinking and wandering around inside the mind.  Intuition connects you with the environment; it reaches out into the subtle vibrations and energies coursing around and through you.  And when one can focus their awareness into their intuition, the door to these other realities can be cracked open and engaged.

“What does my intuition tell me?” is an excellent way to move your mind out of its role of supremacy and into an act of service.  “What does my intuition tell me?” moves your awareness off your physical senses and onto the many senses inherent within the complexity of the intuitive self.  “What does my intuition tell me?” drives your observation off the chatter of the physical mind and into the eternal abode of cosmic consciousness.

It is incredibly difficult to rationalize psychic occurrences because they originate from intuition – a form of perception and communication not well understood by anyone in the 21^st century.  We may discover that we can never pin it down or understand it from a left-brained perspective, for the simple fact that it may be inherently much greater than what logic can comprehend.  The brain loves to use logic like a microscope so as to have a better understanding of things – for if we have a better understanding we can have better odds at controlling whatever it is we are examining.   Unfortunately, intuition may be much larger than what the left-brain can comprehend, thus the notion of control is too far out of reach.  Nay, it may be completely impossible.   

But just because we do not understand it does not mean it isn’t real or that it doesn’t have value.  What we do know is that information outside the normal channels of perception happens – this has been documented time and again.  We know it’s not coming from the jello inside our heads, but from sources outside coming in or by us going outside the body to bring the information back – again, leaving the physical brain behind.  As psychics and mediums, we recognize intuition as being much larger than our minds, though we must trust our minds to be able to process it to the best of our abilities so that our normal consciousness can gain some sort of comprehension. 

But it all starts with intuition. 

And not the brain.