The Face, Love, and Strength of a Spirit Guide

A couple of weeks ago I found myself shaking a fist and really giving my guides the third degree. I felt they had challenged me one too many times with a result I truly didn’t care for. Oftentimes, we don’t understand why our guides move us in certain directions or allow certain things to happen; but it is always in retrospect that we gain the perspective of truth about such enigmatic circumstances and then forgive, engrain the lesson, and move on. Part of that process for me a few weeks ago was to declare to my spiritual advisors that they were going to have to do something pretty extraordinary to convince me of their strength, love, and sincerity for what I had gone through. I didn’t tell them what they had to do, just that they needed to do something pretty impressive to convince me they really cared. (Yes, it was one of those dark times which tests your faith).

The answer came through the night of Development Circle, a few hours after I had made my demand. We were doing an exercise called “Transfiguration.” In this exercise, you pair up with a partner and stare at each other in extremely low light while opening up to spirit. The objective is that spirit will come over your partner and begin to change his or her facial features to where you can somewhat see the face of the spirit objectively. We were doing the exercise twice, and had already completed the first round with great success and were excited for the second session.

For about ten minutes, each of us sat with our partner in silence and just looked at the other’s face. One set of partners sat in a completely different room, as we have a member who uses Skype on the computer to participate in the circle, since she lives in Portland, Oregon.

Immediately, my partner appeared as one of my lead guides, who I have seen objectively on many occasions, the first time when I was 15-years-old. He appears as a medicine man from an aboriginal tribe, with face makeup and jewelry. His bright eyes gleamed back at me during the session, and he smiled widely, expressing his love and telling me clairaudiently how proud he was of my development. He expressed that it was okay for me to have been angry at what had happened earlier and had anticipated the outburst, and that the lesson was being learned (and truth be told, I had already been given insight to the lesson a day beforehand). Then my partner’s face darkened, but lit back up with the face of another one of my guides, with curly hair, high cheek bones, and British accent (again, clairaudient). I was surprised they had showed up to be the spirits my partner became.

The real shocker was when the session was over and we all got back together to share our experiences. I held off on revealing who I had seen – because everyone was talking about seeing the same aborigine male with the painted face! Even Penny, our member from Portland, mentioned seeing him during the session. Wow! My spirit guide really came through on my demands. He appeared to 7 out of 8 members of my Development Circle, all within the same round and across literally hundreds of miles. It was unmistakable and truly amazing.

Sometimes we might take our guides for granted, or are completely unaware of just how much they do care about us, and what they are willing to do to make themselves known. It was an incredible moment of humility and gratitude to realize the amount of energy, intent, and orchestration to make it all happen; to appear to each member at the same time, with one member being geographically far away – all to say “We are here, we love you, and are proud of you.”

I cannot tell you how many times my guides have proven themselves to me (and on occasion, to others as well) -- and not by doing simple things, but by doing stuff that is truly remarkable. It just goes to show that we are loved, cared for, and guided to truly realize what it is great in the universe and inside ourselves by incredible helpers who reside in the land of eternity, unbound by Time and Space. Their love is unlimited – especially after putting up with me for so many decades arguing and disagreeing with them. (The score to date in who wins the arguments: Jeffrey=0. Guides=10000. Go figure).

Never doubt your Spirit Guides. They won’t let you down and they do truly care about you.

Feel free to challenge them – Just be prepared for the response. It will oftentimes astound you.

‘Til next time,

(If you’re interested in meeting your own Spirit Guide and are also interested in mediumship, be sure to come to the next NW Mediumship Association gathering in April. See Events tab for details).

The Busting of the Ego and a Return to the Platform

Spirit introduced me to platform work back in 2003. What is platform work, you ask? This is when the medium plucks people from the audience and gives them a reading. If you’ve seen John Edward or James Van Praagh do a “gallery”-style performance, that’s what it is. When I first began doing them, I was always terrified that nothing would happen. I would get panic attacks and worry that people would find me a fool. Fortunately, this ultimately wasn’t the case and excellent information did come through, but the more I did them, the more difficult they became, and I was doing them on a monthly basis. Finally, unwilling to take the anxiety attacks anymore and struggling to get information from the Other Side, I stepped down from platform demonstrations in 2007 and re-morphed my public services into private home settings, which didn’t necessarily have me connect with the deceased, but allowed me to simply be “psychic” (which is oftentimes easier than being mediumistic).

The new groups helped. I would still get anxious, but most of the time that anxiety would disappear after the first or second reading; and the crowd was considerably smaller. I continued to bring through messages from spirit, but it wasn’t as overwhelming, and I could jump out of being a medium and work strictly on a psychic level if I chose to.

But that’s what happens when you’re green.

For the last few years I have pounded the pavement in trying to develop, learn more, and define my mediumship. I have devoured scores of books on mediums and mediumship, as well as taken (finally) some actual courses which were able to give me much needed direction and explanation. This work has broken down a lot of barriers I didn’t know I had.

The main obstacle, of course, was my EGO. This has been the hardest to tackle, but looking back now on all the anxiety and stress before a service, this has been the culprit. When one worries about whether or not spirit will come through, what they are really worried about is looking foolish – which I was concerned about. Well, that isn’t looking out for spirit and spirit’s inspiration, that’s looking out for number one – the ego. “What if I’m wrong? What if I’m wrong? How will I look?” Yes, that is a natural thought, but if one clings to it as consistently as I did, then it becomes a HUGE distraction and disruption to the process of communicating with spirit. Even more so, if you’re also worried about how the sitter is going to respond to the information you bring through (“Will the information make me look like a fool”), that too is a distraction that will block the flow from spirit.

Pretty much what it all boiled down to wasn’t a lack of trust from spirit; it was more about how I was going to appear to my audience. It wasn’t until I finally started to let go of ME and simply watch out for what was being brought through did my readings really take off. Do I give stellar readings every time now? No, nobody ever does, but the quality of my readings and how I feel going into them has certainly changed.

Case in point: I did my first platform in over 5 years on February 4^th at the Venus Moon in Renton. There was close to 40 people in the audience – the largest group to date (before then, my largest audience was 30). Before, when I had no real formal training and was “fending for myself” I would have been freaking out hours before the event started. But on this night, I was completely calm and relaxed. Not even that, I was excited! I knew, so long as I got out of my own way and gave my mind over to spirit, everything would be fine. And it was! I connected with 8 or 9 different people in the audience, with excellent information from spirit – including names, personal characteristics of the deceased, information surrounding how they passed, and much more, lasting for just over an hour in the demonstration. The only distraction I had was an ongoing fire or medical emergency, as ambulances and fire trucks were screaming by the building with sirens blaring. Nevertheless, I remained committed to being a vessel for spirit and spirit came through.

When it was over, a part of me felt a bit cheated. My mind was so used to viewing platform demonstrations as being stressful and frightening, yet that night it was the exact opposite. Part of me had been waiting for the sense of “work” which the spectre of fear used to bring, but it never came. I had zero fear, and spirit came through without problems. A member of my development circle who attended said I was “inspiring.” What a gift! (And she stood up and made a connection herself, which was equally a joy to witness!) I would love to have compared that demonstration with my last platform in ’07. I bet they would have been light-years apart in terms of quality and style.

So now I am committed to returning to the platform. Spirit has amazing messages to give and they are inspiring me to give them. I am always curious these days to hear what incredible details a person’s relative comes through with that is so unique and expressive that it screams “I’m really here!”

When it comes to doing the work of spirit, there is no room for the ego. As I heard a few years ago (and what has led me on my quest to dissolving it), the word EGO stands for Edging God Out. That is so right. As a medium, I am here to serve spirit, not myself. As a medium, spirit’s messages serve the client, and I can’t be the judge of what that information is, I can only deliver it with as much compassion and love as I can.

There are a lot of messages out there. I look forward to bringing them to the platform as I continue my work and my development throughout the year.

Hope to see you there!