I was still a young man when I first started going to Spiritual churches. My local church would have two rooms put aside on Saturday afternoons, which were open to the general public. One room was for anybody who wanted to have some healing, the other for clairvoyance. There used to be a brilliant medium called Mrs Olive Hocking, a lady well into her Eighties. This was a person who would be quite capable of “calling a spade a spade”. Whenever I attended, I would always be given a positive message through her from “the other side”, usually along the lines of how I was going to be a Healer! One Saturday afternoon I took my Mother: I wanted her to hear me being praised by Mrs Hocking. As we were driving there I said to my mother “I find this all very interesting, but I don’t know what to make of this praying stuff”. When we arrived we duly sat down with the rest of the audience, some fifteen or twenty of us. As usual, Mrs Hocking started to give a demonstration of her mediumship. One by one she gave messages to all present, including my Mother. I sat there full of pride, expecting to be flattered. When my turn came, Mrs. Hocking looked at me with a frown. “Young man,” she said very sternly, “if you want to achieve something in this life, you’d better take it very seriously”. Sheepishly, I looked at my Mother, as we both knew the reason why I had just been told off. After that, I needed no prompting in saying my prayers.
When we say our prayers, we are actively communicating with our Divine Creator. For the more spiritually minded, the main thrust of the prayers will be about asking for healing for other people, the animal kingdom and the planet. We can also pray for ourselves, for help in our material lives, for guidance and to be kept safe. If you hear a medium or a healer say a prayer, they will put a lot of emphasis on the words “May we be protected?” They are asking to be protected from psychic attack. When working, mediums are trying to communicate with souls from the afterlife, but they will not want to have contact from any mischievous spirits from the lower vibrations. Rather than there being a set heaven or hell, Spiritualists believe that the afterlife is made up of many interlinking areas; the general names for these are realms or vibrations. The more evil souls will be in the lower vibrations and the more virtuous souls will be in the higher vibrations.
The very worst case example of psychic attack is spirit possession, this is where the spirit of one individual has temporarily taken control over the body of someone else. This is a very rare event and usually the victims have already suffered some type of trauma in their life. They may have been abused or even abused themselves through drug or alcohol addiction. One of the highest forms of mediumship is Trance, and ironically this is also where the spirit of one individual temporarily takes control over the body of another (the medium).
One night I woke up feeling that I was unable to move, as if there was a presence lying on top of me, pinning me to the bed. I was having a psychic attack. Frightened, I said a prayer, and instantaneously this thing seemed to be prized away from me and flung off through the wall. A couple of weeks later the same thing happened. Now this was starting to worry me. I was still a member of Mrs Hocking’s development circle, so I sought her advice. Once again I was chastised, “Look Robert,” she said, “people do not necessarily change just because they have passed over to spirit. If a person was a bad communicator when they were alive, then they will probably be a bad communicator when they have passed over. Next time it happens, relax”. “Relax!” I thought “that’s easier said than done”. However, I did trust this medium totally. A week or so later, I woke in the night to find a presence pinning me to the bed. In my mind, I said “Relax, relax, relax”. This seemed to work, because I must have drifted off back to sleep having suffered no ill effects. A week later, the same thing happened, but this time I was not frightened, just slightly apprehensive, and again I must have drifted off back to sleep. On the final occasion, I again woke to find this presence on top of me. This time I had no fear at all and I was completely relaxed. Then something totally unexpected happened: a Divine energy overwhelmed me, and to this day I have never been able to fully describe the most wonderful sensation that resonated through the whole of my body. All along, this must have been a highly evolved soul, playing the role of a spirit from a low vibration. I believe that the idea for putting me through this experience was to help me to overcome my fears and learn to trust totally that I am fully protected.
After the prayers are said, the teacher will take over. Sometimes for the meditation the students will be asked to focus on a flower, or maybe a candle. On other occasions the teacher may take them on a guided meditation. The listener’s imagination is the only thing limiting a guided meditation, as the mind can travel to any far off magical lands. After going past the journeying part of the meditation, the teacher will say something like “I’m going to leave you here, just for a little while” and it is here that clairvoyance may be experienced. When it is time for the meditation to finish, the teacher will gently call everybody back. Once the teacher is confident that all the students “are back” and fully conscious, everybody will be given the opportunity to share their experiences. This is how the students develop their spiritual gifts. It is quite easy for a student to lose confidence should their attempt to give a message be rejected by the recipient. Quite often the message may have been accurate, but it may have been given to the wrong person. It may have been the case that the person sitting next to the chosen recipient could understand the message perfectly. I normally introduced a “psychic table” when I was taking such development classes. Should one of my students see, for example, a black cat during a meditation, they were taught to quietly say “I’m seeing a black cat and I’m placing it on the table”. The student could then go back into the meditation and the contents of the table could be deciphered later. You would amazed at how much more clairvoyance comes through the students when the pressure is taken off them and they don’t have to worry about their message being rejected.
There have been times when teachers have exploited their position, and enjoyed rather too much the power that comes from being in control of group of people. I had to watch myself very closely for this. I can remember the very first psychic development group that I ever taught. After about six months, I became aware that some members had started to look elsewhere for their development. I felt quite hurt, and the Spirits must have picked up on my thoughts, as they said to me “Who do you think are prompting them to look elsewhere?” This completely changed my outlook, because I realized that at that time I was like a nursery school teacher and some of my students were ready to go on to a higher education – an education that I was not qualified to teach. Ever since then, I would actively remind all students that being part of my development group was never a permanent arrangement. I explained that no student should ever feel awkward, embarrassed or uneasy if they wanted to question or challenge my views and ideas. I believed that it was their own guides who were encouraging them to do so. This was my cue to talk to them about moving on and reassuring them that it was okay if they wished to break off on their own. My job was to teach them as much as I could and then give them the confidence “to fly the nest”. The next stage of their development would come from them learning from their own experiences. Maybe someday, they too would start up their own psychic development classes, hopefully following my own ethos, that their students would also one day be encouraged to fly the nest.
I have now been a healer for over 20 years and have producing guided meditation cd’s for the last 7. I have produced a number of Personal Development CD’s including the Psychic Development Meditation which has been especially created to help you enhance your own psychic development and improve your communication with the spirit guides.