Rediscovering What Spiritualism and Church SHOULD be About!

On Sunday evening I did something I had not done since the summer. I went to church! You know how sometimes you just feel the need to be somewhere and so you go not knowing why but knowing you had to go at that particular time.

Anyway I went to Britten Memorial Spiritualist Church. I had no idea why I needed to be there but I went with an open mind. So I find myself at this little store front church tucked between two older commercial units. I see there is a number key lock on the door and I am thinking what the heck? But something prods me to enter.

Inside I found a beautifully decorated church and people happily getting ready for the Christmas Service. It has been many years since I set foot in a Christian Spiritualist Church so I was surprised that spirit would think to push me to come out on this night of all nights! Again I am thinking to myself, what the heck? And yet I am comfortable and feeling quite at home. One of the regular members has introduced herself to me and started explaining to me who is who and how things work at this church. It was like being introduced to someone’s family for the first time! I was totally amazed and felt so welcomed and this woman made sure that the folks who run things at this church met me also. Now I had talked to the president of the church several months prior and was totally surprised that he remembered me.

As the service progressed I remembered why I used to enjoy going to church. I felt more community in this little church than I had in the last 3 years I had spent in Spiritualism. After the service I stuck around for the coffee and visit and got to talk to most of the members who were also there enjoying fellowship with each other. I must say that it had been many years since I actually felt the true spirit of Christmas in a church and I found myself thinking about how glad I was that I had made the effort to attend that night.

What I saw and felt during the service and at the coffee and visit after was a group of people truly working as a community. The minister of this church passed away several months prior and this little church really has pulled together to pick up the pieces. Everyone I met that evening seemed genuinely pleased to welcome me as a newcomer and the president of the church even introduced me as a professional reader which shocked the heck out of me. None of these folks were threatened by the fact that I am an established reader who was coming into their church. What a nice change compared to my last experience! I must say that because I felt so welcomed and accepted as I am I gladly gave messages to those who asked or who spirit told me needed a word or two.

Although I would not consider myself a Christian Spiritualist, I will gladly attend this church again and even offer to help where I can because just by being kind and open these folks gave me something I felt was lost in Spiritualism. They showed me that there is genuine caring community and fellowship in their Spiritualist Church and really made an effort to welcome me into their congregation. Now I know why Spirit drew me out on Sunday night. Spirit wanted me to see what Spiritualism is supposed to be about. Love, community service, fellowship and healing! I feel blessed to have shared in the Christmas Service at Britten Memorial Spiritualist Church. I am looking forward to attending again in the New Year!

Mediums are better than Psychics or are they??

I often read and post on various Spiritualism discussion boards and while I expect folks to disagree I will never understand the bugaboo between the terms medium and psychic. For most people these words are interchangeable but for dogmatists in Spiritualism these words seem to mean to very different things. Psychics tend to be viewed by these judgmental Spiritualists as suspect or less capable spiritual readers.

The party line for most Spiritualists seems to be that mediums are superior to psychics because they approach reading and message work from a Spiritualist perspective while psychics are assumed to be New Age flakes and money hungry. Now political correctness dictates that ministers are careful who they say these kinds of comments to but, often behind closed doors (in the form of disparaging humour shared with other Spiritualists) bigoted comments about psychics and the greed of these “New Agers” as a means to demean folks who are spiritual seekers but not involved with the Spiritualist movement are the norm rather than the exception.

Out of the mouth of one minister I often heard the comment “Any jackass and his monkey can be a psychic but it takes work to be a medium.” Now as shocking as this might seem to the reader I have come to understand that people who make such comments are insecure, jealous bigots who will put down others that they feel are a threat to them and their financial and professional position. Once I made this realization I began to rethink what I was told about the differences between psychics and mediums.

Spiritualists will say things like:

Psychics are dealing with lower/earth bound spirits.

Psychics are reading the sitters mind or physical energy and not connecting properly to spirit.

And the best one is that psychics are more focused on money and material gain than Spiritualist mediums.

Not only are these statements bigoted they are outright lies in my opinion that are rooted in jealousy, bigotry, hypocrisy and the good old double standard that allows Spiritualists to condemn psychics for being materially focused when they are just as money hungry as the folks they accuse of this fault .

The only real difference between a psychic and a medium is that a medium has been trained to work in the Spiritualist churches and most psychics have gotten their training and reading experience in other venues like psychic fairs.

This is not to say that all psychics are good practitioners but Spiritualists cannot honestly claim that all mediums are working at the highest standard either. I have seen as many bad mediums on the church platforms in my 12 years as an active Spiritualist as I see in cheesy psychic listings and websites on the web. Even though most Spiritualists know there are good and bad mediums just like there are good and bad psychics there are some dogmatic people who disparage anything that is outside the confines of Spiritualism and thus their grasp. In an effort to justify their position as a minister and Spiritualism as a movement they will take great pains to define to death the differences between the terms medium vs. psychic as if this is in anyway helpful to interested seekers.

The reality is that there is no consistency in mediumship training within the churches. For example I went to one Spiritualist church looking for a development circle and was told they don’t do that but they have a Bible Study! They figured that they could leave mediumship and message work up to God’s inspiration!

Another church I went to was very focused on a development circle where the goal was physical manifestation of spirit through one medium. In that group there is one medium and the rest of the sitters are used as energy sources or "batteries" so to speak. This kind of circle is a throw back to the early days of Spiritualism and does not tend to allow for each member to enjoy full spiritual progress on a personal level.

The latest church development circle I was in was one where the minister’s biases, phobias and judgmental attitude prevented any real spiritual growth in the sitters. She was pushing them so hard to become mediums that many were uncomfortable in circle because they felt intimidated and afraid of what might happen if they could not bring a message.

Now this is just a sampling of the diverse and not always good training that is going on in the Spiritualist Churches in Ontario and yet all of them call their workers mediums. I ask you, how is the seeker supposed to know what quality of medium they will be exposed to in the churches with this kind of lack of constancy and continuity between these organizations? If the Spiritualist churches and their ministers are having this much trouble training their mediums what gives them the right to condemn psychics for supposedly lacking integrity as readers and suggesting that their work is suspect and lacking quality?

Again I say that the idea that mediums are more spiritual and not as focused on material gain is also bogus. This delusion notion that mediums are some how more spiritually evolved than psychics is just a complete farce! I have seen ministers (who are also mediums) that bleed their churches dry for rent when the church is barely surviving make these kinds of nefarious claims about other practitioners while they are as bad as the “New Age” psychics they are trying to demonize for what they claim is their money hungry behavour.

What is even sadder is that these ministers believe their own delusions and lies and pontificate about spiritual progression, working with elevated spirit guides and developing high standards for mediumship while this kind of negativity seeps out of their bodies, minds and spirits. And then they wonder why their church is suffering and they are losing their mediumship ability?

I do not wonder at all why they and their churches are in the bad state they are in. Bigotry, jealousy, hypocrisy and unjustifiable double standards are huge negatives that consume all the energy around them so that nothing positive can thrive! The Law of Attraction says that like draws to like and yet they do not see the damage their attitude is doing to their organizations!

Spell Caster Scams Online: Radio Interviews for 1290 CJBK and the CBC

On Halloween day I had a very interesting experience. It was the day for radio interviews. In the morning I was interviewed on The Shauna Rae Show on News Talk 1290 CJBK (London, Ontario) at 11 am. (http://www.cjbk.com/). The topic was Spell Casters Online. Once I got past my nervousness, I enjoyed talking to the host I found her to be friendly, and interested in the topic. The whole interview maybe lasted about 5-7 minutes but it was a great experience!

It was excellent practice for later that afternoon when I was asked to talk to different hosts cross Canada for CBC Radio via Nationally Syndicated Interviews. (http://www.cbc.ca/) Over about 2 and half hours, I spoke to 10 different hosts from St. John’s to Winnipeg about the subject of “Spell Casting Scams”. This experience was fascinating because I was in a studio booth for the most part by myself waiting for each of the hosts to call in. Although I was unnerved the studio people were great! They made sure I knew what to do and prepared me for each host.

Each host approached the topic in a slightly different way and my feeling is that the women were more openly interested in the topic then the men. I wonder if this is because women are more likely to consider checking out Spell Casters on the internet when their relationships are in trouble. My sense from the men is that they could not believe that Spell Casters on line is a thriving business. In spite of the male hosts’ disbelief the figures quoted in the Globe and Mail article on the same topic that appeared in the Saturday paper under the title “Love Spell $99.99” says that “more than four million sites pop up”. Anyway, once getting past the shock it was easy to tell the hosts both male and female how the scams work and how the exchange of money for spells in illegal in Ontario.

Basically when the seeker goes to the spell caster they are told that the spell is going to cost X amount of dollars. Sounds straight forward right? Well no… then they are told that there is more to the spell casting procedure and that it is going to take several more sessions for the spell to be ready to use. Of course this means more visits to the spell caster and more money spent. So that love spell for $99.99 will actually cost the seeker will into several thousands of dollars by the time they realize that they have been taken to the cleaners.

Another common spell casting scam happens when the seeker goes to a psychic or palm reader and is told that they have an evil spell on them that only the said psychic/ palm reader can remove for a cost of course. Now for a reader to do this to the public is manipulation and extortion through the use of scare tactics. They make the seeker think that they are cursed and convince them to spend their hard earned cash to have the spell removed. This is illegal in Ontario. It is illegal because the reader uses fear and threats to get money out of the seeker who is coming to the reader for a promised service and is persuaded under false pretenses to spend more money than they were prepared to because they are now under pressure.

When a seeker comes for a reading they should know the total cost of the reading, the length of the reading and they should have the choice to stop the reading at any time before the end of the session and not have to pay for it if they are not comfortable. There should be no extra pressure to spend more money or to continue with a session with witch the seeker is not comfortable.

Reputable readers well:

1. Take the time to answer your questions before you book the appointment.

2. Advise you of the cost of their services and what these services include before you book or as you begin the session.

3. Allow you to ask questions as you go along.

4. Allow you to direct the reading with your questions or the area of focus you would like to have the reading take.

5. Record the sessions for you or allow you to take notes

6. Allow you to stop the session and cancel payment if you are not happy with the session as long as you let them know before the end of the session. Most honest readers know when a reading is not going well for some reason and will usually stop the reading themselves and advise the seeker to find another reader and offer to assist them in some other way if possible. If you stop the session the reader keeps their tape and you keep your money and that is that.

Whenever you are going for a psychic reading you have the right to be comfortable. You also owe it to yourself not to leave you common sense behind. Go with your gut! If something feels wrong it usually is!