On skeptics and non-believers

The past few days have blessed us with sunny and almost spring-like weather here in Portland, Oregon. The orchid in these photos is one that my mom got me two years ago after the birth of my son, and it has just started blooming again, so I took the opportunity to take its photo.

Last week I had some wonderful sessions. I am getting better at my self-care, so I took all of Saturday off from any work, but I worked quite a lot all the other days.

Though last week was a great week for me, I had two very interesting experiences with people who don't believe in psychics/mediums. The first was during a facebook-live I did with my colleague and dear best friend Priscila ( from www.innerlighthealer.com ). We were doing free psychic mini-readings together for anyone who wanted one. In these kinds of readings, the guidance is short as we don't have time to go into lengthy readings for everyone. We are essentially just dipping our toes into the person's energy. We were having quite a bit of technical difficulty during it, and I apparently could only see half the comments for some reason, which was probably a good thing.

After we ended the live-stream, I noticed a rant of comments on our video from a stranger. He felt that the readings could apply to anyone, and that we must be making good money on giving people hope. He also called us pathetic before he  went on his way and blocked me. I have a lot of thoughts around this, but first I do find it interesting that someone who is not the recipient of a reading can judge the accuracy of another person's reading. As my other colleague pointed out to this man, just the sheer amount of people on this earth means that quite a few people are going to have certain life-circumstances in common. Meaning that yes, the guidance coming through in the readings could probably apply to several people. But that doesn't mean it isn't spot on for that one person receiving the reading. Should we then refrain from giving that guidance, because somebody else might think it's too vague? No, that would be nonsense.

I am however a big proponent of providing evidence in a full-length reading. Evidence means specific accurate details that applies to the recipient's life or to the spirit who might be coming through. This helps the recipient also take to heart the guidance that comes through in a reading, because they can trust that the psychic or medium is actually connecting. But that is not the goal in mini-readings that we do for free for random people in our spare time. Nor was our goal to convince anyone of anything. Our goal was simply to provide some free guidance for anyone who might need it at that time.

This was one of my first run-ins with a cynic (Luckily it's happened only once before). Most skeptics that I meet are open to learning more about what I do, which I find great because I believe most skepticism and cynicism around psychics mainly stem from false ideas about how psychic abilities actually work.  I am always happy to squash some myths around psychics and mediums. Let me be clear though: I don't try to convert skeptics. If someone doesn't believe in this stuff, that's fine. But if someone, for example, doesn't believe in psychics because they think that psychics should somehow be omniscient, and of course nobody is actually omniscient, then I am probably going to explain to them how psychic abilities really work. If they in the end still don't believe in psychics, I really don't care. I just don't want them to go around believing that we're claiming to be omniscient. Anywho, cynics are different from skeptics, because they are much more set in their opinions about the way things work.

I do believe skepticism is a good thing, by the way, especially when it comes to psychics and mediums. Not everyone who calls themselves psychic are psychic, nor do they all have the best intentions, and some who do have the best intentions probably shouldn't be doing readings anyway because they just are terrible at it. I will write another blog post soon on my thoughts around this, and how to go about finding the right psychic for you.

Anyways, my second experience last week was fascinating and hilarious in a bizarre way, so I thought I would share. In mediumship, we often encounter spirits who were religious when they were alive. Most of the time, this is not a problem when they try to come through in a reading. Sometimes however, they will keep their distance with me, because they just aren't into mediums. They might say hello and give some brief distinguishing information, but they usually won't go on and on as other spirits will (all depending on the individual spirit of course).

Last week, I got to experience connecting with the spirit of a woman who was ultra-religious when she was alive. As I initially connected with her I could sense her gender, her personality, as well as her distinguishing traits in her relationship with my client, but that was about it as she kept her distance from me. So I did as I would normally do: I asked her to come closer and merge with my energy (it helps us connect better). She came close enough that I could feel her almost merge with me before she abruptly said "NO THANKS, MEDIUM" to the merging part, because she clearly did not like that I was a medium. This made perfect sense to my client, as I explained to her that this will sometimes happen when the spirit was really religious.

I had to laugh, because it felt very much like what I can imagine it must feel like to someone who works in customer service, whose job it is to be nice to an incredibly unpleasant customer. My client wanted me to connect with this spirit, so I had to deal with just being insulted by this spirit. It turned out fine, because the spirit did eventually give a few more messages. And she did acknowledge that it was the ultimate irony that she would communicate through a medium after she'd passed (essentially proving herself wrong in many of her beliefs, I would imagine). This was my first time connecting with a spirit who was so blatantly against mediums.

Clearly, mediumship or psychic work is not the type of work to pursue if you are afraid of confrontation with people who have zero understanding of your work. It's definitely a controversial career. Me telling someone that I talk to dead people professionally brings up all sorts of reactions, and to many it can (understandably) feel like I have wrapped in quite a few statements in there: that there must be a 'God', that there's such a thing as a heaven or hell (I don't believe that actually), that I care what they believe or that I'm trying to convince them of something, or that I prey off of people's grief (Side note: if I know that someone has just lost a loved one, I am much more likely to lie to that person if they ask me what I do for a living, because I don't want them to think that I am somehow taking advantage of their grief. I always try to be VERY sensitive to the grieving process).

I understand that my doing this work challenges people's beliefs, and it can be a lot to wrap your mind around if you haven't had a lot of exposure to it before. But I honestly don't care what people believe in, nor am I in the business of converting people. I love to educate others, but I think trying to convert people is a waste of time.

I definitely don't do this work for the ease of it. I do it for the healing it can bring. Luckily, that same reading that had the ultra-religious spirit, turned out to be incredibly healing for my client. That alone is what makes it all worth it in the end.

Anyways, I just wanted to share those two experiences with you, and especially for any of my students who might be reading this.

I hope you all have a lovely rest of your week!