With mediumship, things are rarely black and white, so it’s better to put them on a continuum, with black at one end and white on the other.  Here are a few important continuua to think about when it comes to quality of content, and to some extent, quality of mediumship.

Positive to negative
Positive content is always good, but negative content is not always bad.  For example, you can get a real ass-kicking in a reading or message.  This is true, and I’ll vouch for it, because it’s happened to me.  My life was botched up, and the spirits gave me the kick in the ass that I needed to get me going in the right direction.  And it is not an open license for a message or reading to mean, disparaging, condescending, or contemptuous.  Basically, a good-old-fashioned kick in the ass is still good, as unpleasant as it may be to get it when you need one.

Wisdom to gossip
Content that provides wisdom and guides you in your life is good stuff.  Gossip is exactly what it is, gossip.  It’s junk.  Spirits don’t have time to gossip.  Neither should you.  You shouldn’t be looking for gossip in the first place, let alone from the spirits.  Wisdom is on one end of the continuum, and gossip on the other.  Things that fall closer to the wisdom end are better than the ones that don’t.

Evidence to fakery
An evidential message or reading is one in which there’s clear evidence of the continuity of life, that is, you know who the spirit is that’s communicating from the other side.  Not all messages are highly evidential, nor do they have to be.  But generally speaking, the closer it falls to the evidence side of the contiuum, the better it is.

The source, spirits to the medium
Messages from the spirits are what seekers want, most of the time.  It’s better than a message that comes from the medium personally, which is sometimes called a head message.  My experience is that head messages usually aren’t very good, but I allow the possibility that the content of one could be the same thing the spirits would have said anyway.  Determining a head message from a spirit message is whole discussion in and of itself, and is anything but black and white.

Ethical to unethical
This continuum is more black and white than most, but still has some gray area.  Telling a seeker that they have demons or devils.  Holding back content as a mean of demanding more money for a message or reading.  Manipulating the content for secondary gains, such as sex with the seeker.  Mean, disparaging, condescending, or contemptuous content.

Form, good to poor
This is more about how the content is delivered than the content itself.  But it’s related, because the delivery affects the perception by the seeker.  For example, many of the things that cynics pick on mediums about is simply poor form.  A quality message or reading should not be delivered in a way that makes people think you’re doing cold readings and the like.

My personal pet peeve is when a medium doesn’t know where the message is supposed to go, starts polling the audience to see who responds, finds the right one, and then goes from there.  Even if the message eventually lands in the right place and has good content, it’s very poor form.  It also gives cynics the soap box they need to stand on.  If I had my way, I’d outlaw it.  If the spirits can’t find the right person to deliver the message to and communicate it clearly to the medium, then the message shouldn’t be given.  Period.  You can bet I won’t stand for it with my guides.  I’d rather shut my mouth instead.  No message is better than one with poor form.

The medium as a person, good to bad
A good person is more credible than a bad one.  Even if the message is one hundred percent true (“the sun will rise in the morning”), I’d rather hear it from a good person as opposed to a bad one.  This continuum can also affect the quality of the content, through the Law of Attraction, i.e. bad spirits can provide bad messages.

The medium as a spirit communicator, good to bad
This is the capability of the medium to clearly receive and clearly convey content from the spirits.  While the idea of mediumship is as simple as handing a message from one person to another, who then hands it to the recipient, the reality is more multifaceted.  There are various things that impact the message as it goes from the spirits to the seeker.  And just like it is with our languages, things can get lost in the translation as well.

Obvious exceptions like being mute aside, everyone can talk.  Just because you can talk, it doesn’t mean that you are smart, wise, good, pleasant, sincere, or spiritual.  Not at all, because these things are unrelated to the ability to talk.  Talking is one thing.  Who you’re talking with and the quality of the conversation is quite another.

Mediumship and goodness are somewhat similar.   Just because you’re a medium, there’s no implied or automatic assumption that you’re talking with the smart, wise, good, pleasant, sincere, or spiritual people.  There’s no assumption that your spirit guides are smart, wise, good, pleasant, sincere, or spiritual people either.  None at all.As a medium, you want your mediumship work to be the best it can be, something that truly benefits and uplifts seekers. You want the smartest, wisest, best, most pleasant, sincere and spiritual spirit-people as your guides and teachers.  And you know that the quality of your spirit guides are directly related to the quality your work, the goodness of it.  The quality of the content.

Where do goodness and mediumship come together? Through the Law of Attraction, which states that like attracts like.  Goodness attracts goodness.  Mediums who are good people attract good spirit guides.  Good spirit guides bring quality to the content.

Knowing this, mediums are focused on becoming the best people they can be.  It’s a lifelong (and beyond!) process.  It is continual progression in the upward direction, without end.  This is great, because you can always become better and better.

Mediums also know that the spirits pick them, not the other way around.  This makes the medium’s goodness and spirituality even more important, from a quality point of view.

Seekers want quality.  Quality is an interrelationship of many things, not the least of which are the goodness of the medium.

Sometimes I hear voices, not often but sometimes they aren’t very nice. They don’t tell me to do things, they say things about me. Sometimes they are nice and say things like “don’t worry” etc. Where do the bad ones come from and how can I protect myself from hearing them?

As far as it goes, it has to do with the vibration and the Law of Attraction. When you’re not particularly focused on mediumship at the moment, and you happen to be open at that moment, then whatever is nearby may come in, which can be good, average, or not-so-good. If it’s not-so-good, don’t worry too much, as it’s not necessarily a reflection on you as a person or medium overall, or anything like that, it’s just a condition of the moment. You can close it off, ignore it, tell it to go away, perhaps say a prayer of protection or the like, and that should take care of it.

At first, it’s not easy to know when you’re open and when you’re not, so you just have to make the best of it. Typically, your spirit group keeps the door closed, and you can open it any time you want by sending out the thought. If you want to explicitly close it or keep it closed, you can do so by sending out the thought, or a prayer of protection. That should be plenty. If it starts getting out of hand and/or going very negative, then you have a much bigger problem.

Why is it so misunderstood? If the Ouija were a screwdriver, and you used it to put screws in, you might say it’s the greatest thing since sliced bread for what it does. If you tried to pound nails in with it instead, you wouldn’t be so thrilled with it. If you gave it to a child who didn’t know what it really was or how to use it, and they poked their eye out, you’d swear never to go near it again. If you’re a mechanic who never used a screwdriver but has heard a lot of stories about eyes being poked out, you’d be sure to tell the people you know to avoid it all costs, and given your reputation as a mechanic, people might well listen.

For people who aren’t mechanically inclined, listening to your mechanic’s advice about avoiding screwdrivers is probably wise, as it avoids a lot of problems. Either way, there’s nothing inherently wrong with the screwdriver, because it’s merely a tool. Just don’t poke your eye out with it.