The term “fortune teller” is very cheesy. I’m well beyond being outraged by it, hating it, or even being angry about it. That’s probably because I’ve never felt that it fit me in the first place. The only response I have to hearing it is disappointment. It reminds me of other treatments of spiritual things done by people who have no understanding, and if you pay attention long enough to their treatment of the subject, their ignorance becomes evident.

Be that as it may, I would say that if what you’re doing is unethical, you deserve to be called a fortune teller. Actually, I would say you deserve far worse than to be called nasty names, but that’s for the Law of Cause and Effect to take care of, and it will, in it’s own good time.

1. The presence of God in my life.  That presence that lets me know that life is a forward and uplifting progression towards goodness and spirituality, even when it does not feel that way in a particular moment.

2. The Very Important People (VIPs) in my life.  My wife, children, parents, family, friends.  Strictly speaking, they are largely unrelated to mediumship, but nonetheless, they are very important.  Experiences with them through time have taught me valuable lessons about life, love, and spirituality, which are important ingredients in mediumship.

3.  Assistance from my spirit folks.  They have provided guidance, assurance, and the butt-kicking (when necessary) to help me progress in life.

4. Communication with my spirit folks.  We work together to communicate better and better through mediumship.  I am thankful that they listen to what I have to say, and are willing to work with me.

5. The trust that I’ve developed with my spirit folks.  Building trust involves a lot of work, patience, and desire.  It requires a lot of investment from their side.  And it’s a choice on their part, not a given.  I am grateful that were willing, and appreciate the positive effects of it that show up in my mediumship and in my life.

6. The good works that I’ve been involved with via mediumship.  Healing.  Message work.  Readings.  Writing.  Channeling.  Spirit removal (Ghostbusting).  Guiding and teaching others.  All of these are rooted in goodness, are satisfying to be involved in, and are tightly integrated with the spirits – both my folks and others.

7. My dreamwork.  My dreams are very vivid, and the spirits often use my dream time to take me places, show me things, and teach me things.

8. That I live in a country where mediumship is no longer persecuted.  I am thankful that I do not live in fear of being burned at the stake.

9. That I am a medium.  While one can certainly get along in life without mediumship, I wouldn’t want to.  Mediumship has a mystery and beauty all its own, and I am thankful that it has a presence and a large role in my life.

10. For the people I have met and worked with along the way.  I have learned so many things from my peers in classes.  As time passes, some of them go different ways, and I probably won’t see them again while I’m still here on the Earth plane, but they will always have their special places in my heart.

11. For the future.  Despite what people say about psychics and mediums predicting the future, the future is, by and large, unwritten.  I rather like it that way.  Even without knowing what will happen next, I am sure that the future will involve goodness, spirituality, and mediumship, and for this, I am thankful.

Generally speaking, it’s rare for us to go for reading, but we do.  Remember that mediums are seekers too.  We can benefit from the services of another medium, even though we already talk to the spirits more often than most people.  Sometimes “hearing it from someone else” is good.

People think mediums (or psychics) know everything, or should know everything.  When people sneer at us for not knowing everything, including the winning lotto numbers, it makes me laugh a little inside. While they’re in the middle of sneering and looking down at us, what they’re actually doing is proving is that we’re human beings, (prettymuch) like everyone else.
Don’t they think that if mediums could consistently turn up the winning lotto numbers, that every one of us would be rich?  Sure we would, so why do they look at us like we’re foolish?  It’s not a failing of ours, it’s an unrealistic expectation of theirs, a failing of theirs to think we can do such things!  Usually, the most we say is that “it doesn’t work that way”, which is true, but doesn’t improve their understanding much at all.

Ok, time to climb down off the soap box.  Anyhow, truth be told, we don’t want to do lotto numbers.  If we could, all kinds of bad things might happen.  We would be hunted down and held at gunpoint to provide numbers.  If we made a mistake, we’d be killed.  There would be State, Federal, and police investigations to determine if we somehow got insider information and/or “fixed” the proceedings.  And if we did it consistently, there would be no more lottos, as people would scream that it’s cheating.  I think they’d scream louder than they are about Mr. Madoff’s $68 billion Ponzi scheme, as this type of swindling, as unethical and illegal as it is, is more commonplace.

Good thing that “it doesn’t work that way”, but if it ever did, I would hope that we would spend our mega-millions on making the world better, in some positive and spiritual way.  Too bad we don’t have the Madoff billions to do exactly that.

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.

Barbara Walter’s white blood cells are fine right now, but it does not invalidate the message. Time is a funny thing, it could happen later, or it might be someone she knows, rather than herself – things like this can happen in the context of mediumship, and it’s not necessarily a reflection on the medium’s capabilities.

As a medium and/or healer, you have to be very careful to not appear to be diagnosing, as the medical community, the seeker, or audience members could get you in trouble, depending on the laws in your area. It seems that Van Praagh directed her to her doctor, which is what a medium should do with this kind of information, which neatly avoids the issue.

At the same time, I can relate to Barbara’s statement that it’s dangerous. The danger comes from mediums who are either unaware, or don’t care about the consequences. As a medium, there are (at least) three considerations to keep in mind. The law, as what you’re doing may be, or could be construed to be, illegal. Ethics, because mediums should have high ethical standards, and appearing to be something you’re not violates that. Unintended consequences, as the “advice” you have may actually hurt the seeker more than it helps.

By the way, the article also covers some background on Van Praagh that you might find interesting.

I tend to think that the whole thing is contrived/faked.  Perhaps he researched the seekers beforehand or otherwise got information about them prior to the session.  Or they’re actors performing a script.  I suppose the very-remote possibility that he happened to do some legitimate message work despite his claims that he’s fake exists, but I’m not holding my breath.

I find it a little strange that the seekers were happy to have the video published. If I were one of them, I’d be mad as hell about being taken advantage of, perplexed about how the “medium” got the information, since he’s professing to not-be a medium in the first place, and then wonder if any of it was still valuable anyway, despite it being contrived/faked.  I’d also be embarrassed, and probably not want it published.

For mediumship to take place, a genuine connection to things-spiritual needs to be present.  Saying the same things a medium might say (without that connection) does not make you a medium.

The existence of fake mediumship does not invalidate all mediumship, no more than counterfeit money invalidates all money.  And the ability to produce a counterfeit, whether it’s mediumship, money, or anything else, really doesn’t mean much, other than it’s something to be aware of and avoid.

A good medium’s motivations for doing message work and readings is (or should be!) more noble than than faking people out or otherwise taking advantage of them.  If your intentions are not noble and good, and your ethics are not equally noble and good, you should not be practicing mediumship.  Stop right now, before you hurt people.  The money you can make isn’t worth the pain you can cause, and that pain will come back to you courtesy of the Law of Cause and Effect.

I don’t know if you will remember me. One thing you said was to move the computer near the window because everything would be better if I did that. I eventually got around to doing that and in the process I found that there was a short in the power supply which was burning and would eventually have set on fire.

By the way, when I switched the computer back on it started smoking, no joke. That is how close it was to setting on fire. If the power had gone off and come back on when I was away it would have set on fire. It was caused by a component next to the fan inside the power supply, so it would have blown flames out of the fan vent on the back of the computer on to the wall which is made of wood. Well done Joe and thank you for that, you probably saved my house if not me as well.

The medium’s role is one of service. Service for seekers who want or need contact with the Spirit World. Service for spirits who wish to communicate with seekers. Beneath it all, at the core, lies a sincere desire to be an agent of goodness, for seeker and spirit alike, in harmony with God-as-you-define.

From a medium’s perspective, verification from the seeker is a rare treat, and is always appreciated. Verification can affirm or reaffirm our faith in our mediumship, its positive benefits, and its ability to help others. Getting verification can be considered an expression of the Law of Cause and Effect (“what goes around comes around”) in a positive way.

Thank you Andy.

Hearing things-spiritual (Clairaudience) is the primary way that spirits communicate with me as a medium. I’m happy that they communicate this way, as it seems to work very well with me.  Seeing things-spiritual (Clairvoyance) is all well and good, and that works for me too, but I think people have it waaayy overrated. Essentially, no one mode of communication is necessarily better than another – it’s a question of what works, and what works best.

Leo says that “It is essential that you prepare for the sitting by being calm, in a quiet place if you can– you would be surprised how many call with screaming kids in the background”.

Whether it’s a reading by phone or by any other means, the point is that the surroundings should be “peace and quiet”. Part of those surroundings include you, and if you are relaxed, i.e. “peace and quiet”, it helps us as mediums.

Leo also mentions that “you need to understand that we cannot “call up the dead.” Mediumship is somewhat like a phone call to the spirit world, but it isn’t quite that simple. It’s more of a “party line” or an open connection, as opposed to being able to dial a single number and get exactly the same person every time. Even if we could connect with the same exact person every time, we couldn’t guarantee anything anyway, as that person may not want to “answer”. Despite these issues, mediumship works rather well.

It is a good idea to not-ask us (mediums) a whole bunch of questions, as it’s distracting. A little here and there is fine. Conversely, we don’t usually ask you a bunch of questions or want a lot of information from you, because it too is distracting. We do need to know if you’re following along, hence our occasional questions to you, but that’s about the extent of it.

As for what to make of a reading or message, I think Andrew Jackson Davis has a phrase that sums it rather well – “above all else, keep an even mind”.