Our today shapes our tomorrow

It is sad, I feel, that some of the demonstrators on Spiritualist church platforms are so convinced of their competence that they are unwilling to face up to constructive criticism offered with good intention to help improve their performance.

We have had a problem for many years now, but with accelerating frequency, with inexperienced and insensitive people managing circles for the development of mediumship. While those claiming to teach are no more competent than their students, it is inevitable that the quality of deliveries from our platforms will continue to be poor.

True mediumship is a gift of spirit. Its development can be encouraged and accelerated by guidance, but not taught. Spiritual conversation is personal, not for public audience, and this is likely to be a prominent reason why real spirit messages so delivered are a rarity, and miles of descriptive verbiage, acceptable to half of those present, is proffered and accepted as being spirit communication. I would suggest that those making these deliveries either don’t recognise spirit communication or are wilfully deceiving often very vulnerable people. Neither alternative entitles the speaker to pose as a medium.

When I asked spirit friends for a definition of a medium I was promptly told that one is only a medium at the time of delivery of the message. Looking at the question in a wider sense, anyone delivering a message, information or any item from one party to another is, at that time, a medium, a go-between, but of course not a Spiritualist medium.

Most demonstrators like to punctuate their recitals with expressions of love. In real life, love is not always flavoured with sugar and spice. Spirit friends, in my experience, having the benefit of seeing things in our lives from a different perspective to ourselves will, from time to time, offer advice on our ability to avoid consequences they visualise ahead of us.

Platform demonstrators are reluctant to face up to the responsibility of needing to deliver information with sad or difficult content. When the communicator truly expresses love it will confront those issues. Their desire is to help those for whom they still care – not just to help the speaker to kill time.

Having shared with you my thoughts on the theatrical activities so many have come to recognise as being Spiritualism, perhaps it may be helpful to give some thought to what Spiritualism really is.

Those calling themselves Spiritualists usually meet together for religious ceremonies and, because of their family tradition, relate to a personality they describe as God or the Great Spirit. I would like to invite you to think a little deeper. Begin by asking yourself what you believe your God to be, and to operate.

We live in the 21st century and are, generally, less gullible and somewhat better educated than our forebears who were taught to accept whatever they were told. Science had not come their way. They accepted that miracles happen. We know that that is not possible, that all events result from a cause. They were taught that they might expect to live for three-score years and ten if they were lucky and that death preceded continued existence in heaven or hell, depending on how well they had behaved.

We now know that life is energy, which scientists have demonstrated cannot be created or destroyed, so we know therefore that life is eternal. We are each fragments of that life energy which through the years has developed the intelligence to think, regulate our behaviour and assemble an understanding of the nature of our being. I would put it to you, my friends, that we are personalities comprised of the assembly of our total life experience to date. At present, we have a material body to use as a vehicle with mechanism for expression of our spirit being. Death is the disposal of that vehicle, as with a car or any obsolete equipment. We, the life tenant, move on to continue our spiritual development in a different environment or atmosphere called, for convenience, the spirit world.

When we receive genuine spirit communication, we are made aware of our ‘dead’ family and friends and their continuing consciousness of what is happening in our own physical existence. By this we know that their personality or spirit is still here with us, and I would suggest that this calls into question the nature of the world as we know it.

The continuing familiarity between the dead and the alive, to use standard jargon, demonstrates, I would suggest, that we are inevitably a part of each other, each part of that whole which we describe as the Great Spirit. This being – the total body of life experience – will have assembled vast skills, knowledge and understanding, giving it powers beyond those of any individual. From it we can request, obtain and use knowledge and abilities making possible situations far beyond our individual, mortal ability. These are the events, achievements, believed through generations to be miracles performed by some supreme individual they have recognised as God.

The ancients were wiser than we have given them credit for. They had many gods, each a specialist in a particular aspect of life. Our Great Spirit of today, comprised of all of those skilled beings through history, embraces all those individual gods of our ancestors; it enables us, if needed, to impute a degree of personality, where so desired, when we pray to Father God.

Not being religious myself, I do not engage in prayer but in simple conversational requests for help and guidance for myself, or someone or something in need. My appeals for help in whatever need, are directed to my ‘friends upstairs’. Their being ‘upstairs’ is recognition of their superior knowledge and expertise for which I am in need, not my understanding of their location.

My requests for help arise, of course, from my perception of the cause of the problem for which I need help, so the help I receive is not always quite what I expect. That it is given and has effect I have to accept, and from the result learn to examine my believed needs from a different perspective. The continued gift of service, the unity of purpose in the support of persons and purposes felt to be in need is, for me, Spiritualism in practice. We practise what our understanding teaches us. Because there will inevitably be a continuing need for that service our lives will be continuous, eternal, evolutionary activity. We never grow old in spirit, we mature eventually into an excellence beyond my present comprehension. It is that continuous programme of experience, learning, understanding and service that I believe to be Spiritualism. It can be heaven or hell for each and every one of us depending on our individual present spiritual development, on whether we look on life as an adventure or just existence. Our spiritual development depends on the manner in which we conduct our lives. Are we givers or takers? Do we strive for or accept? Do we explore or just accept?

My mentor, Silver Birch, told us all that spiritual development results from the gift of service. How ready we are to take part in that activity will influence the pace at which we develop. Most people on earth, with their worldly needs, desires and ambitions, will focus their thoughts on the acquisition of material assets, on personal gains and making life more comfortable. It is easy for them to enjoy their ignorance of the needs of others.

Once we have given a little thought to the nature of life, our attitude changes. We examine how and why things happen, and how and if we can influence the direction in which the circumstances we experience and visualise can be revised for the better. We realise that we are a family with responsibility for, and a dependence on, each other. The attention we give to those thoughts influences our spiritual progress and gives us a new view and purpose for living. Attention to our material needs is something we have to accept, but ambition to satisfy wants does nothing for our spiritual welfare, and we stagnate.

The greatest pleasures, I’ve come to realise, come from our ability to help others, not only in the material, but also in the spiritual field. Let us realise those pleasures in the way we manage the life ahead of us.