I’ve always been a spiritual person. However, raised a Roman Catholic, I was starved for spiritual attention and communication. I had questions through my early teens: Why can’t I ask the priest what happens to my pets when they die? Why do I have to keep quiet during mass? Why can’t a woman be a priest? No, thank you. I don’t wanna be confirmed!
During my college days in Boston, while searching for a religion that appealed to my rebellious nature, I was moved to tears by the Unitarian Universalist practice of Candles of Concern and Celebration.
Any congregant could light a candle and actually speak from the pulpit about what was weighing on their mind, or conversely, share the triumphs from their lives.
After having been regularly shushed during mass, speaking in church called to me. I attended and chaired services in a UU church for several years, until I was drawn to Zen Buddhism’s non-dual tradition. Meditation and going within was stripped down and centering. In my meditative zone I felt peaceful, focused, connected.
When I began developing as a medium I discovered Spiritualism at the age of 49. I recall wondering where this religion had been all my life?
Not only did women mostly lead the proceedings, but conversations were allowed, out loud and proud between Spirit and their loved ones. My meditation skills aided in my connection with Spirit, in going within to find that awareness where we are all connected.
Not surprisingly, I’ve begun to rebel (again!) against the object oriented dynamics, the principles, and the hierarchy of organized religion. My distrust of institutions continues to this day.
Yes, I sought education with and joined the SNUi but not to aggrandize myself; my desire was to develop properly and methodically in order to strengthen my foundation of mediumship.
Currently, I wish to merge my mediumistic understanding with my non-dual point of view, and I feel at odds at times with how most mediums see our craft and the “afterlife.”
Naturally, my heart fluttered when I discovered this manifesto for a post-materialist science, spirituality, and society. Created in 2014 during an international summit in Tucson, Arizona it outlines what a consciousness centered paradigm looks like. It’s written for scientists, but there is a lot there for your average holders of the “matter first” model, Spiritualists included.
As such, it doesn’t completely embrace non-dualism enough for me. The language is couched in mushy words like, “apparently,” “may unite,” “suggest” such as this phrase:
Minds are apparently unbounded, and may unite in ways suggesting a unitary, One Mind that includes all individual, single minds.
Why tiptoe around this? In my experience, there is absolutely no limit to awareness. There can only be one awareness, as it is infinite and dimensionless.
Further in, the manifesto mentions research mediums that can sometimes obtain highly accurate information about deceased individuals. I’d change it to “consistently” because, by definition, research mediums are highly trained and reputable, and will be able to provide evidence routinely.
The manifesto is not perfect, but important as a stepping stone for change. Imagine a society that doesn’t disparage mediumship, that encourages peace and understanding through knowledge that all manifestation is interconnected, that we are the activity of one consciousness.
Our minds are not stored in our brains, our memories are shared, we can talk to our animal friends, objects respond to our thoughts.
Forgiveness, mutually respectful communication, and caring encounters across humanity and the animal kingdom would be a natural outcome of such a world view. Mediumship would evolve from attempting to demonstrate survival of the personality after death to celebrating the fact that we can never die.
We mediums could deepen our connections to the point where we’d offer ongoing conversations with our discarnate friends and loved ones as readily as picking up the phone today. Doubt and mental blocks to development would fade away; children would be raised without fear of being considered weird for talking to their dead grandpa or goldfish.
I love the idea of this worldview, and will do my part to encourage its acceptance.
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