Getting The Spirit Communicator The Client Wants
Question: I have heard you talk about doing readings and getting the spirit person that the client wants. I have listened to other mediums say that you are supposed to allow spirit to lead. Sometimes I just let whoever comes through, and it is the person the sitter wants to hear from. Other times they tell me they weren’t close to that person or barely knew them. I don’t understand why in some readings, the person the sitter wants comes through will, and other times it is someone they barely knew, or the one they wanted isn’t there. Why does this happen? What is the correct way to handle these situations?
Answer: I will answer your question from many different perspectives, including theory, mechanics, ethics, and from my own personal practice and client preference. Additionally, from past experiences, this topic can be quite controversial with some mediums. Thus, you will hear me say you ultimately must decide what is best for you.
Theory
Most spiritual theories and even science talk about the energetic concept of “oneness.” This means we are all connected. We are all spirit and energy. Spirit is unbound by time and location. Thus, it isn’t that the spirit communicator the sitter wants to hear from isn’t there or around; they are around. Spirit is present in all places at the same time.
People put human concepts on the spirit in terms of very physical and material standards and limitations. The notion that the spirit communicator is not around or not with their loved one needs to be more accurate based on the concept of oneness. For example, it would be like saying that air is only in one place, not another. Air is everywhere. No one has any idea about the spirit world and the “there” of it because no one has been able to map the spirit world. We still do not have any concrete idea of how mediumship happens, especially the mechanism on the spirit's end, because we are not entirely aware of the spirit world like we are in our physical environment.
We are in our infancy of understanding consciousness, and for years, we have thought that consciousness was explicitly connected to the brain. That all is changing. Theories now suggest that consciousness is energy, and the brain is a very narrow filter for that energy. Our brain filters things our physical senses can perceive, primarily for survival. For example, the human eye can only detect 0.0035% of the electromagnetic spectrum. The small percentage of the spectrum we see is called visible light. We are mainly oblivious to the vast range of electromagnetic waves around us. In terms of hearing, humans cannot hear sounds below 20 Hz (infrasound) or above 20,000 Hz (ultrasound). Thus, the senses we use to perceive our physical environment are limited, never mind the non-physical.
Preference
I am not inclined to tell mediums what to do or how to handle readings with clients/sitters. This is ultimately an individual medium’s choice. However, as I stated, mediums will undoubtedly bring strong opinions and beliefs on this topic. This stems from many areas, including personal views, their philosophy on mediumship, their perception of spirit, how they have been taught, what they find easiest, etc. The only requirements I encourage are that the readings be evidential and ethical. Mediumship tends to be personalized, and one method or style does not fit all. I fall back on people doing what works for them.
That being said, plenty of mediums will allow whoever comes through and are successful with this. However, some mediums do this, and the clients leave unsatisfied because the person they wanted to hear from didn’t come through. Some mediums do customized/personalized readings (where you get the communicator they want) and are successful with this. However, some clients won’t enjoy a personalized reading and want you to bring it through whoever. Again, there is no right or wrong. You must determine what works best for you and your clients (if you are at that stage of your development). What I can do is tell you what I do personally in my business and how I handle readings with clients.
Personal Practice and Client Preference
Professionally, I focus on the client and do customized readings where I get the spirit communicator they want to hear from. This is because the client is coming to me and paying me for a service. This isn’t to say that spirit isn’t essential, as one doesn’t negate the other. However, without the client, there is no communication. Without the client, there is no business. Additionally, in my experience, most clients want to hear from a specific someone, and this makes complete sense. Also, in my experience, spirit wants to connect with them too!
As soon as you charge a fee for your mediumship, the client expects service and quality (and rightly so). I discuss with students the business aspect of the mediumship of an analogy of a restaurant. If a customer were to go to an Italian restaurant and order lasagna, but when the waiter returns, they do not bring lasagna, they instead bring tacos. The customer is not happy because they didn’t get what they ordered. Suppose the customer asks again for the lasagna, and the waiter tells them that they thought they were meant to have tacos, that they would be better for them, or that the lasagna is unavailable, and that they must take the tacos, etc. In that case, the customer is unlikely to return to that restaurant. Not only that, but they are also unlikely to recommend that restaurant to anyone else.
This example with the restaurant is sometimes what happens in a mediumship with clients. For example, the mother wants to hear from her son, but the medium brings the grandfather, whom the client barely knew or despised. The client will likely not leave satisfied or feel they received good service, which they paid for. To take this analogy even further, this may be the one time the mother risked going to a medium, only to be told that her son was busy or unavailable, or worse, that they didn’t want to talk to her. This is not only completely untrue, especially when you understand the mechanics of spirit communication, but not remotely provable and seemingly cruel and damaging to the client.
Ethics
This brings me to what I believe to be ethical considerations as well. Suppose a medium goes with whoever is in their awareness and needs to explain the mechanics of what is occurring during a mediumship reading to the client. In that case, it can be distressing to a client who is likely already grieving. Many clients don’t want to go to a medium. They instead have communication with their loved ones on their own.
For many, it is a big deal if they decide to go to a medium. They may be vulnerable, scared, nervous, anxious, or even silly because they have been told many things about mediums, including fake, fraud, making things up, preying on people, etc. Additionally, the monetary expense to go-to a medium can be substantial with some mediums’. Add to this hoping to hear from their child, spouse, or parent, and the medium taps into the frequency of their second cousin twice removed, Vinny, on stepmom’s side of the family that they rarely saw between 1980 and 1983.
Most mediums will readily refund a disappointing reading; some do not. However, merely refunding money when the client is likely putting much on the line by even going to a medium is not expressing compassion for the inability to link with the person they want to communicate with. Remember, most people coming to see a medium will be experiencing grief. Explaining to the client that it is not their fault that their loved one didn’t come through is vital and loving to the client. As mediums’ we do not want to compound the person’s suffering.
Explain to the client that it is not them; you, the medium, could not link. If you want to do something other than a customized reading, refer the client to someone who does it. Please do not tell the client that their loved one didn’t want to communicate with them or that their loved one has to learn how to communicate from the other side; they are busy, and the client is grieving too much or low frequency, so the communication can not happen, or that Vinny was meant to be for the reading versus their son who has just passed. There is no way to prove ANY of this, and it is surmounted by excuse-making, blaming the spirit world or the client.
Mechanics
There are mechanics about how and why customized readings work. At this point in my mediumship, it has become less frequent that I have to ask the sitter who they want to hear from. This is because I have developed my ability to be able to feel who it is they want to connect with. Getting the spirit communicator the client wants to communicate with is a mechanic that is learned just like any other mechanic in mediumship. I tell students that in terms of mechanics, communication with spirit consists of, but is not limited to, awareness, intention, and love.
To explain awareness, I give the analogy of people in a city crowd. Some people will be drawn to a woman with a big floppy hat, others may be tempted by the guy with beaming red hair, others will notice a little kid with a toy, and some will see the older man in suspenders. Observing certain people in a crowd is subjective and personal to what the medium is drawn to or notices.
When you connect with someone the sitter loves, you can feel this love as an energetic pull in the reading. This pull then lends itself to me being aware of them. It is like having my head tuned in the right direction to notice and be mindful of the spirit communicator. I can still ignore this pull and get into my head or rely on the first thing that grabs my attention. However, because I practiced the mechanics of doing a customized reading by asking whom they wanted to hear from, I can distinguish to a greater degree the energetic love connection versus if I had practiced starting with the first communicator that grabbed my attention.
To give a counterpoint as to why some mediums object to customized readings is based on the belief that the medium is dictating who comes through. However, the medium is ALWAYS dictating who comes through based on their mind and the filter of their mind. Other factors such as the ability of the medium, their comfort level, level of experience, and whom they notice in the crowd, so to speak, play into connecting with spirit.
The medium's bias, especially when starting, is to go for the safety of what they know. Also, mediums admittingly avoid certain types of spirit communicators based on their life experience or comfort level. This is where some personal exploration and development will come in. This may not even be happening on a conscious level but on a subconscious level.
If we are to presume spirit is intelligent, and they object to customized readings because the medium is dictating, then why would they allow the communication even to happen? Why would they provide any evidence at all to the medium? It is impossible to prove that just because the medium becomes aware of a specific communicator, it is a spirit who is deterring and not the medium who decides based on the above examples, mechanics, and the filter/bias of the medium's mind.
I hope this help! Happy practicing and developing!