Part Three: ‘When the pupil is ready, the teacher appears’.
What to do next following the revelations regarding my future path given to me via a medium during my first visit to a Spiritualist church (see part two of this series)?
As a result of her insights into my future I determined to investigate mediumship and to actively seek a means of developing the latent mediumistic ‘gifts’ I’d been told I was in possession of …but where to start? It seemed logical to begin by visiting local spiritualist churches at the weekends to closely observe mediums as they worked. Some impressed me greatly – others not so much. After a few months of what seemed like a fruitless search for ‘the next step’, and at the conclusion of one particular service held at a local church, a rather gruff-looking gentleman who’d been sitting several seats down from me on the row I was in stood up, walked over, towered over me and boomed, ‘…How would you like to be part of a circle?’
Caught off guard, all I could think of blurting out was, ’…Um… I don’t know what to expect…’
‘Well… me!’ barked the gentleman. ‘…I’m not so scary, am I?”
Actually, Bruce – for it was he – did come across as quite a scary man until you got to know him, but despite his abrupt manner I sensed this was the ‘next step’ I’d been looking for, and began to attend his ‘open circle’ meetings on Wednesday evenings (an open circle is a gathering of like-minded people who sit together in a circle formation to build spiritual power, supervised by a medium, with the intent of connecting to higher spheres of reality and/or developing their spiritual gifts). This weekly event was meticulously overseen by Bruce (a truly excellent medium, who passed to the higher side of life some years ago) who subsequently became a close friend.
Following one such meeting I enjoyed the traditional post-circle cup of tea sitting beside a new-to-me face – a middle-aged lady who had beckoned me over to chat with her and who I somehow instantly recognised, despite never having met her before in this life. ‘She’s a nurse,’ I told myself, though I had no idea how I knew this (I later discovered she had indeed been a nurse during WWII). We talked for quite some time and instantly seemed to gel, with Joan, at the conclusion of our conversation, inviting me home to meet her husband. Joan and Jack became ‘second parents’ to me and I regularly dropped in on them, in the process hugely advancing my understanding of many things spiritual and discarnate due to Joan’s extensive, no-nonsense knowledge of such matters, gained through decades of personal investigation and experience.
During one such visit Joan took me into her front room and explained that she had been sitting here (as in sitting with the intent of developing her spiritual gifts) regularly, by herself, for over thirty years, during which time she had taught herself to meditate efficiently and to communicate accurately with the discarnate spirits that often visited her and she had been able to see around her since she was a child.
’if you wish to develop for the right reasons,’ she said. ‘Not for yourself but to help others, then I will sit with you once a week and teach you everything I have discovered over the years. It will take discipline and dedication and commitment and sacrifice. …And once you set your feet on this path you will never be able to take them off again. So…what do you say?’
…I said an enthusiastic yes, leading to the two of us sitting together in that room – a room that was alive with the spiritual power that had built up over the decades of disciplined seeking and connection it had been host to – every Sunday, come rain or shine, for a full seven years from the time of Joan’s initial invitation.
During those years I was taught how to meditate, how to correctly access and interpret the information that came to me clairvoyantly (through higher consciousness sight); clairaudiently (through higher consciousness hearing) and clairsentiently (using higher consciousness senses). I also gained a greater understanding of myself and of my physical mind, and was taught how to control that mind and the energies, impressions and insights that, prior to that point in my life, had, for the most part, controlled me. Amazingly, it was arranged by the group of spirits that regularly visited us from higher vibrations (a key member of which, ‘the Persian Gentleman’, would later act as overseer of the subtle, high vibrational energy ‘bubble’ that needed to be constructed around Joseph and myself each time communication took place then deconstructed following each communication) that Joan could ‘tune in’ and begin a ‘message’, I could then take over and continue that message, and she could step in and conclude the communication….and vice versa. We were able to see, hear and sense the same communicators – a unique arrangement that gave me increasing confidence when learning how to communicate with our discarnate friends.
At the end of that seven-year period I was invited – with Joan – to take my first service at a local spiritualist church. Standing there after the event in front of a congregation comprised of strangers, friends and family – something I would never have considered possible or dared do when first meeting Joan – I knew that I had found my ‘mission’ in life and that all that had gone before had been a preparation for this moment and the countless others like it that were to follow. I realised that the path I was now on would never let me go – nor did I wish it to.
What I didn’t know, and what would be revealed in coming years, was that Joan and I had incarnated together before… at least three times… and that we had done so that we would be vibrationally drawn together in this particular life to allow the Joseph Communications to manifest at this time as a result of Joan bringing out and honing my mediumship and, much later, revealing a crucial fact about herself that would directly lead to my connection with Joseph…
Continued in Part Four.
