Everyone has the mediumistic abilities that can bridge the veil between the physical and spirit worlds. Using these gifts is simply a matter of opening yourself to the possibilities. You’ll find that you are naturally stronger in some abilities than in others. Focusing to develop these skills leads to improvements in all parts of life. Everything is energy, and it is all connected.

Your spirit gifts open new vistas to you, which are often quite profound. Certainly it’s entertaining to develop some gifts, such as telepathy. But it’s also a process of discovery, of learning, of helping yourself and others. These are gifts of love and of healing, and using them in these ways leads only to good.

When you start to open up through meditation and feel what attracts you, you start to put the pieces together. We get different pieces to master in this or other lives. As we work on understanding each gift that comes to us through psychic or spirit connection, we bring them together in a whole picture. This picture unfolds over many lifetimes and in concert with many other fellow journeyers (both on the earth and on the spirit planes). This is not a process to fear; it is a process to welcome and cherish. It is part of the divine order of the universe.

Although you likely excel in certain spirit gifts and lack interest or refinement in others, they exist in unity. Also, there is an integration between what you might view as your tangible gifts and your spirit gifts. Rita, for example, is blessed with artistic talent. Combining that with her mediumistic abilities provides an avenue for development in both areas. We all have roles in spreading the message that life is continuous.

What are your particular spirit gifts? Even now, you probably have some idea of the areas in which you seem to have inherent ability. These are good areas to start your spiritual unfoldment, and there is an exercise later in this chapter to help you identify your starting points.

First and foremost, your spirit gifts exist for goodness and healing. No matter what those gifts are or to what extent you choose to develop them, they are your link to an energy that is much larger than you are. They connect you to the divine, and to all existence. Self-exploration is very important. As you travel this path, you will discover yourself.

Perhaps you feel you really don’t want to expand your own mediumistic senses, but instead want to explore the ways someone else’s abilities—a psychic’s or a medium’s—can bring new information into your life. This is a wonderful start. Of course you can experience spirit contact through readings. But this changes you and your abilities, too, because everything is energy and everything is connected.

Think of all the many ways that you use your physical senses during the course of a day—or even an hour. In fact, that’s a good exercise: For one hour, write down every time you use a particular physical sense. Start with taste, because we tend to think of this as an isolated, intermittent sense. After all, you don’t go through your day tasting everything; you use your sense of taste only when you eat. Or do you? You might be surprised! Then move to your sense of smell, your sense of sight, your sense of hearing. When you walk past a bakery, the smell invites you in. You are driving down the highway and you see a hawk fly, and it gives you a sense of freedom. You taste cinnamon and think of your mother’s apple pie.

What happens to you when you enter a new environment or situation? Do you feel like all of your senses are heightened and on edge? People who engage in high-risk adventures such as skydiving often report intensified sensory experiences. When such an adventure takes you close to what you perceive is the brink of death (though not a near death experience), you might indeed feel that you can taste the air! You also might feel like you can hear colors and see sounds. The energy of the experience is so strong that it crosses conventional borders.

The same happens with your psychic senses. As you explore and develop them, they become more integrated with each other as well as with your physical senses. This increases the amount of information you can gather about your environment, your experiences, and, really, your life. If you’re paying attention, this is all information that increases your understanding.

The expression might be, “curious as a cat,” but in reality, no creature on this earth is more curious than the one who stares back at you in the mirror. We humans want to know everything. How does that work? Why does it do that? What happens if …?

In childhood, we ask just these questions. By the time we become adults, we have learned not to ask these questions because they don’t always have apparent answers. But often, it is the question that matters more than the answer, because asking the question honors the quest—the journey—for knowledge and understanding.

Reclaim your natural curiosity! This is how you grow and develop as a human being, and evolve as a spirit being. Life is a dynamic adventure, an exploration. Your psychic abilities are additional tools available for you to use and appreciate.

You hold your future in your hands, regardless of the extent to which you choose to develop and use your psychic gifts. Each choice you have, every decision you make, influences the next step you take along the path of your soul’s mission. You don’t consciously think about this the vast majority of the time. Your higher being—your spirit in interaction with the thought energy of your subconscious mind—makes many of the choices and decisions that guide your direction.

When you become aware of some of these decisions, you can make them with intent. This is powerful indeed! It’s a good thing to move toward your spirit’s mission even when you are unaware that you’re doing so; life seems easy and smooth when this happens. When it doesn’t, you might find challenge and frustration along your path. Nothing seems to quite work out for you. You feel a half step off—and maybe you are, because you can’t see the path. Imagine how different your journey would be if you could see each step and where it takes you! You can, once you start looking.

We seek because we sense that there is more to our lives, this existence, than we detect. We know, at some level, that growth and development are important spiritually as well as physically and emotionally. We know that ours is a dynamic, not a static, existence. We see evidence of this all around, from the physical signs we see in the mirror—the changes of aging—to the spiritual changes we feel as we encounter situations such as the passing of loved ones. Your psychic senses help you “make sense” of all of these experiences.

What concerns you the most about the progress of living? For most people, it is worry about what lies at the end of the road. All life moves inexorably toward this end; we see this every minute of every day. Once, people were terrified to venture very far from their homes, convinced that the earth disappeared beyond the horizon. There was nothingness, a vast void, on the other side of where the sky meets the earth. Traveling there was … well, beyond comprehension.

But then Christopher Columbus sailed the ocean blue—and changed the world view for everyone else. (As did dozens of other courageous and curious explorers.) Of course the earth continued beyond what the human eye could see. Today we laugh at the perception of a flat earth; we’ve seen the view from space, and we know better.

You are an explorer, too. And you might fear that your world disappears or ends beyond what you see as its physical boundaries. Spirit contact tells us, as did Columbus’s reports back to his sponsors, that there is no end. It’s just different. Columbus and his fellow explorers found exotic new lands, with new species of plant and animal life and physical surroundings like nothing they’d ever seen. This is where your spirit explorations will take you.

What you learn, whether about geography of the physical world or evidence of the spirit world, changes your world view. Knowledge changes how you perceive the events in your life. Knowledge changes you and the way you live your life.

What do you do in life? Think about how you use your tangible abilities and talents. Inevitably, you use them in the service of others. You might do this because it’s your job and someone pays you to. But odds are, you do what you do because you enjoy how it helps someone else. Whether you build bridges, perform surgery, sweep side-walks, sell newspapers … no matter what you do, it somehow helps others.

Your spirit gifts expand your ability to help, in different ways. At the very least, they give you increased insight, empathy, and compassion. You see a bigger picture, which gives you the ability to view the actions of others in a different context. When you know that there is more to life than meets the physical senses, you can be more kind, tolerant, and forgiving. Learning to forgive yourself first, and then to forgive others in your life is a cherished gift; and, yes, forgiveness is always possible.

Is there a relationship to someone important in your life—a child, parent, sibling, spouse—that you feel is drifting, or is impossible to repair? Nothing is impossible with time, love, and effort. If you can spend two hours a day in front of the television, you can decide instead to set aside a portion of that time for improving your relationship. Be tenacious and steadfast, even if your efforts are rebuffed at first. After all, you’ve got endless time across many lives to get it right. And what better time to start than now.

Remember, spirit contact is about healing, learning, and love.

What do you want to know? Sometimes asking the right questions is the hardest part of seeking answers. The more specific the question, the more directed the answer—and also the more limited. Everyone has unresolved issues. Relationships of any kind are complex and often confusing. Human behavior is even more so! Your questions are personal to you, and their answers are likely to bring about significant change in your life.

Are you ready to know the answers you seek? It seems obvious that you are, if you’re asking the questions. But sometimes the questions take us in unexpected directions. The answers often aren’t what you anticipate, although they provide the information that you ultimately need.

We talk a lot about proving the continuity of life. This is something that interests most people who want to make spirit contact. We miss loved ones who have passed to the higher side, and want more than anything, at times, to have just one more contact. Love is an all-powerful energy that connects us through space and time, but the sense of loss that accompanies a loved one’s passing can be overwhelming.

Receiving contact from the spirit world is a blessing. It is also a life-altering experience for many people. Seeing is believing … and believing isn’t always easy. Even when your faith incorporates belief in the continuity of life, you might not be prepared for how evidence of it affects you. Again, remember that spirit communication is for good and for healing. And it comes of love, the most powerful energy of all.

What skills do you want to develop? Do you want to become more in tune with your intuition? Explore personal issues? Facilitate spirit contact for others? Do you want to connect with earth energy, spirit energy, or both? The following self-exploration can help you determine where, and how to start your psychic development.

Obviously, there are no right or wrong answers here; this is an exercise to help you explore what interests you and how you might develop your abilities to aid that exploration. You can revisit the exercise in Chapter 12 to further identify and develop your psychic skills.

The best way to develop your psychic and mediumistic skills is to find a good teacher! Start with sources that you trust, and see where they lead you. You might feel there aren’t many options in your local area, but keep looking. Eventually you will find the right opportunities. You might have to drive or travel to find the teachers you need. Don’t just wait until something comes to you! If you don’t connect, just keep looking. Don’t give up, and don’t settle for what you know isn’t quite right.

If spirit learning opportunities are abundant in your local area, great! But don’t limit yourself to them. Remain receptive to new doors that open. Try to have many different teachers, so you learn more than just the one teacher’s way. Each teacher has different abilities and will bring out different abilities in you. Be sure that, under any circumstances, you trust the teacher. Don’t idealize the teacher, though—teachers are just human, just like you. They’re just more aware of their skills!

The possibilities that your psychic abilities open to you are endless! If you find yourself being inspired along a healing path, try different modalities. Experience them, see whether you relate to them or whether they really don’t make any sense. It could be that it’s not your path, or that you’re not ready for it yet.

Remain an explorer. Self-exploration especially is very important. As you travel this path, you will discover yourself, and you will learn more about your purpose in this life and how you can use your gifts to help others and make this world a better place. In the end, that’s really what this is all about!

The Least You Need to Know