My Introduction to Spirituality
I often say that I didn’t choose to do the work that I do, it chose me. I say this because I first became aware of something spiritual when I was around eleven or twelve years old. It was quite a scary introduction to the world of the spiritual. As a young boy, not understanding anything about these matters, I remember being quite afraid of what “the ghosts” might do. I remember seeing the forms of “ghosts” as I saw them then around the house and that my energy levels were constantly low. I imagine that my energy was creating all kinds of strange phenomena. Sometimes this is attributed to poltergeist (which means noisy spirit) activity, it was back then, with local mediums explaining what was going on by saying the house was haunted and that there were poltergeists in the house. Things would physically move around the house in ways that just couldn’t be logically explained. Today, I am not so sure that this activity was actually caused by bad spirits, but perhaps my own energy was creating chaos. It is quite common for this to happen when children reach puberty.
This introduction to spiritual matters, although scary, was not enough to deter me from coming back to it a bit later in life, around my early twenties. Sadly, my sister Jayne, who I do a lot of work with now, had a son, Ben, who died after a premature birth. The passing of Ben, inspired us both to visit a Spiritualist church to see if there was a message from him, we hoped to hear something that would bring reassurance. Unfortunately, a message didn’t come through in those early days. I imagine that this might have been for a reason; I tend to trust that everything does, even though we might not see it or understand why at the time. I think that if a message had come through on that first visit, we may not have returned. The lack of a message drove us both to continue visiting the church. After a while, we were invited to sit in what is called a closed circle. This is a place where developing mediums can learn how to enhance their mediumship and how to give messages to people in a considered and effective way.
This journey into Spiritualism made so much sense of my life, what I had experienced earlier and gave me a chance to understand my natural ability and to stop being afraid of what I could see and feel. I went on to become President of a Spiritualist Church and worked at the Spiritualist Association of Great Britain and The College of Psychic Studies in London. My work has taken me all over the world and I have worked in America, Europe and Asia. It may sound very glamorous, but it isn’t really. I quite often found my travels quite lonely and hard work. However, the people I met and the sights I have seen have been amazing.
My work took a slight turn around twelve years ago. I noticed that the people who came to me for readings, quite often had a lot of problems in life and I would suggest that they seek counselling to help support them work through issues such as abuse, self confidence and insecurity. I thought it might be a good idea to begin training as a counsellor myself and so embarked on what was the most amazingly healing journey I think anyone can go on. Counselling training, isn’t just about what we can offer clients, but it is also an opportunity to learn about ourselves and this is exactly what happened. I found that I really began to know who I am, made sense of my life and the difficult childhood I had. It was sometimes quite challenging, but worth every moment of the journey. I found that in getting to know myself and enhancing my self-awareness, it actually helped my mediumship too. I was able to be clearer about what was coming from my own self, experiences, feelings, way of seeing things and what wasn’t. Of course, this helps me now to be able to separate my thoughts and feelings from those of the spirit people who come through.
I was so inspired by my counselling training and what it had given me, I decided to offer counselling myself, as well as move into teaching it to others so that I could be part of what is such a rewarding job; seeing people grow and change through the courses is amazing. Today, I combine my spiritual guidance and mediumship work with my counselling practice and recently established counselling training organisation. The counselling I use with clients and teach on my courses is a way of working with people that includes mind, body, emotion and soul. I think that so many of our problems can be helped by exploring them from different perspectives. The mind rarely has all the answers. By helping people to see what their soul may need, have to offer or wants to say, alternative perspectives are often found and healing achieved.
It has been quite a journey and it is still ongoing. I work with my sister now mainly across the South West. Together we arrange public demonstrations workshops under the umbrella of Two Worlds Events. If you would like more information on any of my work, feel free to get in touch.