When I was nineteen years old, I made an appointment to have a private reading from Reverend Gladys Custance of the First Spiritualist Church of Onset, MA.  I remember the anticipatory feeling of experiencing something new, for this was to be a reading by a Medium. 

Reverend Gladys immediately put me at ease with her gentle smile as she indicated a table where I could place my trusty reel-to-reel tape recorder to document my reading.   Never asking me questions, she took a few deep breaths, and with closed eyes began talking to me for almost one hour.  There was an incredible confidence about the information she was imparting to me.  It had nothing to do with love, or money.  The reading was all about my Spiritual Self.  My role on this planet.  Who I had been, and what I was to do in this lifetime.  She accurately described most of my relatives in Spirit, and even brought a message to me from a childhood friend I lost, giving me her name and how she passed.    During the reading she never asked me leading questions.  Occasionally she would ask, “Do you understand?”  I would answer yes or no.  If no, she would ask that I remember what she said to me then she would move on to the next part of the reading.  I still have the tape recording of my abridged Akashic record.  A recording so clear in it’s message with accuracy, that I felt turned inside out.

Fast forward thirteen years, for it would take this long before my path crossed with the Spiritualist Church again.

What first drew me to the Brockton church were the free readings.  A friend of mine asked if I would go to Sunday service with her in the hopes that she would receive a message from the platform. 

After a few months of sporadically attending services the pastor, Reverend Gertrude Stevens, was about to begin the message part of the service, when she stepped down from the platform and started to walk towards me.  She stopped where I was sitting, in the outside pew, leaned down and whispered in my ear, “You know who you are, join me on the platform and give a message.”  I felt my face immediately flush with embarrassment as people turned around in their seats to gawk at me.  Granted, I had been doing psychic readings since I was sixteen years old;  I began with Tarot, and after a few years did not even use cards.  I held my client’s hand, closed my eyes, and was off to the races.

I looked at the back of her head with an incredulous expression on my face.  She was walking back to the platform, her obvious gait telegraphing me to follow. 

Reverend Stevens took her seat among the rows of chairs reserved for qualified mediums.  She crossed her arms in front of her ample chest and nodded her head, “Go on.”

As I stared out at the congregation I cannot fully express the terror I felt.  I know my stomach felt sick.  I was a psychic not a medium.

Looking out at the congregation I saw the light over a parishioner’s head and I asked her, in a shaking voice, to please stand up.  Then I took a breath and read.  Once finished I motioned to leave the platform.   The strong voice  behind me said, “Do a couple more.”  I did four readings my first Sunday service.  Reverend Stevens stood next to me and asked me to take my place on the platform while she ended the service with a closing prayer.

In closing today’s post I want all of you to know that I have been blessed with stellar, integrity filled teachers during my lifetime.  I have met a handful of authentic, genuine mediums in my lifetime.  I can count them on one hand.  One hand. 

Despite my decades of development, I do not consider myself to be a medium in any way, shape or form.  Regardless of what others may have labeled me, I do not place myself in some exalted sphere of experience.

The past few years it has become a popular trend for psychics to label themselves as mediums or channelers.  Mediums channel Spirits.  They take on the appearance and mannerism of the departed.  They commune directly with the departed with clarity of dates, names and places without vagueness or broad spectrum common experiences.  They do not ask the client questions or body read them.  These people are rare. 

Authentic channelers would be Edgar Cayce or Jane Roberts to name two.

I am psychic, as are you.  No exclusive power or intuitive gifts are held outside your grasp.  Knowledge, training and practice are abundantly available.    

Let’s wash away the labels of hierarchy classifying one more “gifted” than the other and move forward with the real work.  Bringing Spirit to those who need comfort, compassion and wholeness.

Tags: channelers, Edgar Cayce, Jane Roberts, medium, psychic readings, Reverend Gladys Custance, Spiritualist Church of Onset