August 1st 2004

Well, it’s been a fabulous couple of days, though I’m still having problems mixing with people. What on earth is wrong with me? I was going to run after that first evening but thanks to a long phone call to Paul I stayed the course. The problem was that the first optional session on Saturday night was taken by a lady who kept pacing backwards and forwards and often had her back to me so I found lipreading very hard. On top of that the constant moving about was giving me a headache and left me trying to follow a moving target, so to speak. I felt so dejected and it seemed like I’d missed an absolutely fundamental session, namely working with doorkeepers. I can’t possibly hope to do anything remotely mediumistic if I can’t open the door!

On the first full day though, things got much better. My group are such a friendly bunch and our tutor, Jan, just lights to room up with her smile. She was quite adamant that we were all budding mediums, so no-one was getting out of anything. I was worried about being able to hear but I explained my problem to the group and they were really good about getting my attention first and speaking clearly. The big problem was following guided meditations because once my eyes were closed I lost the plot completely. Jan said not to worry and reach out with my mind instead because if I just trusted I’d tune into the energy and wouldn’t need to hear her. I wasn’t too convinced about that though now I’ve had a few days I’m not so sceptical. I always seem to emerge just as everyone else is coming to.

That afternoon Matthew (another medium tutor) gave an optional talk on the mechanics of mediumship. It was either that or a talk about physical mediumship by Tony or a numerology tutorial with Cassandra. I wish I could have split into three but I decided that if I really am going to go down the mediumship road I needed to learn the absolute basics first and stay focussed on that. It was a good talk. Matthew seems to be a combination of fun, warm and absolutely lay it on the line blunt! He made us think about why we are doing what were doing, what our motivations are and what actually constitutes acceptable information when we’re giving survival evidence. Good solid foundation stuff with plenty to think about.

After the afternoon group session and a service, there were some more optional sessions at 9pm. I decided to go with Jan’s spirit photography session because it was also about building energy in a room and sensing it. The other options were Tony doing automatic writing and Avril talking about premonitions. Jan handed out disposable cameras to everyone who didn’t have equipment of their own and we set about building energy, focussing our thoughts on the room and calling spirit. The resulting photos were astounding with spirit orbs appearing all over the place. All of us with digital cameras were soon comparing results. Excellent session!

Afterwards I socialised a bit and then turned in early, hoping fervently I wasn’t going to snore.