Making sense of it all, by Greywolf Sheard

In my work I have encountered a great many sceptics. I have found myself defending the job I do to countless people, some of whom had actually formed cotent and valid arguments for their position. Sadly there are a great many sceptics who are only sceptical because they do not understand the spiritual world. And who can blame them? There is a lot of 'airy fairy' nonsense attached to psychic work, and even from a medium's point of view it is easy to see how people can find the whole thing a bit far fetched.

The proliferation of television shows, films and fictional books concerning the paranormal has meant that the definitions of what a spirit actually is have been grossly exaggerated to the point of ludicrousness. Over the years I have never met or contacted a bad / evil spirit / ghost, I have never been 'slimed'. Nor have I ever summoned the Devil. It is only common sense to recognise that dramatic works of fiction must contain hyper-realistic situations in order to satisfy and audience. They are NOT, and nor, would I assume, are they intended to be, an accurate and honest representation of the subject matter. On one occasion I had a lady call me to cancel a visit to her haunted home! because she had watched 'Scariest Places On Earth' the night before and was terrified I might unleash a poltergeist in her house! In reality she would have probably just received a 'Hello' from Grandma Maude!

Terminology is a source of bafflement too, what exactly is 'residual energy'? Come to think of it, what exactly do you mean by 'energy'? Don't even get me started on Fairies and Angels. Well actually, the terminology is probably the biggest hurdle. Lets look at that word 'Energy'. For those scientifically minded folk amongst you, energy is of course a quantifiable force measured in joules. In scientific fields energy can even exist in potentia, and of course we all know that E=MC2, right? When a medium talks about energy, he is referring to the atmosphere generated by the partcular spirit of the time. In life, you know when someone is in a mood or not, you can just feel it. Well that is what we mean by energy. I use the word energy because it is a better word than 'vibes'. A building, a walking stick, a person, an animal, even a football field can all generate their own atmosphere. If you have ever walked in to a house and felt ill at ease for no apparent reason it is most probable that you have picked up on the energy of the building, you are feeling the emotions of many many years which is still as potent as it was in its day. In this sense, the energy therefore is very much 'residual', i.e. it is a product which remains long after the solution (in this case, life itself) has ceased to be, a bit like the white residue left behind after you have given the bath a good scrub! The term 'Medium' is also losing its definition. A medium, in any area of life be it science, cookery or writing etc, is a means of transferring data. A writer uses a pen to channel his thoughts to the paper, a scientist would use copper in order to transfer an electric charge from its source to its destination, and a psychic medium simply passes on the words of spirit beings to their target. So think of a medium as a human radio.

Fairies, Gnomes, Angels and all manner of fantastically named entities exist also. A Fairy is simply a nature spirit and as soon as you get over the fact that it is called a Fairy you will be fine. Call them something else if you like, they are only words after all. We should be careful not to understand the world simply in terms of its language, rather we should look beyond the words to understand more about their subjects. I still think its odd to call an orange an orange, how on earth can you eat a colour? Isn't colour an abstract thing, and not a tangible solid object? Wierd! Gnomes are earth spirits, they inhabit rocks, earth, piles of leaves, old trees and many other places. They do not, however, wear pointy hats and carry fishing rods from toadstool to toadstool. Nor do Angels sit on a cloud playing the harp. Likewise, a Salamander, which is a fire spirit, does not slither about on all fours eating flies. In addition to Gnomes and Salamanders there are two other types of nature spirit. There are the Sylphs, which are air spirits and there are Undines, which are water spirits. What do they look like? I am of the belief that they look like whatever your brain can cope with when it sees one. That is to say, seeing something which we do not understand or recognise causes our brains to apply a suitably easy to grasp overlay to the whole thing, and because of cultural influences you will see Fairies with wings, gnomes with hats on and Angels with halos. That's fine though, that's great in fact, Once you can see these beings you're on the way to a better relationship with the world you live in.

Another difficult aspect of this, is the understanding that not all spirits are ghosts. In actual fact, the majority of spirits I have been in contact with are not ghosts. A ghost, otherwise known as a discarnate, is the spirit of a deceased being which is unable, or unwilling to move on to the next plain (don't worry, we'll cover planes in a moment). In this case a spirit gets 'trapped' as it were and remains on this physical plane. You can look at them like squatters if you like. You never invited them but somehow they end up living in your house, and with every right! Ghosts can be moved on of course, squatters are more difficult. At this point I must point out that not all ghosts are bad spirits. To have a ghost is not necessarily to be haunted to the grave. When a medium contacts a relative for someone during a reading, that relative is not on this plane wandering about with their slippers on.That is why we need a medium and as I have said a medium is simply a means of transferring information from source to target. Okay, so what is a plane? A plane is, in its simplest sense, another layer of existence. In mathematics, if you look at a cube and note that it has eight sides you will begin to see what this entails. Look at the side facing you, it is perpendicular. If you were to extend the sides beyond their framework to fill the space you would have created a plane, and it is on this plane which the front side of the cube exists. Now, without moving the cube, if you were to do the same with all the sides, you would have created multiple planes, which intersect at various points. Each side exists on its own plane and each plane intersects with its neighbours. If you apply this idea to life, and imagine that a physical life is one plane, and the spirit world is the plane on the opposite side of the cube you can see that there is a reason that it is known as 'the other side' and in fact the spirit world is not up in the clouds but is just around the corner.