Part Five: Practices, pitfalls and confusions, and limits

Practices

A medium must critically examine each transmission sentence by sentence. This is necessary because the being that is manifesting can change abruptly, even in the middle of a sentence. And the changeover point may not be obvious from the flow of the wording. Do not assume that one being is speaking the entire time. If this critical examination becomes a consistent practice, it builds the foundation for both healthy mediumship and a healthy spiritual life.

There are fundamental spiritual laws at work here in this respect, including the law of “like attracts like”. This is true no matter whether the mediumship is just starting or is well established. The beings able to manifest through a medium have attributes that mirror, in some way, the attributes inside the medium. And so does the process of what being can come through.

As a human being goes about their day, the aspect of themselves that manifests outwardly to others changes moment by moment. This will rarely be obvious without the difficult spiritual work of dissolving the Mask Self, which contains our ineffective defenses, and bringing to conscious awareness all the fragmentation inside. But after this step is well under way, it will make complete sense that the being manifesting through the medium can change moment by moment.

The manifesting being also often has an amplified version of a medium’s inner fault. In other words, by magnetic attraction, a being with a common inner fault comes through, but the fault expresses in amplified form. For example, if the medium has a hidden fault of dishonesty, the channel will reliably bring beings of far greater dishonestly. This is also a spiritual law of mediumship.

The examination of each transmission, sentence by sentence, is more than an exercise in the search for a truthful message from God’s Spirit World. The qualities of the faulty messages are themselves important information for a medium’s spiritual growth. The medium can use this knowledge of spiritual law to aide their personal search for their own inner faults.

Pitfalls and confusions

When spirit beings identify themselves with prominent or exalted names, this is a warning sign that the transmission is not coming from God’s Spirit World. For example, a being identifying itself as Saint Michael almost certainly has a hidden, corrupt, ulterior motive. The medium should proceed with caution and test the being as discussed earlier.

An authentic transmission from God’s Spirit World will not identify itself this way, if there is any identification at all. The Pathwork Guide did not give any information about himself. The only important thing was whether the teachings were useful and truthful, not who he was. People gave “him” the name the “Pathwork Guide” because they needed to refer to him somehow and they felt a masculine presence while Eva channeled.

A genuine emissary serving Christ will avoid a personality cult at all costs. And this is a difficult task, because pride is so slippery. Pride is the gravest fault in humankind—having the most debilitating and far-reaching consequences of any fault. That is why the Guide said we should never blindly accept anything he said as truth. He asked us to test what he said, apply it, and discern its usefulness for ourselves.

Eva knew mediums that “channeled Jesus Christ” but were incapable of acknowledging the utter nonsense of their messages. The messages made no real sense, but “Jesus said so”. Such pride makes a person blind to the point that authentic spiritual growth is impossible. This is directly opposed to the aim of God’s Spirit World, so a genuine emissary will not identify themselves.

A healthy approach is to neither accept or reject the messages on face value. Instead, put them to the test and see if they bear fruit. Genuine teachings will always serve the purpose of helping people go into and through their deepest inner obstacles. In this way, if we are committed to the journey of our own inner truth, all of the teachings of the Pathwork Guide can eventually be verified.

Pride is a debilitating fault, sitting alongside self-will and fear. These three faults are at the root of every other human fault. The Pathwork Guide offered a slow, laborious and thorough approach to root out pride, self-will and fear. This type of approach is essential for mediums, or any person who intends to open their personal channel to God and Christ within.

When mediumship falters

There are cases, however, where a person may genuinely try to just be a good person, and they may bring through correspondingly genuine and valid messages. They may have worked through some of the Lower Self faults in previous incarnations and thus attract, correspondingly, fewer dark beings. But the messages may be very limited in usefulness without this deeper spiritual work.

Far more often a medium has a promising start but begins to falter, either because they did not know of the divine laws discussed here, or did not want to know. Eva emphasized she herself was not given “secret” information. She had to work for the understanding every step of the way. But either way, Eva found that many mediums become stuck and an inner struggle begins.

After an exciting start, the messages are no longer fresh. They may lose the sparkling genuineness, and the medium may begin to detect something is amiss. There are more platitudes than actual spiritual help. The transmissions may then devolve to wisdom not much different than exists in human minds. An observer might wonder what remaining value the contact has.

Moving forward

Herein lies a great difficulty for the medium. On one hand, there remains a trace of the thrill of having established contact. And it is difficult to give that up. On the other hand, it is difficult to admit that the messages coming through now are highly questionable. Note the pride woven through both sides of the issue.

This dilemma can be very difficult to resolve. “Were the early transmissions real or did I imagine them? Was it all my subconscious? Is there no truth to mediumship after all?” If the medium is ignorant of—or unwilling to do the necessary spiritual work at this point—then a difficult decision must be faced: to stop or proceed?

If the disappointment is too difficult to face, the medium proceeds. Perhaps consciously, perhaps less so, the medium covers up the entire situation. But in order to “succeed”, one must accept ever-more nonsensical messages as gospel. And when a great many people are reading the messages, the medium then can no longer afford to question them.

There is an untruthful either/or duality at work here, underpinned by pride. Either everything is divine wisdom from God’s Spirit World or, on the other hand, there is nothing beyond the human mind. The dubious messages are either all obviously true (even though it’s often nonsensical) or all of mediumship is nonsense. A great many people reading such messages can also become caught up in this same duality.

So, what is the way out of this common pitfall?

Pausing and exploring

The medium must sense into the pace of their mediumship development relative to the progression of their spiritual purification. A rhythm may develop between the two that requires paying close attention to their relative progression. Spiritual development and purification must always precede mediumship development. If the mediumship development outpaces one’s spiritual purification, then mediumship must be stopped until the balance and rhythm is restored.

Eva found this pitfall first-hand and had to stop her mediumship for a year and a half. This meant stopping all professional activity, with the associated loss of income during that period. During this time, she focused only on her personal spiritual healing and development. She did not see this coming ahead of time and only learned the deep importance of this rhythm later as she progressed on the necessary course.

When mediumship is stuck, there is always a commensurate blind spot in the psyche of the medium. There is a negativity or fault that needs exploring, even if it is not yet obvious. This is a reliable gauge that a search into deeper levels of the personality is required. Look with unwavering self-honesty for all hidden places where pride, fear and self-will may block the way forward. We must actively search for the roots of our destructiveness.

Pacing ourselves

One last potential pitfall to mention is with the choices of when, where and with whom to hold mediumistic sessions. Any mediumistic sessions should include, at a minimum, one other person knowledgeable in spiritual purification and mediumship. This practice is dangerous to do without another competent person—it is very easy to become lost in areas of one’s own blindness. The other person can serve as a check against vanity and fascination with the process.

The choice of when and for how long to sit for sessions must be in the control the medium. Eva found a helpful rhythm of two to three hour-long sessions per week. She found this rhythm did not deplete her energy and allowed for the needed development process to proceed. In that way, if after a session she felt depleted, it was a sign that there was some inner aspect of her psyche needing purification.

For this reason, one should not follow a channeled voice’s direction for when to hold sessions. The voice could be any being, one that may or may not have the medium’s best interest in mind. Following the wrong voice can be dangerous. That said, an open mind is required to listen for advice and direction coming from one’s spiritual guardians that may offer a beneficial change.

If such a change is suggested, this change can always be examined between sessions and considered within the larger context of the medium’s development. One should always ask for and surrender to God’s will and guidance. In this fashion—and if a moderate, ordered process is followed—then the session format itself will not impede the flow of divine transmissions.

That said, we often have a misunderstanding about our guardian spirits, thinking they should tell us everything we need to watch out for. Their role is to help us develop our own inner sense of wisdom. Often that happens best when we learn the hard way from our mistakes.

Limits

There are limits to what a true divine emissary will and will not say. Here are a few:

A divine emissary will not give material that flatters—not the medium or audience. For example, a being from God’s spirit world would not give a message that a particular group is a chosen people. Any material that could bring up vanity is strictly avoided due to the damaging effect of pride.

With very few exceptions, a divine being will not give predictions or address idle curiosities. At best, a prediction fulfilled might temporarily ease some human doubts. But a channel to God’s divine Spirit World never opens for the purpose of easing human doubts. Doubt is a symptom of a deeply buried spiritual malady and thus needs to be directly faced. Their intent is to help us do the hard work of inner purification toward full self-realization.

In God’s Spirit World, truth and love are one. Thus a divine being can give truthful insight to aid a person’s development without hurt, unless the person is utterly blocked in this area. And a divine emissary will not answer a question or discuss something within the knowledge of the medium.

Special Guidance

As outlined earlier, there are several attitudes required for healthy mediumship: Healthy discernment, an open mind, and surrender to the will of God. Also actively seeking Christ’s protection together with a deep and ongoing commitment to self-purification. A person who genuinely follows these keys will receive special help and guidance.

There are “control spirits” that come from God’s Spirit World that can protect and aid the development of the medium. These control spirits guide and control which other beings and messages can come through the medium. They are essentially gatekeepers, working to help the medium safely grow and develop.

Having a control spirit does not mean that only divine emissaries will be allowed though one’s channel. For to the degree the medium has remaining Lower Self negativity and ego blindness, these negative influences must by law be allowed to transmit through the channel. Instead, a control spirit uses this lawful process to interactively help a medium learn where they are blind.

The control spirit will allow confusing and disruptive entities and energies to come through a medium’s channel in a constructive, interactive and lawful process. The medium, in turn, must meet these confusing tests by actively using their free will for discernment, honest self-search and self-purification. The degree a medium commits to the attitudes discussed earlier establishes the pace at which healthy mediumship can develop to a point where authentic divine emissaries can reliably come through.

Part 6: Mediumship in Santo Daime