Part Six: Mediumship in Santo Daime

There are three primary ways in which mediumship shows up in the Santo Daime:

• Receiving messages
• Receiving hymns
• A practice by some Daimistas of incorporating suffering souls

A brief recap of the key points discussed earlier will be valuable here.

All human beings are influenced from the spiritual realms. We create many spiritual worlds inside ourselves, ranging from divine beauty to hell realms, all reflecting our inner makeup and development. And the interactions with the greatest influence on us are unconscious—for we are so often blind to our faults.

The Daime frequently opens a mediumistic channel to the spiritual realms—specifically our inner worlds—and to all the beings that live in those worlds. And this can vary across a wide range of consciousness.

Receiving messages

During a Santo Daime work, people often receive messages coming through their channel. These messages will vary as to their source, truthfulness and helpfulness, depending on one’s inner emotional makeup and the many factors discussed in this article.

After the close a work, we must actively work to discern how a received message resonates inside us. And we must also pay attention to the appropriate timing for taking any action related to a message we have received.

As discussed in Part Four, the following attitudes are necessary for developing a trustworthy channel to God’s Spirit World apply when working to discern the validity of any message:

• Discernment and discrimination
• An open mind and surrender to the will of God
• Commitment to self-purification as a prerequisite for Christ’s spiritual protection

Receiving hymns

The hymns people receive are channeled from a spiritual being. But as with all mediumship, they are a co-creation and subject to all the spiritual laws of mediumship outlined here. Thus the qualities of the message—its truthfulness and personal relevance—and the energy contained in the hymns will reflect the level and qualities of the person’s inner development.

Due to the insidious nature of how the Mask Self and ego can hide unconscious negativity, hymns should be carefully examined according to the principles outlined here. For an unfortunate vicious circle can easily be established. If a person is blind to a hidden fault, then a spirit being with a similar fault can, by spiritual law, offer a hymn which amplifies this fault.

The vicious circle closes when the person then blindly follows faulty messages in their own received hymns or messages, which originated from their own inner faults. This can be very subtle.

Incorporating suffering souls

Many people in the Santo Daime church believe mediumship involves a practice called “incorporating suffering souls.” This is where a suffering being approaches a person, and the person invites that suffering being into their subtle bodies, or apparelho. After experiencing the suffering, the person then sends it “to the light”.

While the intent behind this practice—spiritual charity and service of other beings— is laudable, the actual practice violates numerous divine spiritual laws. For no one, whether a human being or a disincarnate spiritual being, gets a free ride to the light. This practice attempts to side-step the necessary spiritual work required to free the psyche of its distortions and is therefore highly destructive to the people and beings involved.

The practice is also unnecessary. According to the Pathwork Guide, the God’s divine Spirit World has specialist beings who are trained to identify and help suffering dark beings who are ready to be taught. If such a being is brought to us, then our task is to help teach that soul about the process of self-development. And the best way for human beings to teach and serve these suffering beings is to demonstrate a continuous commitment to our own personal work of self-purification.

With this in mind, let’s look more deeply at why incorporating suffering souls does not align with spiritual laws.

Our faults are their doorway

Incorporating a suffering soul means that a person allows a dark being—a being that expresses negativity and destructiveness—to enter their body and spirit. And not just any dark being, only ones that have an identical fault as the person does. The only reason these disincarnate beings are able access us this way is that they have a fault that matches a fault we have yet to heal in ourselves. Otherwise, they would be unable to access us.

It always works this way in life. Dark beings can tempt and influence us only to whatever extent we still have faults. This follows a spiritual law of “like attracts like”. Hence, the beings attracted to us—the suffering souls that are incorporated—create a highly reliable mirror for us to use in navigating our own spiritual journey to find our faults.

If we work to identify our fault that is allowing them access to us, and if we do our personal self-development work to heal this fault in ourselves, then we will truly have something of value to give suffering souls. We will be able to teach them how to heal themselves. Further, they will no longer be able to access us directly.

We can’t give what we don’t have

The bigger truth is that we can’t give what we don’t have. We can’t help another being—whether incarnated or disincarnate—heal something that we have not yet been willing to face and heal in ourselves. But once we have gone through our own healing process, we can be of service to Christ and the Plan of Salvation by truly helping others.

Here is an analogy for what happens in an Illumination work, which is a work specifically created for this practice of incorporating suffering souls:

Let’s say I have a fault of stealing from others. But I have not been willing to look at this in myself, examine its roots, and transform it. Someone knocks on my front door, and I open it. It’s a disincarnate soul with the exact same fault of stealing that I have. And it is suffering, so I invite it in.

This being stays for a little while and probably steals some things from me. Then I send them out the back door. I feel good about myself, telling myself that I have done charity to heal this being and “send it to the Light”.

But how could I have healed this being when both the being and I have been unwilling to recognize and honestly face this fault? Then there is another knock on the front door, and I let another being in, perhaps with the same fault or maybe with a different unrecognized fault that I have. For I am not yet aware of my own faults. And therefore I cannot clearly see the larger picture.

One of the core teachings from the Pathwork Guide is self-responsibility. This means, in short, that every disharmony we face in life has roots inside of us. As such, it’s only by doing our own healing work that we can be of service in bringing peace into the world. And this takes perseverance and painstaking work over a long period of time.

It is a misunderstanding to believe that we can offer charity by giving something that we don’t have. That, in essence, is trying to skip steps. And as the Pathwork Guide teaches, it is a spiritual law that we can’t skip steps. We can’t jump to helping others before we have first helped ourselves.

Free will is at the heart of everything

The Pathwork Guide offered a series of five lectures that tell us the story of the Fall and the Plan of Salvation. They start with a lecture about free will. While the Guide says it is not necessary to know about the Fall and the Plan of Salvation—all we really need to do is our own inner healing work—these teachings help us understand the importance of free will.

It’s not just that all beings—both incarnate and disincarnate—have free will. But we all misused our free will once upon a time and went against the will of God. Life is all about learning to use our free will in the right way.

To do that, we must cleanse ourselves of our inner distortions—our faults, destructiveness and rebelliousness—because these are always based on untruth, and therefore do not align with God and God’s will. Each being must take responsibility for learning to properly use their free will.

As the Guide also teaches, all darkness that exists on this planet originates inside of us. Every conflict taking place “out there” in the world is a reflection of our inner struggles. Meaning, every disharmony is an invitation to look within. We can’t actually heal anything outside ourselves, and we can’t heal others, incarnate or not. Each of us can only do our own healing work, and then we can be of service to help others do their own healing work.

How we break divine laws

The misunderstanding behind the Illumination works essentially says I am light, and suffering souls are dark. This means I have the ability to send them to the light. At that point a person’s vanity can become inflated by rationalizing that they are doing sacred work to “save” souls. Instead, they collude with a never-ending revolving door of devious, dark beings, allowing access to their inner bodies, with inevitable destructive outcomes. And the pride that underlies the vanity blinds the person to the collusion that is truly happening.

This misguided practice bypasses the true reason for incarnating and doing spiritual healing work, which is to transform our inner darkness—our Lower Self. At best, it leaves participants with Lower Self faults that have not been transformed. At worst, it invites illness.

Leaving the illusion means letting go of the idea that we are all good or all bad. For now, we must accept that we are all human beings with both dark and light aspects in our psyche. To work on a spiritual path—to become enlightened—is to continually face into whatever is negative in us and work to transform it.

This is how we make peace with ourselves and with others. To do otherwise is to collude with the forces of darkness, which leads us away from the light.

Source materials for About Mediumship

Mediumship by Eva Pierrakos

Also adapted from teachings in the following Pathwork lectures:

• Pathwork Guide Lecture #6: The human role in the spiritual and material universes
• Pathwork Guide Lecture #7: Asking for Help and Helping Others
• Pathwork Guide Lecture #8: Mediumship—How to Contact God’s Spirit World
• Pathwork Guide Lecture #10: Male and female incarnations: their rhythms and causes
• Pathwork Guide Lecture #12: The order and diversity of the spiritual worlds—the process of reincarnation
• Pathwork Guide Lecture #14: The Higher Self, the Lower Self, and the Mask
• Pathwork Guide Lecture #15: Influence between the spiritual world and the material world
• Pathwork Guide Lecture #17: The Call—daily review (the Q&A section)
• Pathwork Guide Lecture #20: God: the creation
• Pathwork Guide Lecture #22: Salvation
• Pathwork Guide Lecture #26: Finding one’s faults