That is what this first spiritual development exercise is designed to explore. Rather than trying to prove whether you are intuitive, psychic or anything else, we are going to practise something much simpler: noticing what happens before you start thinking about the answer.

There is no pressure to get everything right. In fact, getting things wrong is an important part of understanding how your own mind works.

What You’ll Need

Keep this exercise simple. You only need:

• Three small everyday objects

• Three identical cups, bowls or envelopes

• A pen and piece of paper, or the Notes app on your phone

• Someone who can hide the objects for you

Choose objects that are reasonably different from one another. A key, crystal and piece of fabric would work much better than three similar coins, for example.

Ask the other person to hide one object beneath each cup or inside each envelope without allowing you to see where anything has been placed. Number the positions 1, 2 and 3.

Now you’re ready.

Step One: Stop Trying to Be Intuitive

Before you begin, sit comfortably and close your eyes for a few moments.

Take three or four slow breaths and allow yourself to settle. You don’t need to meditate or try to enter some special spiritual state. In fact, trying too hard can sometimes make exercises like this more difficult because you begin searching for an answer rather than noticing what naturally appears.

The aim is simply to become quiet enough to notice your first response.

When you’re ready, open your eyes and look at the three numbers.

Step Two: Notice Where You Go First

Without spending too much time thinking about it, ask yourself:

Which number am I drawn towards?

Perhaps your attention immediately goes to number 2. Maybe you keep looking at number 1. You might hear the number 3 in your mind or simply have a feeling that one of them is the right choice.

Whatever happens first, write it down before changing your mind.

This is important. We’re interested in the first impression, not the answer you eventually reason yourself into.

Step Three: Go a Little Deeper

Now concentrate on the position you’ve chosen.

Instead of trying to identify the exact object, explore its qualities. Notice whether any words, images, sensations or ideas appear.

You could ask yourself:

• Does it feel light or heavy?

• Does it seem hard or soft?

• Do I associate it with a particular colour?

• Does it feel natural or manufactured?

• Does it seem old or new?

• Would somebody wear it, hold it or use it?

• Does a particular shape or material come to mind?

Write down whatever appears, even when it seems completely random.

And importantly, don’t add details simply because they would make sense. If all you receive is the word cold, write cold and leave it there.

Step Four: Reveal the Object

Now uncover your chosen object.

This is where people can accidentally convince themselves they were more accurate than they actually were, so try to be as objective as possible.

Imagine the hidden object was a silver key and you had written:

• Cold

• Metallic

• Grey

• Small

• Something held in the hand

Those would be interesting similarities worth recording.

But if you wrote soft, red, fabric, something worn around the neck, don’t try to find a complicated explanation for why you were secretly correct.

You got that attempt wrong, and that’s useful information too.

What Are You Actually Looking For?

One successful attempt doesn’t prove anything, just as one unsuccessful attempt doesn’t mean you have no intuition.

What becomes interesting is repetition.

Try the exercise several times over a few days or weeks and keep your original answers. Eventually, you may start noticing patterns in the way your more accurate impressions arrive.

Perhaps they tend to be:

• Very quick and uncomplicated

• A word that suddenly appears

• A mental image

• A physical sensation

• An unexpected thought

• A simple sense of knowing without an explanation

You may also discover something equally valuable: your incorrect answers have a different quality. Perhaps they appear after you’ve been thinking for too long, or they become increasingly elaborate as you try to work something out.

That distinction is worth exploring.

Don’t Try to Make the Results Fit

This is probably the most important part of the entire exercise.

Spiritual development should not be about proving ourselves right. If we reinterpret every incorrect answer until it somehow fits the object, we aren’t developing intuition. We’re developing our ability to find connections after the event.

Allow yourself to be wrong.

Keep the misses alongside the hits. Over time, both can teach you something about the difference between a spontaneous impression and something your mind has constructed afterwards.

Your Challenge

Try this exercise five times before deciding what you think about it.

After your fifth attempt, look back through everything you wrote and ask yourself:

• Did my first impression tend to be more accurate than my later thoughts?

• Did accurate information seem to arrive in a particular way?

• Was I tempted to change any answers that turned out to be correct?

• Did I notice myself trying to make incorrect information fit afterwards?

• What did an accurate impression actually feel like?

Don’t worry about achieving a perfect score. That isn’t what we’re trying to accomplish.

The purpose of this first spiritual development exercise isn’t to prove that you have intuition. It’s to begin discovering what your intuition might actually feel like when you’re not trying to force it.

If you try the exercise, I’d genuinely love to hear how you got on. Share your results in the comments, including the things you got completely wrong. That’s part of the experiment too.

Many blessings,

Andrew Spiritual Medium 🕊️

Subscribe

Share

I wanted to begin simply by introducing myself and sharing why I decided to start this podcast. This will be a space for honest conversations about mediumship, spirituality, intuition, grief, the afterlife and some of the bigger questions that don’t always have simple answers.

I’ll be sharing my own experiences and beliefs, but I’ll also be questioning things along the way. I don’t believe spirituality should be about accepting everything we’re told. There should always be room for curiosity, different perspectives and sometimes simply saying, “I don’t know.”

This is just the beginning, and I’m really looking forward to seeing where these conversations take us.

Many blessings,

Andrew Spiritual Medium 🕊️

Leave a comment

Subscribe now

There is a question human beings have been asking for as long as we have been able to contemplate our own mortality: what happens when we die? Religions have offered answers, spiritual traditions have described other realms of existence, mediums have reported experiences they interpret as communication with those who have died, and scientists have spent generations studying the relationship between the brain and the mind. Yet underneath the enormous question of death sits another mystery that is arguably even more fundamental. Before we can ask where consciousness goes when the body dies, we have to confront the fact that we still do not have a complete explanation for why there is a conscious experience occurring inside us in the first place.

Right now, as you read these words, something extraordinary is happening. You are not simply processing information. You are experiencing it. There is a private inner world in which these sentences appear, thoughts arise, memories can be recalled and emotions can be felt. You can become aware that you are thinking, notice your attention wandering and then deliberately bring it back. Somewhere within all the biological activity taking place inside your body exists the unmistakable experience of being you. We live with this every moment of our waking lives, which perhaps explains why we rarely stop to consider how strange it actually is.

We often talk about consciousness as though we understand it because we are so familiar with having it. But familiarity and understanding are not the same thing. We know an enormous amount about the brain, and neuroscience continues to reveal remarkable connections between brain activity and conscious experience. What remains deeply difficult is explaining why any of that physical activity should be accompanied by an inner experience at all. Why should electrical and chemical processes inside biological tissue produce the feeling of seeing red, hearing music, remembering childhood, falling in love or wondering whether there is life after death? That question takes us somewhere considerably more mysterious than it first appears.

The One Thing You Can Never Step Outside Of

Everything you have ever known about existence has appeared within consciousness. You have never experienced the world from anywhere else. The room around you, the people you love, the sensation of your body, the memories of your past and your ideas about the future are all experienced through awareness. Even when we study consciousness scientifically, the scientist conducting the experiment is themselves a conscious observer using consciousness to investigate consciousness.

There is something almost circular about that. We are trying to understand the very thing through which all understanding occurs.

Imagine examining a brain. Modern technology can reveal extraordinary detail about its structure and activity. Researchers can identify areas involved in vision, language, memory, attention and emotion. Damage to particular regions can dramatically alter personality or perception, and drugs can change conscious experience by altering brain chemistry. Anaesthesia can apparently remove ordinary awareness altogether before consciousness later returns. The relationship between the brain and consciousness is therefore impossible to ignore.

Yet if we examined every neuron in a person’s brain, something would still appear to be missing from the description: what it actually feels like to be that person.

A brain scan might show activity associated with pain, but the scan itself does not hurt. It might reveal patterns associated with love, but the image on the screen is not in love. We can measure what happens in the brain while someone sees the colour blue, but those measurements do not contain the blueness that person experiences. There appears to be a difference between describing the physical processes associated with an experience and explaining why those processes are accompanied by experience in the first place.

This is where consciousness becomes difficult.

The Hard Problem

Philosopher David Chalmers famously described part of this mystery as the hard problem of consciousness. Science can investigate what the brain does, how information is processed and how different systems contribute to behaviour. The harder philosophical question is why any of those processes should produce subjective experience.

Consider something as ordinary as drinking coffee. Science can describe how light reflected from the cup reaches your eyes, how sensory information travels through the nervous system and how the brain identifies the object in front of you. Chemistry can describe the molecules responsible for its aroma and taste. Neuroscience can investigate how caffeine affects the brain. Psychology can explore the memories and associations you have attached to the drink. Yet none of those descriptions seems quite identical to the actual experience of smelling coffee on a quiet morning.

There is a first person quality to consciousness that appears difficult to capture entirely from a third person description.

This does not mean science has failed, nor does it prove that consciousness exists independently of the brain. It simply means that there is still a genuine explanatory problem. Some researchers believe future neuroscience will eventually provide a sufficient account of consciousness. Others argue that our current understanding of matter, information or the brain may be missing something fundamental. Philosophers continue to disagree about what consciousness even is, let alone why it exists.

That uncertainty becomes extremely important when we start talking about death.

If the Brain Changes, We Change

Anyone exploring the possibility that consciousness survives death has to confront some uncomfortable evidence. Changes to the brain can profoundly alter conscious experience. Brain injuries can affect personality. Neurological diseases can change memory, behaviour and perception. Certain medications and substances can transform mood and awareness. Electrical stimulation of particular brain regions can produce sensations and experiences. When the brain is placed under general anaesthesia, ordinary consciousness can apparently disappear.

All of this strongly demonstrates that the brain and our experience of being ourselves are intimately connected.

For some people, the conclusion seems obvious: the brain produces consciousness. When the brain permanently stops functioning, consciousness ends in the same way that music stops when a radio is destroyed.

That may be correct.

But there is an important distinction between demonstrating that two things are deeply connected and establishing exactly what the relationship between them ultimately is. A damaged brain altering consciousness tells us that the brain is essential to ordinary human conscious experience. What remains debated is whether the brain generates consciousness entirely or whether consciousness might involve something more fundamental that the brain somehow enables, structures or constrains.

The second possibility is sometimes illustrated using the radio analogy in the opposite direction. Damaging a radio changes or destroys the sound coming from it, but the radio did not create the broadcast. Of course, an analogy is not evidence. Comparing the brain to a receiver does not demonstrate that it actually functions as one. It simply illustrates why brain dependence alone does not automatically settle every philosophical question about the nature of consciousness.

The honest answer is that the relationship is extraordinarily complex, and certainty can sometimes run ahead of what we actually know.

Where Exactly Is the Person?

This becomes even stranger when we consider identity. When you say “I”, what exactly are you referring to? Your body is constantly changing. Many of your beliefs have changed since childhood. Your personality has developed through experience. Memories disappear, new ones are created and some of the stories you remember confidently may not even be completely accurate.

Yet through all of that change, most of us experience a remarkable sense of continuity. The child in an old photograph feels somehow connected to the adult looking at it, despite enormous physical and psychological differences between them.

Where does that continuity reside?

We might say it is stored in the brain through memory and interconnected systems that maintain our sense of self. There is strong scientific reason to take that explanation seriously. Yet even then, we encounter fascinating questions. If memories change, are we still the same person? If someone’s personality is altered by neurological disease, where has the previous personality gone? If every memory could theoretically be replaced while the body remained alive, at what point would the original person cease to exist?

These are not merely spiritual questions. They sit at the intersection of neuroscience, psychology and philosophy because consciousness forces us to confront what we actually mean by a self.

And once we begin asking what the self is during life, the question of what might survive death becomes considerably more complicated.

Perhaps We Ask the Afterlife Question Too Quickly

When people ask whether consciousness survives death, we often jump immediately to possible destinations. Is there an afterlife? Do we reunite with loved ones? Is there reincarnation? Does consciousness return to some larger source? Do we simply cease to exist?

Those are enormous questions, but perhaps we are starting several chapters too far into the story.

Before asking where consciousness goes, we need to understand what it is that might be going anywhere.

If consciousness is entirely produced by biological processes in the brain, then permanent brain death would appear to provide a straightforward ending. The processes stop, therefore the conscious experience they generate stops too. If, however, consciousness turns out to be a more fundamental feature of reality, or if the brain is involved in consciousness in ways our current theories do not fully capture, then the question becomes much less settled.

There are philosophical positions exploring precisely these possibilities. Some forms of idealism place consciousness at the foundation of reality rather than treating it as a late product of matter. Panpsychism, in various forms, considers whether consciousness or proto-conscious properties might be fundamental aspects of the physical world. Other approaches remain firmly physicalist and attempt to explain consciousness entirely through the operations of the brain.

None of these positions should be casually presented as proven fact. They are competing attempts to address an extraordinarily difficult problem.

But their very existence tells us something important. Consciousness is not a mystery discussed only by spiritual people. It is a serious problem sitting inside philosophy and science as well.

What About Near Death Experiences?

Any discussion about consciousness and death eventually encounters near death experiences. People who have come close to death sometimes report remarkably vivid experiences involving a sense of leaving the body, moving through unusual environments, encountering deceased people, experiencing intense peace or reviewing significant moments from their lives.

For those who experience them, these events can be transformative. Some people lose much of their fear of death afterwards. Others completely change their priorities, relationships or beliefs about existence.

The interpretation is far more complicated.

Researchers have proposed neurological and psychological mechanisms that may contribute to aspects of near death experiences, including changes in brain activity, oxygen levels, neurotransmitters, memory and perception under extreme physiological conditions. Others have drawn attention to reports that they believe are difficult to explain through conventional models alone, particularly claims involving apparently accurate perceptions occurring during periods of severe medical crisis.

It is tempting for both believers and sceptics to move too quickly here. A spiritual interpretation does not automatically prove survival of consciousness, while identifying neurological processes associated with an experience does not necessarily explain every reported aspect of it.

The scientifically responsible position is not to turn uncertainty into certainty simply because one explanation fits our existing worldview.

Near death experiences are interesting precisely because consciousness itself remains interesting.

Mediumship Raises the Same Difficult Question

Mediumship enters this conversation for similar reasons. If information genuinely appears during a reading that a medium could not reasonably have known through ordinary means, several explanations become possible. Perhaps the information was obtained through subtle cues or prior knowledge. Perhaps coincidence or memory plays a role. Perhaps some form of psychic information is involved. Or perhaps, as mediums themselves often believe, the information comes from a consciousness that has survived physical death.

As a medium, I obviously have my own experiences and beliefs about this. I have experienced communications that have made me question whether our conventional understanding of consciousness tells the entire story. But having an experience and understanding the mechanism behind that experience are two different things.

I think that distinction matters enormously.

Mediumship should be able to exist alongside questions. If anything, extraordinary claims should make us more interested in evidence, not less. Saying that something happened does not automatically tell us why it happened, and interpreting an experience spiritually does not mean we should stop considering alternative explanations.

For me, the mystery is part of what keeps mediumship interesting. If consciousness were already completely understood, perhaps the conversation would be considerably simpler. It isn’t.

Could Consciousness Be More Fundamental Than We Think?

For much of modern scientific thought, consciousness has often been approached as something that emerges when matter becomes organised in a sufficiently complex way. Brains evolved, nervous systems became increasingly sophisticated and eventually subjective awareness appeared.

But consciousness creates a peculiar problem within that story. Matter can be described objectively through properties such as mass, charge, movement and structure. Consciousness introduces something apparently different: experience. Somehow, a universe containing matter eventually contains creatures capable not only of responding to their environment but of knowing that they exist within it.

That leap is astonishing.

Some thinkers therefore ask whether consciousness might be more fundamental than our ordinary assumptions suggest. This does not necessarily mean souls, spirits or an afterlife. It simply raises the possibility that our understanding of reality may eventually need to accommodate consciousness in a deeper way.

History should make us modest about assuming our current picture is complete. Human beings once believed the Earth occupied a privileged position at the centre of the cosmos. We later discovered that our planet orbits an ordinary star in one galaxy among an enormous number. Physics then revealed a reality at microscopic scales that behaves in ways ordinary human intuition could never have predicted.

Perhaps consciousness will eventually fit comfortably inside a completely physical explanation. Perhaps our concepts of the physical will themselves change. Perhaps something we have not yet considered will transform the question altogether.

We simply do not know.

The Mystery We Carry Everywhere

What fascinates me most about consciousness is that we do not need a laboratory, séance, meditation retreat or near death experience to encounter the mystery. We carry it with us every waking moment.

You can encounter it simply by becoming aware that you are aware.

There is something reading these words right now. There is a perspective from which your entire life is being experienced. Thoughts appear within it, emotions pass through it and memories create a sense of continuity between who you were and who you are now. Tonight, consciousness may disappear into dreamless sleep and tomorrow morning, assuming all goes normally, the familiar experience of being yourself will return.

We accept this because it happens every day.

But repetition should not make it less extraordinary.

A universe that once contained stars, dust and planets eventually produced at least one species capable of looking back at that universe and asking why anything exists. The atoms within us are arranged in such a way that they can experience love, fear death, create music, remember childhood and contemplate eternity.

Whatever explanation we eventually discover for consciousness, that fact alone is astonishing.

Perhaps Death Is the Second Question

Maybe this is why conversations about the afterlife sometimes begin in the wrong place. We ask whether consciousness continues after death because death frightens us, fascinates us and separates us from people we love. Those questions are deeply human, and I do not think we will ever stop asking them.

But perhaps there is a question that logically comes first.

What is consciousness before death?

If we do not yet completely understand why subjective experience exists, how confidently can we declare what ultimately happens to it when the biological systems associated with it stop functioning? That does not give us permission to insert whatever spiritual explanation we prefer into the gap. Mystery is not evidence for any particular belief. But neither should uncertainty be hidden simply because we find it uncomfortable.

There is a mature middle ground between claiming we know consciousness survives death and claiming the mystery has already been completely solved. We can acknowledge the enormous evidence connecting consciousness with the brain while remaining curious about the aspects of subjective experience that continue to challenge explanation. We can investigate unusual experiences without automatically accepting them as proof, and we can question spiritual claims without dismissing every experience simply because it does not fit comfortably inside our existing assumptions.

Perhaps that is where the most interesting conversation begins.

For thousands of years, human beings have looked towards death and wondered what lies beyond it. We have imagined heavens, spirit worlds, reincarnation, nothingness and forms of existence almost impossible to describe. Yet all of those possibilities depend on a mystery taking place much closer to home, inside every person asking the question.

Before we can understand what it means for consciousness to end, perhaps we first need to understand what it means for consciousness to exist.

And when you really stop to consider it, the strangest thing may not be the possibility that one day you will no longer be conscious.

The greatest mystery may be that, right now, somehow, you are.

Many blessings,

Andrew Spiritual Medium 🕊️

Subscribe

There are moments in life when the ordinary noise inside our minds seems to disappear. You might be standing beside the ocean watching the horizon, walking through a forest where the trees tower above you, hearing a piece of music that unexpectedly moves you or looking upwards on a clear night and suddenly becoming aware of the extraordinary number of stars above your head. Whatever caused it, something changes for a moment. The things you were worrying about earlier seem less important, your attention moves away from yourself and you become intensely aware that you are part of something considerably larger.

We often describe these experiences as breathtaking, moving or beautiful, but psychologists have another word for them: awe. It is an emotion that researchers have become increasingly interested in because it appears to affect not only how we feel, but how we perceive ourselves and our place in the world. What makes awe particularly fascinating is that it occupies an unusual territory between psychology and spirituality. Science can investigate what happens to us when we experience it, yet throughout human history people have interpreted the same sensation as an encounter with God, nature, the universe, the sacred or something greater than themselves.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about awe is not that different people explain it differently. It is that people with completely different beliefs can experience something remarkably similar.

When the World Suddenly Becomes Bigger

Most of everyday life takes place at human scale. We think about work, money, relationships, appointments, messages, family problems and what needs to be done tomorrow. Our attention naturally revolves around our own lives because practically speaking, it has to. We experience existence through one body and one perspective, so it is hardly surprising that our personal concerns can sometimes feel enormous.

Awe changes the scale.

Imagine standing somewhere far away from artificial light and looking at the night sky. At first you might notice individual stars, but if you remain there long enough, your mind may begin trying to comprehend what you are actually seeing. The light reaching your eyes has travelled extraordinary distances. Many of the stars you can see are considerably larger than our sun, and everything visible to the naked eye represents only an unimaginably small fraction of what exists beyond it. Suddenly the problem that occupied your mind all afternoon is being considered against the background of an entire universe.

The problem has not disappeared. It may still need to be dealt with tomorrow. Yet something about its proportions has changed because, for a moment, your attention has moved beyond the boundaries of your own immediate experience. Psychologists sometimes describe one aspect of awe as the small self, a temporary reduction in the importance we place on ourselves as individuals when confronted with something vast.

What is particularly interesting is that feeling small does not necessarily make us feel insignificant. Quite often, it seems to do the opposite. People can report feeling more connected, more peaceful and more aware of belonging to something larger. We become smaller while the world becomes bigger, and somehow that can feel reassuring.

Why Does That Feeling Seem Spiritual?

Human beings were experiencing awe long before psychology had a name for it. Across cultures and throughout history, people deliberately created environments designed to overwhelm ordinary perception. Cathedrals were built with enormous ceilings, intricate windows and dramatic shafts of light. Temples occupied remarkable landscapes. Religious ceremonies incorporated music, chanting, silence, repetition and collective movement. Pilgrimages carried people away from familiar surroundings and into mountains, deserts and places considered sacred.

Our ancestors may not have understood the psychology of awe, but they certainly understood its power.

There is something about encountering vastness that appears to push against the limits of our normal understanding. When we experience something so enormous, beautiful or extraordinary that our existing mental framework struggles to contain it, we have to adjust the way we are thinking. For some people, that moment is interpreted spiritually. A religious person may experience the presence of God, while somebody with broader spiritual beliefs may describe feeling connected to the universe or to a greater consciousness. Someone without spiritual beliefs may experience exactly the same emotional intensity while understanding it entirely through nature and psychology.

This creates a fascinating question. If the brain is involved in producing the experience of transcendence, does that mean transcendence exists only inside the brain, or could the brain be the mechanism through which we experience something beyond ourselves? Those are two very different interpretations of the same phenomenon, and neither can simply be assumed from the experience alone.

The Psychology of Feeling Small

Modern life spends an extraordinary amount of energy encouraging us to think about ourselves. We measure our success, appearance, productivity, relationships and social status. Social media has intensified this by turning ordinary existence into something that can be continually displayed, compared and evaluated. We are repeatedly encouraged to consider how we appear to other people and whether our lives measure up to theirs.

Awe temporarily interrupts that self-focused attention. When somebody stands beside an enormous waterfall or looks across a mountain range, the mind encounters something that exists completely independently of their personal story. The mountain does not care how successful you are. The ocean is indifferent to whether somebody replied to your message. A forest does not know how many followers you have, and the stars above you have existed through countless generations of human worry.

That perspective can be strangely liberating. It does not mean our individual lives are unimportant, nor does it make our difficulties imaginary. Instead, awe can place those difficulties within a much larger context. The argument that felt enormous yesterday can suddenly become one moment within a much longer life. The anxiety about something that might happen next month becomes one small part of a world that continues far beyond our immediate concerns.

Perhaps this helps explain why people so often seek nature during difficult periods. We sometimes describe it as needing to “get away from everything”, but perhaps what we are really seeking is a different perspective from which to experience everything.

Music Can Create Vastness Without Space

Awe does not require mountains, oceans or galaxies. Sometimes a piece of music lasting only a few minutes can produce an experience every bit as powerful. Music is particularly fascinating because, physically speaking, it is organised vibration travelling through air, yet those vibrations can create grief, joy, nostalgia, excitement and even physical sensations such as goosebumps or tears.

A particular song can transport somebody instantly to a moment from decades earlier. A choir can create an experience that a person describes as sacred even when they hold no religious beliefs. An orchestral crescendo can produce a physical reaction before the conscious mind has had time to analyse what it is hearing. Music interacts with systems involved in emotion, memory, expectation and reward, yet understanding those mechanisms does not necessarily capture the subjective power of the experience.

This distinction matters when discussing spirituality. Explaining how an experience happens does not always tell us what that experience means to the person having it. We can explain how light enters the eye and how the brain processes colour, but that explanation does not capture what it feels like to watch a sunset with somebody we love. We can understand the physiology involved in crying without fully explaining why one particular piece of music can bring somebody to tears thirty years after they first heard it.

Science and meaning are not necessarily competing explanations. One can investigate the mechanism while the other asks why the experience matters to us.

Why Beauty Can Bring Us to Tears

We usually associate crying with sadness, yet people also cry at weddings, reunions, concerts, births and moments of extraordinary beauty. Sometimes a positive experience becomes so emotionally intense that our bodies seem unable to contain it in the ordinary way. Tears appear even though nothing painful has happened.

Awe can create exactly this kind of emotional overflow. Someone may become unexpectedly tearful while looking at a landscape, holding a newborn baby or witnessing an extraordinary act of kindness. The experience can feel almost disproportionate to what is physically happening, which may be one reason people frequently interpret it as spiritual.

From a psychological perspective, researchers have proposed that awe may have social benefits because it reduces self-focus and can increase feelings of connection with other people. From a spiritual perspective, that same reduction of the individual self has been described in countless different ways, from unity and transcendence to connection with God or universal consciousness. The language changes according to the worldview of the person having the experience, but there is an intriguing similarity underneath it: the boundaries of the individual seem temporarily less important.

Perhaps that is why awe can feel simultaneously emotional and peaceful. We are not disappearing, but for a moment we stop experiencing ourselves as the centre of everything.

Awe Has a Darker Side

We tend to associate awe with beautiful experiences, but beauty is not actually necessary. A violent storm can inspire awe. So can an enormous wave, a volcanic eruption or the sheer power of the ocean. These experiences can be magnificent and frightening at exactly the same time because awe often appears where wonder meets something beyond our control.

This combination of fascination and fear has appeared repeatedly in religious and spiritual traditions. Encounters with the divine were not always described as gentle or comforting. They were sometimes overwhelming precisely because the person felt confronted by something far greater than themselves. The sacred could inspire reverence and fear simultaneously.

Nature can produce the same contradiction. Standing safely at a distance from a powerful storm may be exhilarating, yet that same storm can remind us how vulnerable human beings really are. Looking into the ocean can create peace while also making us aware of its enormous depth and power. Awe does not simply tell us that the world is beautiful; sometimes it reminds us that the world is vast, unpredictable and not under our control.

Perhaps this is part of its psychological importance. Much of everyday life is organised around creating a sense of control, but awe confronts us with the reality that there are forces, distances and mysteries far beyond our individual influence. Rather than always finding that frightening, human beings sometimes find it profoundly moving.

What Happens to Our Sense of Self?

Spiritual traditions often talk about transcending the ego, although the word ego can mean many different things. In this context, it may be more useful to think of it simply as the ongoing story we carry about ourselves: who we are, how other people see us, what we want, what we fear and where we believe we belong.

During powerful experiences of awe, that story can temporarily become quieter. Somebody staring at the Milky Way is unlikely to be thinking about whether they look impressive while doing it. Their attention has moved away from themselves and towards what they are witnessing. Observation replaces self-consciousness, even if only briefly.

There is something refreshing about this because so much of modern life directs our attention in the opposite direction. We are continually encouraged to evaluate ourselves. Are we successful enough? Attractive enough? Productive enough? Happy enough? Do other people approve of us? Awe interrupts those questions because it places something considerably larger in front of them.

Perhaps this is one reason people describe certain awe-filled moments as peaceful. For a short period, they are released from the exhausting responsibility of being the main character in their own consciousness. They remain themselves, but they are also simply one human being experiencing an extraordinary world.

Does Awe Prove That Something Spiritual Is Happening?

This is where I believe we need to remain both curious and careful. A powerful experience does not automatically prove the explanation we give it. If somebody stands beneath the stars and experiences an overwhelming sense of connection with the universe, the experience itself is unquestionably real. Whether that feeling demonstrates the existence of an external spiritual connection is a separate question.

The same principle applies to meditation, prayer, mediumship and other unusual experiences of consciousness. We should be able to respect what somebody experienced without immediately claiming certainty about what caused it. Saying that the brain is involved does not automatically dismiss the spiritual interpretation either, because every human experience we know about involves the brain in some way. Falling in love involves neurological processes, but that does not make love unreal. Grief involves the brain, yet nobody would argue that the relationship being mourned was therefore meaningless.

Perhaps asking whether awe is either psychological or spiritual creates a false choice. It can be psychologically understandable while still raising spiritual questions. We can investigate what happens within the brain when somebody experiences transcendence without assuming that neuroscience has therefore explained everything the experience might mean.

That middle ground is where I think the subject becomes most interesting.

Why Human Beings Keep Looking Up

There is something remarkable about the fact that human beings have always looked towards the sky and wondered what was beyond them. Our distant ancestors saw the same stars without knowing what they were. They created constellations, stories, gods and entire systems of meaning from the lights above them. Thousands of years later, our scientific understanding of those lights is incomparably greater, yet the experience of looking at them has not lost its emotional power.

If anything, knowledge can make the experience more astonishing. Understanding that our planet orbits one star among hundreds of billions in our galaxy, and that our galaxy itself is only one among an enormous number in the observable universe, does not necessarily remove mystery. It can deepen it. The more we understand about the scale of reality, the more extraordinary our own existence can appear.

This challenges the idea that knowledge and wonder are opposites. Understanding how something works does not require us to stop being amazed by it. Knowing how stars form does not make a clear night sky less beautiful, just as understanding the biology of a flower does not remove the experience of seeing one bloom.

Perhaps mature spirituality and good science have something in common here. Both can begin with the willingness to look closely at reality and admit that there is still considerably more to understand.

The Spirituality of Paying Attention

We often imagine spiritual experiences as unusual events: receiving a message from spirit, experiencing an extraordinary coincidence, having a profound meditation or encountering something we cannot easily explain. Yet some of the moments people describe as most spiritual involve nothing apparently supernatural at all. Watching a sunrise, hearing a child laugh, walking through a forest, seeing the moon through a bedroom window or sitting quietly beside somebody we love can unexpectedly produce the same sense of depth and connection.

What changes in those moments may simply be the quality of our attention. Most of the time, ordinary life passes incredibly quickly because our minds are already somewhere else. We can walk beneath a spectacular sky while checking our phones, eat dinner with people we love while thinking about tomorrow’s responsibilities and become so focused on photographing an experience that we barely notice how it actually feels to be there.

Awe forces attention back into the present because something becomes too compelling to ignore. Perhaps this is why it can feel spiritual. For a moment, we are not trying to get somewhere else, solve something or become somebody different. We are simply experiencing what is in front of us with unusual intensity.

There is a quiet lesson in that. Perhaps the extraordinary is not always hidden beyond ordinary life waiting for us to discover it. Sometimes ordinary life becomes extraordinary when we finally give it our complete attention.

Perhaps Awe Is a Doorway Rather Than an Answer

I do not know whether awe connects us with something beyond ourselves in a literal spiritual sense, and I think claiming certainty would diminish rather than strengthen the conversation. What we can say is that awe has an unusual ability to alter perspective. It reminds us that our individual viewpoint is only one tiny part of a much larger reality, and it can temporarily loosen the grip of the concerns that usually dominate our attention.

That may be valuable regardless of what we believe about spirituality. A person does not need to believe in God, spirit or universal consciousness to benefit from standing beneath a night sky and remembering that the world is larger than their problems. Equally, somebody who experiences that moment spiritually does not need to abandon the experience simply because psychology can describe some of what is happening.

Perhaps awe is most interesting when we resist the temptation to turn it into proof of anything. Instead, it can become an invitation to curiosity. It asks us to notice how extraordinary consciousness itself is: that a human being can look at something beautiful, become aware of their own smallness and somehow emerge from the experience feeling more connected rather than less.

We live at a time when information is available almost instantly. Science can explain phenomena that would have seemed miraculous to our ancestors, telescopes can observe light that has travelled for billions of years and technology allows us to carry more information in our pockets than previous generations could have imagined. Yet knowledge has not removed our capacity for wonder. There are still experiences capable of silencing us before we have found the words to explain them.

Maybe that is why awe feels almost spiritual. It places us briefly at the edge of what we understand and reminds us that explanation and mystery can exist together. We can know something about how the universe works while remaining astonished that it exists at all, and we can understand something about the psychology of awe while still wondering why beauty, vastness and connection affect us so deeply.

Perhaps awe does not prove that there is something greater than us. Perhaps it simply reminds us why human beings have always suspected there might be.

And that, in itself, is worth paying attention to.

Many blessings,

Andrew Spiritual Medium 🕊️

Share

One of the questions I’m asked most often about mediumship is deceptively simple: how does a medium actually know who they are communicating with? From the outside, it can appear as though a medium simply becomes aware of somebody in spirit and immediately knows their name, relationship, personality and entire life story. Television has probably helped create that impression, because a lengthy communication is often edited into its most dramatic moments. The reality, at least from my perspective, is usually much more subtle.

When I become aware of someone in spirit, I am not necessarily presented with a complete identity. I may receive an impression of personality, an image, a physical sensation, a relationship, a memory or a piece of information that initially means very little to me. Gradually, those individual pieces can begin to form a recognisable picture. This is why I believe evidence is so important in mediumship. It is not enough for a medium simply to announce that somebody’s grandmother, father or partner is present. The real question is what they can communicate about that person that allows the recipient to recognise them without having supplied the information first.

Building a Person From the Evidence

Evidential mediumship is essentially about identification. If I say that I am aware of an older gentleman, that information alone is remarkably weak. Millions of people have lost older male relatives. If I then say he feels like a father figure, that narrows things slightly, but it is still not particularly compelling. What begins to make the communication more interesting is when further information develops around him: perhaps he was a very private man who rarely expressed emotion verbally, worked with his hands, had a particular sense of humour, walked with a noticeable difficulty towards the end of his life and had an unusual habit that the family still talks about.

At that point, we are no longer describing a generic older gentleman. We are beginning to describe an individual.

This is one of the reasons personality can be so important during a reading. Physical appearance may help, but personality is often what made somebody unmistakably themselves. The person who always had to be right. The grandmother who fed everybody whether they were hungry or not. The father who rarely said “I love you” but would quietly fix anything that broke. The friend whose inappropriate humour appeared at precisely the wrong moment. These seemingly ordinary characteristics can become surprisingly powerful evidence because they belong to the person rather than simply to the fact that they died.

Mediumship, when approached evidentially, is therefore less like receiving somebody’s passport and more like gradually assembling a portrait. Each piece adds another brushstroke until, hopefully, the person receiving the reading begins to recognise somebody they knew.

How the Information Can Arrive

Another misunderstanding surrounding mediumship is the assumption that mediums necessarily see people in spirit standing in front of them as clearly as they see living people. Experiences differ between mediums, but information can be perceived in many different ways. A medium may become aware of an image internally, hear a word or phrase within their mind, experience an emotion, notice a physical sensation or suddenly know something without understanding where that knowledge originated.

This is where traditional terms such as clairvoyance, clairaudience, clairsentience and claircognizance are often used. Clairvoyance generally refers to receiving information visually, clairaudience to information experienced through a sense of hearing, clairsentience to feeling or sensing, and claircognizance to an unexplained sense of knowing. In practice, these experiences can overlap considerably, and a medium may use several of them during the same communication.

The important point is that information does not always arrive with an explanation attached. A medium might suddenly picture a red rose, for example. The image itself may be perfectly clear, but its significance is not. Was Rose somebody’s name? Did the person grow roses? Were roses placed at their funeral? Did they have a garden full of them? Is the flower connected to an anniversary, a wedding or simply a memory between the communicator and the recipient?

This distinction between receiving information and interpreting information is one of the most important aspects of understanding how mediumship works.

The Medium Is Translating an Experience

People sometimes imagine that spirit communication resembles an ordinary conversation conducted invisibly. A question is asked, an answer is heard, and the medium repeats it. Occasionally an experience may feel surprisingly direct, but much of mediumship involves interpretation. The medium receives something and then attempts to understand what that something represents.

Imagine somebody showing you a sequence of photographs without explaining why they chose them. You might understand what you are looking at perfectly well while having no idea what message the person is trying to communicate. A picture of a railway station could represent somebody who worked on the railway, an important journey, a farewell, a childhood memory or a particular place. The image may be accurate while your interpretation of it is completely wrong.

Mediumship can encounter exactly the same difficulty. A medium may receive an impression correctly but attach the wrong meaning to it. This is why I think responsible mediumship requires a degree of humility. Saying, “This is what I’m receiving, but I may not be understanding it correctly,” is sometimes considerably more honest than forcing an interpretation simply because a medium feels they must appear certain.

It is also why a recipient should always feel comfortable saying that something does not make sense. A genuine “no” can actually be useful. It tells the medium not to build further assumptions on an interpretation that may already be incorrect.

Names Are Wonderful, but They Are Not Everything

Names receive enormous attention in mediumship, understandably so. Hearing the name of somebody you have lost can feel extraordinarily specific, particularly when that information has not been supplied beforehand. But names do not necessarily arrive as conveniently as people might expect. A medium may receive a complete name, an initial, a sound resembling a name or even a name connected with somebody else around the communicator rather than the communicator themselves.

This is why I would never judge an entire communication solely on whether a name appears. Imagine one medium correctly says “John” but can tell you virtually nothing else about him, while another cannot obtain the name but accurately describes his personality, occupation, relationship with you, an unusual memory you shared and an object belonging to him that you still have in your home. Which communication contains the stronger identification?

For me, it would be the second.

A name can be excellent evidence, but it should form part of a larger body of information. Mediumship becomes far more interesting when several independent details begin pointing towards the same person.

Why Ordinary Memories Can Be Extraordinary Evidence

Some of the most meaningful evidence during a reading can involve completely ordinary things. People sometimes expect spirit communication to contain profound declarations about the meaning of existence, yet what identifies somebody most clearly may be a kitchen table, a particular song, an old coat, a family holiday, a nickname or a ridiculous argument everyone remembers.

These details matter because human relationships are built from ordinary moments. We do not remember the people we love solely through the major events of their lives. We remember the way they laughed, where they sat, what they cooked, the phrases they repeated and the things that irritated us. We remember Christmas afternoons, journeys in the car, embarrassing stories and objects that would appear meaningless to anybody outside the family.

When something highly personal like that appears during a reading, its importance may be invisible to the medium. An image of an old blue biscuit tin might seem completely insignificant until the recipient explains that their grandmother kept all of her sewing materials inside one. The medium does not need to understand why the detail matters. In fact, sometimes its very ordinariness is what makes it interesting.

The evidence belongs to the recipient. The medium is simply communicating it.

Relationships Are More Complicated Than Labels

Establishing the relationship between the communicator and recipient is another important part of identification, but even this is not always straightforward. Families rarely fit perfectly into neat categories. A grandmother may have raised somebody and therefore felt more like a mother. A stepfather may have been the only father somebody ever knew. A lifelong family friend may have occupied the emotional role of an aunt despite having no biological connection whatsoever.

For this reason, the quality of a relationship can sometimes tell us more than the label attached to it. A medium may sense somebody who feels paternal without necessarily being the recipient’s biological father. They may become aware of a sibling-like relationship that was actually between cousins who grew up together.

The emotional structure of families is often much more complicated than the family tree.

This is another reason why mediumship requires interpretation rather than simply collecting facts. The medium is trying to understand not only who the communicator was, but what that person meant to the individual receiving the communication.

The Circumstances of Someone’s Passing

Information surrounding a person’s death can also form part of identification. A medium may become aware of an illness, a physical sensation, a sudden passing or circumstances that help the recipient recognise who is being described. This can be valuable evidence, but I personally do not believe a communication should become fixated on death.

A person is more than the way they died.

Their personality, relationships, humour, memories and life experiences matter just as much, and often considerably more. The circumstances of death may help establish identity, particularly when they are distinctive, but they should not consume the entire communication. There is also a responsibility to communicate sensitive information respectfully. Evidential mediumship does not require unnecessary graphic detail, particularly when somebody may already be carrying traumatic memories surrounding a loss.

If the purpose of mediumship is connection, then the life of the person should remain at least as important as their death.

Why Several Pieces of Evidence Matter More Than One

Critical thinking belongs in mediumship. I do not think spirituality should ask us to abandon it.

Suppose a medium tells somebody that they have a grandmother in spirit who was loving, enjoyed cooking and cared deeply about her family. Those statements may all be true, but they are also sufficiently common that they could describe a great many grandmothers. Now suppose the medium continues and accurately describes an unusual occupation, a distinctive personality trait, a particular family memory, a specific physical condition and something meaningful that happened shortly before the grandmother died.

The collection becomes considerably more interesting than any single statement.

This is why evidence should be cumulative. One correct detail can be coincidence. A series of increasingly specific pieces of information that consistently describe the same individual becomes harder to dismiss quite so easily.

That does not mean every statement must be correct. Mediums are human beings interpreting subjective impressions, and mistakes happen. But the recipient should not have to perform mental gymnastics to make a reading work. If every statement requires searching through distant relatives and acquaintances until somebody vaguely fits, the evidential value becomes much weaker.

The medium should be doing the describing. The recipient should primarily be doing the recognising.

That distinction is enormously important.

What Happens When the Medium Gets It Wrong?

Sometimes the information simply does not fit.

Perhaps the impression was misinterpreted. Perhaps the medium’s own thoughts interfered. Perhaps something that seemed connected to one person actually related to somebody else. Or perhaps the medium was simply wrong.

I think we need to be able to say that without treating it as an attack on mediumship.

Mediums are not infallible, and pretending otherwise creates unrealistic expectations for everybody involved. A reading should contain enough room for uncertainty that both people can remain honest about what is happening. If something does not make sense, the recipient should be able to say so without feeling pressured to search for an explanation.

What concerns me more is when every incorrect statement is retrofitted until it becomes correct. If the recipient says they cannot understand something, endlessly changing its meaning until they eventually agree does not strengthen the evidence. It weakens it.

Good mediumship, in my view, should be confident enough to survive the word “no.”

So How Does a Medium Know?

Perhaps the most accurate answer is that identification develops.

The medium may begin with only a fragment: an impression of age, personality, relationship or appearance. Further information follows, and gradually those fragments begin to connect. A memory supports the personality. A physical condition supports the circumstances of death. A relationship becomes clearer. A name or initial may appear. Something deeply personal suddenly means everything to the recipient while meaning absolutely nothing to the medium.

Piece by piece, somebody recognisable can emerge.

That process is one of the things I find most fascinating about mediumship. It is not necessarily dramatic. There may be no booming voice announcing a full name from the other side and no perfectly clear apparition standing in the room. Often it is quieter than that: impressions, sensations, thoughts, images and pieces of information gradually forming a coherent picture.

And perhaps that is precisely why evidence matters so much. Saying that somebody survives death is an extraordinary claim. If mediumship is going to explore that possibility responsibly, it should not be afraid of specificity, questioning or uncertainty.

A medium saying, “I have your father here,” may sound impressive.

But the much more interesting question is: what can you tell me about him that you could not reasonably have known?

That is where the conversation about evidential mediumship really begins.

Many blessings,

Andrew Spiritual Medium 🕊️

Share

One of the most common ideas in modern spirituality is that our loved ones in spirit remain around us after death. For many people, that belief brings enormous comfort. It suggests that death may change a relationship without completely ending it, that love may continue in some form, and that the people who mattered to us have not simply vanished from existence. As a medium, I understand why that idea means so much. I also understand why people sometimes take it one step further and begin wondering whether the people they have lost are constantly beside them, observing everything they say, everything they do and even everything they would rather keep private.

That is where I think we need a more thoughtful conversation. If consciousness does continue after death, does it really make sense to imagine someone remaining permanently attached to the everyday details of our physical life? Are they watching us brush our teeth, argue with our partner, make mistakes, have private conversations and go about every ordinary moment of the day? I do not believe that is the most helpful way to think about continued connection, and in my experience of mediumship, it does not feel particularly convincing either.

The idea of a loved one still being connected to us does not have to mean they are constantly observing us. Presence and surveillance are not the same thing.

Why We Imagine Them Being There

When someone dies, one of the hardest adjustments is the sudden absence of their physical presence. We are used to them existing somewhere. We knew where they lived, what they were doing, when we could call them and when we might see them next. Death removes that familiar map completely, and the mind naturally begins trying to understand where the person has gone.

For someone who believes in an afterlife, one answer is that the person is still around in some way. That can feel reassuring because it softens the sense of complete separation. The person may no longer be physically present, but perhaps they remain connected to us through consciousness, spirit or something we do not yet fully understand.

Over time, however, “they are still connected to me” can quietly become “they are watching me all the time.”

There is an understandable emotional logic behind that. When we miss somebody deeply, we often want them to know what is happening in our lives. We want them to see the milestones they missed, the person we became, the grandchildren they never met, the home we finally bought or the difficult period we somehow survived. There is something comforting about imagining them aware of the parts of our life we wish we could still share with them.

But there is a big difference between believing someone can remain aware of us and believing they are permanently standing beside us like an invisible observer.

The second idea raises far more questions than it answers.

Connection Does Not Have to Mean Constant Observation

Imagine for a moment that consciousness does continue after physical death. Would that consciousness suddenly become completely preoccupied with watching the living?

It seems unlikely to me.

If there is an existence beyond this one, I would expect it to involve its own form of awareness, experience and development. I would not imagine people dying only to spend the rest of eternity following their relatives from room to room. Yet this is sometimes the image spirituality unintentionally creates.

A person might be told that their mother is always beside them, their grandfather is constantly looking over their shoulder or their deceased partner never leaves them. These phrases are usually intended to comfort, but taken literally they can become strangely claustrophobic.

Love does not require constant observation.

Think about the relationships we have with living people. Somebody can love you deeply without knowing everything you are doing. Your closest friend does not stop caring about you because they are not watching your daily life. Your parent can feel connected to you while you are hundreds of miles apart. A relationship does not depend on continuous monitoring.

If connection can exist across physical distance while we are alive, perhaps connection after death does not need to resemble permanent supervision either.

“Can They See Me When I’m…”

Mediums are often asked questions that people are slightly embarrassed to ask.

Can my loved one see me getting changed? Can they see me in the shower? Can they see me having sex? Can they hear private conversations? Do they know what I have done since they died? Do they know things I never told them?

Behind the humour or embarrassment is usually a serious concern. People want reassurance that they still have privacy.

I think they should have it.

Whatever mediumship may be, I do not experience it as though somebody in spirit is handing me uninterrupted footage of another person’s private life. Information tends to arrive selectively. There may be an impression, a memory, an emotional connection, a name, a personality trait, a situation or a piece of information that feels relevant to the communication.

It does not feel like surveillance.

That distinction matters because the idea of spirits constantly watching everything can create unnecessary anxiety, particularly for people already experiencing grief or guilt. Somebody may begin worrying that a deceased parent is disappointed in a relationship they have entered. Someone else may fear that their late partner is judging them for dating again. Another person may feel uncomfortable enjoying life because they imagine their loved one observing them and somehow feeling left behind.

Those fears can become deeply restrictive.

Spiritual beliefs should not make us frightened to continue living.

Grief Can Create an Invisible Audience

After a significant loss, people often continue an internal relationship with the person who died. They may still hear their advice in their mind, imagine what they would say about a situation or instinctively think about how they might react.

Psychologically, this is completely understandable.

Relationships shape us. When someone has been important in our lives, we internalise aspects of them. Their opinions, humour, habits and values become part of our own mental world. Even after they die, we may continue asking ourselves what they would think.

There can be something comforting about that. It allows a relationship to evolve rather than simply disappear.

But sometimes that internal relationship can become an invisible audience.

A person may hesitate before making a decision because they imagine their deceased parent disapproving. Someone may feel guilty about moving house because the family home contained so many memories. A widow or widower may struggle to enter another relationship because it feels as though their late partner is somehow watching.

At that point, the belief is no longer simply providing comfort. It is influencing how freely the living person feels able to live.

That deserves attention.

Love after loss should not become a prison built from imagined judgement.

What Would They Actually Care About?

If somebody we love does continue after death, I find it difficult to believe they would become more judgemental, more controlling or more interested in trivial details than they were when alive.

If anything, many spiritual traditions suggest the opposite. They describe death as a broader perspective, one in which the concerns that felt enormous during physical life may look very different.

Of course, none of us can prove exactly what happens after death. That uncertainty should always remain part of the conversation.

But if we are going to imagine that our loved ones continue, perhaps we should ask what kind of continuation makes sense.

Would a loving parent really be concerned that you had a glass of wine on Saturday night? Would your grandmother care that your house was untidy? Would your deceased husband want you to remain lonely forever simply to prove that you still loved him?

Or would the larger concern simply be whether you were living?

Whether you found connection again. Whether you laughed. Whether you allowed yourself moments of happiness without guilt. Whether you continued becoming the person they knew you could be.

If love survives death, I would expect it to become less possessive, not more.

Mediumship Can Accidentally Reinforce the Problem

Mediums also need to be careful with the language we use.

Saying “your dad is always with you” can sound comforting, but what does “always” actually mean? Does it mean there is an ongoing bond? Does it mean the person can sometimes draw close? Does it mean they remain aware of important moments in your life? Or does it literally mean they are observing you every second?

Those are very different claims.

Spiritual language often becomes exaggerated because certainty feels reassuring. “Your loved one is still connected to you” becomes “they never leave your side.” “They may be aware of important events” becomes “they see everything.” Eventually, comforting phrases are repeated so often that people begin treating them as established facts.

I think we should be more careful.

Mediumship already asks people to consider extraordinary possibilities. We do not strengthen it by making claims simply because they sound comforting.

Sometimes a more honest sentence is also a more compassionate one.

I cannot tell you that someone in spirit watches every moment of your life. I can tell you that many experiences of mediumship suggest that bonds of love may continue in ways we do not fully understand.

There is a significant difference between those statements.

The Fear of Being Judged

One of the most painful versions of this belief appears when someone is carrying guilt.

Perhaps the relationship was difficult before the person died. Perhaps there was an argument that was never resolved. Perhaps the bereaved person believes they should have visited more, called more often or noticed that something was wrong.

Now imagine combining that guilt with the belief that the deceased person is constantly watching.

The person may feel as though they are permanently being evaluated by somebody they can no longer speak to.

That can be incredibly difficult.

If mediumship teaches us anything meaningful, I think it should move people away from fear rather than deeper into it. The people we love were human. Relationships were complicated. Mistakes happened on both sides. Death does not suddenly turn every relationship into a perfect spiritual story.

But neither should it trap somebody forever in the worst moment of that relationship.

Perhaps one of the most healing possibilities of continued consciousness is not that the dead are watching us, but that perspective may change when physical life ends.

Maybe understanding becomes wider.

Maybe some of the things we punish ourselves for are not being judged as harshly as we imagine.

What About Important Moments?

This is where things become more interesting.

Many people describe sensing a deceased loved one during significant moments. Weddings, births, anniversaries, funerals, major decisions and unexpected periods of emotional difficulty are often accompanied by experiences people interpret as connection.

Sometimes it is a dream. Sometimes it is a familiar scent, a sudden memory or an overwhelming feeling of presence. Sometimes something happens that feels personally significant enough that coincidence does not quite satisfy the person experiencing it.

I think there is room to remain open to those experiences without concluding that the loved one must therefore be watching everything.

If consciousness can connect in ways we do not understand, perhaps awareness is selective rather than constant.

We already experience something similar in physical life. You do not need to observe someone continuously to sense when they need you. You may suddenly think of a family member and decide to call. A parent may somehow know from the sound of their child’s voice that something is wrong before a word has been said.

Connection can be meaningful without being continuous.

Perhaps spiritual connection could work in a similar way.

I do not know.

And I think saying “I do not know” is considerably more interesting than pretending certainty where none exists.

You Are Still Allowed to Have a Private Life

This may be the most important part.

If you have lost someone you love, you are still allowed to have a life that belongs to you.

You are allowed to make mistakes they might not have understood. You are allowed to change your mind. You are allowed to fall in love again. You are allowed to laugh at inappropriate moments, make terrible decisions, change careers, move house and become somebody different from the person you were when they died.

You are allowed privacy.

Continuing a bond with somebody who has died does not require you to remain permanently accountable to an imagined version of them.

You do not need to live your life as though somebody in spirit is sitting in the corner taking notes.

If the connection is based on love, then surely that love must contain freedom.

Perhaps Presence Means Something Different

Maybe we have been interpreting the phrase “they are still with you” too literally.

Perhaps being with us does not mean occupying the same room.

Perhaps it means that the relationship continues to influence us. Their love shaped us. Their words became part of us. Their existence changed the direction of our life, and their absence changed it again.

Perhaps there are also moments when something beyond psychology occurs. A dream that feels unusually vivid. A piece of information received through mediumship. A sudden sense of connection that is difficult to explain.

We do not need to dismiss those experiences.

But neither do we need to turn them into the idea of permanent spiritual observation.

There is something much gentler in believing that those we have lost may still be connected to us without imagining that they are watching every detail of our lives.

It leaves space for love.

It leaves space for mystery.

And importantly, it leaves space for us to keep living.

If our loved ones do continue beyond death, perhaps they are not standing beside us watching every choice we make.

Perhaps they simply remain part of a connection that death has changed, but not necessarily destroyed.

And if that connection really is love, I would like to think it asks far less from us than we sometimes imagine.

Not perfection. Not guilt. Not permission. Just life.

Do you believe our loved ones remain aware of us after death, and if so, what do you think that awareness actually means?

Many blessings,

Andrew Spiritual Medium 🕊️

Share

Manifestation has become one of the most recognisable ideas in modern spirituality. Open almost any social media platform and it will not take long before someone tells you that your thoughts create your reality, that abundance arrives when you align yourself with it, or that the life you desire already exists somewhere and your job is simply to become the energetic version of yourself capable of receiving it. There are vision boards, scripting journals, affirmations, manifestation challenges and countless stories from people convinced that a relationship, career, home or financial opportunity appeared because they first imagined it into existence. It is optimistic, empowering and enormously attractive. It also contains a problem that I think spirituality has been remarkably reluctant to confront.

That problem begins with one very important distinction. There is a perfectly reasonable argument that the way we think can influence the way we live. Someone who believes a new career is possible may apply for opportunities that somebody convinced of inevitable failure would never consider. A person who develops greater confidence may behave differently in relationships, become more assertive at work or finally take a risk they have postponed for years. What we focus upon can influence what we notice, the decisions we make and the opportunities we pursue. None of that requires anything supernatural. Our internal world and external behaviour are obviously connected.

Modern manifestation culture, however, frequently goes much further. It does not simply suggest that thoughts can influence our actions and therefore affect our lives. It suggests that our thoughts, beliefs or energetic frequency somehow attract the circumstances themselves. Once we make that leap, manifestation stops being merely a technique for motivation and becomes a theory about how reality works. And if we are going to treat it as a theory about reality, then I think we have to be willing to examine what that theory says not only when wonderful things happen, but when terrible things happen too.

The Seduction of Control

There is a reason manifestation feels so compelling, particularly during uncertain periods of our lives. Human beings do not particularly enjoy feeling powerless. We want to believe that our decisions matter and that there is some relationship between what we put into life and what life eventually gives back. The idea that we can influence the universe through our intentions offers reassurance in a world that frequently refuses to behave predictably. If we can learn the rules, perhaps we can protect ourselves from disappointment. If we can maintain the correct mindset, perhaps the future becomes less frightening.

That desire for control is not foolish. In many areas of life, taking greater responsibility genuinely improves our circumstances. Changing our behaviour, setting boundaries, learning new skills, leaving unhealthy situations and becoming more conscious of our habits can dramatically alter the direction of our lives. There is something profoundly empowering about recognising that we are not helpless.

The difficulty comes when responsibility quietly expands into omnipotence. There is an enormous difference between saying, “I have influence over my life,” and saying, “I create everything that happens to me.” The first acknowledges personal agency while leaving room for reality. The second places the weight of reality itself on the shoulders of the individual.

That weight can feel wonderful when life is going well. A new opportunity appears and we believe we manifested it. We meet somebody at precisely the right moment and wonder whether our intentions brought them towards us. We finally achieve something we have visualised for years and the connection between thought and outcome feels undeniable. Those experiences can be meaningful, and I have no interest in telling somebody what they should or should not believe about them. The problem emerges when we apply the same philosophy consistently to the experiences we would never consciously choose.

What Happens When Life Says No?

This is where manifestation becomes considerably more complicated than an inspirational quote.

People believe wholeheartedly in relationships that still end. They visualise successful businesses that eventually fail. They imagine futures that never arrive. They remain positive through circumstances that continue to deteriorate. They ask for opportunities that repeatedly go to somebody else. They hope, affirm, visualise and believe, and sometimes life simply says no.

Manifestation culture has developed an extraordinary number of explanations for these moments. Perhaps the person had a subconscious block. Perhaps they were too attached to the outcome. Perhaps their vibration was inconsistent. Perhaps they secretly believed they were unworthy. Perhaps the universe had something better planned. Perhaps they manifested the experience because there was a lesson their soul needed to learn.

Any one of those explanations may feel meaningful to an individual, but taken together they reveal an uncomfortable characteristic of the philosophy: manifestation can become almost impossible to disprove. When the desired outcome arrives, manifestation receives the credit. When it does not arrive, the individual is often told there was something within them preventing it.

A belief that cannot lose is worth examining very carefully.

This is not merely an intellectual objection. There is an emotional consequence too. Somebody who has already experienced disappointment can now find themselves carrying an additional burden: the possibility that they somehow caused it. What began as a philosophy of empowerment can become a sophisticated form of self-blame.

The Question We Avoid Asking

The uncomfortable implications become even clearer when we move away from relatively ordinary disappointments and consider genuine human suffering. If thoughts create reality, what exactly are we saying about somebody whose reality contains tragedy?

Few compassionate people would look at someone experiencing bereavement, serious illness, abuse, poverty or an unexpected catastrophe and casually tell them that their thoughts attracted the experience. Yet the strongest versions of manifestation philosophy leave us uncomfortably close to precisely that conclusion. If positive thoughts attract positive experiences and negative energy attracts negative experiences, suffering eventually requires an energetic explanation.

This is where I personally become deeply uncomfortable.

Sometimes terrible things happen to kind, optimistic, loving people. Sometimes people who have spent years working towards something lose it through circumstances completely outside their control. Sometimes another person’s decision changes our life. Sometimes biology intervenes. Sometimes economic circumstances intervene. Sometimes an accident happens. Sometimes there is no satisfying explanation at all.

Acknowledging those realities does not mean surrendering to pessimism. It means refusing to make somebody morally or spiritually responsible for every circumstance they encounter.

There is a peculiar cruelty hidden inside the suggestion that a suffering person somehow failed to think correctly. Even when expressed gently, it can turn compassion into analysis. Instead of sitting beside somebody in their pain, we begin searching for the spiritual mistake that supposedly created it.

Perhaps there isn’t one.

Perhaps sometimes what a person needs most is not an explanation for why something happened, but another human being willing to acknowledge that it happened and that it hurts.

When Positivity Becomes Another Kind of Fear

There is another consequence of manifestation culture that receives far less attention than the success stories: it can make people frightened of their own minds.

If thoughts are capable of creating reality, then negative thoughts become dangerous. Ordinary anxiety is no longer simply an uncomfortable emotional state; it becomes something that might attract the very outcome the person fears. Anger, doubt, sadness and frustration can begin to feel spiritually irresponsible. People may find themselves trying to monitor their internal world constantly, correcting unwanted thoughts before the universe somehow interprets them as instructions.

That is not freedom. It is surveillance.

Human beings are not designed to remain positive every moment of every day. We experience grief, fear, jealousy, anger, uncertainty and despair because we are human. Our minds occasionally produce thoughts we did not invite and do not believe. Anyone who has ever experienced an intrusive thought knows how little control we sometimes have over what briefly passes through consciousness.

A healthy spiritual practice should surely give us more room to be human, not less.

There is value in noticing patterns of thought that keep us trapped. There is value in challenging the belief that we are incapable, unlovable or destined to fail. But there is a considerable difference between examining our thoughts because they affect our wellbeing and policing them because we fear they possess supernatural consequences.

One encourages self-awareness. The other can encourage anxiety.

Perhaps Manifestation Is Smaller Than We Think

None of this means I believe we should abandon intention, visualisation or hope. Quite the opposite. I think there is something powerful about becoming clear about what we want from life. Imagining a future can help us begin constructing it. Writing down a goal can transform something vague into something tangible. Believing that change is possible can alter the way we behave long before our circumstances have changed at all.

Perhaps manifestation works best when we stop asking it to explain the entire universe.

You can visualise the career you want and then take the practical steps required to pursue it. You can imagine the kind of relationship you would like and allow that clarity to influence what you will and will not accept. You can focus on abundance if doing so helps you notice possibilities rather than remaining paralysed by fear. You can set an intention and still understand that intention is not a guarantee.

There is something beautifully mature about being able to hold hope and uncertainty at the same time.

We can say, “This is what I want,” without insisting, “Therefore this must happen.”

We can work towards something wholeheartedly while accepting that other people, circumstances and chance also exist. We can celebrate extraordinary coincidences without needing every coincidence to prove a universal law. We can even wonder whether there are dimensions to intention and consciousness that science does not yet understand while remaining willing to question the claims made about them.

Spirituality does not have to choose between blind belief and complete dismissal. There is an enormous, fascinating territory between the two.

A Spirituality That Can Survive Disappointment

Perhaps the real test of any spiritual philosophy is not how comforting it feels when everything is going well, but whether it remains compassionate when life falls apart.

It is easy to talk about abundance when abundance has arrived. It is easy to tell somebody to trust the universe when the universe appears to be giving us exactly what we requested. The harder question is what we believe when we have done everything we thought we were supposed to do and the answer is still no.

That is where I think a more honest spirituality begins.

It allows us to acknowledge that we possess genuine power without pretending we possess total control. It encourages us to examine our beliefs without making us frightened of our thoughts. It allows hope without turning hope into a contract with the universe. Most importantly, it gives us permission to experience disappointment without immediately searching for some hidden spiritual failure within ourselves.

Perhaps we are not here to master reality.

Perhaps we are here to participate in it.

There will be moments when our intentions seem to align beautifully with what unfolds. There will be moments when an opportunity appears with timing so extraordinary that coincidence feels like an inadequate word. There will also be doors that remain closed regardless of how confidently we visualise ourselves walking through them.

We can remain curious about all of those experiences.

What I resist is the idea that every outcome must become evidence of whether we thought correctly. Because sometimes we make things happen. Sometimes things happen to us. And most of life probably exists somewhere in the complicated space between the two.

Manifestation may still have something valuable to teach us, but perhaps its greatest value is not the promise that we can order whatever future we desire. Perhaps it is the invitation to consider what we want, what we believe is possible and what actions we are prepared to take in pursuit of it.

The rest requires something manifestation culture does not always talk about quite so enthusiastically.

Humility.

The humility to admit that life contains mystery. The humility to recognise the limits of our control. The humility to stop blaming ourselves when reality refuses to follow the script we carefully wrote for it.

And perhaps the freedom we were looking for was never in learning how to control the universe.

Perhaps it was in finally realising that we don’t have to.

Many blessings,
Andrew Spiritual Medium 🕊️

There are certain phrases we reach for when life becomes impossible to explain. Everything happens for a reason. It was meant to be. The universe has a plan. Everything happens exactly as it should. Usually, these words are offered with kindness. We say them because somebody is hurting and we desperately want to give their pain a purpose. We want to believe that underneath the chaos of life there is some kind of order, that suffering isn’t random and that eventually everything will make sense.

I understand why that belief is comforting. Spirituality often gives us a framework through which we can process experiences that otherwise feel unbearable, and there have been countless people who have found genuine strength in believing that something meaningful can eventually emerge from terrible circumstances. But I think we need to be extraordinarily careful about the difference between finding meaning after something happens and telling somebody that the terrible thing had to happen for a reason.

Those are not the same thing.

And sometimes, “everything happens for a reason” isn’t comforting at all. Sometimes it’s one of the most painful things we can say to somebody who is already suffering.

Why We Want Suffering to Have a Reason

Human beings aren’t particularly comfortable with randomness. We like stories with beginnings, middles and endings. We want causes and explanations. When something devastating happens without warning, our minds immediately begin searching for an answer because why? can feel almost impossible to live with.

Why did this person die? Why did the relationship end? Why did I become ill? Why did this happen to my family? Why did somebody I trusted hurt me? Why did I lose the future I thought I was going to have? These questions aren’t merely intellectual. They come from the desperate human need to make sense of a world that suddenly no longer feels predictable.

Psychologically, meaning can help us cope. If we can create a story around what happened, the experience can sometimes begin to feel less chaotic. Spirituality can provide one of those stories. Perhaps this was part of a soul journey. Perhaps there was a lesson involved. Perhaps the universe redirected us. Perhaps somebody’s death happened when it was supposed to happen. Perhaps everything was part of a larger plan we cannot currently see.

For some people, those beliefs are enormously comforting, and I would never want to take that comfort away from somebody who has genuinely found it for themselves. The problem begins when we take an explanation that comforts us and place it onto somebody else’s suffering.

Comfort Isn’t Universal

Imagine a parent whose child has died being told, “Everything happens for a reason.” Imagine somebody who has experienced abuse being told that their soul somehow chose the experience in order to learn something. Imagine somebody sitting beside the hospital bed of the person they love being reassured that the universe never gives us more than we can handle.

Perhaps those ideas would comfort some people. For others, they could be devastating.

When somebody is in deep grief, they may not need us to explain what happened. They may simply need us to acknowledge how absolutely awful it is. There is a strange pressure within parts of spirituality to transform pain into wisdom almost immediately, as though suffering becomes more acceptable once we attach a spiritual lesson to it.

But grief doesn’t always want a lesson.

Sometimes grief simply wants somebody willing to sit beside it without trying to make it prettier.

This is where a concept often described as spiritual bypassing becomes important. Spiritual bypassing happens when spiritual ideas are used to avoid, suppress or prematurely move beyond difficult human emotions. Instead of allowing anger, grief, fear or confusion to exist, we rush towards forgiveness, positivity, gratitude, divine timing or some higher spiritual explanation.

The language sounds spiritual, but underneath it we may simply be uncomfortable with pain.

Maybe Some Things Shouldn’t Be Explained Away

One of the uncomfortable questions spirituality has to face is whether every painful event really needs a spiritual explanation. If we insist that everything happens for a reason, where exactly do we draw the line?

Does every accident happen for a reason? Every illness? Every act of cruelty? Every betrayal? Every premature death? Every natural disaster? Every terrible thing one human being chooses to do to another?

The phrase becomes considerably harder to defend when we follow it all the way to its logical conclusion. If absolutely everything is supposed to happen, we risk turning human suffering into something spiritually necessary. And I think that can lead us into very uncomfortable territory.

There is a difference between saying, “Something meaningful eventually came from what happened to me,” and saying, “What happened to me needed to happen so that I could learn.” The first gives the person ownership over the meaning they created. The second can make suffering sound like an educational programme designed by the universe.

Perhaps terrible experiences don’t always arrive carrying lessons. Perhaps sometimes the lesson is something we create afterwards because human beings have an extraordinary ability to make meaning from what we’ve survived.

That doesn’t make the meaning less spiritual. If anything, I think it makes it more powerful.

The Difference Between Meaning and Cause

This distinction matters enormously. Something can become meaningful without having been deliberately caused in order to produce that meaning.

A person may experience devastating heartbreak and later discover a strength they didn’t know they possessed. That doesn’t necessarily mean the heartbreak was sent to teach them strength. Somebody may lose a career and eventually discover a completely different path that makes them happier. That doesn’t prove the universe deliberately took the first career away. Somebody may survive an extraordinarily difficult period and become more compassionate towards other people because of it. Their compassion can be meaningful without requiring us to believe their suffering was deliberately arranged.

We often look backwards and connect the dots because hindsight gives life the appearance of a carefully written story. We see how one event led to another and think, If that hadn’t happened, I wouldn’t be here. That’s often true. But it doesn’t automatically mean the original event was destined.

Every decision and experience changes what happens next. If you’d left home five minutes later one morning, you might have met a completely different person. If you’d taken another job, moved to another town or stayed in another relationship, your life would look different. The fact that our present grew from our past doesn’t necessarily prove that every part of the past was planned.

Perhaps life contains both meaning and randomness.

I don’t think spirituality collapses if we allow that possibility.

When “It Was Meant to Be” Creates Guilt

There is another side to this belief that receives surprisingly little attention. If we tell people that positive things happen because they’re aligned, manifesting correctly or following their spiritual path, what does that imply when terrible things happen?

Did they manifest those too?

This is where spiritual ideas can unintentionally become cruel. Somebody struggling financially may begin wondering whether they have a “scarcity mindset.” Somebody who becomes ill may hear that unresolved emotional energy contributed to their condition. Somebody experiencing repeated difficulties may be told that they haven’t learned the lesson the universe keeps sending them.

Suddenly, suffering isn’t simply painful. It becomes evidence that you’ve somehow failed spiritually.

I find that deeply troubling.

There can absolutely be psychological patterns that influence our choices and circumstances. Our beliefs affect behaviour, relationships and decisions. But that’s very different from claiming that every painful event reflects somebody’s spiritual vibration, mindset or soul contract.

Sometimes people experience terrible circumstances they did nothing to create.

Acknowledging that isn’t negative thinking. It’s compassion.

Grief Doesn’t Need a Silver Lining

This matters particularly when we’re talking about bereavement. When somebody dies, the people left behind often search desperately for meaning because death creates a rupture in the story they expected to live.

We may eventually find meaning in what that person taught us, how they changed us or the love that continues after their physical absence. We may develop spiritual beliefs about where they are now. We may even experience moments that convince us the relationship hasn’t completely ended.

But none of that means we have to call their death a good thing in disguise.

Some losses remain losses.

We can grow around grief without pretending grief was sent to make us grow. We can become stronger without being grateful for what forced us to become strong. We can discover extraordinary meaning after somebody dies while still wishing with every part of ourselves that they were physically here.

Those truths can exist together.

I think spirituality becomes far more compassionate when it stops demanding that pain eventually justify itself.

What If There Isn’t a Lesson Yet?

Another problem with “everything happens for a reason” is that it can create pressure to discover the reason. People begin asking themselves what they’re supposed to learn, why the universe allowed something to happen or what spiritual purpose the experience is serving.

Sometimes there isn’t an answer.

Or perhaps there isn’t one yet.

Meaning can take years to emerge, and sometimes our understanding changes repeatedly throughout our lives. Something we once considered the worst thing that ever happened to us may eventually redirect our lives in an unexpected way. Another experience may remain painful decades later without revealing any obvious spiritual purpose whatsoever.

Both experiences are valid.

We don’t have to turn every wound into wisdom on a deadline. We don’t have to forgive before we’re ready, feel grateful for suffering or pretend that something terrible secretly improved our lives. Healing isn’t a performance of spiritual enlightenment.

Sometimes healing begins with being allowed to say, “This shouldn’t have happened, and I’m angry that it did.”

There can be something profoundly honest in that sentence.

Does Believing in Spirit Require Believing in Destiny?

As a medium, I believe consciousness may continue beyond physical death. I’m open to spiritual connection, intuition and experiences that don’t fit neatly into conventional explanations. But none of those beliefs require me to claim that I understand why every event happens.

Mediumship and destiny aren’t automatically the same belief.

We can believe that somebody continues in spirit without claiming their death was deliberately scheduled as part of a cosmic plan. We can believe that people come into our lives for meaningful reasons without assuming every painful relationship was spiritually arranged. We can believe there is more to consciousness than we currently understand while still admitting that we don’t know whether every detail of our lives has been predetermined.

In fact, I think “I don’t know” is sometimes one of the most respectful things we can say about suffering.

When somebody asks why the person they loved had to die, I don’t think spirituality gives us permission to invent certainty simply because uncertainty is uncomfortable. We may have beliefs. We may have experiences. We may have theories about consciousness and the afterlife. But belief isn’t the same as knowing the architecture of the universe.

Sometimes humility is more spiritual than explanation.

The Psychology Behind Needing an Explanation

There is also an important psychological reason why we may cling to the idea that everything happens for a reason. If the world is governed by a meaningful order, we can feel safer inside it. If good choices produce good outcomes and painful experiences always serve some higher purpose, then life becomes more predictable.

The alternative is frightening.

Sometimes good people suffer. Sometimes careful people experience accidents. Sometimes relationships end despite both people desperately wanting them to work. Sometimes illness arrives without asking whether somebody has done enough inner healing. Sometimes life changes in seconds.

Accepting uncertainty means accepting that we cannot control everything.

Spiritual explanations can soften that fear, but we should be careful that they don’t become a way of pretending uncertainty doesn’t exist. There is a difference between having faith and using faith to avoid reality.

Perhaps spirituality isn’t supposed to guarantee that nothing meaningless, unfair or random will ever happen. Perhaps it gives us a way to remain connected to love, hope and meaning even when life doesn’t make sense.

To me, that’s a much deeper form of spirituality.

Maybe the Reason Comes From Us

There is another way of looking at this phrase that I find far more empowering. Instead of believing everything happens for a reason, perhaps human beings have an extraordinary capacity to create reason from what happens.

We take grief and become more compassionate. We experience rejection and eventually understand ourselves differently. We survive something difficult and later use that experience to support somebody walking through the same darkness. We lose one version of our future and slowly build another.

The suffering didn’t necessarily need to happen for those things to become possible. We made something meaningful from circumstances we never would have chosen.

There is enormous power in that distinction because it gives meaning back to the person rather than assigning it to an invisible plan. It says, What happened to you mattered, and what you choose to create from it belongs to you.

Sometimes people create beautiful things from terrible experiences. That doesn’t make the terrible experience beautiful.

It makes the person remarkable.

A More Compassionate Spirituality

Perhaps we need to become more comfortable saying fewer things when somebody is hurting. Instead of “everything happens for a reason,” we might say, “I don’t know why this happened, but I’m here.” Instead of “the universe has a plan,” perhaps we say, “You don’t have to understand this right now.” Instead of immediately searching for a spiritual lesson, we can allow somebody to experience whatever they’re actually feeling.

That doesn’t remove spirituality from grief or suffering. It simply stops spirituality from speaking over the human experience.

There may be reasons for things that we cannot currently understand. There may be aspects of consciousness, destiny and existence far beyond what any of us can comprehend. I’m completely open to that possibility. But being open to mystery is very different from claiming certainty about somebody else’s pain.

I still believe meaning can emerge from some of the darkest experiences of our lives. I’ve seen how grief can deepen compassion, how loss can change priorities and how people can rebuild themselves after circumstances they never imagined surviving. But I don’t think we need to believe the darkness was deliberately sent in order to appreciate the light somebody eventually found.

Maybe everything doesn’t happen for a reason.

Maybe some things happen because we’re human, because other people make choices, because bodies are vulnerable, because nature is unpredictable and because life contains an element of uncertainty we will never completely control. And maybe spirituality isn’t about pretending otherwise.

Perhaps spirituality is what helps us ask a different question. Not “Why was this supposed to happen to me?” but “Now that this has happened, what meaning, love or purpose can I eventually choose to carry forward?”

There is a profound difference between those two questions. One asks us to justify our suffering. The other gives us permission to decide what happens next.

And sometimes, that may be enough.

How do you feel when somebody says “everything happens for a reason”? Does it bring you comfort, or have there been moments when those words have made something painful even harder to carry?

Many blessings,

Andrew Spiritual Medium 🕊️

We talk about intuition as though it arrives with a label attached. We describe a gut feeling, an unexplained sense that something isn’t right, a sudden thought about somebody or an overwhelming feeling that we should or shouldn’t do something, and we say, “I just knew.” Within spirituality, we’re constantly encouraged to trust that feeling. Listen to your intuition. Follow your gut. Trust what your soul is telling you. I believe there is enormous value in learning to listen to ourselves, and as a medium, intuition is something I take very seriously. But there is an uncomfortable part of this conversation that I don’t think we discuss nearly enough: not every strong feeling is intuition.

Sometimes what we call intuition is anxiety. Sometimes it’s fear. Sometimes it’s previous experience quietly influencing the way we interpret the present. Sometimes it’s an old wound teaching us to anticipate something going wrong before anything has actually happened. Sometimes it’s wishful thinking because we desperately want something to be true. Sometimes it’s our subconscious noticing tiny details that our conscious mind hasn’t yet registered. And sometimes, yes, perhaps it really is intuition. The difficulty is that from inside our own minds, all of these experiences can feel remarkably convincing.

If we’re going to talk seriously about intuition, therefore, I think we also have to become comfortable with a possibility that isn’t particularly popular within spiritual circles: sometimes we can believe we’re being intuitive and be completely wrong.

Why Intuition Can Feel So Convincing

One reason intuition can feel so powerful is that it often seems to arrive before conscious reasoning. You meet somebody and immediately feel comfortable around them. You walk into a room and sense tension before anybody has said a word. Your phone rings and somebody suddenly enters your mind before you look at the screen. You consider making a decision and experience an immediate physical response before you’ve had time to weigh up the advantages and disadvantages. There isn’t necessarily an obvious chain of reasoning involved. The feeling simply appears, which is precisely why it can feel as though the information has come from somewhere beyond ordinary thought.

Psychology doesn’t necessarily dispute that these experiences happen. Our brains are constantly processing enormous amounts of information outside conscious awareness. Facial expressions, tone of voice, posture, previous experiences, subtle changes in behaviour and tiny environmental cues can all influence us before we consciously understand what we’ve noticed. What we experience as a sudden gut feeling may sometimes be the brain reaching a conclusion from information that never reached our conscious attention.

Imagine meeting somebody who immediately makes you uncomfortable. You can’t explain why. They haven’t said anything offensive, everyone else seems perfectly relaxed around them and you have no obvious reason to distrust them, yet something feels wrong. Within a spiritual framework, you might describe that as sensing their energy, and perhaps that’s exactly how you understand the experience. But there may also be another possibility. Their mannerisms, tone of voice, facial expression or behaviour might resemble somebody from your past who wasn’t safe. Your conscious mind hasn’t made the connection, but another part of your brain may already have recognised the pattern.

That doesn’t make the feeling meaningless, and it certainly doesn’t mean you should automatically ignore it. It simply means that the source of what we call intuition may sometimes be more complicated than we realise. If we immediately decide that every unexplained feeling is spiritual information, we may never investigate the psychological processes that are equally capable of producing powerful internal experiences.

Intuition and Anxiety Can Sound Remarkably Similar

This is where things become particularly difficult, because anxiety and intuition can both tell us that something isn’t right. Both can appear suddenly, both can create physical sensations and both can make us want to avoid a person, situation or decision. When the feeling is intense, distinguishing between them isn’t always straightforward, particularly if we’ve already been taught that strong bodily sensations are evidence that our intuition is trying to communicate with us.

There can, however, be differences worth observing. Intuition is often described as relatively quiet and direct. There may be a simple sense of don’t go there, call that person or something has changed. Anxiety tends to create more of a narrative around the feeling. It asks what if this happens, what if that happens, what if you’ve made the wrong decision, what if they’re upset with you, what if something terrible happens and you ignored the warning? One impression can quickly become twenty possible disasters.

The problem begins when we label anxiety as intuition because doing so can accidentally give fear enormous authority. Instead of recognising an anxious thought and questioning it, we may decide that our spiritual senses are warning us. Challenging the thought then becomes frightening in itself because we wonder whether ignoring it means ignoring some important message. The more frightened we become, the stronger the physical sensations become, and the stronger those sensations become, the more convinced we are that intuition must be trying desperately to get our attention.

A self-reinforcing cycle can develop. Fear produces sensations, the sensations are interpreted as intuitive confirmation and that interpretation produces even more fear. From inside the experience, it can feel extraordinarily real. Yet emotional intensity isn’t necessarily evidence of intuitive accuracy. Sometimes what feels like intuition becoming louder may actually be anxiety feeding itself.

When the Past Pretends to Predict the Future

Our past shapes the way we interpret the present far more than we sometimes realise. If you’ve experienced betrayal, you may become exceptionally sensitive to signs of dishonesty. If you’ve experienced abandonment, subtle changes in somebody’s communication may immediately feel threatening. If you’ve spent years around unpredictable people, you may become remarkably skilled at noticing tiny changes in mood, tone and behaviour. Those abilities can become so automatic that they feel almost supernatural because the conclusion arrives before we consciously understand how we reached it.

That sensitivity can sometimes protect us. It can also produce false alarms. Imagine somebody who has previously been cheated on. Their new partner is quieter than usual one evening and immediately something inside them says, They’re hiding something. Their stomach tightens, their thoughts begin racing and the feeling becomes so powerful that they describe it as intuition. Yet perhaps their partner is simply exhausted, worried about work or distracted by something completely unrelated to the relationship.

The feeling itself is real. The interpretation may not be. That’s an enormously important distinction because we sometimes treat the strength of an emotion as proof that our explanation must be correct. Human beings don’t work like that. Something can feel overwhelmingly true while still being based on an incorrect assumption.

This is one of the reasons self-awareness matters so much in spiritual development. If I don’t understand my own fears, wounds and patterns, how can I confidently distinguish them from intuition? The more familiar we become with our psychological landscape, the easier it may become to recognise when an old experience is trying to write the ending of a completely new story.

What About Genuine Intuition?

None of this means I think intuition is imaginary. Quite the opposite. I believe intuition can be extraordinarily valuable, and there are experiences within mediumship and ordinary life where information seems to arrive without an obvious conscious route. What I’m questioning isn’t whether intuition exists. I’m questioning the assumption that we’re always able to identify it correctly simply because something feels powerful.

I think genuine intuition can sometimes have an unusual simplicity about it. It doesn’t necessarily argue its case, create an elaborate story or desperately demand that we believe it. Sometimes it’s simply there: a quiet knowing, an unexpected thought, an image, an impression or a feeling that appears without an obvious emotional narrative attached to it. That doesn’t give us a foolproof method of identifying intuition, but it does give us something worth observing.

Fear tends to want certainty. Anxiety often wants reassurance. Desire wants the outcome we hope for. Intuition, perhaps, doesn’t always need any of those things. Sometimes the most useful question isn’t “Is this intuition?” but “What else could this feeling be?” If an impression remains meaningful even after we’ve considered anxiety, previous experiences, expectation and ordinary reasoning, perhaps we’re in a better position to explore whether something more intuitive may be happening.

The Danger of Romanticising Every Gut Feeling

Within spiritual spaces, instinct is sometimes romanticised to the point where questioning ourselves almost becomes discouraged. People are told to trust every energetic shift, sudden thought and uncomfortable sensation. On the surface, that sounds empowering because it encourages people to stop ignoring themselves. In practice, however, it can occasionally have the opposite effect.

If every uncomfortable sensation becomes spiritual information, we can begin making assumptions about other people without evidence. We may decide somebody has “bad energy” when we’re actually reacting to something within ourselves. We might interpret nervousness before an important opportunity as the universe telling us not to proceed. We might leave healthy situations because they activate old fears while remaining in unhealthy ones because dysfunction feels strangely familiar.

Growth itself can be uncomfortable. Doing something new can produce anxiety. Falling in love can make us feel vulnerable. Setting boundaries can feel frightening, particularly if we’ve spent years pleasing other people. Leaving familiar circumstances can make every part of us want to retreat. If we automatically interpret discomfort as an intuitive warning, we may accidentally spend our lives avoiding precisely the experiences that could help us grow.

That is why the advice to “always trust your gut” needs more nuance than it usually receives. Sometimes our gut is recognising something important. Sometimes our nervous system is reacting to unfamiliarity. Sometimes an old experience is being activated. Sometimes we’re frightened because the decision genuinely carries risk. The feeling deserves attention, but attention isn’t the same as unquestioning obedience.

Intuition Shouldn’t Require Us to Stop Thinking

One of the biggest misconceptions about intuition is that trusting it requires abandoning logic. I don’t believe that at all. If anything, intuition and critical thinking can work beautifully together because one gives us something to notice while the other helps us investigate what it might mean.

Suppose you have a strong feeling that somebody isn’t being truthful with you. You don’t have to dismiss that feeling, but neither do you have to immediately accuse them of lying. You can become curious. What specifically made you uncomfortable? Has their behaviour genuinely changed? Are there inconsistencies in what they’re saying? Could something from your own past be influencing how you’re interpreting the situation? Has this feeling appeared around other people in similar circumstances, and if so, what happened?

In other words, you can honour the feeling without automatically obeying the story you’ve attached to it. That’s an important distinction because even if intuitive information exists, interpretation still happens through the human mind, and the human mind carries memories, fears, expectations, desires and biases.

This becomes particularly important within mediumship. Receiving an impression and interpreting that impression aren’t necessarily the same thing. A medium may perceive an image, emotion, word, sensation or piece of information, but the meaning assigned to it still passes through that medium’s own understanding and vocabulary. Discernment therefore isn’t an optional extra within spiritual work. In my view, it’s part of responsible mediumship.

When What We Want to Be True Feels Like Intuition

There is another side of this conversation that receives even less attention because intuition doesn’t always warn us about something frightening. Sometimes it tells us exactly what we desperately want to hear.

We may feel absolutely certain that somebody is going to return to our lives. We may convince ourselves that a relationship is “meant to be” despite overwhelming evidence that it isn’t healthy. We may interpret coincidences as confirmation that a particular outcome is destined because accepting another possibility would be painful. We may believe an opportunity is guaranteed to happen because something inside us insists that it’s ours.

Hope is powerful, and there’s nothing wrong with hope. But hope and intuition aren’t necessarily the same thing. Neither are longing and intuition, attachment and intuition, or expectation and intuition. When we’re emotionally invested in an outcome, our ability to interpret our own feelings objectively becomes considerably more complicated.

If every intuitive message consistently confirms what we already want to happen, it’s worth becoming curious about that. Genuine discernment requires us to be as willing to question comforting impressions as frightening ones. Human beings aren’t neutral observers of our own lives. We have emotional investments, we want certain outcomes and fear others, and spirituality doesn’t magically remove those biases simply because we’ve learned to describe a feeling as intuition.

Learning the Language of Your Own Mind

Perhaps the goal shouldn’t be to create a rigid checklist that supposedly separates intuition from anxiety in every situation. Human beings are far too complicated for that. Instead, we can begin learning the particular language of our own internal world.

What does anxiety feel like in your body? What happens to your thoughts when you’re frightened? What patterns appear when an old wound is activated? How does your mind behave when you desperately want reassurance? When you’ve experienced intuitive impressions that later proved meaningful, what was different about them? Were they quieter? Did they arrive unexpectedly? Did they remain consistent without demanding your attention every five minutes?

Over time, patterns may emerge. You might notice that anxiety repeats itself obsessively while certain intuitive impressions seem to arrive once and remain quietly present. You might discover that fear demands immediate action while intuition seems to leave room for thought. You may notice that wishful thinking changes whenever the circumstances change, whereas some deeper impressions remain surprisingly consistent. Your experience may be completely different from somebody else’s, which is precisely why blindly adopting another person’s definition of intuition isn’t always helpful.

Spiritual development, in my view, isn’t only about becoming more sensitive to what might exist beyond us. It’s also about becoming more aware of what exists within us. The better we understand our own psychology, the less likely we may be to mistake every internal experience for something external, and perhaps the more clearly we can recognise those moments that genuinely do feel different.

Being Wrong Doesn’t Mean You Aren’t Intuitive

I think this is something people desperately need permission to hear: you can be intuitive and still be wrong. You can be spiritually sensitive and misinterpret something, and you can experience a powerful gut feeling that eventually turns out to have been completely inaccurate. None of that automatically means your intuition doesn’t exist. It simply means intuition, like every other aspect of human perception, is being experienced through a human being who carries memories, emotions, expectations and fears.

Sometimes spiritual communities create unrealistic expectations around intuitive ability. People begin believing that once they’re spiritually developed enough, every feeling should be accurate. When they’re eventually wrong, they may lose confidence entirely or reinterpret what happened until they can somehow convince themselves they were right after all. Neither response helps us develop discernment.

Being able to look back and say, “I genuinely thought that was intuition, but I can see now that it was probably fear,” isn’t spiritual failure. In many ways, that’s evidence of spiritual maturity because we’re becoming more interested in understanding ourselves than protecting the idea that we must always be right. The ability to admit an intuitive interpretation was wrong may actually make us more discerning the next time a similar feeling appears.

Perhaps Intuition Needs Questions Too

In the previous article, I argued that not everything has to be a sign in order to be meaningful, and I think exactly the same principle applies here. Not every internal feeling has to be intuition in order to deserve our attention. Anxiety may tell us something important about what frightens us, an old emotional wound may reveal something that still influences us, a gut reaction may expose a boundary we’ve been ignoring, and wishful thinking may show us something we deeply long for. None of those experiences becomes worthless simply because it wasn’t a psychic or spiritual message.

Perhaps we don’t need to classify everything immediately. We can notice what we’re feeling, become curious about it, consider what may have triggered it and allow psychological and spiritual explanations to coexist while we learn more. If a feeling persists, we can observe it rather than immediately converting it into certainty. That approach may sound less exciting than declaring, “My intuition told me,” but I think it’s considerably more powerful because it asks us to develop genuine self-awareness.

The better we understand ourselves psychologically, the better equipped we may become to recognise those experiences that genuinely do seem different. I still believe in intuition. I believe there are moments when we appear to know something before we consciously understand how we know it, and I remain open to the possibility that human awareness extends into areas we don’t yet fully understand. But I also believe fear can impersonate intuition, anxiety can imitate warning, previous experiences can masquerade as predictions and desire can sound remarkably similar to spiritual certainty. Recognising those possibilities doesn’t weaken intuition; it teaches us to listen to it more carefully.

Perhaps, then, developing intuition isn’t simply about learning how to hear an inner voice more loudly. Perhaps it’s about understanding ourselves deeply enough to recognise which voice we’re actually hearing. That requires more than spirituality alone. It requires self-awareness, emotional honesty, patience and the willingness to question an interpretation even when we desperately want it to be true. To me, that’s not a rejection of intuition. It’s one of the deepest forms of respect we can give it.

Have you ever been absolutely convinced something was your intuition, only to realise later that it may have been fear, anxiety or something from your past? How do you personally tell the difference?

Many blessings,

Andrew Spiritual Medium 🕊️

There is something deeply comforting about believing that life is speaking to us. A feather appears on the pavement just as we’re thinking about someone we’ve lost. We glance at the clock and see 11:11 for the third time that week. A song begins playing containing exactly the words we needed to hear, or we dream about somebody only for them to contact us the following morning. For those of us who are spiritually minded, moments like these can feel extraordinarily significant. They can make us stop, pay attention and wonder whether something beyond coincidence has just occurred.

But I want to ask a question that may make some people within the spiritual community uncomfortable. What if not everything is a sign? I say that as someone who believes deeply in spirituality, intuition and mediumship. I’ve spent years exploring experiences that don’t always fit comfortably within conventional explanations, and I certainly don’t believe we should ridicule people for finding spiritual significance in moments that others might dismiss as coincidence. However, believing that signs can exist doesn’t mean we have to believe that everything is a sign. In fact, I think spirituality becomes considerably stronger when we’re willing to question our own interpretations.

The Brain Is Constantly Looking for Meaning

The human brain is an extraordinary pattern recognition system. Every second, we’re surrounded by more information than we could ever consciously process, so our minds constantly decide what deserves attention and what can safely be ignored. We notice familiar faces in crowds, changes in people’s behaviour, recurring sounds and patterns that appear significant. This ability has been essential to human survival, but it also means we’re remarkably good at finding connections between things, even when those connections may be coincidental.

Psychology gives us another useful concept here: confirmation bias. Put simply, once we begin believing something, we’re naturally more likely to notice information that supports that belief while paying less attention to information that challenges it. Imagine you’ve recently become interested in the number 444. Suddenly, it seems to be everywhere. You wake at 4:44 in the morning, notice £4.44 on a receipt, see a car registration containing 444 and later discover that one of your posts has received 444 views. By the fourth or fifth occurrence, it can begin to feel almost impossible that all of these appearances could be coincidence.

Yet there’s another perfectly reasonable explanation. The number may always have appeared around you. What’s changed isn’t necessarily the frequency of 444, but your awareness of it. Think about what happens when you’re considering buying a particular car. Before researching it, you barely notice that model on the road. Once you’re interested in it, suddenly the bloody thing seems to be everywhere. The number of cars hasn’t mysteriously increased overnight. Your attention has changed.

I think we need to be willing to acknowledge that exactly the same process can happen with spiritual symbols. Once feathers, butterflies, robins, particular numbers or certain songs become meaningful to us, our brains become exceptionally good at noticing them. That doesn’t automatically mean every experience is meaningless, but understanding how attention works should make us a little more cautious before deciding that every occurrence has been deliberately placed in our path.

Does Psychology Mean Signs Aren’t Real?

This is where the conversation becomes far more interesting, because I don’t believe psychology automatically disproves spirituality. Understanding how our minds recognise patterns doesn’t prove that meaningful spiritual experiences cannot occur. It simply gives us another possible explanation to consider, and I think mature spirituality should be strong enough to accommodate that possibility.

Suppose you’re grieving someone you love and, during a particularly difficult moment, you find a white feather. You immediately think of that person and experience an overwhelming sense of comfort. One person might believe the feather was deliberately placed in your path by your loved one in spirit. Another might point out that feathers fall from birds every day. Neither person can prove their interpretation with absolute certainty, but something else happened that is much easier to recognise: for a moment, you remembered someone you loved and felt connected to them.

Perhaps you smiled. Perhaps you cried. Perhaps the heaviness you had been carrying became slightly easier to hold. Does knowing that there could be an ordinary explanation for the feather automatically remove the emotional or spiritual significance of that moment? I don’t think it does. Meaning and causation aren’t necessarily the same thing. Something doesn’t have to have been supernaturally orchestrated in order to become profoundly meaningful to us.

When Spirituality Becomes Unhealthy

Where I become more cautious is when we stop allowing coincidence to exist altogether. If every repeating number is a message, every dream is prophetic, every unexpected song is communication, every electrical fault is spirit activity and every uncomfortable feeling is intuition, we gradually create a worldview in which absolutely nothing can happen without hidden spiritual meaning. At that point, spirituality can stop being something that enriches our lives and begin becoming something through which we compulsively interpret them.

Sometimes the lights flicker because there’s a problem with the electricity. Sometimes you wake at 3:33 because human sleep is complicated and people wake during the night. Sometimes you dream about somebody because you’ve been thinking about them, and sometimes a robin lands in your garden because your garden happens to be a very good place for a robin to find food. None of those explanations is particularly mystical, but allowing ordinary explanations to exist doesn’t destroy spirituality. If anything, I believe it protects it.

This matters because if everything automatically becomes evidence of spirit, eventually nothing requires evidence at all. Any event can be interpreted to support whatever we already believe, and anything that contradicts our belief can simply be ignored. That’s exactly where confirmation bias becomes particularly powerful. We remember the three occasions when we thought about somebody and they immediately telephoned, but we rarely remember the hundreds of occasions when we thought about somebody and absolutely nothing happened.

That doesn’t make us foolish. It makes us human. Our memories naturally prioritise unusual and emotionally significant events. The danger comes when we mistake the intensity of an experience for proof of its explanation.

Why “I Don’t Know” Might Be the Most Spiritual Answer

There are three words I think we need far more often within spirituality: I don’t know. They aren’t particularly exciting, and they certainly don’t make impressive social media content, but they’re incredibly important. There’s a strange pressure within parts of the spiritual world to provide immediate interpretations for everything. Someone sees 11:11 and wants to know exactly what the universe is telling them. Someone dreams about water and searches for its spiritual meaning. Someone experiences an unexpected emotion and immediately wonders whether they’re absorbing another person’s energy.

What if we didn’t rush to interpret these things? What if we allowed ourselves to say that something was interesting, meaningful or unusual without immediately deciding what caused it? There is enormous humility in leaving some experiences unexplained. We can believe something may have been spiritual without pretending we know that with certainty, just as we can acknowledge a psychological explanation without insisting that it tells us everything about the experience.

To me, that’s not weak spirituality. It’s mature spirituality. Certainty can feel reassuring, but certainty isn’t always the same thing as truth. Sometimes the most intellectually and spiritually responsible position is simply to remain curious.

When Looking for Signs Becomes Looking for Reassurance

The distinction becomes particularly important when people begin using signs to make major life decisions. I’ve heard people talk about asking the universe whether they should leave a relationship, change careers, move home or contact somebody from their past, and then waiting for a particular number, animal or symbol to appear as confirmation. I understand the appeal. Major decisions are frightening, and uncertainty is uncomfortable. A sign can feel like permission to choose.

But a spiritual practice should support our ability to make decisions rather than replace it. If you’re repeatedly asking the universe whether you should remain in a relationship that’s making you deeply unhappy, perhaps the more important question isn’t what the universe thinks. Perhaps it’s why you feel unable to trust your own judgement without receiving permission from something outside yourself.

Psychologically, this is particularly interesting because anxiety loves reassurance. When we’re uncertain, reassurance temporarily makes us feel safer, but that relief doesn’t always last. Soon we need another piece of reassurance, then another, and eventually one more just to make absolutely certain. Spiritual signs can unintentionally become part of that same cycle. We ask for a sign, receive something we interpret as one, feel reassured for a while and then begin searching again when doubt returns.

At that point, what looks like intuition may actually be anxiety searching for certainty while wearing spiritual clothing. I think that’s an important distinction, because genuine intuition shouldn’t leave us frightened that we’ve missed a coded message hidden somewhere in the universe.

Mediumship Should Be Questioned Too

I don’t believe mediums should be exempt from this conversation. If anything, those of us who work within mediumship should be especially willing to question ourselves. If I receive information that I believe is mediumistic, I should be prepared to consider whether another explanation might exist. Did I genuinely receive something? Did I make an assumption? Was I interpreting information through my own expectations? Did I unconsciously know something already? Could I simply have been wrong?

Those questions don’t threaten my belief in mediumship. They keep me accountable to it. If a belief can only survive when nobody is allowed to question it, then the questions aren’t the problem. Spirituality should never require us to switch off the part of our minds that thinks critically.

This is why I’ve never believed scepticism and spirituality have to be enemies. Healthy scepticism doesn’t necessarily mean standing outside spirituality pointing at everything and declaring it nonsense. Sometimes scepticism simply means being willing to examine an experience carefully before deciding what we think it means. In that sense, scepticism can become a form of discernment, and discernment is something every spiritual person should value.

Perhaps We’re Asking the Wrong Question

Maybe our obsession with deciding whether something is definitely a sign causes us to overlook a much more interesting question. Instead of constantly asking, “Was this sent to me?” perhaps we should ask, “What did this moment invite me to notice?” That small change moves spirituality away from prediction and towards reflection.

A butterfly may not necessarily have been dispatched by the universe specifically for you, but if seeing it reminds you that transformation is possible during a difficult period, the symbolism can still be meaningful. A song may not have been selected by someone in spirit, but if hearing it reconnects you with a beautiful memory of somebody you loved, that experience still matters. A repeating number may not contain a coded message about your future, but if noticing it causes you to stop for ten seconds and reflect on where your life is heading, perhaps something valuable has already happened.

Meaning doesn’t always require supernatural causation, and spirituality doesn’t automatically become meaningless simply because psychology is involved. I actually think the relationship between the two is far more fascinating than the argument that one must always cancel out the other. Psychology can help us understand how we perceive experiences while spirituality allows us to explore what those experiences mean to us.

The Problem With Spiritual Dictionaries

Modern spirituality has become increasingly fond of giving everything a fixed definition. We search online and discover that 111 supposedly means one thing, 444 means another, a feather represents this, a butterfly represents that and dreaming about water apparently carries another universal message entirely. It’s comforting because it gives us certainty, but human experience isn’t a dictionary.

Context matters. Culture matters. Memory matters. Emotion matters. Personal association matters. A robin might remind one person of their grandmother while meaning absolutely nothing to somebody else. A particular song might bring one person enormous comfort while another has never heard it before. Trying to assign universal spiritual meanings to every symbol risks stripping away the very thing that makes these experiences meaningful in the first place: their personal significance.

I don’t believe every feather is a message. I don’t believe every repeating number is the universe desperately trying to attract our attention, and I don’t believe every coincidence has been orchestrated specifically for us. At the same time, I don’t believe that because an experience could be explained psychologically, there can therefore be nothing spiritual about it.

I’m comfortable somewhere in the middle. There are experiences I’ve had that I can explain quite easily. There are probably experiences I’ve interpreted through the expectations and beliefs I already carried. And there are experiences that, even after years of thinking about them, still leave me wondering how on earth they happened. I don’t need to force all three into the same explanation.

Spirituality Should Be Able to Survive Questions

Perhaps that’s ultimately what I want people to take away from this conversation. We don’t have to choose between being spiritual and being rational. We don’t have to dismiss every coincidence as meaningless, but neither do we have to transform every coincidence into communication from the universe. We can remain curious, question ourselves, change our minds and acknowledge when we simply don’t know.

There is something quite beautiful about being able to say, “I can’t prove what that experience was, but it meant something to me.” It leaves room for psychology, spirituality, coincidence and mystery without demanding that one of them must always win.

Perhaps spirituality was never supposed to provide certainty about everything. Perhaps part of being spiritual is learning to live peacefully alongside the things we cannot know, while remaining open enough to recognise that our understanding of consciousness, intuition and human experience is still incomplete.

So the next time you see 11:11, find a feather, hear that particular song or experience a coincidence so strange that it makes you stop in your tracks, you don’t have to dismiss it. But you don’t have to immediately explain it either. Allow yourself to notice what happened, what you felt and why the moment mattered to you. Question it without destroying it, appreciate it without needing to prove it, and leave just enough room for the possibility that you may never know exactly what it was.

Because perhaps not everything has to be a sign to be meaningful.

I’d genuinely like to know where you stand. Do you believe signs are communication from spirit, the mind recognising meaningful patterns, or do you think the truth could exist somewhere between the two?

Many blessings,

Andrew Spiritual Medium 🕊️

Share

Have You Ever Just Known Something Without Knowing Why?

Most people imagine that mediums only see spirit. While clairvoyance is perhaps the most well-known intuitive ability, it’s only one of several ways people may experience intuitive or spiritual information. In reality, intuition speaks to each of us differently. Some people receive images, while others experience feelings, thoughts, sounds or even familiar scents that seem to appear without explanation.

Over the years, I’ve come to believe that these abilities aren’t reserved for mediums. I believe every one of us is intuitive to some degree. Just as some people naturally have a musical ear or an artistic eye, some people experience certain intuitive abilities more strongly than others. Understanding the different “clairs” can help us recognise the subtle ways intuition may already be communicating with us.

Clairvoyance – Clear Seeing

Clairvoyance, meaning clear seeing, is perhaps the most recognised of the intuitive abilities. Contrary to popular belief, it doesn’t always involve physically seeing spirit standing in front of you. More often, clairvoyance presents itself through images, symbols or brief scenes that appear within the mind’s eye. These impressions often arrive suddenly and carry a feeling of significance that makes them difficult to ignore.

Clairaudience – Clear Hearing

Clairaudience means clear hearing. This doesn’t usually involve hearing voices with the physical ears. Instead, it often feels like words, names or phrases arriving within your thoughts with remarkable clarity. Many people describe it as a quiet inner voice that feels distinctly different from their normal internal dialogue.

Clairsentience – Clear Feeling

Clairsentience means clear feeling, and it’s one of the most common intuitive abilities. People who are clairsentient often sense the emotions of others, feel the atmosphere of a place or experience an unexplainable awareness that something is important. It’s the quiet feeling that tells you something isn’t quite right or reassures you that everything will be okay before any evidence appears.

Claircognizance – Clear Knowing

Claircognizance means clear knowing. Information simply arrives. You may know something about a person or situation without being able to explain how you know it. There are no images or sounds, only a strong inner certainty that often proves difficult to ignore.

Clairalience – Clear Smelling

Clairalience means clear smelling. Some people unexpectedly notice the familiar perfume of a loved one, the scent of tobacco or fresh flowers despite there being no physical source. For many, these moments become deeply comforting because they evoke powerful memories and feelings of connection.

Clairgustance – Clear Tasting

The least common of the clairs is clairgustance, meaning clear tasting. This involves experiencing a taste that has no obvious physical cause, often associated with a loved one’s favourite food or drink. While less frequently reported, many people describe these experiences as unexpectedly vivid and emotionally meaningful.

Trusting Your Own Intuition

It’s easy to assume that intuition belongs only to mediums or highly spiritual people, but I don’t believe that’s true. I believe intuition is part of being human. The difference is that some people naturally notice it more than others, while many dismiss these quiet experiences as coincidence or imagination.

Perhaps the real journey isn’t about developing abilities you don’t already possess. Perhaps it’s about becoming still enough to recognise the subtle ways your intuition has been communicating with you all along.

Many blessings,

Andrew Spiritual Medium 🕊️

Have You Ever Wondered Why Certain Numbers Keep Appearing?

It often begins with something so ordinary that it’s easy to dismiss. You glance at the clock and it’s 11:11. Later that afternoon your shopping total comes to £22.22. That evening you notice a car registration ending in 444, and before going to bed you happen to wake and see 3:33 glowing from your bedside clock.

One occurrence might feel like coincidence.

Two might make you smile.

But when the same numbers continue appearing over days, weeks or even months, it’s natural to begin asking whether they carry a deeper meaning.

For thousands of years, numbers have fascinated humanity. Ancient civilisations believed they represented far more than a way of counting. Philosophers saw them as symbols of harmony, order and the hidden structure of the universe. Even today, numerology remains one of the world’s oldest spiritual traditions, offering the idea that numbers may carry symbolic messages capable of encouraging reflection, personal growth and greater self-awareness.

Whether you see repeating numbers as signs from spirit, meaningful coincidences or simply moments that invite deeper reflection, one thing is certain: they have a remarkable ability to make us stop and pay attention.

Perhaps that, in itself, is worth exploring.

What Exactly Is Numerology?

Numerology is the belief that numbers possess symbolic meaning beyond their mathematical value. Although modern interest in repeating numbers has grown significantly over recent years, the practice itself stretches back thousands of years to ancient Egypt, Babylon, China, India and Greece.

One of the most influential figures associated with numerology was the Greek philosopher Pythagoras. While most people know him for his contributions to mathematics, he also believed that numbers formed the underlying language of the universe. To him, every number carried its own unique vibration and symbolic quality, influencing both nature and human life.

Over time, numerology evolved into many different traditions, but one central idea remained remarkably consistent: numbers can act as symbols that encourage us to pause, reflect and consider where we are in our lives.

It’s important to recognise that numerology is a spiritual belief system rather than an established scientific discipline. There is currently no scientific evidence demonstrating that repeating numbers possess objective supernatural properties. However, that doesn’t necessarily diminish the significance people find within them. After all, many aspects of human life—love, beauty, purpose and meaning—cannot be measured with absolute precision, yet few would argue they aren’t profoundly real.

Perhaps the value of numerology isn’t found in proving that numbers possess mystical power.

Perhaps it’s found in the questions they inspire us to ask.

Why Do We Notice Repeating Numbers?

This is where psychology enters the conversation.

The human brain is an extraordinary pattern-recognition machine. Every moment of every day it processes an unimaginable amount of information, filtering countless sights, sounds and experiences without us consciously noticing them. In order to make sense of the world, the brain constantly searches for patterns because patterns help us predict, understand and feel safe.

Psychologists sometimes refer to something called the frequency illusion, often known as the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon. Once something captures our attention, we suddenly begin noticing it everywhere. It’s why buying a new car often leads you to see the same model on every road, or learning a new word seems to make it appear repeatedly in conversation.

Numbers can work in exactly the same way.

Once 11:11 becomes meaningful to someone, their brain naturally becomes more aware of it.

Some people see this as evidence that repeating numbers are simply a product of selective attention.

Others believe selective attention may simply be the mechanism through which spiritual guidance reaches our awareness.

Personally, I don’t think these ideas necessarily contradict one another.

If spirit were to communicate through everyday life, wouldn’t it make sense to use something we naturally notice?

Perhaps psychology explains how we notice the numbers.

Spirituality explores why they resonate so deeply.

Rather than viewing these perspectives as opposing one another, I find it far more interesting to consider how they might coexist.

Should Every Number Be Interpreted As A Sign?

Before exploring the meanings behind each number, I think it’s important to approach the subject with balance.

One of the biggest misconceptions surrounding numerology is the belief that every repeated number must be a direct message from the universe or the spirit world. I don’t personally believe that’s a healthy way to approach spirituality.

Sometimes 11:11 is simply the time.

Sometimes 444 appears because it’s part of a postcode or a receipt number.

Not every coincidence requires a spiritual explanation.

Discernment is one of the most valuable qualities we can develop.

Rather than asking, “What does this number mean?” every time we see it, perhaps a better question is, “Why did this particular moment capture my attention?”

What was I thinking about?

How was I feeling?

What was happening in my life?

Sometimes the significance isn’t found within the number itself.

Sometimes it’s found within the moment that surrounded it.

That shift in perspective transforms numerology from fortune-telling into something much richer.

It becomes an invitation to become more aware of ourselves.

The Meaning Behind Each Number

000 — Infinite Possibility

Traditionally, 000 is associated with wholeness, infinite potential and the beginning of a new cycle. Rather than representing emptiness, it symbolises limitless possibility. Spiritually, many people interpret this sequence as a reminder that every ending quietly contains the seed of a new beginning.

Psychologically, seeing 000 can encourage us to pause before stepping into a new chapter. It represents the blank page before the story begins, reminding us that although we cannot control every circumstance, we always retain the ability to choose how we respond.

Reflection: Where in your life are you being invited to begin again?

111 — Intention and New Beginnings

Perhaps no number sequence is recognised more widely than 111. Within numerology, it’s often associated with fresh starts, conscious creation and becoming aware of the thoughts occupying your mind.

Many people believe 111 appears during moments when life is encouraging us to pay attention to the direction we’re moving in. Rather than promising that everything we think will magically appear, it serves as a gentle reminder that our thoughts influence our decisions, our actions and ultimately the life we build.

From a psychological perspective, 111 can act as a mindful interruption. It encourages us to become aware of our internal dialogue and to ask whether we’re living intentionally or simply reacting to life.

Reflection: Are your thoughts moving you towards the life you hope to create, or away from it?

222 — Trust and Balance

Seeing 222 is often associated with patience, harmony and trust. Life doesn’t always unfold according to our preferred timeline, yet this number gently reminds us that growth often happens beneath the surface long before we see visible results.

Spiritually, 222 encourages balance within relationships, emotions and daily life. It reminds us that forcing outcomes rarely brings peace, whereas trusting the natural rhythm of life often does.

Psychologically, it speaks to something equally important: our tendency to seek certainty before we’re ready to receive it. Sometimes growth requires us to remain patient despite not yet seeing the bigger picture.

Reflection: What part of your life are you trying to rush that may simply require more trust?

333 — Growth, Creativity and Encouragement

Among those who study numerology, 333 is often associated with growth, creativity and expansion. It suggests a period in which you’re being encouraged to express yourself more fully, to trust your natural abilities and to step beyond the limits you’ve unconsciously placed upon yourself. Rather than representing sudden transformation, it points towards steady personal development and the confidence to become more authentically yourself.

From a psychological perspective, creativity isn’t limited to painting, writing or making music. Creativity is the ability to solve problems, adapt to change and imagine possibilities that don’t yet exist. Seeing 333 can serve as a gentle reminder that growth often begins the moment we stop doubting our own potential.

Perhaps the greatest message behind 333 isn’t that something extraordinary is about to happen. Perhaps it’s that you’ve underestimated your own ability for far too long.

Reflection: Where in your life have you been holding yourself back through self-doubt?

444 — Stability, Protection and Strong Foundations

Few repeating numbers bring people as much comfort as 444. Within numerology, it is widely associated with stability, protection and creating strong foundations for the future. Many people interpret it as reassurance that, even during difficult periods, they are not facing life’s challenges entirely alone.

Whether you believe that reassurance comes from the spirit world, from your subconscious or simply from your own inner resilience, the emotional effect can be remarkably similar. It reminds us to stop focusing solely on the uncertainty ahead and instead recognise the strength we’ve already built through everything we’ve overcome.

Psychologically, 444 can also represent our need for security. Human beings naturally seek stability in relationships, careers, family life and personal identity. When life feels uncertain, perhaps this number invites us to strengthen our foundations rather than becoming overwhelmed by everything we cannot control.

Reflection: What foundations in your life deserve more attention before you focus on what comes next?

555 — Change and Transformation

If one number consistently symbolises change, it’s 555. Traditionally, this sequence represents transition, movement and embracing new opportunities, even when they arrive unexpectedly. Change rarely feels comfortable, yet it is one of the few certainties we all share.

Psychology tells us that the human brain often resists change because familiarity feels safe. Even situations that no longer serve us can feel preferable to stepping into the unknown. This explains why so many people remain in unfulfilling jobs, relationships or routines long after they know something needs to shift.

Spiritually, however, 555 is often viewed differently. Rather than encouraging us to fear change, it reminds us that transformation is often the pathway to growth. Sometimes the life we’ve been hoping for only becomes possible after we’re willing to let go of the life we’ve outgrown.

Reflection: What change have you been resisting simply because it feels unfamiliar?

666 — A Call for Balance, Not Fear

Perhaps no number has been misunderstood more than 666.

Popular culture has associated it with fear, darkness and negativity for generations, leading many people to feel anxious the moment they see it. Yet within many modern numerology traditions, 666 carries a very different meaning.

Rather than representing something to fear, it is often seen as a gentle reminder to restore balance. It encourages us to notice where our attention has become consumed by worry, material concerns or constant stress, inviting us to reconnect with what truly matters.

Psychologically, this interpretation is surprisingly meaningful. When we’re overwhelmed, our thoughts naturally become narrower. We lose perspective, become trapped in cycles of overthinking and begin believing that every problem demands our immediate attention. Perhaps seeing 666 is less about predicting misfortune and more about encouraging us to pause, breathe and regain our sense of balance.

Instead of asking, “Why am I seeing 666?” perhaps a better question is, “What part of my life has fallen out of balance?”

Reflection: Are you giving as much attention to your wellbeing as you are to your worries?

777 — Wisdom and Spiritual Growth

Within numerology, 777 is often regarded as one of the most spiritually significant sequences. It symbolises wisdom, self-discovery and a deeper connection with life’s bigger questions. Rather than suggesting you’ve reached the end of your journey, it reminds us that learning is a lifelong process.

I’ve always found it interesting that genuine wisdom rarely arrives with absolute certainty. The more we learn about ourselves and the world around us, the more we realise how much remains unknown. Psychology recognises this too. Intellectual humility—the willingness to acknowledge that we don’t have every answer—is increasingly recognised as a sign of maturity rather than weakness.

Perhaps that’s the true message of 777. Not that you’ve discovered all the answers, but that you’re becoming more comfortable asking better questions.

Reflection: What truth about yourself are you only just beginning to understand?

888 — Abundance and Receiving

Abundance is one of the most misunderstood concepts within spirituality. Many people immediately associate 888 with financial success or material wealth, but I believe its meaning reaches much further than that.

True abundance can be found in relationships, health, purpose, kindness and the simple ability to appreciate life as it unfolds. Numerology often associates 888 with the natural flow of giving and receiving, reminding us that life moves in cycles rather than straight lines.

Psychologically, it’s easy to focus on what’s missing while overlooking what already exists. Our brains naturally notice problems because they’re designed to protect us, yet gratitude gently shifts our attention towards the richness already present in our lives.

Perhaps abundance begins not when we have more…

But when we begin recognising how much we already possess.

Reflection: Where is abundance already present in your life that you’ve stopped noticing?

999 — Completion and New Chapters

Every story eventually reaches the end of a chapter, and 999 beautifully represents that idea. Within numerology, it symbolises completion, closure and preparing for something new. Although endings can feel painful, they also create the space from which new beginnings emerge.

Psychologically, endings are rarely easy because our minds become attached to familiarity. Even when we know a chapter has finished, part of us continues searching for ways to keep it alive. Whether it’s a relationship, a career, a season of life or a version of ourselves we’ve outgrown, letting go requires courage.

Spiritually, however, endings are rarely viewed as failures. They’re often understood as transitions, reminding us that every ending quietly prepares us for a beginning we cannot yet see.

Perhaps that’s why 999 appears during periods of change.

Not to tell us something is over.

But to reassure us that life is still unfolding.

Reflection: What chapter of your life is asking to be gently released so another can begin?

11:11 — Awakening and Alignment

Few number sequences have captured the imagination quite like 11:11. Many people make a wish when they see it, while others believe it represents a moment of spiritual alignment or awakening. Whether you encounter it on a digital clock, a receipt or somewhere entirely unexpected, it has a remarkable way of making you stop and pay attention.

Perhaps that’s why 11:11 has become so meaningful. It interrupts the ordinary. For a brief moment, your attention shifts away from whatever was occupying your mind and towards the present moment. From a psychological perspective, that pause alone can be incredibly valuable. We spend much of our lives operating on autopilot, rarely stopping to notice our thoughts or emotions. If 11:11 encourages us to become present, then perhaps it has already served a meaningful purpose.

Spiritually, many people interpret 11:11 as a reminder that they are moving in harmony with their soul’s journey. Whether that is objectively true isn’t something we can prove, but perhaps proof isn’t the most important part. Perhaps what matters is that, for a brief moment, we reconnect with ourselves.

Reflection: If your soul could gently interrupt your day, what do you think it would want you to notice?

10:10 — Trusting the Timing of Your Life

Life has a habit of making us feel as though we’re falling behind. We compare our progress to other people’s achievements and quietly wonder whether we’ve missed our opportunity. Seeing 10:10 is often interpreted as a reminder that life unfolds according to its own rhythm rather than our preferred timetable.

Psychology tells us that comparison is one of the quickest ways to diminish our sense of fulfilment. We rarely compare our ordinary days with someone else’s ordinary days. Instead, we compare our behind-the-scenes reality with their highlight reel. It’s an impossible standard.

Spiritually, 10:10 encourages us to release the illusion that everything must happen immediately. Sometimes delays are not denials. Sometimes they’re preparing us for experiences we simply aren’t ready to receive yet.

Reflection: Where are you measuring your life against someone else’s timeline instead of trusting your own?

12:12 — Stepping Into A New Level Of Awareness

Within numerology, 12:12 is often associated with expansion, learning and moving into a new stage of personal or spiritual development. Rather than symbolising dramatic overnight change, it points towards gradual evolution—those moments when you quietly realise you’ve become a different person without even noticing when it happened.

Growth often happens this way. We expect transformation to arrive like a thunderstorm, yet more often it resembles the changing seasons. We only notice how much has changed when we look back.

Perhaps that’s why 12:12 resonates with so many people. It reminds us that growth isn’t always visible while it’s happening.

Reflection: How have you changed over the past year in ways you rarely stop to appreciate?

12:34 — One Step At A Time

Unlike many repeating numbers, 12:34 forms a sequence. Because of this, it’s often interpreted as representing progress, movement and taking life one step at a time.

I’ve always liked this interpretation because it feels deeply human. We often become overwhelmed by the distance between where we are and where we hope to be. Yet almost every meaningful achievement begins with one small decision followed by another.

Psychology supports this beautifully. Lasting change rarely comes through dramatic transformation. It comes through consistent, manageable steps repeated over time. Small improvements compound into extraordinary outcomes.

Perhaps 12:34 isn’t asking you to leap forward.

Perhaps it’s simply reminding you to take the next step.

Reflection: What is one small action you could take today that your future self would thank you for?

22:22 — Partnership And Harmony

While 222 is often associated with balance, many people view 22:22 as a powerful reminder of partnership, cooperation and building something meaningful with others. Human beings are not designed to journey through life entirely alone. We thrive through connection, shared purpose and meaningful relationships.

Psychologically, strong relationships remain one of the greatest predictors of wellbeing and happiness. Spiritually, they often become the mirrors through which we discover ourselves most deeply.

Perhaps seeing 22:22 encourages us to ask not only how we’re supporting others, but also whether we’re allowing others to support us.

Reflection: Who brings balance into your life, and have you remembered to let them know?

Mirror Numbers — 01:01, 02:02, 03:03 and Beyond

Mirror numbers often attract attention because they create a sense of symmetry. Many spiritual traditions associate them with self-reflection, suggesting that life may be inviting us to look inward before searching outward for answers.

Whether it’s 01:01, 03:03, 05:05 or another mirrored sequence, perhaps the message isn’t contained within the number itself but within the pause it creates. Every time we notice one, we’re briefly invited back into the present moment.

In psychology, self-awareness is recognised as one of the foundations of emotional intelligence. Spiritually, self-awareness has always been central to personal growth.

Perhaps mirror numbers quite literally encourage us to become our own mirror.

Reflection: What truth about yourself have you been avoiding because it feels uncomfortable to face?

So… Are They Really Signs From Spirit?

After exploring numerology, psychology and the meanings traditionally associated with repeating numbers, we arrive at perhaps the most important question of all.

Are these numbers genuinely messages from the spirit world?

The honest answer is that nobody can say with complete certainty.

Some people experience repeating numbers during periods of profound personal transformation and feel deeply convinced they are receiving guidance. Others see them as examples of the brain’s remarkable ability to notice patterns and assign meaning. Both perspectives deserve respect, and neither necessarily cancels out the other.

Throughout my own work, I’ve learned that spirituality becomes healthier when it makes us more thoughtful rather than more fearful. If seeing a repeating number encourages you to become kinder, more grateful, more reflective or more present, then perhaps that experience already holds value, regardless of how you explain it.

What I would gently caution against is allowing numbers to control your decisions. Spirituality should never become a source of anxiety where every clock, receipt or number plate feels like a hidden instruction waiting to be decoded. That can pull us away from living and into constant searching.

Instead, perhaps repeating numbers are best understood as invitations rather than instructions. They invite us to pause, to reflect and to reconnect with ourselves.

Maybe the real message has never been hidden within the numbers.

Maybe it has always been hidden within the moment they encourage us to notice.

Many blessings,

Andrew Spiritual Medium 🕊️

The Question That Never Seems to Go Away

Have you ever had an experience that stayed with you long after the moment had passed? Perhaps it was a dream that felt so real you woke convinced you had been somewhere else. Maybe it was hearing the voice of someone you love in your mind so clearly that, for a brief second, you forgot they were no longer here. Or perhaps it was a coincidence that seemed almost too perfect to dismiss. Whatever it was, it made you pause and ask yourself a question that has fascinated humanity for centuries.

What if there is more to this life than we currently understand?

What’s interesting is that this question rarely remains unanswered for long. Before we’ve had time to reflect on the experience itself, another voice begins speaking. It tells us we’re imagining things, that we’re reading too much into it, or that there must be a perfectly logical explanation. In many cases, we dismiss the experience before we’ve even given ourselves permission to explore it.

Over the years, I’ve heard countless people tell me about moments like these. What fascinates me isn’t the experience itself, but the response that almost always follows. So many people apologise for their own curiosity. They laugh nervously as they tell their story, almost embarrassed that they considered the possibility that it might have held meaning. It’s as though we’ve been taught that wonder is something to outgrow rather than something to embrace.

I don’t believe every unusual experience is a sign from the spirit world. There are many events in life that have ordinary explanations, and I think it’s important to acknowledge that. But I also think we’ve become so determined to explain everything that we’ve forgotten how to sit comfortably with mystery. Perhaps the real question isn’t whether every experience has a spiritual origin. Perhaps it’s why our minds seem so uncomfortable with the possibility that some experiences may never fit neatly into the boxes we’ve created.

Why the Brain Prefers Certainty

To understand this, we first need to understand something remarkable about the human mind. The brain is not designed to seek truth above all else. Its primary role is to keep us safe. Long before human beings had the luxury of debating philosophy or spirituality, our ancestors relied on their brains to make split-second decisions about survival. Every unfamiliar sound, unexpected movement or unusual event had to be assessed quickly. The faster the brain could reach a conclusion, the greater the chances of staying alive.

Although our world has changed dramatically, the brain still operates in much the same way. Every day it processes an extraordinary amount of information, filtering countless sights, sounds and sensations without us even noticing. To cope with this constant stream of information, it looks for patterns. It categorises experiences, connects them with previous memories and builds a picture of reality that feels predictable and familiar.

Psychologists often describe this as our mind’s need for cognitive closure. Simply put, we are far more comfortable when we feel we have an explanation. Unanswered questions create tension, while certainty brings relief. That’s why waiting for important news can feel more distressing than receiving the news itself. Whether we’re waiting for medical results, hoping to hear back after a job interview or wondering whether someone will return our call, it’s often the uncertainty that weighs most heavily upon us.

Perhaps this explains why spiritual experiences can feel so unsettling. They rarely arrive with certainty attached. Instead, they invite questions. Was that dream significant? Was that coincidence meaningful? Did I really feel something, or was it simply my imagination? For a brain that prefers clear answers, these experiences can feel deeply uncomfortable because they refuse to fit neatly into categories we already understand.

The Difference Between Scepticism and Closed-Mindedness

I think scepticism is one of the most misunderstood qualities in both science and spirituality. Too often, people assume they must choose between believing everything or believing nothing. In reality, neither approach encourages genuine understanding.

Healthy scepticism is curious. It asks thoughtful questions, considers alternative explanations and remains open to changing its mind when new evidence appears. Closed-mindedness, however, does something very different. It reaches a conclusion before the conversation has even begun. It decides that because something cannot currently be explained, it therefore cannot exist.

Those are not the same thing.

Throughout my work, I’ve met people who desperately wanted every unusual experience to be a sign from the spirit world. I’ve also met people who refused to consider that any experience could possibly have spiritual significance. Interestingly, I’ve found that both positions can limit our understanding. One risks seeing meaning where there may be none, while the other risks overlooking experiences simply because they don’t fit comfortably within an existing worldview.

I believe there’s a healthier place to stand. It’s a place of thoughtful curiosity. It’s where we can acknowledge that psychology explains many aspects of human behaviour while also accepting that there are still questions about consciousness, intuition and human experience that remain unanswered. Admitting that we don’t know everything isn’t a weakness. In many ways, it’s one of the most intellectually honest positions we can take.

When Psychology and Spirituality Meet

For many years, psychology and spirituality have often been presented as though they occupy opposite ends of the same conversation. One seeks evidence. The other seeks meaning. One explores the workings of the mind, while the other explores the possibility that human experience extends beyond what can currently be measured.

I’ve never been convinced they have to be in conflict.

In fact, I sometimes wonder whether they’re asking different questions altogether. Psychology helps us understand how we think, why we form beliefs, how memories influence our decisions and why certain experiences affect us so deeply. Spirituality, on the other hand, asks questions about purpose, connection, consciousness and the possibility that life may be larger than our current understanding allows.

Perhaps the most interesting conversations happen where these two worlds meet. Not because one proves the other right, but because together they encourage us to remain humble. They remind us that human understanding is still evolving, and that some of history’s greatest discoveries began with someone having the courage to ask a question that others considered impossible.

Maybe that’s where every meaningful journey begins.

Not with certainty.

But with curiosity.

When Meaning Becomes Personal

If psychology helps us understand why the brain seeks certainty, it also reveals something equally profound about human nature: we are meaning-making creatures. We don’t simply experience life; we interpret it. Every significant event, every relationship and every challenge becomes woven into the story we tell ourselves about who we are. It’s one of the reasons two people can experience the very same event and walk away with entirely different conclusions. One person may see coincidence, while another sees synchronicity. One may see chance, while another experiences comfort. In many ways, those interpretations tell us less about the event itself and more about the lens through which we view the world.

Perhaps this is where psychology and spirituality begin to overlap. Psychology explains our need to create meaning because meaning provides structure, purpose and emotional resilience. Spirituality asks whether some experiences might carry a significance that extends beyond what can currently be measured. Neither perspective has to invalidate the other. In fact, I’ve often wondered whether they’re simply exploring different dimensions of the same human experience. One asks how the mind works, while the other asks why certain moments seem to touch something much deeper within us.

The Responsibility of Remaining Curious

People are often surprised when I tell them that I don’t believe every unusual experience is a sign from the spirit world. As a medium, some assume I automatically interpret every coincidence, dream or intuitive feeling as evidence of spirit communication. The truth is far more balanced than that. Throughout my career I’ve experienced moments that have left me genuinely speechless, yet I’ve also learned the importance of humility. Not everything requires a spiritual explanation, just as not everything can be explained away with complete confidence.

I’ve come to believe that curiosity is one of the most underrated qualities we can possess. Curiosity doesn’t demand immediate answers, nor does it rush towards fixed conclusions. Instead, it quietly asks, “What can I learn from this?” That question is far more powerful than asking whether something is definitively real or definitively imagined. It allows us to remain intellectually honest while also remaining emotionally open. In a world that often encourages certainty, there’s something deeply freeing about admitting that we don’t know everything.

Perhaps We Ask the Wrong Question

When someone tells me about an experience they believe may have been a sign, the first question they usually ask is, “Do you think it was real?” It’s an understandable question, but over the years I’ve found myself becoming more interested in another one entirely. Rather than asking whether an experience can be proven, I find myself asking what it changed within the person who experienced it.

Did it bring peace where there had only been pain? Did it encourage forgiveness after years of resentment? Did it remind someone that love still felt present even in the absence of the person they missed? Psychology has shown us that meaning has a remarkable ability to influence our wellbeing, our resilience and even the way we remember difficult experiences. Spirituality often suggests that meaningful moments can also transform the way we understand ourselves and our place in the world. Whether one views those moments through a psychological lens or a spiritual one, their impact can be undeniably real.

Learning to Live With Mystery

Perhaps one of the greatest challenges of modern life is that we’ve become uncomfortable with not knowing. We search for immediate answers, instant certainty and definitive conclusions because uncertainty can feel unsettling. Yet some of life’s most profound questions have never offered simple answers. What is consciousness? Why do we love so deeply? What happens after death? These questions have inspired philosophers, psychologists, scientists and spiritual teachers for centuries, and despite all we’ve learned, they continue to invite exploration rather than certainty.

The older I’ve become, the less interested I am in proving anything and the more interested I am in protecting my sense of wonder. Wonder has always been the beginning of discovery. It inspired science to ask impossible questions, philosophy to challenge accepted ideas and spirituality to explore realities beyond what we can immediately observe. I sometimes think the greatest mistake we can make isn’t believing too much or believing too little. It’s deciding we’ve reached the end of what there is to discover.

Maybe that’s the invitation signs from spirit offer us. Not proof. Not certainty. Simply an opportunity to remain open. To recognise that the world may still hold mysteries we don’t yet understand, and that living with those mysteries isn’t a weakness but a deeply human experience. Whether we ultimately explain them through psychology, spirituality or something we have yet to discover, perhaps the most important thing is that we never lose our willingness to ask thoughtful questions.

Many blessings,

Andrew Spiritual Medium 🕊️

Another weekend to visit. Another birthday to celebrate together. Another quiet evening to ask the questions we’ve been meaning to ask or to say the words we’ve carried around for far too long. We tell ourselves that life will slow down eventually, that tomorrow will be less busy than today, and that the people we love will still be there when we’re finally ready to say what matters most.

Most of the time, we don’t make that decision consciously. We simply assume there is more time.

Perhaps that’s why some of the heaviest burdens people carry are not the words they said, but the words they never found the courage to speak. A thank you left until next week. An apology delayed because the moment didn’t feel quite right. A conversation avoided because it felt uncomfortable. We convince ourselves that we’ll come back to it when life feels a little less complicated, never considering that life has a habit of changing without asking our permission.

When I speak to people about grief, whether through my work or simply through everyday conversations, one theme appears time and time again. It isn’t usually anger. It isn’t even sadness on its own. More often, it’s regret. Not because they failed to love the person they lost, but because they assumed that love would always have another chance to be spoken aloud.

It’s easy to believe that the people closest to us already know how we feel.

Perhaps they do.

But hearing the words still matters.

There is a world of difference between believing somebody loves you and hearing them say, “I’m proud of you.” There is something deeply human about hearing, “Thank you for everything you’ve done,” or, “I don’t say it often enough, but you mean the world to me.” Those sentences are surprisingly ordinary, yet they have a remarkable ability to stay with us for years. They become part of the stories we tell ourselves about the people we love.

Ironically, we often reserve those words for life’s biggest moments. We wait for anniversaries, birthdays, retirements or special occasions, as though love needs a reason to be spoken. Yet when we look back on the people we’ve lost, it is rarely the grand occasions we miss most. We miss the ordinary Tuesday afternoons, the casual phone calls that lasted only a few minutes, the cup of tea shared around the kitchen table, or the familiar voice asking, “How’s your day been?”

Those moments never felt extraordinary while we were living them.

They only became precious when they could no longer happen again.

Perhaps that’s because life doesn’t announce its endings. It never tells us that this will be the last family photograph, the last walk together or the last time we’ll hear someone’s laughter echo through the house. We only realise that we were living an ending once it has quietly become a memory.

That thought has changed the way I see the people around me.

Not because I believe we should live every day as though it’s our last. I don’t think that’s realistic. Life is busy, messy and wonderfully ordinary. We all get distracted. We all take things for granted from time to time.

Instead, I think we should remember that the smallest moments often become the ones we treasure most.

A hug that lasts a little longer. A message sent for no particular reason. A conversation that isn’t rushed. A simple, heartfelt sentence spoken while someone is still here to hear it.

The beautiful thing about words is that they cost us nothing. Yet they can become one of the greatest gifts we ever leave behind.

Long after flowers have faded and photographs have aged, people rarely remember every detail of a conversation. They remember how we made them feel. They remember the kindness we showed, the encouragement we offered and the moments we chose to speak instead of remaining silent.

Perhaps that’s why the words we never say matter so much. Not because they’re impossible to say. But because we spend so much of our lives believing there will always be another opportunity.

Sometimes there is. Sometimes there isn’t.

And the difficult part is that we never know which ordinary day will quietly become the one we wish we could revisit.

So before you close this article, I’d like to ask you one question.

Who in your life deserves to hear something you’ve been meaning to say?

Perhaps today is the day to tell them.

Many blessings,

Andrew Spiritual Medium 🕊️

People often ask me how I became a medium.

It’s a question I’ve answered countless times over the years, yet I’ve realised that I’ve never really answered it properly.

Usually, I tell people where I trained, how long I spent developing my abilities or how my work eventually found its way onto social media. All of that is true, but none of it explains why I chose this path. Because the truth is, I never chose it. It found me, and it found me through the darkest chapter of my life.

If you had met me ten years ago, I don’t think you would have recognised the person writing these words today. Back then, my life looked very different. I had spent ten years working in aviation, a career that I genuinely loved. It was a world of routine, teamwork and meeting people from every walk of life. Outside of work, I had always been drawn to creativity. I loved digital art and anything that allowed me to build or create something from nothing. Looking back, I think creativity has always been part of who I am. Long before I ever stood in front of a camera or sat opposite someone for a reading, I simply enjoyed making things that might bring a little happiness to other people.

I’ve always been an outgoing person, although perhaps not in the way people imagine. I was never the loudest voice in the room, nor did I enjoy being the centre of attention. What I enjoyed was seeing other people smile. If I could make someone laugh, ease an awkward moment or brighten somebody’s day, that was enough for me. Looking back now, I sometimes wonder if that instinct to help people had always been there. I just hadn’t yet found the right way to express it.

One thing that definitely wasn’t part of my life was spirituality. In fact, I was sceptical, very sceptical. If someone had sat opposite me back then and confidently told me that one day I would become a medium, spend my life talking about grief, life after death and healing, I would probably have smiled politely before changing the subject. Not because I wanted to offend them, but because it simply wasn’t something I believed in. I wasn’t searching for answers about the afterlife because I didn’t feel I needed them.

My life felt ordinary, comfortable and predictable.

Life has a habit of feeling wonderfully ordinary until the day it doesn’t. For me, that day was Christmas Day 2018.

Christmas is supposed to be a day filled with family, laughter and traditions that rarely change. Ours had always been exactly that. Like so many families, we gathered together expecting nothing more than good food, familiar conversations and the comfort of being surrounded by the people we loved.

Instead, it became the day everything changed.

Without warning, Mum suffered a seizure at the kitchen table and collapsed onto the floor. Within moments, the laughter had disappeared, the conversations stopped and the panic began. She was rushed to hospital, and before we had even begun to process what had happened, we were sitting in a room listening to doctors explain that she had lung cancer and that it had already spread to her brain.

Nothing prepares you for hearing those words.

In a single afternoon, life had become divided into two parts. The life we had known, and the life we were about to face.

My mum wasn’t just my mother. She was my best friend.

People often say that after someone dies, but for us it wasn’t just a comforting phrase. It was simply the truth. We shared a bond that is incredibly difficult to describe unless you’ve experienced something similar yourself. She knew me better than anybody else ever has. There were countless occasions when we’d send each other a message at exactly the same moment or find ourselves saying the same thing without even realising it. We laughed together endlessly. She was the first person I wanted to tell when something good happened and the first person I turned to when life became difficult.

She was, quite simply, home.

Born in Southern Ireland, Mum came to England when she was only sixteen years old to train as a nurse. It was here that she met my dad, who worked as a hospital porter. Their love story still amazes me to this day. They married just ten days after meeting each other. Most people would say that’s impossible. For them, it was the beginning of almost fifty wonderful years together. She would pass away just one month before their golden wedding anniversary.

When I think about Mum today, three words always come into my mind.

Love. Beauty. Laughter.

She was one of the most thoughtful people I’ve ever known. She never pretended to be anyone other than herself. What you saw was exactly what you got, and perhaps that’s why so many people loved her. She had a quiet kindness that made people feel comfortable simply by being around her. She never needed to demand attention because her presence spoke for itself. Most importantly, she loved her family with everything she had. I never doubted that for a single second.

Over the weeks that followed Christmas, life became a series of hospital visits, difficult conversations and silent hopes that somehow things would improve. Even when reality tells you otherwise, part of you continues believing that perhaps there will be another treatment, another option or another miracle waiting just around the corner. Hope can be incredibly resilient. So can denial. Sometimes the two become impossible to separate.

On the 3 March 2019, only three days after my birthday, my family faced the most painful decision we had ever known. Mum could no longer breathe on her own. Together, we made the decision to remove her life support.

It felt as though three quarters of my heart died with her.

I didn’t just lose my mum. I lost my safety. I lost my comfort. I lost the one person who had always made life feel steady, no matter what was happening around me.

When she took her final breath, it wasn’t simply the end of her life. It felt like the end of mine as well.

For weeks afterwards, I found myself moving through each day almost on autopilot. I smiled when I was expected to smile. I spoke when I had to speak. I carried on because that’s what people do after loss. But inside, I was completely lost.

Looking back now, I realise I wasn’t searching for mediumship.

I was searching for my mum.

Before losing Mum, I don’t remember ever lying awake wondering what happens after we die. Like many people, I simply got on with life. Death was something that happened to other families, other people, at some point in the distant future.

Then it became my reality.

The silence after losing someone you love is unlike any other silence. It’s not just the absence of their voice. It’s the absence of the person you instinctively reach for when life happens. I found myself wanting to pick up the phone countless times, only to remember there was no one there to answer.

In the years since losing Mum, people have often asked me whether grief gets easier. For me, it wasn’t that it became easier. It became different.

At first, every day felt like survival. Friends and family were incredibly supportive, but no matter how much people love you, there are parts of grief that only you can carry. I found myself searching for something I couldn’t quite describe. I wasn’t searching for proof. I wasn’t searching for a new belief system.

I was searching for Mum.

One afternoon, I was sitting at a friend’s house when he handed me a telephone number.

“You should go and see this medium,” he said. Her name was Dolly, and without either of us realising it that day, she was about to change the course of my life.

Even now, I smile when I think back to that moment because my first reaction wasn’t excitement. It was scepticism. I’d never visited a medium before and, if anything, I expected to walk away unconvinced. I wasn’t the sort of person who accepted extraordinary claims without questioning them. If I was going to believe something, I wanted a reason. I wanted to experience it for myself.

Looking back, I think my scepticism actually protected me. It meant that whatever happened next, I wasn’t simply looking for something to believe in.

I arranged an appointment with Dolly, not really knowing what to expect. I remember sitting there thinking, Let’s see. Part of me hoped she would say something meaningful. Another part of me expected nothing at all.

What happened during that reading quietly changed the direction of my life.

She shared things about Mum that, to this day, I still struggle to explain. They weren’t vague statements that could apply to anyone. They were deeply personal pieces of evidence, things that nobody outside my family should have known.

I didn’t leave that reading believing I suddenly had all the answers. In many ways, I left with even more questions.

But something had shifted.

For the first time since losing Mum, I allowed myself to consider the possibility that perhaps there was more to life than I’d previously believed.

As the reading came to an end, Dolly asked me a question that seemed almost casual at the time.

“Would you like to come to the Spiritualist church with me this evening?” I surprised myself by saying yes.

If I’m honest, I nearly changed my mind several times on the journey there. Walking through those doors for the first time felt completely surreal. Everyone seemed to know each other. People spoke openly about spirit communication, healing and mediumship as though they were discussing the weather.

I remember looking around and genuinely thinking, Have I just walked into some sort of cult? It still makes me laugh now because that really was my first impression.

Everything felt unfamiliar. Everything challenged what I’d always believed. Yet something else surprised me. Nobody tried to convince me. Nobody pressured me. Nobody criticised my questions. Instead, they welcomed them.

Several of the mediums spoke to me that evening. A few even suggested that I had an ability worth developing. I remember thinking they must have been mistaken.

Me? A medium?

It seemed impossible. But there was something about that place that kept drawing me back.

What I expected to be one visit became another. Then another. Before I realised it, I was attending the development circle three evenings every single week. That continued for almost two years.

When people hear that part of my story, they often imagine I spent those two years learning how to become a medium. The truth is far more personal than that. I spent those two years learning how to live again.

The Spiritualist church became far more than somewhere I attended. It became my therapy. It became the place where I slowly began to breathe again after feeling as though grief had stolen the air from my lungs.

The people there didn’t just teach me about mediumship. They gave me something I desperately needed without ever realising it. Hope. Not the kind of hope that promises life will return to how it was. That never happens after losing someone you love.

Instead, they helped me discover a quieter hope. The hope that one day I might smile without feeling guilty. The hope that one day I could think about Mum without every memory ending in tears. The hope that perhaps my life wasn’t over after all.

Looking back, I don’t think I found healing because I learned about mediumship. I found healing because I found people who understood what it meant to carry heartbreak. People who never expected me to be “over it.” People who simply accepted me exactly as I was.

Those evenings changed me in ways I probably didn’t recognise at the time. Every development circle taught me something. Not just about spirit, but about patience, listening, humility and trusting myself. Most of all, they taught me that grief doesn’t disappear. It becomes part of your story.

And perhaps the greatest lesson of all was this.

The person who walked through those church doors believing he’d accidentally joined a cult…Would eventually discover he had found exactly where he needed to be.

People often assume there was one extraordinary moment when I suddenly realised I was a medium. The truth is, it wasn’t like that at all.

There wasn’t a flash of light or a voice telling me I’d found my calling. There wasn’t a single reading where I walked away thinking, This is what I’m meant to do. It was much quieter than that.

After nearly two years of attending the development circle three evenings a week, something inside me had begun to change. I was still learning. I was still questioning. In many ways, I felt I knew less than when I’d started because the deeper I explored mediumship, the more I realised how much there was still to understand. Yet alongside that humility came something else. Not confidence that I had all the answers, but confidence that perhaps I had something worthwhile to offer.

I reached a point where I realised that if I waited until I felt completely ready, I would probably spend the rest of my life waiting. Sometimes there comes a moment when you simply have to take the leap before you know where you’ll land.

For me, that moment came on 4 May 2019.

One evening, I sat down in front of my computer, opened Facebook and stared at a button that simply said, Go Live.

Looking back now, it’s strange how one small click can change the entire direction of your life. I didn’t have a business plan. I didn’t have expensive equipment. I certainly didn’t have thousands of people waiting to watch me. I just had a feeling that I needed to try. So I took a deep breath and pressed the button. If I’m honest, I had no idea what I was doing. I simply threw myself into the deep end.

The first few moments felt terrifying. I remember wondering whether anyone would even join the live. Then people started appearing. One person became five. Five became twenty. Twenty became hundreds. Before I knew it, I was giving readings to complete strangers. Each reading felt different because each person carried their own story, and every family carried their own grief.

As the weeks passed, something remarkable began to happen. People weren’t just watching. They were sharing the lives. Messages began arriving from people I had never met. Some wrote to tell me they’d found comfort after losing a loved one. Others simply wanted to say thank you because, for an hour, they’d forgotten how heavy life had felt.

There wasn’t one message that changed everything. There wasn’t one reading that suddenly made me think, I’ve made it. Instead, it was something much more profound. It was the emotional connection.

Whether there were ten people watching or ten thousand, I found myself feeling exactly the same thing. Connection, hope and purpose.

For the first time in my life, I realised that what mattered wasn’t whether people remembered my name. What mattered was whether they remembered how I made them feel. That became the foundation of everything I’ve done ever since.

From Facebook, my journey continued to grow in ways I could never have imagined. One community became another and today I’m privileged to have built a community of more than 800,000 people across TikTok, alongside the incredible and growing community we’re building here on Substack. While I’m deeply grateful for that, the numbers have never been what motivates me. Every person who chooses to follow my journey has their own story, their own struggles and their own reasons for searching. That’s what I think about, not the statistics.

People often ask me what it feels like. The honest answer is that it’s humbling. Not because of the numbers, but because every single number represents a real person. Someone sitting in their living room missing their mum. Someone lying awake at night wondering if life will ever feel normal again. Someone carrying questions that perhaps nobody around them can answer.

I never see followers. I see sons who miss their mums. Daughters who miss their dads. Husbands trying to navigate life without their wives. Wives learning how to carry on without the person they thought they’d grow old with. Grandchildren missing grandparents. Parents grieving children. Every number is a person carrying a story, just as I once carried mine.

Perhaps that’s because I know exactly what it feels like to be one of them. I know what it’s like to search for hope when your world has fallen apart. I know what it’s like to wonder whether anyone truly understands what you’re carrying.

If my work has taught me anything, it’s that people don’t need perfection. They need honesty. They need compassion. And sometimes they simply need someone willing to sit beside them in their grief and remind them that they are not walking through it alone.

As I look back over this journey, it’s impossible not to think about Mum. Every step somehow leads back to her. If she hadn’t become ill, I would never have started asking questions. If I hadn’t started asking questions, I would never have met Dolly. If I hadn’t met Dolly, I would never have walked into that Spiritualist church. If I hadn’t walked through those doors, I would never have found the courage to press Go Live.

Life has a remarkable way of weaving together moments that seem completely unrelated at the time. Only when we look backwards do we begin to see the thread that was connecting them all along.

Sometimes people tell me that I’ve helped change their lives. The truth is, the person who changed mine was my mum. She probably never realised it. She certainly never planned it. Yet through loving me so completely, and through the heartbreak of losing her, she unknowingly set me on the path that has become my life’s purpose.

I still miss her every single day. I suspect I always will, because grief doesn’t disappear when we find purpose. It simply learns to walk beside it.

Sometimes I sit quietly and wonder what she would think if she could see all of this. The articles. The videos. The lives. The messages from people all over the world.

If I’m honest, she probably wouldn’t have believed in mediumship any more than I did. But I know my mum.

She wouldn’t have cared how many people followed me. She wouldn’t have cared how many videos I’d made or how many articles I’d written. She would have cared about one thing. That I was helping people.

I think she would have smiled that beautiful smile of hers, looked at me with the same love she’d shown me my entire life and reminded me of something she’d been teaching me long before I ever realised it.

Before I was a medium, I was a son.

And in many ways, I still am.

Many blessings,

Andrew Spiritual Medium 🕊️

One of the first things people say when they discover I’m a medium is, “So… are you psychic?”

It’s a completely understandable question. The two words are often used interchangeably in films, television programmes and everyday conversation. Over time they’ve become almost synonymous, which is why so many people assume they describe exactly the same thing.

In reality, they’re closely related, but they aren’t identical.

The easiest way I can explain it is this.

A psychic works primarily by tuning into the energy of the person sitting in front of them. That may include their personality, emotions, life circumstances, patterns or potential future possibilities. It’s a heightened awareness of information connected to the individual themselves.

A medium, on the other hand, is working with the intention of communicating with those who have passed from this life into the next. While a medium may also use psychic awareness during a reading, the focus is different. The intention is to establish communication with spirit and provide evidence that the communicator continues to exist beyond physical death.

That’s why many mediums will tell you that every medium is psychic, but not every psychic is a medium.

It’s a simple phrase, but I think it captures the distinction quite well.

One of the reasons this causes confusion is because both abilities involve intuition. Neither relies on our five physical senses in the way most everyday experiences do. To someone observing from the outside, they can appear almost identical. Yet the purpose behind them is different.

Perhaps an analogy makes it clearer.

Imagine your intuition is like a radio.

When working psychically, you’re tuning into the station that’s broadcasting the experiences, emotions and energy of the person in front of you.

When working as a medium, you’re attempting to tune into an entirely different broadcast, one that isn’t coming from the living person at all, but from someone in the spirit world.

The radio itself hasn’t changed.

Only the station you’re trying to receive.

Of course, not everyone accepts that spirit communication is possible, and I completely respect that. Belief is deeply personal, and I don’t think anyone should feel pressured to accept something simply because another person believes it. Healthy scepticism has an important place in conversations like these. Asking respectful questions isn’t a sign of closed mindedness. It’s often a sign that someone genuinely wants to understand.

Throughout my own journey, I’ve learned that certainty can sometimes become the enemy of curiosity. Whether someone believes in mediumship or not, I think the conversation is always richer when people are willing to listen before reaching a conclusion.

I’ve also met people who describe themselves as psychics but occasionally experience communication with spirit. Others identify solely as mediums, while some comfortably use both terms because they feel each reflects part of the work they do. There isn’t a single rulebook that every practitioner follows, which is another reason the terminology can sometimes become confusing.

For me personally, the distinction has always been helpful because it reflects my intention whenever I sit with someone. If I’m working as a medium, my purpose isn’t to predict someone’s future. My purpose is to provide meaningful evidence and communication from those they love, while offering comfort, hope and reassurance where I can.

That doesn’t mean everyone has to agree with my beliefs.

It simply means this is the framework through which I understand the work I’ve been privileged to do over the years.

Perhaps the most important point isn’t which label we choose.

It’s that we approach these conversations with honesty, humility and an open mind. Labels can help us describe what we do, but they should never become more important than the integrity with which we do it.

If there’s one thing I hope people take away from this article, it’s that psychic work and mediumship aren’t competing ideas. They’re simply different ways of understanding intuition and human experience. Whether you believe in one, both or neither, I think respectful conversation will always teach us more than assumptions ever could.

What are your thoughts? Before reading this article, did you think a psychic and a medium were the same thing?

Many blessings,

Andrew Spiritual Medium 🕊️

It might seem like an unusual thing for a medium to admit, but I don’t want you to believe everything I say.

In fact, I’d be far more concerned if you did.

Over the years, one of the questions I’ve been asked most often is, “Do you believe…?” It might be about life after death, signs from loved ones, spirit communication or the purpose of our lives. People are often looking for a simple answer, and I completely understand why. Human beings have always searched for certainty. We like the reassurance of believing that someone, somewhere, has the answers.

The difficulty is that genuine spirituality has never been built upon certainty.

It’s been built upon exploration.

I think that’s an important distinction.

There was a time when I felt pressure to have an answer for everything. If someone asked me a question, I believed I should be able to explain it. Looking back, I realise that pressure didn’t come from the people asking the questions. It came from me. Somewhere along the way, I’d convinced myself that confidence and certainty were the same thing.

They aren’t.

One of the greatest lessons mediumship has taught me is how comfortable I’ve become saying, “I don’t know.”

Far from weakening my beliefs, it’s strengthened them.

Because the more I explore spirituality, the more I realise how much mystery still exists.

As a medium, I’ve had experiences that have profoundly shaped the way I see life. They’ve given me hope, challenged my thinking and, at times, left me questioning everything I thought I understood. Those experiences are deeply meaningful to me, but I’ve also come to recognise that they are my experiences. They aren’t proof for someone else, and I don’t think they should ever be presented as such.

That’s why I become cautious whenever anyone claims to have absolute certainty about the spiritual world.

Whether they’re a medium, a teacher or a religious leader, I think certainty deserves to be approached with humility.

History is full of people who were absolutely convinced they were right.

Many of them weren’t.

For me, spirituality has never been about collecting answers.

It’s about asking better questions.

Questions have a remarkable way of opening doors that certainty often keeps closed. The moment we convince ourselves that we’ve reached the end of understanding, curiosity quietly disappears. Yet curiosity is one of the qualities I value most, not only in spirituality but in life itself. It’s curiosity that encourages us to listen rather than argue, to explore rather than dismiss and to remain open to the possibility that there may still be something we haven’t yet considered.

I sometimes wonder whether we’ve become uncomfortable with uncertainty because we’re taught to see it as weakness. We celebrate confidence. We admire people who speak with absolute conviction. We often mistake certainty for wisdom simply because it sounds reassuring.

But wisdom and certainty aren’t always companions.

In my experience, some of the wisest people I’ve ever met have also been the quickest to admit the limits of their own understanding. They don’t pretend to know everything. They don’t feel threatened by difficult questions. Instead, they welcome them, recognising that every meaningful conversation has the potential to deepen their understanding rather than challenge their identity.

I think spirituality deserves that same openness.

If something I write resonates with you, I’m grateful. If it encourages you to reflect on your own experiences or see something from a different perspective, then I feel I’ve achieved something worthwhile. Equally, if you read one of my articles and quietly think, “I’m not sure I agree with that,” I don’t see that as failure. In fact, I welcome it.

The last thing I would ever want is for someone to replace their own judgement with mine.

Blind belief has never sat comfortably with me, regardless of where it comes from. At the same time, I don’t think blind scepticism serves us any better. Dismissing every spiritual experience without consideration is no different from accepting every claim without question. Both positions close the conversation before it has even begun.

Somewhere between unquestioning belief and automatic disbelief lies something much healthier.

Curiosity.

Curiosity allows us to examine ideas without feeling threatened by them. It gives us permission to ask difficult questions without assuming we already know the answers. It reminds us that changing our minds isn’t a sign of weakness but a sign that we’re still learning.

Perhaps that’s why I don’t measure spiritual growth by how many answers someone has collected over the years. I find myself far more interested in the quality of the questions they’re willing to ask. The people who have inspired me most throughout my own journey have rarely been those who claimed certainty. They’ve been the people who remained humble enough to keep learning, even after decades of experience.

As I look back on my own journey, I realise that mediumship hasn’t given me all the answers I once hoped it would. Instead, it has given me something far more valuable. It has taught me to become comfortable with mystery, to appreciate that not everything meaningful can be measured, explained or neatly placed into words. It has reminded me that the search itself can be just as important as the destination.

So if there’s one thing I hope you take away from my writing, it isn’t a belief to adopt or an opinion to repeat. It’s the confidence to continue asking your own questions, exploring your own experiences and arriving at conclusions that feel honest to you. We don’t all have to agree for a conversation to have value.

Perhaps that’s what genuine spirituality has always been about.

Not telling people what to think.

But encouraging them to think more deeply.

Many blessings,

Andrew Spiritual Medium 🕊️

For years, I believed that the greatest challenge people faced after losing someone they loved was the loss itself. It seemed obvious. Death changes everything. It alters families, routines, conversations and futures. It leaves an empty space that nothing else can quite fill.

But the longer I’ve worked as a medium and the more conversations I’ve had with people navigating loss, the more I’ve begun to question that assumption. I’ve started to wonder whether the deepest pain isn’t always created by grief itself. Sometimes it’s created by the expectations that surround it.

Grief is one of the few experiences every human being will encounter, yet it’s remarkable how little we’re taught about it. We know how to organise a funeral. We know what flowers to send, what colour to wear and what words are considered appropriate in a sympathy card. What we rarely learn is what grief actually feels like once the funeral is over, the visitors stop calling and the world quietly returns to normal.

Perhaps that’s why so many grieving people tell me they feel as though something is wrong with them.

They’ll say, “It’s been two years. Why am I still crying?” Or, “I thought I’d be stronger by now.” Sometimes they apologise before they even begin speaking, almost embarrassed that the person they lost is still such a large part of their daily life.

I’ve often found myself asking the same question.

Where did they learn that?

Who decided grief should have a deadline?

I don’t think those expectations come from cruelty. Most people genuinely want to help. We say things like, “Everything happens for a reason,” or “They’re in a better place,” because we desperately want to offer comfort. We tell people to stay strong because watching another human being suffer makes us feel helpless. We search for words that might somehow make the unbearable feel a little lighter.

The problem is that grief isn’t something waiting to be solved. It’s not an illness that needs curing or a problem with a solution hidden somewhere just out of sight. It’s a natural response to losing someone whose presence became woven into the fabric of your everyday life.

Modern psychology supports this far more than many people realise. For years, grief was often described as something people had to “work through” before eventually reaching acceptance. Today, many psychologists see it rather differently. They recognise that healthy grieving doesn’t necessarily involve letting go of the relationship. Instead, many people continue an internal relationship with the person they’ve lost. They speak to them in their thoughts. They remember the advice they would have given. They smile at shared memories. Rather than being unhealthy, these continuing bonds are often recognised as an entirely normal part of adapting to loss.

I find that fascinating because it’s something I’ve witnessed countless times throughout my work.

People don’t usually tell me they want to forget.

They tell me they’re frightened of forgetting.

They’re afraid that one day they’ll no longer remember the sound of a laugh, the way someone walked into a room or the little habits that made them uniquely themselves. They worry that healing somehow means leaving that person behind.

Personally, I’ve never believed that.

I don’t think healing asks us to love someone less. I think it asks us to learn how to carry that love differently.

Perhaps that’s where we’ve misunderstood grief for generations. We often imagine healing as returning to the person we were before the loss, but that person no longer exists. Loss changes us. Sometimes gently, sometimes profoundly. We don’t return to our old life because our old life disappeared the moment that person did.

The real challenge is learning to build a meaningful life around a loss we never wanted.

That doesn’t mean every day becomes easy. There will still be birthdays that hurt, anniversaries that arrive unexpectedly and ordinary moments that catch us off guard. A favourite song in the supermarket. An empty chair at Christmas. Reaching for the phone before remembering there’s nobody to call.

Those moments aren’t signs that you’ve failed to heal.

They’re reminders that love leaves echoes.

As a medium, people often ask me what the greatest lesson has been from all the years I’ve spent sitting with those who are grieving. They usually expect my answer to involve evidence of life after death or remarkable experiences during readings.

In truth, the greatest lesson has been something much simpler.

Love doesn’t end because a life does.

And if love doesn’t end, why should we expect grief to disappear completely?

Perhaps we’ve been measuring healing by the wrong standard all along. Instead of asking whether someone still misses the person they’ve lost, maybe we should ask whether they’re beginning to live alongside that loss rather than constantly fighting against it. Those are very different things.

I’ve come to believe that grief isn’t something we overcome. It’s something we gradually learn to carry with a little more balance, a little more compassion and, eventually, a little less fear. Over time, the sharpness softens. Tears are joined by smiles. Stories replace silence. Gratitude slowly begins to stand beside sadness.

Maybe that’s what healing has always been.

Not forgetting.

Not moving on.

But discovering that love is capable of changing its shape without ever losing its meaning.

If that’s true, then perhaps the biggest mistake we’ve made isn’t teaching people how to grieve.

Perhaps it’s teaching them that one day they should stop.

What do you think?

Many blessings,

Andrew Spiritual Medium 🕊️

It’s one of the questions I’m asked most often.

“What actually happens during a mediumship reading?”

I think it’s such an important question because, unless you’ve experienced one yourself, it’s completely understandable to wonder how it all works.

Some people imagine that a medium asks lots of questions and pieces information together. Others believe it’s a conversation with someone in the spirit world exactly as we would speak to a person sitting beside us. I’ve even met people who think the medium already knows everything before the reading begins.

In my experience, the reality is far less dramatic, yet far more meaningful.

When I begin a reading, I don’t start by asking someone about the person they’ve lost. In fact, I try to know as little as possible beforehand. My role is to communicate the information I’m receiving as honestly as I can, without leading the conversation or asking questions that might influence what unfolds.

Sometimes the information arrives as a clear memory. Sometimes it’s a feeling, an image, a word or even a personality trait that reminds someone of the person they’re hoping to hear from. At other times, it’s something wonderfully ordinary. The way someone laughed. A favourite phrase. A habit nobody else would think to mention.

Those ordinary details often become the most extraordinary moments.

People sometimes expect every reading to be filled with full names, addresses and dates. While specific information can and does come through, mediumship isn’t something I can control like reading from a script. Every connection is unique, and every reading unfolds differently.

That’s why I believe honesty is one of the most important qualities a medium can have.

If I don’t understand something immediately, I’ll say so.

If I’m unsure, I’ll say that too.

I don’t think a medium should ever feel pressured to force information just because silence feels uncomfortable. I’d much rather be honest than pretend certainty where there isn’t any.

As the reading develops, people often ask questions of their own. That’s when the conversation becomes more personal. They may ask about a particular memory, a concern they’ve been carrying or simply something they’ve always wondered. Sometimes those questions lead to profound moments. Sometimes they don’t. And that’s okay too.

One thing I wish more people knew is that mediumship isn’t about proving how gifted a medium is.

It isn’t a performance.

It isn’t about impressing anyone.

At its heart, it’s about creating a moment where love, memory and hope can be shared in a way that brings comfort.

Whether someone leaves a reading feeling reassured, reflective or simply reminded of how deeply they loved someone, I believe that’s where the real value lies.

Perhaps that’s why I don’t think the most important question is, “What happens during a mediumship reading?”

Perhaps the more meaningful question is…

“What do we hope to find when we walk through the door?”

Because in my experience, most people aren’t looking for a demonstration.

They’re looking for connection.

Many blessings,

Andrew Spiritual Medium 🕊️

For much of my life, I’ve heard people describe themselves as either religious or spiritual, as though the two are somehow opposites.

It has always fascinated me.

Why do we feel the need to place them at opposite ends of the same conversation?

I’ve met deeply religious people who have an incredible sense of spirituality. Their faith shapes the way they love, forgive and care for others. I’ve also met people who have no religious beliefs at all, yet speak about feeling profoundly connected to something greater than themselves whenever they walk through a forest, watch the sun rise or sit quietly in meditation.

So which one is right?

Perhaps they both are.

As a medium, I’ve been asked countless times whether what I do fits within religion, sits outside of it or contradicts it altogether. The truth is, I don’t believe there’s a simple answer because every person’s journey is unique.

For some, religion provides structure, tradition and a shared sense of community. For others, spirituality is something deeply personal, shaped not by rules but by experience. One person may find comfort in prayer. Another may find the same comfort in silence. One may feel closest to God in a church. Another may feel that same presence while standing beside the sea.

Does one experience make the other any less meaningful?

I don’t think it does.

Perhaps the real difficulty begins when we believe there can only be one path. History has shown us that people often become divided, not because they seek truth, but because they become convinced their truth is the only one worth following.

I’ve never believed that asking questions is a sign of weak faith. In fact, I think curiosity is one of the greatest expressions of faith there is. A willingness to explore, to listen and to remain open can deepen our understanding far more than pretending we already have every answer.

Working as a medium has introduced me to people from almost every faith imaginable. Christians. Muslims. Jews. Hindus. Buddhists. People with no religion at all. What has always struck me is not how different they are, but how similar their deepest hopes often become. Almost everyone longs for love to continue. Almost everyone hopes the people they’ve lost are at peace. Almost everyone searches for meaning when life becomes difficult.

Perhaps those hopes matter more than the labels we give ourselves.

So can you be religious and spiritual?

I believe you can.

I also believe you can be one without the other.

What matters most is not the label you choose, but the kindness you show, the compassion you offer and the openness with which you walk through life.

Maybe the question was never whether religion and spirituality can exist together.

Maybe the better question is whether we can learn to respect one another’s journey, even when it looks different from our own.

I’d love to hear your thoughts because I don’t think this is a conversation with one right answer. I think it’s a conversation worth having.

Many blessings,

Andrew Spiritual Medium 🕊️