© 2006-2008 John C. Beresford

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Contents

What is Spiritualism?

The Spiritualist's National Union (SNU) pages (there is a link to the home page below) contain a very comprehensive statement of the definition of Spiritualism, which I won't attempt to improve upon.  The religion is founded upon the "Seven Principles" which, for anyone like me who gets a little uncomfortable with talk of God, or Angels, can be a little off-putting to read, but stick with it!  They are:

...and modern Spiritualism usually adds the caveat "with freedom of interpretation" at the end, because each of these principles can be interpreted differently by each of us.  If you find these impenetrable, then go here for a modern interpretation (although not that much better IMO).  Also, as part of my training to become a Spiritualist Healer, I had to write a paper on my personal interpretation of the Principles and their relevance to Healing.  If you're interested, you can read it on-line, or download the document in Word 6 format.

Why am I a Spiritualist?

My family has a history of Spiritualist belief, although this was never overt.  My paternal grandmother was a "sensitive" - although untrained, she regularly told of visits from the spirit of my grandfather, and my Uncle Jack, who passed over during the Second World War.  She could see their spirits quite clearly and describe what they were wearing.  I'm sure she would have been an excellent medium, had she ever wanted to be trained.  Both my mother and maternal grandmother were (infrequent) attendees at Spiritualist meetings during the 40s and 50s.

During my school days, I scoffed at religion.  I have never really felt comfortable with the idea that unless you believe in something, and follow the prescriptive ritualistic behaviours, then you are doomed to eternal damnation.  Nor was I convinced by the scriptures, since to my mind they had been written by people who often had a hidden agenda to maintain their position of power and subjugate the congregation.  The vast riches of the churches compared to the poverty of their parishioners sat uncomfortably beside their preachings, in my view.  More recently, the dictats of Rome and of Eastern religions have seemed to be adhering to dogma in the face of all reason and justice, and (again, in my opinion) these cannot be what God intended.  Of course, in their eyes, I'm probably not allowed an opinion ;o)

In my mid-to-late teens, I crystallized my beliefs in my own mind, helped by some reading around the subject and a deal of thought.  Basically they were: that there was an after-life; that everyone went there after "death" irrespective of race, colour, or religious belief; that really evil people didn't have an easy time of it, but were made to own up to their deeds and "pay" for them in some way; that really good people had some privileges in the after-life; that most people fell into neither of these extremes and were therefore "comfortable" in some at-that-time undefined way; and that the life hereafter was in many ways similar to this life, with friends, loved ones, useful things to do, etc, but that there was none of the deceit, bickering, pollution, pain, disease, slavery, bigotry, or any of the things "normal" people hate about the world we all live in here and now.

Being a tidy sort of person, once I'd become comfortable with this personal outlook, I put it away on a shelf in my mind and got on with living life.  Naturally, I tried to stick to the principles I'd worked out, but I didn't always have them at the forefront of my thoughts.  Many, many times I slipped from the right path, and did things or said things that I'm not proud of. What can I say? I'm human.  It came as some surprise to me around early 1994, to learn that my own set of beliefs were mirrored almost exactly by Spiritualism.  What was even better, there were many works detailing clearly what the natural laws are (as far as we can understand them), what happens after "death" and suchlike.  And even better than that, there are churches and meeting houses I could go to, where trained people can communicate with friends, family and loved ones who are already in the world of Spirit, and bring proof that they really have lived on.  Not nebulous witterings or dogmatic cant and ritual, but a plain language detailed description of things only you can know, together with readings and philosophy that are directly relevant to the world we live in and the world we would like to live in.

I should expand a little on the phrase "laws ... as far as we can understand them" because for many years, I treated this sort of waffle with disdain when served it up by the clergy.  Natural Law is immutable.  It governs the universe that we know, and that that we don't know: the different planes of existence that are available to us once we "shuffle off the mortal coil."  However, in a similar way that uneducated natives in an Amazon rain forest don't understand electricity, most of us are uneducated about spiritual matters.  Moreover, we would need to learn an awful lot more, experience more, than we can whilst living, before we would have a chance of understanding anything of how things really work.  But just as Amazon natives, when taken out of the forest and brought to "civilization" can be educated in the wonders of the modern world, so we will be able to learn and understand, once we leave this world.  Unlike most religions, it is a basic tenet of Spiritualism that such knowledge is available to all, once they achieve the required level of spiritual development.  Nothing is hidden or unattainable.

After I started to become involved as a Healer, I attended the service at my local church and was privileged to receive a message from my recently-passed father on my first visit.  That it was my father, speaking through the medium, there can be no doubt.  The expression of his surprise that I should be there in a church at all, his distaste at the fact of my having a beard (the medium - a lady - even used my father's gestures to express the irritation he would have felt to have a beard, gestures he made many times in life), the description of his looks and personality, likes and dislikes, and even the events of that very afternoon, before the service, when he had been with me unseen in the house and had witnessed an event that was totally unpredictable and could not have been guessed at by the medium...all this was firm evidence to me that he was there with us in spirit.

If you have never been present when spirit messages are given, or find it hard to believe that it is credible, then you may easily scoff at the notion.  Perhaps you have seen documentaries on how charlatans tease information out of their audiences, are experts in the reading of body language, facial ticks etc, or use plants in the audience who appear to agree with what the "medium" says.  There is no doubt that the Spiritualist movement has in the past suffered its fair share of pranksters.  But if you have seen it first hand, as I have on many occasions, where total strangers relay messages to people you know personally (or even to yourself), so there can be no question of a "fix", where the responses are only allowed to be "Yes" or "No", so there is no possibility of information being "given away" and where the messages are so detailed and accurate that they elicit a strong emotional reaction from the people receiving them, then there are only two ways of explaining the phenomenon:

Either the mediums are telepathic, and are reading the information directly from the mind of the person they are addressing, or the messages do, in fact, come from the world of spirit.  The former explanation fails on many counts, since often facts are given that the receiver is unaware of and only later prove to be true upon further research by the recipient.  Well, you may say, perhaps the recipient had previously been aware, but had forgotten, or only been very young. The memory was there, but not consciously.  Even this explanation fails when messages concerning events of the recipients family, often before the recipient was even born, are related.  Each of you must make up your own minds, but if you have the opportunity to visit a Spiritualist service, or to have a personal consultation with a Spiritualist medium, I would urge you to take it.  It can be a life-changing experience.

How did I become a Spiritualist Healer?

My father died in 1993, 4 days after the birth of my second daughter.  My mother was, naturally, devastated.  As with many people, the death of her husband prompted her to look for some religious help and she turned to the local Spiritualist group.  After attending a few meetings, one day a medium told her that she had a message about a tall dark man who was still on the Earth plane.  She went on to describe me perfectly, having never met me, nor even knowing who my mother was.  When mum recognised the description and explained who she was talking about, the medium told her that I had the ability to become a healer, but that it was latent as I had never been trained.  I should seek out my local healing group and apply for training.

I found this quite unnerving to say the least.  I had never had any inkling that I had psychic abilities of any sort, although I guess looking back I remember often being able to predict what someone will say, or "knowing" in advance that some minor event will occur.  I always treated these as coincidences, as most people would.  Then a funny thing started to happen.  Over the next few weeks, whenever the subject of healing, and the medium's message, came into my mind, I started to get an unmistakable feeling of heat in the palms of my hands.  Just as if someone had heated up two large coins on top of a stove and placed them in my hands.  Anyhow, this made me determined to find out whether there was any truth in the message, so I looked up the address of my local church and went down to their Healing Clinic.

I presented myself to the leader of the group and explained why I was there.  She was a little taken aback at first (they don't usually get bearded 6-footers coming in off the street and saying "I want to be a healer" ...LOL) but took me into a private room and explained what was entailed in giving healing.  She then asked me to try to give her some healing, so I did exactly what she had told me to do, and within a few seconds my hands were feeling very hot indeed.  After only a couple of minutes, she stopped me and said "Oh yes, you'll be alright!"

From that day on, I began to attend the Huddersfield church healing group as an observer.  Soon after, I applied to start the training course to become an SNU Approved Healer.  There is a long training period - each trainee healer must complete 100 healing sessions over a minimum of two years and during this time write 8 papers on various aspects of healing theory and practice - but as soon as I was accepted on to the course I was allowed to give healing, so long as I always worked in the church itself, and alongside another trained healer.

I completed the written course in 1998 and, as friends will know, won the Eileen Ledger Prize for 1998 achieving the highest mark for the course in the UK that year.  Since I travel away a lot on business, it was another 6 months before I completed the required 100 weeks of practical training.  I attended my practical assessment on August 3, 1999 and passed, being thereupon upgraded to Approved Healer.  This means I can now give healing on my own, and outside the church building.

In future, I may study for a further qualification: the CSNU(h) or Certificate of the Spiritualists' National Union, but as yet I remain undecided.  It requires several more years written work, and a greater level of awareness than I currently have achieved.

How does Healing work?

This SNU page on healing explains what it is in more detail, but as to how it works, that is another matter entirely.  What I have learnt explains that the healing energies pass through the healer to the patient.  The energy does not (or should not) come from the healers themselves, so there is no question of a healer being "exhausted" - or only insofar as they may get tired from standing up, or holding their hands in a particular position.

The energy comes from the Spirit World, and travels through many intermediaries.  As with all energies, healing energy originates from God, or the Great Spirit, or whatever else you call the prime motivating force of the universe.  It passes through Healing Ministers - as I understand it, these are highly evolved spirits who are very close in their development to the Great Spirit - and from there it passes eventually to the healer.  It also comes through the Spirit Guide of the Healer, who always works side-by-side with the healer, but is only visible to someone with a trained awareness of the higher vibrations of spirit, like a medium.

I have been told that my Spirit Guide is an Egyptian gentleman, though as yet I am unaware of him.

Healers must develop their "attunement" to the Spirit World in order to make the best contact possible for the energies to flow.  This is really what makes the difference between truly great healers like Harry Edwards and Don Greenbank, who have been known to actually effect a permanent cure in a very short time, and other healers like me who can bring relief but in most cases not cure a condition.  In any case, no Spiritual Healer will ever *offer* you a cure, because to do so violates our code of conduct.

It is difficult to describe the process of attunement, and it is different for each individual.  Broadly speaking, it involves putting aside, in one's mind, the earthly cares and considerations, and concentrating upon things of a higher spiritual nature on the one hand, and on the patient on the other, for the idea is to make a link between the two.  The attempt to lift one's awareness to the higher realms can be thought of as a kind of meditation.  I tend to picture myself in a garden, surrounded by spirit helpers who are at work sending healing energy through me to the patient.  Sometimes I envisage the energy as a sparkling golden cascade that passes through my body and out of my hands to the person I am with.  Quite often the colour of the cascade changes as the healing progresses, though this is not done my me (at least consciously).

Links

I was delighted to find that even a brief search of the Web reveals a host of on-line resources, information, writings and explanations.  Here are just a few of the sites I have visited.  Some of them will, if you are interested, lead you to many others and many hours of reading and enlightenment.  There is also a Spiritualist's Web Ring, which I intend to join at some future date.

The Spiritualists' National Union (SNU) of the UK.  Although started in England, this organisation is rapidly becoming affiliated with many other groups of Spiritualists around the world.  It is the main "administrative" body for the religion in my country.

The Gateway Centre has an incredibly wide-ranging set of information on survival, books, healing, mediums, and further links.

The Spiritualist hosts a directory of churches in the UK, wherein you may be able to find a Spiritualist church near you.  Try NSAC if you're in the US.  These lists are far from complete as yet though, so if you don't find one there, don't give up!

One of the most famous Spirit teachers of all time, the writings and teachings of Silver Birch are amongst the most important documents ever made available to us in the material world. These pages carry some excerpts from his lessons, many of which are now out of print.  At one time the New Age Library included a free on-line Silver Birch Anthology - a selection of passages on some of the main themes of his teachings: truth, death, fear, love, immortality, law, God and so on.  Sadly this resource is no longer available, but a search on "Silver Birch" will reveal several others.

First Spiritualist Church celebrates the 150th anniversary (1998) of modern Spiritualism.  Much additional reading and food for thought, as well as some interesting stuff on the history of Spiritualism.

Last but not least The Spiritual Healer On-Line is the official page of the Harry Edwards Healing Sanctuary at Burrows Lea in Surrey and is updated monthly.  It has a lot of information on healing and philosophy, how to get help for yourself, your friends or your pets, and online copies of a monthly magazine The Spiritual Healer.