Can I ask a medium / spirit about just anything?

The other night I was meeting with some people and someone mentioned that an electrosensitive woman had asked a medium about her electrosensitivity, but not really got any good answer.

In Sweden we have a person, who is channeling a certain spirit and this is something that he has been known for a long time, more than 30 years. Many people admire him for this and travel a long way to meet him. They seem to believe that the spirit that "talks through him" knows everything just because he is a "well known spirit".

A spirit is "everywhere", isn´t he? Like the wind! So he must be capable of knowing everything! If not, can´t he just simply blow away in any direction and find out?

If you are trained as a shaman in the old way and also if you are for example a well trained Indian guru you know how to handle spirits. But in our society we do not. It is almost the opposite, that we wonder if they exist or not. But we often do not even know what we mean with this word spirit, or ande in Swedish. Often we think of a deceased person living in a subtle form in another realm of existence. Sometimes it is a shiny one residing on a higher plane and sometimes it is a ghost that has got lost "somewhere here" or it might be a demon from the Underworld. Sometimes it is someone who has never lived here on our planet and he can speak about kosmos and such big things like the meaning of life. Or it is your deceased grandfather who can tell you where he has hidden the family silver. 

Here the word spirit is used in the sense of a supernatural, invisible being, (this meaning is attested from mid-14c.)  The word spirit is used in different ways and has different meanings but that is another long story.  Read more ...

We can discuss how they exist and what they are made of, but if we get stuck in that question we will end up in physics and that will also be another story, probably quite a long one, maybe almost neverending.

We can just take it for granted now...

So for the moment we can just take for granted that those spirits, that are conscious corporeal beings of an airy nature do exist, because otherwise we will never get to the second question (how to deal with them). Even if spirits in reality should be just frequency patterns, similar to ideas and principles, that we can get into cohesion with, we can still use these airy bodies as symbols. How a principle can have arms and legs and a crown on his head is also another story!
When I take this for granted I also change my language to fit into that.
So...

"How to deal with  spirits? 

First of all there are many different spirits, all kinds of them, innumerable airy figures. They are good, they are evil, small, big, shiny, dark, tricky, space commanders, angels, dragons, tree spirits, power animals, ancestors, aliens.... everything! 

If you develop the contact with one of them you will pick up these qualities and they will be part of you. It is like eating invisible food for the soul. The spirit creates you (by influencing your thoughts, emotions and behaviour) and you create the spirit (by giving your energy to it). It seems like many spirits are interested in catching our attention, even fighting about getting us. 

According to my old shaman friends (and others) a spirit cannot have any inflence over you and it cannot do you anything, unless you invite it. But focusing much on the same principle and "living it" is the same as inviting. A sudden emotion can be the same as inviting when it gives you inspiration that you follow. The word is made up from in + spiritus and it is the same root as in the word spirare, to breathe. You breathe in something. 

That´s why the Indian gurus talk so much about not being a victim of sudden reactions. When you suddenly react strongly you can see it as a spirit that is getting you on his hook. An intense thought that you hold is also inviting the spirit of the thought and it fills you with the correspondent feeling, which can take over. 

There is not much difference between a spirit and a god. If you call in a spirit it becomes a god, because the old German word god means "the one that is invoked". In this sense there are innumerable gods. In Swedish we can say trädanden, the tree spirit, but we can also say trädguden, the tree god. The meaning behind the worshipping of a god is that one should get into cohesion with the principle and thus get transformed by it.

Inviting a spirit (god) is either made unconsciously or it is made consciously by you, by a priest, a shaman or a medium. A priest is usually having a temple and focusing on only one god and here we can talk about the Latin word for god, which is deus, a word that originates from the root dyeu-, to shine, which has also given the Sanskrit word deva. A deus is a shining spirit that lives on a higher plane, in a heaven. Such a deva is worshipped with light, fire, prosperity, pearls, flowers, jewelry, harmonic music and everything that creates beauty, joy and happiness.

A shaman has specialized on his personal choice of gods, which are spirits that he can invoke for various reasons. It can be some ancestor. It can be a Power Animals, which gives the shaman the special ability that is typical for that animal. He can get into symbiosis with it, even totally going into trance. He can make a jorney out of the body and in this way get information. In India some gurus can do the same, they can use remote viewing to get information, without losing consciousness. Even children can do that, if they are initiated into the use of the third eye.

Now I get to the point.

A minor spirit cannot answer all possible questions. He is not the king of everything - he is a specialist. If he is 3000 years old and lived in Egypt he will not be of much use for an eskimo, who wants to know how to get fish. This eskimo will get more out from asking a lokal water spirit.

So whatever you want to ask about you will have to adress the spirit that "belongs to that question". It is the same in our physical world: whatever you want to ask about, buy or getting repaired you must know to go to the right place and ask the right person. To ask about the car, it is better to call the garage mechanic than to call the dentist.

A spirit does not know everything just because he is a spirit. So you cannot give any kind of question to just any spirit. Spirits are like bubbles that contain different kinds of knowledge. They dwell in different worlds. The are like different kinds of melodies. Like different books. You do not open the French grammar if you want to learn German.

You have to contact the spirit that is not just an "invisible being" - you have to contact the representative of the inner essence of your problem or question. If that one does not exist you will have to create it.

When it comes to the spirits the real shaman knows which one to ask. If he doesn´t have any contact with the one that suits your problem he cannot help you and he will send you to someone else. It was the same among the old wise women in our part of the world. They could do different things.

So if you want to ask a spirit about electrosensitivity you will have to adresse a spirit that is connected to this issue. But which one is that? It is the one that you slowly get more and more in contact with when you focus with full intention on the subject.
It is quite difficult with some kind of "direct information" because a spirit can talk with symbols and concepts and you will have to focus not on electricity (if your problem is electrosensitivity) but on the body and the psyche (if that is where you experience the effects). If you do not exactly know what you mean with electrosensitivity the spirit will not know it either. His own expression for such an experience would probably be "bad spirit". You might not speak the same language (use the same symbols). 

The best is not to ask a special spirit (just because he is famous!) because it might be the wrong one. The best is to ask straight out or at least the highest god that one can think of, because that will include a lot of other spirits and also include some protection. And focus very much on the question, really loudly demanding an answer. But don´t ask about "something else". Focus on yourself and ask about yourself and then wait. The answer can come from just anywhere and it can come after a long time. Or a piece here and a piece there, so it is important to look closer at everything.

But if you just passively wait for an answer the spirit might think that you are not seriously interested in the question and he might drop you. Search for the answer everywhere and show that you mean what you say! Then the spirit will guide you and maybe make you find the right book and open the right page. But that requires focus and persistance and an open mind. Follow inspiration.

Hyper-sensitivity and psychic reactions can be part of that learning process that in ancient time was initiated in mystery temples with the help of psychedelic drugs and various ceremonies. We have heard about the horrors that the shaman´s apprentice has to go through before he gets his final status. Today we have psychedelic frequencies in the air and they can have the same effects as chemical drugs. 

The big question here cannot be solved by someone else and someone else´s spirit in just one session. You will just get a wise but in the same time quite easy answer. You might get the answer that you should "move to another place", but you will not get a long lesson about the effects in the body in connection with all different electrical things. If you don´t know why you have to move you might move to the wrong place. You might get the answer that you have to "change your thinking" but if you don´t know what it means it doesn´t help. 

If it was possible to get a quick answer from someone else´s spirit every shaman would just have got his whole education for free by just getting the right answer from the old shaman´s personal spirit during a little session by the fire one evening. 

A person, with an activated third eye, can find answers that she has never heard about before, but your spirit will guide you to find the right thing in your own memory among everything that you have stored (and "forgotten"). It works like a search engine. So the more information you collect the more tools your spirit will have access to. It might also put you in contact with someone who has good answers. A real living person, who can tell you more. It is not so that all the specialists have died and become spirits.

The answer in this case consists of many, many small answers to many, many minor questions that arise from a conscious introspection during a learning process that can take years.

Our western view on spirituality is so much inflenced by the Christian Church that we use this "church-thinking" also when it is about shamanism and spirits. If someone "has a spirit", that he can talk to and get answers from, people get so impressed that they think that this spirit is "the best" (in the same way as we have been taught in the church that our God is the best and the "only one") and whatever answer that is delivered from it, that is the best one, so there is no need to continue listening to anything else. But the best for you is your own spirit and not someone else´s. It is like your inner flashlight that you can take with you and use many times everywhere. Charge it with talking to it. Light a candle for it. Use your fantasy!

SPIRITS Do they exist?

Some "believe in spirits" and some say that "spirits do not exist" but usually most people do not even try to figure out what it is that they are talking about. What is the meaning behind the word? What is it that we say does not exist? Usually we talk about our own fantasy about it, but we do not have the same fantasy so we can talk about different things without even noticing it. 

The word spirit and the word god are almost impossible to use as we don´t share any common interpretation of them. We have different ideas.

It is not possible to even think about shamanism without having to be confronted with all those spirits that the shamans and medicine men are calling in. It can be ancestors and power animals or the spirit of rain, the spirit of the river or especially the spirit of a hallucinogenic plant.
In ceremonies the various spirits have to be invoked, maybe on the different places on the medicine wheel or together with the medicine pipe.

Those people do of course not use the Latin word spirit. They have their own names for all those invisible friends and all those words are usually translated to spirits, so it can be of interest to know what the word means. The original meaning has to do with something invisible (of an airy nature) that you breathe in (and get an animating effect from). An earlier word for it was animus, which comes from the Proto-Indo-European root ane-. to breathe.

SPIRIT

Inspiration, energy, vitality

The word spirit corresponds well to our Swedish word ande. It comes from the verb spirare, which is to breathe. Ande is from andas, which also means to breathe. A spirit is something that is in the wind, in the air and it is something that we can take in, breathe in. We can be filled with spirit, have high spirit or get inspiration. It is to be filled with life-force and vitality. L´esprit in French. When you get inspiration you also get energetic ideas about what to do. It comes from in + spir. It can be translated as taking in a spirit. The old root is (s)peis, to blow.

Angel, demon

From mid 14c spirit means an "invisible corporeal being of an airy nature", a supernatural transparent being like an angel or a demon. 

Ghost

From late 14c it can be a ghost, a disembodied spirit of a dead person, walking around and scaring people.

Inner essence

From around 1500 it could mean the nature of something, the inner essence of it, the essential principle of it. We have the famous Spirit of St.Louis and we can also say the spirit of Paris, the spirit of the blues. Essential nature, essential quality.

Alcohol

In late 14c it is the volatile substance in alchemy and it also gets the meaning of alcohol around 1670. In Swedish alcohol is sprit. 
It is not strange that they have called alcohol spirit as alcohol  gives changes in the psyche, which was just another word with the same basic meaning as spirit, derived from the root bhes-, to blow, to breathe. 

How you think and feel

Also from mid-14c. as "character, disposition; way of thinking and feeling, state of mind and "source of human desire".

The Holy Ghost, divine mind

Late 14c.: "Divine substance, divine mind, God, Christ or His divine nature. Spiritus Sanctus, the Holy Spirit (Ghost) Divine power;  extension of divine power to man; inspiration, a charismatic state; charismatic power, especially of prophecy. (Divine = reflecting the deus, the shiny one.)

Christian terminology made a distinction between soul and spirit: anima / spiritus in Latin and psyke / pneuma in Greek. Pneuma also means wind and comes from pnein, to blow, to breathe, and the root is the Proto-Indo-European pneu- to breathe. The word psyche comes from the PIE root bhes-, to blow, to breathe.

So one can wonder if there was any original difference in the meanings of the different roots that meant blow and breathe! We have now got ane-, (s)peis, pnein and bhes- for air, wind and breathing and they are all being used for a life giving force, that we get energy from and "filled with".

GOD

The word god comes from the root ghut- which means "that which is invoked". So the spirit becomes a god when you start praying to it and calling for it.

It is not the same meaning as in the Latin word deus, which means "the one that is shining". That word is used in the Latin world: dio in Italian, dieu in French and so on... but we translate it with god. The root is dyeu-, to shine.
But we translate deus with god, even if it is not exactly correct according to the basic meanings of the words. If you do not invoke the shiny one he is not your god. And if you invoke the spirit of the river she will be your goddess.

Conclusion

As both anima, spiritus, psyke and pneuma originate from roots with the same meaning: to blow, to breathe. it means that this variation does not really reflect any basic truth. It is simply not true that we are made up from these different parts. They have changed meanings many times and they have replaced each other when writers have got new ideas or made translations. 

So it is useless to try to figure out the ”real” difference between soul, psyche, mind and spirit etc. by comparing European texts and translations. The only thing you can do with that is to get a Ph.D. in linguistics / religion. How our mind /spirit / soul works is probably best told in Sanskrit, but as soon as we start translating the words it gets lost. You will have to get it explained from someone who is fluent in sanskrit and also well trained in spirituality. But... only explained and not translated!

If you get it from another old language, as for example from some old Native American Indian tradition, you will have to remain in that bubble of references and then you will experience their world from inside. Translations create confusion as the words being used do not mirror each other.

In a conversation we just have to decide upon the mening of the word before we start using it and arguing about the eventual existence of it. First we can ask: What is the meaning of "inner essence".

A new Talking Stick

Yesterday I made a new Talking Stick. I have left place for personal symbols to be painted on the stem . So one day there might be more decorations on it, more personal ones, if the person that I gave it to is interested in that. The fur on it is rabbit fur which is symbolic for the ability to listen carefully "with long ears".

Why do I not answer directly on Facebook?

Sometimes I find a question or a statement that triggers a feeling that urges me to make an answer in Facebook and immediately I start writing down an answer as a comment. I make it quick to be able to catch the impression that has come. But... if I find the subject interesting and worth commenting I also want others to understand what I mean, which can be difficult on Facebook. The text gets longer and longer and then it no more fits into Fb. 

We live in different mental bubbles.

Even if the text belongs to a group with "the same interest" all people live in different worlds with different ways of thinking (different mental bubbles) and our associations come from different educations, different memories, different cultures and different levels of consciousness. 

If you want another person to understand what you mean you will first have to lead that person to the space where you are (and then the other person has to lead you to her place) but that is not possible on Facebook where people  usually just attack each others opinions, starting from quite different mental places. We can say that Facebook triggers a behaviour that is the opposite of the behaviour that we can learn from the use of the Talking Stick. Answer quickly without listening too much!

Anyway... I start writing down my answer to catch the thougt (the concept) quickly and after a while, when I have written down 20 cm of text I hesitate, because now the subject starts opening up and more information and associations are coming. The writing turns my brain into a contemplation mode and I get into a flow that opens up the world behind the question. The associations come and I want to catch them all because they are like a big puzzle where no little peace should be missing.

Now my ascendent in Virgo starts living up and Virgo is the sign, the goddess of analytics, so now I start analyzing all my associations to check their validity. Then I get into contact with something that we can call "the spirit of the subject" and as long as the energy, the spirit, is there I can keep the flow and now the writing gets speedy till the energy is over (the spirit is gone). 

Now the text has become far too long to fit into a little comments box in fb, so I delete it and I put it on a document in my laptop. And then...either I forget about it or I put the text on a blog, which is a much better place for a long text. 

Then I get a comment from a friend, who says that the text is too long!!!

But for me blogs are much better places to put texts than just storing them in the pc and eventually never finding them again. 

It is tempting to start engaging in a discussion on fb, but such discussions are never real discussions about anything  - they usually tend to be just throwing around empty words. A word is not empty for the person who has thrown it away because it reflects his "inner puzzle", but for other people, who do not know anything about his mental and emotional background his words become empty. Another person´s words are empty to us before we have filled them with our own opinions and associations. But my understanding of your words might not at all be reflecting what you really mean!

Instincts activated

All this means that fb is a perfect place to turn people against each other. Everyone wants to be understood and if others misunderstand what you say you will feel misunderstood and the next thing is that you get sad and then it turns into anger. And the fight starts.

A fighting situation, even if only mental, triggers the lower brain and the fight-flight-impulses with cortisol and dopamin etc. and this takes over the brain in a way that the higher functions stop working. They are just cut off.

But this also means energy!!! The liver sends glucose to the brain and you will get a kick. This kick can, of course, be energizing so that you feel that you get energy and you feel bright and strong and smart and your thought process goes in full speed. But it also tells you thet you are in a fight that you have to win. The glucose is the speed sugar for attack, defense and survival.

Some people have made this into a sport. They either search for questions that they can easily attack or they constantly put out statements that they know are provocative. They know that others will be triggered to answer and then they get the desired fight that gives them the feeling of being a clever, intellectual debater who is seen and admired by the public. 

Many other people, who don´t know this, might do the mistake of answering with quite a good opinion, which immediately gets knocked down. This seems to have made Fb into something that is often quite boring as a lot of intelligent people have stopped saying what they really think, because they are tired of being always misunderstood.

Facebook - friends, war and nonsense.

But the method of the Talking Stick, that everyone should express himself to be understood by the others, is not possible here, because it would require too much writing and it would also require one person talking and twenty others just listening. So Fb is more like a cocktail party where you just float around and say: "How lovely you are"..."How sweet you look"..."My heart is with you".... "Have you seen my kittens"....

But.... many people have got tired of this polite nonsense so more and more groups are being formed to deal with real issues and at least here people have the same interest. But it does not always mean that people understand each others points of view. Because, as I said in the beginning, people are very much  different. 

In a religious sekt the leader wants the whole group to be in unison, to mentally, emotionally and spiritually sing the same kind melody. The group becomes like an entity with one spirit. 

In some Fb-groups you are not allowed to say "the wrong thing". You will immediately get attacked, which can be frustrating for new people who do not yet know what is being allowed. 

Most of us think that we should have free speach and that everyone has the right to express his own opinion. In the same time we attack each others opinions calling them wrong. Actually this is the meaning of a discussion, that two people should be handling the same question from two different points of view, where one acts as the prosecutor and the other one is the attorney of the defense. The prosecutor works with cutting the statement into pieces, i.e. destroying it and proving it to be wrong, while the attorney has to prove that the statement is right and valid. The word discuss comes from Latin discutere, which means to cut apart (to destroy).

That is also a valid way of handling a concept bacause our inner judge might be interested in knowing if the statement is true or fake and the best way can be to let it be attacked to see if it survives. 

Discussion

I have heard that French people like discussions, that they like to let different opinions meet to see what will come out of it. I have got an impression that people from many countries are in that way and maybe it is mainly the Latin languages that give people the interest in debating everything loudly, as they know the meaning of the word discuss. When I came to Italy I first believed that people were really angry with each other when they were screaming about something. But as I understood what they said I found that they were "just talking". The shouting, screaming and waving with arms and hands was just someting normal for them. 

The Swede wants peace not war.

So it is not in Sweden!  Here rules the opposite! But normally we seem to have missed the point.

If you have the opposite opinion about something you will have to be very careful, because if you say it the other person might be offended. He will not be willing to start an interesting discussion, knowing that it is a fight between concepts. He will feel personally attacked (because he identifies with his opinion) and experience the eventual start of a fight between persons. A mental war is sailing up!!!! Horrible!!! Stop it! Run away!

The typical Swede is very much afraid of conflicts and if he just senses the minimum of "opposite opinions" in the air he will get afraid and then he will avoid the conflict by not answering or maybe even just walking away. He will presume that a mental war is approaching and we want peace, don´t we? On Fb this kind of person turns silent while the more aggressive ones get noticed, and it is here that we can notice our tendency to feel personally attacked from "another point of view". Small wars brake out everywhere and people call each other names instead of discussing the subject. Instead of even asking what you mean! 

Use a Talking Stick!

Peace is not created by avoiding everything, it is created by looking into the conflicts to see what they are made up from - before they grow too big. When conflicts start growing in the darkness they will often continue to grow until they get released with a sudden burst of energy. 

I would gladly take part in such a little mental war in reality, but it should be performed with a Talking Stick being sent around, as this method takes down the anger and promotes the understanding of different opinions. The Talking Stick, used in the right way, lowers the talking speed and prevents a conflict from collecting more hidden energy. It leads everyone into a more listening and receptive mood. 

That´s why!

That´s why I often answer by writing on the blog instead of writing directly on Facebook.
The text will also remain on it´s place so that I can use it again, putting it on also another place.