A common scenario I’ve seen for people who are going through a spiritual or psychic awakening, is that a death in the family served as a catalyst for their awakening.
Typically, this means that when a person loses a beloved family member or friend, they have an experience around the person’s passing (usually something of a paranormal nature) and it opens up their spiritual awareness or challenges their worldview and beliefs about the afterlife.
I’ve had a lot of emails in the past from new readers beginning “My loved one recently passed away, and I’m finding that my abilities are opening up…”
I’ll give you an example of how this can play out, through a story involving my little brother, Tony.
This is Tony and me in the photo below:
Tony is only 18 months younger than me and was my little partner in crime when we were small — we were really close, with an almost telepathic bond.
When I set myself up as an intuitive back in 2008, Tony honestly thought I was a bit bonkers. However, he had a paranormal experience a few years ago that was so odd, it completely changed his mind:
Back then, he had a routine going when he got home from work in the evening. Every night, when he arrived home and parked up, his beloved cat Ling would wait for him and jump on the bonnet of the car when he arrived. Tony would wind down his window and the cat would give him a kiss, and jump into the car.
Anyway, one day when he got back home from work, the cat jumped on the bonnet as usual but this time, he did not get into the car when Tony wound down the window. Instead, he ran off into the garden as if he’d been spooked by something. That had never happened before.
Tony opened the car door, and was amazed and horrified to find the cat that had just greeted him cold and dead on the floor. As he was standing there, a taxi driver drove past and said, “Is that your cat? I came past here earlier…he’s been dead for a few hours, I didn’t want to move him so that the owners could find him easily.”
Sadly Ling had been hit by a car at some point earlier that day. It is an experience Tony can’t explain. Perhaps that was the cat’s way of saying goodbye.
How losing a loved one can trigger an awakening
After a person passes, it is not uncommon to have experiences (like my brother’s experience) that we simply cannot explain. Sometimes the signs we receive from our deceased loved ones are subtle signs, like hearing their favourite song on the radio, seeing something moving in the corner of your eye or even just having the sense that the person’s energy is with you.
Or sometimes the experience we have can be more dramatic, such as what happened to my brother.
I’ve often heard of experiences for people where a deceased loved one passes in the night, perhaps a long distance away, and the person who is left behind wakes up at exactly the time that the passing took place, or they wake up hearing the deceased person calling their name at the time the passing happened. The deceased can quite easily come to us in our dreams (in this article, I explain why.)
Another common experience that can cause us to change the way we look at the world is when a medium is able to connect to our deceased loved one and pass on information that is unmistakably from the deceased.
So when you go through such experiences, it’s not surprising that your beliefs about life after death are challenged, and this can spark a spiritual awakening.
There’s also another mechanism through which our intuitive gifts can awaken when someone close to us passes…
Part of us follows the deceased person to the ‘other side’
The other phenomenon that can occur after a loved one dies, is that part of our energy/soul can follow the deceased into the afterlife for a while. This doesn’t happen to all those who go through a loss, but it does sometimes happen, especially when a death is unexpected and sudden.
This corresponds to the concept of soul loss in shamanism. Soul loss is based on the idea that that traumas can cause us to “lose” fragments of our soul’s energy temporarily. In psychology, it corresponds to splitting, dissociation and the idea of part of our psyche being stuck in the past, with another person or or with a past experience that is unresolved.
When you experience soul loss, you may feel like part of you is missing, or has been lost somehow. You may not feel like ‘yourself’. You may have low energy and low immunity. You might also have gaps in your memory when it comes to the trauma or loss that affected you.
The part of you that is temporarily missing following a bereavement can usually be found in the afterlife, with your deceased loved one. After some time, and as you come to terms with the loss, this soul fragment will usually return to you, but in the mean time, having a piece of you reside with your deceased loved one on the other side can cause a heightened sense of spiritual awareness.
This can manifest as you noticing when your deceased loved one is visiting you. You may become more perceptive when it comes to receiving spiritual communication from them. If you had any latent mediumship abilities at all, these begin to open up.
I hope this article explains why a death of a loved one can often be a potent catalyst for a spiritual or psychic awakening. You can perhaps think of it as your deceased loved one’s gift to you.
Did this happen to you? I’d love to hear about your experience. Please share in the comments section below.
In this article, I’m going to give you some tips on what you can do to draw your deceased loved ones closer to you, and I’m also going to give some examples of signs that they are already communicating with you.
This topic has been on my mind a fair bit lately, mostly because I’ve been hearing a lot from my deceased grandparents in recent weeks, including one I’ve never heard from before.
The lady in this picture is my paternal grandmother, Frances Adams.
She died one week before I was born. My dad didn’t talk much about his mum when we were growing up. All I knew about her was that she worked in a factory and she played the piano. And when she died of a stroke when he was 29, he was devastated. I remember when he talked about her death, it was still a very painful topic for him and he looks very sad in my baby photos.
And then when I went to visit my dad (who lives in New Zealand) in February of this year, my dad confessed that after 40 years of being estranged from his older sisters (after an argument), he was hoping to track them down or at least find out if they were still around and if they would be interested in reconnecting. His mum (Frances), came through to me, loud and clear and told me where to look for them and how to approach getting in touch. She also told me what to expect in terms of whether they are alive or dead, and it didn’t take long to track one of my dad’s sisters down, using the info she gave.
Around this time, I also had a dream about Frances. In the dream, I was in a hospital (I’m not sure why) and she was also there to visit someone. She was wearing an orange blouse, the same colour as the dress she was wearing in the photo above, and she looked very smart. In the dream, she spoke to me, and although I couldn’t remember what she said, I remember she was very softly spoken and seemed like quite a gentle person.
I woke up in the morning with her voice (that I had never heard before in real life) ringing in my ears. I felt so close to this person I had never met. I told my dad about the dream and he mentioned that she was very softly-spoken and a gentle personality, too. So, I do feel that it was a visitation from her.
Do you want to know how your deceased loved ones might be communicating with you, too?
Next up, I’m going to give you a comprehensive list of how you can know if your deceased loved one (in this article, I‘m going to shorten this term to d.l.o.) is already communicating with you, and then I’m going to give you a full list of tips for encouraging communication with them, if you’re not seeing any communication or much at all.
So, here are all the common ways in which our deceased loved ones tend to communicate with us:
Flickering lights & problems with electrics
Yes, d.l.o’s can interfere with electrics. When I lived in New Zealand, I noticed I was getting a lot of flickering lights in my house, and it went on for about 3 weeks. A medium I saw around this time told me that my great-grandmother, Ida Sayce, was around me, and that she said she was making my lights flicker to make her presence felt. I hadn’t even mentioned the lights to the medium, so that was pretty cool.
Feathers & Coins
If you’re finding feathers or coins on your path, especially in unusual places, then this can also be a sign that your deceased person is getting your attention. I was recently chatting online with a friend when I was in an airport waiting for a flight. She was telling me all about her partner who passed away several years ago. She told me that she sensed that she and him were going to meet again in a future life. I got the strong sense (intuitively) this would be the case, and felt tingles on my neck as I read the message (which is a sign Spirit is with me). Then in an empty (indoors) airport with no birds around, I had this feather blow past me and settle right at my feet in front of me. Feathers for me are a sign that Spirit is with me, so I felt like that was her deceased partner giving her a sign and I sent the photo of the feather to her.
You smell their fragrance
Maybe your deceased loved one wore a particular brand of perfume or they smelled like tobacco because they smoked. If you smell this odour around you and there’s no other source it could be coming from, that’s also a sign they are with you (by the way, this gift is called clairsalience.)
You have birds or butterflies around you that are behaving in unusual ways
Obviously not every time you see a bird or a butterfly is going to be your deceased loved one communicating with you. But if you are on a walk, thinking about your d.l.o. and you see a bird that follows you around on your walk, that’s a sign. Or if you see a butterfly and you’re thinking of your d.l.o., and butterflies have some significance for you spiritually, maybe that’s a sign, too. Basically, go on how YOU feel about it. If something feels significant, it likely is.
Physical sensations
A sign for me that Spirit is around is that I get tingling on my temples, near my eyes. This can happen on one side or both sides. I don’t just get this when a deceased spirit is around but also when I do readings and come into contact with other types of Spirit. This is a form of clairsentience and it is not uncommon for people to experience it when their deceased love one is hanging around. It can manifest in different ways — it won’t necessarily always manifest as tingling or on the temples, like mine does. It could be on your back or on the back of your legs, for example (both common spots.) It could also be a physical sensation like pressure or feel like someone is touching you when there is no-one there.
You just get the sense they are with you
This one is hard to describe. Maybe you just feel like they are so close that they are in the room with you, or maybe you feel like you’re not alone and being watched (but not in a creepy way).
Your/their special song comes on the radio
Maybe there is a song that reminds you of your d.l.o., or perhaps there was a song that was ‘your’ song, that you both enjoyed listening to, when you were together. If this song comes on the radio (especially if it is not a song that comes on the radio too often, and it happens at a significant moment), this could also be a sign.
Objects are moving around and you’re not moving them
Perhaps a photo of your d.l.o. keeps getting knocked off the wall, or some other item that you associate with your deceased loved one is showing up in odd places or where it shouldn’t. And no-one else put it there. Deceased spirits do have the power to move matter (although not all spirits are capable of it) so if this is happening, it could also be a sign.
You see angel lights or things moving in the corner of your eye
Sometimes I see golden/white/blue/pinks lights that are a bit like fireworks, in my peripheral vision. They go off in a flash but if I look at them directly, they’re gone. For me, this is a sign that a spirit is nearby or trying to get my attention, and I call them ‘angel lights‘ because they are sometimes associated with angels, too. I go through phases with how often I see these lights, sometimes I can go months without seeing one, but if it’s been a while and I see one while thinking about someone who is deceased, for me that’s a sign that that person is with me.
Seeing things moving in the corner of your eye can also be a sign that a deceased loved one is with you. Equally, this could be a sign of an earthbound spirit. Seeing something moving in the corner of your eye should feel comforting, not creepy. If it’s comforting, or is accompanied by some other positive feeling, it’s likely to be your d.l.o.
Conversely, if it creeps you out, and you suspected anyway that you had earthbound spirits around you or in your space, you might need some techniques to clear them (see my book The Empath’s Toolkit for a technique to clear earthbound spirits from your aura.)
OK, back to signs that your loved one is with you:
It’s the anniversary of their death, or your wedding anniversary
All of the above signs are extra significant, if they happen on or around the anniversary of the person’s death, or on another significant date, such as their birthday or your wedding anniversary (if the deceased loved one was your spouse.) In my experience, d.l.o.’s are even more likely to communicate at those times.
So now I’ve gone into some signs that your loved one with with you. What if you don’t see any of these signs but you want to encourage them to check in?
Here are some ideas to encourage communication with them:
Pay attention most of all to your dreams
Dreams are the easiest way for our d.l.o’s to communicate with us, simply because channelling the deceased is like building a bridge. You live in different worlds. You’re in the earthly world and they are on the ‘other side’. To communicate with them, you have to (energetically speaking) build a bridge to their world, and they need to build a bridge to yours. When you dream, you visit the astral planes, which are like a halfway house between the earthly realm, and the ‘other side’. And so this makes it easier for your d.l.o. to get through to you, because they can pop into a dream more easily than they can, say move matter in the physical realm. And it also makes it easier for you to pick up a message because you’re in such a receptive state when you’re asleep and dreaming.
ASK them to make their presence felt
This sounds really obvious but asking them to communicate with you can get the ball rolling. Speak their name, and say it out loud that you want to hear from them. If you’re someone who spooks easily, ask them not to knock your stuff over and startle you!
Develop your psychic abilities
Our deceased loved ones will use any available channels to communicate with us, including our clairvoyance, clairaudience, clairsentience, or claircognizance. Developing and sensitising these clairs gives them more opportunities to contact you. For example, if you develop your clairvoyance, you’re more likely to see the ‘angel lights’ I mentioned above as a sign from your d.l.o.
(If you’d like some help developing your clairs, I have a free e-course at the top of my free resources page.)
Play a song (or songs) that you used to listen to together, or that remind you of the person in question
This can draw your d.l.o closer to you. Doing this before bed may even bring them to you in a dream.
Keep their photo close by
If you haven’t got a photo of your deceased loved one on display in your house, get one up. Keeping a photo next to the bed, may also bring their spirit closer to you when you’re asleep and dreaming.
Hold something that belonged to your person and think about him/her (preferably while you meditate)
Doing that daily or a few times per week can call their spirit in to you.
Visit their grave
This might not be possible at the moment, depending on your circumstances, but they will know you have visited, and it will draw them closer to you.
Ask your friends/family to be aware
If your d.l.o. is not able to get through to you, sometimes he/she will take advantage of another person’s openness, so ask your sensitive or intuitive loved ones or friends to tell you if they have a dream involving your deceased person.
This happened to a friend of mine who lost her husband a few years ago. She was in a situation where she really wished she could talk a situation over with him, that was happening in her life at the time. She would have wanted his input. So, she asked him to come into her dreams or communicate with her, but didn’t get a message from him. I didn’t even know she asked him to communicate, but that night he came into my dreams. He didn’t say anything, I just had a dream where I felt his presence strongly. I messaged her about it in the morning and she felt it was meaningful, especially as she had particularly wanted to hear from him, at that time. Perhaps he hadn’t been able to get through to her for whatever reason and so tried another option.
So. make sure to ask any friends/family who are open to it, to let you know if they dream of your deceased person. Sometimes they won’t tell you if you don’t ask, and then you can miss a message right when you need it.
Mediumship has come a long way in recent years, with help from ‘celebrity’ mediums on TV demonstrating how they connect with people in spirit. Movies in the 90’s such as ‘Ghost’ and ‘The Sixth Sense’ helped it to gain popularity and become mainstream. Mediumship has gone from being old ladies hiding behind a crushed velvet curtain with a crystal ball, to the fashionable Tyler Henry ‘The Hollywood Medium’ on the E network. Now is a great time to learn how to develop your mediumship skills, with endless courses and workshops to choose from. But can everyone become a medium?
Are you born a medium or can anyone be taught?
Many people don’t even realise that they have natural mediumistic abilities. They may have had spooky experiences during their life, but just thought everyone goes through something similar. Some people are so scared of the mysterious things that they saw, felt, or heard as a child, that they buried the memories deep inside themselves, forgetting that it ever happened. I believe it’s a bit like any skill. You know the kids at school that were just natural at math? They just seemed to get it and went on to be engineers or accountants. Other children could pass the subject but had to get ongoing tutoring and work really hard. They just weren’t natural at it. Natural mediums can remember that they have this unusual gift, by taking some time to recall the strange experiences they had in their younger years. Everyone has psychic abilities and can improve their clairs through commitment and practice, though mediumship may not be as straightforward.
This is how I figured it out
I didn’t know that I was a natural medium until I was into my 30’s. Looking back now, it seems so obvious, but when you’re in the middle of trying to find your life purpose, things get a little hazy. As a teenager, I spent years waking up during the night with people in spirit standing at the end of my bed (yes, I see dead people!). My little chihuahua Joey tried to protect me by barking at them. After a few years I did eventually stop seeing them, but by then I was scared of the unknown and very keen to be a normal teenager. Life goes on but you can only repress this gift for so long. If you’re meant to use your mediumship skills in this life, Spirit will find a way to remind you! For me, it was in my dreams. I would dream about having conversations with people who would tell me they were deceased and what their life was like. After a spiritual awakening and a lot of soul searching, I started to remember and embrace my gift.
So let’s check out 10 signs which show that you are a natural medium:
1. You are sensitive to everything —being sensitive to Spirit, unfortunately, means that you are sensitive to this planet as well. Do you have food intolerances, can’t handle perfumes, and get a lovely skin flare up when you touch chemicals? Your sensitivity is a gift and a challenge. It is very important as a medium to reduce the toxins in your body that you are sensitive to, so it can really help to eat an organic diet and drink filtered water.
2. You suffer from glandular issues —maybe you have a thyroid condition or adrenal fatigue? The spirit world uses your glands to connect, which is why many mediums are overweight and tired. They have been unknowingly burning through their glands while connecting with people in spirit. Self-care practices including a good diet, lots of rest, and things like yoga, are a must for mediums.
3. Growing up you saw some strange things, particularly when you were alone— people in spirit know when a medium is around and will try and make a connection, even if you’re a child. Children are generally more connected to the spirit world as it hasn’t been long since they were there themselves. Maybe when you were a child you saw people in spirit in your bedroom or heard them talk to you. Night time may have been quite eventful and you may have opted for a nightlight for many years.
4. Your favourite genre of movies and books is the paranormal — whether it is books about UFO’s or TV shows about ghosts, you thrive on understanding the supernatural. What were your favourite shows when you were a child? Were you the child reading about going back in time and watching the movie ‘Poltergeist’? It’s no accident, this was a sign of things to come! I loved the TV show ‘Touched by an Angel’ when I was growing up (and I still do!)
5. Dreaming about dead people — this is very common amongst mediums who aren’t using their mediumship skills in their waking life. For some mediums, they will feel people in spirit drawing near as they are falling asleep, while for others, spirit people will appear to them in their dreams. They might want to tell you how they died or their name when they were living. Rather than it being a message to communicate to someone that is living, it is often a sign to embrace your mediumship skills in your waking life.
6. Your blood relatives see unusual things as well — being a natural medium is hereditary so if your mother, grandfather or aunty tells you paranormal stories about what they see (or saw as a child), it’s a good indication you may also have the gift. It’s common for family members to have repressed that side of themselves and have forgotten all about it, until you have a chat on the topic, or they have a spiritual awakening.
7. You get woken up during the night —this is particularly common for developing mediums when they are opening up. People in spirit may notice the medium and take the opportunity to make contact during the night. If you’ve ever woken up suddenly and felt like you’re being watched, you might just be! Don’t worry, no-one in spirit can hurt you, but it might be time to set some firm boundaries with your Spirit Guides about when you want communication from those who have passed.
8. No fear of death — even from a very young age, you had an understanding that death is not a big deal so there’s no reason to fear it. Maybe you decided to work in an industry such as aged care or emergency services, as you knew you could help people who were transitioning. You might be the one everyone turns to when there’s a death in the family as you have a natural ability to guide others through grief.
9. Always seeing things — weird sparkles out of the corner of your eyes, a blob of white mist, something flying into the corner of the room that is not really there. Often people in spirit can look like haze. If you regularly look around the room and think to yourself, “what was that?”, maybe you don’t need your eyes checked, you’re just a medium!
10. You are jealous of mediums — this may seem obvious to some or strange to others, but this is a strong sign you too could be a medium. There is a reason why you watch a medium on TV and get that feeling of envy, or you go to get a reading from a medium and get a flutter in your stomach telling you that you could do that too. Jealousy is a gift that helps to point you in the right direction in life. If this is happening to you, take it as a sign.
So you’ve checked off nearly everything on the list and realised, WOW, I could be a medium after all. So now what? It takes a lot to go from being a natural medium to working as a professional medium. It can take many years to fine-tune your skills while doing lots of self-development work. The best mediums really understand how their mind works and how to work with their ego voice. They have healed as much personal baggage as possible so they are a clear channel for Spirit, and have built a strong relationship with their Spirit Guides.
Know that if you have this natural ability, you are meant to use it in some way. There are no accidents! Maybe it is so you can become a professional stage medium. Perhaps it is so you can be an excellent palliative care nurse. You may use your mediumship to help your family through the death of someone very close to you all. If you have this exciting and unusual skill, now might just be the time to embrace it, and take the first step in what can be an amazing process of self-discovery and transformation. How are you going to use your gift?
Recently I received a question from a reader who wrote:
Hi Anna,
“Is it true that everyone always has Spirit Guides? I recently had a reading with someone who channelled my deceased friend but could not find any guides or angels.”
~ Jenny
Hi Jenny,
Yes, in my experience everyone has guides and angels around them.
When an intuitive tunes into you, they may pick up on any one of a variety of different beings around you, including:
Note that some intuitives are naturally going to pick up on a certain type of being more than the others. For example, some are natural born mediums while others are very attuned to the angelic realm.
Here’s a summary of some of these types of being:
Spirit Guides
Spirit Guides are helpful beings that hold a spiritual, expanded perspective of our lives. Even before we incarnate, we will choose the right guides to help us on our path for this lifetime.
Our Spirit Guides know our soul’s characteristics, path, and life challenges. They know what we are here to learn in this lifetime, and their job is to help us to stay on track with paths which align with our soul and life lessons. Accordingly, they give us advice, comfort, and protection in the form of warnings.
They help us to stay on track by communicating with us intuitively, through clairvoyance, clairaudience, clairsentience, and claircognizance. You may feel tingling on your body when you’re impulsed by your guides, or you might just receive information that pops into your brain seemingly from nowhere.
Most people have between four and seven guides around them. If the person is very young, there may only be one or two present, and the others will show up at later points in the person’s life. By maturity, a person usually has all their guides in place.
Sometimes, if a person has a large number of guides, such as six or more, one of the guides may be a temporary guide — one that comes in for a specific purpose, and then leaves again later on. For example, if you need to do a lot of public speaking in your new job, and you’re finding it challenging, you may have a guide who specializes in communication and confidence show up, helping you through that issue. If you’re struggling with something at the moment, you can even request that Spirit send you extra help. This may come in the form of a temporary guide or it could come in another form.
Spirit Guides tend to function as a team, but each one also has an individual role to fulfill. Much like the people around us in the physical, Spirit Guides bring us beneficial energies, even if we’re not entirely conscious of what those energies are. So, for example, if you have a life lesson of moderation (like me), it is likely one of your guides will be helping you with balance. If you’re a very serious person, you will probably have a guide with playful and lighthearted energy. Some guides specialize in relationships and others are more at home with practical day-to-day matters, for instance.
Spirit Guides may have defined genders and usually they have names, too. They come across as male, female or balanced in their energies (androgynous).
They also show up with defined appearances that a clairvoyant can pick up on. Obviously, Spirit Guides do not have a physical aspect but they take an appearance which we resonate with, and which also makes a statement about who they are.
Spirit Guides can also be in the form of animals — I usually find that most clients have at least one animal energy around them.
Spirit Guides are fairly high vibrational, so folks who resonate with these energies (those who have a lot of energy running through the upper chakras) will find it easier to connect with the guides.
Guardian Angels
Everyone has at least two Guardian Angels around them, and some people have more than two.
The role of angels is to protect us physically, emotionally and spiritually. They also comfort and influence us with their loving energies.
They mostly protect us by putting thoughts into our minds. For example, if there’s going to be an accident at an intersection you’re approaching, but it’s not your role to be involved in that accident, your Guardian Angel will give you a really strong urge to stop off for food or gas, so that you avoid it. Or if you’re thinking of getting involved with someone who would not be good for you, your Guardian Angel will influence you to stay away from that person.
In really dire situations, Angels can also manifest in physical form to give assistance (although this is less common, I have heard some amazing stories about such cases.)
Angels do not tend to have names or genders (they are gender neutral) in the same way as Spirit Guides, and they often appear to be hovering in the background, more concerned with their role as spiritual protector than they are with being channeled.
Angels are of an even higher vibration than the guides, and some people are naturally good at picking up a signal on the ‘angel channel’. You can become more attuned to the angels by calling on them often.
Deceased Loved Ones
The next category of being that psychics commonly pick up on is the deceased.
If you should lose a beloved friend or family member, then know that this person is likely to spend time around you even after their death and can be picked up on in much the same way as an intuitive picks up on a Spirit Guide.
Deceased loved ones don’t guide us in exactly the same way as our guides do, but they become our non-physical ‘champions’ from the other side — looking out for us and providing insights and help along the way.
Whether or not an intuitive picks up on a deceased loved one depends on how easy it is for the deceased person to communicate, and it also depends on the skill of the medium.
Connecting with the dead is like building a bridge — both sides need to be able to build their end of the bridge and meet in the middle.
Deceased loved ones resonate at a lower vibration than the angels and guides — it’s almost as if they are closer to the human aspect than the other non-physical beings I’ve talked about in this article. Some people are naturally good at picking up on spirit at this level — and those people tend to be the ones who are rather in tune with their emotional side.
I recently had a reading with an intuitive who only picked up on my deceased cat and my maternal great-grandmother, Ida Sayce, whose surname I adopted when I decided to change my name. This psychic was very attuned with those who have passed. As for me, I’m naturally more in attunement with the angels and guides and communicating with the dead is not something that comes most naturally to me, although I can do it if I need to.
For someone with a natural attunement like that to one type of being, they sometimes need to consciously learn how to tune into the other types.
Want to Learn More?
For those who are interested in learning to tune into a person’s Spirit Guides, angels, ancestors, and other types of beings, you can learn how to do this in my Intuitive Reading Program.
This course teaches you how to tune in and create a portrait of all the different beings around your client — this is a beautiful reading which reminds people that they are not alone on their path through life.
The program also teaches you to channel these beings for other life questions, along with instruction on doing career, relationship and decision readings for clients.
I have a question about mediumship and the afterlife. I want to talk to my dad who passed away in 2018. Do I have to do this through a medium or can I do it myself? Where is my dead father now?
– Mirush
Hi Mirush,
Thanks for your question. I’m sorry to hear about your father’s death.
First of all, I wanted to say that your father most likely crossed over fully to the other side following his death. Soon after death, his soul would have undergone a ‘life review’ which is where his soul gets to go over what happened in his most recent lifetime and what he learned from it. Then most probably, he will hang out in the afterlife for a while before incarnating again into a different body. Even if your dad is now reincarnated, part of his spirit will be on the other side, and you can talk to him any time you like.
So, the answer to your question “where is my dead father now” is:
(1) Either his soul is in the afterlife or (2) he has reincarnated into a new body. He will have moved forwards on his soul’s path in some way.
If you have things you want to say to your father, say them out loud. He will hear you. In order for you to have a 2 way conversation with your father, you both have to build your half of a bridge. This bridge is between heaven and earth. Your dad builds half of the bridge and you build half. That means, to communicate ideally you will develop your psychic sensitivity to reach him and he will lower his spiritual vibration to reach you.
You need to “build” your half of the bridge in order to communicate with your deceased father
Many times, deceased spirits are already communicating with us, but we haven’t noticed (which means that they have “built” their half of the bridge, but we haven’t built ours). So I would say it is a good idea for you to sensitize yourself further. Be really observant and pay attention to see if you notice any of the following ways deceased loved ones communicate with us from the other side. You can also ask your father to send you some of these signs.
(Note, if you would rather watch this article as a video, instead of read the article, scroll down to the bottom!)
#1: Through Dreams
When we are dreaming, we are very open to communication from deceased loved ones and from the other side in general. This is because we’re already in the astral planes, which is a non-physical place that we visit when we’re asleep. It’s easier for our deceased loved ones to ‘meet us half-way’, energetically speaking, by visiting us there.
I had a dream visitation from my great-grandmother (my mother’s grandmother) a few days before my mother got remarried in 2007 (although I didn’t realize at the time that it was a dream visitation.) Great-granny turned up, looking frail, grey and old – just how I remember her. The only thing she said to me in the dream was “your mother looks lovely in brown”. I felt a great deal of affection coming from her even though I hadn’t known her very well when she was alive. It was a nice dream, but I forgot about it soon after I woke up.
A couple of days later, I was out shopping with my mother for something to wear on her wedding day and we had looked all over town for the right dress for her to get married in, but we hadn’t found anything suitable.
Then, just before the shops were shutting at the end of the day, we found a gorgeous brown dress. My mum tried on the brown dress and it fit beautifully and she looked gorgeous in it. It was perfect. Then all of a sudden I remembered the dream where great-granny had told me that mum looked lovely in brown and I told mum about it. She smiled and said, “Great-granny always used to tell me how nice I looked in brown.” Mum thought it was just a coincidence that she had found a brown dress but I felt like it was great-granny giving her blessing from the other side.
How do you know if your deceased loved one is visiting you in a dream or not?
I’ve had a few dreams with deceased spirits in them since then and they’ve all ‘felt’ very similar to me.
It’s hard to put my finger on it exactly, but for me, the ‘climate’ or ‘mood’ of the dream changes when a deceased spirit shows up. You might feel their love or affection for you, transmitted in the dream whereas before there was no particular mood or feeling to the dream. The setting of the dream may suddenly change to somewhere quite symbolic and it may become more vivid. You will often have the dream just before you wake up so that you remember it.
#2: Deceased Spirits Can Move Objects
Can the dead move objects? Yes, it is possible. Don’t ask me to explain how deceased spirits manage to mess with objects. I just know they can and do.
My mum’s sister who passed away from ovarian cancer around two years ago made her presence felt in a few different ways after her death.
Shortly after she passed away, my mother’s sister visited me in a dream and told me that she was messing with the clocks in my grandmother’s house. I rang up my grandmother the next morning to tell her what I had dreamt and she told me that the grandfather clock in their lounge had stopped overnight with the pendulum in the wrong position and they couldn’t get it to work again (it had never happened before and they’d had it for decades.)
Another time a book that belonged to my mother’s sister about ovarian cancer fell off the bookshelf while my grandmother was in the room.
#3: Communication Through Signs from Nature
The world of Spirit is entwined with and superimposed onto the physical world and the natural world. You just have to be looking for Spirit in order to see it. I’ve heard of deceased spirits sending natural symbols which were meaningful to them when they were alive – such as flowers, birds, animals or animal symbolism. Other signs from nature include rainbows, the person’s favourite flower taking up residence in your garden randomly – that sort of thing.
A while ago my mother told me about a local man here in New Zealand who died in a diving accident. He hit his head and drowned while diving in some coastal caves. When they recovered his body, three whales were sighted nearby, on the coast, hanging around the area where the body had been recovered. (Whales are the Maori symbol of divine protection.) In this area of New Zealand, whales rarely show up on the coast – you have to go many miles out to sea to see them. So that was interesting in itself. Then a few weeks later they were having a memorial service for this man in the place where he died, three whales showed up again.
#4: Communication Through Mediums & Through Your Intuitive Senses
Deceased spirits are energy, like your Spirit Guides, so they can impulse us and connect with us in a similar way if they are around. But I do believe that it is easier to communicate with Spirit Guides than it is to communicate with deceased spirits. This is because guides are connected to you, so if you tune into a person’s energy, you can also tune into their guides fairly easily if you know how. But deceased spirits are not attached to you as such.
So, if you cannot connect with a deceased loved one through a medium, don’t despair. There are many reasons why the communication might not be successful.
Remember that the ether is far removed from the physical plane. Communicating with the other side is a little like building a bridge (made of energy). It’s like you are on one mountain, in the physical plane and the dead on another in the ether. In between you is a valley. In order for you to make contact, someone, or both parties has to build a bridge. You can build an energetic bridge by raising your vibration and opening up your psychic senses and the deceased spirit can build half of the bridge by lowering theirs to meet you halfway. Sometimes deceased spirits may not be available to build their part of the bridge because they’re working on the next stage of their soul’s journey. Some recently deceased spirits want to build the bridge but they’re not yet fully comfortable in their new energetic state and cannot.
Even if you cannot connect with your deceased loved ones through a medium or if they are not showing you signs of them being around you, you can still honour and love them in other ways.
One of the best ways of honouring another soul is by letting them go.
You’ve probably heard the saying ‘if you love someone, set them free’. This is as true in death as it is in life. Deceased spirits can really benefit from permission to leave and go and pursue the next stage of their long journey. I know deceased loved ones who still have one foot in this dimension one year after their death because they feel guilty for leaving their family behind.
My grandmother told me about a friend of a friend who punched her dying husband in the face (he’d had a heart attack) because she was so angry that he was leaving her. My grandmother always found that story quite funny and sad at the same time. I’m thinking of this story because we do send out clear messages to dying and deceased loved ones about whether they are allowed to cross over that will affect their willingness to move on. And of course it is natural to want to hold onto people.
Something that is very powerful is to give your loved one permission to die while they are still alive. My grandfather did this in the moments before one of our relatives was on her deathbed. He talked to her to sleep like a little child, telling her that it was OK to go and to not be afraid. She died shortly after.
During the funeral, some native cultures consider that the spirit of the dead person is there, so they address them directly and tell them that it’s OK to cross over fully now. Then, they promise to honour their dead and check in with them at certain times, like on the anniversary of their death.
Even after they are gone, you can speak to your deceased loved one and tell them that it’s OK to move on. They will hear you.
You can also honour the dead by focusing on new life
Death is not just an ending. With it, new life begins, although you do not see the new life and the new stages in the evolution of the soul of your loved one (you only see the ending which is what causes grief). Know that your loved one lives on, and experiences new life and goes on to the next stage in their soul’s evolution, even if you cannot see it. You can honour and witness this cycle symbolically through planting something beautiful and seeing it grow.
How have your deceased loved ones got your attention? Please leave a comment if you have something to share.
Clients and readers sometimes ask me ‘Do you believe in life after death?’
Life after death is one of those things I am certain exists. I don’t offer my services as a medium but I have had plenty of experiences communicating with the other side that I want to share in these blog posts.
An ‘Intuitive Knowing’ that There Is Life After Death
I personally have always believed in life after death. It just made sense to me, on an intuitive level, that a spirit that exists in a body would still exist long after the body has disappeared.
I remember that this belief really hit home for me when I was in my early twenties and I saw our dead cat Hunter who had just been killed by a car. Her body was empty – just a shell. It was then that I consciously realized that there was something in the cat – you could call it the cat’s “essence” or “consciousness”, that had been there and which was no longer there. The people around me were talking as if Hunter no longer existed, as if she had just dissipated into nothingness. But I knew that if the cat was no longer here, she had to be somewhere else.
Then something that I had been taught in physics popped into my mind – that energy cannot be created or destroyed, it can only be transferred. To me, this seemed like a good metaphor for the dying process. It seemed wrong to me on an intuitive level (the level I have operated on for my whole life) that the life that animates an animal or human just dissolves into nothing.
I later learned (or remembered) that we are all pieces and individual projections of Source or God energy. You can’t destroy Source/God, and you can’t destroy our souls. I do believe our souls can and do return to Source or the Creator and lose their individual essence, but I don’t believe they can be destroyed or can just disappear after death.
My belief in life after death actually became something I could verify when I began practising as an intuitive. That was when I began to see and hear evidence of the afterlife.
Evidence of the Afterlife: Talking with the Dead
I wrote about the very first experience I had with a client’s deceased relative in this article and my boss Pete wrote about it in a testimonial for me. That experience stopped me doubting my psychic abilities once and for all because the deceased spirit I communicated with told me things that were true, specific and which I could not have known otherwise.
Since then, I haven’t connected with clients’ deceased loved ones very frequently (only a handful out of 350 or so readings) but when I have, it’s been an amazing experience. Last week I had the pleasure of contacting a client’s deceased relative during a reading. At the end of this reading, this client asked me to tune into her Spirit Guide team. Well, someone else showed up as well when I tuned into her guides and it was a lovely surprise.
At first, it was difficult for this spirit to communicate with me. Unlike when I talk with Spirit Guides, who present to me in my mind’s eye clearly, easily and quickly, I could tell it took energy and effort for this spirit to convey who she was. At first, she looked like a green and white ball of energy that was moving and whizzing really fast. I felt she was trying to convert this energy into an image I could understand and convey to my sitter. She told me her name and then this energy changed in a flash to a human appearance which I described to my sitter and then changed back into the whizzing ball of energy. The spirit, because of her name and appearance was identified as a dearly departed relative. The messages the spirit conveyed showed that this deceased relative was still watching over my sitter and being her ‘cheerleader’ in the non-physical.
Feeling the Love the Dead Still Have for us
One of the nicest things about connecting with some deceased relatives is feeling the love they still have for those they’ve left behind. As soon as I connected with this deceased spirit, I was hit by this overwhelming love and such beautiful energy. I think this was the love the deceased relative had for my sitter. It felt so lovely to be bombarded with this energy – quite different from speaking with a Spirit Guide.
Reasons for the Dead to Come Back to us
Why is communicating with the dead so hit and miss? Why can mediums sometimes communicate with the dead and not other times? I have noticed that usually, the dead have to have a strong motivation to come back to us AND actually make their presence felt, probably because it takes a great deal of energy and effort to communicate with us.
# 1: To give us peace, reassurance and comfort
Spirits who come back to remind the living of their presence do so often because they see the healing it brings. They remind us that there is no imposed separation from those you love. The dead can be with us in spirit in a flash, when we think of them. Whether we perceive them is another matter. The Maoris – the native people of New Zealand – say that the spirits of the dead are on the shoulders of the living and we carry them with us wherever we go.
# 2: Because their path is still entwined with yours
Sometimes deceased relatives stay very attached to their living loved ones. This can be for a variety of reasons – sometimes because they want to see their loved ones succeed – like the deceased relative I encountered recently. (She was standing behind my client’s Spirit Guides and had a ‘cheerleader’ and supporter role.)
In another case, a spirit can stay attached because they feel a responsibility to watch over the actions of the living and warn them of certain things. This has happened before in one my sessions. A deceased spirit warned against doing something the client was considering, that would have had dire consequences. This spirit had been dead for many, many years and you would have thought he would have cut ties with the living, but he was obviously still quite attached to whether or not this person was doing the right thing, and he had vested interests also in the situation.
# 3: To say what went unsaid
If there’s something important that’s left unsaid, spirits can stay around to attempt to resolve it instead of moving on. The dead returning to communicate with us is also a reminder to check if there is anything left unsaid in your life. I have a stiff upper lip that I either inherited or picked up from my background, so the people around me rarely know just how much I respect, admire and love them because I am not good at getting it out. My encounters with the dead have taught me how important it is to say the words that can heal, reconcile or just communicate how much you care, because once you’re gone it’s harder to do.
So, I know it’s a massive cliche, but make sure YOU communicate to those you love how much you love and appreciate them.
# 4: To resolve something that went undone
The spirits that are most motivated to hang around are perhaps those who left something unresolved or undone. In particular, I’m thinking of those who experienced some sort of injustice in their lifetime, like a murder which is still unresolved.
The dead can also remind us not to leave things undone for an extended time period. The biggest thing you can leave undone is pursuing your own dreams. Are you happy with how you spend your days now? Or do you live for tomorrow, planning, with your mind continually in the future, putting off life? The lesson that the dead brings to us is to live in the present moment and do what we want now, because there may not be as many tomorrows as we think.
# 5: When you’re reviving their memory
Sending the dead a lot of energy also brings them to you, in spirit. For example, my mother as a hobby digs up the past and reconstructs our family tree. She has uncovered interesting and scandalous stories of our family. In dreams, I have seen the bodies of long-deceased relatives turn in their graves and communicate to me that they are watching what she is doing with the family tree. So, sending our ancestors energy – studying their past and our ancestral roots – can also call them to us.
Do you have any thoughts you want to share on the subject of life after death? Please leave a comment!
Myth # 1: Only ‘Gifted’ People Can Develop Psychic Awareness
Clients often ask me ‘do you really think I could develop my psychic abilities?’
My answer is always yes and the reason for that is, we all have the potential to be gifted psychics. Your intuition is your birth right, but for many of us our psychic senses diminish in childhood as they are not nurtured in the same way that our five physical senses are. Those who are psychic have either:
I retained a little bit of psychic ability from childhood but I also fall somewhat into the second category of people (those who have worked to consciously develop their psychic ability) – this is partly because I shut off my natural psychic awareness around the age of six or seven. I remember seeing spirits around that age. My mother told me that my experiences were just imaginings and since I was not the kind of child who liked to go against the grain, I took this to heart. As a result, I just stopped engaging with the energies around me.
My psychic re-awakening began with a bump in 2007, when I trained as a professional intuitive.
One night I was rudely awakened by a spirit who presented as a dark-haired man, in his thirties. And the following happened in a flash:
The spirit of this man showed me an image (like a movie image) of him in a caravan with a woman who appeared to be his wife. The man got out of the caravan. My boss at that time got into the caravan with the woman and replaced the man. The man gave me this message:
“I was not able to take my wife on holiday, but I am so glad your boss did”.
I was shocked and excited that I had had an encounter with a spirit but I did not know who the spirit was or what his message meant. I knew I had to relay it to my boss.
So, the next day, I put my apprehensions to one side and told my boss about what had happened in the night. He was amazed and proceeded to explain that the spirit was undoubtedly his wife’s first husband, who had died several years earlier.
My boss’s wife and her first husband (the deceased spirit) had always planned to spend time travelling around the US in a camper van but their dream was never fulfilled as he became ill and later passed away. When she met her second husband – my boss – they made the camper van tour that she had been unable to make with her first husband. I couldn’t believe what had just happened to me! I didn’t consider myself psychic or gifted and all I had done was set an intention and do a little psychic development. This story shows that we can all reawaken our psychic awareness, sometimes with quite stunning results.
Myth # 2: Psychic Development is Scary Because You Have To Communicate With Spirits
I remember being really terrified at the thought of opening up my psychic awareness again. I didn’t want to talk to spirits or see them – I was afraid of being startled.
Talking to disembodied spirits and seeing them is a big aspect of psychic awareness. But I later learned that there are other ways to tune into Spirit. Psychic awareness can also be gut feeling (clairsentience), an inner knowing (claircognizance) or listening to your inner voice (clairaudience).
If you’re a beginner in psychic development, you can begin by tuning into your own Higher Self. You don’t have to talk to disembodied spirits to do that.
Your Higher Self is already communicating with you constantly – whether you are perceiving it is another matter. If you’re stuck in a job you hate with no escape in sight, your Higher Self may whisper to you ‘you know this job isn’t for you…why don’t you pursue your long-term dream of becoming a writer?’
This sense of knowing that you’re not fulfilling your purpose by working in a job you hate is just as much part of your extra-sensory perception as clairvoyance is.
You can begin developing psychic awareness just by allowing your Higher Self to guide you. Take note of what feels ‘right’ to you, on a deep level and take action accordingly. It is one thing receiving intuitive guidance, but acting on that intuitive guidance is something else entirely and can take a great deal of courage at times.
Let’s have a look at the third myth:
Myth # 3: All psychics are clairvoyant by definition
Before I trained in spiritual healing, I thought that all psychics had to be clairvoyant. This was mostly because many professional psychics are natural clairvoyants. I’m not among them. My clairvoyance has developed over time, but my strongest intuitive gifts are still clairsentience (gut feeling, empathy, the ability to ‘feel’ what aligns with my spirit, among other things) and claircognizance (the ability to ‘download’ information from Spirit).
But I didn’t realize I had these gifts until I started my training. And I’m not alone in being primarily clairsentient and claircognizant. Several months ago, in my readings, I undertook to find out from clients’ Akashic soul records which psychic gifts they use to receive information from their Higher Self. I found that most clients do not primarily utilize the gift that we normally associate with being psychic – clairvoyance. Over the last several months around 35% of my clients have been primarily claircognizant (this means that their strongest natural psychic ability is claircognizance), 30% clairsentient, 30% clairaudient and only 5% of the people I read for were clairvoyant.
Many people haven’t heard of clairsentience and claircognizance (and few have heard of clairaudience), which is interesting because according to what I’ve seen over the past several months, these psychic gifts are so much more common than clairvoyance.
Does this mean that the people who aren’t naturally clairvoyant can’t be gifted psychics?
No, what it means is that most people have a different psychic skill set from the one we’re used to hearing about most – clairvoyance. But clairvoyance is not the only skill to develop. Clairsentience, claircognizance and clairaudience are equally valid intuitive ‘vehicles’ too.
So now when clients ask me “do you really think I could be psychic?” my answer is always yes, if you can do the following: identify your strongest psychic gift , honour and acknowledge the guidance you receive through that intuitive ‘vehicle’ and then make time to consciously develop it .
The rest will follow. Once you honour and develop your primary gift, you will find that other skills that once weren’t so natural to you will develop as well.
