February 11^th 2013 (Monday)

I’ll cut to the chase. No preamble about Tim’s lateness or my mental note to drive next week.

Zoe was back, and she facilitated the circle. She’d laid out a large purple cloth on which were candles, crystals and seven pieces of paper representing the chakras. After the opening prayer she explained that we would be contacting our guides though meditation and later doing some work with photographs.

The instruction was to meditate for fifteen minutes with the intention of contacting our guides. She explained for Tim’s sake how to open up the chakras, and, to the sound of quiet music we invited our guides to draw near.

I got nothing. No one even came close. No little old lady, no Native American, no ancient African warrior. Not a bean, nil, zero, zilch. Other people got stuff. Either discovered new guides or reconnected with their established ones. Even Tim got someone who he thought could be a guide.

In the following meditation she asked us to think about someone in the group we would like to get a message for, and also to be aware that our guides often speak to us through an intermediary. At that instant my phone which I’d put on silent began to vibrate. I made a mental note to check who it was when the meditation finished. She also asked us to open our eyes when we got something.

I set the intention to get a message for Sam who was sitting opposite me. Well, I must have been there for ten whole minutes getting absolutely nothing, when my mind began drifting to the magenta card I’d got earlier, and I was reflecting on how often I pull it, or it fell out the pack at me. Then the name Petra popped into my head and I focused on it for a while, happy that at least that something had come that had nothing to do with me, as I don’t know a Petra. I went back to focusing on the magenta card and had a vague sense of something to do sleeplessness, but no more guidance than that.

I was still waiting for something profound to happen when Zoe asked me to open my eyes, and I realised that everyone else had already opened theirs. I felt like the dunce in the class. When it came to feedback time she skipped over me as we went round the circle. People got amazing messages for each other. Incidentally no-one got a message for me. She came back to me last.

‘Well, I didn’t really get much.’ I hesitated.

‘I guessed as much as you didn’t open your eyes. That’s why I left you till last,’ she admitted, deepening my sense of uselessness.

‘Did you get anything at all?’

‘I got the name Petra.’ I said, hoping someone would leap up and say, ‘I can take that,’ and tell some fantastic story associated with the name. But everyone just looked at me blankly.

‘I also kept getting a lot of magenta,’ I said, and scanned the group for a take up. Again nothing. I didn’t add that what I was actually seeing wasn’t diffused magenta like some others have described, but specifically the card from the pack which also has the words ‘connect to you deepest inner knowing’ written on it.

I was losing confidence rapidly by now and muttered something about lack of sleep’. Zoe was about to move on when from out of nowhere I turned to Sam and said, ‘Have you been having difficulty sleeping?’

BINGO!

‘I have terrible trouble sleeping,’ he said. ‘Either I can’t get to sleep or I wake up in the early hours of the morning and can’t go back to sleep.’

‘What do you do when that happens?’ I asked, like I was some expert on insomnia.

‘Make a drink of coffee,’ he answered to horrified gasps, ‘or I read a book or watch a bit of tele.’

Once we got past the general advice from everyone about how bad coffee is if you want to sleep, I heard myself telling him that what spirit wants him to do is meditate. That the reason he can’t sleep is because he needs to go and connect with his inner guidance, his inner knowing.’

‘I’m terrible at meditating,’ he protested.

‘How about if you re-phrase that and say ‘I’m improving my meditating skills every day?’ I asked, recognising that he was perpetuating an unhelpful view of himself and therefore keeping himself there.

‘But I can’t do anymore than about five minutes when I’m on my own,’ he insisgted.

‘Well, that’s a start. If the next time you do six minutes you have improved. Congratulate yourself and affirm that you’re improving all the time.’

‘See, you did get something after all.’ Mary said, and I relaxed a little.

As Zoe began to explain about how to read from photographs I sat back and marvelled at the way spirit works. I had all but convinced myself that what I was picking up was useless bits of information and when it hadn’t made sense I was prepared to discard it. I guess that’s how some mediums must feel when they ask a sitter if something makes sense and they say ‘no’.

The photo reading exercise was of a real live couple. We were initially given no more than that. The photo was passed around and we were asked to ‘tune in’ and using all our senses try to pick up anything we could from the picture about the two people.

Some people picked up that the man was ill, which Mary confirmed. Others elaborated on the extent of his illness and made suggestions on how long he had to live, still others talked about the lack of closeness between the two, some talked about their characters and the way if affects their relationship. Tim is a natural at this, and seems to have the confidence to say what he’s picking up, usually prefixed with ‘I’m new to all this…’

After about six people had had a go, Mary (who was acting as a participant as Zoe was running the circle) asked us to think about the future for the woman.

I was last but one to get the photo. As soon as I held it I got a strong pulsing pain in the front of my head. My throat became very tight and tickly and I had to reach for a glass of water to soothe the coughs that were bubbling up.

‘Does this woman suffer from headaches?’ I asked.

‘She used to suffer from terrible migraines.’ Mary answered, ‘but not any more.’

I knew intuitively that the pain in my head wasn’t associated with the past. It was definitely located in the future as that’s what Mary had asked us to think about.

‘I think when the man dies her migraines will return, but they won’t be as prolonged as previously. She will get them under control reasonably quickly, but they will be very intense for a while.’

My attention moved to my throat, and I knew that there was creativity she’s been suppressing that will find an outlet when the man dies. I already knew she was a painter from information that came out earlier, but the word writer came into my head. I wanted to say she will write, but I wondered weather I was thinking that because I’m a writer, so I asked instead, ‘Is there something she wants to do creatively that she’s not doing now?’

‘Well, she wants to try her hand at singing,’ Mary said.

‘That’s it,’ I said eagerly, relieved that I’d got something else right.

‘But what she really wants to do is to write,’ she added.

I couldn’t believe it. Why didn’t I go with what I got? Why do I keep censoring it? I shared my original thought and asked the question out loud.

‘Why do I censor?’

‘Because you don’t trust it yet,’ Zoe suggested, ‘at the moment you still think its you, and nobody wants to make a fool of themselves. But that’s what the circle is here for. To help you build your confidence. It will come with practice.’

We closed with another trance demonstration from Zoe. Again the altered breathing, the turkey neck movements and the same male voice as last time, slow, measured, precise. He thanked us again for agreeing to help in this way and warned us about the dangers of going off too quickly before our skills are properly developed. He said there is much healing that we can do but that humility and patience are vital qualities to enable us to serve safely.

And the person who had called me during the meditation was… my husband.