Saturday 28 April 2012

Spiritualism.... Good and bad news of the week.... Spiritual Healing.... Church News....



The flu virus meant that I had to cancel bookings at the beginning of April and it was the 10th before I took my first service, which was at the Dalneigh Spiritualist Church in Inverness.  There is always a good turnout at this church, in fact a good turnout at all the churches in the north-east.  Spiritualism is always well supported in the NE.

The 12th saw me at the Arbroath Spiritualist Centre and again there was a good turnout.

The 16th – 20th we took a holiday the Isle of Wight travelling by coach.





 Spiritualists come from every walk of life.

Spiritualism is a place you will find thinking men and women coming together...

Spiritualism is a science, philosophy and religion that satisfy your logic, your mind and your heart. 

As the population contemplates the current conditions in the world today, they are seeking a greater understanding of the purpose of life and what can be done to improve individual life situations and the circumstances of the world.

Spiritualism gives a person the key that can be used to find the answers she/he seeks.

Spiritualism provides the knowledge that by using prayer and meditation, we can become more aware of our responsibilities to ourselves and to others. Through this inner awareness and guidance received through spirit communications, a person takes the necessary actions to improve his or her own life and contributes to the improved welfare of the entire human race.

Spiritualism is the KEY that sets humanity free! Free to live and grow in the physical through love and law; and free because we know that life is continuous, the spirit never dies. "There is no death, there are no dead."





 Sad news of the week; -

The BBC’s stark video footage of Tibetan monks and nuns setting themselves on fire, in protest against the Chinese’s treatment of the Tibetan people and the Tibetan way of life.  I have heard some say that what was shown was too stark, but as the persecution of the Tibetan’s has been going on for the past fifty years and little has been done to help the Tibetan people.  Maybe such horrific video footage will make ordinary people of the world sit up and notice, even if world leaders will not.



Good news of the week; -

Seeing all those runners in the London marathon doing their bit for charity.







 Several emails have been suggesting that I am neglecting the Healing side of Spiritualism on this blog.  I have to admit that I should have been commenting more on Spiritual Healing which is equally as important as the clairvoyance and philosophy.

I have said in the past that Spiritual Healing APPEARS to be the poor relation of Spiritualism.  In many of our churches the Healing Service is after the Divine Service and after a cup of tea.  Many will wait on for the tea and a chat but the numbers fall when it comes to the Healing Service.  In fact I know of those who have attended our churches for years but never once waited on for the Healing Service.  Never experiencing what such Healing was like.  Although I must say the numbers for Healing have increased greatly recently in recent years.

I have looked through emails to this site and picked out two questions on healing this week.

“G” asks – Does spiritualist healing involve massage or manipulation?

No.  Spiritualist Healing is administered by a simple application such as laying on of hands, or the direction of thought from a distance.  Massage and manipulation is not part of Spiritual Healing.

H – “Will I be asked to remove any clothing?”

Again the answer is no, with the possible exception of an outer coat, and then only for comfort.  The removal of clothing is completely unnecessary with this form of healing. Although you may be asked to remove spectacles.

I remember at a question and answer evening on Spiritualism, the heating in the hall was not working so we were all wrapped up in our outdoor clothing.  One gentleman asked roughly the same question as “H” and he was not convinced that Healing energies could get through to a patient wearing a lot of clothing.   All of a sudden his mobile phone rang.  This phone was in his shirt pocket and the signal had to go through a heavy overcoat and a jacket for the phone to ring out.  I mentioned the comparison to the phone signal and the power of Spiritual Healing but he was still not convinced.  I wonder if Spirit was trying to put a point over to him.

There are always arguments whether Spiritual Healing works or not.  Many cases are laid on the table by each side on this issue and it is like politics, each tries their best to destroy the evidence presented by the other.

 The medical profession must have got it wrong the first time around”   The number of times I have heard these words  when someone’s health has dramatically improved after receiving Spiritual Healing, could easily make one a little uneasy about  the ability of the medical profession.  But if we take into account that Spiritual Healing MAY have played a part in the patient’s improvement then, the medical profession’s reputation is quickly restored.   But on saying that – NO ONE should ever stop medical treatment and rely solely on Spiritual Healing as both can complement each other. 

Two cases I have recently heard about and this is not just hearsay.  There has been a big turnaround in two patient’s health after receiving Spiritual Healing, but neither of the patients would be willing to have their details all over the media.  A cop out some may say, not according to the patients and their families and friends.

But I prefer to stay away from the dramatic side of this and rely on my own judgment and the comments of patients and their families as far as this type of healing is concerned.

Here is one example; -

I constantly saw an elderly gentleman at many different Spiritualist Churches in the Glasgow area.  He was a poor looking soul, thin, no colour about his face and he always looked as if he was in pain. 

After coming in contact with him for many months he suddenly was absent from the churches I saw him at on a regular basis.  I wondered if he had passed over or decided to give Spiritualism a miss. 

Then one day I met him.  What a surprise I got, he had colour in his cheeks; the pain I always seemed to see in his eyes was gone.  He told me that his intake of painkillers had halved per week.  Not only did I notice the difference in him but his sensible words helped to show that Spiritual Healing could have been part of him having a better quality of life.

After no change in his condition for eight years he started going for Spiritual Healing.  Although at first there was no difference in his condition as the far as the pain was concerned, he immediately did feel more relaxed.    Then after a few months of Healing he suddenly realized he was taking fewer painkillers than he had done for the past eight years.  The intake of painkillers went down and down and at one stage he felt that he may be able to stop taking them altogether.  That has not happened and he now admits it never will as the injury he received all those years ago can never be repaired.  Neither the medical profession nor Spiritual Healing will bring him back to full health, between the two his quality of life had got much better.

I asked him what his family and GP thought of this improvement.  He said that he had no close family but his friends have been amazed at the change in him and his GP told him to keep up with his regular appointments for the surgery but also to keep going for Spiritual Healing.

On leaving him he said “You Spiritualist should do what you are good at – giving healing to the sick – and stop all this mumbo jumbo about talking to the dead”.

This comment goes to show that Spiritualism has many different facets and mean different things to different people…….





 Church news… …Two churches have been on the move… new venues for two churches in Glasgow

 White Dove Spiritualist Church

Toryglen Community Hall

199 Prospecthill Circus

Torygeln

Glasgow

G42 0LA

Service Thursday 7.30pm… Healing 8.50…

 ………………..

 The Culmodden Drive Spiritualist Church has not only moved premises but also changed its name.  You will now find Angela at

Lambhills Eternal Light Spiritualist Church
Lambhill Stables
Canal bank north
Lambhill bridge
Balmore rd
Lambhill
G22 6RD

Service Tuesdays 7pm

...................... 

And a church that could do with some support is

Angel Light Spiritualist Church

Govanhill Neighbourhood Centre,

Daisy St,

Glasgow.

G42 8JL

Church service Fridays 7.30pm,

So if you have spare time on a Friday please go along and you will receive a warm welcome from Nancy, Elizabeth and Christine.

Saturday 14 April 2012

Do Prayers Get Answered?.... Life - A Learning Process….. The Week's Good and Bad News...


24th March I returned from five days in Scarborough with no voice and flu like symptoms...

25th March – I had to cancel a coffee afternoon at Berkley Street, Glasgow. (SNU)

26th I felt bit better and made the trip to ASK Dunfermline.  This church is still coming to terms with the passing of two of its founder members.  Jock McArthur who was President and Tilda Wilson.

27th –It is always a pleasure to visit the Cumnock Spiritualist Church.

28th I was again driving down to South Ayrshire to a new church for me in Girvan.

30th – The virus was really taking hold and it was only a last minute decision to attend a 1 ½ day seminar in Oban on paranormal research.

31st – I just returned home in time to get changed and off to the New Dawn Spiritualist Church in Kilmarnock.

But by this time the flu type virus had taken hold and I had to cancel my bookings for over a week.

During this period I was in a car accident and luckily no one was injured.




Mike emails; -

“Do prayers work for you?  They never seem to be answered as far as my “family is concerned”.

I am sure everyone has prayed for help at least one time in their life and many will be certain that their prayers have not been answered.

We have to start looking at the content of our prayers.  What we will find is that most if not all of our prayers are connected with other people in one form or another.   Whether it is family, friends or those we see in the media who are in dire straits through lack of water food, are being persecuted or are in poor health. 

Who do we pray too?  “God” of course.  But the Supreme Being has many names and is different things to different people. 

Just think the dilemma The Supreme Being must have in answering all our prayers, especially if they are connected to others here on the earth plane.    For your prayer to be answered “God” may have to alter the life of another, even though that person may want to go in one direction but you are asking God that he/she goes in another direction.   So their free-will is taken from them.

When a medium stands on the platform of a Spiritualist Church to give a Spiritual Address, they should in theory not have made up an address before hand, but be inspired by spirit on that evening.  Spirit alone will know the needs of the congregation.  Questions they want answered and if the link is pure, all that will come out in the address.

There are some addresses where the link is so spot-on that it will cover the many needs of those in the congregation.  Usually on such a night the medium is enjoying the address as much as the congregation, as it will be the first time he/she will have heard it.    On such nights it can mean as much to myself as I hope it means to the congregation.

One address of the many addresses I have given over the years still is clear in my mind, even though I gave it over a decade ago. 

That evening as I stood up for the address the word “prayer’ came into my mind, and what was said, and the feedback might be the best way to answer Mike’s question.

If your prayers do not seem to be answered then take a look at what you are actually praying for.  The address went on to say, “pray” for the right thing to be done in certain situations, and not for what you to want to be done in these situations. 

It was over a year before I was back at that particular church and yet four people came up and spoke to me about that particular address.    

Two I will mention here; -

One lady said that she was praying almost every hour that her daughter and son-in-law would not get divorced.  After hearing my words she changed her prayers to “Please let the right thing be done in this situation”.  A few months later the pair did get divorced and yet the situation was not as dire as she expected.  The divorced couple did keep friendly even though they quickly had new partners.  Not only that, but the five of them, mother, daughter, ex-son-in-law and their new partners meet up for a coffee or a meal once in a while.

She went on to say “Now when I think about it the marriage would never have worked, as friends they will be great friends but they never could have had a happily married life”.

The other was of a young man who was homeless and said that he could put up with sleeping rough, but not with an empty stomach.  He knew that in six months there would be a job waiting for him if he kept out of trouble.  But when hungry he was sorely tempted to break the law and steal food.  He said that it was only a matter of time before this would happen. 

Well again after that address he changed his mode of prayer and got through those six months because there was a change in what he received when begging on the streets of Glasgow.

Instead of the odd £1 coin and small change he got when begging on the streets, when he really was hungry he started to be given the odd meal voucher or filled rolls and cups of coffee.  .  Before the change in prayer these were not existent when he was begging.  His story does have a happy ending because he did get the job and has not looked back since.

There is more to come as far as these two successes are concerned.  The mother then looked at life from different angles and is now doing voluntary work.  The young man plans to put something back into the community in the near future. 

All that from a spiritual address.  All that from spirit knowing what was suitable for the congregation that evening. 

No miracles but just little seeds planted in the minds of those seeking some guidance.  It is then up to them to decide if that little seed of knowledge will grow and bear fruit.

The feedback from the other two went in a different direction but still in the end a positive path. And I will give an account of them in my next blog.

This shows that churches that stop addresses are diluting spiritualism as a religion and also diluting the power of spirit.


All a Learning Process”
It is only through experiencing all manner of things, negative and positive that one can leave this life knowing a little more than when they entered it…
The more you learn… … The more equipped you will be for the next part of your existence…
For the next week… Look on everything… and I mean everything… as a learning process…
Think what you have to learn from this… and what you have to learn from that…
It will amaze you by the end of the week… how you will see so much… in a different light…
A whole new world…
A whole new dimension will open up to you…
You will see things like you have never seen them before…
Never give up… Never give in to the negative side of what unfolds in front of you
Alan…
The above comments were given in a trance circle in 2000 and forgotten about till a few weeks ago.
This gave a few of us an idea to ask four people to take heed of these words and see how they get on with being more aware of their surroundings for the next week.
To make it more interesting we decided to select four people from different walks of life; -

A spiritualist...
A lady who attends one of the main-stream churches every Sunday and takes part in a lot of church activities.
 An atheist who is manager in a large go-ahead business.
Someone who is unemployed.
In the next few blogs I will pass on to you their comments.

 
This week’s good news...
 With so much strife on our planet it was good to see the Pakistani President and the Indian Prime Minister standing side by side after talks...
........................................................................................................
The head of the UK’s leading cancer charity has said understanding of the disease is advancing “exponentially.
Describing a “golden era” of research, Harpal Kumar, the chief executive of Cancer Research UK, said there has been “an explosion in our understanding of what cancer is why it happens, why it doesn’t happen in some people and why it moves around the body”.
The cure for all types of cancer cannot come soon enough…

Bad news this week…

I will not go into details but the lady was attacked and blinded, she will never see her children growing up.  We should all send a few thoughts in this mother’s direction.



And once again the Grand National takes its toll on the race horse.

It is not just the fatalities during this race, just think of the pain and injury when we fall. So I wonder how many horses who ran in the Grand National today are injured and suffering at this moment?

TWO will never suffer again - as they are dead.

Fell - TEN

Pulled up for various reasons – FOUR.

Brought down – THREE.

Unseated rider – SEVEN.

Refused – ONE.  

One of the dead horses unseated it rider on the way down to the start and then was reluctant to walk to the first fence before the race.  Did the poor creature have a premonition?

............................................................................................................

Still gathering information about Jock McArthur and Tilda Wilson.




Here are the other statistics.

Fell - TEN

Pulled up for various reasons - FOUR

Unseated riders - SEVEN

Brought down - THREE

Refused – ONE

One of the dead horses, , unseated his rider on his way down to the start and then was reluctant to walk close to the first fence before the race started. the first fence. Did the poor creature have a preminition?




Unseated riders - SEVEN

Brought down - THREE

Refused – ONE

One of the dead horses, , unseated his rider on his way down to the start and then was reluctant to walk close to the first fence before the race started. the first fence. Did the poor creature have a preminition?





Tuesday 3 April 2012

I end up on the wrong side of a debate on Spiritualism... “Hereafter” not my cup of tea.... Topaz... Wise words from Jim Brown...




Sunday 11th February I attended the AGM at The Glasgow Association.  (SNU)

 12th it was voluntary work and then on to a discussion group where the topic for the evening “Do only the vulnerable in our society accept Spiritualism?”    More about this in a moment.

 14th - A trip to Perth Spiritualist Church (SNU) where there is always a great welcome from Ivy & Co

 15th – taking part with a few selected people in a “Psychometry experiment”.

 17th - I took the second of my six workshops at Somerset Place. (SNU)

 18th – I was off to Edinburgh Spiritualist Church (SNU) Albany Street.

 19th -24th – we took a small break and headed south east to Scarborough.







 The courtesy call I got to make sure I would fulfil my booking at a Debating Group should have left me a bit puzzled and I should have phoned back.  The secretary of the club chatted away about everything but what the debate was to be about.  My past visits to this club the themes have been loosely on Spiritualism and paranormal research, so maybe being a bit complacent I decided to go with the flow and did no preparation.



The secretary had been a bit devious in not giving me details of the evening, because even although the debate was about Spiritualism I was in the team trying to debunk our religion.  I was a bit uneasy about this but decided not to ask to change sides.  Gerry, the leader of the other team made in clear in the other debates that I attended with this group that he was against all religion.   So I would play it by ear and put as much effort into the debate as he did.  It turned out to be a most interesting evening as Gerry had put a lot of research into it and fought spiritualism’s corner well.   There could have been no better result at the end of the evening, seeing the change of roles, the vote was a tie and the chairman decided not to take the casting vote.

 I think it was a learning curve for the two of us who were ‘on the wrong side’ so to speak.  For the next few days I started looking at how those who cannot accept Spiritualism look at us and Gerry phoned me to say he was thinking in-depth in the opposite direction.




An unsigned email
Tom did you think the Clint Eastwood film “Hereafter” was anything like the real thing?
I seldom watch any TV programme or films that are connected with the spirit world.  Only two such pprogrammes that I watched were; -
 “Medium”, the first two series I felt were passable.  But after that I felt that each storyline had to be more successful that the last to keep good viewing figures. 
Ghost Whisperer” I also only watched the first two series but I did not abandon this programme because I felt it was going over the top it was more that I did not have time to watch television..
“The Lovely Bones” was the only film in this genre that I watched and I have no complaints about it.  I will just say say that it was thought provoking.
I find the real thing so much more interesting than fiction.




Maxine sent the following email
My daughter is now the proud owner of her first pony and they will soon be taking part in pony club activities.  I am a bit concerned for both of them.   I remember reading that there is a semi-precious stone that protects both rider and horse.  Can you help me please”?
Hi Maxine.  Sorry I have taken so long to get back to you on this as it took some time to trace this stone, but I eventually found the stone you were thinking off.  It is Turquoise. 
European Spiritual Myths from as far back as the middle ages have   believed that this stone could protect horses from danger and illnesses as well as the rider from any fall that might occur while riding.
There are many spiritual myths about Turquoise from all around the world and you may wish to research the many properties turquoise is said to possess.




As promised - more wise words from Jim Brown...

We would become more content with our lives, so instead of facing the world with a dissatisfied mind that is continually crying out for more and better material things we will transform our attitude so that whatever situation we are in we can feel happy and contented and our life will be more meaningful.

 In learning about spiritualism and Spiritual Enfoldment we have to be very practical and to the point without getting distracted into useless speculation.

 For instance, take the story of the man who was run down by a car. Before consenting to have any treatment for his injuries he insisted in knowing the name of the car owner, the type of car and the make presumably to make a claim for compensation.

 Perhaps he would die before learning the answers to a lot of unhelpful information. The crucial thing for him at that time was to be treated for his injuries immediately to prevent further complications.

 Likewise, while we are engaged in the development and learning of our inner self, if we allow ourselves to be sidetracked by useless speculation about irrelevant subjects that we can’t possible answer immediately then we are impeding our own advancement. It is much wiser and beneficial to get on with what is important.

 In Buddhism, they have a little story of the three faulty pots which is used to explain how obstructions can obstruct the learning process.

The first pot is sitting upside down therefore; nothing can be poured into it. This is like trying to reading a book while watching the television.

 There are so many distractions from the television that very little of what is being read goes into the mind.

The second pot is sitting upright but has a hole in the bottom. Something can be poured in but it doesn’t stay there for long. The book may be read with little attention but if we are asked sometime later, what it was about, we can’t remember.

 The third pot is also sitting upright but this one is very dirty. If we were to pour clean, fresh milk into it would stay there but it would become undrinkable. This can be compared to filtering what we read, through our own preconceived ideas. We won’t understand the subject referred to because we have polluted it with our own misinterpretations. 

 It can be difficult to set aside our preconceptions because sometimes we aren’t always aware that our ideas are prejudiced.

 When we have understood the spiritual way in its own context then we will be more successful in seeing how it corresponds with philosophy and science and other religions.

We should learn and practice spirituality according to our own abilities so that we improve the quality of our lives. In this way, we will gradually come to understand and appreciate the teachings that may have seemed difficult or unimportant.

 The goal in spiritualism is simplicity and clarity. With simplicity, we leave behind hypocrisy and selfishness, therefore letting impartial love and compassion grow in our minds. With clarity, we abandon the confusion of ignorance replacing it with direct perception of reality.

I will close by saying to those of you, who are new to spiritualism and may wish to develop your own awareness of spirit, be dedicated to your studies and understand our teachings.




I am still waiting on background information on Jock McArther and Tilda Wilson...