My landlady Linda has been telling me about this show, Long Island Medium. The medium is a woman named Theresa, with a big personality, two kids, a husband and full time business doing readings. The show basically follows her around her day, and Linda has been watching it a season at a time. She described Theresa as a psychic in long island who has no control over who talks to her when, and she does readings everywhere she goes.

This morning I pulled up an episode on youtube and gave it a watch. Wow, Theresa is incredible, and I really enjoyed the show. One interesting part about Theresa’s approach is this “I can’t help it!” thing she has, she’ll just read for anyone, everywhere. I want to generalize and say, “Most psychics don’t do that,” but how do I know what most psychics do? I just know what I do, and I turn the volume down or off for most of my day. I actually don’t want to be reading people as I go about my day, and when I do medium work, it involves a half hour to an hour of preparation.

Connecting people with their loved ones in heaven is a humbling privilege; it’s something that’s really beyond the identity of the medium. It was fun to see Theresa surprising herself with hits, which happens to me too. You’re going into every reading blind, and it’s miraculous every time a connection is undeniably made.

The neat thing about meditation practice is that you can develop this habit of observing yourself, and I’ve started learning things about myself in this way. One thing I noticed as I was watching the show, was that I was automatically connecting empathetically with Theresa’s clients, which is just a reflexive thing. My heart went out to these people who cried as they connected with the loved ones. I was tearing up. I noticed that Theresa just kept going and was unaffected by their tears… and then I remembered that when I’m doing a reading, I’m just like Theresa – focused on the message.

Something clicked in my mind. When I do readings, I get into “medium mode”. On a reading day I’ll be careful with what I eat, avoiding foods I know bring me down or wind me up. I’ll meditate before I talk to the first person, in order to address my own thought stream, set aside worries and ground my energy – just getting my ducks in a row. Once I make that connection, it’s like a channel opens up inside of me, and there’s this circuit running through my body. The energy from this circuit pushes all of the usual parts of my emotional experience aside, and it becomes all about the message. I’m so focused on what I’m seeing, hearing, feeling as communication, the empathetic/emotional connection to the people around me just isn’t possible.

That doesn’t mean that I don’t care, it just means that my personality, my own experience, is set aside so I can make room for this other person’s message. It’s a very pleasant and safe place to be, completely protected from everything else in the world.

And then I thought, maybe that’s why Theresa says she can’t turn it off. Maybe she just lives in that safe place, all the time. If I were to walk about my whole day, always in medium mode, I’d feel pretty safe, I’d probably have a lot of energy all the time. But I’d feel cut off from the rest of the world, and I feel like I’d be missing out on a lot of the things I enjoy about my day-to-day experience right now. No, constant medium mode is not for me.

But Theresa, she does many readings every day. She’s always in medium mode. Her work involves a lot of putting herself out there, a lot of energy. Maybe, leaving the light on is why she can do what she does.

I used to have opinions about mediums and psychics who just walk up to people on the street and start telling them about their lives. At some point, I must have set that judgment aside. I think Theresa’s show would’ve annoyed the crap out of me last year, I would’ve written some entry about ethics and what she “should” be doing. None of that is coming up for me now, and that’s just a change within myself which I’m quietly observing.

George, I feel you there my friend. What do you have to say about all this?

Did you know (young girl in his family – daughter? Niece?) is psychic? She’s quite gifted; I’m very (proud of her, filled with great love and admiration.) I visit her (when she meditates or thinks before she goes to sleep.) He shows me her at fifteen, and flashes to her grown up, in her twenties. I think he’s saying he used to visit her every night, and she’d talk to him before she went to sleep. Sometimes she’d think it was her imagination, but she’s getting ready to open up again. She’s just getting her feet on the ground.

So while I was typing that, I got this head rush of dizziness and a sign on the wall fell to the floor.

Shows me this young woman wading slowly into a swimming pool, as she’s wading into her mind’s potential, and it’s also a symbol of all of us wading into our – I heard the word “awakening”, and another head rush dizziness.

George, what is with this dizziness, You’re feeling it / me stronger / you’re getting stronger. It’s like a pull behind my sinus, tugging my head to the side. He laughs, it’s like he’s pulling my head around to face him, in an energetic sense. That’s what the feeling is.

It returns to (what I was saying before) Awakening to your full potential.

You know George, anything that I feel has become a buzzword, I feel this resistance to – I don’t like feeling like I’m just jumping on some new age band wagon:

Laughs – what if that wagon is (going someplace you want to be?)

George, why do I feel like I want to do this alone? I’ve always been a bit of a loner.

Only you can answer that.

I’m sorry, I think I’ve sidetracked this conversation – you wanted to talk about LIM? Theresa? Yes – you know, she’s talked with The Beatles (George and John) – her family really didn’t believe her. Shows me Theresa waving her hand at John and saying “Just leave me alone!”

That’s funny. Yes, we found it amusing. Shows me Theresa at John’s wake – was she there in New York when he died? Yes, and she was trying to get him, and she was telling him to go to the light. John just popped in later to thank her for that. She helped him. (George shows me this little skit, of John popping in front of Theresa, telling her about that, thanking her for being at his wake, and she has this Beatles fan moment of “holy moley I must be crazy now!” It’s funny, George shows me this lady who talks to dead people constantly, all the time, is not comfortable talking to famous dead people. That’s where she gets scared.)

Huh, maybe I should schedule a reading with her eh? That would be fun. That would be awesome actually.

So, dear readers, it’s Christmas time. Here in town, I’m doing a discounted reading day, 20 minutes for $20, so that locals have an opportunity to connect with their loved ones before Christmas. I’ll do something similar for you folks in the New Year, but first:

I’m going to give a free Christmas reading to one of you out there, this weekend! To enter, send an email to: tofinopsychic with the subject line “Hello from Heaven”. The winner will be selected randomly, and announced this Friday – everyone who emails me will automatically have a spot reserved for them, if they choose, for the next Readings for Readers event in January 2013.

Merry Christmas, everyone.