Are You Living as the Truest Version of Yourself?
There was a point during my recent conversation with Reverend Gurdeep Bhogal on Soul Sync where we started talking about authenticity.
Not the polished, slightly overused version of authenticity that gets thrown around online. I mean something much deeper.
Are we actually living as the person we came here to be?
It stayed with me after we finished recording.
Because I think an awful lot of us aren't.
And I'm not sure I always have either.
I've had several very different versions of a life already. I worked for Virgin Atlantic. I became a police officer. I built a business. And now, increasingly, mediumship has become the centre of my working life.
None of those previous chapters were a waste. Quite the opposite. I can see now how much of what happened along the way became part of the person and the medium I am today.
But there were certainly periods where I thought the next achievement was going to be the thing that finally made everything click.
A better job.
More money.
A more successful business.
The next milestone.
And I remember reaching a point where, financially and professionally, I had achieved things that a younger version of me would probably have thought meant I'd “made it”.
Yet I wasn't particularly happy.
That's quite a strange thing to admit when the world spends so much time telling us that those are precisely the things we're supposed to be chasing.
When something inside you knows
Gurdeep's own journey is completely different to mine.
She grew up in West London, went on to have a successful career with British Airways, eventually moved to America and — through the wonderfully unlikely route of meeting somebody on a dating website — found herself walking into the Spiritualist church where she is now a minister.
Her spiritual development eventually included a Kundalini awakening, mediumship, healing and a much deeper exploration of yogic wisdom.
What interested me wasn't only what happened to her.
It was the sense that, looking backwards, she could see a thread running through it all.
I think many of us can do that.
Life rarely announces a change of direction by putting a massive illuminated sign in front of us saying:
THIS IS YOUR SOUL'S PURPOSE. TURN LEFT HERE.
Sometimes it arrives as restlessness.
Sometimes something we've worked incredibly hard for suddenly doesn't feel important anymore.
Sometimes a relationship changes.
Sometimes life falls apart.
Sometimes we simply develop a nagging feeling that the person we're presenting to the world and the person underneath it all have drifted too far apart.
My own route into mediumship wasn't particularly neat or beautiful either.
There were periods of my life that were messy. There were choices I wouldn't make today. There were experiences that, at the time, I certainly wouldn't have described as part of some grand spiritual awakening.
But looking backwards is different.
I can see how those experiences made me question things.
They made me search.
And eventually they made me listen.
Mediumship has made me look at myself
One of the unexpected things about developing as a medium is just how much the journey turns you back towards yourself.
Initially, you think mediumship development is going to be about learning how to communicate with the spirit world.
And of course it is.
But eventually you realise there doesn't appear to be a great problem with the spirit world's ability to communicate.
We're often the complicated bit.
Our fear gets involved.
Our need to be right.
Our expectations.
Our confidence.
Our past experiences.
Our desire to impress somebody or prove something.
I remember earlier in my development going into readings almost mentally braced for impact.
Right. I need to get this right.
Hardly the most expansive state of consciousness.
I've come to believe that one of the hardest things about mediumship is actually its simplicity.
The more I've learned to get myself out of the way, the more interesting the work has become.
And that process inevitably asks you to look at other areas of your life too.
Where am I acting from fear?
Where am I trying to control everything?
Where am I being unnecessarily hard on myself?
Where am I living according to somebody else's idea of who I should be?
They're not always comfortable questions.
We're connected to everything except ourselves
Another part of our conversation really struck me.
We live in probably the most “connected” period humanity has ever known.
I can record a conversation with somebody thousands of miles away, publish it, and within hours somebody in America, Australia or another part of the world can be listening to it.
It's extraordinary.
And yet I wonder whether, underneath all that connectivity, we're becoming less connected to ourselves.
We spend enormous amounts of time looking at other people's lives.
Other people's success.
Other people's bodies.
Other people's homes.
Other people's spiritual practices.
Even other people's versions of happiness.
We live, as I said to Gurdeep, in the land of the airbrush.
It becomes very easy to start editing ourselves too.
Perhaps that's why I've become increasingly interested in the word connection.
Because mediumship, at its heart, is connection.
Connection between two people.
Connection with somebody in the spirit world.
Connection with love.
And, perhaps most importantly, connection with ourselves.
You are allowed to be here
Gurdeep also spoke beautifully about the physical experience of being alive.
There can sometimes be a tendency within spiritual circles to become so interested in the spirit world that this world starts feeling like somewhere we're simply waiting to leave.
I don't believe that's what we're here for.
Whatever you believe about the soul, reincarnation, consciousness or what happens after physical death, you are here now.
In this body.
In this life.
Having this particular experience.
And life moves incredibly quickly.
I've been reminded of that very personally recently while going through my dad's belongings following his passing.
You see photographs, handwritten notes, objects from decades ago and suddenly whole sections of a life are sitting there in front of you.
Things that once seemed permanent become memories.
It has made me think even more about what it means to actually be here while we're here.
Not constantly waiting for life to begin once something else happens.
Not waiting until we're more successful.
Thinner.
Richer.
More confident.
More spiritually developed.
More whatever.
Just here.
Perhaps the work is remembering
Towards the end of the episode, Gurdeep talked about the idea that underneath everything, our essence is love.
I like that.
And perhaps a large part of spiritual development isn't becoming something new at all.
Perhaps it's remembering.
Remembering what matters.
Remembering how to listen.
Remembering that sensitivity isn't necessarily a weakness.
Remembering that we don't need to become a copy of somebody else in order to belong.
And remembering that this slightly chaotic, imperfect human experience is part of the spiritual journey too.
I don't think living authentically means you'll suddenly wake up every morning completely certain of your direction.
I certainly don't.
I still question things. I change my mind. I get things wrong. I have days where I feel incredibly connected and others where I'm probably more interested in making a cup of tea and watching something ridiculous on television.
That's being human.
But perhaps there's a quieter question we can keep returning to:
Does the life I'm building feel like me?
Not the version of me somebody else expected.
Not the version that looks most impressive from the outside.
Me.
And if the answer is increasingly yes, perhaps we're closer to where we need to be than we realise.
Listen to the conversation
My full Soul Sync conversation with Reverend Gurdeep Bhogal explores her Kundalini awakening, mediumship, consciousness, yogic wisdom, breathwork, healing, authenticity and what it might really mean to live from the soul.
[Listen to the episode here]
A personal reading with Jason
If something in this Insight has resonated with where you are in your own life, I offer mediumship readings, psychic tarot readings and blended psychic & mediumship readings, both online and from Bristol.
The intention of a reading isn't to tell you how to live your life. For me, it's about connection — whether that's connection with someone you love in the spirit world, with your own intuition, or simply seeing something you're moving through from a different perspective.