You have a job you’re good at, and there may be plenty about it you enjoy. The mortgage gets paid. Your income supports your family, perhaps pays your children’s school fees, and gives you a sense of security you’ve worked hard to create.
Yet something within you keeps asking for your attention.
It might be a longing to do something more creative. A growing interest in your spiritual life. A wish to work differently, to feel less constrained, or to give a part of yourself some room after years of putting it aside.
You might even feel guilty for wanting change. With so much to be grateful for, how do you explain that you still feel unfulfilled?
That tension sits at the heart of my conversation with medium and teacher Albert Krikken on Soul Sync. We talk about mediumship and trusting spirit, but we also explore a very human question: how do you find the courage to be yourself when other people, and perhaps you, have become used to a particular version of your life?
Listen to the Soul Sync conversation
The Courage to Be Yourself: Trusting Spirit with Albert Krikken
Albert and I explore the expectations we carry, the fear of judgement, the loneliness that can accompany change, and the relationships with spirit that have helped us find our own direction.
Why success can still leave you feeling unfulfilled
In our conversation, Albert reflects on how much of his pursuit of success was connected to acceptance. He spoke about qualifications, career progress and earning more, and the hope that these things would help him feel good enough.
I recognised something of myself in that.
I remember the launch party for a new office during my years running a recruitment business. I had put a huge amount into it. There was even a wine bar and a ten-foot living moss wall. People were congratulating me and telling me how successful I was.
Privately, I was struggling to feel what they assumed I must be feeling.
I had kept moving the point at which I thought I would finally be happy. Another milestone, more growth, the next achievement. When I reached those places, the sense of fulfilment I expected still hadn’t arrived.
That experience made me question the definition of success I was living by.
A reliable income and meaningful responsibilities matter. So does how it feels to inhabit your own life. Feeling unfulfilled despite success can be an invitation to look more closely at what your achievements provide, and what still needs attention.
Where do you feel interested, engaged and able to express yourself? How much space does your week make for those things?
What being your authentic self means in everyday life
For me, authenticity involves being honest about what matters to you, and gradually allowing your choices to reflect it.
That can be surprisingly difficult when you’re very good at meeting expectations.
You may be the dependable one, the successful one, the person who never makes a fuss. Perhaps you have become so practised at that role that it takes a while to recognise what you want beneath it.
Albert describes the difficulty of letting people who knew his professional life see his mediumship. I understand that hesitation. For years, I kept those parts of my own life very separate because I worried about how people would respond.
Being more open about my mediumship meant allowing something deeply important to me to become visible.
For someone else, authenticity might begin with admitting they want to study, asking for a different way of working, returning to something creative, or being honest about a boundary.
It helps to make the question specific: where in your life do you feel able to speak and act as yourself, and where do you feel you have to keep editing who you are?
The courage it took to leave the police and my business
When I left the police, I was in a very difficult situation. Being myself within that environment had become painful. Leaving meant stepping away from a familiar role and facing the uncertainty of what came next.
That took a leap of faith.
Years later, I faced another significant decision when I stepped away from the business I had spent ten years building. The circumstances were different, but once again I had to consider who I was beyond the work people associated with me.
These decisions carry so much more than a change of job title. They can affect your sense of identity, your relationships and the way you understand your place in the world.
I know how easy it is to describe a leap of faith neatly afterwards. Living through one involves questions that may remain unanswered for a while.
My relationship with the spirit world played an important part in my more recent decision. I felt guidance from my grandfather, and I had come to recognise how meaningful mediumship was to me. Trusting that relationship helped me act on what I was already coming to understand about my life.
I still experience doubt. Making a decision that feels true to you can involve uncertainty as well as conviction.
Listening to the yearning for change
A longing for change deserves curiosity. Understanding it takes more than deciding that everything must go.
You might enjoy your work while needing more time for another part of your life. You might want a different role, a more supportive environment, or a chance to explore an interest that has never been given much room.
Try putting the longing into ordinary language.
“I want a different life” is a large, difficult thing to respond to. “I miss making things,” “I want to help people more directly,” or “I’m tired of hiding this part of myself” gives you something you can begin to explore.
You might write about these questions:
What do I keep returning to when I have time to think?
Which parts of my life do I genuinely want to keep?
What am I doing mainly because I fear disappointing someone?
What would I like to experience more of in an ordinary week?
Give yourself room to answer without turning every thought into an immediate decision.
Trusting your intuition when you are afraid of change
When I asked Albert about living in alignment, he spoke about the sense of energy, motivation and connection he experiences when something feels right to him.
That offers a useful place to begin reflecting. I also think our feelings deserve time and context. Excitement, fear and a strong desire for relief can all be present when we’re considering change.
In my own life, learning to trust my intuition has involved noticing patterns: the interests that keep returning, the work I feel drawn towards, and the situations in which I repeatedly feel unable to be myself.
I believe spirit can offer guidance. I also believe the choices we make remain ours to consider carefully.
You can write down an impression, return to it after some space, talk it through with someone thoughtful, and explore it through experience. Allowing questions into that process gives you more to work with.
You can also explore what matters to you without sharing my understanding of spirit. Honest reflection, practical information and trusted company can all help you find a way forward.
How to begin making a change when people depend on you
If your income supports a household, the practical questions are real. They deserve a place in the conversation about your future.
A first step can be small enough to take while you continue meeting those responsibilities.
Name the change you want to explore. Be as specific as you can. Taking an evening course is a clearer starting point than expecting yourself to discover your entire life purpose.
Identify what needs to remain steady. Consider the commitments and people affected by your choices. Talk with those involved about what might be possible and what needs more thought.
Give the interest some real experience. Attend a class, speak to someone doing the work, volunteer, or set aside regular time for a creative project. Notice how you feel when you engage with the reality of it.
Choose someone you can speak honestly with. Look for a person who will listen and ask useful questions. A supportive conversation can include both encouragement and a careful look at the difficulties.
Return to what you learn. After taking a step, ask what it revealed. You may want to continue, adjust your approach, or discover that a smaller change meets the need you were feeling.
Progress can be quiet. You may be building confidence and understanding long before there is a dramatic announcement to make.
When change affects your sense of belonging
One of the most moving parts of Albert’s story was his honesty about loneliness.
He spoke about friendships falling away and Christmases spent alone. He also described finding meaningful connections through mediumship and meeting his partner at the Arthur Findlay College.
I have known that uncertainty around belonging too: wondering who understands you as your life and interests change.
There can be sadness in recognising that a familiar relationship no longer feels the same. There can also be room for an existing friendship to grow as you become more open about yourself.
I would be careful about assuming that everyone who questions a change is against it. Sometimes people need help understanding. Sometimes their concerns deserve consideration. And sometimes we need company beyond our familiar circle, where we can explore something without feeling we have to explain every part of it first.
Being yourself can involve allowing people to know you more fully, and giving yourself opportunities to find that connection.
A question to take away
Albert’s closing invitation was to have “the courage and the audacity to be yourself”.
What stayed with me was that he extended it to everyone, whether mediumship forms part of their life or not.
You may choose to make a significant change. You may discover that there is a great deal you want to keep, alongside one important part of yourself that needs more room.
Both possibilities deserve an honest hearing.
So here is something to think about:
If you allowed your own needs, interests and sense of meaning a fuller place in your decisions, what might you begin to do differently?
You can listen to my full conversation with Albert in the episode above. There is much more in his story, including the relationship with his mother that brought him to mediumship, automatic writing, and his experience of learning to trust spirit.
Explore more conversations through Soul Sync, or visit Upcoming Events for opportunities to join us. You can also join my mailing list at the bottom of the homepage for new episodes, gatherings and resources.
The Courage to Be Yourself: Trusting Spirit with Albert Krikken
Soul Sync with Jason Paul · Interview transcript
Edited for readability from the interview transcript. Fillers, repeated phrases and unclear fragments have been removed, and obvious transcription errors corrected. This is an edited transcript, not a word-for-word record. The separately recorded introduction and outro are not included. Timestamps refer to the produced episode.
00:05:12Meeting Albert Krikken
Jason Paul: Albert, lovely to have you on Soul Sync. Welcome!
Albert Krikken: Thank you, Jason. Thank you for having me.
Jason Paul: To begin with, tell us about you, because you're a medium and a teacher, and you've been in this world for 16 years now.
Albert Krikken: Presently active and aware, 16 years, yes.
Jason Paul: Active and aware: that's an interesting couple of words, isn't it?
Albert Krikken: Yes, because are we born as mediums? Are we cultivated as mediums? When is the point where the awareness sets in of who we really are, to the fullest extent of our mediumistic abilities?
I remember going back as early as when I was 11 years old. We had this little summer cabin on a peninsula in a big lake in Holland. On Saturday mornings, I used to go on my bike for one and a half hours to that summer cabin and just write letters to myself, with questions and answers. Why are my brothers bullying me? What do I want to be when I grow up?
I wrote down whatever came to me, and I thought I was writing letters with myself. Now I understand that it could very well also have been influenced by spirit. That was beautiful, but it was really when my mother started to get very ill, I think in 2008, that I thought, “I can't lose her. I just can't lose her.”
So I went to a medium for the first time in my life. She brought in so many amazing things. I thought, “Wow, this is incredible.” I said to her, “Whatever you're doing, I want to learn that as well.” She's a good friend of mine now. She said, “I've been developing this for 20 years. You can't just do this from today to tomorrow.”
I said, “Well, lady, I have 20 months. Teach me all you know, and refer me to the best teachers and the best places, because I can't lose my mother.” My mother was all I had in my life. There were other people there, but they were not giving me that connection and that love.
A few weeks later, I was at the Arthur Findlay College with Matthew Smith, and he said, “Okay, let's go.”
Jason Paul: I've got a very close relationship with my mum. What first brought me into mediumship, my granddad being a medium to one side, was that my mum and I kept talking about death on a holiday. I said to her, “I feel absolutely petrified that if anything was to happen to you, I don't know if I would be able to cope.”
It's interesting what you say about going into mediumship to continue that relationship with your mum from the other world, because that's a big reason why I kept going back on courses and developing my mediumship, especially in the early days. It was the only time I would hear from my granddad, my nan, and, in more recent times, my dad.
My granddad has been passed away a long time now. It must be about 15 years. I still feel as close to him now as when he was alive. That probably sounds crazy to a lot of people, but he's become my guide. I don't know what it's like for you and your mum now that she is in the other world, how that relationship has developed and evolved.
00:09:10When loved ones become guides
Albert Krikken: Very similar to your story with your grandfather. I'm smiling now at my younger self when thinking back. When I was first at the college, I was a message hunter. I wanted to develop my mediumship to have a connection with my mum, but I was really going from course to course thinking, “I hope she's coming in again.”
That was giving me so much fulfilment and connection, and that has grown throughout the years. Now she very much feels more like a guide. It's not Mummy; it's Mum. Because on her side, she's been developing, training, learning and growing.
It's beautiful that our loved ones can grow into our guides and continue their life, not seen by us, but very much felt. She feels more tangible to me now, almost, energetically, than when she was alive.
Jason Paul: It's interesting, because it took me a long time to identify that my granddad was a guide. It goes back to trust. It took me a long time to have the trust to know that he is a guide.
Because he was a medium, I feel that his role in the spirit world is as the guide who acts as the interpreter to people who want to come through and use me as their medium. Obviously, I'll never know until I go back there, but I believe he lines people up and trains them to help them communicate best through me.
Like you said, your mum has evolved and developed, and you've noticed that yourself. It's the same with my granddad, my nan and my dad. For that very reason, it allows me to understand and believe that they have to work in the other world as much as we do for them to come through.
Even my nan, in the very early days of me developing my mediumship, would speak through my granddad. Now you can't stop her. She will barge another spirit person out of the way to have her turn!
How have you noticed that relationship develop with your mum? How did you come to the realisation and the knowing that she is there, guiding you in many more ways?
Albert Krikken: That's a very good question. Back to your grandma, and the communicators and their skills and training levels on the other side: as a medium yourself, you must have realised that one day you feel like the best medium in the world, because the communicator comes through so strongly with so much evidence, and you just feel the energy. The next day you think, “Wow, I need to get onto some courses, because nothing is coming through.”
We don't always have to blame ourselves. The communicator really plays such an integral role in bringing through a good connection.
With my mum, first I just got messages through other mediums. Then some faint feedback or messages when I was communicating with her myself. I do that through automatic writing, because there I feel I get out of the way most easily. When I'm the medium for other sitters, it goes the usual way. But with my own mum, I feel it takes me more out of the way when I apply the automatic writing approach.
That has deepened. How it evolves is that there's more content, more depth, more philosophy, more direction and more guidance behind it. It went from “I'm okay” and “I feel this or that is important for you”, just some basic, top-level bits of feedback or guidance, to something much deeper.
It's almost like she is looking over my shoulder into my life. She knows what's going on, what directions are available to me, and what might be at the end of the tunnel. Which, of course, is always light, Jason.
00:14:04Automatic writing and surrender
Jason Paul: I haven't done a huge amount of automatic writing, and it is something that interests me. There are going to be people listening who don't necessarily understand what automatic writing is. From what I understand, you're going into some kind of trance-like state.
Albert Krikken: Yes.
Jason Paul: Then you're surrendering to allow what comes through to come through. How did you start developing that with your mum? One of the big difficulties people can find is when it happens to be their own family members. You can have a medium who's very good at bringing through messages for other people, but when it comes to connecting to someone they know and love, the rational mind comes in, and it's difficult.
How did you develop that with your mum, and have that level of trust and surrender to allow those messages and guidance to come through?
Albert Krikken: Easier said than done, right?
Jason Paul: Yes.
Albert Krikken: Getting out of the way of your own mind: that's 90% of mediumship, ultimately, when you have established a connection. That's what Eileen Davies has boiled it down to: just get out of the way and give it to spirit.
Over the years, I have trained myself, or tried to train myself and learn, to get rid of the ego, expectation, bias and hope, and just get into that mildly entranced state where it happens to you; you don't happen to it. You just let it flow.
In that state, I'm not writing with my mum. I'm just writing. I allow that to flow through me, through my hand, and go onto paper. When I'm done and I get out of that light entrancement, then I read what she wrote.
I would prepare the questions beforehand, or nothing at all, and just write in complete surrender. Because I know that if I don't surrender to the process, and I think, “Okay, now I'm writing with my mum,” then I'm so much in my mind and in expectancy that it doesn't flow as well.
Jason Paul: It's an interesting point, isn't it? It is that expectation and trying to control something before you go in that creates resistance and friction. There's something even about the act of trying that puts a block there. You've got to get out of the way and be able to stand to one side.
I think with mediumship, if you're going in with an expectation, first of all you're actually limiting the spirit person. It takes a long time as a medium to overcome that and realise it, because in every other aspect of our life, trying is what we are taught to do. We're conditioned from a very young age, even in school: try, try, try. If you want to make anything of your life, try. If you want to get anywhere and have a job, try. Mediumship: stop trying, because it creates a block.
You've gone through that development of automatic writing, and I've heard so many amazing stories of people who've written books. So many books on trance have been channelled through automatic writing. It's something I very much want to develop myself, but for me, it's having the ability to get out of the way.
00:17:45From business success to mediumship
Jason Paul: Before your mum passed to the world of spirit, you were very much immersed in the business world, chasing success and money, like lots of us. How did you go from that world to mediumship? I was in a very similar world, and I've only recently left that world myself.
Albert Krikken: Well, good for you.
Jason Paul: I wonder why my mediumship has taken off since leaving. It's hardly surprising, because there was always residual stress, a million and one things going on in the back of my mind, and I was never truly present, even when I was trying to be present. But there we go again: the word “trying”.
Albert Krikken: Exactly. Trying is forcing. I sympathise with your transition as well, because we cannot become our new selves when we're still our old selves. We cannot aspire to become a fully new self, the way that maybe our own soul has destined it to be, if we hold on to everything that has been dragging us down, mentally, emotionally or spiritually.
For me, I never cared about money. My father did. I never cared about success. My environment did. So I thought, “To be loved, to be accepted, to be good enough, I will do that MBA. I will try to do well at work. I will try to make more money.”
But a part of me was really thinking, “If I make enough money, then I'm free to leave this.” Of course, that does not work, because you're still connected to the old world.
00:20:00A dark night of the soul
Albert Krikken: We all have these processes. I think they call it the dark night of the soul, where suddenly everything collapses on you. For me, everything collapsed: job, money, my mum got ill, my father got ill. I realised, “This is not doing it for me anymore.”
I think Eckhart Tolle said he wasn't able to live with his old self anymore, so he had to leave his old self and his old world behind. I think he sat on a bench in Regent's Park for two years until the new self really came along.
For me, there was a shock moment, because I'm an optimist, I'm positive, and in one moment, Jason, I just thought, “I can't live this life anymore.” Literally, I was thinking the faster it ends, the better it is.
That's where I got on my knees. For the first time, maybe the second time in my life, because I'm not a very religious person, I knelt down at night in front of my bed and said, “God, sorry, we haven't spoken for a while. But I can't live anymore. This is too heavy, this is too dark. I don't see a future anymore.” Everything was black. “If you could please just give me one sign that life is worth living, then I will follow you with all my heart for as long as I live.”
I didn't give the “if not” bit, because I trusted that something would happen. In the middle of the night, the most magical moment happened that I've ever experienced. I saw and felt so much light and love. It's indescribable.
The next morning, I woke up with happy tears in my eyes, and suddenly I saw my life in full clarity. Not the future, but the easiness of dissolving the current life. “Oh, this is not important. The job's not important.” Everything started falling into place.
That's where my, let's call it awakening, my growing awareness of the spirit world, really took off. I never looked back. Now I also know they saved me in that moment, and they saved my life in a couple of other moments, a car passing by or whatever. I know spirit is stronger than matter. That's what Eileen, my favourite teacher, says all the time: “Spirit is stronger than matter, and what's for you will not pass you by.”
So I thought, “Who am I to go against that?” Since then, I've really been walking hand in hand with spirit. It's not necessarily that I wanted to be a medium. I never wanted to be a medium. I just wanted to be immersed in the connection with spirit. Mediumship gave me that connection, and it evolved naturally from that point onwards.
Jason Paul: It's interesting that you went from the depths of despair, absolutely in such a dark place, to having an experience where your entire worldview had shifted the next morning. I can't imagine the intensity of that experience and how it changed your perspective on everything.
The power of the spirit world never fails to amaze me. The intelligence of the spirit world blows my mind. Even the act of spirit communication, how it works through our collective consciousness, our thoughts, memories, emotions and experiences, how we feel about certain people and places, and how they draw on our memory bank using the photographs we have in our mind. It absolutely mind-boggles me.
So many of us go through a dark night of the soul. I would say I went through a couple myself. My story was around addiction and domestic violence. I got to a place, like you by the sounds of it, where I was chasing material success. I'd started a company and got it to a point where I had 10 staff. Then I said, “Things will ease up when I get to the first million. Then I've achieved, and I'll be happy.”
Got to the first million, wasn't happy. Got to two million, still thought, “When is it going to start feeling better? When am I going to start feeling happier?” Obviously, we all have ups and downs in life, but I'd got to the belief, “When I get to this point, I will be happy.”
I remember one distinct moment, Albert. I had a celebration party for my company because we'd moved into this plush new office, where I'd done this amazing fit-out. We had a wine bar in the office and a 10-foot living moss wall. A lot of ego there, I will say that, with this office.
At the office launch party, I must have had 50 people come up and congratulate me: “You've done so well. You're so successful.” On the inside, I did not feel any of that. It almost felt like I was a BAFTA-winning actor. I was acting and putting on this mask of what I felt I should be.
What I couldn't get my head around was that one day we're born, one day we die, and it didn't make any sense to me. Looking at the notes about your story, what I found interesting was that you had this experience and started developing your mediumship, but then you struggled with a lack of acceptance from the people around you.
00:25:56Mediumship and the fear of judgement
Albert Krikken: Yes, and some of it was a perceived lack of acceptance. I was firmly on my path, thinking, “Now I have felt what energises me, what fulfils me.” Back to your story as well: if it's not your path, it's not your path. You can be so good at it and so successful, but if there's not the energy on your path that fulfils you, then maybe you have to change the path.
I did this haphazardly, slowly. I was still in that old life a little bit, because you can't get rid of the ego from today to tomorrow. My heart was saying, “I know what makes me happy.” My ego was saying, “Yes, but your father, your brothers, your environment, your work colleagues, your entire reference framework know the old you, and they will probably not take too kindly to the new you.”
But I did put out some feelers. One time, when my mother had passed, my oldest brother and I were having a beer. Of course, we were both very sad. I asked him, “Don't you think that perhaps, just perhaps, when we lose our physical body, we don't necessarily lose the rest of our senses, our personality, character, our being, our essence?”
With a tear in his eye, and I'd never seen him cry, he said, “When you're dead, you're dead. If you can't see it, it doesn't exist.” I said, “Yes, but Wi-Fi, radio waves, telepathy, when you think of somebody and they call?” No. So I thought, “There's no way.”
At the same time, I just feel for him so much, because he's such a gentle soul, so sensitive. I think he's more sensitive than I am, but enclosed in his own belief system, and maybe fear of the unknown.
I also know we can't push people. We're not converters. We can't tell them, “You should believe in this, because I know it exists, or I believe it exists,” when they're not ready.
Twenty years ago, I had a friend in IT in the same company, a wonderful guy. He said, “I'm doing some shamanic drumming this weekend, and we're going to meet my spirit animal.” I said, “Well, good luck! I'm going to the soccer game.” I thought he was completely nuts, and I was not ready for it. Five years later, I would have said, “Yes, please. That sounds amazing.”
We can't really judge who's ready and who's not. Everybody goes their own way and walks their own path. This podcast, Jason, is actually the first time. Even though I'm part of this large community of wonderful friends in the mediumistic and spiritual world, all my old work colleagues, some of my friends and some of my brothers, I have three, have no idea.
They might be Googling my name and this comes up: “Oh my God, he's gone off the wagon. We've lost him!”
Jason Paul: It's funny you say that, because when I started my mediumship work, I've always used the name Jason Paul. Paul was my granddad's surname, and I did it in honour of him. But why did I not use my actual birth surname? Because I wanted to keep my mediumship secret.
I used to think people would think I'm nuts enough at work without thinking I go home at night and speak to people who've passed away. I've always kept my mediumship very private. These days it's very different. I'm out there and proud of it.
I used to work in sales, in recruitment, which is the land of the ego. Sales is all about money, material possessions, that that's going to solve all the answers. So I'd kept it very secret. The cat did come out of the bag at work once. This is what happens when you have multiple inboxes on Outlook: I ended up sending an email to the whole company from the wrong email address, which was my mediumship one. You can imagine. I thought, “Oh my goodness, let me retrieve that. How do I recall it immediately?”
I'd always kept it very separate. If someone doesn't believe in something, it is not my job to try and prove it to them. To change someone's mind, you're fighting a losing battle. You can't change someone's mind or their belief system. When someone is ready, they are ready.
Even I wasn't ready. When my granddad was alive, I was interested in the haunting and paranormal side, but I only really became interested in mediumship after my granddad died, because I wanted evidence. People have to be at that stage of wanting to explore it.
As a medium, our job is to prove that there is survival after death, but if someone comes into a reading and they're really uptight, only responding with nothing because they want that proof, already that energy is not great. It's not a great energy to be in. Do you see where I'm going? Our job is to give evidence.
Albert Krikken: I'm with you, yes.
Jason Paul: It is to give evidence, but I'm not there to prove to you that that is a thing. I've had readings where someone comes in and their energy is so uptight, almost passive-aggressive, like I have to sit here and prove to you that the other world exists.
Albert Krikken: The medium is not there to do anything except be the empty vessel relaying communication from spirit to the sitter. However the sitter absorbs that, it's up to the sitter. We can give some advice or insight, and help them understand the process and philosophy of how we have learned it to be.
But the communicator is in charge of the evidence and the message. Who are we to start over-interpreting it and become an evangelist, trying to convert a sitter who, for maybe very good reasons, is just not ready to believe?
I've never felt the motivation to push or convert anyone. It's a free world, and like you say, when they're ready, they're ready. What I am also no longer willing to do is hide it. I don't necessarily need to send emails and voice messages to people saying, “I'm a medium, and this is important because…” No, it's not important at all. That's my thing.
At the same time, I don't want to deny it and deny the truth. I think that's a step in the surrendering process to spirit, to say, “I'm with you, and you've got my back.”
Jason Paul: It's interesting once you finally do surrender. It took me a while, because for so long, even in the early days of mediumship, I would try to control it without realising I was trying to.
I remember going to do a reading and sitting there for 20 minutes beforehand: “Right, I need to build my energy. I need to push my aura out. Can I feel that? Am I doing that right?” All I'm doing is sitting there the whole time thinking. It took me a long time for that penny to drop.
Now, when I go to do a reading, I will sit there for five to 10 minutes before. Any more than that, and my analytical mind will start overthinking. Some of the best work I've ever done has been when I've given myself the least preparation time. But you have to work out and understand what works best for you.
I know what works best for me. I'm very quick. If anything, I have to slow myself down in readings. Even the other day, I was doing some platform work and thinking, “My goodness, the speed I can work at.” The spirit world knows with me, I've got an ADHD brain. I can work quickly. You can throw the information at me at the speed of lightning, and I will be able to run with that.
00:35:33Loneliness, change and finding your people
Jason Paul: Another thing I was looking at on your form really resonated with me, and I think a lot of people will understand and relate to it. That period when you're going through a big change in your life, whether you're embracing your sensitivity or developing it, can get very lonely.
I remember a distinct point when I started my business 10 years ago and it started to have success. I noticed all my friends started to drop off. I had no friends, because I stopped relating to people.
I'll always remember one instance. I'd had my business about two and a half years. I was really struggling with a number of different things, how it was going, how busy it was. I was exhausted and fatigued. I met a friend in London who I'd known from my cabin crew days at Virgin. She was telling me about her problems, and when I started to tell her about things I was struggling with, her response was, “Well, it's all alright for you. You've got everything.”
I thought, “Hang on a minute, we're not on the same wavelength here.” I went through a period of being very lonely. I was kind of fine with that loneliness in some ways, because I knew the people I'd previously had as friends were no longer serving me, but it was also a real period of misery.
It was probably that period that drove me, in some ways, into addiction. It was almost like, “What's wrong with me? Why can I not find my tribe?” If I look at my friends these days, nearly all of my friends are in some way mediums.
That was an experience you went through, and I think a lot of sensitive people go through. I feel sensitive people need to spend a lot of time by themselves as well, because sometimes the world can be very overwhelming.
To hear that you went through that experience at a time when you were going through so much change: you'd had this dark night of the soul, this massive realisation, and then you started realising a lot of people weren't really understanding or agreeing. That's a lot to go through, isn't it?
Albert Krikken: Yes.
Jason Paul: Then to start trying to work out, “Who should I be surrounding myself with?”
Albert Krikken: It's exactly that. With 20/20 hindsight, I realise it was good to leave, or let that fall away organically. As we reshape ourselves and become the fuller version of who we feel we really are in the deepest depths of our own heart, we also reshape the life outside us that resonates with that.
Ninety per cent of the people in my environment have fallen away naturally and organically. It's almost like spirit picked them away: “Nope, this doesn't make sense anymore.” There have been several Christmases where I was sitting alone in Switzerland, watching television. I was not necessarily lonely, but I did feel, “Wow, this is rough.”
I love your aquarium. I had a 160-litre aquarium myself, and lots of maintenance. Those were my friends, the fish. But when I least expected it, Jason, four years ago at the college, I met the love of my life. I met my girlfriend, and we've been inseparable ever since. I've met so many other like-minded friends.
It's beautiful how, when you let go of so much in your environment, friends, family, work, job, money, whatever, you create a lot of space for the new to come in. It's just a period of transition that's sometimes very difficult to deal with.
In that empty space of nothingness, because you can't do mediumship 10 hours a day either, I started collecting so-called art, artefacts and antiques, buying and selling. Nonsensical. Never made me a penny either. I was trying to keep myself busy with stuff. I was buying shoes, ties and shirts, because the ego wants to be busy.
It takes a long period of time before the ego finally succumbs to the new reality: “I don't have to try so hard. I don't have to fill up my life and my calendar and my house with nonsensical stuff just to feel productive, to be busy, or to be seen by the outside world.” That was a difficult path as well.
00:40:59Recognising spirit's guidance
Jason Paul: Dissolving the ego is something I'm trying to do ever more with myself. It's interesting how you can go through such different motions. For instance, when I decided to leave my business, the spirit world was massively responsible for decisions I've made recently.
My trust in them is so much that, in the days leading up to making this big decision, I didn't really know what my plan was. All I knew was my granddad kept standing there from the spirit world, with his arms crossed, doing that look where I know he's serious.
My granddad was a very fun, funny, charismatic person, but he'd have a certain look that, when he gave me that look, oh my God, I would listen. He very strongly said to me, “You need to do this.”
Looking back in hindsight, with the benefit of age, I realise just how much intervention I now believe the spirit world has had in recent years. When I was reading more information about you, you stated that many of your actions and decisions, you now believe in hindsight, are from your higher self or your spirit guides.
I want to ask you about that, because looking back now, the spirit world has massively influenced a lot of my decision-making. A lot of the time, things drop into our awareness. We can't police every thought. We don't know if every thought is from the spirit world. But the way I operate now, I just know by how I feel what I need to do.
Tell me how you feel the spirit world has inspired, influenced and helped you, and how you've identified that on reflection.
Albert Krikken: That's a very good question. With me, it's a combination of certain seeds being planted in my consciousness that I start becoming aware of. I feel they're my ideas and convictions, but suddenly they're new ideas and new thought forms.
I also feel, as I blend more with spirit and am more with spirit, that my own view and perspectives are changing. Suddenly I feel, “Wait, that does not resonate with me anymore. I have a different opinion, feeling, priority or perspective on it.”
It's almost like they're polishing the way we are to gently nudge us to take the path they have written for us, or that we have written for ourselves before even incarnating. It's probably a bit of everything, but I feel that so many times in my life, spirit literally intervened.
For instance, that fantastic job: everything was going very well, then suddenly the company went down. And also people. It's incredible. So I blame spirit for everything, but I also thank them for everything. The further I get from the past, the more grateful I am for the things I blamed them for at that point.
I do feel the invisible hand of spirit is very active in our lives, in the lives of people who acknowledge it, accept it and allow for it. Who knows where they want to take us further? I guess the best way to see what's at the end of the tunnel is to keep on going.
00:45:08How do you know you're living in alignment?
Jason Paul: Obviously, we have free will in our lives. A lot of people in the early days of their journey are going to be thinking, “I've come to understand there's such a thing as a soul plan. I've come to understand, from what I hear, that there's some reason we've come down here, things are mapped out before us.” But how does one know, Albert, if they're living in alignment?
I guess I would answer that by saying I certainly knew when I was out of alignment, because I was addicted to substances. I was downright miserable. I felt I had to be on that hamster wheel, the grind of life. How would you articulate to someone if they're living in alignment with their soul's plan?
Albert Krikken: I think if your heart is happy, energised and motivated to do the things you're doing, or pursue the activities you're pursuing, that is a very good sign.
When the mind takes over and it's mind-controlled, and the mind is happy: I love for the mind to be happy because the heart is happy, and the mind understands this is a good direction. What I'm careful about is when, intuitively, your gut feeling says, “This doesn't feel right, but I'm going to do it anyway, because my mind is so strong.” That is something to be very aware of.
It's the gut feeling. In your gut, you just know: “This is right, this feels good, this gives me a peaceful and calm feeling that I'm on the right track.” If there are still doubts, there are plenty of mediumistically able friends around us who can give feedback or act as a sounding board.
That's why I absolutely love trance. I also host several trance groups, just to be in that immersive state with spirit and get some messages from your spirit guides, because messages are always good, right?
Jason Paul: They are! The thing that excites me most about mediumship, other than doing it myself, is getting the messages, hearing from my loved ones and my granddad.
My granddad makes me laugh when he comes through in readings, because he teaches the medium lots of lessons. We've almost got into this state where, if it's a practice exercise with another medium, I will understand from what he's giving and the humour of it what he's trying to teach the medium if they're getting stuck.
He comes through with a lot of good humour. It's what pulls me back to mediumship so much. I know it's my calling. I know it's in my soul's plan, absolutely. It's being around my family members, having that love.
00:48:19Self-doubt and a gentler inner voice
Jason Paul: I'm in a process at the moment of trying to dissolve the ego more. If you'd asked me a few weeks ago, I'd have said, “Absolutely, I'm feeling empowered. I'm feeling ready to go. This was the right decision.” A few weeks later, you get that creeping voice coming back in, trying to give doubt: “Is it going to work? Will it be successful? What are you going to do next in your life?”
You have to train your mind. I used to struggle so much with feeling my anxiety would run away with me, that I couldn't get control of my thoughts. I was not in control of my brain in any sense. Even when you're in a place where you've got that under control, life throws you a curveball, and the ego goes back in.
Albert Krikken: Oh, yes.
Jason Paul: It's work you have to do all the time. I don't believe you ever arrive somewhere. If you feel you've arrived, that's probably a very dangerous mindset.
Albert Krikken: That's a risky situation to be in. When you feel you've arrived and no longer need to manage the mind, the mind says, “I thought I was out for the count, but I'm coming back now.”
The mind is so tricky. I've been focusing on really understanding it for so many years. The best way to describe it is if you can keep your mind in check and see the pitfalls and tricks it wants to play on you. Also your energetic state, because when you're tired or stressed, that's where the mind kicks in and goes into that old pattern of behaviour.
Identify how your mind is reacting when you're in a certain situation, condition or energetic state. How can I smooth it over, instead of shooting from the hip and giving in to it? Becoming the manager of our own mind is a full-time job. That's the most important thing. Everything else will come.
Jason Paul: For me, it's about being gentle. For a long time, I was very hard on myself. Even in my business, I would always beat myself up: “You need to do more of this. You could do better on this. You should do more of this.” My inner voice was a very harsh critic. It's almost like I had the food critic from a newspaper that you'd never want in my own head.
These days, the way I've trained my mind is that I've got various tricks. If I find myself going off on a spiral of anxiety about something, the first question I ask myself is, “The thing you're thinking about right now, is this real or is this hypothetical?” We spend so much of our lives worrying and concerning ourselves with things that aren't even real. They haven't happened yet. It's the old thing of 99 problems.
The amount of mental energy we waste second-guessing the future is crazy. I used to be terrible for it, thinking about every possible outcome in my business. The process I go through now is, “Is it real? If it isn't real, do I actually need to think about this? Nope, because it isn't real. Leave it, or schedule it. Move on.”
I have to have these little gentle tricks. Even now, I'll notice an unhelpful thought come in and say, “Thank you, but no thank you. I'm not going to take that.” It's a very gentle process. I almost look at it like training a dog. If you're going to shout at the dog and scream at it to sit, the dog isn't going to respond, is it?
There needs to be a gentleness to how we go about that. We all want to do our best, live our fullest lives and live a happy life. But life is not easy at times, especially with the stresses of the modern day. It's taken me a long time to get my anxiety into a state of manageability.
A lot of us do very stressful jobs, and we live in a world where we're constantly bombarded by pings and dings. I've removed myself from nearly all social media now, because I find myself glued to it, and it's not healthy.
00:53:15Grounding, breathwork and finding balance
Albert Krikken: If I can just quickly add to that, because it's so important and helpful that you addressed it. I believe there are so many triggers that can trigger an imbalance in our energetic state and our nervous system. As mediums, our nervous system is being used a lot.
What I've found very helpful, aside from walking in nature to find grounding, is breathwork. I feel that intense breathwork, even a short 10-minute session, can really regulate the nervous system. What I like to do when I feel I'm being triggered is not react, but stop. Either sit in the power for 10 minutes, do some breathwork, or go into the forest. Then come back to the situation and re-evaluate it along the lines you just presented.
It's to know thine self, right? As your lovely Shakespeare has said it, to know thine self is half of the solution. The other half is common sense. Most of the issues and problems we face, we can solve. We are experienced, trained by life to take on the biggest challenges.
The problem is not how to solve the challenge. It's how we get to a balanced state where we can solve these issues. For me, it's to take a step back, then either meditation, sitting in the power, grounding or breathwork. I wanted to throw that in there as well.
Jason Paul: It's good that you've found the mechanism that works for you. One of the big problems I had at the beginning was this belief that I couldn't meditate. I couldn't quiet my mind when I sat down. It took me a long time to get to that point.
Now, in those situations, I will often do the same. You make an interesting point, which is to understand the biology of the body as well. There are so many things that can be done with our bodies to settle the nervous system, using the vagus nerve, tapping, EFT, breathwork, yoga and meditation.
Part of the problem is that a lot of people don't look into how our bodies actually work. It's fascinating. There's so much that can be done. These days, when I log into social media, it's a stream of different places I should be tapping, holding or pushing.
One thing I found fascinating the other day was that I spoke to someone on this podcast who had a quantum entanglement machine. I had a photo of me put in this machine. The amount of information that was absolutely spot-on, just within the resonance of the pixels of that photo, blew my mind.
To bring us back to the start of what you said, so much can't be seen with our human eyes. As you can see, I'm wearing glasses now, and as my eyes continue to deteriorate the older I get, I really realise that. There's so much more than can be seen.
00:56:37Individuality in mediumship
Jason Paul: I wanted to ask you about something I know you're passionate about: making mediumship seen and accepted by as many people as possible. Why is that, and how do you feel that should be done in the world we're in now?
I feel we're pumping out mediums on a bit of a conveyor belt at the moment, factory-type mediums all working in the same way. I feel there needs to be a real shake-up of creativity, of doing mediumship in ways that are different, not just this tick-box SNU way of working. I think it's good there's a certain framework with the SNU. We could have a whole hour's conversation on that.
Albert Krikken: Oh, yes.
Jason Paul: But I also feel this very rigid way of working is limiting the intelligence of the spirit world, the magic and what's available for us to access. I've asked you about 40 questions there!
Albert Krikken: I will try to be concise. First of all, I was so grateful for the Arthur Findlay College and its tutors when I became aware of my mediumistic inkling and felt the need to nurture that.
From the get-go, I was very much trained to be a checklist evidential medium, with, in my opinion, outdated SNU directives, where it's really boxed in, as if we're living in the 15th century. That approach doesn't resonate with me anymore.
It's not so much that I would like for mediums to be seen, because to each their own, but I would love for mediumship to be a safe space. There are so many different platforms and mediums that either work psychically or charge horrendous amounts. As a new starter in mediumship, a person may be very confused, not know who to trust and be taken for a ride. As a client for a mediumistic session, the same might be the case.
00:59:02VerySoul, community and learning through practice
Albert Krikken: I came across this beautiful platform, VerySoul, that Sally Hawk set up at her own expense. It's a completely free platform, which is very well set up. I think you know the platform, right?
Jason Paul: It's a great website, VerySoul.com. Sally Hawk was on this show in the very early days, talking about it. I think that was when it had just launched.
Albert Krikken: Yes, beautiful. I started by practising with other mediums. You go through the different phases of the programme, and then you become a VerySoul verified professional medium. That's all good and well, but I thought, “What can I add? What can I give back?”
I started hosting sitting in the power, a coaching group session and a healing circle. Then people said, “What about trance?” Okay, let's do trance. “What about psychic?” Okay, let's work on psychic development. Now, five days a week, I have one group or another.
It's absolutely lovely to share that with people. Lots of them are really good mediums, and it's a beautiful community. For me, the most important thing is to be part of the community and share the teachings I received from our beloved Arthur Findlay College tutors. Let's not kid ourselves, it's not me, it's them. Like Eileen Davies being Gordon's student. It's so beautiful, and I feel everybody is enriched by that wisdom and philosophy.
In general, I think platforms such as VerySoul give a home to mediumship, just like Arthur Findlay College has given a home to us as mediums. It's secure and it's trusted.
Jason Paul: It's a great website. I almost wish I'd thought of it! What I like about the concept is that, in those early days of practising, you can find someone to practise with who's wanting to develop as well.
I love that it's so simple. You go on there like you're booking a mediumship reading, select a time, and all you've got is the person's name in front of you. It feels like a safe space to experiment.
In those early days of mediumship, if you're practising with a family friend, there's almost a bit of expectation, isn't there? You feel pressure, and it's that pressure and expectation that's going to trip you up.
The best advice I could give anybody wanting to develop their mediumship is to look at what you're doing as an experiment. One, it takes the pressure off. Two, how are you ever going to learn how to communicate with the spirit world and how your mediumship works if you don't experiment with your faculties? It's like getting a brand-new mobile phone for the first time and expecting to know exactly how it works. It doesn't work like that, does it?
I can't recommend it enough. You've made me realise I want to get back on it a bit more myself. I love that there's feedback. It's designed in the right way by someone who gets mediumship, who is a medium. That's what I like about that site.
It's been so lovely talking to you, Albert. Your passion for helping people, and so much of what you do assisting people with your teaching: I can feel that passion and alignment. It feels to me that you're very much doing what you're meant to be doing in life. In Soul Sync tradition, leave us on a final thought today.
01:03:14The courage and audacity to be yourself
Albert Krikken: Alright, no pressure! First of all, very much gratitude from me to you for having me on your lovely podcast.
A final message to the listener would really be to have the courage and the audacity to be yourself. To jump over the shadows that your environment and upbringing may have created for you, and feel the fulfilment and happiness of walking your path in alignment with the guidance you feel you're receiving.
If there's one key success factor to this life, it's to be yourself and live your fullest life, whatever that is, with or without mediumship. Everybody has their own journey. I feel mediumship can really enrich a person's life, that the connection with spirit can be such an incredible, beautiful thing to happen to anyone.
But the most important thing is, whatever you do, step over the fear of the reaction of your environment, the perceived reaction, because many people at the end don't really care when it comes down to it. They're more involved with themselves. Walk your path audaciously and courageously, and be yourself.
Jason Paul: I love that, and I completely agree with you. When you're fully being authentic, being yourself, that is when you're living in alignment. If you feel you have to be someone else, or try to be someone you're not, that is going to chip away at you over time.
I know that because I lived that life for so long myself. I would assume I was an actor more than living my life in its truest form. You make a beautiful point. Thank you for coming on Soul Sync!
Jason Paul is a psychic medium based in Bristol, giving private readings online to clients across the UK and around the world. He is the grandson of medium and healer Eddie Paul, and came to mediumship after careers as a police officer and the founder of a legal recruitment business. Jason hosts the Soul Sync podcast and teaches online psychic and mediumship development classes.
