What Is Sitting in the Power? How My Understanding of Mediumship Changed

There was a time when I thought sitting in the power was something I needed to get right.

I would sit down, close my eyes, try to quieten my mind and almost wait for something to happen. I was looking for a shift in energy, the presence of the spirit world, a sensation — anything that would tell me, yes, there it is. I've found the power.

The irony, looking back, is that all of that searching was probably part of what made it so difficult.

My understanding of the power has changed enormously since those early days of developing my mediumship. And I suspect it will continue to change, because I've come to realise that our relationship with the power isn't fixed. It grows as we grow.

Recently I sat down with medium and spiritual teacher Adam Berry for Soul Sync and we returned to this subject. Adam has been sitting in the power for many years and brings people together every Monday evening to sit collectively.

What struck me during our conversation was how similar parts of our journeys had been.

We had both, at different times, gone looking for something that was never really somewhere else in the first place.

So, what is sitting in the power?

This is where language becomes difficult.

Ask ten mediums what the power is and you'll probably hear ten slightly different explanations.

Some may use the word God. Others might speak of the Divine, universal consciousness, creative intelligence, spirit, love or simply the power.

For me, the terminology has become less important than the experience.

I used to think of the power as something I needed to reach towards. There was me here and the spirit world or this great spiritual power somewhere over there.

I now see that very differently.

The power isn't simply something that arrives when I want to do mediumship. It isn't a switch that suddenly brings the spirit world into the room.

It is already present.

Within us. Around us. Within life itself.

Sitting in the power is therefore less about summoning something and more, in my experience, about becoming aware of what is already there.

And that seemingly small distinction changed a great deal for me.

I spent a long time looking outside myself

In the early stages of my mediumship development, I was fascinated by the feeling of spirit.

Like many developing mediums, I wanted to recognise the signs. The change in atmosphere. The altered awareness. The sensations that told me somebody from the spirit world was drawing close.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. Learning to recognise those changes is part of developing mediumship.

But I think I confused two things.

I was becoming aware of spirit around me, while still thinking of the deeper spiritual power as something external to me.

Then I had an experience while sitting that felt completely different.

There was an extraordinary feeling of love.

Not sentimental love. Not the sort of emotion I could easily attach to a thought or memory. It was almost overwhelming in its intensity. In fact, it was so powerful that I came out of the experience.

For the first time I felt I had touched something rather than merely thought about it.

And once something has been experienced, our relationship with it changes.

That doesn't mean every sitting since has produced fireworks. Far from it.

Sometimes sitting in the power is incredibly subtle.

Sometimes there is stillness.

Sometimes inspiration.

Sometimes very little appears to happen at all.

That, too, has been part of the learning.

The problem was that I was trying too hard

This may be one of the most important things I have learned through mediumship.

Trying and allowing are not the same thing.

For a long time I would sit there trying to access the power.

Trying to stop my thoughts.

Trying to feel something.

Trying to reach the right state.

Trying to work out whether I was doing it correctly.

There is a wonderful contradiction in spiritual development: the harder we sometimes chase the experience, the further away it seems to become.

During my conversation with Adam, we spoke about the idea that you have to completely silence the mind to sit in the power.

I don't find that particularly helpful.

A human brain thinks. Mine certainly does.

The invitation isn't necessarily to wage war against thought. It can simply be to bring some stillness to ourselves and allow the mind to settle in whatever way it can.

That's very different from sitting there thinking:

I must stop thinking.

Because now you're thinking about not thinking.

I've been there.

Why sitting in the power matters for mediumship

For anybody interested in mediumship development, this is where I believe sitting in the power becomes particularly important.

Mediumship isn't simply about receiving information.

For me, good mediumship comes from relationship.

There is our relationship with ourselves.

Our relationship with our own soul.

Our relationship with the spirit world.

And our relationship with the power in which that communication takes place.

The more I've developed, the more recognisable the difference has become between those moments when I am deeply within the power during a mediumship reading and those moments when I have slipped back into my own conscious thinking.

When I'm truly immersed in it, the communication has a different quality.

There is flow.

There is less effort.

I'm not frantically trying to work out what comes next.

Sometimes I barely remember parts of a reading afterwards because I was so absorbed in the experience as it unfolded.

And when I begin trying to force information, analyse it or make something happen, I can feel the difference.

That awareness hasn't appeared overnight.

It came through sitting, working, getting things wrong, questioning myself, experiencing the spirit world, returning to the power and gradually becoming more familiar with my own mediumship.

That is why I don't believe mediumship development is simply about learning techniques.

Technique can help us understand the mechanics.

But relationship takes time.

You probably won't become a spiritual superhero in six weeks

One thing Adam and I laughed about during the conversation was our tendency as human beings to want results quickly.

We go to a development circle.

We meditate.

We sit in the power for a few weeks.

And somewhere quietly in the background there can be an expectation that we should now be dramatically transformed.

I understand it because I've done it.

But this isn't really how my development has unfolded.

The changes have often been incremental.

You begin noticing when your awareness changes.

You become more familiar with your own energy.

You start recognising when inspiration arrives.

You notice the difference between something you've manufactured mentally and something that seems to have arrived fully formed.

You become more sensitive to when you're working in harmony with the spirit world and when you're trying to drag the communication somewhere yourself.

Then one day you realise that something you once desperately tried to understand has become quite natural.

Perhaps that is development.

Not acquiring some mysterious new ability, but gradually becoming familiar with something that was already part of you.

The power has become bigger than mediumship for me

This may be the part of my understanding that has changed the most.

Initially, sitting in the power was connected almost entirely with becoming a better medium.

Now I think that makes the practice far too small.

Mediumship may be one expression of it, but what about creativity?

Inspiration?

Compassion?

Healing?

The sudden urge to change direction in life?

The idea that appears apparently from nowhere?

Those moments when we feel completely connected to what we're doing and somehow become less aware of ourselves doing it?

Adam is an incredibly creative person. In our conversation we spoke about music, poetry, writing and the different ways inspiration can emerge when we create some space for it.

It made me think about how often human beings may touch this deeper part of themselves without ever calling it spiritual.

And perhaps they don't need to.

I've become much less interested in forcing everybody to use the same language.

If the word God connects with you, wonderful.

If universe, Divine, consciousness, creative intelligence, spirit or simply love makes more sense, use that.

Words should help us towards an experience, not become the barrier preventing us from having one.

What does sitting in the power actually feel like?

This is one of the questions I receive most often.

And the slightly frustrating answer is that I can't tell you exactly what your experience should feel like.

I can tell you about mine.

I can tell you about moments of stillness, expansion, love, altered awareness and an unmistakable feeling that something has shifted.

Another medium may describe it completely differently.

That individuality matters.

One of the traps in mediumship development is hearing somebody describe an extraordinary experience and then sitting down waiting for exactly the same thing to happen to us.

We can end up overlooking our own experience because it doesn't resemble somebody else's.

Instead of asking, Am I experiencing what Jason experiences? or What does Adam feel?, perhaps the more useful question is:

What happens to me when I consistently create the space to sit?

Notice.

Become curious.

Don't immediately judge an experience as successful or unsuccessful.

And give the relationship time to develop.

Sitting in the power isn't about escaping life

This has become important to me too.

Spiritual development shouldn't require us to permanently retreat from being human.

We still have relationships, bills, disappointments, ridiculous days, beautiful days, grief, laughter, insecurity and everything else life throws at us.

The purpose, for me, isn't to become so spiritual that none of that touches us.

It is to bring more of what we discover in the stillness into the way we live.

More awareness.

More compassion.

More trust.

More presence.

Perhaps a little less fear.

Adam said something in our conversation that stayed with me: knowing the power isn't fundamentally about becoming the best medium you can be. It is also about becoming the best human being you can be.

I love that.

Because if our mediumship develops but we don't, what exactly have we developed?

My relationship with mediumship continues to change

The medium I am today isn't the medium I was when I began.

And I hope the medium I am several years from now won't be exactly the medium writing this either.

My understanding of the spirit world continues to evolve.

My philosophy changes.

My relationship with my own soul changes.

And my understanding of the power changes with it.

There was a time when I was looking for the switch.

I joked with Adam at the beginning of our conversation that I think I've finally found it.

But perhaps even that isn't quite right.

Maybe there never was a switch.

Maybe the real change was learning to stop looking for one.

Listen to the conversation

I explore all of this in much greater depth with Adam Berry in a new episode of Soul Sync:

Sitting in the Power: Mediumship, the Soul & the Power Within with Adam Berry

We talk about our changing understanding of the power, mediumship development, the conscious mind and the soul, spiritual experience, creativity, sitting in stillness and why our relationship with the power can evolve throughout our lives.

Adam also runs his regular Monday evening Sitting in the Power sessions.

Listen to the full interview below

Listen to Adam Berry’s sitting in the power meditation by clicking below

And if you're exploring mediumship yourself, you can also find more of my writing here in Insights, learn more about my work as a medium, or explore my mediumship readings and other sessions.