What Spirit Art Taught Me About Trusting Mediumship
I had a conversation recently that left me thinking about something I see again and again in mediumship.
We care so much about getting it right that sometimes we make it harder to receive anything at all.
My recent Soul Sync conversation with spiritual medium and spirit artist Shelley Youell began with spirit art, colour and creativity. But underneath all of that was a much bigger conversation about trust.
About self-doubt.
About the mind.
And about what happens when we stop trying to force mediumship into a shape we think it ought to have.
It is something I have been noticing more and more in my own work.
Mediumship isn't always a voice in your head
I think one of the biggest misconceptions when people first begin exploring mediumship is that communication from the spirit world is going to feel incredibly obvious.
Almost like somebody has walked into the room, announced who they are and started dictating a message.
My experience is rarely like that.
Spirit can communicate through a feeling. A picture. A memory. A physical sensation. A thought that seems to arrive from nowhere. A song. A smell. A colour.
Sometimes it is so subtle that the biggest challenge isn't receiving it.
It is believing what you've received.
That was what interested me so much about talking to Shelley about spirit art.
For her, a pencil, paintbrush or piece of charcoal can become part of the language. She described how sometimes expression begins before she consciously understands where it is going.
I love that.
Because that, to me, is mediumship.
You don't always understand the communication first and then deliver it.
Sometimes you have to follow it first.
I used to make my mediumship far more complicated than it needed to be
There was a moment in our conversation where I found myself laughing about the way I used to process information.
Spirit would give me something perfectly simple and I would somehow manage to put it through an entire mental production line.
If I was shown a washing machine, somehow I'd end up talking about curries.
Give me a postage stamp and I'd turn it into a letter.
I was adding layers.
Trying to understand.
Trying to make the information better.
And, without realising it, I was moving further away from the original communication.
That realisation changed the way I work.
These days I don't particularly like to pre-link before a mediumship reading. If information begins arriving and I start storing it in my head, analysing it and wondering where it belongs, I'm already moving into my thinking mind.
I would much rather receive what I need in the moment.
Feel it.
Say it.
Stay with it.
Then allow the next piece to come.
It sounds ridiculously simple written down.
Actually doing it took me years.
Self-doubt isn't always a sign you're doing something wrong
Shelley said something during the episode that stayed with me.
When we were talking about self-doubt in mediumship, she said that perhaps it isn't necessarily a bad thing.
Sometimes, it's because we care.
I understood exactly what she meant.
There is a huge responsibility in sitting opposite somebody who hopes to receive evidence of someone they love in the spirit world.
I care about the person sitting in front of me.
I care about the communicator.
I care about doing justice to the connection.
But I've also learned that caring can very easily become pressure.
Before you've even started, the mind gets involved:
Come on, Jason.
Do a good job.
Don't make it up.
Don't get this wrong.
Is that spirit or is that me?
And suddenly I've created precisely the mental environment that makes subtle communication harder to hear.
The intention was good.
The effect wasn't.
The mind loves a rule
Colour became a fascinating part of our conversation.
Like many developing mediums, I've done exercises over the years using colour cards and learning different associations.
Yellow can mean this.
Blue can mean that.
Red can mean something else.
There is nothing necessarily wrong with learning those associations. Shelley herself talked about the value of having some general understanding.
But she also said something much more important:
Find your own relationship with colour.
That is the bit I think we sometimes miss.
What does yellow mean to you?
What happens inside you when you see it?
What memory does it trigger?
What emotion?
Who does it remind you of?
Because the moment every symbol has one fixed meaning, mediumship can become a decoding exercise rather than a living relationship.
And spirit, in my experience, is far more intelligent than a pack of flash cards.
We have to learn our own language
I think this is one of the biggest changes in the way I now understand mediumship development.
A teacher can teach you mechanics.
They can give you exercises.
They can help you recognise the difference between thinking and receiving.
They can challenge you, encourage you and hopefully help you become a more disciplined medium.
But eventually you have to understand how spirit communicates with you.
My language will not be Shelley's language.
Shelley's will not be somebody else's.
One person may experience colour intensely.
Another may feel emotion.
Somebody else may suddenly know things without understanding how they know them.
Another person may experience memories almost as if they belong to them.
None of that needs to be made identical.
In fact, I think one of the most damaging things we can do in mediumship is spend years trying to become somebody else's version of a medium.
Spirit art reminded me about play
During the episode Shelley talked about taking her easel outside, putting her AirPods in, sometimes listening to nature, sometimes playing music, and simply throwing paint at the canvas.
That brought back a memory for me.
Not long before leaving my business, I took my team to one of those immersive painting experiences.
There was paint everywhere.
At some point the neon lights came on.
People started throwing paint at each other.
It all became completely ridiculous.
And I loved it.
There was no pressure to create anything worthy.
Nobody was judging whether we'd correctly expressed ourselves.
We were just making a bloody mess.
But afterwards I felt lighter.
There is something in that.
How often do we actually allow ourselves to experience something without immediately judging the result?
Mediumship development can become incredibly serious.
Did they understand the evidence?
Was that specific enough?
Was I in the power?
Should I have stayed with it longer?
What did the teacher think?
What did everybody else get?
Some of that reflection is necessary if we want to improve.
But there has to be room to play too.
To experiment.
To get something wrong.
To follow something strange simply because it arrived.
Otherwise development becomes an endurance test.
The recipient decides whether the evidence matters
Something else I have learned is that the piece of information I think is insignificant can be the very thing that means everything to the recipient.
That has helped me stop editing spirit quite so much.
A red car might sound mundane.
A certain chair might seem pointless.
A particular meal, phrase, holiday destination or strange family habit might not impress me at all.
But it isn't for me.
The recipient knows the life that was lived.
Sometimes one tiny, ordinary detail brings somebody's personality into the room more powerfully than anything dramatic ever could.
That is one of the reasons evidence matters so much to me in a mediumship reading.
It is not about performing clever psychic tricks.
It is about allowing enough of someone's life, personality and memories to emerge that the person receiving the communication can recognise who is there.
Perhaps trust comes after we step forward, not before
For a long time I think I imagined confidence as something you acquire and then use.
Once I'm confident enough, I'll trust this.
Once I'm good enough, I'll say what I'm getting.
Once I've developed enough, I'll stop doubting myself.
I'm not sure it works like that anymore.
I think quite often trust grows because we step forward.
We say the strange thing.
We follow the image.
We describe the feeling.
We allow ourselves to be wrong sometimes.
And slowly we gather our own evidence that this relationship works.
Mediumship has given me enormous evidence about the continuation of life.
But it has also forced me to look at myself.
My need to control.
My fear of getting things wrong.
My tendency to analyse.
My expectations of myself.
Perhaps that is part of the development too.
Not simply becoming better at communicating with the spirit world.
But becoming more able to get ourselves out of the way.
And maybe, sometimes, the question isn't:
“How do I become a better medium?”
Maybe it is:
“What would happen if I stopped trying quite so hard to be one?”
Listen to Soul Sync
This Insight was inspired by my conversation with Shelley Youell on the Soul Sync podcast, exploring spirit art, colour, creativity, self-expression, confidence and learning to trust your own relationship with the spirit world.
[Listen to / watch the full Shelley Youell episode]
If you're curious about mediumship from the other side of the experience, I also offer private mediumship readings in Bristol and online mediumship readings via Zoom. My approach is grounded in evidence, personality, memories and allowing the connection to unfold naturally rather than forcing it into a particular expectation.