by Betty Shine
‘Betty,’ she said, ‘I haven’t come along hoping to hear from my daughter again, I just want to thank you for the precious gift I received last time I was here.’ She laughed. ‘I haven’t suffered with my bowel since, and I know that my daughter’s visit has cured me.’ As an afterthought, she went on, ‘With your help of course.’
Whilst I was healing Jill, a spirit child built up in the room. It was Gemma. She was smiling, and although she didn’t speak I was able to give Jill an accurate description of her. Jill never looked back. Because she now knew that Gemma still lived, albeit in another dimension, it gave her the strength to rebuild her own life.
Was I being shown the link between healing and survival evidence? Did they sometimes have to go hand in hand to get results? At the time I did not know what to think. All I knew was that things were moving too fast for me and I just could not take it all in.
One night I awoke with a start. I could hear a rushing sound, like a waterfall. Then as the sound receded I saw the most beautiful coloured pictures being projected on to the wall opposite my bed. The first scene depicted a small village with white houses and a dusty track. Behind the village were hills, and just above the hills was the most beautiful sunset I have ever seen. The sky was a mass of many different colours. As I stared, the scene slowly changed. This time it showed a valley filled with people crouching on the ground, obviously listening to the figure standing before them. I could not see the face of the figure as it was half hidden by a white cowl. The scene changed again, and before me was a beautiful waterfall and the same rushing sound that I had heard on awakening. And then a voice said, ‘Everything is possible.’
As my bedroom returned to normal I tried to leave my bed. At this point I needed to make myself a cup of tea – perhaps with a tot of brandy! But I could not move. The whole of my body felt like lead. Eventually, I was able to sleep. The leadenness, I was to find out later, was due to the mind energy having practically left the body, as it does with shock or deep sleep, and until it slips back, the physical body is helpless. These visions have continued, and all have a spiritual significance. I love them and would hate them to disappear altogether.
It seemed that the more I tried to reject the voices so eager to pass on messages of survival, the stronger they became. Healing sessions were usually of an hour’s duration. I felt that anything less than that would lead to a sense of urgency, and when people are ill they need time to talk. When survival evidence came through, the session obviously went on for much longer and this worried me a great deal, because my clients liked the confidentiality that I gave them. I did not favour the packed waiting room. It might give the appearance of being successful, but it does little for the sensitivities of the people who are forced to share their space when they are at their lowest ebb. As I could not stop the flow of spirit voices I had to arrange my diary accordingly so that my appointments did not overlap.
This worked quite well until four friends, who all had health problems, asked if I would mind if they stayed together whilst they each received healing. I reluctantly agreed, although I thought at the time that the room was far too small for all of us. It seemed, however, that the spirit world thought it could hold a few more! As I healed, survival evidence poured through. It must have looked as though I was giving a command performance! As usual there was a mixture of tears and laughter, especially when an uncle, who had been a professional comedian, came through. His niece said, ‘I cannot believe he is still telling the same old jokes.’ Another of the friends had lost a watch and was told to look under the wardrobe in her bedroom. She called later to tell me that it had indeed been there. All of this happened during the evening and they were my last clients – but what if it had happened during the daytime? They had overstayed their time by two hours.
When they had gone I sat quietly in the healing room, feeling thoroughly exhausted. Leaning my elbows on the healing couch I put my head in my hands and wondered what was going to happen next. I felt that I was being knocked sideways as each individual experience gave me more problems. Then I heard a voice calling my name. It was repeated three times. Silence. A few seconds passed and the voice said, ‘You must have faith, trust us.’ I stood up and threw my arms out and shouted, ‘Trust who? Who are you?’ Silence. I was so annoyed that I began to tell them just how I felt. ‘How do you think I feel?’ I said dramatically, still throwing my arms around. ‘Every day something different happens. I’m trying to give people privacy and then voices clamour to give survival evidence and it completely messes up my schedules, and tonight I have had to work myself to death trying to please.’ Still ranting like a drama queen, I went on, ‘There must be someone else you can go and bother, for Heaven’s sake!’ At the end of this tirade I felt wonderful, having released all the frustration of the past six months. Perhaps that had been the reason for the silence. Nothing made me more angry than a one-way conversation, spiritual or otherwise. I had found out the hard way that onesided conversations meant trouble. As I left the room, I prayed that I would be given a peaceful night’s sleep. This was granted. Perhaps my ranting had done some good after all.
Another, more personal problem was worrying me. People who I had thought of as friends were avoiding me, and one day I had the opportunity of asking one of them if there was a problem. He looked shamefaced, and told me that when he had told his mates in the pub about the wonderful survival evidence he had received they had ridiculed him. The bottom line was that he could not cope with this, and so had decided to stop seeing me. I argued that I had not changed, but was exactly the same person that I had always been. A trifle more perplexed perhaps, but the same.
‘Betty, the majority of people think mediums are frauds,’ he said.
‘And your friends think they’re the experts, do they?’ I was furious.
‘Why did you tell them in the first place?’ I asked. ‘You must have realized they would laugh at you.’
‘Well, I must confess I was pretty bowled over by what had happened, and wanted to share the experience.’ He smiled. ‘I’ve been an idiot, haven’t I?’
‘No,’ I replied. ‘But I think you’re being a coward.’ Upset, he turned around and left.
A few months later we talked on the phone. He told me that he had needed time to think about what I had said, and laughingly agreed that he was a coward at heart.
‘I am so intrigued, I can’t keep away,’ he confided. Eventually, the survival evidence, clairvoyance and healing won him over. He was to admit later that it had completely changed his life. During this time there was one question that he repeatedly asked. ‘As a believer, will I have to change my ways and become a goody-two-shoes?’ ‘Well if you do then I’m in serious trouble,’ I replied.
It was a thought that frequently passed through my mind, especially as my clients were obviously in awe of me. Like my friend, I did not want to change. I had led an extremely eventful life and I was the sum total of every experience I had ever had. And yet the thought continued to bother me.
My mother was religious and belonged to the Church of England, and so I had become part of that Church from my birth. After much coaxing from my mother, I was confirmed in Southwark Cathedral when I was nineteen. I was already beginning to feel disenchanted and hoped by making this commitment that things would change. It is only later in life that one realizes that it is not that easy. Eventually, after much soul-searching, I stopped being a member of the Church. And from that time on, I felt spiritually cleansed. In retrospect, it is obvious that it was part of the Grand Plan that had been mapped out for me. But here I was twenty-five years later, with yet another spiritual dilemma. It had to be solved if I was to have peace of mind. And yet, as with so many problems we have during our lives, this one was going to have to be put on hold.
Throughout the first year of my mediumship I tried to make all sorts of pacts with the spirit world; some worked while others did not. I could not understand why this should be so, and continued to experiment. It was through
trial and error that I began to see a pattern emerging, and this was confirmed through survival evidence.
One evening I was healing a woman who was crippled with arthritis. Halfway through the session a spirit voice told me that he would like to speak to his sister. I passed the message on and the woman was delighted that her brother was communicating. With myself acting as the mediator, the communication was as follows:
‘Hello, Joan, we heard you were in trouble. I was elected to speak as we were so close when we were young.’
‘Bert, it’s so lovely to hear from you but who are the “we” you are speaking about?’
‘Oh, Mum, Dad, Ivy, Flo and many others who loved you.’
My patient began to weep. She said, ‘I am in such pain, I wish I could be with you.’
‘Joan, you will never be well until you have released all the hate in your heart. It is crippling you.’
‘I can never forgive him for what he did to me,’ she replied.
‘This hate is not hurting him, only yourself.’ Bert paused, then continued, ‘We cannot help you until you help yourself.’
For the next twenty minutes they enjoyed a private chat about their lives until Bert said goodbye. I asked my client who the ‘he’ was. She told me that it was her ex-husband, and that he had made her life hell.
Joan visited me again a fortnight later. She walked into my healing room, twirled around and said, ‘Look what you have done for me. My arthritis has gone.’
On questioning her about the last two weeks I found that she had rid herself of the hate she had inside her by mentally sinking into a bath and watching the black hate being released. Then she ran the water until it was clear.
‘So you have actually cured yourself,’ I said. She looked at me in silence for some time. ‘I suppose I have,’ she was perplexed. ‘But it was so easy.’ I smiled. ‘If I had all those people rooting for me in the spirit world I would find it easy. I think the evidence you received has been a valuable lesson for both of us.’
She visited me again a year later to tell me that she was getting married and was going to live in America.
It was a simple message, but a powerful one. Working in my capacity as a medium or healer I could not always be successful if the spirituality of the client had been badly affected in some way. I began to give myself mental exercises for cleansing, and felt so much better that I passed them on to my clients. It was whilst I was sitting at my healing couch writing them down that I heard a voice say, ‘We are going to try something.’
My hand moved rapidly, as I drew face after face on the blank paper. There were priests, nuns, clowns and children, and they were not all English. There were many foreign people with ornamental headdress. The drawing stopped as rapidly as it had started, and I was completely dumbfounded. I had never been able to draw at all, and here were most professional sketches. I tried to carry on, but I could sense that the force had left and with it my artistry. These sessions continued for about three weeks and I thought that I had found another talent. I was thrilled. Unfortunately, it left, one day, never to return. I found out much later that a medium is tested in many ways, and a spirit artist had obviously wanted to work through me but had found that I was not the right material. I could have told them that to begin with!
I was still being urged to give straight sittings and although my clients were extremely happy with the results, I myself did not particularly enjoy the experience. It was too inactive for me. As most of the sitters needed healing, I was able to persuade them to have healing whilst giving them survival evidence at the same time. They were delighted with the results, and this method suited me.
My mediumistic abilities enabled me to work in conjunction with a team of spirit entities, including doctors who had taken it upon themselves to train me. As in any teacher-pupil relationships we had our ups and downs. I was convinced at one stage that healing was purely magnetic, and that the spirits did not have anything to do with the healing. The team were quick to react to this.
First there was the blind man who told me that when he and his wife arrived home after healing, all the lights in their house were on, including the spare room which they never used. Also, the curtains in the bedroom were closed at night and opened in the morning.
Then a woman client told me that she had felt someone manipulating her arm in the night and found when she woke in the morning that her frozen shoulder had been cured.
A friend who suffered from migraine mentally asked for my help during an attack. After a few minutes she felt hands on her head and shoulders and fell asleep. When she awoke, the pain had gone and she never suffered another migraine.
And so it went on, until they had convinced me that there were spirit doctors and they did work through me. But one day whilst meditating I received this message.
Having experimented with the idea of healing being purely magnetic you have been given evidence that this is not entirely correct. But you have found out for yourself that life force is magnetic. You will find that spiritual power and life force interact all the time and it is impossible to separate the two. You were partly correct. We would like you to continue with your original ideas and when we feel that you are on the wrong path we will gently guide you back on to the correct one. You are a free spirit and will always be so.
I was glad to hear that. I hated the thought of being manipulated and sometimes the idea disturbed me. It was only the successful healings that urged me on. If so many people were being given a new life by this incredible force then what I was doing must be right. But somewhere in the corners of my mind I occasionally felt uneasy. Sometimes, I was not quite sure if the ideas I had were mine or theirs, they were so mixed up.
Other aspects were also worrying. Although I have been an avid reader all my life there were certain subjects that did not interest me, and one of those was golf. Yet when a group of friends discussed golf I found myself making suggestions that would improve their game. They were astonished, and so was I. But trying these tactics later they found them to be extremely helpful.
The same pattern was repeated whenever there was a particular topic being discussed. People who did not believe in mediumship or healing gradually began to phone me for advice, and I began to give my friends psychic consultations. Between us we monitored these consultations, which were to prove extremely accurate.
Nine months into my first year of mediumship I was to discover yet another gift. In conversation, whenever a name was mentioned, I seemed to know everything about that person and was able to give a detailed account of their personality. When asked about this ability and where the information came from, I had no answer. All I could say was that it was, ‘a kind of knowing’. Now, of course, I know that it is an ability to tap the Universal Mind. Twenty-two years on I am still using this talent to help friends.
One memorable consultation was with an amateur golfer. His ambition was to achieve a hole in one. The words came before the thought as I explained what he had to do.
‘Take a long look at the direction in which you want the ball to go and visualize an energy beam from the middle of your forehead to the hole. Then “see” the ball going into the hole. If you have any doubts at all it will not happen. Just “know” that it is going to happen.’
My friend laughed, ‘That sounds even more difficult than trying to get it in the normal way.’
‘If you simply “think it there” it should work.’ We were both laughing at this point. He agreed to try, though we were both doubtful.
A week later I answered the door to find him standing there with a huge bunch of flowers. He shoved them into my arms, and raising his hands above his head, shouted, ‘You’re a bloody marvel. It worked!’
He then explained in detail how he had carried out my instructions to the letter and got a hole in one on the first try. Grabbing my arm be propelled me inside and told me that he wanted me to be his personal consultant. I declined. But over the years he was able to achieve his ambition five times
.
I enjoyed the mixed consultations with my friends. They were always happy events and there were no great expectations, it was just fun. Nevertheless, we were all pleasantly surprised at the outcome of these meetings. For me it was a time to relax, away from the pressure that was being put upon me by requests for healing and sittings.
At the end of the first year I still found sittings difficult. The communicators themselves were very coherent most of the time, and I was at ease with the two-way conversations. The difficulty arose from the emotions that were released when the contacts came through. A sitting would sometimes leave me feeling completely exhausted.
When I had been healing it was quite the reverse and I felt exhilarated. It was to be some time before I could work out why this should be so. I was also saddened by the fact that I did not seem to have a life of my own any more. I was trying to please too many people at the same time. However, I was so fascinated by the phenomena that were becoming a daily occurrence that I could not, it seemed, cut the cord.
There was one thing, though, that angered me during this period, and that was the intolerance shown to mediums and healers. The word ‘medium’ seemed to bring out the worst in people. I was ‘told’ by Christian friends that the devil was speaking through me. I replied that if that was the case then he was pretty well-informed and extremely intelligent.
‘Of course he is,’ was their reply. ‘That is why he is so good at hoodwinking people.’
‘You know him personally, do you?’ I asked.
‘Yes! We know him as well as we know Jesus Christ,’ they said.
‘Describe him,’ I asked. They faltered, and then said, ‘He can take on any image.’ Laughing, I remarked that he must be very talented. They were furious. ‘We’re trying to help you. This is no laughing matter.’
‘If you are right, then why does he give so much pleasure to so many people?’
