Recently, I spent the weekend doing mediumship readings at a psychic fair. On a break, I strolled around the festival booths, stopping at one featuring decals emblazoned with witty sayings. I couldn’t stop myself from buying a bumper sticker, which I took back to my table and propped against my sign, so all passersby could read it: “You’re just jealous because the little voices talk to me.”

Naturally, I meant this to be funny, but all good humor stems from a seed of reality. This sticker amused me because the voices it referenced have been speaking to me for years. For a long time, though, I didn’t understand who they were or what they were trying to say. Instead, I questioned my sanity and never mentioned to anyone that sometimes I heard a little voice in my ear that told me what to do.

Thank goodness I finally discovered mediumship, the process by which those of us in the physical world can communicate with those who live on the Other Side. Moreover, by learning about the Other Side, I met my spirit guides, the entities who dwell in the spirit world who have agreed to help me during my physical incarnation.

Now, I know what you’re thinking: “This is all fine and good for you, but how does this pertain to me? I would like to know how to talk to my spirit guides and loved ones who have passed over, but I don’t hear voices. How can I possibly know when Spirit is trying to tell me something?” Spirit surrounds every person, and it has messages to impart. You simply need to figure out how you receive your messages in order to refine the process of communicating with Spirit.

For some, messages come through the auditory psychic sense of clairaudience, or hearing voices, like in my case. Others may visually perceive those in the spirit world and see visions containing messages for them. This is called clairvoyance, or clear-seeing. However, the vast majority of people simply feel the presence of Spirit and receive messages through their impressions. This is called clairsentience, and it can indeed be the hardest way to understand that Spirit is communicating with you. Just because it may be difficult to perceive, however, doesn’t mean that it isn’t happening!

Clairsentience, or impressional mediumship, is hard for people to trust because it is difficult to tell which thoughts, or impressions, are coming from your own brain, and which thoughts are communications from Spirit. The right side of our brain controls imagination as well as intuition, but we tend to allow the left side of our brain, which controls rational thought, to convince us that we’ve imagined an intuitive thought or a spirit communication. In order to become a medium, a person who can consciously perceive spirit communications, we need to honor the right side of our brains and allow these impressions to be recognized and analyzed.

In my years of teaching mediumship development, I’ve found that introducing students to their spirit guides helps them immeasurably in their quest to communicate with the Other Side. Each of us has at least five spirit guides working with us. These guides make a pact with us to help us before we come into this incarnation. Each of our guides has a specific function; as one example, our Protector is especially concerned with keeping us physically safe and with driving harmful energies away from us. Our five guides often try to contact us through one of our psychic senses in order to give us important messages about our health, our work, our relationships, or any of the challenges that crop up in our lives. By meeting these guides and learning to work closely with at least one of them, we can establish a pattern for communicating with the Other Side. Our guides can also facilitate communication with other people in the spirit world, like our passed relatives and friends. A good relationship with our spirit guides is key to opening up the lines of communication and becoming a medium.

That’s what you are if you communicate with Spirit: a medium. Don’t let the word throw you. No one expects you to go to the next psychic fair and start reading for other people. You don’t have to become a medium for anyone but yourself. All of us want to make good decisions in our lives. We want to be happy and to achieve the goals we’ve set for ourselves. Some of us long to hear from folks who have passed over to the Other Side. Communicating with Spirit can help you to do that, and it can help you to grow spiritually, an intrinsic desire for many of us.

If this sounds like an exciting endeavor, So You Want to be a Medium? A Down-to-Earth Guide might be a good place for you to begin learning. I wrote the book with you in mind, gearing it toward those who don’t have access to physical spiritual teachers but who still desire to learn the mechanics of mediumship. If you choose to open your mind and heart to the teachings of Spirit, I urge to you open this book. The voices are speaking to you, too, in a language only you can understand. So You Want to be a Medium? can help you decode the messages. Are you ready to listen?