Choosing to Be a Medium: Experience & Share the Healing Wonder of Spirit Communication

By Sharon Farber

Discover How to Become a Medium When You're Not Born That Way...Or Are You?

Experience the wonder of spirit communication first hand—even if you don't think you were born a medium. Sharon Farber shares her amazing story of becoming a medium through study, not birthright, and she reveals how you can become one, too.

This easy-to-use, empowering book provides everything needed to lay your foundation for connecting with loved ones in spirit. Build your skills through practical techniques and hands-on exercises. Explore the different types of mediumship, what it is and isn't, and its roots in Spiritualism. Learn how to gather information from those you connect with in spirit and how to overcome common fears and challenges.

Featuring insights from Q & A sessions with various mediums, along with many ways to enhance your abilities—including setting intention, raising your vibration, trance work, meditation, and grounding—Choosing to Be a Medium demonstrates that anyone can connect with spirits on the other side.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Llewellyn Worldwide
• Release date: Mar 8, 2019
• ISBN: 9780738757735

Sharon Farber

Sharon Farber is a massage therapist, healer, award-winning artist, medium, teacher, and the owner of Dragonfly Healing Arts in Pine Meadow, Connecticut. She gives mediumship readings and demonstrations, facilitates a mediumship development circle, teaches mediumship classes, and leads mediumship development retreats. Learn more about the author at www.sharonfarber.net.

Book preview

About the Author

Sharon Farber is a massage therapist, healer, award-winning artist, medium, teacher, and the owner of Dragonfly Healing Arts in Pine Meadow, CT. She gives mediumship readings and demonstrations, facilitates a mediumship development circle, teaches mediumship classes, and leads mediumship development retreats. Learn more about the author at www.sharonfarber.net.

Llewellyn Publications

Woodbury, Minnesota

Copyright Information

Choosing to Be a Medium: Experience & Share the Healing Wonder of Spirit Communication © 2019 by Sharon Farber.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any matter whatsoever, including Internet usage, without written permission from Llewellyn Publications, except in the form of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

As the purchaser of this e-book, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. The text may not be otherwise reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, or recorded on any other storage device in any form or by any means.

Any unauthorized usage of the text without express written permission of the publisher is a violation of the author’s copyright and is illegal and punishable by law.

First e-book edition © 2019

E-book ISBN: 9780738757735

Book design by Samantha Penn

Cover design by Shira Atakpu

Project management by Samantha Lu Sherratt

Editing by Rosie Wallner

Llewellyn Publications is an imprint of Llewellyn Worldwide Ltd.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Farber, Sharon, author.

Title: Choosing to be a medium : experience & share the healing wonder of

spirit communication / Sharon Farber.

Description: First Edition. | Woodbury : Llewellyn Worldwide, Ltd., 2019. |

Includes bibliographical references.

Identifiers: LCCN 2018053961 (print) | LCCN 2019000853 (ebook) | ISBN

9780738757735 (ebook) | ISBN 9780738757483 (alk. paper)

Subjects: LCSH: Mediums. | Spiritualism.

Classification: LCC BF1286 (ebook) | LCC BF1286 .F37 2019 (print) | DDC

133.9/1--dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018053961

Llewellyn Publications does not participate in, endorse, or have any authority or responsibility concerning private business arrangements between our authors and the public.

Any Internet references contained in this work are current at publication time, but the publisher cannot guarantee that a specific reference will continue or be maintained. Please refer to the publisher’s website for links to current author websites.

Llewellyn Publications

Llewellyn Worldwide Ltd.

2143 Wooddale Drive

Woodbury, MN 55125

www.llewellyn.com

Manufactured in the United States of America

Acknowledgments

Special thanks to my parents, Seymour and Helen Farber, who have always been my champions. Dad, thanks for continuing to help from the other side, particularly for inspiring me to revisit The Seymour Agency. Thanks to my husband, Jeff, for being my best friend and supporting me on yet another endeavor, and my children for putting up with me while I wrote this book and not minding too much having such a weird mother.

Thank you to Dr. Dorothy Martin-Neville for telling me I could be a medium and Rita Berkowitz for teaching me how. Thanks to Kitty Woud and Eileen Davies for loving support in my mediumship development. Thanks to members of our circle for sitting with me, allowing me to share our stories, and especially to Mary, Marcy, and Becky, for so many years together. Thanks to everyone who has given me the opportunity to spread love and healing to both worlds through readings and demonstrations. Thanks to my students for allowing me to share the wonders of mediumship. Thank you to all my teachers on both sides of the veil, for love, support, and guidance.

Thanks to Julie Lucey, and Gerald and Marion Lichtenstein for proofreading my initial book proposal. Thanks to Noelle Tkacz and Ellie Luisi for being my second (and third) pair of eyes. Thank you to Tina Wainscott, my agent, for taking a chance on me and helping me cope with commas. Thank you to Angela Wix, my editor, for bringing this book to its full potential, and Llewellyn Worldwide for supportively embracing a new author.

Dedicated to my mom and dad

Contents

Exercises

Disclaimer

Acknowledgments

Author’s Note

Introduction

Part I: Groundwork

Chapter 1: My Journey

Chapter 2: Mediumship

Chapter 3: Spirits

Part II: Diving In

Chapter 4: Beginning Your Adventure in Mediumship

Chapter 5: Going Within

Chapter 6: Getting Ready

Chapter 7: Communicating with Spirit

Chapter 8: Being a Medium

Chapter 9: Circle

Part III: Advanced Mediumship

Chapter 10: The Professional Medium

Chapter 11: Overcoming Challenges

Conclusion

Appendix A: Ten Mediums, Ten Questions

Appendix B: Spiritualist Organizations and Principles

Appendix C: Spiritual Healing Mediums

Glossary

Cited References

Additional Resources

Exercises

Exercise 1: Telepathy

Exercise 2: Strengthening Intuition

Exercise 3: Making Intuition Instinctive

Exercise 4: Using Intuition

Exercise 5: Wonder about Everything

Exercise 6: Who’s Calling?

Exercise 7: What Time Is It?

Exercise 8: Perceiving Pictures

Exercise 9: Sensing Color

Exercise 10: Psychometry

Exercise 11: Psychic Shower

Exercise 12: Waterfall of Light Meditation

Exercise 13: Connect with a Spirit Guide Meditation

Exercise 14: Examining Your Fears

Exercise 15: A Simple Meditation

Exercise 16: A Simple Breathing Exercise

Exercise 17: Alternate Nostril Breathing (simplified)

Exercise 18: Breath Counting

Exercise 19: Sitting in the Power

Exercise 20: Sitting in the Power (simplified)

Exercise 21: Sitting for Trance (suitable for beginners)

Exercise 22: Smudging with Sage

Exercise 23: Grounding with Roots

Exercise 24: Affirmations

Exercise 25: Gratitude List

Exercise 26: Being Quiet in Nature

Exercise 27: Walking Meditation

Exercise 28: Setting Your Intention

Exercise 29: Envisioning Love

Exercise 30: Opening Your Third Eye

Exercise 31: Visualizing

Exercise 32: Hearing

Exercise 33: Listening to (Actual) Music

Exercise 34: Feeling Physical Sensations

Exercise 35: Feeling Emotions

Exercise 36: Smelling

Exercise 37: Using All the Senses

Exercise 38: Working with Symbols

Exercise 39: Creating a Symbol Dictionary

Exercise 40: Psychic Doodling

Exercise 41: Practicing with Evidence

Exercise 42: Three Ways to Link with Spirit

Exercise 43: Fake it till you make it.

Exercise 44: Clearing and Strengthening Chakras and Aura

Exercise 45: Protective Bubble

Exercise 46: Sitting in Circle: The Basics

Exercise 47: Sitting in Circle: More Structured

Exercise 48: Multiple Links

Exercise 49: Three More Ways to Link

Exercise 50: Flowers and Crystals

Exercise 51: Seeking Specific Evidence

Exercise 52: Exchanging Readings

Exercise 53: Drawing What You See

Exercise 54: Reverse Readings

Exercise 55: Getting Psychic Information About Your Sitter Before the Reading

Exercise 56: Giving Readings Blindfolded

Exercise 57: Speed Readings

Exercise 58: Receiving an Object from a Spirit Person

Exercise 59: Getting More Information

Exercise 60: Recording a Reading

Exercise 61: Giving an Indirect Demonstration

Exercise 62: Giving a Direct Demonstration

Exercise 63: Giving a Double-link Demonstration

Exercise 64: Dead or Alive

Exercise 65: Alternating Between Psychic Perception and Mediumship

[contents]

Disclaimer

Not everybody has the ideal emotional strength and stability to be a medium. Good mental health, including a strong connection to reality, is vital. People with certain types of mental illness, including clinical depression or psychosis, are advised to consult a healthcare provider or spiritual mentor before pursing mediumship development.

Do not engage in mediumship when you’re feeling physically, mentally, emotionally, or spiritually unhealthy. Do not practice mediumship while depressed, drained, seriously sleep-deprived, or emotionally unstable, nor while drunk or under the influence of mind-altering drugs.

Expressing belief in a supportive and healing afterlife is not to be misconstrued as in any way advocating suicide. Suicide is not a solution to life’s problems. If you or someone you know is considering suicide, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 in the United States. Outside of the United States, contact the International Association for Suicide Prevention (IASP) at https://www.iasp.info/resources/Crisis_Centres/.

Neither the publisher nor the author takes any responsibility for any possible consequences that may result from the reader’s use of content contained in this publication and recommends common sense when contemplating the practices described in this book.

[contents]

Author’s Note

The people, examples, and anecdotes in this book are real and derived from my own experiences. Some identifying information has been changed to protect identity.

[contents]

Introduction

I’m not a morning person. I stay up late, sleep in, and am not usually pleasant before 9 a.m. This book emerged near dawn as I tossed in my bed trying to sleep while spirit people poured ideas into my head. It was awfully early, but they were particularly persistent. I finally gave in, got up, and started writing. If they were working so hard to get me to do this, then we would do it together. My spirit guides give new meaning to the phrase ghost writers. I started writing notes, made a list of topics, and created an outline. I told no one. This was between me and Spirit.

Several days later, I was taking a mediumship class in New Jersey and exchanging readings with another student. She connected with my mother’s mom and gave evidence to validate her identity. Then the student moved her hand in a writing motion and told me that Grandma was encouraging my writing. My mouth dropped open. I hadn’t told anybody about writing a book. I started the manuscript and within days my deceased grandmother urged me on! It was interesting that Grandma knew what was happening in my life more than my husband and children did. I continued to receive spiritual support and guidance throughout this entire book adventure.

I agreed to write this book because I have a different perspective than many other mediumship authors. Most of them connected spontaneously with spirit people and didn’t have to learn how. I became fascinated with mediumship without seeing spirit people. This book shares how I learned to become a medium and how you can too.

I am a massage therapist, healer, and artist who has chosen (with guidance from Spirit) to become a medium. I have a BA in sociology from the University of Massachusetts where I graduated Phi Beta Kappa and Cum Laude. I spent three years in the social services field before I decided I could be of more help to people with massage and healing. I’ve thrived as a healer for more than thirty years but found nothing as exciting and fulfilling as communicating with people in spirit. I am passionate about connecting with those who’ve passed, and I am thrilled with the knowledge that there is an afterlife. I’m a natural teacher, so sharing my journey and encouraging likeminded people is an obvious choice. Unlike mediums who’ve been in contact with spirit people since they were toddlers, I’m an authority on becoming a medium, whatever your age.

Choosing to Be a Medium will enlighten those interested in mediumship and empower and transform those seeking to become a medium. It’s not necessary to decide which type of reader you are. Read, and see where the journey takes you. You don’t need previous experience or encounters with spirit people to develop your own mediumistic abilities. If the spirit world fascinates you, but you doubt you have the gift, I dedicate this book to you. If you’ve already begun your mediumistic journey, may this book ease your fears and bolster your confidence.

This book starts with a clear explanation of what mediumship is and how it works. Then it addresses every facet of spirit communication to help you become a medium or improve your mediumship. It guides you through potential fears and obstacles and teaches you how to quiet your mind, raise your vibration, increase your intuition, set your intention, and connect with spirit people. There’s a constant emphasis on self-care, healthy boundaries, and making this a safe and sacred journey.

The sixty-five exercises include simple, easy-to-follow steps and appear throughout the book. I encourage you to take the time to complete each exercise. In my own journey, I’ve participated in these exercises as a student and teacher. I learned or adapted them from workshops, mentors, and books, and some I believe I’ve invented. Many have been used for decades or longer. You can do most of the beginning exercises by yourself anytime or anywhere; for the advanced exercises, you’ll need to work with other people. Ideally, practice with those who want to develop their own abilities, but if not, ask a friend or family member to help. Keep a journal to track what you do, the results, and how your results change over time.

I suggest you read the entire book in sequence because the information builds chronologically. After that, use it as a reference to support your development. My hope is that after you’ve read this book, you’ll have a clear understanding of the wonder and healing of mediumship.

[contents]

Part I

Groundwork

Chapter 1

My Journey

I had a normal childhood in New Jersey. I wasn’t aware of spirit guides and didn’t confuse living people with those in spirit. As far as I know, my parents and ancestors didn’t either. I had no tragic deaths of close loved ones or near-death experiences. I lived with parents who loved each other, stayed together, and weren’t alcoholics, addicts, or abusive. My unremarkable childhood differs from that of the many mediums who experienced trauma, spirit sightings, a family history of mediumship, or all three.

My stable home life didn’t mean that growing up was easy; I was sensitive, had trouble making friends, and had poor self-esteem. I entered kindergarten at four years old with a late-November birthday. That was fine academically, but it took years to catch up socially. Overall, it was fine. My parents were loving and supportive, and there were always books. I was the girl who spent hours in the library.

I was raised Jewish. Our family belonged to a traditional progressive temple and my parents were very observant. In Hebrew school, the one class I found interesting, even fascinating, was Judaism and Mysticism, where we learned about Kabbalah and the Tree of Life. The teacher recommended reading Carlos Castaneda’s books, which I devoured. This was my first peek at the world of Spirit and it left a strong impression on me. Although Jewish education was tedious, I loved my Jewish summer camp.

I spent summers at the New Jersey Y Camps, where life was infinitely better and I was blessed with camp friends. My love of nature bloomed there and my first intentional psychic experiences occurred. My friends and I were about thirteen and did psychic activities in the bunk at night without supervision. The two I remember best were a numbers game and psychic drawing. In the first, we would sit in a circle and have a girl leave while we chose a number between one and one hundred. When she returned, we would send her the number through our minds and she’d be able to hear the number. I vividly remember having the correct number pop into my head when it was my turn.

The doodling was even better. A camper and I sat back-to-back on the floor, each with paper and pen, and drew without talking. We couldn’t see each other’s papers. I can still visualize one of the finished products where we’d sketched the same shapes but differing concepts. I drew an ice cream cone using a circle on top of a triangle. She made a head with a wizard’s hat using the same shapes. There were other drawings that followed the same pattern, with remarkably similar results. I don’t remember how many of us participated in the doodling, or whose idea these games were, but they left an impression on me.

I eventually had a best friend outside of camp and made more in high school and college. I traveled across the country after college and ended up in Charlotte, North Carolina as a Medicaid caseworker. Throughout those years, I dabbled with the I Ching: The Book of Changes (a divination tool) and began a long-term but casual relationship with Motherpeace¹ tarot cards. When the I Ching told me, It furthers one to cross the great water, I moved back east, eventually went to massage school in Connecticut, and started a career as a massage therapist and healer, which I still pursue today.

During this time, I met my now husband, Jeff. I started painting watercolors with our daughter when she was in kindergarten. After a few years, I became an award-winning artist. When I decided to sell my eighteen-year-old massage practice so I could focus on painting, my friends and family were horrified. They told me how hard it is to make a living as an artist. Jeff told me, If anyone can do it, you can.

I was a content wife, mother, massage therapist, healer, and artist with no special psychic abilities or interest in communicating with spirit people.

How I Became a Medium

In 2005, a friend asked if I would go with her to see a medium who was giving readings to a small group in Middletown, Connecticut. I’d never been to a medium, had no preconceived ideas, and decided to go. About ten people attended the session and we all received connections. She brought through a special friend and a beloved dog for me, with enough information for me to recognize them. I was fascinated.

She accepted my invitation for her to give small group readings at my massage office. As the host, I attended all sessions and was awed by the powerful experiences people had connecting with their loved ones in spirit. We laughed, cried, and healed through this work. She did this regularly for about a year before relocating to another part of the country.

About a year later, while massaging a man who complained of chest pain, I learned he’d lost his ten-year-old son. The boy had been hospitalized for undiagnosed abdominal pain and died in the hospital from a ruptured appendix. No wonder the man had pain where his heart was! I couldn’t begin to grasp the grief these parents were experiencing and kept thinking how they might benefit by seeing a medium. I imagined how a good medium might be able to connect with their son who’d be able to tell them it wasn’t their fault, he was happy in spirit, and how much he loved them. The parents would still grieve but might gain a measure of closure and peace. I didn’t mention this to the client but became increasingly aware of situations where mediumship might aid in healing. This event occurred before mediumship was as popular as it is now and when there weren’t many mediums in my area. I saw the need for more and thought maybe I could become one.

I started reading books on mediumship, but all were written by mediums who’d been connecting with spirit people since childhood. Some clearly stated that mediumship wasn’t something that could be learned; you had to be born with the ability. Others were more ambiguous, suggesting anyone can learn to connect with spirit, but if you’re not born that way, you’ll never be very good.

I knew I wanted to be a medium but didn’t know if it was possible. When I began taking classes, people kept telling me, I thought you had to be born that way, and, "I