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Ann Théato, International Psychic Medium and Spiritual Tutor, investigates psychic development, mediumship techniques, and paranormal science, so that you can come to understand your own innate psychic ability and expand your knowledge, whilst learning to develop a curious mind.

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TRANSCRIPT

Hello everybody! My name is Ann Théato and welcome to the Psychic Matters Podcast – episode number 49!

Thank you to all of you for continuing to listen and for making this podcast swing! I’m so grateful to you for your listening ears.  I’ve had 77 five star reviews so far and I am so grateful to you for those.  Written reviews really do help the podcast move up the podcast charts, – we got to number 3 in Hungary last week!

So, if you are enjoying listening and learning loads from the content, could you pay it forward, and write a review for me on iTunes or Stitcher?  If Psychic Matters moves up the charts, then it grows the listenership and it reaches more people across the globe who may not be able to afford to take classes or who live in countries where there are no training facilities.  To leave a review is pretty simple – just go to iTunes or Stitcher, search for Psychic Matters, scroll down to the bottom and you will see a button that says leave a review! 

This week in the Studio I had a wonderful time chatting to Spiritualist Medium, Adam Berry CSNU.  In this episode, Adam talks very openly about the huge difficulties he overcame during his teen years and how his own struggles with living and with learning, have led to him feeling huge compassion for others in a similar situation; always believing in them when they don’t necessarily believe in themselves and always encouraging them to be the best they can be.

Get yourself a coffee, or if you’ve got Irish blood like me, a nice cup of tea and get ready to listen to this beautiful episode on how, with a little human courage and the help of inspirational mentors and our spirit team, we can learn to tackle anything that life throws at us.

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Ann

We are very lucky to be joined here in the Psychic Matters studio by Spiritualist Medium, Adam Berry.  Adam, welcome to the Psychic Matters.

Adam

Thank you, Ann, it’s a pleasure to be here, thank you for inviting me.

Ann

It’s great to have you on the show, Adam because I know that you have done a lot of study into mediumship and the knowledge of the soul and spirit, and it’s a huge passion of yours.  And I know you consider yourself a lifetime learner as it were. And I was wondering Adam, when did you start your learning?  Because so many of us are trying to pick up information and trying to learn about the soul and spirit, but when, when did you begin?  Did you begin like, when you were very young, or in later years?

Adam

Well, really it was in later years that I did start to learn more, and educate myself, because I think within anything else within our lives, like when we’re younger, I think we tend to feel like, because we feel it, and we’ve always felt it, it seems to become normal.  I was interested in things like astrology, and I always knew that there was something more within this life, but I suppose it wasn’t until I got older and ventured into the Spiritualist Church with friends, out of intrigument, and my real dad had passed away at that time, so there was this real, wanting to know whether there was something beyond this life. Knowing really deep down, that there was something more.  I always knew that there was something more, but I also felt that I wasn’t part of this life as well, so, with the emotional problems that I did have during my upbringing and in my teenage years I had an alcohol problem, which was a huge train crash in my life, that you start to question, where your place is within this world and what does my life really mean?  And I suppose it was a slow, stagnant, stage process within that, joining various groups.  I was involved in Alcoholics Anonymous for a time and that was to, obviously for the effects of my illness with alcohol and my addiction to alcohol.  And that led me onto a spiritual experience through the 12 Steps, because it’s a programme that helps you within life, but it was actually venturing into the spiritualist church that actually changed things for me.  Because I started to, I suppose, understanding something outside of myself, understanding that there is life after this physical death, having that comfort, knowing that my dad was OK in the spirit world, and you know, that there is no death.  I mean, it’s, it’s a wonderful thing to know I suppose, and believe in, I think you have to believe in it first, to actually know and understand it. And that then comes in turn with education, because as I started to attend the Spiritualist Church over the years, I sat in certain circles, awareness classes, went on workshops, went to the Arthur Findlay College in my early 20s, that opened up another avenue.  So everything that I went to, sort of opened up another experience and a quest and a thirst to understand more, but I suppose it was when, how I started to deepen my knowledge, was going to the Arthur Findlay College, and I was in a, on the week of Glyn Edwards and he was very much educated me about sitting in the power, which I didn’t know what the power was.  And after that time, I did actually start searching for the power for about 11 years after that, but it was my first experience within the power and I suppose after that, I became a bit of a workshop junkie, going from workshop to workshop.  But it wasn’t until I was put in contact with Mavis Pittilla, who was local to me, and I’d heard so many wonderful things about her.  And to cut a long story short really, I went on Mavis’ mentorship, I was, I was invited, or I was accepted should I say, on Mavis’ mentorship, which was a very much a synchronistic process in itself, a very much meant-to-be moment.  So much so, I didn’t know whether I actually belonged on that course at the time, through what people had said to me, because someone had really crushed my confidence before I actually embarked upon the course.  It was probably a few weeks before I was going on the course and somebody had sort of belittled me, because it was, it’s so easy, being sensitive as well, to take on things what people say, and to make yourself  feel worthless and you don’t deserve things and so on, and so forth.  So, it was a real big thing for someone so shy, to embark on this big thing, this big process within life, to actually think, well I’m actually medium?  Well, this is the time that will actually show me whether I am or I’m not.  There’s obviously, I’m drawn to this for some reason, and it was Mavis that throughout all the years that I had learned from the different workshops, from different people, from some wonderful tutors, some not so great teachers, that you learn from as you, as you are going ahead, Mavis just threaded all that together like a tapestry.  So, it was like she just knew the soul of me, and it was as if like, she picked me up, and she nurtured what I was supposed to be.  And she knew the pain that I felt when I stood up in front of people.  She said to me Adam, you may be shy, but your soul isn’t.   And them words really stuck with me throughout that time, and what happened as a result of Mavis’ mentorship was, I started off on, I think it was an 18-month course, travelling down to the Banyan Retreat every so often, and I started to build up confidence and I learned about prayer.  Mavis said to me, you’re not a pray-er Adam, I think she had to write a prayer out for me too, because I just… I found prayer was something that was personal, and I would say my own personal prayers and maybe a lot of begging and asking, that was what prayer was to me.  But Mavis taught me that prayer was about gratitude, about gratitude of everything that we have.  It was about setting intention of what we’re about to do, it was the sacredness of life, this power, this God force is our life and our, and all that ever has been, all that ever will be, and all that is.  And within that power she brought through my inspiration, she nourished the inspiration within me to be able to find my voice.  It was something that I struggled with throughout my life, was to find the voice that, was my voice really relevant in this world? And what Mavis did was to bring forth the space or the place, for me to be able to be safe to express the spirit within me, the soul of me, and in turn with that as well, because it was, she encouraged my mediumship, she would take me out, she took me out on the platform a couple of times.  And she also took me out teaching, which was a wonderful experience, and it was something, I was thinking, why is she taking me out teaching?  And I remember her saying to me, I’m proving to you that you are a teacher, and she set up these exercises for me with the students, and it was really wonderful really, because even though she’s a, she’s a mentor, and she is now a friend as well, at the time it was like, she treated me as an equal.  It wasn’t like this hierarchy, or it wasn’t… I understood that yes, I’ve got this respect as a as a teacher and a mentor ,that she was and still is, but it was like she was, we were colleagues at that point, and it just felt in that way.    But Mavis was the one that brought in the passion for philosophy for me, because I was never a speaker, I was never someone that would get up.  You know, as soon as I got up in front of people I would want to sit back down, that’s how I was.  And I remember Mavis having in one of her classes, she would have like a bag of items, and there would be like a calculator in there, there would be a pen, there would be all these different items in, and no-one would know until they got up what they had, and they had to  pick them out of the bag.   Then they’d have to give an inspirational talk on these items, and I was like… I’ll never forget and I was talking about this, this weekend.  Because I have just done a talk, an interactive talk, on inspiration in life for the Arthur Findlay College Open Week this weekend.  And I actually brought this story up, because I always think it’s an important one.  Because it helps people to understand that I was so scared to speak, yet, and Mavis knew that.  And I took this this item out of the bag, and it was a plastic bottle, and all I kept thinking was, it’s  just a plastic bottle, not realising it was a bottle of water, or it was, it was empty but it had water in it.  And that was the purpose of it, but all my conscious mind is thinking, it’s just an empty bottle, it’s plastic, what can I, what can I get from that?  I really couldn’t draw any inspiration until I saw the word water.  And then when I started to look at the word water, it started to flow into the streams and the rivers and the oceans and how we are at one, and I must have lasted about two minutes speaking, and then it was like, and Mavis went well done, excellent, go and sit down.  She knew how painful it was for me to stand up there and deliver that.  So, she really congratulated me for doing that.  So as time’s gone on, throughout Mavis’ mentorship really, I embarked on the SNU qualifications, you know, The Platform Accreditation Scheme which then led onto the CSNU.  I won the Gordon Higginson Memorial Scholarship in 2016, so that was a big wow for me because I never win anything, so it was like, wow, really? But that helped with my education and furthering my knowledge of the soul and the spirit.  But I would safely say I did learn about the soul and the spirit with Mavis.  She was the person that, through her lectures, through her speaking, it was more, it resonates.  You know, everything that she says resonates with me.  Don’t get me wrong, you know, that there are some things which is healthy that we think, oh well, I don’t know whether I quite agree with that, because I might not have experienced that, and that’s healthy, but everything, near enough everything that Mavis has said I really resonated with.  And then it sort of takes you in your own inspiration then, with your own experiences within life, how you adapt to these and express them in your own way.  So, there’s things in my life now that I have experienced, that will enhance my vision and version of the soul and the spirit.  It’s like with the Sitting In the Power that we have just done this evening, I incorporate the soul and the spirit within that, because obviously it’s important, and important for those aspects of self to be acknowledged because we are a soul and a spirit.  And the soul is the, obviously the vehicle in this this life that holds all of our experiences, all of our knowledge, and I believe it’s powered by the spirit within, and that vehicle takes us through this life, and then when this physical shell of a body is no longer needed and goes back into the earth, our soul continues in the spirit world, powered by the spirit.  And, you know, it’s something that we, it’s like the trinity so to speak of the soul, the spirit and the physical body.

Ann

Yeah, I mean it’s beautiful, the way that you speak so passionately about inspirational speaking, and it’s very interesting hearing your story about how shy you were, and how painful you found it initially to just, like you say, actually to just find your voice and speak in front of other people, and then to speak from a place of inspiration.  So, I know this has become a real passion of yours Adam, so how are you, how are you using your inspirational speaking?  You are teaching it, I know..

Adam

Yes, well it sort of was a gradual thing that, obviously it didn’t come over night.  It’s something that through experience, and for me wanting to know more too. It is sort of like, with the SNU courses, they give you guidance on how to present yourself in certain ways, how to breath and how to, just little tips on things like that, so that all sort of went hand in hand with this.  But I’ve always sort of had a creative mind but never been someone to be able to take it forward to express it.  Coming into spiritualism, coming on the courses that I have, doing the pathway that I’ve taken, it has sorted of lifted that lid of inspiration for me.  So, for example, I started to write poems. And, it started off where I would want to write about something in a cathartic way, whether it be something about my life that’s gone on in the past, something that might have been kind of painful, something that might have been happy or something that I was struggling with and you just want to journal. Some people journal and things like that.  Well as I started to write, I just noticed that it would start to rhyme as I was writing.  So, I was, sort of like an accidental poet because it didn’t really….  I never set out to write a poem, but that’s how it would come out.  And then I just sort of kept them for myself, for that, just to … some of them were very personal but then it has sort of come out in a generic way, where I just talk about incidences where… I’ve written a poem called The Roundabout.  And it was about how life is so fast and we are stuck on this roundabout.  And sometimes it’s too fast for you to get on, and it’s too fast for me to leave.  And then sometimes I was stuck on that roundabout with people with bad intention, whilst our heart is on our sleeve, I’m sort of going into it a little bit there, but it’s, then realising that this roundabout was spinning round so, so fast, and how long will it last?  And what you start to realise is, sometimes within life, it’s not necessarily you that is spinning this roundabout around.  And somebody, or some people can be actually pushing the spinning button for you.  And once you realise that, you can get off this roundabout, or it starts to go around a bit lighter, and easier, and then your life becomes something that you adore.  So that’s where the poems started from, this frantic, chaotic place, that ends in something that was really quite nice.  And you know, I have written about grief, I’ve written about my alcoholism, I’ve written about acceptance, peace, there’s all these different things that sort of tap in.  But I started to realise that, because I started sharing them on Facebook and social media, and just, just with friends.  Putting a nice background on them, and, and posting them, and then I just got so much sort of feedback, by saying, you should publish these, and so much interaction these poems that people could relate to them, because they are relatable.  I’m not a one with all big fancy words and things like that, so they’re just some, just quite kind of simple really, and very relatable to people’s lives.  And I just found that as time went on, people were saying it more and more and more.  And my dear friend Suzette said, you need to share these to the world, these poems.  and but she said what you need to stop sharing them into stop sharing them publicly.  People were saying you should publish these, these poems, and again I’m thinking, oh I don’t know about that.  What happened was, some churches are asking if they could share these poems as well at the services, I had friends who were asking if they take the poems to start off their addresses at the services.  And my friend Suzette took them to one of these services, and in that same time I was thinking, how do you publish you, your work if you wanted to?  And a published poet came up to Suzette after the service, asked her about the poem and asked, have I ever considered publishing?  So that was then, it was like that synchronistic meeting of somebody, actually, it was a published poet, thinking, gosh that, it’s good enough to be published.  So it then sort of sent me onto an investigation of looking at how and what to do, and now Soul Rise, which is the name of the book,  instead of poems I call them Soul Expressions by myself.  That name was born from a poem that have written called Soul Rise and I thought it was very apt to have within the, as the title of the book.  So that is soon to be released and what is kind of different about this, this book is, that it gives you an opportunity to, to actually have, so it’s got the poem on one page, and then it’s got a Reflections Page on the next page, and that’s blank.  So, it gives the reader the opportunity to write how they feel about, what’s that stirred up within them? And you know, just as a reflection, because I found that by, when I was sharing these poems with friends, work colleagues, they’d go, I love that poem but I find that really difficult to accept, or I don’t know, it stirs something up within me. So again, that brought forward for me, well, sometimes people need to write things, once they’ve read.  If it’s really stirring something up on a deeper level, then they need that opportunity to write.  So, I thought, I’ve never heard of a book that actually does that, or a poetry book that does that so I thought… and I’m sure I was very much inspired to do that.  So yes, that’s what it is.  There are 24 poems and Mavis has actually done the Forward for me as well, which is lovely, seeing as she was the one that really helped me find my inspiration, it only seemed right that she did the Forward and it’s, it’s lovely.  So, I’m really looking forward to being able to share these poems in fullness to people and that it will be being released quite soon actually.

Ann

Adam, it sounds just so beautiful, what a lovely thing to do, to allow the reader to interpret your poems in the way that they feel in that moment, I think that’s really beautiful.

Adam

Yeah.

Ann

And how wonderful of Mavis to do that for you, to write that Forward for you.

Adam

Yes, I’m really honoured.

Ann

She sounds like she has been an incredible, I mean she’s an incredible tutor, and an incredible person, and she has obviously had a great influence on you in terms of being incredibly supportive in helping you find your own path.

Adam

Yeah, absolutely .

Ann

And she’s taking you out teaching and I know that you are now teaching, so you must be, I don’t know, let me put it to you this way, your past experiences of being so shy, and the difficulties that you’ve had, that must in some way surely feed into your teaching and how you help others?

Adam

Absolutely I, I’m sort of like, a see myself as a teacher that nurtures, and more than anything, because I’m dyslexic as well so, I always have to make sure that people understand fully what’s been said.  I always want them to experience the fullness of the experience that it’s meant to be.  I’ll always worry about teaching as well.  I’ll always worry about putting the content together, because I just want to make sure that the learning experience is at the fullest of what they can experience.  And sometimes it’s kind of nervous coz you, you’re coming from a vulnerable place as well, because you are working with your inspiration to help and facilitate, and also teach those students, and really we’re working with something that is so sensitive and so sacred within each and every student that you have.  So it’s only right to be nurturing that with them, and to find the naturalness within them as well, because I know I’ve been in the past in certain education or whatever works, that it is drilled into you to do things in a certain way, and you can be crushed for your own inspiration, you be can be crushed for your own self-expression, and we really can’t be one thing all the time, because we’re many different, different facets of whatever we are to the world, whatever the world has done to us, and whatever we bring to the world.  And we’re all unique in our own passions and self-expression, so it wouldn’t be right to just fit us all in one box, but for us all to sort of dance with the spirit in our own unique free way.  And you know, whatever that is, and as long as we’re being true to the spirit world, bringing forth that evidence that life does continue.  As long as we’re delivering the inspiration in how it’s meant to be, and being free within that, then what is wrong with that?  There’s nothing wrong with that.  And I think it’s, a great teacher is someone that can acknowledge the uniqueness of the student, and being able to nurture their individual qualities to their full potential.  I think that’s really, really important.

Ann

I love that.  I just love it and I love that exercise that Mavis did with you, where she had a bag of objects and asked you to talk inspirationally.  It reminds me of when I was an actor and teaching acting to others as well, I’d have a bag of objects, but I would get people to talk about it for one minute, here’s your strange object, now just talk about it for one minute, or pretend it’s something else, but I’ve never really thought about doing it in terms of, I mean, I think it’s beautiful –  have this and just talk inspirationally about it, because you can be taken anywhere, couldn’t you with an object?

Adam

Yes, yes absolutely.  But it is, it’s so hard, but sometimes when people, depending on where they are in their life as well, it can be just so difficult.  So, what can seem so easy for somebody, can be so difficult for somebody else.  And I think that that’s what really helps me, is struggling so much within my learning, it’s really given me more of a compassion for the student that does struggle, to know and understand I can see in you what was in me.  And do you know, you have got it, you can do this.  And it’s that encouragement, believing in somebody when they don’t necessarily believe in themselves, and that is a power that, that is a power, and it’s and it’s a power that helps others to succeed.

Ann

I think that is beautiful.  And Adam let me just take you back to, you spoke earlier, very candidly, about your alcoholism that you had as a teenager… so you must have hit a point where you had to deal with that and do something about that.  Talk us through how you decided to, or how you helped yourself get out of that situation, because I think a lot of people listening to this podcast may have addictions of some sort, or be in situations where they just feel very helpless and hopeless.  So, what advice can you give those people?

Adam

Okay, well first and foremost I’ve got to say that, you know, I’ve just got this addictive personality which will always be with me, it’s just something that is, me.  And I’ve had to learn how to adapt to that in a positive way, rather than it be in a self-destruct way or a sabotage way. Because my alcoholism, I mean, when I look back as a child, you know I had quite a lot of emotional problems as a child and one thing that still sort of goes by now is sweet things, you know, chocolate.  It wouldn’t be, it was the norm for me and my sister to go across to the garage across the road, and we’d get about  five or six chocolate bars, and we would eat one after the other.  Now you now, that is like a sugar hit, that is a sugar hit.  So this is going into like 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, you know, into teenage years, and it was just something that just felt the norm.  It was normal to get about five chocolate bars from the shop, you know.  And what happened with me, I was a greedy drinker. At 13 years old I had my first experience with drink. It was in Greece on a holiday, it was Amstel beer. I remember that feeling, I remember that feeling of being, because I would be laughing and joking and I would make all the adults laugh with what I was saying, and I loved that feeling, I loved that feeling of confidence and you know, and that stuck with me, that warm feeling of, oh, it was, just something I’d not felt before.  So that was my first experience of alcohol, so having that feeling of like a oneness is what I would have thought it was at that time, and confidence. Going out drinking with friends at the weekend, you know while you were at school, having bottles of cider, Mad Dog 2020, all these different things that we would have, Thunderbirds Berry, you know, I would have that because my surname was Berry, just daft, daft things.  But instead of like, some people would share a bottle,  I’d be a greedy drinker and want a full bottle.  And you know, my family were big drinkers in the village, so it wasn’t really a big deal.  It was just something that we did and we drunk to get drunk, we drunk to get drunk and that was the norm.  I wasn’t really a fan of the taste of it, it was the effect.  I would go in the shop and I would look at the amount of alcohol in the bottle before choosing it. So, it didn’t really matter what it was, I would just want that effect.  So, this is sort of underlying and bubbling as time goes on.  And I would drink a lot at the weekend with friends and it would just be the weekends.  And then, as I was getting older, we would go into the pubs, so like 16, 17 we would be going into the pubs.  I mean I got barred from the pub when I was 17 for sneaking vodka in and putting it in my coke, you know, so that in a way is.. But at 17, what happened was, my biological father passed away, and that was just like the biggest train crash in my life, and that then spiralled this already addictive nature into a deeper, darker place.  I was left a little bit of money from my biological father, I wasn’t working, and I just went into this spiral of the depths of alcoholism, it was the depths of it.  And to cut a long story short, it was an awful time, there was times of overdosing, not wanting to be here, not wanting to live, not wanting to die.  Cutting myself,

there was, there was all manner of different things that was going on within my, my emotions, and, and also my sexuality had a lot of to do with this as well, must have done under, underlying it.  But it was, you know, I ended up having to be put onto a psychiatric ward when I was 18, to detox.  So, it had got that bad with my alcohol drinking that I had to be detoxed.  It was such a horrible experience, because I would actually have the physical, the sweats, the shaking, when, I needed a drink, it’s like, you need this, you need the drink, you feel like you, you don’t know want you’re going to do without it, and you need this drink, it’s as if like, your life depends upon it, and you are actually retching whilst trying to put this drink down, it was awful, awful place to be, but you could never, it’s as if like, you was in this vicious cycle, cycle and circle and you just couldn’t get out of it.  Then things would happen and you just want to forget about things, you wanted to suppress emotion but drink would bring go out the emotions in you as well, so it’s like this horrible, vicious circle.  But it was the physical side of it for me, that I had to be admitted into the psychiatric hospital and put on these strong tranquillizers called Librium to detox from alcohol.  And because of the severity of it, you know, obviously you have a psychiatrist when you are in there.  My real dad had schizophrenia, he was actually on that ward, the year previous and that’s where he escaped the lock up ward and he drowned.  So, I was there a year to the day in that same ward.

Ann

Oh, my goodness.

Adam

There’s so much anger for, for those nurses that let him go. Do you know, it was, it was just awful, as if like rubbing salt in the wounds.  But they were treating me, they were pumping me full of drugs, for treating me for manic depression, you know, I was put on Lithium, I was put on very strong tranquillizers.  Because my dad had schizophrenia, they thought it was something that was, I was affected by this in some way with my mental health, so they thought it might have been something the hereditary.  That’s the only thing I can think of at that time .  But they had an AA meeting in the hospital around that time, and that’s where I went, and it was on a Saturday night and I remember there was a guy there called Big Mike.  He was in his 80s and I was 18, but we had such similar lives, and he took me under his wing and I started go to AA for about 18 months or so, started to learn more.  And my psychic  awareness started to open up during that time, because what I didn’t realise is that they start to, you’ve got to understand a power that is greater than yourself.  In other words that’s the God, that’s God, that’s the source.  And I did believe in a power that was greater than myself, so it wasn’t too hard not to believe in that, but following that sort of programme and being sober, it started to, my sensitivity was heightening, and psychic experience was happening.  I just knew things were going to happen and just a whole manner of things started to happen but I was 18 when I went there and then when I was 19 and walked into the spiritualist church.  I always felt that there was some sort of similarity with the spiritualist church and AA.   Whether it was the community, whether it’s this sense of belonging, I’m not too sure, but I knew that I felt safe in both of the places. So, but what I did start to realise was, in AA, I couldn’t speak to anybody else that wasn’t in AA.   If it wasn’t talking about drinking or not drinking, I really had no conversation in me.  And that was kind of difficult, so things became socially awkward for me and in the real world and I was alright in that world of Alcoholics Anonymous.  And I’ll never ever put Alcoholics Anonymous down and this is my experience because it’s such a wonderful place for people, it’s helped so many people and the 12-Step recovery programme is absolutely phenomenal and I’ll never ever degrade it in anyway.  But for me in my experience, I had to, sort of detached from that.  And my recovery is started with spiritualism, that’s what I would I would say.  And it helped me to get the purpose in my life, help me to understand what the meaning of life was to a certain degree, it sort of went with my values of what I needed to nourish my life, and to start living.  I’ve written a poem actually, called Fix, which sort of comes in hand in hand with this, because when I started in sobriety, it’s as if like, it’s a common thing, you want to help the world.  You want to, you feel like you’ve got this, you know, I should have known about this before, and you know, everybody needs to know about this.  And what happened was, I went on a counselling course, a Level 1 counselling course, actually thinking, I’m going to help other people, that’s what, that’s what it will be.  But all what I was doing at that time was just deflecting from myself.  I had this crave to fix people, to find solutions, to problem-solve but whilst I’m doing that, I’m not actually finding the solutions within myself, and really the person I needed to, to fix, was myself, and that took many, many years I suppose, of understanding and coming to that conclusion.  Because it has been, it’s been over 17 years since I’ve had a drink, so it’s been quite a long time, but it’s, you know, it has been a challenging one, but what I have found is that my addictive behaviour, my all or nothing personality, is something that I’ve had to curb in.  And sometimes it’s great at work, because I’ll get a job done, or I’ll get a task done and I’m, you know, I’m dedicated to it, to what I do, but I’ve had to start, let in the grey areas, not everything is black and white.  I had to learn that, I’ve had to learn that not everything is perfect now, because I became a perfectionist in things and if things weren’t perfect then it had made me feel really uncomfortable, and if it wasn’t going to be perfect, then I’d never do it.  Also you’ve got to really go outside of your comfort zone to live, and, and take the risk to fail in things as well.  Challenge yourself to risk to fail.  It sounds a bit daft this, but you know like, when you putting pegs out, and people match things up, I was that person matching other colours up.  Challenge yourself to put different colour pegs on the washing line, you know, a different colour.  I do it at work with the notice board when you got a different coloured, because the Site Manager will go, oh I bet you have everything just so don’t you?  And I’ll go, no, and I’ll mix them all up because I want to challenge myself within that. Because we are, we have imperfections, and not everything is perfect, and we’ve got to live that, because not everything in life goes right either.  You know, plans don’t go the way that they should do, you know. We have programmes at work, I work in construction in the day time and we have programmes, we could spend hours creating this programme of works, but being in construction for 19 years now, you know, you set a programme up, you’ve got all the good intentions, but it’s not necessarily going to go that way, but as long as you’ve got that guidance to keep you on the track, and you know which way it should be going, then you can always bring things back on track again ,and it’s about that, and just access accepting those faults, and those these derails and the different journeys, because sometimes it’s just meant to be.  It’s just meant to be that it just didn’t go to that destination or it just didn’t work out that way, because if it had of worked out that way, then this wouldn’t have happened that is so beautiful now.  And do you know, we’ve accepting these things within our life and that there is this divine plan, obviously we’ve got free will within our life but, we, you know, we’ve got so much to learn and to express and to embrace within this life and you know, that’s what makes up the philosophy of our own soul.  We all have a philosophy of the soul and it’s a case of expressing that and looking at different parts of that.  Some parts are not so nice, that some parts are beautiful but we’ve got to go and it’s all messy and chaos but we’ve got to go into it to produce the beauty that is to be shared.  And I also believe too, that when we look at the philosophy of our own soul, being a medium it also helps to understand the philosophy of the souls in the spirit world, because the more that we learn and understand about ourselves, the more of the understanding or the tools and the expression that the spirit world can have upon us to deliver that message that is meant to be, you know, without judgement without prejudice, we can be that that messenger of healing between the two worlds for that spirit communicator, for that loved one in the spirit world.  And the more that we know ourselves, the more that we allow ourselves to be vulnerable is then that gives us more of an opportunity to feel within life.  I went for a time within life where I didn’t feel much, I suppressed everything and it was a horrible place to be until that lid lifted, that’s when I started to live.  And I believe, the only way out is through, within life as well, we have to get through things.  We can’t avoid things, because it’s only so much time that things get bottled up and bottled up.  That was the scenario with drinking, that was a scenario with substances, you know, because we want to have something that will smother those feelings or enhance those feelings, and it’s about embracing what those feelings are, understanding why we’re feeling that.  Don’t avoid them because if we don’t, if we avoid them,  then it’s just going to build up.  And then that could lead into a self-sabotage, that could lead into self-destruct or however we want to put it.  It can even lead to your behaviour and how you are with other people and how you react and interact.  So, understanding self and  understanding soul and who you are in this world, I think it’s a really important aspect that we sometimes miss, because of the stresses and the worries and the concerns that we have within life, they can be just sort of like detriment to, to our understanding.  So, I think it’s really important for that time for self-development. I believe the poems that I’ve written are that cathartic process and it’s been an expression of my soul too, for other souls really to tap into, and of that acknowledgement of, oh yeah I understand that.  And it’s very much like, I’m an accidental poet.  And I love Alanis Morissette, the singer, and you know, every album that she’s brought out, it tells the story of my life.  All the lyrics they, they are my lyrics, and when you listen to those lyrics and you can incorporate that in some aspects of your own life, and you are singing it, and you know, it’s your life and this is, this is, this is me, and then you hear the story of why them lyrics were written, it’s, well I didn’t think it were that.  That doesn’t match up to what I was feeling and that’s what poetry is to me. So, that is an aspect of my life and my experience, but it will draw out the many different aspects in different people’s lives.  And it was accidental but it was lovely to do it because you do actually go into this power.  You can be inspired by a word, you know, I can be talking with friends and they’ll just mention a word and that word will stick in my mind and then something else will come in and then that starts to build up this poem.  And I just feel this impulse to write.  If I was to sit, if I was to say right after this now, I’m going to sit and write a poem, it just wouldn’t happen.  It has to be this trigger of inspiration.  I’ve written one called Scars, which I think you’ve listened to Ann, and that was probably one of my most powerful.  I was coming out of Morrison’s with the shopping bags and I just looked at my arms and I could see the scars on my arms.  And I remember, I was so self-conscious of those scars. I used to wear long-sleeved tops, I used to put the camouflage make-up on of my friends before we went out, I was so self-conscious.  And then one day, I just looked and I thought, do you know what, I’ve not thought about them, I haven’t even thought about them for years. And I used to be so self-conscious and it really brought me to a place of how far I had come.  But one thing that was said to me is that those are your war-wounds of the past.  And so, the scars, I need to write a poem about scars.  I didn’t know where it was going to go, but I knew war wounds had to be in it and you know and that is what came, is the result of the video that I shared. So yeah, and all of them have got an aspect of that in one way or another.  But I just felt scars would help a lot of people, you know, not to be ashamed of the scars that you hold, whether they are in the physical or the mind.  And the greatest thing that can you do is to share them.  Whether they are in your mind because it lessens that load or don’t be afraid to share them, if they are physical, they are part of you, they are your war wounds of the past and they are a testament to you.

Ann

I think that is just beautiful though Adam, because what you have shared with everybody there is total vulnerability and just saying, look, this is what happened to me, this is my story and I’m not frightened to tell it.  And you’ll have your own story and don’t be frightened to tell your story and let’s share with each other and support each other.

Adam

Yeah, yeah.  Yes, so I am putting some of my poems on TikTock, I’ve  joined the mad world of TikTock, but I’m doing it just sharing poetry, and you know, it’s, it’s a wonderful way and then they get shared on Facebook and Instagram and social media.  But here’s one that I have shared publicly on my Adam Berry Medium page on Facebook but I’ve never read it out before.  So this was actually inspired, there was a word, or a sentence that my mum would always say, if ever we were feeling down, you know, it would be, ‘Come on Adam, it’s not always dark at 6’ and it’s always stuck with me, what she, what she says and I’ve actually read this to her and said, you know, this is, this is down to you, this is.  That line inspired me for this whole poem here.  So it’s called Acceptance, and it starts

Going through this life and its twists and its turns

Its ups and its downs with lessons to learn

Learning from darkness and shades through to grey

The more we encounter, the more that we pray

Acceptance is needed for shades to flow bright

Engage in forgiveness, in truth and in light

A power unknown, a source of divine

a compass of life, a guidance to time

when you forgive the unforgiven starting with oneself

it relieves the heavy burden you created for yourself

taking responsibility for your past in your present

unlocks your potential future, without anger or resent

 so through all the hardships and life’s painful kicks

always remember it’s not always dark at 6

Ann

Ah, that is so lovely, that is so lovely Adam, and you said you’ve got this book called soul rise it’s coming out very soon, where will people be able to purchase that?

Adam

Well, there’s a website that’s being generated at the moment, and it’s going to be called www.soulrise.co.uk.  So, if anybody is interested in the book, then they can obviously go on this webpage, but they’ll be able to email info@soulrise.co.uk, and I’m going to be sort of making a list of people that are interested in the book.  And then once it’s released, I’ll be able to send out an email with PayPal and we will be able to deliver it to you.  It is going on Amazon as well, but the official release is actually the 28th of February 2022, because it’s had to, it’s had to go through that process for the retail.  But I will be getting the books before that time.  So if people generate their interest within that, I’m hoping that it will be here before Christmas, so that will, that would be wonderful.  But there is also another book that is coming out.  So obviously I’ve tapped into a little bit of my life during this podcast, and there’s a a wonderful friend and Medium, Kerry Alderrucio, she’s already an author and written a book called The Mother’s Journey, a story of everlasting love and evidence of life after death, which was about her lovely son Sam, who passed away in a tragic car accident.  And what Kerry has done, she’s got numerous amounts of mediums, I think there’s about 17 or 18 mediums, and what she wanted to do was to demystify mediumship, so showing that there’s a life and a story behind every medium, and that it’s very much normal.  We’ve had normal-ish lives I suppose. I’m laughing at that, we sometimes have quite difficult lives, but we have normal everyday lives and where we come from within our families.  So, Kerry herself is one of the mediums that tells her story, who is the author.  You know, there’s people like Andrew Manship, Paul Jacobs, Anne-Marie Bond, Sharon Harvey, Angie Morris.  There’s quite a few mediums that are you’ll be able to get their stories in there.  Oh, and  Jeffrey Peck, I have got to say Jeffrey Peck and Deborah Charmers as well, and Pam Pollington, just get a few people in there.  So yeah, and it’s called Demystifying Mediumship What Makes A Medium.  So that is due to be out soon, and I know that Kerry has been doing some snippets on Facebook and social media, just with, about certain chapters, giving people snippets and a taster and Anne-Marie Bond has done the lovely illustrations for the book, so it’s all really exciting, and when I’ve been talking to Kerry, it’s like, oh I think we will be promoting book two books here. Going from, I’ve gone from no books to like, two books, being part of two books here, so it’s a wonderful and exciting experience.

Ann

Yeah, it really is, it’s really great, I’ll put in the show notes for this episode, I  will put all the link so people can pick them up for Kerry’s book and for your Soul Rise as well ,but just before we go, I know Adam,  that you are a Tutor at the Arthur Findlay College so have you got courses coming up or what’s happening with your teaching?

Adam

Well, I’m an assistant tutor at the Arthur Findlay College, so I’m still going through the process of becoming an approved tutor.  So, everything at the moment is sort of online because the College isn’t open.  I’ve still got some training to do, like three weeks of training at the College when it’s physically open.  But I will be planning on doing some online courses with the College soon.  I’ve just obviously done one for Open Week which was this weekend, so I just done a talk and a demonstration with the lovely Anne-Marie Bond, so I will be putting somethings together for that in the near future.  But it’s just quite difficult with working full time in construction and doing all these different things, so, but I will definitely be putting something together, because it’s ,as I said, I do love to teach, so I will, that will be next on my list to prepare another online course.

Ann

Next on your agenda.   And what is your website Adam, so people can go and have a look and see your upcoming events and workshops?

Adam

Yeah, my website is www.adamberrymedium com, so you can go on there and my Facebook page is probably the most active really, although it shares and integrates with my website as well, but it’s Adam Berry Medium on Facebook, that’s the professional page on there.  I have also got Instagram which is Adam Berry Medium on Instagram,  TikTok is Adam Berry 2020 and I’ve got a Twitter account but again, that’s not used very much.

Ann

You can’t keep up with all your social media can you, all the posting?!

Adam

It’s hard, yeah, It’s very hard!

So yeah, do you know, I have to really give thanks to Sean, my husband, throughout all this process we’ve known each other for 16 years, we’ve been married for ten years and when we first got together, it was like, I was just someone, my interests were, just going to church once a week on a Thursday evening. I don’t think he even bargained for what was to come, about me exploring this even more.  He knew I was really interested in everything, but to where I am now, I would not have been able to do that without him.  Because it takes a very strong person and an understanding person to know what sacrifices we’ve had to do for me to go along this journey.  Through the education, through the training, there’s been a lot of hurt and tears and emotions, you know, because you’re being assessed at some points and you need to, it’s nice to have that that strength at the side of you, supporting you, and really, he is out of all this as well.  So, he he’s got the knowledge of it, so he’s always there to ground me, he’s always there to support, to pick me up if I need it, you know, if I feel like I’m going to give up, he’ll be the one that believes in me more than myself sometimes, to continue even further.  So, you know what, and I have got some wonderful friends as well which is a blessing, and I’m very lucky with that, but like Sean is my best friend.  He is, he’s just my biggest cheerleader that I’ve got so, I’m always ever so grateful for, for him.

Ann

How beautiful, thank you for sharing that, about your beautiful husband.

That is superb Adam, thank you so much for talking to us.  Oh, one thing I did want to say before we do finish is, you on a Monday evening, have these beautiful half hour sessions of sitting in the power, just say a little bit about that because I was privileged enough to be able to sit with you this evening and sat in the power with you and your group.  So just a little bit about that if you would.

Adam

Yes, well this was born from, I’m very passionate about the power and the purpose and soul purpose and I do see it as like, being like the spiritual gym.  Just giving ourselves that time because over the years, you know, people, it’s always been a common theme within friendships, within the mediumship world it is like, I need to be sitting in the power more, I need to be doing it more and what I did, when I was President of Rawtenstall, I introduced sitting in the power as an evening on a Monday night, and people would come physically to sit in the power, and they would be sitting in the power hour, and it was, it was really successful.  And then obviously we went into lockdown and I then took that online, onto Facebook live.  It was wonderful at the beginning of like between 40 and 50 people doing it it was, it was amazing.  And I have consistently just kept it on a Monday night, it was an hour at first but we’ve put it to half an hour now, because and it’s just different online to being in the presence sometimes, because you know I put a little bit of music on, which I wouldn’t do in the church, just so that you know, you’ve got that connection there, and you’ve not lost me, and I’m not talking to myself.  Yeah it’s just that time, I call it the soul time with the divine, so you’re more than welcomed.   If you come, if you come and follow my page, add Adam Berry Medium, then you will get notified when I do become live, and I usually come on about 6.45 pm to 7:00 every Monday night, so it just gives people just have a bit of interaction with people beforehand, if there is anybody new, I just explain what’s going on but yeah, I’ve got some real diehard sitting in the power people that come every week now and it’s just wonderful.  And it is a community, supporting community.  So what I’ve done is anybody that comes, it’s, it’s free will, it’s free, I’m doing it free of charge, but know, if you’ve got a local spiritualist church, centre or local spiritual community, obviously we’ve had lockdown, which people have been suffering in this time financially.  Now, if you’ve got a local spiritual community that is in need of support, then donate to them.  Donate and help your spiritual communities out. Then what I would do, I ask people to just name their communities in the comments box and then I’ll tag them into the next event so that they know that they’re being supported, yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s a lovely thing, I really enjoyed hosting it. I’m just a facilitator for everybody’s own personal spiritual experience but it just gives people that time.  And the feedback is wonderful, they just, I just love how people are loving it and you know I just want to continue to keep on doing it.  So everybody, whatever you believe, is welcome to come and join me on Sitting In The Power on a Monday night.

Ann

That is so fabulous Adam, thank you so much for talking to us and just explaining what makes you tick as a medium and the kind of work that you’ve done in the past.  It’s been so inspiring talking to you, thank you so much.

Adam

Thank you Ann, thank you, it’s been a pleasure.

Adam Berry there everybody – an incredibly humble man, who so far, has taken an incredible spiritual journey through his life.  Do consider going along to Adam’s Monday Night Sitting In The Power sessions – there are only half an hour and they are an absolute must for those of you who wish to advance along your own spiritual path.

All the show notes for this episode, including a complete transcript plus resources and links for everything mentioned can be found on my website www.anntheato.com so do head over there to the podcast page and pick those up.  You can take a quick look while you’re there at the training courses I have coming up – you might just find something that you love – and I’d love to see you in class!

For now, I want to thank you everybody for being fantastic listeners, I really do appreciate each one of you.  We are now just over 18 months old and have reached almost 38,000 downloads of this podcast worldwide which is an incredible achievement and one of which I’m really proud.  I could not have done it without you.  Thank you for your support. 

Huge thanks to my guest this week, Adam Berry, for sharing his knowledge with us and do let us know on the Psychic Matters Facebook Group page, what you thought of this episode – I do love to hear your feedback – so let us know how this episode sat with you.

Wherever you are in the world – my name is Ann Théato and thank you for listening to Psychic Matters. 

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