EPISODE 093: What Did I Learn at the AFC? with Ann Théato

podcast Jun 29, 2023

The Arthur Findlay College is the world’s foremost college for the study of spiritualism and psychic sciences. Join Ann Théato in this episode as she explains what she learned about her own mediumship, after joining a one-week residential course at the College.

This Week’s Episode

“The college is such a supportive place. The teachers will encourage you to try new things, to try to work in a way that is different from the way you usually work, to expand your confidence, to deepen your trust in your spirit communicator. And we have to be brave as students and put our faith in our tutor and do what they are asking us to do – and not to work in the way we always work because it feels safer – we have to try new things and new ways of working. It takes a lot of courage” – Ann Theato

Episode 93 Resources

Here are some resources referred to in Episode 93 which you may find helpful.

The Arthur Findlay College

Spiritualists’ National Union

St Mary’s Church

The Healing Intelligence by Harry Edward

An Exploration of Trance Mediumship by Chris Ratter

Man of Spirit by Paul Jacobs

Pathway to Mediumship by Jackie Wright

The Mediumship Hour with Ann Théato

About Psychic Matters Podcasts

Ann Théato, CSNUt, 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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PM 093

WHAT DID I LEARN AT THE AFC?

You’ll Learn

What a typical day at AFC looks like
how to deepend the evidence
The importance of clairsentience
What working in the power means
Why we must honour our mistakes
The importance of courage in training
Why we need to converse with our spirit communicator

TRANSCRIPT

Hello, my name is Ann Théato and welcome to episode 93 of the Psychic Matters podcast. Today I am discussing what I learned at the AFC. What is the AFC I hear you ask? For those that don’t know – It’s the Arthur Findlay College – the world’s most foremost college for the study of spiritualism and psychic sciences. It was built in 1871 and gifted to the Spiritualists’ National Union by J Arthur Findlay MBE, JP. The college used to be Arthur Findlay’s home, although he never actually lived there, and he after he passed away, he left his magnificent home and it’s grounds, library, museum and lake to the Spiritualists National Union, with his specific intent to use it as a college for the advancement of psychic science.

The AFC as we call it affectionately, offers facilities unequalled anywhere in the world. It is primarily a residential centre (although since the pandemic, they offer some wonderful online courses) and it is THE place to study spiritualist philosophy, religious practice and healing, as well as exploring & investigating the psychic sciences. Students travel from all over the world to study there and they hold courses, lectures and demonstrations lead by some of the best Tutors in the world.

It is an incredible place and I had the very good fortune of studying there this month, on a residential one-week programme under the tutelage of fantastic medium, Mr. Paul Jacobs.

The course I attended was called Meeting The needs of Today. It was a course for professional working mediums, and Paul’s passion is the training of tomorrow’s mediums. it was a residential course and I had a wonderful room, with its own little en-suite – now for me this is a thrill – I know lots of you listening may well have an en suite and wonder why I’m so enthused about it – but for me, I come from a two-up, two-down tiny council flat in North West London so to have your own en suite is a wonder in itself. I line up all my little toiletries in there, lay out all my make-up and my hair accessories and I often just open the door and go, “ooh, I’ve got an en suite”. Anyways, I was thrilled to see on the door of my room, a small plaque which read: This room is dedicated in loving memory of Ursula Roberts MSNU. I need to gen up a little because I’ve decided to make a podcast episode about her life, so I will let you know about that once I’ve done my research. I will have to talk to Paul Gaunt at the AFC who is a historian in the museum there, and he will be able to direct me to the books and resources he has, so that I can find out lots of information about her and bring it directly to you.

Now, I have had friends who say to me, how do you train to be a psychic? how do you train to be a medium? Surely you either are one or you’re not. How can you actually train to be one?

Well, it’s my belief that we are all psychic and it’s also my belief that we are all able to talk to the spirit world. How can we not be? We are eternal soul beings and as such we all speak the language of the soul. Of course, some people have a natural ability, for some of us, we are psychic all our lives, for some of us we are only turn our attention to our psychic side later in life. The same with communicating with the spirit world. For some of us we see spirit people from a child. For others of us the spirit world make their presence known to us later in our life.

But for all of us, no matter how advanced we each are in techniques talent or skill, we can always benefit from excellent training. And this goes across any topic in the world whether it’s art whether it’s hairdressing whether it’s dressmaking whether you are an architect, a hot dog seller or a top heart surgeon. We can all benefit from training to be the best that we can be, in order to best serve other people in our field.

If I can, I like to go to the Arthur Findlay College twice a year, three if I can manage it, and this time, a friend of mine, Susan Hughes – an excellent medium from Dublin – called me and said that Paul Jacobs was offering this course and it would be sold out and if I was interested, I should book early for it. Well, I’ve studied mediumship now under several tutors but never under Paul Jacobs and I really felt at this point in my development, that he has a lot to teach me and that there is an awful lot I could learn from him, so I signed up.

Well to say it was a brilliant week, would be an understatement. It’s always brilliant at the AFC. It’s a stunning building with magnificent grounds, the staff are incredibly kind and go out of their way to make sure that you have a wonderful stay. The food is fabulous, the rooms are spotless and the tuition is world-class.

It’s an intensive week – for those of you who have never been it is an intensive 6-day course – each day begins with a wonderful breakfast at 8:00 o’clock until about 8:30 then you’re free for an hour to get ready or walk in the grounds. At 9:30 AM we have a half-hour meditation which is really not a meditation – it’s sitting in the stillness of our own soul, at 10:00 AM we have our first lecture. At 11:00 AM is coffee break at 11:30 we have a tutorial for 90 minutes and then it’s lunch break and then after lunch we have group work and then it’s time for a cup of tea and then after tea break, we have a 90-minute group work and then it’s dinner at 6pm and then after dinner we have a 90-minute session. So, you can see how intense it is. We work hard, very hard while we are there but you know, they say when you are doing what you love you will never work a day in your life. And it’s not like work. It’s an absolute pleasure to be there.

As a working medium, I always strive to do the best I can for my recipient or my client, whether that is serving them in a one-to-one private sitting or whether it is serving them during a demonstration of mediumship. In order to do the very best I can, like many mediums who are out there working professionally, I too have had to train continuously, to commit to my craft , to understand the mistakes I make and to have courage to return again and again, to keep trying to deepen the evidence I get from my spirit communicator, to tell their story in the way they want me to, and to be the best ambassador I can be for the spirit world. It takes commitment a lifetime of commitment and learning and I love it.

Paul Jacobs’ course was called Meeting the Needs of Today. Now I can’t and won’t give away the course content here, and I highly recommend that you sign up to one of Paul’s courses and experience how brilliant they are for yourself, but I will speak about what I learned in regards to my own mediumship and I do hope this episode will inspire you to book your own training course at the Arthur Findlay College, either with Paul or any of the tutors at the Arthur Findlay College. It was an incredible, incredible course and an incredible experience.

It was wonderful as well, to be able to go and work with like-minded people to work alongside other professional working mediums who are out there in the world working away. People who have different frames of reference than mine and who are from different countries and cultures – it all makes for fascinating mediumship. We had people from Holland, from Denmark, from Switzerland, from America, we had people from Germany, from Belgium, from Canada and Australia.

Paul Jacobs was talking about not just the needs of the human recipient in front of us, but about meeting the need of our spirit communicator. I know that I have often forgotten about the need of my spirit communicator, indeed I wonder if I’ve ever considered it before – so busy am I trying to understand the feelings and perceptions they are giving me, I forget to see if I have met their need – that I have translated and told their story in the way they want me to tell it. Of course, as mediums we’re always trying to translate the information that comes from our spirit communicator in the best way that we possibly can. We’re always trying to surrender, to move our conscious mind out of the way so it doesn’t interfere, to become open and surrender to allow more and more evidence to touch the mind.

But there are techniques and methods to use and there are ways to keep it simple and get to the point. And that is what Paul was so wonderful at helping us with.

And I was struggling with that before this course, I was struggling to sometimes hold onto my spirit communicator- they may come into my awareness and fade out again – come in and fade out, and i know that that is about me working in and sustaining the power, and i know when i don’t feel the flow of information so strongly, it’s because I’ve come out of my power, I’ve stepped out of my power and a lot of my mediumship these days is trying to establish how to sustain and maintain that power and that link with spirit and never let it go because if you’re truly in that flow of spirit, the information is so easy to receive, it’s not hard, it flows so smoothly and when you work that closely with your spirit communicator, none of the information is wrong, because you don’t let your conscious mind interfere in the process – it is just you and your spirit communicator, working together, conversing together, blending energies and smoothly communicating with the recipient. So, I felt at the beginning of the week I had a lot of things I wanted to unfold and explore within my own mediumship.

And I’ve been contemplating since I came home, everything that I learned, everything that I received in tuition and it gives you just so much to consider and think about. I’ve really deepened my knowledge of deepened my knowledge of myself and how I work. I’ve deepened my own knowledge of how my own mediumship works and that is so important. I understand where I’m going wrong. I understand how I can keep a stronger link with my spirit communicator. I understand the necessity for me to have a conversation with my spirit communicator to ask them for clarification on pieces of information they give me, before I give it to the recipient. We often check in with and are taught to check in with our recipient – do you understand? that does that resonate with you? and you would understand this. This would be a memory for you. But how often do we forget to check in with our spirit communicator? Do we ever say to them through our clairsentience, have I got that right for you? is that what you meant? they don’t understand it, can you give me that in another way? I don’t think I have those conversations with my spirit communicator – well I certainly didn’t before I did this course.

The college is such a supportive place. The teachers will challenge you to try new things, they will encourage you to try new things, to try to work in a way that is different from the way you usually work to expand you to expand your confidence 2 deepen your trust in your spirit communicator. And we have to be brave as students and put our faith in our tutor and do what they are asking us to do – and not to work in the way we always work because it feels safer – we have to try new things and new ways of working. It takes a lot of courage.

I faced a lot of fears during my week. I faced the fear of being wrong. You know when we get our information, we are always worried is this right? Is this my mind? Is this actually what I’m feeling from this spirit communicator? I faced the fear of inconsistency in my mediumship because you know how it is, some days it flows so beautifully and some days it’s just a little sticky and it’s more difficult to get more and more detailed evidence. I understand better now why my information can become sticky and less detailed and it’s all about staying in the power and working in and sustaining the power.

The biggest thing I learned was to really stay in contact with my clairsentience and never to let that go and that seems to be key for me, because I quickly go up to my clairvoyant images because clairvoyance is so strong for me. I can see visions and imagery and symbols and images like a movie playing in my mind, I see that so strongly clairvoyantly and because that’s strong with me, I tend to use it all the time, but by me using my clairvoyance all the time, I’m not sensing and feeling the spirit communicator so clearly – instead I’m moving my awareness to view what they’ve given me and I allow the film to run in my mind but then I’m not listening back to the spirit communicator and asking is this what you want to show me? is this clearly what you are giving me? I tend at that point to let go of the spirit communicator in order to view the information that give me. So, my learning is that I need to stay with the feeling of being strongly bonded with my spirit communicator, so that I know when they give me the clairvoyance but then feeling into the spirit communicator with my clairsentient feelings to understand whether I have received correctly. Is that exactly the image that they want to give me? and need to make sure that I don’t allow my conscious mind or my imagination to come in and fill in the gaps to make sense of what I’m seeing – I shouldn’t be filling in the gaps – if I need to be sure – which I do – I need to be talk to my spirit communicator for confirmation and not allow my conscious mind to make sense of it.

So that was something I personally learned about my mediumship that was really important for me and now since completing the course I feel I’ve got a much clearer idea of how it feels when the spirit communicator is working with me and how it feels when a second communicator comes in to work with me and a third communicator comes in to work with me.

So, for me that was really really key – the vital importance of clairsentience and how that should be the very foundation stone of my mediumship.

As part of the weeks course, we are all expected to demonstrate mediumship in front of the rest of our cohort. It always makes you feel nervous especially demonstrating in front of your fellow mediums from across the world. You don’t want to mess it up, you don’t want to look foolish, you want your link to go well, etc., but I always find when I go to the Arthur Findlay College my mediumship falls apart – but I’ve gotten used to that now. I don’t care if it all goes wrong during class time because when I’m out working in a professional capacity it always goes smoothly. But at the Arthur Findlay College my mediumship gets deconstructed. I like to think of it like taking a machine apart. If you take a machine apart and you lay out all the parts on the table, and you polish them all up and then you put the machine back together again, the machine works better when it’s cleaned, it’s tighter, it’s oiled, old parts that don’t work are taken out and replaced by parts that are much better, and then it’s all cleaned and ready to go and I feel a little bit like that with my mediumship. I feel I have to take it apart, examine it, get an expert opinion and some recommendations, clean it, tighten it up, make it work better, and then when you leave the Arthur Findlay College my mediumship can then work smoothly.

So, years ago when I went to the AFC I used to be upset that my mediumship fell apart in front of the Tutors because I always used to think no, but you need to know that my mediumship is so much better than that and that when I’m out there working I can sometimes be quite brilliant and why can’t you see me on a good day?! Why do you have to assess my mediumship based on what I’ve just shown you in this classroom, which has all gone wrong! But the great thing about Paul Jacobs was, that he wasn’t interested in our fabulous information that we got from the spirit world – he takes it as given because we are all professional mediums – he was interested in whether we’d done the exercise he’d asked us to do and it was wonderful, because there was no room for my ego to enter the space. I could focus on the technique he was teaching me, whether it worked or not was immaterial, I was focused on the technique, making sure I understood the process of it.

And of course everyone in my group was so supportive of each other – it was a brilliant, brilliant group, all of us wanting each other to succeed and to be better and to stretch ourselves to work in these new ways and it was fabulous to have that kind of support from my fellow mediums – so thank you to everybody who was on that course with me – I absolutely loved your company and I learned so much from each one of you.

As for my demonstration at the AFC, it was a 7-minute link. That’s all I had to do – give a 7-minute link and I was demonstrating in the library at the AFC college and for those of you that haven’t been there it’s the most beautiful library with wood panelling and very, very old books. It has a huge fireplace with a big mantlepiece and there are oil paintings that hang from the high walls. And many, many pioneers of mediumship have demonstrated in that library and we are looked down upon by a beautiful portrait of Gordon Higginson and a new beautiful portrait of Mavis Pittilla and they are both watching over us as we’re working, so it feels that we’re being very supported not only from the students in front of usm but supported from our beautiful pioneers and Tutors of mediumship in the spirit world – former Tutors of the Arthur Findlay college, still teaching us from the spirit side so that was really very very beautiful.

And what I learned about my own demonstration of mediumship was this. Now, bear in mind this was only a 7-minute link, it’s not a long time to be working. At the beginning for me it was very itty and bitty. I was trying to establish from the spirit world who was with me, the relationship to the recipient and trying to establish one clear piece of information before placing the link with the correct recipient by allowing the spirit communicator to lead me in the direction of the person they want to speak to in the audience. So, you know, is it the left-hand side of the room, if so, is it two rows back, or one row from the front, where is it you feel drawn to? So, I struggled with that because I was trying a new way of working, I was trying it the way I was asked to do it. So, it was a little bit difficult and itty and bitty and messy (I’m sure if Paul had been watching it, he would have been rolling his eyes!) but I finally placed the link and after that the information just flowed so beautifully and I really really enjoyed working. It was only 7 minutes like I say, and it flies by in a second. But I had this gentleman with me from the spirit world who played the piano accordion. That was my first key piece of information he plays the piano accordion and I know his fingers fly up and down the keys like this, I know he has arthritis in his fingers and I feel it’s a grandfather, I looked around the room and I feel I’m with this lady in the second row. Well, she couldn’t understand the grandfather, she couldn’t understand the information, so I threw it out to the room. Does anybody here understand this? And then three people put their hands up. So obviously I hadn’t honed it down properly – I’d left it too open because three people can now take the information and if I’ve really got the right spirit person and they give me the right information, then only one person in the room should put their hand up. Eventually after diddling around, I placed the link with Jackie Wright who is the President of the Spiritualist’s National Union and head of the college, she was assessing me so it was very nerve wracking but she is so kind and such a supportive tutor. I gave her some information about the man and she could take all the things I was saying, and the reason the information flowed was because I placed the link in the right place. The man playing the piano accordion really did want to speak to Jackie – fantastic – and I gave her lots of information and at the end I was able to say, you know what Jackie he doesn’t want to leave his love with you as a message, he wants to leave a song in this space, he wants to play the piano accordion again for everybody here in this space and he’s just so delighted to be able to play it here again. And Jackie said to me he actually did used to play the piano accordion in this very library and that was really powerful for me it was really really powerful because phew, I got somebody correct for Jackie wright and it was a beautiful link but it was also really really powerful because I made so many mistakes at the beginning and that’s where I did my learning. My ego of course loved placing a link with Jackie Wright – my ego loved her receiving the information well – my ego loved the fact but she said that that gentleman used to play the piano accordion in that very room. But my ego had nothing to learn only to be stroked by that information I had nothing to learn from that experience where I did my major learning was in the mistakes I made at the beginning and that is what I’m so, so grateful for.

Because there’s no point in us doing perfect demonstrations in a teaching environment. There’s no point in trying to be the be all and the end all with our mediumship links. We have to make those mistakes because that’s where the learning comes and we have to be so grateful for those mistakes because the learning doesn’t just come just for us, but for our fellow mediums who watch us as we struggle and we make those mistakes. We listen as a group to what the teacher says to us to correct our mistake and we learn through that mistake. And it helps everybody in the class – we all learn that way from each other and what we each struggle with – we learn how to correct things – how to make it better. So, I thank each and every one of my fellow mediums who had the courage to stand up and try these new and different ways of working, who had the courage to take apart their mediumship and rebuild it in front of us all. I learned so much from you. Thank you.

I think that it really builds resilience within us. And if we view mistakes as failures, it can discourage us from taking risks and trying new things. So, I’ve been really embracing the idea that mistakes are opportunities to learn so that I can develop resilience and I’m more willing now to step out of my comfort zone, knowing that if I stumble, I can bounce back stronger, wiser, more knowing. I also find mistakes help me reflect and to get a deeper understanding on the topic of mediumship and that they help me to gain valuable insights and pave the way for improvement. Also, by embracing my mistakes it encourages in me a growth mindset which encourages me in turn, to continually learn and to improve and to overcome any challenge with dedication and perseverance. I love Thomas Edison who once famously said, “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”. In his case, and I think it works for us too, embracing mistakes can lead to unexpected breakthroughs because they encourage us to explore alternative approaches and to think outside the box. It also helps us to develop humility, empathy and a willingness to grow both professionally and personally. It’s good to keep in mind that the journey of learning is not about being flawless from the start. It’s about embracing challenges, learning from our mistakes and persisting until we succeed so next time you encounter a setback or you make an error, just remember it’s an opportunity for growth and improvement rathe than a failure.

So, I had to make those mistakes during my demonstration at the AFC, because that’s where my learning came from and that was the vital part for me, that I couldn’t place that link initially and finally I did. So feeling into the power of it feeling into the power of that beautiful man, listening to him playing that piano accordion and listening to him, feeling him showing me and telling me how everybody used to dance when he played the piano accordion and leap around the dance floor, etc etc and I got such great feedback from Jackie afterwards but I threw it out too early I needed to feel into him more to strengthen my connection with those in the spirit world how through my clairsentience not through my clairvoyance.

I also learned not to give everything out in the order I receive it so I get the information I can see it in my mind’s eye, I can feel it, I can sense it, but I’m choosing now, I’m able to talk now to my spirit communicator through my Clairsentience and as I’m saying one sentence I’m able to be having that conversation with my spirit communicator as well “he’s not understanding what you meant, OK great and give the next sentence. Check with my spirit communicator have I got that right for you? Could you give me that in a different way so that the recipient will better understand? thank you. so that’s another tick on the box of technique.

I certainly haven’t mastered it don’t get me wrong I have yet to master this but this is something that I’ve learned which I want to put into my practise of mediumship going forward. Something that Paul Jacobs said which was so interesting was that Gordon Higginson used to say if you can see the photo frame for your recipient then you can also see what’s in it. If the photo frame is there, then so is the contents of that photo frame. So as a medium, there’s no point in saying there’s a photo frame on your sideboard. The recipient may well say yes, but if we were to say there’s a photo frame on your sideboard of you feeding ducks at a village pond” – yes – that is evidence. That makes us a great medium. A photo frame on the sideboard is kind of lazy, isn’t it? We’re not looking properly – we’re not surrendering to look deeper and deeper into the evidence presented to us by our communicator – we haven’t given the significance of it and that is what will make extraordinary mediumship going forward for all of us, as we work in this movement of spiritualism. So going back to my link in the library, I had my piano accordion playing man but I hadn’t given the significance of what that piano accordion was, so I didn’t look deep enough. Yeah, I played the piano accordion, that’s not enough I should have said I’ve got a man here who plays the piano accordion – feeling into it – he’s played this since he was a boy and he’s had and played a different sized piano accordion with each year of his age and he still has them all – who can take it? That would have been far more evidential because I would have said what the significance of their piano accordion was.

So that was great learning for me why have I got that information? There’s no point in me just hoping the recipient will say, oh yeah, I know what you’re talking about – that’s our job as a medium. So, I learned to do that to feel what is the significance of the piece of information that I have received.

And the other thing I learned from this course is that our spirit communicator will give us something at the beginning that will always lead us to the message. That’s a beautiful example of my piano accordion man his message was not that he wanted to leave love with everybody but that he wanted to leave his song in space I felt him so strongly and that’s what he wanted to do and that’s what his raison d’etre was. of course I gave a lot of other evidence once that link was placed but that led to the message which was I want to play once again in the library for everybody here and just lift everybody’s spirits and it was just so beautifully received by Jackie as well when she said that he did used to play in that space so that was the message which was led through that first piece of information that I received really really beautiful.

It was an amazing week I studied with some wonderful fellow mediums like I said from across the globe a new family of friends that I’ve met and there was a time during that week where I looked around in the dining hall and I was watching everybody having their lunch or the breakfast or this supper and I was just thinking Oh my goodness look at all these people all of us feeling the same things knowing the same things feeling the same psychic experiences experiencing the spirit world and we’ve all come to seek out tuition for that because we’re all experiencing the same things in each of our homes, each of our countries across the world. What a magnificent, incredible place the college is to bring everybody together in this way.

People I spoke to, my fellow mediums on the course, you know they were going home to their villages, to their towns in different countries and they don’t have any training places near them. They don’t have the Arthur Findlay College. They don’t have spiritualist churches to demonstrate in. They don’t have any tuition of any kind. They just go home and they’re on their own. They are lonely and they’re hungry – spiritually hungry – and this is the reason I started the psychic matters podcast – to bring the tuition of experts from across the globe to everybody out there who needs it – for free – because when I was training, well of course I am still training as you can see, but when I began my journey I had nothing, I didn’t have a psychic matters podcast to listen to, I didn’t have any access to any free tuition at all, I couldn’t leave my two children alone to go out and train and I had no family support and I had no financial means to spend on any training, and that is why this podcast is so very very important to me. It’s a real passion of mine to be able to go out there and to let people have access to the guidance and teachings of experts across the globe.

Some of you may have seen that I have a tiny little T-shirt shop I create some little T-shirt slogans and I put them on the front of my T-shirts and for each Tshirt I sell, I receive £2.75 and that little £2.75 comes to me and that money supports the podcast – all the overheads – all the free hours of work I put into it – the cost of subscriptions to apps I need to pay for in order to create trailers, the cost of apps I need to run the podcast, cost of Zoom to interview my guests, costs for my editing programmes, costs for creating the artwork on Canva, cost of I have to pay for to hang the podcast on the internet, all kinds of costs and overheads need to be paid in order for me to make it, so if you ever feel you want to support podcast in some small way, please do go and buy a little T-shirt to support it and by supporting the podcast you’re helping me to create this podcast and create episodes of the show so that people like my friends at the Arthur Findlay college who go home to their villages and have nothing they can at least listen to a podcast for free and you are supporting them, helping people who are alone in all corners of the world who may never be able to afford to get to the Arthur Findlay College – you are supporting them in getting access to the knowledge and information they need.

So, a new family new friends like I say, world class tuition, a brilliant course and it moves you in so many different ways it’s not just about the tuition it’s often about the little things that people might say to you in a corner as you’re talking over a cup of coffee or it’s about the connections that you make in the bar afterwards over a drink, or the things that we share with each other – the experiences, the stories that we can share with like-minded people, there’s just so much peace there, so much upliftment, so much joy, so much knowledge and everybody with the same drive to push forward the boundaries of human consciousness – again as you all know, this is another huge passion of mine.

When the course had finished, I went across to Saint Mary’s church – for those of you that haven’t been to the Arthur Findlay college – there is a church just beyond the grounds of the Arthur Findlay college called St Mary’s Church and I always go there afterwards to say my personal thank you to Arthur Findlay. He’s buried there next to his wife and I always like to go and say thank you for allowing me to stay in your beautiful home and thank you for bringing everybody together in this way and it was just so lovely there the day that I went to give my thanks to Arthur Findlay. The sun was shining and the bells were ringing in the tower, so I recorded them and I’m going to play them now here for you. Those bells were ringing and I’ve never them ring before. The door of the church was open and I’ve never been in before and it was just so beautiful in there. T

As I entered the church, a breath-taking sight unfolded before me. The air was thick with the delicate fragrance of blooming flowers, it was as if a vibrant tapestry had been woven within the ancient sacred walls, every inch adorned with nature’s most enchanting creations. Peonies, resplendent in their full, voluptuous bloom, stood proudly, their soft petals, varying in shades of blush pink, ivory, and crimson, exuded an aura of elegance and grace, lilacs danced on the breeze from the open doorway, their clusters of dainty blossoms boasting a rich palette of purples, lavenders, and whites, lush ferns cascaded down from pedestals. play of light and shadow enhanced the scene, casting delicate patterns through the stained-glass windows, illuminating the floral display with a kaleidoscope of colons. Every nook and cranny of the church seemed to have been transformed into a sanctuary of natural beauty. It was astonishing.

There was a cleaning lady there and she was so kind and so helpful and knowledgeable. She said we’re having a wedding here today for the first time in 35 years and the bells were ringing for the bride or groom I wasn’t sure who was getting married what sex or gender but the bells were ringing for that happy couple and it was just so beautiful to be there and she was just so wonderful it was a really lovely way to finish my week.

And one of the things that was said to me at the college this week was don’t let mediumship be your entire life do other things outside of it you have to live a full life do other things that lift your soul and give you joy I know here I’ve got a little painting in the corner of my room that’s been unfinished for a year and so some of my students who come online for my courses sometimes see it it’s been there forever but you know I’m going to finish that painting I’m going to use my soul not just for mediumship and in service but in service to me and to express my creative self as well.

I also bought some beautiful books from the Arthur Finley shop. I bought The Healing intelligence with Harry Edward; an exploration of trance mediumship by Chris ratter; I got Paul Jacobs beautiful book Man of spirit which he graciously signed for me thank you very much Paul; and I also bought Jackie Wright’s book Pathway to Mediumship, as I was really interested in her story, she such a beautiful gracious kind person as are all the tutors there.

So, I’m going to sign off and say goodbye but just before I do – a reminder – every Tuesday evening for free online I hold something called The Mediumship Hour. It is one hour of mediumship, I usually share the platform with one other medium, so I will demonstrate for half an hour and my fellow medium will demonstrate for the other half hour, and I usually demonstrate alongside fantastic medium Leslie Malone, and also fantastic medium Tyrone Cusack, and whenever Leslie or Tyrone can’t make it, I often work alongside guest mediums, so do come along and enjoy it. All the details for that are on my website anntheato.com. It starts promptly at 7:00 PM UK time zone, that’s 2:00 PM EST every single Tuesday throughout the year – it’s always on so do come and join us and you can see me trying out my new techniques of mediumship. You won’t be able to know they’re new techniques but it may be just listening to this episode will help you to understand there’s so much more to mediumship than we perhaps at first consider, that’s whether we are a professional working medium or whether we’re somebody with just a vague interest in mediumship.

It’s a fascinating topic and I will be trying hard to bring ever more detailed evidence and have those very important conversations with my spirit communicator. So, I have an awful lot to thank Paul Jacobs for personally, who gave his all in that week as a Course Tutor and Course Organiser and to his incredible fellow Tutors who worked alongside him that week, Jackie Wright, Jose Gosschalk and Penny Francis.

Thank you to all of you for everything that you taught me this week. I’ll be back.

My name is Ann Theato and thank you for listening to Psychic Matters.

EPISODE 093: What Did I Learn at the AFC? with Ann Théato

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