What's the Difference Between a Medium and a Channel?

A few clients have asked me what the difference is between a medium and a channel. Throw in a question or two about psychics in general and it was time for me to clarify:

I am a medium. Maybe you've heard that before, or maybe you have experienced my work as a medium. But many people don't know what a medium does. And then there's this other word, "channel", that many people have heard but don't understand.

Fair enough. I can understand the confusion, because psychics, mediums (I prefer the proper plural, "media"), and channels are all woo-woo practitioners who deal in the unseen and the metaphysical. AND I have even heard people who ARE these things misuse the terms. So here are my definitions that fit to the very best of my knowledge:

Medium: A living person who communicates in some fashion with the spirits of dead people. A medium may conduct seances or may communicate directly. John Edward is a famous medium whose primary work is communicating with the dead. I am also a medium, although I am not yet as famous as John Edward.

Channel: A person who allows a non-physical entity/ies to enter his/her body for the purpose of communicating with living people. The channel may or may not be conscious of the information coming through him/her. Esther Hicks is a famous channel who channels non-physical energies who call themselves Abraham. I do not channel in this way; however, I do "take cosmic dictation" and channel information from your guides in Mystic Mails. But I don't give my body over. My latest book, Channel One: 137 Messages from the Universe, is comprised entirely of channeled messages.

And what about the psychic? Well, a medium is always a psychic, but a psychic is not necessarily a medium. A psychic is someone who can sense information about others and often predict the future. Sylvia Brown is a famous psychic who also happens to be a medium. I am also a psychic. I personally do not see that a channel necessarily qualifies as a psychic, but channeling definitely requires a special spiritual gift, and it seems likely that a channel might also be psychic in some way.

There, I hope that makes it all clear as mud. If you have any questions about it, you know where to find me!

Susan K. Morrow
www.SusanKMorrow.com
512-257-2737
Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/sistermystic

Making Sense of That Tweet

Hey! Like about half the people I know, I've recently begun to use Twitter. If you're not aware, Twitter (.com) is a mini-blog site. Each entry is limited to only 140 characters. One of the cool things about it is that you can post links there--in this case, I'm going to post the link to my maxi-blog (this one). Convenient!

I want to explain a Tweet (posting on Twitter) that I posted earlier today. I said, "Love those repeated messages. Thanks to my messengers--I get it!"

I thought that might appear a bit esoteric, so here's what I meant. Everything starts with Spirit and your whole life is a presentation of messages that will point you in the best directions to live the life you came here to live. (And it's beside the point, but nobody came into this life to be miserable. Remember my adage from my days as a wee mystic: If you're not at least trying to be happy, you're not doing it right.)

In other words, messages come to you in many and varied forms, including your thoughts and feelings, your body, the people around you, nature, things you read... Anything that catches your attention deserves scrutiny.

SO VERY OFTEN, I find that messages come in duplicate or triplicate. And I know that, just because I noticed something once or twice doesn't mean that's the only time I've received it. These messages are like roaches. For every one you see, there are hundreds of others that you missed.

Ew. Gross analogy. Anyway, I recently heard the EXACT SAME THING from three different people. One person is my new marketing assistant, who told me that she sometimes writes blog entries for her clients. (Not this one, it's really me.) The next person is a friend, who is a successful copywriter, who told me she has started subbing out some press releases. She has a junior copywriter write the first draft, and then she does her magic on it. Saves her a lot of time and effort. The third person showed up today. A new friend, she's a life coach, and she mentioned her blog and how effective it is for her business. She said that she had tried a service that writes the blog for the blogger, then she would edit it to make it her own.

Do these three messages sound almost identical? This happens to me ALL THE TIME--and guess what. It happens to you all the time too! You've probably become somewhat immune to it. And that's why I'm telling you this now. Start paying attention.

For my clients, when I talk about paying attention to the messages, I sometimes use an example about seeing and hearing frogs. Two frogs? You'd better listen up. Three frogs? Now you've got something really important.

So will my next blog post be ghost-written??? Well, I really like writing, so I don't know, but it could happen. I got the message!

Until next time,
y'all be good!
Susan K. Morrow
512-257-2737
http://www.susankmorrow.com/
Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/sistermystic
Author of the brand-new book Channel One: 137 Messages from the Universe
Plus Seven Chakras, Seven Days and Dead On: Spirited Stories from a Medium's Diary

Poof! Manifestation Made Easy

I love it when things go my way! Don't you? Isn't it great when you make a wish and it comes true?

Well, the Law of Attraction dictates that what you wish for will come to you--but you have to hold your mouth just right. Or something like that. I know that for many people the LoA remains a mystery.

I won't get into a whole lecture on that, but I do have a fun story to share about it. Recently, I have been making plans to move. I've been thinking about my dream house, which I designed several years ago. That house has appeared in reality in the town where I want to live... but that's another story.

This is a story about what will go into the house. I was thinking about the loft that will be in the house, and how I want to furnish it. I just like to play with such things. The loft will be the library, lined with bookshelves on either side, with two chairs and reading lamps under the window in the back. In the front of the room, next to the hallway, I want a game table with chairs.

I've never had a game table and am not sure what they look like or where to find one. I didn't worry about those details, I just said, "Oh, and a game table will go right there!" I imagined friends and family members sitting around the table, playing Bananagrams and Rummikub. Maybe the odd game of chess or poker now and again.

Last weekend, I was visiting my mother in that town where I want to live, the town where my dream house has sprung up. She said, "I got this table for Mother when she went to the assisted living place. Do you want it?"

It was a game table.

Happy Manifesting!
Susan K. Morrow
http://www.susankmorrow.com/
512-257-2737

Got Ghosts?

Spooked!

A client called to tell me she had gotten a little spooked in her own house. She walked in after work and could just FEEL a presence there. At first, she was afraid there might be an intruder, but determined that wasn't the case. She felt like there was a spirit of some kind present and she felt at least a little fear and nervousness about it. As she lay in bed later, her heart was pounding and her imagination--now fueled by her concerns over the unknown spirit--turned the sound into footsteps!

I was glad she called me, because I was able to allay her fears and give her some pointers about dealing with spirits like that.

First of all, please be assured that there is nothing in the non-physical that can hurt you in the physical. So a spirit or "ghost" is not going to stab you or smother you in your sleep.

Second, usually, if you sense something that frightens you, it is a only manifestation of your own fear. It doesn't mean that there is not a spirit present, but it means that it is not the spirit that is frightening you--it's you. Truly, we have nothing to fear but fear itself.

And third, if you are bothered by this presence, speak to it in love. Say something like, "God loves you" or "There is only love here" or even "I love you". In my personal experience, this has been an effective banishment to wayward and unwanted spirits. And yes, I have had my share of experiences with them!

Alternately, you can ask or tell the spirit that you are willing to help: "Is there something I can do for you? If so, please make it clear to me so that I can help you. If not, you may be excused." And then see what pops into your mind or if something in the room catches your attention.

This information, and quite a bit more, helped my client feel comfortable returning home the next day. If you need more info, you know where to find me!

Until next time, my friends,
y'all be good!
Susan K. Morrow
512-257-2737
www.SusanKMorrow.com
smorrow@sistermystic.com

Selfish Is the New Selfless

Selfish is the new selfless. Does that sound counter-intuitive to you? How can being selfish translate into selflessness?

It's the way the Universe is set up, but, as often is the case, human beings have mucked it up over the centuries. Everyone arrives here in human form with a nice bag of goodies. We all have gifts--or talents--that are perfectly designed to do two things: 1) make us happy and 2) help others.

Several sayings have grown up around this Universal Law, among them

"If Mama ain't happy, ain't nobody happy."
and
"Charity begins at home."

Yes, these famous quotes have other meanings, like "If Mama ain't happy, she's going to make sure nobody else is happy either." But look at it this way: If Mama is sick with the flu, how can she care for the family?

As for "Charity begins at home", we all know where that came from. But it can be extrapolated to mean that if one person has not taken care of himself, he cannot care for others--except possibly at his great expense.

We are not designed to give of ourselves until we are empty. If you are a mom (and dads might hear this too, but moms really hear it everywhere), you have read or heard at least once in your motherhood years that you must take care of yourself in order to care for your family. This is true for all people! Not just moms and their families.

And I am not talking about saying "no", although that is a great place to start. Saying "no" when asked to do more than you think you can handle is great--just be sure you don't allow any guilt to creep in! But I am talking about

• knowing yourself,
• understanding yourself,
• discovering your talents,
• and above all, using your talents!
  

When you find out what is in your goody-bag, and you start using those goodies, you will find your own happiness. Then you will notice that your properly-used energy flows out to help others around you automatically.

The Universe is set up to work like this: Use your talent(s). You benefit. Others benefit. It's very simple, really. The reason it's not happening all over the place, every day? People got it messed up. Most people believe that you have to give tremendously of yourself in order to get a small part back for yourself, or that it is only in giving that you can find happiness. And this "giving till it hurts" seems to mean that you don't get to receive anything. Give, give, give and that's just the name of the game. Too bad for you.

Well, consider that a myth and consider it busted!

Now, to put this Universal Law into action, get happier, and help others:

• Discover/determine your talents/gifts (Yes, you do have them!)
• Do work, play, or other activities that employ these gifts
• Feel happier
• Notice that others are being helped

Need help with this? Well, guess what. I've gone through this process and now my work is all about helping other people. I'm not just sitting around every day, trying to see what I can get for myself. I think of how I can use my talents and when I do, others are helped.

The Universe is an awesome place. Welcome!

Susan K. Morrow
www.SisterMystic.com
512-257-2737
Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/sistermystic

Use Your Gifts to Glorify the Giver

My daily goal is to use my gifts to glorify the Giver. This comes from what I learned in Sunday school when I was a little girl. The teacher told us to use our gifts or talents to glorify God. I was almost 40 years old before I understood what that meant.

If everyone used one or more of the gifts they were born with, here's what would happen:

1) Everyone would be happy
2) Everyone would be served and taken care of
3) There would be perfect balance in the world

Sounds heavenly, doesn't it? Well, it is. We are designed to create such a perfect world and the way to do it is to find our gifts/talents and use them!

What does this mean to you? I spent my 30s asking, "What are my talents?" I worked as a facilities manager and loved it. I was good at it, good with numbers and budgets and purchasing, good with the mechanical aspects of my responsibilities, and good at managing people. I was very happy in doing that, but I couldn't figure out just what talents were being used. Skills, yes, things I had learned, but talents?

Here's how I found my talents: I went back in my memory to my childhood and I thought about what I loved to do when I was growing up. My first favorite activity was writing or storytelling. Later, I enjoyed performing. I had a definite bent for spatial relations and thought of being an architect. I loved language, writing it, speaking it, learning it, performing it. Doing anything along these lines made me happy. These activities felt good.

And this is how you find your talents. What do you love to do? What feels good? When you have the ability and the desire to do something, that is your gift to share with the world, and to use to glorify the Giver. Remember:

1) Everyone is blessed with more than one talent
2) Talent goes way beyond the arts--you don't have to be a singer to be talented
3) Every talent can be used to make a living--you don't have to do work you hate during the week and only use your talents on weekends

If you have always felt that your job is just a job and you've wondered what you're here for, try looking for your talents and thinking about how to use them. Then glorify!

Until next time,
Y'all be good!
Susan K. Morrow
http://www.susankmorrow.com/
512-257-2737
smorrow@sistermystic.com

The Logic of God

One of the many important things I have discovered in all of my studies of spirit is that God is logical.

The Universe is amazingly set into action to create a highly-complex tapestry of which we are all a part. Just as every action has an equal and opposite reaction, everything you do affects other people and the world around you. When you make a new friend, for example, the other person also makes a new friend. So we affect each other constantly in ways from minute to enormous.

Have you ever noticed how a series of events led to an end result? And that without any one of those in the series, the end would not have come about?

God is logical.

I've always said that religion is about thinking and believing, spirituality is about feeling and knowing. Think about that for a moment. In church, you are asked to believe what you are told, whether it makes sense or not. I recently saw a clip from an Oprah show in which she said that there was a moment for her in church when the preacher was saying that God is everything, everywhere, omnipotent, and... jealous. She said the "jealous" didn't fit the idea of God to her.

This is the logic--or in this case, the illogic--that I am talking about. Most religions start with "God is love". And if you ask me, they can stop right there. All of the guilt and fear are not what God is about. Man was not created in God's image, it's the other way around. Think about all of the human qualities given to God by man: jealousy, damnation, judgment, cruelty, anger. Do any of those things sound like love to you?

If God is pure love, light, and energy, how can he also be angry and jealous? If God is everywhere and in everything, how can there be an angel that he became angry with and threw out of heaven? (That story is not from the Bible, by the way, but from Milton's Paradise Lost.) If God is everywhere, how can there be a place, hell, where he is not?

When people say, "It was God's will" (and I have a whole book to write about will), they are saying that God created this event or thing or person. But they also say that God lives within us, dwells in our hearts and minds. So if God was responsible for something you don't like, do you not have any responsibility or say in the matter?

What I have found is that, if something doesn't make sense to you, it's probably not true. I read an interesting quote by James Kern Feibleman (philosopher and psychiatrist, 1904-1987): A myth is a religion in which no one any longer believes.

Remember reading about ancient mythology? And all of the stories of the gods, which we think are rather silly today, were intended to explain to people how and why things happened. Just as much of religion does today.

So the next time you hear someone say something about God, stop and ask yourself, "Does this make sense?" If the answer is yes, you may be staring at truth. If not, you might just be kidding yourself.

Think. Feel. Know.