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Communicating with Spirits: Meditative Methods to Help You Tap Into Your Innate Medium Abilities
You know there's more to life than physical existence
Life is a journey and physical birth and death are its points of transition. Many people across multiple cultures and faith systems believe that the spirit lives on--and have experienced contact with the spirits of loved ones who have passed to the higher side. This contact is joyous, comforting, and healing--but you wonder if it's actually real and whether you can share in it, too.
This enlightening guide will show you exactly how to uncover your own mediumistic capabilities and connect with those no longer on your plane. In this new and improved edition, you'll
Don't give up the spirit!
Life is a journey and physical birth and death are its points of transition. Many people across multiple cultures and faith systems believe that the spirit lives on--and have experienced contact with the spirits of loved ones who have passed to the higher side. This contact is joyous, comforting, and healing--but you wonder if it's actually real and whether you can share in it, too.
This enlightening guide will show you exactly how to uncover your own mediumistic capabilities and connect with those no longer on your plane. In this new and improved edition, you'll
Don't give up the spirit!
368 pages, Paperback
Published October 12, 2021
2 people are currently reading
14 people want to read
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January 13, 2025
Upon finishing this book, I find myself wavering uncertainly between giving it a high three or a low four stars. If the former, I would at least feel compelled to write a more positive review detailing what I did like; if the latter, I would make sure to emphasise that the book was not at all perfect. So … I guess the latter it will be.
This is a beautiful, positive and thoughtful book about us, human beings on the temporal plain, and also spirits - those who have passed on into the higher realm of existence which (depending on whose faith or belief system you are consulting) awaits each of us in some form or another after death.
From a religious (particularly Christian or Islamic) perspective, much of this may tread too far into the occult for comfort, but really it only does so in the most benign of ways. On the other hand, whatever your beliefs (including, perhaps especially, those of an atheistic bent) there is a lot of what even I would consider to be pure nonsense. Past lives, chakras, an incessant reliance of personal anecdotes we have only the author’s editorial word on.
And, in fact, while I say “author”, the book is actually credited to two - one of whom wrote the Complete Idiot’s Guide to Communicating with Spirits, and the other seems to be a practicing medium who had little direct hand in the writing of the book. It seems mostly just to be the work of Deborah Romain. Rita Berkowitz is only present by the former’s constant relating what she says, does, recalls, etc. I was not interested enough by the unanswered question to look into it and clarify, but I got the impression she was more of a consultant than anything else. Deborah was something of a ghost writer for her - pun not intended - only, in keeping with the book’s theme, a wholly present and vocal one whose voice is clearly heard. I have taken this fairly pointless digression to linger on the dual authorship of the book because it leads me into one of my larger issues.
I just wasn’t really a huge fan of the loosely structured way in which the content was delivered. It all had the feeling very much of a personal passion project rather than a rigorously researched and professionally published book. It flits between personal anecdotes, introductory expositions on beginner concepts, comparative cultural and historical analyses, guided meditation and practical advice in doing the titular activity of communicating with spirits. All of this is fine in itself - I just did not personally love the seeming lack of clear direction, nor the constant being told that Rita says this, or that, did this, did that, which had me thinking for the first few chapters that we were still in the territory of forewords, prefaces and introductions.
But for all these minor gripes, I did still really enjoy the book as a whole. I enjoyed the positive, non-sensational and religiously inclusive approach the writers took, making sure to honour and not exclude any particular faith, nor stoop to evangelising their own as bona-fide Spiritualists - an actual, distinct religion that nevertheless embraces all other faiths within its own system, and which for a strange and spiritually confused period of my late teens, I nominally adopted as, all the while, my youthful inability to commit to anything helped preserve me within the default of my own, then still immature, Catholic faith.
This is a beautiful, positive and thoughtful book about us, human beings on the temporal plain, and also spirits - those who have passed on into the higher realm of existence which (depending on whose faith or belief system you are consulting) awaits each of us in some form or another after death.
From a religious (particularly Christian or Islamic) perspective, much of this may tread too far into the occult for comfort, but really it only does so in the most benign of ways. On the other hand, whatever your beliefs (including, perhaps especially, those of an atheistic bent) there is a lot of what even I would consider to be pure nonsense. Past lives, chakras, an incessant reliance of personal anecdotes we have only the author’s editorial word on.
And, in fact, while I say “author”, the book is actually credited to two - one of whom wrote the Complete Idiot’s Guide to Communicating with Spirits, and the other seems to be a practicing medium who had little direct hand in the writing of the book. It seems mostly just to be the work of Deborah Romain. Rita Berkowitz is only present by the former’s constant relating what she says, does, recalls, etc. I was not interested enough by the unanswered question to look into it and clarify, but I got the impression she was more of a consultant than anything else. Deborah was something of a ghost writer for her - pun not intended - only, in keeping with the book’s theme, a wholly present and vocal one whose voice is clearly heard. I have taken this fairly pointless digression to linger on the dual authorship of the book because it leads me into one of my larger issues.
I just wasn’t really a huge fan of the loosely structured way in which the content was delivered. It all had the feeling very much of a personal passion project rather than a rigorously researched and professionally published book. It flits between personal anecdotes, introductory expositions on beginner concepts, comparative cultural and historical analyses, guided meditation and practical advice in doing the titular activity of communicating with spirits. All of this is fine in itself - I just did not personally love the seeming lack of clear direction, nor the constant being told that Rita says this, or that, did this, did that, which had me thinking for the first few chapters that we were still in the territory of forewords, prefaces and introductions.
But for all these minor gripes, I did still really enjoy the book as a whole. I enjoyed the positive, non-sensational and religiously inclusive approach the writers took, making sure to honour and not exclude any particular faith, nor stoop to evangelising their own as bona-fide Spiritualists - an actual, distinct religion that nevertheless embraces all other faiths within its own system, and which for a strange and spiritually confused period of my late teens, I nominally adopted as, all the while, my youthful inability to commit to anything helped preserve me within the default of my own, then still immature, Catholic faith.
Displaying 1 of 1 review