The Art of Preserving the Sacred

Navigating the Terrain of Spiritual Sharing

Bob Olson is the host of Afterlife TV, author of two books, Answers About The Afterlife and The Magic Mala, and creator of the reputable directory of psychics and mediums, BestPsychicDirectory.com.

Photo by K. Mitch Hodge on Unsplash

I’m now closing in on twenty-seven years since I began investigating the afterlife and sharing what I’ve learned about life and the afterlife from my investigation. I’m immensely grateful that I wrote about all my experiences within days of having them. These articles preserved the precious details of those experiences that might have been lost because memories fade with time.

My first reading with a medium resulted from my commitment to investigate the afterlife. I sought evidence, and since mediums claimed to communicate with people in spirit, I had to turn that rock over to see what was underneath. I never expected this stranger would be able to do what she claimed. Yet, once she gave me pages of accurate information from my deceased loved ones that she could not possibly have known without having made contact with them, I found myself in a very different position.

If you read my article about that reading, you might recall how excited I was to share my discovery that people can communicate with the deceased. In my mind, since this medium had spoken with my dead father and grandmother, that meant there was an afterlife. That was news worth sharing, so I set out to tell the world. I began by calling my closest friend, David, and my mother—two people who loved and trusted me.

Almost ironically, I was met with the skepticism that I had once held so dear before my reading. David told me he wanted to believe me but couldn’t make the leap. He decided he would have to have a reading himself, but he never actually got one. My mother’s response was a bit harsher than David’s. Her response was, “I believe that you believe it.” In the ‘70s, we would have called that a “mom burn.”

Their responses made me curious. I now wanted to understand the mindset of people who get readings from mediums. How do these people deal with skepticism? I referred to it as “the stigma of being a believer.” After all, I’d never been on the receiving end of it until now. So, I set out to interview multiple clients of the medium who gave me my reading.

One of the last interviews in this series became one of the most significant of my twenty-seven-year journey. I interviewed a woman named M. E. Oriol, an author specializing in life coaching, pastoral counseling, and psychotherapy. I’ll never forget what she taught me about skepticism. When I asked her if she was skeptical the first time she heard of the medium’s gift, she replied, “No, not at all, because I am neutral in it. If somebody shares that [mediums can communicate with spirits] with me, I have no judgment on it. Later, if I witness it, it becomes, and that is fun. I didn’t think she was a fraud right off the start because I am neutral. Why would I doubt it? I haven’t lost anything if she can’t do what she says she can do. There is freedom in being neutral.”

Given my experience telling David and my mother about my reading, I asked Ms. Oriol how she shares her readings with others. She explained that she considers her spiritual way of life a private matter. For years, she told me, she rarely talked about it. “It was just too sacred,” she admitted. “I do not know how to put my experience with it into words. I’ll mention it, and if it touches someone’s heart and they ask me more, I’ll talk to them about it. But I don’t want to betray my experience by not portraying it accurately,” she said.

After my interview with M. E. Oriol, I made note of this idea of personal experiences like readings being sacred experiences. Later in my investigation, this proved true for people’s past-life regressions, dream visitations, after-death communications, and even near-death experiences and out-of-body experiences.

As I focused on this more, I realized that Ms. Oriol’s statement about sharing her experiences was more common than I had realized. “I’ll mention it, and if it touches someone’s heart and they ask me more, I’ll talk to them about it. But I don’t want to betray my experience by not portraying it accurately.” I learned that her use of “betray” was not an exaggeration. She did not “want to betray” her experience because she didn’t have the words to explain it adequately. That’s the crux of it. No words can express the sacredness we feel about our spiritual experiences.

Ms. Oriol used the word “betray” when referring to her inability to put her experiences into words. I soon realized that this is a betrayal because sharing our experiences with words opens the door for others to “diminish” the sacredness of our experience. Let me share with you what I told over one hundred psychics and mediums in a workshop I gave them in 2010. (This is a transcript of my talk.)

Teaching Sacredness to Psychics and Mediums

Spirituality is a sacred experience. It’s private. It’s individual. Let’s use a mediumship reading as an example. Because spirituality is subjective, it’s often the silliest evidence coming through that is the most profound for the person getting the reading. It might be a nickname. It might be a memory you shared with the deceased. It might be something that nobody knows, like you put something in the casket.

Interestingly, when we try to share our sacred experiences with others, that sacredness is somehow reduced. It gets torn down. I remember I had my first reading. It was a three-hour reading. I had all these notes, all this evidence. I was so excited. I told my wife Melissa, and she believed me. She’s never been a skeptic anyway. Then I told my mother and my friend. They both said, “Bob, I want to believe. I believe that you believe. But I’m unable to believe it myself.”

That hurt a little, but it was okay. Still, the more people I shared my first reading with, the more the sacredness of that reading diminished. The consequence of this over time was that I started to question myself. “Oh my god, did I imagine that? Did I give something away to the medium, a clue perhaps? Am I giving too much weight to the evidence provided in that reading?” Before I knew it, I needed another reading to be sure it happened the way I remembered it.

People’s skepticism affects you. More accurately, it infects you. Before you know it, the sacredness of your life-changing spiritual experience is diminished to uncertainty, possibly even shame, depending upon who you shared it with. In the worst cases, you ask yourself, “How could I have been so foolish, so naïve?”

I told the psychics and mediums why this perspective was essential to them.

I’ve made this point to you because most of you have probably had a client who was enthusiastic and excited about their reading while you were giving it, and then a week or two later, they’re sending you a nasty email or leaving you an angry phone message. “I got nothing! You were way off! My reading sucked!”

You might have wondered how this happened. How did the client go from enthusiastic and awakened to agitated and skeptical? They had a sacred experience during the reading, but then they talked to people about it. Their friends or relatives tore it down. This is when clients begin to question themselves. Before you know it, they’re asking for a refund.

Not Just for Readings. True for Every Spiritual Experience.

As mentioned, this is true for any spiritual experience. You saw the spirit of your deceased mother? Your departed son came to you in a dream? Your dying father told you he saw your mother greeting him from the other side?

Each encounter is an incredible spiritual experience until you begin telling people about it. Try telling friends that whenever you start talking about your dearly departed spouse, “Stairway to Heaven” plays on the radio. Their facial expression alone might make you regret sharing it.

The first two responses might not hurt too badly. You can tell yourself they don’t understand. The third person’s remarks might begin to get under your skin. The fourth and fifth have permanently tainted the memory, which is when most people stop sharing altogether. Beyond that, you might wish you had never shared it with anyone.

My friend, David, had it right. His first instinct was that he would need a private reading to overcome his skepticism. I recently wrote an article about the three stages to knowing, explaining the necessity of having personal experiences to overcome skepticism as opposed to vicarious experiences (hearing about someone else’s experience).

Respecting Sacred Experiences, Both Ours and Others

I’ve written this article to emphasize that one person can diminish the sacredness of another person’s experience. It’s important to know so we don’t open ourselves up to this diminishment, which Ms. Oriol calls a betrayal. It’s also important to know so that we can be cautious not to diminish the sacredness of someone else’s experience.

It doesn’t have to be a spiritual experience, although we could interpret any experience as spiritual. A child might come home excited that she got a B in English. Perhaps she struggled earlier in the year, but she managed to pull her grade up with extra effort and the help of a tutor. Yet, how many parents have diminished the sacredness of that experience for the child by asking why she didn’t get an A? A more interesting response might be, “Tell me how you made that happen?” Imagine the smiles and lava-like passion that could follow that question.

Stages of Preserving the Sacred

Many of us have gone through stages of sharing in response to the subject of this article. The typical stages look like this...

Stage One: Initially, we share our spiritual experiences as if we had just discovered the key to the kingdom, only to be met with skepticism, judgment, or shame.

Stage Two: Before we know it, we’re more cautious about sharing our experiences, dropping breadcrumbs into conversations to see who bites. We feel safer sharing more details if our companion is interested in the nibbles.

Stage Three: Depending on our past experiences, we either remain in the second stage or graduate to only talking about our spiritual experiences if the other person shares first. In this stage, not only do we feel safer sharing with the person who just shared with us, but we also want that person to feel the support we craved but never got in our earlier stages.

Stage Four: A few people move to a fourth stage, which is never letting their sacred experiences leave their lips. People who reached this stage typically felt judgment or shame after sharing experiences in their past, which led them to regret having shared at all. They have concluded that it’s safer to keep their experiences to themselves.

I’ve certainly recognized these stages in my life, which I've witnessed in others as well. I started off wanting to share the good news with everyone. "If you just hear my story, you'll feel the same comfort I feel." Until I realized it didn't work that way. Again, I refer to my article about sharing our "personal experiences" with others, which are only "vicarious experiences" to the people we're telling. 

Why I Never Stopped Sharing My Sacred Experiences

In last week’s article, Death Becomes Me, I illustrated how I learned to be cautious with my sacred experiences. Adverse reactions from others taught me that sharing sacred experiences with others gives them the opportunity to diminish the experience we’re so generously sharing. That being true, my journey has taught me why I’ve never landed in Stage Four (never sharing my experiences for personal preservation).

In the comment section under that article, my friend, Shari, talks about the awkwardness of people asking her, “How many children do you have?” I refer to this as “an innocent question” because the person asking it does not know the emotional charge behind it in Shari’s case. Her son passed away eight years ago.

Shari admitted feeling a sense of dread whenever the question is asked. Who among us wouldn’t feel the same way? If she says she has one child (the one still living), she says it feels disrespectful to the son in spirit. So, she usually says two, adding that one is in heaven. “The reactions are varied,” she wrote in the comments.

Shari concludes, “I usually follow with something like, ‘He still finds a way to communicate with us or send messages!’ This invariably brings up the conversation of an afterlife. I can usually tell in an instant if this was a good idea or not. If the person isn’t really open, I shut down pretty quickly.”

Shari’s final comment is also why I never landed in Stage Four. She wrote, “I didn’t always [shut down], though. I used to try to convince people about all I have learned and what I believe. I realize now that this isn’t always a good idea... Still, I feel I have made a believer out of some.”

I think Shari’s example fits perfectly with today’s subject. In response to her explanation of the stages she’s been through on her journey and her feeling good about making a believer out of a few folks with whom she shared, it prompted me to recognize the reason I still share as well.

I responded to Shari, “Every so often, someone asks you an innocent question, which somehow leads to an incredibly meaningful conversation, and the result lifts you and the other person in ways that can't fully be articulated, but it's always appreciated. And both parties walk away a little differently than before. These are the small moments that make a life precious and full.”

As I told Shari, I wish you more of these moments in your life. I’d love to hear which stage you currently find yourself in relation to sharing sacred experiences. Whatever this brings up for you, please share in the comments (it’s a safe place for sharing).

With love,
Bob

Bob Olson is the host of Afterlife TV, author of two books, Answers About The Afterlife and The Magic Mala, and creator of the reputable directory of psychics and mediums, BestPsychicDirectory.com. His newest venture is Bob Olson Connect, where you can read Bob’s articles before they become books.