SUMMARY KEYWORDS

Mediumship, Gordon Smith, spirit communication, grief, healing, children's grief, mediumship development, psychic abilities, altered states, animal communication, compassion, emotional resilience, mediumship accuracy, spiritual teaching, mediumship journey.

SPEAKERS

Gordon Smith, Hannah Macintyre

Hannah Macintyre 00:00

Hannah, hello and welcome to mediumship. Matters with me. Hannah Macintyre, I am incredibly excited to be bringing to you today an interview with one of my heroes, Gordon Smith, who has agreed to come on. Yes, the Gordon Smith, author of 23 books, Britain's most accurate medium and great inspiration to people all around the world with his incredible abilities and his teaching. Hi Gordon.

Gordon Smith 00:33

Hi Hannah. It's a pleasure to be asked to come on. I'm

Hannah Macintyre 00:38

really, really excited to have you now, I want to start straight away today, the way that I always start every interview on my podcast, which is, how did you begin with all of this? I know it's been 30 years. I looked on your website earlier, but how did it all start for you? Well,

Gordon Smith 00:54

I suppose really it's It started when I was about 21 and colleague in the hairdressing salon where I worked, her brother died tragically in a fire, and it was at the moment of his death, he somehow managed to appear in my bedroom spiritually. So I mean, as a young guy, I had never seen anything like this. As a child, I had experienced several mediumistic moments, which I wouldn't really have understood or knew how to frame them or so at the age of 21 and it was the most remarkable experience, because for a moment, he was real in my room, like solid three dimension or not glowy or see through or and my heart started to really race like this, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. But there was something I wasn't actually afraid of it. It was more as if I was, I don't know, contained within something that was beating I kind of, now look at that and see a whole different spin on it. But the thing was where Brian just smiled at me, that was the guy's name, and he just sank through the floor. And I sat up and thought, oh my god. I had a crazy vision at that moment inside my head, like a dream. It was three o'clock in the morning, so it was hard to know Was I dreaming of the whole thing was crazy, and I saw two police officers, male and female, coming towards my front door. And it's like part of the dream and extension the dream. The door knocked really loudly, and I jumped out of bed, threw on some trousers and ran and as I opened the door, there was a male and female police officer. We got some keys, and they said, Gordon Smith. And I said, yeah, they said there's been an accident, and we've been asked by a Miss Christine Peebles to give you these keys to the salon. And I said, Is she okay? But something inside me said they've already said she gave them the keys. The whole thing with her brother, Brian went out in my head, because all of a sudden, my thoughts were on Christine. So when later that morning, I realised her brother had died, and that was the start of my journey as an adult in mediumship. And yeah, from there, Christine asked if I would take her to see a medium. And I had no idea how that worked. I thought, I've never been here medium. I don't know what mediums are, and really where you would find one. And through the network of hairdressing that I was part of, everybody knows everything in hairdressing, you just make a call and and then before we knew it, somebody gave me a church, and that was that I walked in the spiritual church, and I felt I'm home something just said, you're home.

Hannah Macintyre 03:25

That's amazing. And when you work with spirit now, do you ever get full apparitions like that? Was that a one off? No,

Gordon Smith 03:33

it's not a one off, but it's one of very, very few. I would have liked to have had more, but then, in hindsight, no once you learn to trust it, then a new form of understanding and language begins. You learn a language of spirit, which isn't them having a comment in our terms. They're teaching us to take our mind to a more cerebral level. For them, just to keep appearing, we learn nothing. So we have to advance mentally, emotionally, spiritually,

Hannah Macintyre 04:04

love it. And that's really interesting, because that was answering a question that some of my students were asking me last night, and you've just come in and done it straight away. So I wanted to talk first of all, obviously, you've written a lot of books, but you've got a new book out where two worlds meet. So could you just introduce that to us all, please?

Gordon Smith 04:22

Yeah, we're two worlds meet. I wrote specifically for children or people and the deep Stages of Grief who don't understand it. So essentially children, because I worked with lots of families where you would see the family and you'd have maybe a little child who was eight or 910 and they'd be looking at this medium guy, this man who's walked into their home with pleading eyes of, please help. And it was just something that said, who talks to these kids, yeah, in a way that it's not religious, or you're not leaning them to anything, who gives them an understanding of life after death, or just. Of life and death, because a lot of people don't, and I could see that these kids were feeling the emotion of their parents, who were shrugging off everything's fine, your sister's in heaven. Yeah, heaven must be terrible, because look what it's doing in my mum and dad. How can it be beautiful? So I put together where two worlds meet as as a kind of aid to church children's grief. It's turned out that more adults are reading it than children, because a lot of them get taken back to their own young life and think, Oh my God. When my dad died, I felt that, or when I lost so and so. So it has many, many messages, and because it's fiction, I was allowed to play in the world of fantasy and use animals and the child like mind of children and basically, I created a new language called sense, and only children and animals could talk sense. Human adults had lost their ability to understand sense, so the wee boy ends up becoming a part of nature in the natural world. Who teach him that actually life and death are part of the same thing. They're not opposites, and that this is your hard body, but you have a light body, and the light body lives on, and the hard body has to go back to something in the earth. And basically taught him the whole kind of wheel of life and death and beyond. And it was something lovely that I taught my kids when they were growing up with a father as a medium, when they'd say, you know, Dad, do you really see people who are dead or hear them? So I would tell them a little bit about what I called Light land. And that's where the whole idea originally way back. And I thought, I'll bring light land into this so that kids can see that, wow. Oh. Your light stuff, your dreams, your memories, your reflections, your hopes, and they don't die. That's the lighter party, and that travels on So, so that was, that was where two worlds meet. And it was a joy to do. It's a joy I listened to and talking about recently, and I was moved. So moved, I thought, What did I really write that? Actually? Yeah, and

Hannah Macintyre 07:08

I'm not surprised that adults are listening to that, because I had a soul midwife on the podcast quite recently, and that's been very interesting for people, because it really made me even me, who, as you do, communicates with both of us how much we don't talk about death, how much we hide from it, and it's not part of our conversation. So I'm not surprised that adults are reading that as well, just to help them open up to it in a really gentle

Gordon Smith 07:35

way. Well, I think also the behaviour of the parents in the book, which was a natural behaviour, if you lose a daughter or a child, and both when the mother was kind of angry at God and angry at life and angry at everything, so but, you know, and her, she had these traits where kid would talk to her, so she was fraught with anger, but she'd smile at him, but the kid could feel And he just wanted to remove his mom's anger. Yeah, and we his dad. His dad was just broken hearted, but trying to be a man trying to No, no, all is and the boy would feel and he just want to hold his dad so he would again. There's a description of how men and women suffer grief. Grief is grief, but within society, men are seen to be women more kind of open to the heart and pain and moving through it. But I wanted to show that from a child's point of view, yeah, so that, so that they would, you know, when we do have a loss and those kids involved, how to treat them in a way that we are not giving them information that's going to be overwhelming for them as a child, but we're giving them enough information to say, you know, this is why I'm not the way I usually am right now, yeah, because I'm feeling something, and I have not got words yet. But just know as this is not to do with you. This is me and how I'm feeling. So there's a whole kind of evolution of emotions. Because the biggest part of the book I did, I spoke to a lot of child grief counsellors and things, and said, What would you like included in the book? And they said, Oh, talk about emotions. Would you please educate children on emotions? So I created a standing ring of stones, and I called them the mood stones. And every time the wee boy went there, he would feel different moods. And he took his parents there to to let them see the stones. And of course, when his mum touched this particular stone, he could see inside her heart, and it was just anger, rage. And when his dad stood in one he just had tears. So these stones so that the boy could actually understand the changes, and so he realised, I'm taking them either happy stone, yeah, they got giddy and they didn't know what to do, and grief with happiness, because that made them feel guilty, right? Immediately they were so all of these things that I've studied in the many years I've worked as a medium and and trained, and still trained. Grief is a big thing that a lot of mediums themselves don't even look at. They look at the result of trying to help people grieving. But a lot of them don't have knowledge when they go into a situation what type of grief they're dealing with, or what extent the grief is at, and it's so important for mediums to learn absolutely

Hannah Macintyre 10:18

and I remember having a reading with somebody once, and I brought through all the evidence, and she said, Well, yeah, that's all right, but that doesn't help me. He's still not here and and I was flawed because, you know, so there is that expectation for mediums that we're going to take it all away. And obviously we can't, because it is a process that people have to go through, fascinating. So I know when you started, I've heard you saying that you you were made one of a better expression to focus on healing. Yes, quite a long time. How do you feel that impacted your development? Well,

Gordon Smith 10:54

I think it's important for people mediums, especially in development, to understand the process of healing. Because I realised I was healing myself, or my teacher was guiding me to heal myself at the time, because I was in my early 20s, I had two kids, and, you know, life had been a bit messed up. So in order to be a medium, you have to unravel a lot of your own stuff. So in the healing classes, I would be healing people, but it would reflect on, Oh God, I remember that happening in my family, or this, oh my god. So then you would start to look at, am I actually feeling their thing, or am I feeling mine? And you learn to also understand what was your pain and what was somebody else's? So the healing class was really good for recognising levels of heart and others so, and it's the same when that to me, transferred it in my mediumship, that you could tell when somebody was having a message from the other side, and it was, Oh, I've got your gran here. And she tells me she died 12 years ago, and she'd love their life. And you guys, you could feel that there's no heart there. There wasn't a need for healing in that message. But there'd be others where they were so raw and tender. And I realised that in the healing class, I was also developing sensitivity. And people need mediums. Need sensitivity. So in many ways, you need to be psychic to your point, to understand the people you're working with. That's the tool you bring to it. And I understand that the teacher who taught me, they talked about psychic mediums back then, because the medium themselves was a psychic mediumship, was an extra faculty that you developed, or a higher level, yeah. So if you were to radio station, I've often said you already come with em, that's, oh, my God, I can read this room. Oh, there's something happened here. Oh, that person's sad. So that's your sensitivity, or your psychic abilities, which you have inherent I had them as a kid. And then the mediumship you were learning, he had FM, you were going to a wider frequency. And you're picking up on finer energies the spirit world. But you would, you would relate to them in the same way. Instead of that lady's hurting, oh, my God, the Spirit lady needs to talk to that lady who's hurting, and you would put them together, and then you would feel the healing quality that, wow, when that and that comes through me, and get that, then there's an absolute healing. And that's to me, is what I've always done with mediumship, is looked for the healing. I don't look to be right or accurate, I just like to heal. So it's healing mediumship that I do more than anything incredible.

Hannah Macintyre 13:26

And yet you are incredibly accurate. And so do you feel that that accuracy is something that you have naturally? Are you quite a scientific minded person? Would you? Would you not be happy with the kind of Woo, woo, non specifics, or is it just, you know, how's that worked out for you?

Gordon Smith 13:48

I like that. Actually, I will use that, if you don't mind. Hannah, yeah, we were non specific. No, I think because of the mediums that I was watching as I was developing, and there was a kind of big percentage who that was. What mediumship was. It was just, you had to be accurate. No medium and when I started, could ever throw something out to an audience that would never have been heard of to see? Can somebody in the room that never would have found you either had to start with Mrs. Macintosh, and she tells me she died, and you stay with that lady, you don't change her. Whereas some people say, and you can take that and you can, and I often think, well, if 10 people have spoke to you, and which spirit are you dealing with here? And I don't understand that they can, you know, in some one wee boy in Denmark once it Yes, but it's a better show. And I say, oh, sorry, you cannot show so immediately. And as you said, Okay, fair enough, that's if the world changes to that, then, you know, I'll welcome it. Don't mind. But no, for me, it was a sense. You, this is your sensitivity again. You got drawn to the I need to speak to you. I would say to that I still do it today, and I should do. It. That's where your trust comes in. You have no idea what's coming next, but you know it is. And there's nobody else in the room, just you and that person. Forget all the other hands. They don't exist to me, it's that person. I have your father here, and it's minute they nod, and then something else comes out. And I'm not even trying to be anything at that point. I'm just staying in that link, because the development I did Hannah was to sit in the power, let the Spirit sit with me for the whole time, so that I could hold the space of mediumship open for them to give messages, not me. I don't give messages. And as what I tell people when they say, you know, they get somebody saying no to them, and they go home and they obsess over that word to me, no. It's just a yes. They haven't realised I do not. Because it's not about me, yeah, it's spirit. And I take very little part in these demonstrations. I turn up, take my body there, and let the Spirit World do the rest. And it's not about being right or wrong, because I've already done that with spirit for years. Showed them, you know, my trust in them. So I trust whatever they see comes through. So I believe it's feel real. Then I leave it with people, and then they come back. Oh, my God, this hand. You told me that I didn't tell you anything your son did. And oh, wow. So I'll say, Well, that may be something nice to look at. Your son actually knows things from a different perspective. So, yeah, I don't, I really don't compete with people who say, but don't you think mediumship should be I think mediumship should help as my simplest thing I'll ever say to people it should help. Should be quality of helping. So, and I

Hannah Macintyre 16:37

think from the point of view of being a sitter, it is a high pressured environment. It's a bit like, you know, trying to make your loved ones your specialist subjects, especially in an audience scenario, because everyone cranes their neck around, and your emotions are rising. And so in that moment, you do sometimes say no to things because you're panicked absolutely

Gordon Smith 16:58

and because, again, the medium is delivering the message. They're not creating the message. One of the great people in my life was an old medium called Albert best, who was a bit of an influence in my life. And Albert, in his day job, was a postman, and his night which all were our mediums back then, we all had a day job, you know, we had a life away from mediumship, and that also was good. But Albert would deliver mail during the day and then deliver spirit messages at night. And he was, he was the most accurate medium I'd ever watched. He was incredible. But one of the times he said to me, son, remember this? He says, we only deliver the messages. We don't write them, we don't create them. He said, just make sure you get them to the right letter box. That's true. Just get your your information to the right person. And you know that you feel it. Trust what you feel. Too many people do. I do the spiritual thing. And you think, what do you mean by that? Because a spiritual thing is actually helping people. That's all it is. Yeah, my mother never believed in any great God in it, but she was one of my spiritual people. I know because she made soup for the poor, she gave clothes and he places. She took people in when they had nothing. Now that to me, is spiritual, not saying I got the name Edward in a message. I mean, that's just silly. Yeah, for sure, all that spiritual is nonsense. Real spiritual is when you genuinely care and have compassion about the work that you do. That's that's really caring.

Hannah Macintyre 18:27

I love it. Now I know that you're a very humble man, and I can already tell that you're Yeah, but would you be willing to share an example with the listeners about when you have done some epic accuracy?

Gordon Smith 18:42

Oh, god, it's hard to know.

Hannah Macintyre 18:44

I can give you an example. Oh yeah, I was gonna say, I bet you've got tonnes when I saw you in London 10 years ago, probably more possibly you were talking. You went direct to somebody in the audience, and you were talking to them about a fox at their you described their sliding doors. And I bet you don't even remember it. You've got so many messages. And honestly, it was like that lady had been struck by lightning. Her whole body responded to you, saying, Fox. And I thought, there you go. That is, well, I

Gordon Smith 19:18

mean, I suppose it's when it's something like I last year I was over in Tokyo, and I don't do so much demonstrations as I used to. I used to do every night. So now I have long pauses between, which is good, and it also means that I keep my mind really strong for when I do it. I love doing it. So going over to Tokyo, I hadn't done a damn for quite a few months, and COVID before that. So it's only been on Zoom. I thought, Oh my God, and I don't get nervous about demonstrations. And I thought I feel, all of a sudden, I feel this sense of trepidation. And I thought that takes me back. And I said, Well, spirit, I just have to trust you. And my translator said, Do you do anything before you. Start. And I said, not normally, but now I'm worried, so I'm going to worry for a while. She said, But you're joking, aren't? I said, Yes, I'm absolutely fine. Don't worry about it. When I got up there, I'll be fine. And as soon as I started, because ladies translating me. So I thought, keep the brief short, I am a medium. And the pointed to Lady, Mom, can I speak to you? And this little lady, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I said, there's a Mr. Oganawa, here is your husband. And she says, huh? And then, of course, everybody went. People came from everywhere they were. They were in a mind, body, spirit type. So everybody was leaving their events and ended up with 1000s of people. And of course, the messages just came like that. And it was, I mean, even at the end of that, I think one is not evidential, and that was evidential. And there was many Japanese names, streets, towns, cities, dates, above, dates, all that stuff. But the nicest thing that happened to me was I came off stage a little. I mean, I'm not tall as a guy, but this woman was shorter than me, and she came up and she kind of put her hands in prayer in front of me and said, my boy died. Is he okay? And I'm slightly drawn. And I put my hand over her hand like this, and I was wearing Buddhist prayer beads that I'd been to see this wonderful Buddhist chap the day before, and he empowered them. He did a blessing on them. So I felt really great my beads I've had for 20 years, and and as I did that, they rolled from my hand on either lady's arm, and she's Oh, you. And I said, no, no. I said, No, your beads. And I said, these have been empowered by a beautiful llama. And I told her who? And she's Oh, she says, I've been trying to get to see him since my boss. Well, there you are. Isn't that a beautiful gift? And I said, take that from your son. I can't give you a message because I'm just not tuned in anymore. But please accept that. And my translator said she just said to me yesterday, that was the greatest thing you could have got your beads. And I said, Well, I'll get another set of beads and somebody else will do that. I said, that'll mean everything to that woman. And I'm sure it did. She did write any people later to say she couldn't believe it, though she never got an actual verbal message. She felt that was the greatest message she could have got something to hold. She said, to hold something that she feels her son gave her was very precious. So it's incredible again, for me, Spirit work in so many ways. It's not all of it, standing on a platform, giving that so that is a part of it, but the other part is just trusting your life that you're in the right place at the right time with the right people who need what you can give them.

Hannah Macintyre 22:30

That's an incredible story. Thank you. I'm really glad I asked now so you work with helping parents heal. Can you tell us about that and your work there, yeah,

Gordon Smith 22:42

they're a wonderful organisation with masses of people. I think several million people are members, or, as the name would suggest, parents who have lost children. So as a medium, I always like to be able to refer people to other organisations or places I truly believe in, because sometimes your work as a medium can only take people to that part of the road. So it's nice to have somebody like helping parents you, who can take parents that you've worked with and then bring them into their fold. And these are the most wonderful, kind, loving people, full of compassion, and they've all been down that road. So it's like that, and yeah, there's just magical people, and they're a great extension of mediumship, I would say. And so I would do mediumship for them, do zooms, where I talk to the families, and I've gone out there and did live demo. I did that last year, which was utterly incredible, because I was asked to give a talk. But when you see like 900 families, not 900 people, 900 families all lost kids, and I thought they don't want me to talk to them. Everybody's talked to them, and I don't want to talk to them either. I want to give them something. So if you can't work in a room when 900 families have lost children as a medium, you're not a medium. So for me, there's no preparation. You just go out and talk. And some of the most beautiful things happened that day, incredible things. It really was, you know, there was this lovely man who departed the message. I said, I see your hand rubbing a little blonde boy, I said, he's this high and daddy, and see your hand. I said, Put your hands down. You're holding his hand, I said, and I'm hearing the Beatles song. I want to hold your hand. And they were like, oh, and the guy couldn't speak, and I just carried on with a message. I said, you know, he's just showing me Abbey Road. There's something to do with the Beatles here. And later that night, I was in the bar looking at the other spirits and seeing how they were getting on. A lot, a lot of the fathers, from helping parents heal, came in to the bar and one, one man say, Me, I show you something. And I said, you, you are allowed to talk to me, because a lot of the mediums were kind of, you know, some mediums get a little bit precious, but I don't. I'm right there with the guys, and the fella has said to me, you know, Gordon, they said, What you said today? Was incredible. Can I show you something? I said, Sure. And he pulled his sleeve up near the tattoo of Abbey Road and Hannah's son walking over it, and he said, that was, I said, Oh, was you that guy? And I said, there's so many people I couldn't distinguish who I was speaking to. So he told me the whole story, and it was incredible. And I want to hold your hand. Was the song, and, oh, god sake. And then the photograph of him and his boy and hold, oh, just beautiful. So things like that, you see the value of mediumship. And from when I was quite young, I worked in Italy with Italian families who'd lost children. So my whole story is a medium a lot of it has been trying to help people come to terms with a stage of grief, I now realise I cannot take away grief, but I can give people tools to work with what they've got, and as a medium, that's as much of a role I see myself in. Now, if somebody feels that message changes their life, that's incredible, but I'm set to heal. I try to let people lead me feeling better than when they came. Yeah, and I don't reach for the stars in that one. I just let nature take its course,

Hannah Macintyre 26:06

providing a bit of hope. Yes, yeah, there's a way. Yeah, very dark time. So if I may pick your brain now, what advice would you give people who write who are right at the beginning of their journey and just starting to explore their connection. I

Gordon Smith 26:24

think the first thing I would say is why you want to be a medium? Ask yourself that question. That's a big, important question, because a lot of people arrive at it these days for very different reasons. I feel Yes, but ask yourself the question, Why? Why me? And why do I want to do this? Because you commit yourself to something. It's a long journey of your true medium it's for life. It's not, you know, for Christmas, no mediumship is for life. But so you ask yourself that question for us, and think, am I truly dedicated to doing this? And you need to do you need the real elements of mediumship, and one has dedication and devotion, that that kind of quality has to be there. You also need to develop compassion. You also need to understand yourself. There's all these qualities that you have to examine. Am I well enough to do this? A lot of people come because they're very broken, and you think, can you truly sit down with other people? Are you just going to cry? Are you going to get caught up and be so sympathetic there ordeal that? So you got to be an emotional life card. And that takes training. And for me, it was seven years in my first development circle to train how to cope with my own emotional state. Yeah, because you can pull people out of the emotional seas if you end up in it with them. So for me, I can stand at the side, be unemotional, and help pull people out of an emotional turbulence or whatever. So you need to look at that, because you're carrying a lot of people's heavy stuff. So you need to be psychologically robust, yeah. So you need mental training. There's a whole lot goes on, and if a medium isn't, kind of doesn't have everything in their toolbox to prepare for all of that. Then they might find two years down the road, they're exhausted. They have exhausted their compassion, they have exhausted their resilience. They've exhausted their trust and belief and spirit. And that's when you start to hear why did Spirit let me down? And you think spirit never let you down. So much like anything. Hannah, if you were going to run a marathon, you don't just go and run a marathon. You take a long time to train your body to cope with that. And that's the same. So for me, it was all mind gymnastics, mind yoga, mind exercises to train so that my mind became psychologically robust. That is a big important part of being a medium. Don't rush into it. Get to know yourself first. If you cannot understand self, you'll never understand an unseen spirit world. You'll never understand that so Absolutely

Hannah Macintyre 28:49

and we want. The thing is, a lot of people, I think, come to mediumship to escape themselves. And it is, you know, you want to be out floating in the ether. And I'm like, no, no, no. This is all about being here with you. And I completely, Yeah, completely

Gordon Smith 29:02

Hannah. One of the things I enjoyed doing, I was asked which I thought was ridiculous, 2002 or something. I was in London, and somebody said, would you come and speak to an acting class? And I said, Are you kidding me? An acting class? Why? And they said, because you do trance mediumship. You check on the identity of another spirit being. Could you talk to actors about what that feels like? I thought, Okay, this will be interesting. And I did it. I enjoyed it. They asked me to come back and do it again. And I was saying to them, when you work as an actor and you become a person, if it's a series, I mean, they were proper actors, not kids learning. A lot of them you see in your soaps, and a lot were appearing on the west end stages, doing Shakespeare and things and and they genuinely wanted this. And they said, how do you let go of the character? And this was really interesting. And I said, Well, here's the first thing. You are you the character is on their character. I said, so for me, the spirit is on. Momentarily thing, it's a momentary appearance, I said. And the same would be if you were being Hamlet, you know you are, and then you need to learn how I was gonna say To be or not to be cheesy. That's really kind of a shake. But anyway, I probably used that. But the idea was showing people when you disengage, and that was a big lesson. I said it's one thing, you take on a spirit message and deliver it, but to then become obsessed with it yourself. Once again, the mental training comes in when that's enough and you go back to being used really, really strong mind. All of this should be done before people are allowed to actually work with the public agree, I was seven years in training with my first teacher, and at the end, she said, the moment you walked in the doors of my church, you were a medium. She said, what I worked on was the person. She said, now if you were in a medical school, she said, we wouldn't give you a scalpel in the first week. She says, but what you could do to people's emotions with bad words and the wrong phraseology and even the lack of compassion or empathy, you could destroy a mind. And I thought, wow. And she said, that's why it took seven years, yeah, so that you were responsible enough, and that the appropriate thing when giving a spirit message, because, again, it's important that mediums know what they're doing. Really important, rather than, I'm not sure what's happening here. That's never a good thing here, immediately. Yeah, no. And I have said it when I was younger, Oh, do you know what I'm this is not clearly, no, no, stop. You need to train yourself so that you're in control of a reading you don't control of a platform. You don't let people take that away. You You are the force that you've trained to be, and therefore, you're confident in everything you do. And that's when you're ready for the platform when, yeah, when it feels like, yeah, I can do this.

Hannah Macintyre 31:57

I love it. And I saw on one of your blogs, on your website, you wrote that you you teach with kindness. Why do you think teaching with kindness is so important? Well,

Gordon Smith 32:06

I don't think you have to shout at people. First of all, I think I think either way, Spirit teach and they talk taught me, because most of my teaching I got was from spirit, and that's how Mrs. Primrose allowed us to do it. Sit with spirit and let them show you the lessons, let them teach you. So spirit are compassionate and wise. And for me, if somebody gets something, unless they did something horrible to another person, I would stop that immediately, because that's kindness. Stopping somebody from hurting someone is kindness. Yeah, so remember, kindness is a double edged sword. Here. Sometimes kindness is saying, no, stop that, or that's wrong, but the way you treat them after it is not to make them feel bad. Let me show you why you did that, or let me maybe point out something. So when that's what I mean by kindness, a good teacher should never have to raise a voice to anybody in any situation. A good teacher watches, I watch all my students when they're doing their early platform work, and I don't tell them anything other than they've been taught. I let them go on. I let them finish the message. I don't stop the mid message unless it's damaging to the person, then I would. But I let I watch their process, because I want to see what they're doing, and I don't want them to be copying me or copying other mediums. I want them to be a version of themselves, the best version. And some may do something a lot that seems a bit annoying to a lot of the people. And I think, Well, can I ask you, are you aware that you're flying your hands a bit in front your face when you're talking it? And they go, because I do all the time, and they'll do I really do that. And I said, I'm not telling you to stop, but what I'm telling you is it's distracting a lot of the things in a public demonstration. And I said, I'm only telling you, be aware of it. That's all I said. But your information was excellent, so I'm not going to say no to that. And I think it's nice to have good conversation with people, yeah, and explaining them if something's right, what's right or wrong? If it helps people, it's right, yeah, if it doesn't help people, then find out why you're not helping people so but again, you don't need to destroy people. I think the whole idea is being generous to them and and also having the answers that they need. Well, if I'm doing that wrong, can you show me how to do it right? Sure, you have to have something to replace it. You can't take away somebody's crutch unless you're going to put something there and its place, yeah, and again, that's fair teaching, you know, but you don't need to be horrible to people.

Hannah Macintyre 34:26

No. Agreed, agreed. And I also saw that you encourage your students to experience altered states. I know you were just talking about trance. Why do you think that's so important?

Gordon Smith 34:36

Well, for me, that was probably the thing that helped me overcome a lot of my fears when I was young, fears of death. Because as a medium, you don't just inherit a fear, a lack of fear of death or dying. You have to work to it, even mediums of that as your people. But the more you work and the more you know you see things. It was the way I was developed, was setting the power and. Try to let the Spirit come close to me. So to do that properly, you have to alter your state. So you go into this, what I call thin place between two worlds, the same place you would go to when you were waking up from a sleep. And dreams affect your mind at that point or or something. So you learnt to do that while you're in a waking state, so that when you, when you do a reading for somebody. I very often words are coming out my mouth, but I'm still very, you know, coherent, but at the same time, I've let go. It's almost like self hypnosis, in a sense, I would imagine, yeah, that's just flowing from you, and you're happy with the flow. And when that happens, it's because I've trained to go into that now I I've also trained people to understand things about that because out of body experiences as a part of that, and letting people actually understand what can and can't happen with this stuff, because some of them come with crazy ideas. But if I close my eyes and, you know, and I go too deep, what will happen? How deep do you want to go? You fall asleep. Yes, the worst thing that can happen to you is you fall asleep. But it's the ideas you take into that meditation that are sometimes a little bit off the track. And again, I anybody who comes we, you know, their own version of incredible things that will happen when they close their eyes. And I will ask them. And again, we kindness to say, can you explain to me why? As you see unicorns and and you go off to this wonderful Fairyland, why do you think that is? And I'll talk, I will never ridicule people. And I'll say, okay, because one thing I did study, which not for everyone, definitely for me, was Carl Jung. I wanted to understand symbology, because the mind throws up symbols a lot. And then I'll talk to people. So could it be a symbolic type of mediumship you're working with? So tell me what a unicorn means to you, and what does it mean to be in this other world this? Tell me what that's like. It sounds like you're very safe there and and before you know it, you're unravelling their psychology. Not that I'm not a psychologist, but I'm letting them see, oh, my God. When I was young, I was scared of that, and I used to lock myself into this thing. And so you would find, as part of their spiritual development, their fantasy was actually a tarot card. Really, you can read it, yeah, so everything is symbolic if it's not understood in this form of reality. And once again, studying psychiatry doesn't really harm a medium to understand mental states and emotional states and fantasies and stuff like that. Yeah. Oh,

Hannah Macintyre 37:31

fascinating. And you've got a book called Animal Magic. You have connection to animals. Yeah, was that something that happened naturally in your communications with spirit? Was it something you consciously decided to develop?

Gordon Smith 37:46

No, that just been part of my life. And I don't know when it started. I don't remember the actual message when it started, but, yeah, I have so many messages. I think one was a lady who, when she came along for the reading, and she was from Spain, I think, and I started to talk to, I've got your grandmother here, dad, nodding, yeah, got all that right. And it was that this lady's not looking for that, yeah, come on spirit, which you need. And then this beautiful, big Doberman came through, and its name, whatever. And then right after that, I was reading for a Swiss man. And as soon as, I don't know if that Doberman, opened the floodgates, but the next one, this guy came, and his dog was called pongo. And I said, it's a Dalmatian, and it was killed on a railway track. And a man just know. And I said, But you know what? You've had a headstone made for the dog. It's in your garden. And he showed me a photograph of it. He did, and he's my dog really here. And I said, the spirit of your dog is here, the consciousness, yes. And he said, But why? And I said, you loved it. That loved you. There was a bond that's all you need. That bond is created that won't die. So that kind of began, and then, ah, God, African animal has come through. It's been ridiculous. And I don't only give messages from animals. Some people think I'm Dr Doolittle of the mediumship world. I'm really not. And I don't talk to animals. I sense them, and it's that language of sense I mentioned that's in the book with a little boy and the animals, you feel as a sensitive what the animal needs or how it's trying to convey something. And that's how mediumship works as well. If I'm working with people in Japan and I don't know the language, I still have to convey the feeling, yeah. And that's where being in the old slight altered state and overshadowing, I would call it, yeah. That overshadowing allows the character to come really through you, and you can animate the spirit, allow them a moment in this realm, just a moment, and it's enough to be recognised.

Hannah Macintyre 39:47

I love that I asked that purely for selfish reasons, because I've always been a human communicator, and then recently, in the way, soon as you get comfy, all of a sudden, the dogs come in, and I'm like, Who are you with? And the dog's like, no one.

Gordon Smith 39:59

I get. Family, though, yeah, when I wrote that book, Hannah, we I was co writing it with a lady I was on the road all the time, and my publisher said, Look, if we bring a ghostwriter, go straighter. There you go. She come in and we mean her work together, and she put a thing out on the internet saying, if anybody has an animal story they'd like to share? Well, we just shut it down. I mean, it was so many 1000s of things that came in, and we wanted to show the consciousness of animals, and also to have a kind of understanding of how people have been treating animals, you know, because there's a heck of a lot of cruelty, and you think cruelty doesn't, shouldn't exist in any realm. In this day and age, we've evolved, but it does. So there was a lot of awareness of Animal Awareness in it as well. But, yeah, I think it develops with you. And I mean, it's not something I would be called an animal communicator. I'm not. I'm a medium. And if that means your loved one is, you know, a poodle, it doesn't matter or whether your loved ones you you know, I think one of my funny German stories was in Frankfurt saying, the woman, I've got your husband, his name's Carl. Oh, actually, it's Carl Heinz. He lives in Berlin and barnastra. She says, Yeah. And I thought, oh god. I thought, Well, honey, I don't get much better than this. As good as I get, I've got the man, I've got his name, his address, all the things. And then eventually I thought, come on, give me something. And I said he has a terrier dog with him. My hon, my Honda. She went crazy, and I thought her hands was up to your husband. But I love to tell that story in Germany, because a lot of the people, when you're doing a damn don't understand how it works. So I use that sometimes. It's a real story, and I use it to make people see that, come on. I need you to talk back to me. I need you to be involved. Your loved ones are trying to communicate. But it's a great thing to show that this woman had more of a bond with the terrier than with her husband. That

Hannah Macintyre 41:52

is hilarious, and so that, I mean, that's so true for so many. It really is, so I'm not surprised. So do you believe that your journey with spirit has been predestined, or one that you have created through your passion for it?

Gordon Smith 42:11

I think a bit of both. I think it's part of your destiny or a potential part of your destiny, and you can either find it, or you can walk past it. And for me, I had several opportunities. I had several things happen in my life. And then the one that I mentioned earlier was Brian, when he appeared, that kind of then said, Okay, follow it. Because through my young life, I had many different occasions of some paranormal, some media mistake, some psychic so lots of things, seer ship, seeing things in the future. So there was flags there, but I'm a great believer that you can still turn a different corner, yeah, and you can say no. And your destiny, I think your destiny is a many kind of fold path, that when you come to that point of personal choice, that that's the point that we are involved in. So you have the potential to be I mean, I was a hairdresser at that time. I had so many options, because I love doing lots of things. I love cooking. I was I started being a cook for a while. So I had many, many options of careers, to travel and all the things. And then I followed that. Yeah, I was a sports coach. I was a champion gymnast. There was all sorts of things. So I think I just like doing what I do, any whatever it is. Yeah, for me, all these options were signposting. You get flagged up with something, and you follow a flicker, something happens, and you follow, and then you're on that timeline. Now that timeline will run into the next personal choice day. I'm back at the crossroads again. So I think we have a time to be born and many potential times to pass, to leave the world. And I really a lot is down to the different choices we make at pivotal moments in our life. Yeah, you know when it's an important you know the big choices. You know them. Everybody knows them. You go, ah, and it's because we don't know what to truly do with them. These are the moments where nobody can help you. Don't ask Spirit for guidance on those ones, because they won't they'll be there, and whatever road you take, but you have you sometimes you're the one that has to make the next step on the journey, and that's okay. You learnt to get good at that.

Hannah Macintyre 44:24

Yeah, I love it. I love it. Now, you've also got live events, and you're running groups as well and teaching online as well, aren't you? So you've got your happy medium events with James van Praag. They look amazing. And you've got teaching coming up, I believe, although it's sold out really quickly, didn't it when

Gordon Smith 44:41

I Yeah, the online ones, well, the Zoom ones and things we do, they're sold out in less than an hour, normally, waiting lists and waiting lists and wait lists. But yeah, so if anybody's interested, just watch the website for that. Because we are introducing new things. One of the things I love Hannah is that I've. I'm still learning as a medium. I tell everybody that I'm still growing. I learn new things. I go walks in the morning, six o'clock in the morning, with my dogs in the countryside, and I really feel things from spirit. And that's when I get my beautiful moment with spirit. That's my two worlds meeting. And I just get annoying for a moment. No, I'm not some great, clever sage. I'm not a moment where I think, wow, let's add this. Oh, I never thought telling people this or here's a new way to deliver that, how to be a clairvoyant. So new additions come because I'm open to it. I'm not rigid, yeah, and I think, I think, as long as you're flexible and open, you keep learning. And that's one things I love about it. So lots of events and those online courses, I work with a big company in Switzerland called Unity. And unity run a lot of online courses and minds as I've got several there. In fact, James and I are going to film one. How Improve Your mediumship? Yeah? Oh, nice together. That will be fun. Yeah,

Hannah Macintyre 45:55

that will be fun. Amazing. Well, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us today. It's been absolutely I knew it would be great. And I love, I love your down to earth. Just this is how it works. Let's do this approach.

Gordon Smith 46:10

Have another gear, Hannah,

Hannah Macintyre 46:14

well, it's great, and I will obviously put a link to your website in the show notes so the listeners can check you out. Thank you again, Hannah,

Gordon Smith 46:21

your star. Thank you, God. Bless you. Feel.