Gordon Smith - Through My Eyes: A Medium Reveals the Reassuring Truth about the Afterlife

Lots of people think that being a medium is just about talking to the dead, and dealing with all kinds of spooky things like ghosts and poltergeists, but I know after eighteen years of working as one and giving sittings for thousands of people around the world, that my contribution is really about healing the living. I have worked as a healer with people who have physical health problems, but that's not what I mean. The ultimate healing a medium can offer is to those who have lost someone they loved, and who they felt meant more to them than life itself.

I'm trying to lift the bereaved out of the fear, anger and sadness that crowd their every thought, and not only to help them overcome those in their daily lives, but also to show them that there is another life beyond death a life after life, if you like.

Death is only part of our journey, and it comes to all of us, yet most people choose not to recognize that fact. It may be painful to face death, but not to accept it means being completely deluded. It's strange to me how far people will go to avoid thinking about it, because they truly believe that their consciousness will be snuffed out forever in an instant.

I've been in contact with the conscious life force, or Spirit, for most of my life, and because of my experiences I see death not as an end but as a new beginning. Our existence after death is one which is brighter and freer than the one we know in this life, and in this book I'd like to try to explain what that means, and how we have nothing to fear in dying, nor in losing a loved one.

Death affects each person in a different way. There does not seem to be any rhyme or reason to human behaviour when death touches us. Some whom we regard as being pillars of strength dissolve, while others whom we'd thought of as weak become stoic. I remember a medium I worked with who fell apart when her husband died, even though she had been comforting the bereaved for many years and had received confirmation of life after death time and time again. It seemed that she couldn't move on and kept trying to get messages from him from other mediums.

Those who accept death as a part of existence move through their bereavement more easily than those who see it as a catastrophe they never expected. That's not to say that they won't still have moments when a vivid memory will move them to tears, but this is part of the natural course of grief, and can, with time, become a more positive experience.

It is not death, or grief, which is complicated, but people and our behaviour. Every death we endure is different, and comes with a unique set of emotional meanings and triggers for each person who knew the deceased. The way we handle a loss also depends on our circumstances at the time, and while at one stage in our life we may be able to cope with parting from someone we were very close to, at another time we might be more vulnerable and break down.

The suffering which a person goes through is caused by the feeling of disconnection. When someone they were so closely bonded to in life is no longer in their sight, and cannot be touched, heard, or smelled, they are left with a feeling of being cut off forever. Memories of the things that they went through together seem diminished because they can no longer be shared.

This feeling is the first in a line of experiences of fear which we all go through in our grieving process. We are reminded too that we are vulnerable to death as are our children, family and friends. Grieving can become a sort of mental solitary confinement which crushes hope and leads to despair and depression, but there is a path through the darkness, for those who try to follow it.

I would never belittle someone's loss or expect them to be philosophical and just pick up the pieces of their life and move on, as grief is a powerful, devastating experience and permanently alters your being. However, sometimes people make the burden of grief much greater for themselves, and an already gruelling process becomes almost impossible.