Medium Jake Samoyedny is known as The Compassionate Medium. He was recently recognized by The Times Square Press as the #1 Most Recommended Medium in the USA and voted the #1 Best Medium in the United States for 2016 and 2017. Jake is also on the Preferred Provider List for Helping Parents Heal, a national organization for parents who have children in Spirit. Jake is the author of 3 books titled, The Compassionate Medium, A Pathway to Eternity, and Gatekeeper of the Invisible Door.
IN THIS EPISODE, YOU’LL HEAR ABOUT THINGS LIKE:
- The difference between a trained and a born medium.
- What J.K. Rowling and Hogwarts have to do with the Arthur Findlay College for Psychical Studies in Stansted, England.
- Dying is a process. Death is an event.
- Humanity is developing a “sixth sense.”
SOME QUESTIONS IRENE ASKS JAKE:
- How do young children provide their parents with proof of survival?
- Why is it often common for people to abandon their grieving loved ones and friends?
- Do Spirits literally “rest in peace?”
SHOW LINKS:
CONTACT INFORMATION:
Email: jake@compassionatemedium.com
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Listen to the podcast here
Jake Samoyedny: The Compassionate Medium
This interview is with Jake Samoyedny, who is known as the compassionate medium. He was recognized by the Time Square Press as the Number One Most Recommended Medium in the USA and voted the Number One Best Medium in the United States for 2016 and 2017. Because of Jake’s unique journey to mediumship, he has become a much sought-after speaker, and he is blessed to be on the preferred provider list for Helping Parents Heal, a national organization for parents who have children in spirit.
Jake is the author of three books titled The Compassionate Medium, A Pathway to Eternity, and Gatekeeper of the Invisible Door. I finished reading and thoroughly enjoyed Gatekeeper of the Invisible Door. I learned much new information as the book focuses on Jake’s readings with children who have transitioned to the other side.
Jake, it is my pleasure to welcome you to the show. I’m eager to share your fascinating life story and spiritual insights with our readers, especially your insights about children who have transitioned to spirit. Let’s begin our interview with this question. Jake, what’s it like to be born a medium? Please explain this and share with us your unique journey to mediumship.
Let me thank you, Irene, for inviting me to your program. It’s a joy for me to have a chance to reach out to other people who don’t necessarily know me or may know of me. As a kid, I was the kid who always you turn the radio on. I’ll tell you what the next three songs are, the phone rings, who it is, and why they’re calling. I grew up urban. I’d walk up to a bank of elevators. I never waited. I would go right to the door opening. It was a knowing. I assumed everybody had that. I didn’t think there was anything unique or special about it until I was much older. I found out not everybody has it.
The difference, if I explained it from reading, this will make sense to you. I’ll give you an example from a reading I did years ago. This was several years ago. I had a young woman on the phone. It was her father-in-law in spirit. He was a good communicator. At one point, he showed me the number 210. I asked her if 210 meant anything to her. It didn’t mean anything. She couldn’t take it.
As the reading went on, all of a sudden, he showed me a watch. I said, “There has to be a watch that’s significant to him, that’s meaningful.” She says, “I don’t know if my husband hasn’t.” She yelled to the other room. She was like, “Do you have your pop’s watch?” He said, “No, I don’t, but my brother does.” he called his brother, and I heard him yelling in the background. He was like, “He has Pop’s watch, but you don’t want it. It’s broken. It’s stuck at 2:00.”
That’s a natural medium versus a trained medium. A trained medium would’ve gotten the idea of a watch that may have been significant, but they would never get the time off the watch. They wouldn’t get that specific piece of information. That’s the difference. The best stuff in readings from me are things that are unknown by my sitter. It’s called validation after the fact. You cannot get it from them psychically. It has to come from somewhere else. That’s what you want to aim for, as much of that as you can. Otherwise, people who will be cynical will question, “You got it from her.” I don’t need to do that. I don’t need to pick it up from you and do any other research on you. It’s always right there. It’s as simple as that.
That’s the difference between a trained medium and a born medium. The perfect phrasing is the Gordon Smith line, “When something is a belief, there’s room for doubt. When something is a knowing, there’s no more room for doubt.” That’s the way I work from it. It’s knowing. It’s always right there. I’ve never opened up and there has not been a spirit person there. I’ve not been able to bring anyone through for somebody. It’s never happened.
When something is a belief, there's room for doubt. When something is a knowing, there's no more room for doubt. Click To Tweet
I do somewhere between 550 and 800 readings a year, depending on how busy I want to be. It’s always right. I’m 6,000 or 7,000 readings in at this point. It’s reliable and consistent. The flaw that most people find in their mediumship is it’s inconsistent. I don’t find I’m lucky and find that with my mediumship. It’s always right there.
You are right on the button where I allow some people. They’ll say, “They’re 96% or 85% accurate.”
There’s no way to gauge that. There’s a lot of that out there now. People who are trying to prove that which is otherworldly by human standards. Good luck with that. They’re not going to get it. It’s going to sound pretty and sell whatever they need to sell, but it’s not real.
In addition to being a natural-born medium, what makes it even better is you also did train. Our readers will be interested in that because you’ve trained with some of the best mediums at the prestigious Arthur Findlay College for Psychical Studies in Stansted, England. You’re also a registered medium at Lily Dale, America’s oldest spiritualist community. Could you tell our readers why you went to Arthur Findlay College and Lily Dale? What makes each one special? Where’s Lily Dale located?
I’ll start with my teachers and how I ended up in England and Lily Dale because that’s the natural progression of it. My main teacher for several years, twice a week, was Janet Nohavec out of Pompton Lakes, New Jersey.
I know her. She’s fabulous.
There’s nobody in the United States on the same level as her when it comes to platform-style mediumship. She’s the standard bearer for evidential mediumship in the United States. I’ve been studying with her for several years, week in and week out. The integrity is there. You have to work from a place of integrity. It’s all about providing evidence and not messages without evidence.
There are two different main styles and mediumship in general. There’s the American style, which is heavy on message and less on the evidence. The British style is heavy on evidence and not always heavy on message. What I think of as the right way to do it is to go cafeteria style, learn from as many teachers as you can, take what makes sense, leave what doesn’t, and don’t stay with one teacher too long because you tend to become a clone.
I’ve heard many mediums sound like their teachers, give the same evidence, and even sometimes have a little hitch in their speech pattern. They even do that in it. That’s how you know they’re a clone. They have not developed their own version of mediumship. It’s sad because they have the ability. They’re not trusting the spirit world enough.
Everybody’s afraid of looking like a fool or falling on your face. A comedian has told that joke 1,000 times. A singer has sung that song 100 times. An actor learns their line. They know their part and play the character. When a medium opens up, you have no idea what’s going to come out of your mouth. You are flying by the seat of your pants. You have no clue. You have to trust that it’s going to be there. They’ve never let me down yet. It’s always there.
Compassionate Medium: A comedian has told that joke a thousand times. A singer has sung that song a hundred times. But when a medium opens up, they have no idea what’s going to come out of their mouth.
Tell us about Arthur Findlay College, because you hear a lot about that in England. Our readers would love to learn what is this Lily Dale.
If you’ve ever read any of the Harry Potter books, the author JK Rowlings used to take the train trip. It would go through Stansted Mountfitchet, which is where Arthur Findlay College is. She based Hogwarts in the Harry Potter series on Arthur Findlay College, except it is all about wizards. It is about mediums. It’s an odd place. It’s been there since 1964. It was bequeathed by Arthur Findlay, who was an early spiritualist in England. He was connected to Arthur Conan Doyle in that era of spirituality.
It’s a unique building, and they’ve grown on it. It’s a beautiful old English estate. It’s a gorgeous place to stay. Bizarre things happen in that building. They still have a lot of physical things happening there because the energy is completely different. You feel it when you’re in there. I have seen things floating around. There’s stuff that you can’t explain. The teachers that teach you have been some of the best that have ever been in this field. As they age out and new teachers come in, they’re as good. You’re lucky in that way.
Lily Dale is a spiritualist community that’s been there for many years. It was started by a group called The Free Thinkers. They were the ones who were behind the women’s suffrage movement to get their right to vote. They have photographs in the museum at Lily Dale of Elizabeth Cady Stanton. All the different suffragettes who would come to speak there. If they were to speak in public, say in Rochester, they would get arrested.
They were not allowed to meet in public and hold talks in front of groups. Lily Dale is a spiritualist religion. It’s considered religious property. You can talk there without getting arrested. You can hold a group there and speak in front of crowds. You’re not going to be arrested. That’s how it came to be, and it has grown over time.
Our feminist readers will be interested in that.
The place where the suffragette movement started is about two hours away. This was a perfect place for them to get to that was close enough. If you go to LilyDaleAssembly.org, you’ll find everything you need to know about the place. It’s about an hour South of Buffalo and about 45 minutes North of Erie, Pennsylvania. It’s right on Lake Erie. It sits on Cassadaga Lake, which is a twenty-minute ride from Lake Chautauqua, which is famous in that part of the country.
It’s an upscale lakefront place for the summer. It’s a beautiful little community. There are approximately 50 mediums that are registered. They have all different degrees of abilities, skills, and styles. You may have spirit artists. They have a handful of spirit artists there who will draw loved ones and bring through messages from them.
What’s not allowed in Lily Dale are things like tarot cards and things about the psychic. This is more about mediumship. It’s a beautiful place. It’s worth a 3 or 4-day trip or a weekend. It’s worth the drive. If you’re looking for a place to go or you’re going to be in that part of the country, It’s an interesting place. There are a lot of workshops there. I’m teaching two. One is on a grief weekend. I’ll be doing an afternoon workshop on that. Another one will be a mediumship intensive to teach the style I work on. I work under a different unique style than most mediums. I develop that on my own by going to the cafe.
What is your style called?
I don’t call it anything.
It’s the date style.
I was watching a Netflix show, The Kominsky Method. I thought it should be The Samoyedny Method. I give it a name like that. I’ve changed the dynamic of how most mediums work. If you watch Fledgling Mediums, they said there like this, “Please give me something.” They’re waiting for the information to come in. I’ve taken that element out of it. I teach people how to keep speaking so they don’t drop their link and they’re able to stay connected to spirit longer. That’s when you start to get better stuff and how to mine it for more instead of taking that first initial piece and jumping to another piece. You’re always looking for that wow factor.
When you take that out of it, you find that the first piece they gave you was only an introduction. The story they wanted to talk about was behind it. The people in a reading shut it down by not knowing what to do with it. It’s a triangulation of energy. You have a sitter, reader, and spirit communicator. Think of a triangle. If any one of those three parts is not working for the highest good, the reading is going to be less.
I try to teach people how to not do that and how to work for the highest good with the idea you’re providing an avenue for communication. It’s not a conversation. We mislead you. Your mediums mislead the public because we have to say things in a certain way, leading you to believe it’s a conversation, but it’s not. It’s a form of communication.
They’re telling me. He’s talking about. She’s speaking of. They’re mentioning. They’re not doing any of that. They don’t have a voice box. They cannot do that. They’re imprinting a thought from their mind to my mind. I have to use my voice box to create words that my sitter can understand of what the story is they’re trying to bring back or the connection of what they’re trying to bring through.
In a way, it’s a refined form of translating.
What I’ve told people over the years is to imagine you’re creating a language that only you and the spirit world can understand. No one else will understand it. It’s that personal and individualistic unless you turn into a clone of another teacher, and even with people I mentor. I mentor maybe 4 to 6 people a year. I don’t charge them for it.
If I spot somebody who’s a natural medium, I’ll latch onto them, grab them, work with them for a while, and make them a better medium. They can move on and find the next teacher who will find the next teacher and keep them going. They became more engaged in it with the idea. There are times I felt like I worked for the HR department for the spirit world. I feel like I’m grabbing out to people when I spot them that has some real ability versus the ones who are doing it for attention-seeking behavior or, “Look at me. Look at what I can do. You can’t.” There’s a lot of that out there.
It is sad because they should be providing a service that people are often desperate for. They make it all about them.
If you understand it this way, the human in the physical world is making a phone call. The person in the spirit world is answering the phone call. If the medium is doing its job, there is nothing more than the old-fashioned phone booth. They get out of the way and give what’s coming through. They don’t add it. You give what you get. You get the best readings that way.
The human in the physical world is making a phone call. The person in the spirit world is answering the phone call. If the medium is doing their job right, they're nothing more than an old-fashioned phone booth. Click To Tweet
As a natural born medium, when you worked with all these people, you took a little bit of each of their styles or how they communicated with people. You took popery. There were tips for better ways to interpret information because you already could do that.
I had never sat and watched another medium work when I didn’t have paper and pen in my hand, taking notes for certain phrasings they may say better than I say. That’s a good transition to this piece of information. I’m always looking to improve. I have a good several years in as a full-time working medium. I’m smart enough that I’m only about 55% of my development at this point. I’m looking forward to what I will be like several years from now. I can’t wait to see where this goes, what it’s going to be like, and who’s going to be the next group.
There’s a wonderful teacher. It’s one of the teachers I had in England, Mavis Pittilla. I sat in a lecture of hers. She was talking like, “Don’t be concerned with who’s recommending you here. Be concerned with who’s recommending you in that world. If you find that you get a lot of the same type of readings over and over, that means you’re being passed around in the spirit world.”
Most mediums from conversations I’ve had with them do a couple of dozen readings a year connected to children that have died. They talk about these readings in how they hurt them. It beat them up. They cried. I did under 300 of those readings. That’s normal for me. I don’t get in the way of what the kids are trying to bring through. I know how to bring healing into the reading between a child and a parent because that’s my role. It is to take it to that level and not provide evidence.
Some of the better-known mediums are boring to listen to. They were like, “They’re showing me pasta. I don’t know why they’re showing me pasta, but they’re showing me a bowl of pasta. Did they like pasta?” I can’t stand to listen to them because they’re boring. These are people who have died, but they’re still people. Their personalities are not like, “They’re showing me pasta.”
That’s not the way people communicate with each other. They have conversations. They talked about things that were meaningful. They talked about things that meant to each other. They talk about the stories from when they were a kid from when you were a kid. They bring up things that are significant to their memory bank, not to your memory bank.
When they come into that thing where they’re rolling off one piece of evidence after another, and there’s no healing attached to it, it’s a flat affect reading. It’s like, “They’re wonderful because they told me this.” It has that so-what factor. Did it help you? Did it provide any avenues for healing for you and your family? If it doesn’t do that, why bother?
It’s a waste of money. It sounds like they’re not coming from a heart connection. It’s almost like a test. They have to pass the test, get the evidence across, and that’s it. They don’t understand that they’re dealing with hurting people.
This will make me sound a little critical, but it is part of what I’m trying to get across. There are many, especially the ones that are running workshops like crazy all over the country, and they have podcasts, books, and twenty different things going on.” I always look at it, and I go, “Are you good at any one thing? You seem to be so spread out. Can you do one thing well?” They’re always pushing and building their brand. I don’t know where the healing is. I’m not sure. I am content to make a small living doing something I love. That’s living a life of service to others. That’s enough.
You’re living your sole purpose. How many people can say they do that?
I feel blessed to have the opportunity sometimes to meet some of the people I get to meet, not just here in the physical, but also in the spirit world. We’re always interested in unique stories or things. You mentioned before about things coming through in other languages. I’ve had that happen a handful of times. It’s unique and odd.
Early on, I used to get a lot of downloads in showers. I don’t know if there was something about the water hitting you in a certain way, and your head is back in a way. I would get buckets of information dumped into my head. I was taking a shower one morning, and I only had one reading scheduled later that morning. I heard this young man say to me, “My name is Nick.” He showed me the New York State Thruway. He showed me around Exit 14 on the southbound side. He was like, “It was rainy and misty. It was the middle of the night. This is where I died. I felt the idea of two impacts. Write this down.” I’m watching my hair. I’m like, “I can’t write it down.”
Nick, can’t you tell it in the shower?
I memorized what he said. I wrote it down on a piece of paper. I stuck it in my pants later. When I went to do the reading, I met with the guy and said, “This is your son. His name is Nick. He was 26 when he passed. He’s shown me that it was two impacts. He’s on the New York State Thruway. He’s by Exit 14, the southbound side. He said to me, “You’re right and wrong.” He says, “It’s not my son, Nick. It’s my nephew Nick. I understand how you would get confused because we lived in a three-family house. All our doors were always open. We all raised each other’s kids.” That’s the way he felt to me.
I went through the whole reading. He wasn’t emotional. I was a little surprised because it was fresh. The kid was only gone a few months at that point. Toward the end, he started to get a little emotional. In the end, I said, “Does this mean anything to you?” I took the paper out and handed it to him. What I had written down sounded something like, “Jam shume e lumtur.” I was like, “I don’t know what that means. It sounded weird when I heard it.”
He is reading it and mouthing it over and over. He goes, “You don’t spell it right.” I’m laughing to myself because I don’t know what it is, never mind spelling it right. He goes, “Do you speak Albanian?” I said, “No. What does that mean?” He says, “It means I am happy.” With that, he started to cry. He is emotional.
From that one reading with that man, I got 40 to 50 readings with Albanians in that county nonstop for the next few months. Interestingly, with the parents of the boy who died, when I showed up, they asked me to come to their home to do a reading for them in hopes of connecting with their son. They wouldn’t let me pass the end of their driveway.
I had to do the reading sitting on a chair in their driveway. They wouldn’t let me in their house. They were afraid I was going to open a portal. I did the reading anyway, even though it was odd to sit outside like that in somebody’s driveway doing a reading. Their son came through, and it was good for them. I still hear from the mother once in a while. She’ll reach out and ask for a reading.
I did one with a woman. In the reading, I kept getting it screwed up. I kept hearing something that sounded like, “Van jou houd ik.” I couldn’t figure out what it was. It was my sitter’s mother. My sitter was eight years old when her mother died. I said, “Your mother’s telling me I got it backward. I got it all scrambled up. Write this down. It’s going to sound something like this.”
I had a couple more readings after her. I was in their home doing 5 or 6 readings that night. When I came down at the end, she had googled it. What it turned out was it was Dutch, which was her mother’s native language. It meant I love you in Dutch. Here is this woman, many years later, having her mother tell her I love you. That meant the world to her, having that come through in that way. That’s what I’m saying. If you become one of those trained mediums who only works off of a formula or menu board, you’re not going to get that stuff. That’s the stuff that’s life transformative.
Can you tell our readers, Jake, what evidential mediumship is, how it works, and how you get these messages? People need to know that our lives and the bonds of love are everlasting. Evidential mediumship provides this information. How does it appear to you? How do you get it? How do you hear it?
I’m going to back out of your question a little bit. The nature of your question is limiting to mediumship. I never say that I work there clairvoyance, clairsentience, clairaugustine, and claircognizant. There are many different ways. I do not want to limit how they can work. I’m open to working with every style possible, and any mode of information can come through. I’m open to that.
When I’m working and I’m open up, I will allow them to work any way they want to. They often with me do a thing called light overshadow it, where they come close enough to me that they’ll use my central nervous system, and I will feel what the body went through when they were in their dying process. I will know they have a heart attack because they’ll give me twinges in my heart. I will sometimes feel like I’m missing a finger because I feel like it’s not there. I found out that the finger had been cut off.
A lot of mediums are afraid to do that. I’m not. They take it away immediately. I’ve never held onto a symptom, but I’ll let them show it to me. It’s evidential because if I say to you, “This is your mother. I know she died of congestive heart failure because my chest is full of fluid. I can’t cough it out,” you understand that because that’s how your mother died. It means something to you rather than saying, “She died in the hospital.”
It is very generic.
Seventy percent of all Americans are going to die in a hospital. We know that statistically. That’s the way it works. That’s not evidence. This is more of the American style. I have a woman on the mother’s side of the house who is showing me that you were quite a handful when you were a kid. Who is that, your grandma? Yes. That’s your grandma. Tell me your grandmother’s name. Tell me what she died from. Tell me what her husband did for a living. Did she work? Tell me stuff that’s real to her. Did she have brothers and sisters? Aren’t they with her there? Who came and got her when she died?
We don’t die alone ever. There has never been a human being who has died alone. Somebody in the spirit world, usually a group of people, come and take us. That’s how we leave this world. You cannot get into that world on your own unless they come and take you. You have to know that it could be weeks, days, or a few hours before you leave.
There’s a study being done now. I’ve known this for several years. It’s interesting that somebody is doing a study on it based on hospice nurses and hospice workers. The spirit almost always leaves its body going to the left. That’s when you’ll see the heads turn. The eyes open in that direction. The left hand will raise as if they’re taking somebody’s hand. They’re studying it to prove that. They’ve been showing me that for years, that that’s how they left. They were in that corner of the room, watching their bodies shut down. They turned ahead. There were their mother and father. They leave with them.
They always leave connected to other people. You come into this world connected to somebody. There’s always a connection between the two worlds. You’re a spirit entering the physical body of your mother. When you leave this world, you’re a spirit, and a physical body will leave that physical body to connect with those spirits to go home. We lived there. This is a visit. We were there before we were here. We’ll be there after here. We will know the people we know. We will interact with them. It’s a continuity thing. Energy can never be destroyed. It can be altered or changed, but it can never be destroyed. The idea is you always will exist in one form or another.
Compassionate Medium: There’s always a connection between the two worlds. You’re a spirit entering a physical body. When you leave this world, you’re a spirit leaving that physical body to go home.
This is a mistake on the human level. We try to humanize that, which is otherworldly. I hear a lot of young mediums now doing this. A lot of them are learning from one certain teacher who’s teaching this thing. It’s 100%. wrong thing to put out to the public. It’s getting out there more. It’s becoming more pervasive.
If I have a son who dies in this world, you have a daughter who died in this world, and now, they’re in the spirit. They’re together. They’re a couple over there. There was even one woman who claimed she went to the wedding of her child in spirit. She was marrying somebody from Australia in spirit. It’s not real. There are clairvoyance, clairsentience, clairaugustine, clairaudience. There are all these different clairs. There is one becoming far more dominant. We have to be careful of it. It’s called clairdelusional.
My husband died next to me in a car accident. He was gone. Even though that happened, he was not lying in a bed for a long period of time. He is slowly dying. His parents would’ve shown up for him to take him over.
Let me explain to you this way. You’re assuming, based on the human version of time, that it could be like that. There is no time there. Time doesn’t exist the way we understand it. When your husband dies, and I am sorry that you lost your husband in a tragic way like that, it could be 30 years until the next time you see him. That’s your experience. His experience is, “I saw you a second ago. I’ll see you in a moment.” There’s no time for him to wait. He’s not aching for you the way you’re aching for him.
How do you grieve somebody you’re going to see in a second? How do you miss somebody that you left a second ago? You don’t even have time to miss them. This is one thing that’s beautiful about the spirit world. They’re loving and kind. When they know we’re coming home, they always remove the spirit out of the body, even if it’s a split second or in an accident.
She doesn’t feel the immediate pain. You’re already out.
No, we associate the dying process with death. They are two different things. Dying is a process. Death is an event. An event can be in a split second. We put the two of them together. It’s like saying your brain and your mind are the same thing. They’re separate and different. One has value more than the other. It’s always like that. It’s the same thing in death. You will experience it, and it will be quite beautiful.
If you go back to religion, the Bible talks about the rapture, the end of days when we all rise up. We have that as an individual. We will all rise as an individual. Your spirit will leave your body. You rise and move away. What they’ve shown me is that any sensation you’ve experienced in this world, take that feeling and multiply it by 100,000 times. That’s what it will feel like when you die. It is the most beautiful experience you’ve ever had. You will feel that far more intense.
Any sensation you've experienced in this world, take that feeling and multiply it by a hundred thousand times. That's what it will feel like when you die. Click To Tweet
I’m of the belief, based on what’s been shown to me repeatedly, thousands of times at this point, that they live in a state of grace. We can’t quite wrap our heads around that. If you take that feeling of when you fell in love and were useless to this world because you were in love, you’re like a dish rag. If you take that same feeling and multiply it by 100,000 times, that’s what they live in all the time. That’s the feeling of that place in the afterlife. We have oxygen. That’s what we understand. Our atmosphere. The closest thing they have to that air-oxygen atmosphere is that feeling I described. I called it a state of grace because I don’t think we have adequate human words to describe that place.
We’ve bought into that Renaissance period of what the afterlife is. It’s a heaven that’s unattainable beyond the skies. It’s not real. This may annoy some of your readers. There are three things I’ve yet to see in reading ever. I’ve never seen anything political, materialistic, or religious. I’ve yet to see any of those in it. Does it mean they don’t exist in that world? Of course not. They’re there. They may not have the role that we’ve given them here.
The joke I make is that I think Jesus, Buddha, and Muhammad are sitting there, and they’re like, “I was a carpenter. I don’t know what the hell they made a religion out of me.” “I wasn’t supposed to be a religion. I was a teacher. What are they doing?” We’ve humanized something that was never meant to be humanized.
Jake, how do children in spirit, especially young children, provide meaningful evidence to their families to provide proof of survival? Do these young children grow up on the other side or remain the children they were when they died?
I can explain it in multiple ways. If somebody is a newborn or is pre-verbal in this world, they’re more likely to show up with a grandmother, an aunt, or somebody who’s holding them to show me that they have a child with them. Sometimes that’s enough for the parent to hear. My grandmother’s holding my baby. My aunt, who is my second mom, has my child. It’s mind-to-mind communication. They don’t need words.
I had one with a little boy who showed me a specific type of stuffed animal. That was the stuffed animal they ended up burying him with. I didn’t know this. It meant something to that little boy, but it was not verbal. He didn’t give me the name of it because he couldn’t. He wasn’t capable, but he showed it to me, and I was able to describe it to the father. It meant everything to him.
As far as them growing up on the other side, I had somebody close to me who died at the age of 25. He chose to leave this world. He was somewhere on the Asperger’s scale. He was not good with social relationships and struggled in that aspect of his life. His name was Jerry. At one point, he showed me a scene where he and thousands of other spirits were sitting on this hillside, watching the night sky. It was like they were watching meteor showers and shooting stars. It was quite beautiful.
I was like, “What are you doing? I was having a conversation.” He said, “This is something I like to do.” I was like, “Okay.” He leaned back. When he leaned back, I saw there was a girl sitting next to him. I was like, “Is that your girlfriend?” He says, “Not in the way that you think.” I said, “What’s the purpose of it? How do I understand it?” He goes, “She’s helping me.” I said, “I understood that.”
I watched the scene with him for a little bit. He leaned back again. She turned towards me. I started to speak with her. I said, “What’s your name? Where did you live when you were here? How did you die?” I don’t remember her name. I lost it. I had it on an old computer. I wrote it up, but that computer crashed, and I lost it. She showed me that she died of stomach cancer. She was from Kalamazoo, Michigan. She appeared to be about his age, 24 or 25.
It was interesting interacting with somebody different than him in that scene. It was nice to have two at one time like that. When it was all over, it got the best of me. I took her name. I took Kalamazoo, Michigan. I typed it into the computer. I popped an obituary for her. It was her name. It didn’t say stomach cancer. It said after a long battle with cancer. She was a resident of Kalamazoo, Michigan.
Jerry died in 2009. In her obituary, she died in 1964. Here, she presented herself as a peer to him, a contemporary. She was only nine years younger than me. She was more than middle age. What he meant by, “She’s helping me,” is she was helping him by being a little bit of a girlfriend to him. He can’t understand how to act in those relationships.
That state of grace I described to you before is a place where it’s unconditional love to the degree that we can’t wrap our heads around it. Our brains are not evolved enough to understand it. We can’t comprehend it. You don’t come here to learn unconditional love because that’s the state you live in. We come here to learn all the other types of relationships, romantic relationships, familial relationships, siblings, parental love, animal, nature, music, art, and all of the other different types of love that we experience in this world. That’s why we’re here. If you’re honest with yourself, those are the things that knock you to your knees in this world and those relationships to love. That’s the stuff why it’s hard to be here. You don’t come here to learn unconditional love. You already have that.
Compassionate Medium: You don’t come here to learn unconditional love. You already have that.
You learn not only about how to get along with people and relationships and how to work things through but if you are doing your work, you will learn how to avoid relationships that are toxic to you out of self-love. Would you agree?
We’ve all been in toxic relationships. We’ve all experienced that. It’s a necessary thing. If that’s one of the lessons, you have to go through it. You have to get knocked down a little bit in this world to get back up. Otherwise, why be here? You still consider it to be a privilege to come into this world for a spirit. There are far more spirits than there are human bodies on this planet. That’s why I believe that our population keeps growing. Spirits want this opportunity. They need a chance to come here. When you come through here and go through the earthly thing, you’re much further down the line when you go back home.
This experience helps you evolve more.
This is an art school. This is a tough place. You’ve known a few people in this world who’ve had an easy life, who have not been traumatized or had some tragic events happen in their life. I can’t think of one off the top of my hand who’s had it that easy. We don’t know why, but it is.
Some of the experiences you say, why would they sign up for that? Some of the experiences are awful.
You are adding to the idea of predestination, and you know that you’ve signed a soul contract. Not everybody buys the soul contract theory there. It’s like Wordsworth, the writer. He called it the sleeping and the awakening. We have it backward. When we are born, we go to sleep. We don’t remember where we came from and what we agreed to. When we die, we are re-awaken to that which we know where we came from. We think it’s the other way. If you die, RIP, Rest In Peace. The biggest joke in the spirit world is, “Where’s that rest in peace? I’m active, busy, and constant. I’m looking for the door. Where do I go on this vacation you are talking about?” That seems to be a humanizing version of death.
That sounds great to me. It’s perfect for me. I’ll be busy over there. I even put in a request for a party when I get there.
What they’ve shown me is that we create and manifest. Sometimes they’ll come back and say to their loved one, “I want them to learn how to do this. We create and manifest that which we see in the moment of our death.” They’re always saying, “Pick a good one. Pick something pretty if that’s a good one.”
If you’re like Disney and need the garden with the animals running around your feet and the bluebirds falling around your head, you got that. If you need Jesus on the golden throne and it’s saying Peter at the pearl gates, that’s what you’re going to see. Lean into it. It’s a mist. You’re going to go right through it, and you’re going to be where everybody else is. There’s one place after here. We don’t know what’s after that. Even the best mediums can only lift the veil slightly and see a hint of what is right after this.
Our loved ones are all around us. It’s not that they’re going to some heavenly place. It’s a different perception.
We have five senses that we understand. We’re developing on the whole. Humanity is developing a sixth sense. We’re in the process of that. It may take thousands of years for that to happen. I believe our loved ones may be outside of our senses 7, 8, 9. When you look out of the corner of your eye and you see something black go past your doorway in your bedroom, that can be them. That’s how close they can be. We’ve all experienced that. There may have been a time when we only had four senses, and it took 50,000 years for us to develop that fifth sense. We don’t know how that works.
In the way people are evolving, someone like you who has this ability, you’re already at the forefront of that.
I would assume you’re part of this group. There are people who are called The Sensitives. I’m a part of that group. Not only are they here to learn their own lessons and be a part of other people’s lessons, but they’re also meant to move all of humanity forward a little bit. It’s a little nudge over good over evil and light over dark. They’re the ones who have that double-edged sword thing going on. They feel things differently.
If you’re sensitive and the average person has 9 million nerve endings in its body. A sensitive may have 10 million nerve endings. That’s why they love deeper. They get hurt deeper. It takes them forever to get over something. We don’t heal that easily. It’s a hard process because you take things a little harder. You have to be careful of being victimized or all the different archetypes you can fall into. It’s significant to keep moving.
That was part of the lesson. To learn how to discern and choose my attitude and certain things that are happening were lessons to be learned. It is not the end of the world. That’s all part of evolving in a different way.
When your husband passed, especially in the way that he left, or if a child passes, and it doesn’t matter how, but the fact that they left because it’s out of order for us, we always go with the theory that everybody is around you for that first month or two. You’ll notice a lot of people disappear out of your life. You lose friends and relatives. They can’t touch your pain because your pain body is too hard and dense. They don’t know what to say to you. They don’t know the right words. They’re afraid of hurting your feelings.
If you remember what Crisco is, the shortening, that’s your pain body. It is dense. Picture your husband as this little white fluffy feather and he is sitting on top of Crisco. He can’t get through it because it’s dense. What happens with Crisco if you heat it up from underneath? It turns to a liquid gradually. Eventually, that feather can flow through the liquid.
The way we heat our pain body or create that ability is through self-love and self-care. Other people are pouring love on you. People treat you kinder and all these different things they can do. All of a sudden, your pain body dissipates enough. That feather can flow through. That’s why sometimes parents will say, “I don’t get any signs. I don’t feel him around me. I don’t know when she’ll be here. What can I do differently?” You can’t. You have to wait. You have to take care of yourself. You have to allow others to take care of you.
Compassionate Medium: You have to allow the pain. You have to take care of yourself. You have to allow others to take care of you.
The greatest gift we can give somebody, especially somebody who’s lost a child, is to say their name, tell their stories, come up to the mom, and say, “I loved that time in that basketball game when he tripped. The ball went up in the air, and it went through the basket. That was funny.” The mother is going to eat that up. You made her day. You’re sharing a piece of her son’s life. That’s what they live for.
Even somebody like yourself, and this happens a lot with parents from conversations I have had with them, you could be online in Walmart or the supermarket and have everything out on the little conveyor belt, and somebody will have a conversation beside you about an accident that happened. They start talking about the brutality of it. You can’t do it at that moment. You walk out of the store. You leave the stuff there with the cashier because you can’t even do it. You have to shop later. That happens. Those are triggers. For people with children, they’ll watch a movie, and the scene will be the exact scene of their child’s death. They can’t do it. They have to walk out of the theater or a TV show.
I can understand that.
With Helping Parents Heal, there are certain movies that I’ll see. I shoot them a message about whether or not their membership should avoid this or see it. When the movie Shaq came out, or Collateral Damage with Will Smith, all of these movies need to be seen so that these parents don’t walk in and get hurt again. You got to keep them from that. It’s hard.
Let me ask you something about what you do. Do you ever get skeptics who challenge you, Jake?
All the time. I’m the most honest medium. Only once in the last several years have I had to stop reading because the sitter was not being appropriate or they were being difficult. Usually, it’s a skeptic or the one I’m thinking of now, and it happened to have been a mom. I did not have a good connection with her daughter. I knew she had a daughter in spirit. I gave her daughter’s name, but I didn’t have a clear connection. I only had a 20% connection. It wasn’t enough. I couldn’t get any information that was valuable. I could give generic stuff, but it’s not going to be me.
I said to her, “I don’t have your daughter in a way I like. I need you to talk about your daughter. That will help her to come closer. She’ll decide that she hears your voice. She’s going to tune in. She’s going to get a little close to me.” She was like, “I’m not doing that. That’s your job.” I said, “You’re not hearing me. I’m telling you. I don’t have your daughter. I feel her near me, but I don’t have her in a way that I can have her to get you a better reading. Talk about the way she dies.” She was like, “That’s your job. You’re supposed to do that.”
After she did it a few times, I said, “I’m going to stop. I’m sorry. I’m going to hit the refund button on PayPal and send you back your money immediately. I can’t work this way. I don’t have her. I don’t want to give you a less-than-credible mediumship reading. I’m not the right reader for you. There are a couple of people I would recommend. If you try them, maybe you’ll have better luck.”
She badmouthed me for a week. I’m not on any of the Helping Parents Heal sites because I don’t want to know any information about the parents or their kids. If they ever add me to a group, I always remove myself immediately. She badmouthed me there. People defended me and said, “What happened?” They said, “You were blocking the reading. He was trying to tell you he didn’t have it.”
A lot of times, if they’re not strong enough on their end or the connection is not good, or in this case, the mother’s own skepticism was blocking the daughter from coming close enough to me. Eventually, she came to understand that she blew it. She had a chance. All she had to do was start to tell stories about her daughter. Her daughter would’ve tuned into her voice, gotten more comfortable, and slid right into the reading.
They’re not always the first person to come through. Sometimes your mom or a cousin will come through. Somebody else will come through first, and they’ll bring them with them. In this case, she wanted nothing to do with anybody else except her daughter. She tried to control the reading. One thing I know about the spirit world is they will never let a human control that process ever.
Perhaps this kid was a little shy. Her lifetime and personality transferred over. She was still a little shy. She needed to open up and encouragement to come through.
If her mother was like that with me, I would imagine her mother was like that with her daughter.
She was intimidated still.
She might have been a little difficult. When I was done and sent her back her money, I said a little prayer that I hoped her daughter would find a way to get to her in a way that her mother could do it because I felt bad. It bothered me for days. That’s the sensitivity part again. It bothered me more than it may have bothered her. I didn’t care that she was going to badmouth me. That’s going to come into the territory. You can’t please everybody. When you do this, you lose people in your life. I have friends I’ve lost. I have relatives who have cut me out.
Is it because they think you’re crazy?
Partly that, and also it goes against the religions. It’s not what they believe. It’s not their belief system. The main one, and this is true, is they know you in a certain way, and you’ve grown into something different. You’ve reinvented yourself, and they can’t accept the reinvention of you. They still have you locked into that other place.
They can’t accept you for who you are.
Not now. They can accept you for who you used to be.
I’ve experienced that also.
I only do one thing. I only do mediumship. I don’t do anything else. I don’t claim to be a healer. All of those things are there. I can do all that stuff, but I don’t put that out there. If you look at my business card, it says I do one thing, and that’s because I want to do laser rather than buckshot. The ones with laser tend to get better readings. When somebody has Reiki on their card, and they’re also doing Qigong, and they list twenty different things, I don’t trust them because I don’t know if they’ve spent any time working hard at one thing. I’m a little reluctant to work with them at that point.
Let me ask you, Jake. In the book, Gatekeeper of the Invisible Door, you share stories of parents and their children who have passed from the physical world into the spirit. Can you please tell us about the incredible bond of love and share your story related to a little girl named Olivia?
I was finished for the day and putting my clothes sign out outside of my reading room. This couple walked past me. The woman stopped. She goes, “Can you give us a reading?” I said, “I was closing up.” I had already done six readings that day, and I was closing up. “I only do individual readings unless it’s for a couple who has a child in spirit. That’s the only time I do more than one person at a time.” She looked at him and said, “That fits us.” I knew at that moment, and I said, “Let’s do it.”
I brought them inside. Immediately, there was a daughter. She showed me this accident. I knew that she was ejected from the car. It took a while for them to find her. When they found her, she didn’t have a mark on her, but she was gone. All of that turned out to be true. I said, “Your daughter is giving me a name like Lindsay. Something like that.” She says, “My daughter’s name is Olivia.” I said, “That’s as close as I can get. I’ve never met Olivia. I’ve known Olivia, but never Olivia.” It was very cute. I could see the kid’s face. I don’t always see their faces, but in this case, I did see the kid’s face. She was a little cutie pie with dark hair. She was about 8 or 9 years old when she passed.
The reading went well. What impacted me was they didn’t let go of each other through the whole reading. They were holding each other tight. The father and mother were crying. It was like they were in tandem with each other. I found out afterward that they had been divorced. They were not even married anymore, yet they were here supporting this thing.
When the reading was over, we were talking. They told me that they had been to a couple of mediums. One was nice and tried. She got some lovely stuff, but nothing evidential about their daughter. She was a sweet lady. They had come from another sitting where the medium had told them. I’m sure the medium wouldn’t say it this way because I know the person, and she would never phrase it this way, but their interpretation of it was, “You have a lot of nerve trying to connect to your daughter. She’s in the hospital in the spirit world. She will not be available to you for at least 6 months or 1 year.”
When I heard that, my head exploded because how can you deny access to a parent of their child? When you die, they are immediately available. A second later, they can come through on a reading. That’s how quickly it happens. They’re never not available to us. I’ve had them come through hours after they died, and they’re right there. It’s evidential, and they give you information.
They had been hit by a drunk driver at 103 miles an hour. The child was in the backseat of this SUV. Because of the impact, she was thrown out of the back window, flying out of the car that way. They found her 40 feet away. She was not marked up. It wasn’t a scratch on her, but she was gone. She had left. She said, “Twenty minutes before the accident, Olivia said, ‘Mommy, there’s an angel in the car.’ I thought that was beautiful, and it hit me in a different way.” I said, “You got to come with me.”
I took them outside. I took them to my car. I opened up the trunk of my car. The night before, the person that I rented my reading room from had given me a two-foot angel statue. I said, “This is for you. This is not for me. This is an angel in the car.” I gave them the statue because it belonged to them. It didn’t belong to me. It meant the world to them. They’ve been connected to me.
In natural law, when there’s a negative, there’s always a positive. That woman who was in her early 40s had a brand new baby girl. She’s given it a name similar to Olivia. Aviana is the name of the new baby. I’ve seen pictures on Facebook now of this new baby. She’s happy. Olivia is still a significant part of her life. There are still a lot of pictures of her there. They have a new thing. It’s a different father. The other father had remarried and had a different family. They’re both getting on with their lives in a way.
Is it true that sometimes, like Olivia, she could come through as a soul into her sister’s body?
Impossible.
We hear that sometimes.
One spirit hijacking another body is not done. That’s us wanting to romanticize something. This new baby is your grandfather’s spirit. Come into him. That grandfather’s spirit still exists. He’s not of this world anymore. He’s moved on to the next thing.
Since Olivia was on the other side, might she have?
The only connection is through the parents. They may have been connected over there beforehand. Who knows? They’re two separate spirits.
There was a 9/11 reading you like to share with our readers.
Another medium had a cousin who lost her husband. I didn’t know this upfront. She says, “I have somebody I need for you to read.” I said, “Okay.” I made an appointment. She came to my office at that time. I lived outside New York City normally. I had an office in a town over from my where I live. I went through the reading with her. I picked up her husband easily. I knew that he was a police officer. He wore a uniform like that. All of a sudden, I saw the World Trade Centers and the whole thing. I connected him to her. He died on 9/11.
Her affect was flat throughout the whole reading. I spent a good hour and a half with this woman. There are no emotions or reactions. It’s several years after. All this stuff is fine. I said to her, at a certain point, “I know this expression. I don’t know why your husband is telling this to me, but I’m going to say it anyway. I give everything I get. I never edit anything. Your husband wants me to say to you that he’s like a pig and s***.” That’s when she lost it.
He was off duty. He had gotten off his shift. He was getting ready to head home. He lived about an hour North of Manhattan. They got the calls and all hands on deck. He was an EMS guy. He hopped in his truck and was shooting down towards the World Trade Center. This is the day of the flip phones, if you remember the big heavy flip phones.
She was trying to talk him into turning around and come home. She was like, “You have to get out of there. This is not good. You finished your shift. Come home.” As he’s running into the tower, he says, “Are you kidding? I’m like a pig and s***.” That’s the last thing. The phone died at that point. That’s the last thing she heard of him.
What was interesting was I saw the number 23 above him. I couldn’t understand what that was about until I said to her, “What is the number 23?” She said, “When they found his body, and it had come down, what they believed happened was somebody who got out said that they saw her husband attending to somebody who had a heart attack coming down the stairs, and they were on the 23rd floor. He crashed down. He was working on this person. He was in the midst of saving somebody else’s life.” That’s when he died.
He got a special place.
You understand evidential versus seeing the 23. That’s evidential. That other stuff meant nothing to her.
You have many thoughts about grieving. We care about those who are grieving. Jake, would you like to share that with our readers who are coming into the holidays, and some of them are grieving?
The perfect thing to say is about holding space for people. Sometimes it’s about listening. You cannot give somebody a greater gift than being on the other end and listening to them. You have to let them vent and talk about whatever it is that’s bothering them or whatever they need to do. When somebody dies, the person or the people left behind feel guilty for 100 different reasons. None of them are relevant and real, but they feel it anyway because it’s humid.
You cannot give somebody a greater gift than just being on the other end and listening to them. Click To Tweet
You have to let them vent about, “I wish I had talked him out of that day. If only I had called a doctor.” There’s always all of those stories. In the case of your accident, if you guys had left a minute later, you could do all that. You can beat yourself up for years over that stuff. It doesn’t change a thing. It’s still going to be what it is.
If you can be kind to each other, and especially to yourself, that’s a big one. We’re judgmental in this world, and easy to judge other people. It’s not hard for us to do that. If you were to take that element out of your personality when you’re talking to somebody in grief, you’d be surprised what a gift you’re giving them. Talk about their loved ones.
It’s not about saying, “Let me know what I can do for you,” especially when it’s right after. Do things. You say, “I’m free Thursday night. Do you need to get a mani-pedi? Do you want to get out of the house for a little while? I can watch the dog. I can take your kids to Mickey D’s.” Do something for them concrete and continue to do things like that.
Usually, people drop off food because you drop it and you leave. That’s not enough. That’s okay and helpful. The real thing is to give them that conversation. Let them vent, and don’t push it. Know when to leave. They may only be good for half an hour, and that’s it. They have to cry. The way I think of it is your tears in this world are liquid love in that world. That’s appreciated.
When I cry and think about different things that went on, my tears are more watery. They fall down my face.
When you’re crying, imagine if he felt that as love being poured on him over in that world. Why would you deny him that?
This is an interview with you, but I have to say that when they pulled me out of the car after I knew that my husband was gone, an authoritative and loving male voice came into my head and said, “Be loving and kind to everyone,” as they put me on the side of the road. That began my book. If you want to have your life changed with your husband dead next to you, you’re being told, you are not someone who gets messages like this, you didn’t even believe in it, and you’re being told, “Be loving and kind to everyone,” it changed my life. It’s continued to ripple forward and change other lives because I got that message, which is keeping with what you’re saying.
We forget the rippled effect of every interaction we have in this world. That’s what you’re going to come to learn when you die. We’ve made a Hollywood version of it. It’s not accurate, but it’s the closest way to describe it. You have a little bit of a life review when you die. It’s not punitive and does not make you feel bad about what you missed out on it. It’s nothing like that. It’s not that Hollywood thing where you see scenes from your life.
What you’re shown are certain interactions of relationships. You come to understand the closure of that why you were mean to that girl in high school and why this guy broke your heart. All of those things that got you to that day that you leave this world. You understand the lessons that you didn’t get to learn while you were here.
When you go home, and you head back to the spirit world, you’re finished and cooked. You’ve learned what you were meant to learn here. Whatever you didn’t get, don’t worry about it. They’re going to give it to you. You’re going to come down the scene. You’re going to go, “I got it. I should have never done that. I can’t believe I broke his heart that way.”
We continue to learn when we’re on the other side, which is interesting.
The higher side and the essence of who you are is what survives. The lower side of you is usually earthbound things, jealousy, rage, anger, bigotry, hostility, and racism. All of those things are earthbound. They stay here. They don’t go with us. If your dad was like an Archie Bunker type in this world, he’s not going to be like an Archie Bunker type in that world. He’s going to be with people who are all diverse and different people and understand they’re no different. We’re all the same.
If he comes through with evidence, he may come back as his Archie Bunker self because he recognizes him.
You’ll show me that I can say that this is your dad. I would say to you, “Your dad would be okay if you brought Meathead home, but don’t even think about bringing Lionel home. Do you understand? My father would’ve freaked out.” That’s the mentality of the Jim Crow-era group that would all be in their ‘90s now. That’s the way they grew up.
Jake, do you have a message about the importance of healing to share with our readers?
Here’s the best way to phrase it, “To live an external life is an internal process. Healing comes from within.” I believe that the human body is capable of healing itself in a lot of ways. We water it down a lot and spread it too thinly too easily. We shouldn’t use it as much as we do when everybody’s writing on Facebook to send healing thoughts, “My family is struggling right now.” That’s not the way to use it. You use it at that moment when it’s necessary to help that one person who’s stuck in that certain place.
To live an external life is an internal process. Healing comes from within. Click To Tweet
We’re at a time of healing in the world. Everything has to come. We wonder why we have certain politicians in power all over the world right now. We’re all struggling with it. For a pot to boil over, you have to take the lid off. This is the pot boiling over. This is the process of us taking the lid off. We’re going to learn from this. This is a learning experience for all of the world.
We’re fine. We’re okay. We’ll get through this. They don’t have as much impact as you think. We’ll clean up their mess when they’re done. It’s not going to be a problem. We don’t have to marry them, their principles, or what their like. They are pointing out what’s wrong with us. We have a chance to fix it. That’s the way we have to look at them and not get caught up in the minutiae of what they’re saying.
I feel like it’s squeezing a huge pimple in a way. All the junk is coming out. It’s giving us a chance to clean it up and heal it.
We are healing by nature. It’s who we are. We are always taking care of each other. If you think about it, you’ve run into hundreds or thousands of people in your life who have been kind and nice to you. That’s what we do for each other. That’s what we’re meant to do. I had somebody say to me who spent a couple of hours with me. I complimented this one girl on her nails in the store. I told this other woman I loved that she had the sweetest little voice. She was a cashier in another store. She goes, “You’re flirting with all of these.” I said, “I’m not flirting. I’m giving them compliments because there could have been ten rotten people already in their day. I want to give them a little something of balance.”
You heard the message I got, “Be loving and kind to everyone.” Jake, you got it too.
That’s what it’s about.
I’m conscious of that.
The quote I have in my first book was, “Love is and always will be the answer.” That’s it. Plain and simple. In the second book, the quote that I use all the time is, “Love of others is the destination, but love of self is the journey.” The quote I use when I sign Gatekeeper of the Invisible Door is, “In the spaces between the pain is where love lives and the healing grows because you have to go through the pain in this world. It doesn’t mean that love can’t live in those spaces in between because that’s how we get through it. That’s how we survive and keep moving on.”
We know that we can move on, or some people don’t, which is one of the reasons why there’s a show like this. It is to let people know that you can and that there are ways that you can heal and help your life. Do you want to keep coming back time and again with the same turkeys that you struggled with the last time? Learn your lessons, and keep going. I’m sure everyone wants to connect with you. How do our readers connect with you? If they’d like to have a private session with you, how does that work?
The easiest way is to shoot me an email. My website is CompassionateMedium.com. My email is Jake@CompassionateMedium.com. My phone number is (914) 227-5398. They can always reach out to me there. The younger people tend to text me for readings. Older people call or email. I can’t speak for other mediums, but phone readings with me are the same as in person. I do over 200 of them every year, and I do them all over the world. I did one not long ago in Norway, Lebanon, France, and the Philippines. I’ve done them all over the world. It doesn’t matter. You could be sitting across me, or you could be sitting around the world. As long as the connection is to spirit first, it will work.
Do you record the sessions for people?
I never do a reading that’s not recorded. I believe you should never get a reading that’s not recorded because you need to hear it more than once. You’re not going to get everything at that moment because we process differently than we think we do. There’s stuff layered in there. I’ll give you an example. I did a reading with a lady back home a couple of years ago. In her reading, I’ve made up this generic name to tell this. It was an ethnic name at the time, and I’ve lost it. I couldn’t remember it anymore.
I said to her, “Do you understand the name Joe Armstrong?” She was like, “Sorry, I’ve never met anybody with that name.” I said, “Remember I said it.” I let it go. Several weeks later, I got an email from her. She was a single lady traveling alone on a business trip in the Midwest. Her rental car breaks down. They send a tow truck. The guy jumps out of the tow truck. On his uniform, it says Joe Armstrong. The spirit world was letting her know, “Heads up, something is going to happen. You’re safe. We got your back. This is who will help you. This is his name, Joe Armstrong.” All I thought was I blew a name. She walked out, saying, “What is he talking about?” Several weeks later, it meant everything.
Talk about evidence that this is real.
The Compassionate Medium: The Most Important Book On Mediums and Mediumship
It hasn’t even happened yet, and they’re trying to take care of you. I’m not blown away. I’m the biggest fan of this. I promise you that I’m sitting there sounding professional with you and looking professional. Inside, I’m doing backflips because I’m like, “Where did that come from? Thank you.” That’s what it’s like on the other end of that.
With Lily Dale, do they get on your website also if they decide they’re going to take a summer weekend and go to Lily Dale, but they’d like to see you there? Do they get on your website and sign up for Lily Dale that way?
You can also get access to my website through Lily Dale’s website. All mediums are listed there. You can always reach me that way. Otherwise, you go through CompassionateMedium.com.
Tell us about your workshops on mediumship and spirituality. Why would people want to go to them? What do they learn? Do you do them in Lily Dale or during the year of the location?
I do them all year round. I teach infrequently. I’m picky about when I teach and where I teach. I’m teaching two classes at Lily Dale. That’s the first time. I’ll be doing two there. I’ve only done one in the past. If I do a mediumship class, it’s intensive. It’s an explanation of the connection, how to sustain the link longer, and how to mine it for better information, using the techniques I work with. I’ve developed over the last several years to learn how to prep for the reading so that you get the best stuff for your sitter.
The idea is to provide the best reading possible for that human sitting with you and with the idea for it to be healing for the person in spirit, not just for your sitter. That’s how mediumship is changing. Mediumship is a living, breathing thing, and it’s in transition now. It’s been sitter-based for the last several years. It’s starting to become a little bit more spirit-based. It means it’s not going to be about your sitter, but it’s also going to be a chance for the person in healing to evolve a little more.
I had a troubled relationship with my own father in this physical experience. I’ve had readings where he has come through and said, “Don’t stop what you’re doing because I’m growing, healing, and learning from you as this goes on.” It is comforting to me.
The fact that he said to you, “Don’t stop,” means, “I’m proud of you. Look at what you’re doing.” The interesting thing they’ll show me is they’re on the other side with a group of friends, and what they’re talking about is you. You think they’re not interested in you anymore, and they’re bragging about you to their friends there. It is the same way they would’ve talked about you here. That’s the way they talk about you there. They’re much kinder.
Jake, with all of this, you’ve got to have a terrific tip for finding joy in life. What is yours?
Get out of your own way. Stop overthinking. We tend to overthink in this world. It’s about getting grounded. The one gift you can give yourself, and you can do it anywhere and anytime, is to learn how to do basic meditation. You don’t have to become a yogi and sit with your feet crossed anywhere. There’s a fabulous one on YouTube called Eternal Om by Robert Slap. It is an automatic meditation.
It doesn’t matter whether you are in the mood for it or not or you’re cooperating. You’re going to meditate if you listen to this, especially if you listen to it with a headset on and on low volume. All it is monks chanting over each other. There was something about the way this was produced that it takes you through the brain waves and the right cycle at the right point that you automatically get into a meditative.
That’s the whole CD.
There is a whole CD.
I have it.
Listen to it.
Do I have to listen to it through headphones?
What I’ve done to help me because my focus has to go in a different way when I go into an altered state is that I use noise-canceling headphones. I’m hyper-focused on it. I don’t know where you’re at as far as time, but one of the things I did years ago was I would sit for hours trying to heighten certain sensitivities. I got to the point where I could look at a tree. It would be 30 or 40 feet away. It would come right up to me and be 2 feet away. I could see every grain in the wood and the bark.
I got to where I would close my eyes and move my head like an antenna. I could pick up a conversation a block and a half away at a bus stop. I could pick up birds singing three blocks away. I worked, but I did that for hours on end to try and make it stronger. When I am open to the spirit, if they’re struggling, I can still pick up a little bit more than most people, only because I’ve put the time into it. It doesn’t mean there’s anything special about me. It’s not about me. It’s about me wanting to be the best I can be for you.
In a way, that is about you. That’s why you’re such a beloved medium and compassionate because you are putting that extra piece into it, which is helpful.
You have to constantly work at this. This is not something you learn, and you do it. Before I ever charged anybody a nickel for reading, I was $30,000 on workshops and classes. If anybody ever knocks, they say, “Why are you charging $150 for a reading?” I’m entitled to eat and pay my mortgage. I have kids. I have a life, and I’ve worked for it.
Gatekeeper of the Invisible Door: True Stories of Children In Spirit
You’ve worked hard to be the best you can be at what you do.
I try to do the best I can every single time. I have a level of integrity that I try to hold onto, and the consistency is there. One of the things that brings people back is that I am fairly consistent compared to a lot of other people.
When I read your book, Gatekeeper of the Invisible Door, your integrity jumped at me. I knew immediately that was a special part of you because not everyone has that. It’s important to make sure that you find people who have integrity. With that, Jake, I have to say that I admire your humility, sincerity, and kindness as you continue to make a profound difference in people’s lives by lightening the load of pain they bear from losing their loved ones. My heartfelt thanks for that all you do to help people heal through your books, your remarkable readings, your inspiring public appearances, your workshops, and so much more, including this wonderful interview.
In the spirit of lightening the load of pain, by learning about healing choices and becoming inspired, here’s a reminder to everyone. Make sure to follow us and like us on social at @IreneSWeinberg on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. Thanks again for joining us, and as I like to say, to be continued, many blessings, and bye for now.
Thank you, Irene. I appreciate the opportunity to meet you. I feel like I’ve made a friend, and I feel blessed to know you. I’ll say right out front, “I love you. You’re awesome.”
Much love to you too, Jake. This is wonderful.
Thank you. You’re welcome.
Guest’s Links:
- Jake Samoyedny’s Website
- Jake Samoyedny’s Books: The Compassionate Medium, A Pathway to Eternity, and Gatekeeper of the Invisible Door.
- Jake Samoyedny’s Email
- Lily Dale’s Website
- Robert’s Slap YouTube Video Eternal Om
- Helping Parents Heal mentioned in this episode
