Can You Coach Someone and Still Talk About Spirits?

One of the questions that professionals, including therapists, have asked me is: how can you coach someone about their life and, at the same time, talk about spirits? How can you prove that spirits exist? How can you prove that when someone dies, something of that person continues to exist somewhere else?

My answer is that I cannot prove that to you, and I don't think I should pretend that I can.

These are questions that require research, discussion and, for many people, personal experience. They are also questions that human beings have been investigating for a very long time. Research into experiences associated with death, the possibility of consciousness continuing after death, near-death experiences, mediumship, unusual experiences reported by children and adults, and other questions surrounding what we call the afterlife exists. There are books, academic papers, medical discussions and decades of disagreement about what those findings actually mean.

That disagreement matters. The existence of research does not automatically prove the existence of spirits, just as the inability to explain every reported experience does not automatically prove that nothing exists beyond physical death.

My position comes from somewhere different because these questions were never purely academic for me. I have had experiences since childhood that I understand spiritually. My own sensitivities have also changed throughout my life. For example, there was a period when my sense of smell was particularly noticeable to me. That sensitivity is much less prominent now, while other senses have become more noticeable. I understand those changes through my own spiritual framework, but I am not asking you to interpret your experiences in exactly the same way.

This is particularly important when we are grieving someone we love. You may find yourself wondering where that person has gone, whether anything of them remains and whether there is any possibility of connection.

Within my own spiritual practice, prayer and meditation are ways in which I approach those questions. I believe people can ask for spiritual guidance and support concerning someone they have lost. However, I would never tell someone that an answer must arrive immediately, that it will arrive exactly as they expect, or that every feeling, dream, coincidence or unusual experience is necessarily communication from a spirit. That is a completely different discussion, and one that deserves considerably more care than a few sentences in a blog post.

What I would rather say to you today is this: do not take my word for it.

Research it.

And I mean genuinely research it. Read people who believe consciousness may continue after physical death. Read researchers investigating near-death experiences and reported mediumistic phenomena. Read neuroscientists and psychologists proposing conventional explanations. Read sceptical researchers as well. Look at methodology. Look at sample sizes. Look at criticism. Look at what has and has not been replicated. Then decide what you think.

The same invitation applies to professionals who disagree with me. You are entitled to believe that there is no life after death and that what I describe spiritually has another explanation. I have no difficulty with that. What I encourage is intellectual curiosity rather than dismissing a subject without examining what has actually been studied.

There is also a difference between reading about something and experimenting carelessly with something you do not understand. If you decide to explore meditation, intuition or other spiritual practices, I believe that should be done respectfully, safely and without abandoning critical thinking. Spiritual exploration should not require you to surrender your judgement.

This is one of the reasons I enjoy bringing spirituality and scientific inquiry into the same conversation. I don't need science to validate every spiritual belief I hold, and I don't need spirituality to replace science. There are places where the two can have a conversation, places where they disagree, and places where we simply do not have an answer yet.

So don't believe something because Marcia wrote it on the TFC spiritual blog. Read. Question. Research. Think about your own experiences. Then come back and talk to me.

I want these conversations to grow within the TFC community, both academically and personally, because questions about consciousness, death, spirituality and what may exist beyond our present physical experience are too important to reduce to either “of course it's real” or “that's nonsense.”

There is much more to discuss.

And we can discuss it together.