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Dear Soul Arcanum:

I find, embarrassingly enough, that I feel closer to the spirits of dead loved ones after having a drink or two! I feel bad about this, but wonder if I should. In your opinion, can moderate use of alcohol increase psychic abilities or enhance spirit communication?

W.

Dear W.:

You are not the first person to experience this, and you should not feel bad about it any more than you should feel bad about getting rid of a headache by taking pain reliever or breaking out in hives when you have an allergic reaction to something. It’s actually a natural side effect of mild intoxication, and your embarrassment and puzzlement is probably more a reflection of your socialization than spiritual truth. A long time ago, Christians got it into their heads that “spirit” was good and “physical” was bad, and we’ve viewed the two as disjointed in the West ever since. In truth, the physical reflects and affects the spiritual, and vice versa. So what you ingest will naturally affect you spiritually, mentally, emotionally, etc.

While there are valid positive reasons to abstain from drugs and alcohol, we would all be wise to examine the beliefs we’ve developed about mind altering substances. In the West, most people have negative associations with drugs and alcohol (though that doesn’t stop us from using them). In other cultures, this is not the case. Throughout history around the world, many cultures have traditionally ingested something in order to commune with gods or the divine. From the wine and bread of communion to the trance-inducing peyote of South American shamans, this is an honored tradition seemingly as old as mankind. In fact, in shamanistic cultures, trance-inducing plants (drugs) are not considered destructive, but are honored and revered as gifts from the gods, left here to help us connect with higher planes. Drugs like peyote and ayahuasca are said to induce spirit communication, clairvoyance and healing abilities. So please remember that there is no one “right” answer to this question. If you asked a shaman, he may push your wine glass aside and offer you ‘shrooms instead.

Drugs and alcohol facilitate spirit communication because when you have a drink or two, you begin to relax. If you’re a very logical person who is always “in control,” then the only time you may experience freedom from your strict inner censor is when you’re sleeping, dreaming or under the influence of some mind altering chemical. Someone who has a lot of natural psychic or mediumship ability but who was raised in a family or culture that demonized or invalidated it would actually be predisposed to the sort of experience you’re having. Similarly, most people are very left-brained, and spirit communication and other psychic abilities are right brain functions. Various drugs and alcohol impair the left brain first and/or enhance right brain activity, so we are more likely to have mystical or psychic experiences while under the influence.

Despite all of this, I have never used any hallucinogenic drugs of any kind. I have studied with some of the best teachers of mediumship in the world, however, and since they’ve been right about everything else, I am happy to pass their advice on to you. The general consensus among these experts is that there are better ways to approach spirit communication.

First, initiating spirit communication while even mildly intoxicated is like driving under the influence. Both activities can be dangerous, so you need to have your wits about you and remain in control. As strange as this may at first sound, we don’t leave our addictions behind when we pass on. Many people who are of low spiritual vibration also have physical addictions, and when they depart this life, they end up in the lower astral, where they remain until they develop themselves beyond this level. When you open up to spirit communication and you have been drinking, it’s like throwing open the saloon door and yelling to a crowd of thirsty alcoholics, “Bar’s open and drinks are on (in) me!” Lower astral entities will race to experience alcohol vicariously through you. (I believe this is why alcohol is also called “spirits.”) As it is easier for spirits to influence you when you’re intoxicated, and these spirits tend to be “low lifes,” this is very unwise indeed. If an alcoholic in the astral attaches itself to you, you can also quickly become an “alcoholic” yourself. You’d then feel like you just couldn’t stop yourself, and you’d be right: someone else would be controlling you.

When it comes to reading for others, it’s even more important to be in the proper frame of mind. First, to give a good (accurate) reading, you need excellent integration of the right and left brain functions, so being intoxicated, which cripples the left brain, is not going to help! Interestingly enough, one of the the best ways to integrate right and left brain functions is by practicing meditation. (Sound familiar?)

In addition to skill, we must consider responsibility. I will never read if I’ve been drinking or even if I’m not feeling my best for the same reasons I don’t drink and drive. If I did, not only would I put myself in a compromised position, but someone else may get hurt. I know that I have tremendous influence over whoever I’m reading for. Most clients will hang on my every word as gospel, and emotionally invest so much in the messages I bring through both from loved ones in Spirit and higher intelligences that their long-term well-being could very well hinge on what I say. For some people, I am their last hope: they have tried everything else they could think of, and still not found the peace and healing their souls are starving for. It takes a tremendous extension of trust for someone to confide their deepest feelings and worries in me; the least I can do is honor that trust by being as responsible as I can be.

I am also very mindful of what I do, think, say and ingest even when I’m not “working,” for this is part of “the job.” Just as a professional athlete must train even when he’s not playing in a game, a spiritual counselor must remain in “peak spiritual condition.” As everyone is psychic and capable of spirit communication to various degrees, a key reason people actually pay me for my services instead of tuning in themselves is because they do not want to make all the sacrifices and undertake all the disciplines that would be required for them to develop their own skills to the same degree. To achieve spirit communication, one must maintain a very high vibration, which for most people means eating a healthy diet; regular physical conditioning (exercise), meditation and spiritual study; extraordinary dedication to personal growth and emotional mastery, which includes abstaining from negative thoughts and emotions and immoral or harmful acts; and abstaining from substances that can lower our vibration such as drugs, alcohol, junk food, cigarettes, etc.

Fortunately, you don’t really need the alcohol to achieve spirit communication. Your experience reflects the truth that in order to connect with Spirit, you just need to relax and shift your consciousness so that your left brain doesn’t filter out all that is real and yet often unperceived. While you’re free to choose the path of the shaman and the use of mind altering substances, I strongly advise you against doing so unless you have a very experienced and trustworthy mentor. Personally, I recommend the Spiritualist path of sound personal spiritual development including meditation and good old-fashioned clean living, for as is true of so much in life, when we try to take short-cuts, we often end up lost and wish we’d taken the safe, sure path in the first place.

– Soul Arcanum

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