Challenges, Plateaus and Uneven Trance Development
Trance does not always provide visible evidence that something is moving. A period of steady development may be followed by sittings that feel lighter, less coherent or less productive. A familiar communicator may become less prominent. An established feature may disappear. Nothing new may seem to replace it. These periods can be difficult precisely because the medium already knows what the work has been capable of. The temptation is to recover what was there before. Try harder. Sit longer. Recreate the conditions of a particularly successful sitting. Return to the communicator who once seemed easiest to distinguish. Or assume that something has been lost. None of these conclusions should be automatic. Sometimes the work is consolidating rather than expanding outwardly. Sometimes the human conditions around the trance have become less supportive. Sometimes expectation itself has begun restricting the relationship. Sometimes the organization of Spirit contribution is changing. And sometimes a pause or practical adjustment is more useful than continued effort. Difficulty does not need to be romanticized as hidden progress. It needs to be understood accurately enough that the medium does not make the difficulty larger by responding to the wrong problem.
Book Five: Trance Mediumship
A Common Question
What should I do when my trance development seems to stop or go backward?
Answer
Begin by identifying what has actually changed.
A quieter or less familiar period does not automatically mean that the trance relationship has weakened. An established form may be consolidating, the distribution of Spirit involvement may be changing, or familiar outward markers may simply be less prominent.
But difficulty should not automatically be interpreted positively either.
Fatigue, frustration, rigid expectation, unsuitable circumstances or repeated attempts to reproduce an earlier sitting can all restrict the work.
Trying harder is therefore not always the answer.
Sometimes continued steady work is appropriate.
Sometimes a practical adjustment is needed.
Sometimes the most responsible response is to pause long enough for pressure and expectation to recede.
The task is not to force movement.
It is to understand what the present difficulty is actually asking of the medium.
Introduction
There is a period in many forms of learning when change becomes harder to see.
Trance can make this especially confusing because its early developments often arrive through obvious differences.
Speech changes.
A communicator becomes easier to distinguish.
The medium becomes less involved in directing what occurs.
Physical expression takes on a more established form.
Different members of a Spirit team begin contributing in ways that can be distinguished.
Something appears to be happening.
Then the pace changes.
A series of sittings may seem remarkably similar.
A familiar feature disappears.
One session feels substantial and the next comparatively ordinary.
Speech that previously unfolded easily becomes brief or uneven.
The communicator the medium expected does not present in the familiar way.
Nothing seems to be advancing.
The immediate interpretation is often:
“I have stopped developing.”
That conclusion may be premature.
A plateau is not necessarily a period in which nothing is changing.
It is often a period in which change is no longer easy to identify.
Those are different conditions.
Some developments attract attention because they add something.
A different voice.
A new communicator.
A stronger physical response.
A previously unfamiliar degree of reduced self-direction.
Other developments refine what already exists.
The medium interferes less.
The communicator uses an established form with greater economy.
Several contributors work together with less adjustment.
A pause no longer destabilizes the expression.
None of these has to look new.
Yet it would be equally misleading to explain every stagnant period as unseen progress.
Sometimes the work really has become constrained.
A medium may be arriving exhausted.
Their attention may be occupied elsewhere.
A once-useful routine may have become compulsory.
Frustration may now accompany every sitting.
The person may be trying to recreate a previous condition rather than encounter the present one.
The relationship may need space that increased effort cannot provide.
The task is therefore neither pessimism nor reassurance.
It is diagnosis.
What has changed?
What has remained possible?
What has become more difficult?
What is the medium now trying to make happen?
What expectation has entered the sitting that was not there before?
Has the Spirit arrangement itself begun to change?
And is continued sitting actually helping?
Difficulty becomes more workable when it is examined before it is explained.
Not Every Difficult Period Means the Same Thing
Two sittings can feel equally disappointing for entirely different reasons.
In one, very little outwardly changes because the relationship is functioning through an already established form that does not presently require expansion.
In another, the medium is so occupied with trying to reproduce a previous trance that the relationship has little room to organize differently.
In another, physical fatigue makes sustained work impractical.
In another, a principal communicator is becoming less prominent because another arrangement is beginning to emerge.
The surface experience may be similar:
“Nothing is happening the way it used to.”
The underlying situations are not.
That is why one universal response to difficulty is unlikely to help.
More practice is not always the answer.
Neither is less practice.
A new technique is not automatically required.
Nor should every problem be attributed to Spirit withdrawing, spiritual blockage or some hidden failure in the medium.
Before intervention comes understanding.