If there's one fear that keeps good mediums small, it's this one: "Am I just making it up?" You get an impression, and a little voice says, that came from me, that doesn't count. I want to take that fear apart, because it's built on a misunderstanding about how this whole thing actually works.

Is it me, or is it spirit?

Here's the answer that freed me: it has to be both. You are not a marionette on the end of spirit's strings. Spirit cannot reach you without using your mind, your imagination, and your life experience — that is the only equipment they have to work with. So when something rises up and feels like it came from you… it probably did. That's not a flaw in the contact.

I'm not a marionette to the spirit world. This is teamwork.

Then how is it different from imagination?

It isn't separate from your imagination — it travels through it. Think of it as teamwork, with respect flowing both ways: they can't do this without me, and I can't do it without them. They give the impulse; I give the words, the pictures, the meaning, drawn from everything I've ever lived. If I sat there waiting for a message so pure that no part of "me" was involved, I'd be waiting forever — and I'd be calling the very tool they're using "interference." (It's the same reason your imagination is the most important tool you have, not the thing getting in the way.)

Why do so many of us believe the opposite?

Because some of us were taught it. Early in my own journey I trained under someone who pretended the spirit told him everything — that he was simply a mouthpiece, a passive channel, never responsible for a word of it. It took me years to understand that this isn't only untrue; it's a way of dodging responsibility. We are not puppets reciting lines. We have personal responsibility for what we say and how we say it. That realisation was hard-won, and it changed everything about how I work — and how I teach.

So what do I do with "I'm making it up"?

You greet it as a good sign, not a red flag. Nine times out of ten, that feeling is simply spirit inspiring you through the only door that's open — your own mind. So don't be a coward. Trust what you're getting, say the simple thing, and sort the pieces out as you go. The contact almost never arrives gift-wrapped and certain; it arrives as a nudge, and your job is to have the courage to voice it. If the impressions themselves have gone quiet lately, that's not loss either — it usually means you've levelled up.

You are a partner in this, not a passive receiver. Your humanity — your memories, your humour, your way of seeing the world — isn't getting in spirit's way. It's the instrument they chose to play. So stop apologising for being in the room. They need you there.