Advice from a medium

By MARY THURWACHTER
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

Saturday, March 15, 2008

Ever watch a medium converse with the dearly departed and wonder how they do it - and if you might be able to?

Joan Piper, a certified medium, healer, speaker and teacher at Cassadaga Spiritualist Camp between Orlando and Daytona Beach, was in West Palm Beach recently and said anyone who seeks answers can find them.

Joan Piper: The Inside Track

Joan Piper, who's now in her late 40s, left a 20-year elementary school teaching career in Massachusetts to learn more about Spiritualism, moving to Cassadaga in January of 1999.

When she was 5 and her grandfather died, she didn't want to go to his funeral to say good-bye, she remembers, because she could still see him. Today, her grandfather still visits her.

"I came to Florida (from Massachusetts) on a family vacation in the late 1990s," she said. "Someone told me I had to come here (Cassadaga). It was a rainy Tuesday. I had my first reading and was told (by a medium) I'd be back in four months - and I was. I completed classes here in three years and four months. I loved every ounce of it. I also studied in Europe."

She is a fan of the TV show Medium, starring
Patricia Arquette, because, she says, it puts a normal twist on the life of a medium.

"When you're looking for answers (as Arquette's character Allison is), you get information from different sources. You have to decipher, put parts of the puzzle together."

At Cassadaga, Piper teaches classes on spiritualism, gives readings and conducts seances.

For more information, see www.joanpiper.com.
"It's where you put your attention," Piper said.

"Some people don't have any desire. But if you do, and there's an openness, you absolutely can."
Messages can be received in so many ways, according to Piper, who'll be back in town March 21-22.

"My father, who has passed, had a beautiful Irish tenor," she said. "When I was listening to a regular (pop) radio station one day, out of the blue the song On the Street Where You Live came on - a song my father loved - I knew he was getting in touch."

If you want to feel things, get messages, you need to quiet down the chatter in your mind, Piper said. Meditation helps. So does good health.

Ten ways to unlock your intuition:

1. Develop your passion. Do what you love and love what you do.

2. Follow your heart, not your mind. Intellect sometimes limits us, puts us in a box.

3. Listen with openness. Don't put boundaries on what you're hearing. You need to be ready to receive any information that is given to you, any way it is given to you. "If a hawk flies in front of me, that's information for me," Piper said.

4. Hear with deliberateness. When you ask the universe for insight or help, you need to listen carefully to hear what you ask for. And you need to listen with more than just your ears, as the message could come in a vision, a dream or even in a scent. That overwhelming smell of roses you pick up while trying to connect with your rose-loving grandmother, for example, may be grandma's way of saying hello.

5. Remove perceived limitations. Fear, Piper said, can stop people from trying anything new or discovering fresh vistas.

6. Stay balanced. If something is making you stressed, figure it out. Decide how you can find peace. Maybe it's something as simple as a soak in a tub or a walk on the beach.

7. Know that there are no wrongs, only learning opportunities or experiences. Many times we are way too hard on ourselves. Don't beat yourself up. Why not be the optimist?

8. Be responsible for personal happiness or unhappiness. Who is in charge of you? Everyone has the right to their own belief system. As Buddha says, happiness is an inside job.

9. What you put out is what you get back. What you reap, you will sow.

10. Know that there are endless possibilities. There is always another way to do something.