Talking Boards: Part 2

So I've already covered some of the basics of talking boards, but WAIT! There's more! For just five easy payments of $19.95, you, too can have -

Nevermind. 

Very Superstitious

Let me just jump right in and pontificate on a subject that is the basis for much bitching and moaning on my part: Ghosts. Demons, evil spirits. You name it, there's a bullshit movie about it. Think of almost any haunting movie: The Exorcist, Poltergeist, The Amityville Horror, Paranormal Activity... What are your standard plot elements? Sweet innocent family moves into a creepy house with a horrible past and a GHOST who wants them out. Or, the ever-popular someone-is-doing-something-dumb-with-some-sort-of-stereotypical-ritual-or-occult-accoutrements (Ouija board, spell casting, ancient burial grounds, the Necronomicon) and they UNLEASH THE KRAKEN!!  

Sorry, I don't have the ability to say the word 'unleash' and not mentally follow it up with 'the Kraken.' Anyway, they unwittingly unleash some demon or ghost or evil entity who wants to do BAD THINGS to everyone involved. I would like to be on record as saying to all of these plot devices: Why don't you go outside and play hide-and-go-f**k-yourself?

From my experience, and from questioning The Collective on this matter, there seems to be infinitesimally small grounds for the reality of any such occurrences happening in real life. I'm not saying there aren't locations in this wide world that have a greater amount of spiritual "activity" than normal, I'm just saying that there are no spirits trying to maliciously levitate your baby for no apparent reason, no matter how much cyan tint you put on your security cam footage. No one dead is trying to "possess" anyone alive, or steal your soul for any so-called demonic ends. So let's everybody just calm down with the superstitious nonsense, OK?

The bulk of the Collective is actually out there trying to help us, and I would say most of those that aren't actively helping with the affairs of the living are just on their own, indifferent and possibly wanting to be left alone for a time.  So please rest assured that no one is going to "come through" your talking board and start haunting your house or trying to harm you. Probably the worst you're going to get is some gibberish series of letters that doesn't make sense or maybe some swear words. And if you were offended by a few profanities you would have stopped reading this post a long time ago.

I ain't afraid of no ghost.

Party Foul

I have learned that talking boards seem to get a lot of use at parties and events. Everyone gets slightly tipsy and wants to see if they can summon the ghost of a celebrity and ask them stupid questions. All my personal derision for other people's ideas about the dead aside, I would like to explain why this is not the most productive idea.

You can do it, of course. As long as you have at least two people, preferably a Speaker and a Battery. The leaf will start moving around and coherent words may or may not be spelled out.  You can start asking questions of your friendly neighborhood dead person, and they should begin to try to answer you. 

Here's where it gets tricky: remember how I talked about the Collective? And how a lot of them are involved in our affairs? Well wrap your head around this, my spiritually curious friends: each one of us living, fleshy beings has, on average, two to three "invisible" buddies hanging around us at any given time. Some people have more. During one board session my inquiries about this revealed that one of my relatives had a whopping thirty-two souls gathered 'round her at all times, mostly due to her very receptive nature. They're trying to help us keep our lives on track and in line with the Great Plan. Hoping to nudge us into making decisions that will benefit us on our path to spiritual growth. They're the movers and shakers, working to make circumstances unfold properly so that we can continue down the right path for each of us. That little voice in your head that sometimes warns, "I wouldn't do that if I were you," when you're about to do something dangerous? Yeah, that's probably not you. It's more likely someone else trying to help you out. More on that in a future post. 

The point is this: if each of us is walking around with an entourage of at least a couple disembodied spirits, think of the crowded spiritual party scene that ensues when even a modest group of eight or ten living people is in the same place at one time. Now imagine getting on a talking board and trying to ask questions. I know that the vast majority of my personal board sessions are done with only two people (me and my husband), and with even a quorum of participants, there are always specific messages for each of us, and usually more than one apiece. Once you start adding additional participants to the mix, the number of messages in total that the other side of the Collective would like to relay increases exponentially. Now there is, essentially, a cacophony of voices trying to be heard. 

"WHAT? I'M GONNA HAFTA CALL YOU BACK!"

Imagine you're on the phone with someone, and that person is at a noisy party. They're trying to talk to you, but you can barely hear them because of all the noise that other people are making. Maybe you even mistake someone else's voice for your friend because so many people are speaking at once. Or maybe you have a few friends at this party, and several of them are jostling to get on the phone and have their turn to talk to you. This is the type of confusion you can have when you try to use a talking board at a crowded event. There are a lot of crossed lines and mixed messages, and chaos ensues. This has happened to me a few times, where we thought a particular message was for one person, and later we discovered that it was meant for someone else entirely, but because there were too many spirits competing for a chance to get their message across, information got muddled and was directed at the wrong recipient. This is not only confusing for the people asking the questions, but it also does a disservice to the reputation of talking boards in general, making the whole affair seem like none of the information delivered was worthwhile or relevant.

Because of this phenomenon of too many voices, I have found that my most productive sessions are those that have anywhere from two to four live participants. Other than the two-person minimum needed to operate the board, this is not a hard and fast rule, just an idea of what seems to be the most useful from personal experience. It is also worth noting, that if you can, it's a good idea to have an equal portion of Speakers versus Batteries with their hands on the leaf. I recently had a session with three Speakers and only one Battery, and the poor Battery person was pretty drained and tired by the end of it, because they were providing the bulk of the energy fuel for four people's worth of questions.

Silent Oracle

It's also worth noting that there are some questions that They won't answer for you at all. Even when we ask questions that They will answer, the responses run the gamut from the pretty cut-and-dried yes or no variety all the way to vague, enigmatic responses consisting of initials or clue-like buzzwords on which They won't elaborate any further as to the meaning. So while even normal questions can elicit sometimes frustratingly confusing answers that no amount of disambiguation seems to clarify (I've found myself many a session pulling my hair going, "What the hell are you telling me? That doesn't make any sense!"), there are in fact some types of inquiries that will cause your spiritual messenger to clam up altogether. Let have some examples, shall we?

Q: When/how/am I going to die?

A: Listen, cubby, they're not going to tell you that, so don't bother asking. This is probably the poster-child for the types of questions, the answers to which provide you with information that would cause you to make a bunch of bad decisions and/or stray from the path that you're supposed to be on in life. How would you change your way of life if you knew you were going to die next week? Next year? Not until you were 97 years old? This is information that will cause you to act in a way that would be out of character for yourself, as it were, and this is not The Plan.  And consider this: what if They're wrong?  It's happened. Events don't always unfold in the most likely manner. You may ask questions about your future when you're on the board, but the answers they give you usually are based on your life taking the path that looks like the strongest probability at the moment for The Collective. But things change, so They are not going to burden you with information about death (your own or that of others), especially when that information might not be 100% guaranteed - not a good basis for decision making, to say the least.

Q: What are the winning lottery numbers?

"Woohoo! Live-in pizza chef, here I come!"

A: The Collective is not going to allow itself to be used for purely selfish material gains. Read up on some of the history of the original Ouija board marketing from the early 1900s if you would like to see how They deal with people trying to make money from this gift of communication. The gentlemen attempting to run a business selling talking boards found themselves in not-so-fortunate circumstances before too long. Yes, They will answer questions you have about your search for a better job, or help you make decisions on buying a house, starting a business, or having a baby. All of these are factors that contribute to your quality of life, and while they are not the sole keys to happiness, they are perfectly reasonable topics of inquiry. I mean, even if you get a better job, it's still you that's earning your living. The Collective is not simply going to hand you sudden, independent wealth - if it was part of the plan for your personal spiritual growth for you to experience a sudden windfall and then deal with the aftermath of such an event, this would occur regardless. So don't be silly and ask for the keys to the mansion when you are only a weekend guest, OK?

Q:  Is my boss sleeping with his admin?

A: This is just one example of an entire category of questions that you probably won't get an answer to - not necessarily because the information is sacred, but because They believe that if you had the information, you would likely do something destructive with it. A participant in a board session once asked if the company they worked for was preparing to let them go. They were told that this was not the case, and to stop worrying about it. Shortly thereafter, however, they were let go, just as they had originally suspected. Now why did the spirit answering questions that day basically lie to this person? They knew that this person would be let go, but they proceeded to give reassurances that this was not the case. My suspicions were confirmed when we consulted Them a few days after the event, and They admitted that although They knew that events were about to take a turn for the worse, They did not give the querent the heads-up this time, because They knew that given this information, the employee would have probably taken some sort or rash, preemptive "revenge" action against their employer, for even daring to terminate them. The Collective knew that such an impulsive and likely bout of temper would have consequences that would probably hurt this person's chances at future employment, which they would be needing post haste in light of the upcoming break with their employer. As you can see from this example, an honest answer from The Collective would have probably cost this person dearly, if only due to an inability to overcome human emotions in such a heated situation. And much as they will not give you information that they think will cause you to do harm to your own chances for success, they will also not tell you things that they think you will use, intentionally or not, to do harm to others or their circumstances.

To sum up: the other side of the Collective is here to help us, not to harm us. They are eager to talk and are pleased when we can both hear them, and are willing to listen. If you are polite and respectful, as you would be when asking advice from any person you look up to, they will provide you with the information that you can use to steer yourself along the most spiritually beneficial path for you, without harming anyone else in the process.