Dear Julia:

I'm studying with a clairvoyant to develop my psychic abilities, and I'm so excited about fulfilling this long-time goal. I am a Masters degree Nurse Anesthesia student and have been a nurse for 12 years. In addition to being a gay student of psychic and spiritual development, I do medical missions overseas when I can.

Here's my problem. I have a number of skeletons in my closet, and feel unworthy of pursuing my dream of becoming an ordained Spiritualist minister, perhaps by taking an online course. Am I worthy of calling myself a minister when I am so green on the spiritual path? Who am I to help others when I am so new to it all? I have lots of doubts and fears. Since you're a Spiritualist minister, what are your thoughts on someone like me becoming one too? My intentions are purely to be of help and service, but I don't feel smart enough yet to hold such an important title. Thanks for your advice!
- Kevin

Dear Kevin:

I understand your feelings, for I too questioned my "worthiness" of doing spiritual work. It's important for you to realize, however, that many official and unofficial ministers have very "colorful" pasts, and in my view, this actually helps them to help others. They not only have a lot of life experience and wisdom to draw upon, but they can truly understand what others are going through and not judge them for their choices.

In fact, I believe that to be a fine spiritual counselor, we have to continue to question our worthiness in setting ourselves up as guides to others, and we must continually ponder if we are deluding ourselves in any way. If we fail to do this, we run the risk of falling prey to our egos and thus disconnecting from Spirit.

I do want to reassure you that you don't have to be perfect, saintly, amazingly wise or all-knowing to be a wonderful Spiritualist minister - you just need to truly care about people and maintain a close personal relationship with "God" or Spirit.

You are already a healer - your profession and your volunteer work speak volumes about you in that capacity. Your intention of being of help and service is indeed pure. All you need now is that close, conscious, personal relationship with Spirit, which is what you should focus on when selecting a training program.

I don't know about online ordination programs. While I'm sure there are some great psychic development classes online, if your goal is to become a minister for life, why not invest the time, money and effort in attending a program in person? I think that would underscore the strength and purity of your intentions.

However, I do want to caution you about investing too much in the title of "reverend." There are many wonderful people quietly ministering to others who don't have any official title or commission to do so. In my view, being ordained has just one main benefit, and it's legal in nature.

Though few people know it, there are a number of states where Spiritualist endeavors like energy healing and readings are technically illegal. This goes way back to fortune telling laws that were designed to keep "undesirables" like traveling gypsies away from the supposedly upstanding town folk. While these laws are rarely enforced these days, it DOES happen.

I know one wonderful Spiritualist minister whose reading work empowered a woman who wanted to leave her husband, and when the husband found out, he called the cops. As a result, my friend (who was a sweet little old lady at the time) was actually thrown in jail! (She found it all rather amusing, but those of us who heard about it were utterly dismayed.)

As Spiritualism is recognized as an official religion in the U.S., if you're an ordained Spiritualist minister, you're safe from such persecution. It's sad that we have to go to such lengths to follow our true callings, but we enjoy many hard won freedoms in this country - we might as well make good use of them.

So while I think a training program is a great idea for you, I would ask yourself why you want the title of minister. My feeling is that it ties in to your feelings of unworthiness in general. Perhaps you believe if you're given an official stamp of approval, you're somehow more entitled to answer your calling.

This is also a great time to step back and look at how your feelings are not impediments, but rather stepping stones on your spiritual journey, for in healing your feelings of unworthiness, you will gain a great deal of power and wisdom to help others heal similarly.

Lots of us struggle with feelings like yours. In my case, it's because I was raised by a father I totally adored who had very high expectations of me. If I brought home a report card that had all "A's" and one "A -," he focused entirely on the flaw. As you might imagine, I became quite a perfectionist as a result, but in trying to win his approval, I also achieved a lot more than I might have otherwise.

Others who suffer from feelings of unworthiness may have been abused as children, had major social differences to overcome such as physical defects, or simply been parented in a way that left them feeling they were somehow not good enough. Feelings of unworthiness can also be tied to past lives: for example, if you sought to become a monk or spiritual leader in a past life and somehow failed or were rejected for some reason, you may not feel worthy of a spiritual calling in this lifetime.

I found it interesting that you made a point of sharing your sexual orientation. While I don't want to presume, it seems to me that by being gay in this culture, you have plenty of stuff to work with in terms of sorting out why you may feel unworthy. I'm sure you've suffered some deep psychological and emotional wounds along your journey to self-acceptance, and perhaps not all of them have healed. While you were forming your own sense of identity, you were probably even led to question if you are really "okay" as a human being. Even if you believe you've made peace with your sexual identity on a conscious level, you may want to explore how this ties in to your feelings of unworthiness.

In my view, being gay could prove to be an advantage in spiritual counseling work. Because you already live outside the "mainstream," you've suffered a great deal in terms of learning to accept and love who you really are, and this is going to be a key problem that you'll be helping other people with. Heck, even being able to question what is "normal" (which many people rarely do) will help you to sort out and make sense of your psychic experiences. As I see it, there are many reasons you might feel ESPECIALLY worthy of this calling.

Your first, step, however, is to love and accept yourself more. As a minister, one of your key roles will be to illuminate the divine beauty in others, to see their potential and their worthiness of fulfilling their highest dreams, and in order to do that for them, you will first have to know how to do this for yourself. What you do for others as a minister will be much like what I'm doing for you now - encouraging them to believe in themselves and their dreams, and to know that they are "worthy" of the highest and best in life.

So I encourage you to forgive yourself for those skeletons in your closet, and to view any past mistakes as wonderful assets for your future role as a minister. When you are able to forgive yourself for being (wonderfully) human, you will be able to guide others in forgiving and loving themselves so that they can reach for their own dreams.

- Julia