So many people have said to me, “But what if I’m just imagining it?”. This question is so normal. It’s also one of the biggest blocks people face when wanting to connect with a loved one in the afterlife, and not because spirit isn’t there, but because we second guess the way they come through. We expect it to be loud. Clear. Obvious. A flashing sign in the sky or a booming voice in the room. But it doesn’t always come in a big way. Sometimes, spirit arrives in a quiet nudge. A passing image. A subtle knowing that moves through you before your logical mind can grab it. And just as quickly, your brain kicks in with: “That can’t be real. I’m probably making it up.”
Why We Doubt
Let’s start here: you were born intuitive. You came into this world able to feel. To sense moods before words. To read energy before explanations. But the world doesn’t really nurture that. It trains you out of it. You’re taught to rely on logic, not gut feeling. To focus on what can be proven, not what can be sensed. You’re told to be rational, factual, and grounded, and so you start pushing away the intuitive parts of yourself. You grow up learning to trust thought over emotion, explanation over experience.
So when spirit does show up, through energy, emotion, memory, or subtle thought, your brain short circuits a little. It doesn’t know how to categorize what doesn’t fit the physical mold. So the easiest thing to say is: “That’s just my imagination.” But here’s the thing: imagination isn’t a flaw in the process of connecting with spirit. It’s one of the main tools spirit uses to communicate.
The Real Question Isn’t “Is It My Imagination?”
It’s: “How Is Spirit Using My Imagination?”. This is the part most people miss. We assume that imagination is something made up, but that’s not the whole truth. Imagination is how your mind accesses what isn’t physically in front of you. It’s the part of you that can see without your eyes, hear without your ears, and feel something before you explain it. Spirit knows that. So they use it.
They’ll drop in a symbol, a memory, a visual, a word, right through your imagination. It might feel sudden or random, but it didn’t come from your conscious mind. It came from the part of you that’s receptive. That’s the key difference: spirit inspires your imagination, while your mind constructs it. One is received. The other is built. Learning to feel the difference is part of the journey.
The Role of Imagination in Spirit Communication
Imagination is not the opposite of intuition. It’s a bridge. Spirit uses your imagination because it’s one of the easiest ways for them to send you messages. That flash of a rose in your mind’s eye?. That sentence in someone’s voice that pops into your head out of nowhere?. That “movie scene” that rolls through like a daydream?. That’s not always random. It’s often the method spirit uses to reach you. Instead of asking, “Am I imagining this?” try asking, “What if spirit is using my imagination to reach me right now?”.
Here are five ways I teach people to know it’s spirit and not just their mind wandering.
1. It Feels Dropped In, Not Pulled Up
Spirit messages often arrive fast. You weren’t thinking about them. You weren’t trying to “get” anything. Suddenly, you just know something or feel someone. It feels like it landed, not like you built it. That’s a key distinction. The energy of it is different, it carries a tone, a frequency, a sense of origin that doesn’t feel like your usual train of thought.
2. The Message Carries Love, Comfort, or Clarity
Spirit speaks through love. Even when they bring insight or ask you to reflect on something, the energy isn’t heavy, punishing, or fear based. If it brings clarity, peace, warmth, or that “ahh, I needed that” feeling?. That’s likely spirit. If it’s looping, anxious, harsh, or critical?. That’s your mind in survival mode, not spirit.
3. It’s Not Something You Would’ve Thought of On Your Own
When I first started giving mediumship sessions, I’d get names, odd references, or images that made no sense to me. A yellow daisy. A set of keys. A weird nickname. I’d feel silly saying them out loud, until the client’s face changed, or the tears came, and I realized: this was for them. That’s spirit’s signature. They’ll give you something that feels just left of your own thought process, because it wasn’t your thought process. It was them.
4. There’s an Emotional or Physical Response
You know those goosebumps?. That surge of warmth or chill that washes through you out of nowhere?. That’s energy. That’s spirit. Our bodies are often more sensitive to presence than our minds are. When something makes you stop, breathe, tear up, or feel chills, don’t brush it off. Pause. Pay attention. That’s not always just your nervous system. Often that’s your soul system tuning in.
5. The Signs Start to Stack
Spirit loves patterns. They’re subtle, but persistent. You might hear the same phrase three times in a week. You ask for a sign and suddenly see it on a license plate, a billboard, and a random text. If it’s weirdly specific?. If it gives you that “okay, no way that’s coincidence” feeling?. That’s your sign. And that feeling of, “Okay, that was them”. It’s real. Trust it.
But What If I Still Doubt?
You will. We all do. Even after years of doing this work, I still have moments where I think, “Wait, was that me?” But here’s the change of thought that helps: Instead of chasing certainty, chase curiosity. Don’t ask, “Was that real?”. Ask, “What if it was?”. I always tell people to write it down. Start a journal. Log the dreams, the feelings, the nudges. You’ll be amazed by what starts to build. Patterns will emerge. Trust will grow. And over time, you’ll start to feel the difference. You don’t have to be 100% sure every time. You just have to stay open. Spirit will meet you there.
Let the Messages Be Small
You might be waiting for a big, cinematic message, and instead, all you get is a subtle feeling. A moment. A tiny whisper. Let that be enough. Spirit isn’t trying to convince you of their existence. They’re already here. It’s us learning how to feel again that takes time. So let the connection be subtle. Let the signs be small. Let your trust build slowly, quietly, in your own way. Because one day, a message will land just right, and you’ll think: “I didn’t make that up. That was them.” And you’ll be right.
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Originally published: https://medium.com/the-afterlife-view/is-it-spirit-or-just-my-imagination-why-the-answer-might-be-both-33c3520ef0aa