Based in Seattle, Washington, Marc Lainhart, The Intuitive Prospector, is an award-winning, internationally respected and tested British trained Psychic and Spiritual Medium and Best American Psychics 2020 Psychic of the Year. We chat to Marc and find out a little more about his beliefs and life experiences that have shaped him into the outstanding man he is today.
Marc, Please tell us a little about your background and childhood.
I have always been involved in the Rescue Services. In my early twenties, I served in the US Coast Guard for 8 years, so that was all about rescue and being on the high seas. I left the Coast Guard and became a professional firefighter, again helping out in the local community and helping others in that format. Then due to a broken back and medical injury, I unfortunately had to retire early. This was a serious blow to me as it was my dream job.
It was at this point that I started to work in the service of Spiritualism, mindfulness, psychic mediumship and meditation. I went to college and studied Sports Medicine and Human Performance at the University of Washington. That opened me up to the world of mediumship and the unseen esoteric world. I wasn’t aware of my abilities at this stage and they lay dormant for many years.
I had my first NDE (Near Death Experience) at the age of five. I fell out of a tree and was in a coma for a few days. I remember being with very tall figures who were neither male or female, almost white beings of light and at that time I referred to them as the shadow people. They would walk around holding my hand and showing me things that I wasn’t familiar with. When I came out of the coma, I didn’t recognise anybody around me. I told everybody about these tall beings who had been with me and they just told me that it was my imagination. And in fact, I put it down to that until years later when I was an adult and had an OBE (Out of Body Experience) at the age of 27. I was in a river accident and drowned. Walking with the Spirit People is what I call it now.
In my early years, I never really thought too much about my ‘psychic abilities’ and never imagined that one day I would do this line of work. In 2000, I started to unlock these abilities of mediumship and spiritualism. It took me a few years to grapple with the change and the transformation as I was at college to study Sports Medicine. I started hearing voices, seeing things I didn’t understand. Trying to understand the latter led me to many different pathways amongst others: The Berkeley Psychic Institute in California, the Omega Institute in Upstate New York, and eventually across the Pond to England to the Arthur Findlay Spiritual College where I studied for the last decade. I studied the different modalities of Spirit, the Science of mediumship, meditation, awareness, intuition, energy, frequency, vibration, The Force, the energy that binds us all.
I only embraced my abilities much later. Having had a Catholic upbringing, I was conditioned to believe that there was a Heaven and a Hell, Purgatory in-between and nothing else!
Do you think that your early career in healthcare helped expand your abilities in the spiritual realm?
I do. I believe that the Spirit world is intelligent enough to work off our own life experiences to make those connections. I have worked in healthcare for 25 years here in Seattle, and I still have a part-time job with the Federal Government in healthcare inspections. I believe that the Spirit World understands who you are authentically, and the experiences you have and they work with you. I have lost one person to murder, another two to terminal illnesses and another two family members to suicide, so these experiences, as tragic as they are, create a deeper empathy within you and your energy field and who you are as a human. Your spirit world connects to that and will bring you the correct medium and person to work with. Not every medium is suited to everybody.
When did you first become a Spiritualist and why?
When I was 27 trauma and tragedy came to my doorstep in a big way. I lost both my brothers in one same week. My younger brother aged 21 was murdered and my older brother was diagnosed in the same week with terminal brain cancer and passed at the age of 35. In addition to this, my wife’s father was sick with Multiple Sclerosis and passed at the age of 48. These deaths, and the trauma and tragedy (I refer to them as the T&T) literally blew my world apart, changed my belief systems, changed how I saw myself and changed my life forever and started me down the path of what I do today. It is a privilege to get older. It is a privilege that so many others are denied and it really is all about Carpe Diem. We have no idea what tomorrow holds. Being the Intuitive Prospector is all about prospecting, being human and understanding what all of this is about.
I am a full member of the SNU (The Spiritualists’ National Union) in England. I am currently working on accreditations and certifications through the SNU and the SNUI (International). I work locally here with the Spiritual Church of Seattle. I am on the Board and do a lot of demonstrations. I like to say that religion is for those who fear hell and spiritualism is for those who have walked through it. I am definitely a Spiritualist and was about 33 when I started to feel this way.
How important is training and mentoring others (in mediumship) to you and how would you explain this in a nutshell?
It is absolutely essential and that is because I believe in my own experience. Growth never stops. If growth stops, decay begins. I believe that Spiritualism, psychic, and mediumship are a lifelong vocation through body, mind and spirit. I am both a mentor and a ‘mentoree’. I still have one of my mentors in the physical world, Mavis Patella, who is known in the UK for her work. I have mentored a few people and I always remind people that mentors can shift your perspective. They can push you to and beyond your limits to understand what it is you are trying to discover about your spiritual pathways. For example, if you take a piece of coal and apply pressure for a given amount of time, it will turn into a diamond. That is why I am known as The Intuitive Prospector, because I’m constantly helping people to search and find that diamond within. There will be pressure because that is the reality of life. However, I think that it is vital, essential and important to have development, belong to a spiritual development group and have a mentor. Growth should never cease until we leave the physical body and enter the etheric plane.
How would you explain the term “Discarnate”?
There are two terms. We start off as a spiritual energy and we incarnate into a physical form. When we are ready to move, we ‘decarnate’ into another form. For example, in the womb, we breathe liquid, and then we incarnate into the physical form and start to breathe air. When we pass away or pass over, we excel that last breath and we ‘decarnate’ back to Source or Consciousness.
If we study and understand the laws of physics, all energy has to go somewhere. If you turn on a lamp, the energy goes from the switch to the lightbulb. If you turn the lamp off, it goes from the lightbulb back to its source. One step further, if you think of water, when it is heated it evaporates into the clouds, the clouds capture it, it hits a mountain, it rains or snows, the water ends up back in the river and all rivers eventually end up back at their source. It is one big cycle.
Do you think that we all experience the same emotions and processes before what we call ‘death’?
I don’t know. My scientific mind would require data to support this claim. However, I would say that some of the most energetic experiences that we encounter are birth, sex and death. They are very powerful experiences. I have met people who have had NDA’s (Near Death Awarenesses), so they have experienced the spiritual world before passing over, and sometimes up to weeks in advance. I have spoken to some people who actually left their bodies before impact took place so they wouldn’t feel the pain. So, however we experience death, I think the energy is the same but how we get to that point is different for everybody.
Is death something to be feared?
Not at all. I always quote John Lennon who said “Death is getting out of one car and getting into another”. I think that death is a progression of a staircase that takes us to a higher form. I feel that death is unknown, and something we don’t understand. It is fear-based, and what is unknown to us as humans is something we fear . We are the only species which creates our own fear, just as we are the only species which pays to live here and measures our life by time.
So for me, death is a transformation of moving into something higher but we actually have to experience this so as to be ready for the next progression. However, reincarnation (or some version of) is a world-wide phenomenon which every religion speaks of. Some would say that death is the light at the end of the tunnel. Perhaps that is just us coming out again to start from scratch again. I hope that this is not the case. I personally believe that we go to the etheric world where we rest and recalibrate and decide if we want to be a spiritual energetic being to come back and incarnate into another physical form.
Did your psychic abilities develop naturally after your life experiences or did you have to learn how to master them?
Some people are aware of their abilities from birth. Some of us develop them through trauma and experience. I believe we all have abilities, it is just about how we come to discover them and if indeed we choose to open up that door and develop them. I don’t know if i would be doing what I do today had I not lost my brothers and family members and lived through that trauma. That trauma opened up my doorway to my gifts and abilities which perhaps would have remained forever undiscovered.
Is reading the Oracle an important part of your practice?
There are many different tools for the toolbox. I call them spiritual development tools. You can use an Oracle card, a crystal ball, a cup of coffee…I think it’s how you want to work with the information and whatever your definition of Oracle may be.
How do you envisage the afterlife in layman’s terms?
I always believe that education leads us to knowledge, knowledge leads to wisdom and wisdom leads to some form of Higher Consciousness, or Nirvana, whatever you wish to call it. But with everything, there is a hierarchy as we always report to somebody or someone. Perhaps at some stage we get to a point where we don’t have to reincarnate because there is simply nothing more to be learnt. And there, we can just rest.
Life is an acronym; Learn It From Experience. I do think there is some kind of system that allows us to repeat the learning cycle if we so choose to.
“Be kind, be caring and be compassionate in everything you do. Until our next soul adventure together, dare to dream, dare to explore, dare to live and find that diamond within.”
