A Spiritual Address by Ash Robinson.
Good evening, everyone. I’m Ash Robinson, a medium from South London. I’m Vice President of Wimbledon Spiritualist Church and President of Hatbridge Spiritualist Church, two little sister churches that are very close to my heart.
I’m also a third-generation Spiritualist. My mum and dad, and my nan and grandad, have all been involved in the church. Now we are bringing up a fourth generation, as I have three boys aged four, eight and eleven.
My wife is Irish and comes from a Catholic background, so our boys are growing up with an understanding of Christianity, Catholicism, Spiritualism and spirituality. Somewhere amongst all of that, we want them to have the freedom to choose their own path.
I’ve also recently become an author. My first book, Spirituality Simplified, is a plain-English guide to living spiritually. That is quite an achievement for me. Those who know me will know that it took me about ten years to finish my last book, and that was a colouring-in book!
One of the subjects I explore in the book is joy, and I believe joy has a much deeper spiritual significance than we sometimes realise.
Joy as Spiritual Alignment
There may be many reasons why we are having this human experience, but I certainly believe that one of them is our journey in pursuit of happiness.
Joy, that glorious, fizzing, heart-swelling feeling, isn’t simply a mood we wear like a jumper when the weather is good. To me, it is a spiritual frequency.
When you’re experiencing joy, you’re tuned in. You’re plugged into the divine Wi-Fi and getting five bars of soul signal. It is alignment. It is resonance. It is you saying yes to life, experiences, love and all things sacred.
I’m not suggesting you need to be doing cartwheels across the astral plane to be spiritual. But I do believe joy is an energy that clears the cobwebs, brightens the aura and opens us to guidance.
Some of my best readings, the proper goosebump ones, have started with a giggle and ended with full-on belly laughter. Some of the deepest healing can happen when a whole circle is laughing together.
Why?
Because I believe joy is medicine.
It is living, breathing, chuckling proof that light can get in, even when life feels really heavy. Especially then.
People sometimes think spirituality needs to be solemn. I don’t believe it does. I’ll take a sacred chuckle over a silent chant every single day. That doesn’t mean I’m cracking knock-knock jokes while meditating, at least not often, but I genuinely believe humour can be holy.
Finding Joy in Ordinary Moments
Joy isn’t only about laughter. It can be found in those small, sacred moments that remind us why being human is worth all the bother.
The other day, I was having a really rough one. You know the sort. I was stressed and tired, the kids were climbing the walls, the animals had been sick in the hallway, the works.
Then, out of nowhere, my little boy Oscar toddled up to me and said, “Daddy, I just want to tell you something. I love you.”
Boom.
Heart exploded. Spirit realigned.
Joy didn’t just knock at the door. It smashed the door in and gave me a great big cuddle.
There are other everyday moments too. One of my boys might look at me with that twinkle in his eye, perhaps a cheeky grin or a knowing smile, and for that split second everything feels right with the world.
That’s joy.
It isn’t necessarily comedy or entertainment, and it certainly isn’t pretending that everything is perfect. Joy is presence. It is appreciation. It is a full-body “yes” to the moment you are in.
It might be hearing your child laughing from another room, catching a beautiful sunset while you’re putting the bins out, or finding yourself in a spiritual circle howling with laughter at something ridiculous.
For me, these are glimpses of God.
It is when I am experiencing joy that I feel most like myself, most connected and most capable. I become more productive, loving and effective, not because the external world has suddenly become perfect, but because I am aligned with something deeper.
So, if you’re searching for spiritual alignment, don’t only look towards the stars. Look around you.
Find the giggle. Chase the grin. Count your blessings as though they are gold coins, because they are.
Five Ways to Bring More Joy Into Your Week
There are five simple things I encourage people to try.
First, make somebody laugh, even if that somebody is you. Tell a ridiculous joke, send a daft meme or pull a face at yourself in the mirror. Laughter is like spiritual WD-40. It gets the creaks out of your soul.
Second, count your blessings. Literally. Don’t simply say, “I’m grateful.” Name five things and say them out loud as though you mean them. Include the silly things too. Tea bags, your nan’s gravy, heated seats. All of it.
Third, put on that song. You know the one. The song that makes you sing badly and dance even worse. Music is pure frequency. Plug yourself into joy and turn it up, preferably with a little shimmy around the kitchen.
Fourth, surprise somebody with kindness. Text someone to say you’re thinking about them. Make an unexpected cup of tea. Let somebody pull out in front of you in traffic without swearing. I know, that’s advanced-level spirituality!
Finally, find the funny in the messy. The burnt toast, the broken zip on the rugby bag or the child who has turned your living room into a Lego minefield. Take a moment, step back and laugh. We often say, “We’ll laugh about this one day.”
Perhaps that day might as well be today.
The Boomerang of Life
Thinking about joy also brings me to another important part of our spiritual journey: karma.
When my boys get involved in spiritual philosophy, being Generation Alpha, they have a wonderful way of putting traditional ideas into plain English.
We talk a lot about personal responsibility, both at church and at home. My eldest boy, Ethan, once described it brilliantly. He said that life and personal responsibility are like a boomerang. You have to throw wisely because what goes around comes around.
That, in many ways, captures my understanding of karma.
Karma sometimes gets presented as divine revenge, as though there is a spiritual parking inspector hiding in the clouds waiting for you to pinch somebody’s biscuits so the universe can punish you.
Other people treat it like a points system. Do something good and you earn a karma gold star. Cut somebody up in traffic and you lose ten karma points. A bit like a supermarket loyalty card with reincarnation thrown in as a special offer.
That isn’t how I see it.
For me, karma isn’t punishment. It is purification.
It is the soul’s accounting system, but it is far more nuanced than simply saying, “You did something bad, so now you get a flat tyre.”
Karma and Personal Responsibility
I see karma as operating alongside other spiritual principles.
There is cause and effect. What we send out into the world eventually has consequences.
There is vibration. Everything is energy, and the energy we carry affects our experience of the world.
There is correspondence, the idea of “as within, so without”. What is happening in our outer world can sometimes reflect what is happening within us.
There is compensation, where our intentions, efforts and energy have consequences.
Then there is free will. We have choices, but every choice has consequences, including the choice not to choose.
And, crucially, there is personal responsibility.
For me, that is the crown jewel.
You can pray, smudge and crystal yourself into a wonderfully calm state, but if you’re still behaving like a spiritual gremlin towards everybody else, the universe will be making notes.
Karma is not about blame. It is about balance. It is about restoring harmony to the music of the soul.
When we act with kindness, generosity and quiet courage, we put something into the world that can lift both ourselves and other people. That isn’t about collecting reward points. It is about the progress of the soul.
When we act with deliberate cruelty, selfishness or malice, there are consequences too. They may not be immediate, but those experiences can ultimately bring lessons that move us back towards alignment.
What Do We Do With This Life?
I believe karma cannot necessarily be fully understood during our earthly experience.
At the end of this life, perhaps there is a kind of spiritual reckoning, not conducted by some bearded judge sitting in the sky, but through our own higher consciousness.
From that greater perspective, perhaps we make decisions about what comes next. Do we serve Spirit and help guide others? Do we reincarnate and have another attempt at some of life’s lessons? Might we choose a difficult life, not as punishment, but as a profound challenge through which the soul can learn and develop?
That takes us into the enormous subject of reincarnation, which is another discussion entirely.
But regardless of whether you believe in reincarnation, this life is important right now.
What matters is what we do with it.
What we do during this earthly life, and what we do following the change that we call death, matters. I believe the soul never truly dies. It learns. Healing remains possible, whether that takes several lifetimes or an infinite amount of time within the spirit world.
Karma, therefore, is not about keeping a naughty list and handing out divine punishment.
It is about energetic education.
Every kind word, every grudge released, every apology sincerely given and every wrong we try to put right contributes towards the development of the soul.
In the end, perhaps karma is simply love with a very, very long memory.
So whether we are talking about karma or joy, the really
This article was drafted using Chat GPT AI from a transcript of the medium’s spiritual address during our Divine Service. Edited by humans. Featured image by Chat GPT.
