How to Develop Your Natural Psychic Abilities

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2 Contents Introduction... 4 Why Do We Have Intuition, And Do We All Have It?... 9 Why Hone My Psychic Skills? What Is Intuition? Intuition Defined How Do You Know If You Are Being Intuitive? Two Step Intuition Process Types Of Psychic Abilities Predictions Divination Tools As Training Wheels Or Aids Ask Very Specific Questions Staying Objective Traumatic Memories Knowing Your Place How To Develop Your Own Psychic Abilities Remove Your Doubts Establish A Need For The Psychic Ability Or Feat Things To Be Aware Of And How To Handle Them Expansion Or Tightening Sensations Visuals Hearing Voices Taking On The Pain Of Others Unseen Forces Restlessness Or Unbalance When It Concerns Your Own Life Use Psychic Abilities Benevolently What To Do About Psychic Attacks Protection

3 Can Mind Altering Drugs Aid In Psychic Development? Psychic Games To Play Color / Number Dice Cards The Envelope Telephone Psychic Exercises Exercise 1: Getting In Touch With Yourself Exercise 2: Becoming Aware Of Senses Exercise 3: How Can You Tell If You Are Seeing The Past, Present, Or Future? Exercise 4: Making Use Of Polarities Exercise 5: Learning Your Own Symbols Getting In Touch With Your Intuitive Vocabulary Exercise 6: Useful Questions For Finding Out The State Of Another Person Exercise 7: A Group Exercise Exercise 8: Awaken Your Psychic Centers Exercise 9: Psychokinesis Exercises More To Know About Your Psychic Abilities Spirits And Guides Doing A Psychic Reading Your First Reading Conclusion Bibliography

4 Introduction The extra ordinary powers of the mind known as psychic abilities are an inherent gift to all of us. Melita Denning and Osborne Phillips tell us in their book The Development Of Psychic Powers (1988) that psychic powers are our birthright. Some people more naturally express these abilities than others. For the others, psychic abilities may be developed through study and practice. It is also called intuition or psychic abilities. In more conservative circles it is called a hunch or gut feeling. The term ESP, extra sensory perception, was coined by the late Dr. Joseph Banks Rhine. He was a professor and head of the parapsychology laboratory at Duke University. Dr. Rhine was ridiculed by some and admired by others, and he was working with parapsychology at a time when it was considered taboo. It is a good thing that the 6th sense is gaining a revived recognition of its usefulness. Laura Day says in her book Practical Intuition: How To Harness The Power Of Your Instincts And Make It Work For You (1996), As the end of the second millennium draws near, the limitations of logic, rationality, and the scientific method as the sole means of guiding our lives are becoming all too painfully clear. Increasingly our world is turning to modes of perception and understanding that don t rely on evidence presented to our senses, modes such as intuition and faith The early Greeks [Greece being the birthplace of logic, philosophy, and the rudiments of the scientific method] recognized that rational thought is incomplete and needs the support of intuition. Belleruth Naparstek goes further by saying in her book Your Sixth Sense: Unlocking The Power Of Your Intuition (1997), We ve entered a new stage of our human evolution, a time when the development of our psychic capacity is essential to our survival. Without a new and stronger kind of psychic attainment, without a deeper sense of spiritual connectedness to the whole, and 4

5 without a much larger sense of self than we as a species has ever attained, our planet could easily die from out of control aggression, territoriality, and greed. So it s no coincidence that we find ourselves in a time of great interest in psychic phenomena, of widespread longing for connection to our virtual core. More and more people are looking for ways to join with the mysterious, the wider perspective, the divine, the world of spirit. People who are by nature very devotional and feel a close connection to their spiritual natures are most prone to having spontaneous mystical experiences that transcend the limitations of time and space. Specific examples of natural states that mystics and saints have been known to reach include levitation, ecstatic trances, and the ability to live on very little or no food. In India, yogis can slow their breathing down in meditative states so that their vital signs all but disappear. They are also able to generate amazing amounts of body heat during meditation. Tibetan monks have been known to meditate in the snow without adequate clothing, and they do not become cold. Many spiritual adepts lived on little or no food, and yet live healthy and vibrant lives. In religious history, the Catholic Church has documented accounts of saints demonstrating special powers (called siddhis in India) which are very advanced psychic abilities. Once consciousness can bend space and time, this is the ultimate psychic ability. One of these is called levitation, which is the experience of floating slightly above the ground. Levitation happened usually when priests were caught up in the deep reverence of officiating the Holy Mass. St. Francis was a saint famous for levitation. He was said to float from the ground when he was in ecstatic states of communion with God. There are also descriptions of priests and nuns who spontaneously have bled at the hands and feet. Spontaneous bleeding of this sort is known in the Catholic Church as stigmata. These locations correspond 5

6 to the wound sites where the crucified Christ was nailed to the cross (although some mystics had visions pertaining to the exact location being in the wrists rather than in the palms of the hands). The occurrence of stigmata in the upper body being more correctly located in the wrists is referred to by Eileen Freeman in her book Touched By Angels (1993). Here, she writes of a contemporary saint, and she declares that in the twentieth century, the stigmatic Therese Neumann had a comparable experience. These feats are also seen in people who can bend spoons and forks, or move objects. This is called telekinesis. There are others who are quite accurate in psychic tests. They have participated with in depth experiments in the past 50 years. Children are said to be exceptionally intuitive until they lose their abilities as they grow older. Young children are believed to be closer to the spirit world and spiritual abilities because they are not completely entrenched in the ways of human physical reality. Remote viewing is another well tested and proven psychic ability that even governments and authorities make use of. Police departments have also been known to make use of psychics, or intuitives, in solving crimes. A psychic or intuitive is someone who uses their intuition consciously, rather than unconsciously. Most people use intuition unconsciously every day. Some have learned to use it with precision and accuracy. As to the nature of psychic abilities in general, there are many schools of thought. Some believe it is by higher functioning of the human brain that psychic abilities are possible. Others believe that it is by God s grace that these higher powers are possible in a human. However, ultimately, psychic abilities can be said to stem from the limitless nature of the larger Mind, synchronous with Universal Law. Because all of us are aspects of this one force, this larger awareness is part of our experience even while we focus our consciousness in the limited material plane of duality and identify with it. One way to describe our relationship to the Cosmic Unity is through what can be called the subjective or subconscious mind, which functions as the repository of memories and feelings. The subconscious perceives by intuition, and obeys the conscious mind, according to Dr. Joseph Murphy. In his book, The Power Of Your Subconscious Mind (1963) Murphy states, The subconscious sees without the natural organs of vision... [and] has the capacity of clairvoyance and clairaudience. 6

7 Intuition is an ability you already have and use every day. Exercising intuition makes it stronger, and making it a conscious process makes it more accessible. Laura Day says in her book Practical Intuition: How To Harness The Power Of Your Instincts And Make It Work For You (1996), Intuition is a capacity you are born with as a human being, like the capacity for language or thinking or appreciating music. Intuition is not a power one acquires. It s an integral part of every human mental, emotional, and psychical process. Each moment right now you receive information intuitively, you re simply unaware of the process. You use your intuition in practical reasoned decisions you make every day, from choices as mundane as to what to eat for dinner, what to major in, or who to marry. The trick to using your intuition more effectively is to bring the unconscious data it supplies to a place where your conscious mind can interpret it. You may be wondering why, if intuition is an innate ability that you use all the time why, you might ask, should we make ourselves work for what we already have? until now, using your intuition may have been a hit or miss proposition. The skill comes in knowing how to access and apply it effectively. Learning to understand the information you receive intuitively requires structure, Just as thinking is improved with the structure logic provides. Whatever intuitive skills you ve retained from your childhood, you can develop them, like any other skill, with guidance and some practice Training intuition [enables] you to use the different capacities together more effectively. We use our intuition all the time, but we don t realize it. Why don t we recognize intuition if we use it every day? Laura Day continues on this subject, At a very young age we learned to distrust our intuition. As we grow up we learned to judge data as real or pertinent or objective, 7

8 and to weed out what is not real by society s standards. Over the years, this mental censoring becomes an unconscious, automatic process Another reason you don t recognize intuition is that it speaks a different language. Intuition is often symbolic and fragmentary. Only on rare occasions does it speak in complete sentences. What s more, intuitive information often does not make sense, especially when it involves the future. As a result, we train ourselves to dismiss it. If you doubt the validity of intuition, you can either allow it to prove itself or you will prove it doesn t work yourself. Your belief in whether your intuition works are not, or the information of others works, will affect the outcome of your experience. If you are skeptical, your experience with intuition will most likely be a disappointment. If you re optimistic, and approach with curiosity, you will most likely receive positive results. Most people are skeptics. Many people do not believe that intuition can find answers, and even those who wish to develop their intuition may be skeptical about their abilities. However, as with all new skills and abilities, to pretend is where it all begins. Set aside your rational mind and your doubts about your own abilities, and just pretend that you are able to use your intuition to find answers to anything and everything for a little while, and see what happens. You are always welcome to go back to a rational belief that you do not have these abilities, but for now give it a whirl and see what happens. Laura Day expounds on the value of pretending in her book Practical Intuition: How To Harness The Power Of Your Instincts And Make It Work For You (1996), As we become older and mature, many of us lose touch with this important ability to pretend because of the overwhelming social pressures to be logical and sensible. Even young children are encouraged not to make things up. What s more, our ability to pretend and to create has been replaced to a large degree by technology, like videos and television and advertising, which gives our brains most of what they need to keep entertained. All of this is too bad, because pretending performs some very useful functions. Pretending is also a valuable ability when learning a new skill. Before we master something, it helps to pretend that we ve already acquired the skill even modern science is based on pretending pretending often precedes faith. Indeed, pretending often generates faith, and, before we know it, we no longer need to pretend. Intuition is not limited by space or time. Intuition does not require that you know anything about the subjects you re inquiring about. It doesn t even require that you understand all the impressions that you receive. This is the beauty of intuition. Even though you may know nothing about refrigerators, a refrigerator repair man may come to you and ask you why a particular refrigerator is resisting repair. You can find out through intuition, by describing feelings, pictures or words coming to you about the dysfunction of the appliance. The refrigerator repair man can 8

9 then use your clues to determine the problem. You can know the answer to any question. You have access to all the answers. It is not the same as knowing everything consciously. It is a different kind of knowing. Intuition plays a part in all your decisions. Feelings are emotional senses without explanation, and we tend to dismiss feelings as unreasonable and untrustworthy, but feelings are facts. Feelings are often what overrides the rational mind in the decision making process, and in fact can be a very trustworthy steering mechanism through your reality. It is not uncommon for someone to delay a trip based on a feeling, only later to find out that a disaster had been avoided, or an opportunity would ve been lost if they had left. Feelings, or gut feelings, can be very accurate indicators of the right choices for you. Why Do We Have Intuition, And Do We All Have It? A scientific hypothesis is that intuition is first and foremost a survival tool. It gives you information instantaneously that you might need in a survival situation. The ability to be in tune to the surrounding environment was a life and death situation in primitive times. People who were more intuitive had a better chance of survival. Laura Day says in her book Practical Intuition: How To Harness The Power Of Your Instincts And Make It Work For You (1996), We tend to rely on our more advanced and civilized senses, but remember that our most reliable senses are the ones that developed first. Our sense of touch develops before our sight, our intellect last of all. Nature tells us what we can count on to survive, and we were given intuition for a reason. Most of your life questions related in some 9

10 way to the future, and intuition, being foremost a survival tool, is especially adept at addressing the future. Most likely it is the sense (or collection of senses) specifically geared to gathering information that is not available in your immediate environment. For most of us, this process takes place unconsciously and with much interference from our logical minds and emotional patterning. In becoming aware of our intuitive information before it s fully assembled and before we have unwittingly acted on it, we bring this valuable data above our emotional consciousness to the level of our intellect. As a result, we make better reasoned decisions. Everyone has intuition. Even those who think they don t, yes, they have it too. How often have you thought of your friend, and lo and behold, your phone rings and you know it is your friend? Have you ever had a dream that came true? You have at least once blurted something out and your friend said, Hey! I was just thinking that, you read my mind! Haven t you ever known without knowing how you know something? You have had intuitive experiences galore, but you might not have realized that was what they were. Most often these experiences are dismissed without thinking much about them, or we chalk it up to coincidence. Everyone operates in their life not even knowing how much they use their subconscious abilities. It is actually a two way street between the subconscious mind and the conscious mind. The subconscious not only communicates with the conscious mind, giving it privy information now and then from the realms of the unknown, or psychic hits, but it also takes direction from the conscious mind. What you re conscious mind projects as a desire, your subconscious goes about 10

11 creating, giving you information along the way as to its workings. Joseph Murphy explains this in his book Psychic Perception: The Magic Of Extrasensory Power (1971), It is best that you have a healthy regard and respect for your thought. Thought is the most powerful force in the universe Your subconscious mind could be likened to an iceberg 90% of it is below the surface. It is your subconscious mind that does the work according to the orders given it by your conscious mind. What you think with your conscious mind you produce with your subconscious. In other words, your subconscious mind knows at least 90% more than your conscious mind does, if not more. Your subconscious mind works with the mathematics of the cosmos, all probabilities and all outcomes. It knows the future, it knows the past, and it knows all the possibilities for your life. It is one with the universal mind. It knows who will be standing on a particular street corner at 2:20 PM on a particular day, and will attempt to arrange that chance meeting you need to have with that stranger who will soon become one of your closest friends or business partners. The subconscious mind will nudge you to take the bus that day instead of the train, or give you the idea to take a different route home than you normally do. This is how psychic hits work. There is a constant rapport between the conscious mind and the unconscious mind. If you realize that this is not such a mystery, and learn how to hear your subconscious when it speaks to you, your life can have some very magical unfolding s based on following the directions you are given from within yourself. The attainment of psychic abilities is the direct attempt at learning to tune in to the subconscious and using it consciously. Although the human mind will never be able to hold all that the subconscious does, it can definitely be trained to interact with and take direction from the larger self that is directing your life. The advantages of being able to do this are limitless. Why Hone My Psychic Skills? One question that might come up is, Why hone my intuitive skills if anyone can do an intuitive reading, and everyone has this ability? Laura Day gives the answer in her book Practical Intuition: How To Harness The Power Of Your Instincts And Make It Work For You (1996): While anyone can generate intuitive information, it takes an experienced practitioner to interpret the information in a useful way. The skill is in knowing how to ask questions, and how to interpret the intuitive responses. The real challenge is in the interpretation. This is where the training is needed. This is why one must practice intuitive readings and then check on the accuracy in order to know that the interpretation of the symbols has been accurate. Not very 11

12 many people check the accuracy of their intuition, and this is why not everyone can give a reading without any training. Having exercised and practiced using your psychic abilities gives you an advantage that you did not have before in moving through your life. Now you can access more information when making your decisions, and use more of your senses than only five physical senses and the limited human intellect. You can use the viewpoint of the Universal Mind to make your decisions rather than the human viewpoint without extra information. Shakti Gawain says about learning how to use your psychic abilities in her book Developing Intuition: Practical Guidance For Daily Life (2000), Quite simply, [it is useful] because it s probably one of the most valuable things you will ever do for yourself. It actually takes relatively little time, and the potential rewards are enormous. Intuition is an important resource that can greatly contribute to our success and fulfillment in life once we know how to follow it, intuition is a very accurate guiding force in all aspects of life. Without it, we are at a great disadvantage.ʺ Enid Hoffman puts it even more simply in Develop Your Psychic Skills (1981), We develop our psychic skills for the same reason that we developed any other skill because they enhance our lives. Some people fear that developing their psychic skills would change their lives too much, or interfere with living a normal life. While having psychic abilities can greatly enhance your life for the better, there are no true disadvantages to developing them. There are adjustments that must be made however. For instance, you may become aware of disembodied spirits that no one else can see, but whom you have a working relationship with. Another example would be that you may be quite aware of someone who has a serious illness, and yet you must say nothing unless you are asked by that person to expound on it. It is not appropriate to be telling everyone that you are seeing this or that in their energy. There can be some frustration involved when you know more than the average person about the people that you meet. However, you must be aware that you may not always be 100% right about what you are seeing, especially in the beginning. Either that or you may not be interpreting it correctly. 12

13 Eileen J. Garrett says in her book Many Voices: Autobiography Of A Medium (1968), I am often asked if my psychic experiences disturb my daily life. On the contrary, they enrich it I have heard people with similar powers speak of themselves as being in the grip of something that leaves them helpless, that others find them difficult to understand This has been true of great writers and thinkers through the ages, but I have never felt myself set apart. One simultaneously lives a separate existence, aware of a tenuous level of experience as one rubs shoulders with one s fellows, while underneath there is the pattern that plays unconsciously and perpetually, a web many colored and delicate, but filled with the awareness of what is happening to each and all below the surface. Living with psychic abilities can add more layers to your experience than you ever thought possible. Imagine what it would be like not only to hear the words being spoken in a conversation, but also being aware of the energy patterns of the person s aura you are conversing with, the emotional tones, the history, the mental processes, all of it in a deep way that you have never experienced before. Some might say it would be like living in an altered state all the time, and yet have more lucidity and clarity than any mind altering substance would facilitate. Joseph Murphy says it quite eloquently in his book Psychic Perception: The Magic Of Extrasensory Power (1971): For every man and woman, the cultivation of the intuitive faculty is of great significance. Intuition offers instantaneously that which the intellect or reasoning mind could accomplish only after weeks or months of monumental trial and error. When our reasoning faculties fail us in our perplexities, the intuitive faculty sings the silent song of triumph If you will only believe, and not just pretend to believe, that Infinite Intelligence is guiding you in all your ways in your thoughts, words, and deeds you will be led along the right road Your subconscious mind is one with infinite intelligence and boundless wisdom It can provide you with the right idea and can free you from limitations of all kinds. What Is Intuition? One might ask what the difference is between intuition and psychic abilities. Actually, there is no difference. The word psychic seems weird and far out to some people, whereas intuition is a word that is more acceptable in conservative circles. The words psychic and intuition are used interchangeably and synonymously. However, one might say that intuition is a precursor to having psychic abilities, or becoming a psychic. Developed intuition leads to psychic abilities. Intuition comes from the right hemisphere of the brain, the primary brain. According to Enid 13

14 Hoffman in Develop Your Psychic Skills (1981), the right brain knows, and the left brain guesses and theorizes. Shakti Gawain says in her book Developing Intuition: Practical Guidance For Daily Life (2000), Intuition is a natural thing. We are all born with it. Young children are very intuitive, although in our culture they are often trained out of it early in life some of us consciously develop this ability, while a majority of us learn to disregard and deny it Fortunately, with some practice most of us can reclaim and develop our natural intuitive abilities. We can learn to be in touch with our intuition, to follow it, and to allow it to become a powerful guide in our lives the intuitive mind [has] access to an infinite supply of information, including information that we have not gathered directly through personal experience. It appears to be able to tap into a deep storehouse of knowledge and wisdom the universal mind. These three types of psychic skills are involved with intuition: Clairvoyance: clear seeing, usually having to do with images, pictures, symbols. Clairsentience: having to do with sensing, or feelings, knowing. Clairaudience: having to do with hearing, actual words that you literally hear, also celestial music or whooshing sounds. Intuition Defined 1) Intuition Is A Nonlinear Process. This means that intuition does not reason and it doesn t need to. It simply knows, instantly. Reasoning goes through a process of analysis and deduction, and then draws conclusions. Intuition does not follow these steps. It gets glimpses of bits and pieces in the form of symbols. 2) Intuition Gathers Information Through A Non Empirical Process. Empirical means: based on experience or experiment, and sensory information through your five senses of taste, touch, hearing, sight, and smell. The empirical process of gathering 14

15 information is based on what has already happened. This has to do with past experiences, facts of reality, and other concrete parameters. Intuition, being non empirical, does not perceive information through your senses. However, information received through the intuition becomes empirical, and can be used by the reasoning mind as such. 3) Intuition Is Interpreting Information. Intuitive impressions must be interpreted if they are to be useful. The information received through intuition is symbolic rather than literal. Intuition works with internal language. Very rarely does intuition speak with the spoken language. The symbols come in detail, more economically than in words. We all know the saying, A picture says 1,000 words. This is true with the language of symbols. 4) Intuition Responds To Questions Intuition must be set in motion by a question. The question focuses intuition in the same way that a captain or pilot needs the longitude and latitude in order to pinpoint the location of a mayday call from a stranded boat. When using intuition one is tapping in to a vast array of information. Unless a question is asked, intuition does not know what to pull first, for in every human there are millions of questions every day. Intuition must be directed as to which one of these questions to answer. Laura Day says in her book Practical Intuition: How To Harness The Power Of Your Instincts And Make It Work For You (1996), Intuition responds to questions, even the ones we haven t consciously asked. How Do You Know If You Are Being Intuitive? Many people who are just beginning to develop their intuition are not sure whether or not they are just protecting their own fears or hopes, have made something up, or are making a lucky guess. This is a valid question. The answer is that you don t really know until you have practiced for a little while and received feedback on how accurate you have been. However, there are a few ways to know when you are in the intuitive state. These 15

16 will become your signposts that let you know you are ready for the reading you are about to begin. Next time you are in an intuitive state, take notice of how you feel when you are there. There might be a sense of lightness, heaviness, changes in your perceptions like heightened hearing or heightened smell or touch, warmth, coolness, a still mind, heightened intelligence, peace, different breathing the list is endless. Something will be different than your normal waking consciousness. This will let you know that you have entered an altered state. Write down these impressions when you experience them, for these are your signposts that will let you know when you are in an intuitive state. Another way to know if you have been using your intuition, is the extent to which the impressions you received during the reading are confirmed by experience, according to Laura Day in her book Practical Intuition: How To Harness The Power Of Your Instincts And Make It Work For You (1996). She also advises, Practice applying your intuition often. Each time you consciously access your intuition, get feedback by comparing the impressions you received with reality. In a very short time you will learn to distinguish a genuine intuitive impression from your feelings or projections, particularly your hopes and fears. Two Step Intuition Process The first step is receiving the symbols, the language of the inner self, and this is a nonlinear process. The second step is interpreting the symbols and putting them in a language that the human mind can understand. This is a linear process. The same way that a translator works, for instance one who translates German into the English language, this is how intuition works. The logical mind makes sense of the fragmented images and feelings that the intuition perceives. Assembling intuitive information is a talent in itself. The practitioner needs to find the meaning of the messages given by the unconscious, through symbols, of the inner self. This process of learning to translate the language of the unconscious can be laborious, difficult and may take a little time at first. However, This process becomes instantaneous once you re a 16

17 practiced intuitive, according to Laura Day in her book Practical Intuition: How To Harness The Power Of Your Instincts And Make It Work For You (1996). She also sums up what intuition is with this statement: The intuitive state is simply one in which you gather information without relying on your senses or mental processes. Instead of blindly relying on this intuitive information, you must then assemble, verify, and interpret in a rigorous fashion. In that sense, intuition is a two step process, not unlike the event of first having dreams and then waking up to interpret them. To add to what she is saying, one impression usually suggests others. Intuition works much like dominoes. The first image is shown, then the next and the next. Very rarely does intuition show the whole picture all at once. You are already intuitive, you just need to practice with it and become comfortable with this ability. Even at an early stage, you will be amazed by your intuitive abilities. The trick is to go with your first impressions, and not second guess what you re getting. This is most important. However, if you re going to use your intuition for something like betting on horses, choosing stocks, business risks, or other financial gambles, make sure you have practiced long enough to know that your intuition is working correctly, before you invest money based on what your intuition tells you! Types Of Psychic Abilities First let s clarify what specific psychic skills are called. You may have heard many of these terms, but now you will know exactly what each of them means. Clairvoyance literally means clear vision. It refers to visual insights which sometimes override the field of vision in a spontaneous manner. These experiences may also be invoked through meditative states. For example, Dr. Judith Orloff is a contemporary psychiatrist who has learned over the years how to appropriately use her natural gift of clairvoyance to help clients. As she describes in her book, Second Sight (1996) regarding the ability she learned to cultivate, It was a gradual process, but I became adept at staying attuned to many different levels at once. Intuitive impressions would often spontaneously pop up in the middle of a session. Sometimes there would only be a single image, 17

18 sometimes many. I discovered that it wasn t the number or complexity that mattered simple, straightforward impressions can be the most potent. Clairvoyance also pertains to the ability to see auras. It is not unusual for a psychic to be able to see auras, if not with the physical eye, at least with the inner eye. The way in which Dr. Orloff first learned to develop and tame her natural gifts was through her early experience in a paranormal phenomena research laboratory. This was located at the Neuropsychiatric Institute of the University of California in Los Angeles, and research psychologist Dr. Thelma Moss ran it in the late 1960 s. In her initial interview with Dr. Moss, the art of psychometry was introduced to Dr. Orloff, which is a process whereby objects belonging to a person are used to help induce psychic intuitions about them. By holding in her hands the house keys of Dr. Moss, who encouraged her to shut her eyes, relax, and describe the house, young Judith learned that her interior visionary capabilities were quite advanced. This form of psychic ability is called psychometry. Her accuracy and detail in the process of describing the house convinced Dr. Moss that she could be a valuable asset in the lab. Dr. Orloff also had the chance to work with a research project called The Mobius Group in southern California, which worked in conjunction with police departments, insurance companies and private groups needing the assistance of psychics. There, she learned how to do remote viewing, which was the modus operandi of the group. This skill may be described as a concentration on a specific objective, such as the location or other unknown information about an object or person from a distance. In her case, she passed her hands, in a light trance state, over a map, feeling the energy change and guide her to certain locations. She was also encouraged to draw what she saw in her field of interior vision. It was through this training that she later learned to read her subjects while holding her attention on them at other levels simultaneously, as mentioned earlier. Remote viewing is another form of clairvoyance. Remote viewing means that a person can see what is happening in another place, or observe an object from a great distance. Many documented experiments were conducted where a viewer would report on what he or she was seeing in a different physical location than where he or she was present. This was verifiable information. Clairaudience is similar to clairvoyance in that the auditory sense is heightened, and voices or sounds can be heard psychically. Clairaudience means clear hearing. The sounds can be described as 18

19 radio signals from varying levels of universal air waves, including our own Higher Nature. Voices can be to warn us of impending danger, or of spiritual guidance. This psychic skill is perhaps more commonly accessed by most people (given that we hear ourselves think so much of the time) as well as the ability to be clairsentient. Clairsentience means, in essence, to feel. Many say that it is clear sensing. This can also be called empathy. Clairsentience is when we feel the feelings of others and sometimes these feelings might be so prominent that they may seem as if they are our own feelings. Very often, healers who work with people who are ill feel their physical symptoms as they open themselves up to higher frequencies in order to channel healing energy. This is a process of clairsentience at a concentrated level. Claircognizance is a form of this ability, which means to know. A person who is claircognizant knows without knowing how they know. The scientific process of assessing ESP has been an interest in the West since the Society of Psychical Research was founded in 1882 in England. An American society was established a few years later, with similar groups now in other countries, and what is known today as parapsychology has come to be regarded by some as an accepted field of scientific study. One of the most well known modern researchers was Dr. Joseph Banks Rhine of Duke University in North Carolina (who coined the term ESP). Hansel reported in his book ESP: A Scientific Evaluation (1966), In 1934, [Rhine] published Extra Sensory Perception, in which he gave details of research at Duke University and claimed to have found overwhelming evidence for the existence of extrasensory perception. Further research followed, and in 1940 the Duke Parapsychology Laboratory was formed with Rhine as its director. Perhaps one of the best contributions to the study of telepathy, or being able to read the minds of others, came out of Duke with the invention of the Zener cards as an experimental instrument. These cards, invented by Duke s colleague K.E. Zener, were symbols that have come to be associated with ESP testing, and they consist of a circle, a rectangle, a plus sign, wavy lines, and a five pointed star (known as ESP cards). In the experiments there was usually a sender who 19

20 would pick a card, visualize the object on it, and a receiver in another room or behind a barrier who would be instructed to guess the object. The process of telepathy has actual electrical impulses involved. When you have an idea or a thought, an electrical impulse is created in the brain on etheric levels. Thought waves throw off tiny particles of themselves as they travel, and they can travel great distances. Thought waves are not affected by solid objects, so thoughts disregard the physical laws of space and time. They pass through walls, cross cities, and traverse mountains. Eventually, they do lose their potency and can no longer be picked up by a receiver. This is much the way that a sound wave or radio wave loses its potency after it has had a chance to bounce around for a while. The process of receiving through telepathy comes in through the unconscious, or subconscious, and then is filtered to the conscious mind. The sending process goes through the conscious mind. The receiving process is rooted in the etheric connections the unconscious has to the universal mind. Because the receiving process comes in through the unconscious, there are many ways the conscious mind can become aware of what the unconscious picks up. These include receiving vague images, feelings, sensations, fragmented thoughts, etc. When telepathy is utilized by a trained sender and a trained receiver, amazing results can be documented, and they have been time and time again in many labs. Telepathy is most potent between people who have an emotional bond. It is not unusual for a mother to know when a child of hers is in danger, has been harmed, or has been injured. She knows when something is wrong. It is not unusual for lovers to know what is happening with each other even though they may be on opposite sides of the world. Stress, of course, also brings about spontaneous telepathy. When there is great need, it is not unusual for a person who has never worked on being telepathic to suddenly know. 20

21 Precognition is the ability to know the future. Precognitive dreams are not unusual, and almost everyone has had one at some point or another in life. Knowing future events can be quite useful, but also disturbing if they are of a disastrous nature. Some people are naturals at precognition, and others can develop this with training. A premonition falls in this category of psychic experiences, but it is not quite as defined as precognition. It would be more like a hunch, a vague feeling, or sensation. Precognition is more detailed and clear compared to a premonition. Seeing the future is a natural occurrence. Time as we know it is a human convenience. To the eternal self, our true nature, time is simultaneous. There is no past or future. There is only the eternal now. To the eternal self, everything happens at once. Eternity is not just a long time. It is a whole different way of perception. All other versions of time are contrivances in order to organize experiences for versions of consciousness that are not aware of themselves as Eternity. People with psychic abilities can leave the time stream temporarily sticking their heads outside of it, as it were to look into the so called future or past, according to Dr. Hans Holzer in his book Are You Psychic? (1997). This is why psychic predictions are possible. Dealing with probable futures, however, is a whole other matter. The fact that time is an illusion may give us cause to re examine what we think cause and effect is. The law of cause and effect may be far more complex and sophisticated than we have previously believed. In the timeless dimensions, which is where a psychic sticks his or her head when perceiving the past or future, events themselves are stationary and may not have anything to do with cause an effect as we know it. However, this is a subject for another day! Something to think about though. The point is, the future is available to us whenever we are able to step outside of our belief in time as explained in human terms. When we are standing in the timeless dimensions, we are able to access any point in time as if it is happening now. Everyone has had the experience of having a time warp, an occasion where a large amount of time passed, but it seemed to only be a short amount, or an occasion where the opposite happened. These are moments when you have stepped out of time as it is known in human terms. One factor that is almost always involved in time warps is that there is often a feeling of 21

22 happiness and joy when time flies. Have you ever noticed that time seems to move faster when you are happy, and drags endlessly when you are depressed? Time may after all be a perception experience more than a hard and fast physical law of the universe. Even scientists are beginning to question the nature of time. They have discovered that time moves differently around large masses of matter, like black holes, and other anomalies in the universe. This is still, as yet, largely undiscovered territory. Is time itself something that will become a myth that was once believed so predominantly among the masses, much the way the masses once believed that the earth was flat? Over the years, evidence from experimental research has been found for the following extra sensory perception processes: telepathy awareness of thoughts without sensory means, such as verbal communication; clairvoyance visuals of an object or event without the known five senses; and precognition knowledge of the future without use of the five senses. These experiences are ones of perception and cognition without the activity of our usual sense organs, thus being categorized as ESP. There is another type of easily measurable psychic skill that utilizes the mental processes but has a paranormal outcome. It is known as telekinesis (also known as psychokinesis). This unusual process is defined as the ability to influence a physical object or event by thinking about it, such as the fall of a die (dice). It also includes the movement of objects through space. This particular model was scientifically researched in Russia in the late 1960 s. More on this research can be found in Sheila Ostrander s book Psychic Discoveries Behind The Iron Curtain, written in A direct experience with telekinesis is related by the psychiatrist mentioned above, Dr. Judith Orloff, when she worked in the NPI research laboratory with Dr. Moss at UCLA. At the time, a young Israeli man named Uri Geller, who was reputed to be able to bend metal objects with the force of his mind, came to the laboratory for a demonstration. He had started out by entertaining the Israeli armed forces and was discovered in a Tel Aviv nightclub by a parapsychologist who was impressed with his ability to bend people s rings from a distance. 22

23 Geller s successful experiment at the lab astounded the observers, for he was able to bend, without touching, many eating utensils into little balls as well as the metal contents of a large desk. As Dr. Orloff writes in Second Sight (1966), Uri had defied both our expectations of the physical world and our skepticism about the authenticity of performers. (In fact, she herself found out later that he had managed to bend the house key in the pocket of her dress and she could not let herself into her front door.) Related to the objectively observable outcome of psychic abilities such as telekinesis is the ancient art of water dowsing, also popularly known as water witching. People who can do this are among those who, legendarily, held a forked tree branch by each prong and traversed a person s property in a Uri Geller systematic manner, waiting for the branch to tip downward and indicate the presence of underground streams for building wells. Rosemary Althea writes of such a contemporary person in her autobiography The Eagle And The Rose (1995) when she describes a Greek man whom she counseled about healing. She says that on his home, the island of Cyprus, he could often find water and get paid for it, but that she told him his true work was as a healer. Once she helped him get started with that path she found him to be quite successful, as a man of uncommon humility, devotion to spirit and willingness to give to others Edgar Cayce The ability to see auras is described as a psychic skill that many people naturally possess, especially children. It is in the category of clairvoyance. In this experience, the varying brilliant, transparent colors emanating from a person, called the aura, are perceptible to the naked eye. In this process, it is speculated that our electro magnetic energy is radiating soul consciousness through the 23

24 vibrational levels of color corresponding to our soul pattern. This skill is related to clairvoyance, but has expanded to include the physical eyes in addition to the inner eye. Many psychics are naturally able to observe auras, and have gotten used to it since childhood. In one incident that has been written about in the life of the famous psychic Edgar Cayce, auras played a major role. As biographer Jess Stearn noted in his biography of Edgar Cayce The Sleeping Prophet (1979), apparently Cayce was able to forestall his death by instinctively refusing to step into an elevator that subsequently failed. Everyone in the elevator died. This leads us to believe that perhaps the absence of the aura is a sign of impending death. The reason he gave was that he knew something was wrong when the doors opened and he saw, momentarily, the lack of auric emanations around the people within it. Kirlian photography has been able to capture the aura in a photographic technique that was developed by a Russian research team. As husband and wife, Valentina and Semyon Kirlian began their research in 1939 and were granted government funds by Russia in 1960 to continue their work. We in the West are indebted to the scientific advances that these scientists contributed to the field of parapsychology. Dr. Orloff, who worked with Kirlian photography at the U.C.L.A. research lab, describes it as a process that records the subtle energy field of all forms of life, as well as inanimate objects. She says in Second Sight (1966) that this field extends as far as a few feet or more beyond the body, and is not detectable by most people. Kirlian Hand Photograph In conclusion to this overview, a very large component of the study of psychic skills is the experience of channeling information from other dimensions, which is a study in itself. This includes the process known as mediumship, in which mediums are in communication with discarnate souls and transmit information to the living in gatherings called séances. A similar way to get in touch with out of body sources is through the use of the Ouija Board, which has letters and numbers on it to which a pointer can go to spell out messages. Some people have attempted automatic writing in this vein, in which they hold a pen loosely and wait for it to move of its own accord. 24

25 Practitioners As to the work of psychics and readers in the art of channeling, there are many types of practitioners. They range from full trance operators such as the famous Edgar Cayce, who was able to see the body of those requiring medical readings while he was unconscious, to faith healers rapt in prayer. Many psychics are known as conscious intuitive consultants, and give their impressions. The art of channeling is varied and reflects the greater or lesser personality involvement of the person who is doing the channeling work. Channeling is mediumship. Sources for this information range from anonymous origins to spirit guides with names, who sometimes aid the mediums in contacting and facilitating communications from deceased family members. Psychic healing is another psychic ability. Many miraculous healings have happened through psychic healing sessions, much to the bewilderment of puzzled doctors. Psychic healing has to do with bringing through healing energies for the client, helping the client understand and resolve karmic influences that were left unaddressed, and bringing calm, balance and peace to a distorted part of the client s energy. Often, those who possess the gift of healing have had no formal training and can do this without knowing how they even do it. However, this gift can be attained, just as all the other gifts, if a person has a true desire to do so. The ultimate psychic abilities are great spiritual powers, or siddhis. These spiritual powers include levitation, astral projection (out of body experiences), lucid dreaming, teleportation/bi location and other advanced spiritual skills. For now, start with the smaller siddhis and move up to the more advanced ones as you are able. Divination sources include pendulums, which will move in one direction or another when questions are asked, and many forms of the original Tarot cards that were once read by gypsies. Also included is scrying, or using water and glass for reading images to divine peoples fortune. Many indigenous cultures throughout the world have used shamans for guidance and healing in their society, special people who were gifted in understanding the mystical presence of wild animals and birds as messengers. These 25

26 cultures have also used sacred herbs that altered consciousness for visioning, and this tradition is gaining much popularity today. While some of the devices such as pendulums, cards and Ouija Boards, can be used by anyone to experiment, the path to increasing psychic capabilities should be undertaken seriously. A strong foundation in meditation and a desire to open to higher energies for the good of all life lays a good framework in which to avoid being misguided. The key to healthy psychic development is in establishing one s purpose and integrity, and examining any motives for personal power. A clear heart and mind creates the clearest possible experience in your endeavors into the field of psychic abilities. Predictions Sometimes someone comes to you with a question and you give an intuitive response, and then they come back to you with a question and now the response is different. Answers change depending on the actions that the person who is getting the reading took. This is a world of probable realities and probable futures. Probable realities are things that could happen, and nothing is written in stone. A person has choices, and every choice attracts a different probable future to it. Therefore, no prediction can be 100% sure of happening because probable realities are involved and all the person has to do is make a different choice and he or she changes his or her future. Sometimes the reading itself is what caused the person to choose a different path than the one that they were headed on at the time that they received the first reading. When a person makes a different choice after a reading, the next reading will have different results. Many people do not understand this and believe that you were wrong, but their choices and actions changed their path into the future. Predicting mass events is easier because then it takes a lot of people to make different choices to change the future, and this is less likely than one person s ability to change his or her mind. 26

27 Laura Day says in her book Practical Intuition: How To Harness The Power Of Your Instincts And Make It Work For You (1996), Making a prediction is viewing the strongest possibility. Predictions tend to be accurate because the pattern of any system, including human beings, tends toward stasis. I often hear people tell stories of predictions that scared them, such as, she said I will have a car accident in July. I would most certainly not forget the most obvious question to ask: how can I avoid this event? Predictions are not written in stone. There are probable futures. They may or may not happen. When an intuitive predicts something, he or she is tapping into the most probable future, not all the probable futures. This is why predictions sometimes fail, because the people involved made different decisions and different choices, which resulted in a different probable future being picked. Probable futures can also be avoided by making different choices, and part of the intuitives job is to help the client find what their choices are in order to avoid unwanted probable futures. The collective conscious works on the belief that our actions individually, and collectively as a planet and a system create a pattern and direction that, unless intercepted and rerouted, is determined by the motion of the past and present. For example, a person can roll a ball. It goes in the direction it was rolled and, if you know the terrain its rolling over and the speed at which it started, you can make a fair guess about where it will end up. Then think of thousands of balls rolling in all directions. If you know where all the balls started from, then you ll know at what speed and at which point your ball will meet another ball and change direction. You also have information available to allow you to alter the direction of a ball. In fact, you have the resources to alter the direction of all balls that your ball comes into contact with, directly or indirectly, by altering just one ball. Reality is nothing more than a consensus. 27

28 Divination Tools As Training Wheels Or Aids You can use intuitive aids as well as straight intuition. Some people like to use tarot cards, runes, tea leaves, the pendulum again the list is endless. There are multitudes of divination systems that can assist with intuition. For some, they are good training wheels for developing intuition but then they are discarded once the intuitive process is fully honed. The only difference with using intuition versus using divination techniques is that intuition does not use external cues to help find the answers. Divination tools may be very useful in the beginning until you begin to hone your abilities and trust them. Ask Very Specific Questions By using your intuition, you can ask anything and receive answers. When people wonder what questions they can ask, tell them to ask whatever they want, no limits, for they will be able to have audience with an all seeing universe and the vast knowledge that intuition can tap into and that will provide the answers. Through intuition you can find out about anything you want to know, including information about any person, place, or event in the past, present or future. It is important to learn how to ask the right questions. Much information can be lost or distorted if the questions are not asked correctly. If a question is not phrased correctly, this may distort the answer. Laura Day gives an interesting analogy in her book Practical Intuition: How To Harness The Power Of Your Instincts And Make It Work For You (1996), One of the frustrating things about working with computers is that they do only what you tell them to do. If a computer malfunctions, it s because your instructions were not correct. In a sense your intuition is like that. It answers precisely the question before it. If you want to get the right answer, you d better be sure you ask the right question. 28

29 Laura Day goes on to describe a famous example of a question put to an intuitive in ancient Greece. A powerful ruler, about to invade the lands of an enemy kingdom, asks the Oracle to see whether a great battle would be won. The Oracle responded in the affirmative. The Oracle was correct; a great battle was won. Unfortunately for the king, it was won by his rival. Had he known as much as you now do about asking questions, he would ve asked a question along the lines of this: Will I successfully invade my rival s kingdom tomorrow? Another example Day gives is: Will it rain tomorrow? The answer must be, Yes: of course it will rain tomorrow somewhere! It is easy to ask nonspecific questions, so it is good to think them out ahead of time. Always ask people who are coming for a reading to take a couple of days and write their questions out ahead of time, think them out very carefully, and be very specific. There are three requirements of a good question. 1. Each question must be specific so that a precise answer is possible. 2. Each question should be simple rather than compound. 3. Each question should be directly relevant to the issue you want to know about. Laura Day gives us some guidelines on how to construct the right question in order to get the right answers. Let us look at the pitfalls with common questions that are asked in readings. 1. Will I have enough money? Enough is not specific. Enough means something different for every person. For some people enough money means just enough to pay the bills. For others, enough money means being able to buy specific stocks that have been coveted. For others, enough money means great wealth. A more specific way to ask this question is, When (or how) will I be financially secure enough to retire? or When will I be able to afford the kind of lifestyle I want? 2. Will I be happy? This is a loaded question. For instance, one could get a head injury that limits the ability to worry, thereby making room for happiness. Also, there are no time limits specified as to when this happiness will come. For instance, happiness is often achieved upon death when entering the realms of angels and spirits, letting go of the worries on earth. It is important to be very specific. 29

30 Better questions to ask are as follows: ʺHow do I create happiness in my life? or ʺWhat prevents me from being happy? 3. Should I take the new job? The word should in this question poses problems. Whether you should or not depends on what you want. One must ask oneself what one is trying to experience by changing jobs. The following questions might be more specific: Should I take the new job if job security is my primary goal? Should I take the new job if experience rather than compensation is my primary goal? Should I take the new job if I want to spend more time with my family? 4. Should I become an artist? Questions that involve choices can also pose difficulties. For instance, one must ask oneself what the goals are for becoming an artist. A person can be an artist without being a financially successful artist and completely enjoy the process. However, one who wants to be a successful artist must incorporate this into the question. Will I be a financially successful artist? One must also define what success means, and how is it measured. 5. Will I get married and have children? This is a double question that might have two different answers. This is a common mistake. It is up to the reader to separate the two questions and answer them separately. This question should be asked, and answered, as two single questions. Staying Objective Staying objective can be a challenge, especially if you pick up particularly disturbing information. The questions a person asks are normally highly charged, and might be asked around deep healing that is needed. People ask questions because they have issues to resolve. Some people may come with a very traumatic past, and you may be inundated with scenes from this person s past if one is asking you to help with healing of certain issues connected with those events. For instance, it is not unusual to witness violent events from someone s childhood that may be directly related to an issue that is now trying to be resolved. Sometimes it is appropriate to reveal 30

31 the events and sometimes it is not. It is usually best if someone remembers these events on their own, and are not told about these events in detail. You can ask questions to determine the level of this persons conscious knowledge of their past, and encourage them to remember it. Usually traumatic events from childhood are relegated to deep memory pockets and are not conscious unless spiritual probing and age regression have taken place. Most importantly, however, more important than determining whether a person has conscious knowledge of what has happened, is to deliver the message that this person most needs to heal in connection with these past events. For instance, instead of reciting the events you are witnessing in your intuition, ask yourself what does this person most need to heal in connection with these events. When you receive this answer, deliver it. For instance, the message a person might most need to hear is, What happened to you in your childhood was not your fault. At this point a person might break down and begin to cry and tell you about what happened, especially if it is conscious. They may even want to know more about what happened if the memories are vague. Traumatic Memories When handling clients with traumatic or troubling memories, it is important to know when a psychotherapist is necessary versus an intuitive. In some cases, the intuitive can help where the psychologist cannot, especially if the questions pertain to past life issues manifested in this life and it is a spiritual dilemma rather than a psychological dilemma. It is important to know your skill level with counseling. You must remain in the area of counseling from a spiritual viewpoint, rather than a psychological viewpoint. Only a trained psychologist can work with severely abused or traumatized people when dealing with serious mental illness. This is very delicate, volatile and difficult material to work with in a person who has been traumatized, and if you have not had the experience yourself of healing from traumatic events, you are not necessarily equipped to help this person unless you have had formal training in psychology. Telling this person of other traumatic events that you see happened to him or her may not help this person at all, and in fact may compound the situation. Again, these memories must come to this person from within, and be remembered on one s own. You can encourage this by suggesting to the person that he or she do past life regression, or age regression to the childhood, and you may tell him or her that it is true that he or she was harmed at a young age or in past lives. However, it is not always appropriate to go into the details, especially if they were very horrific. 31

32 If you do feel that you re equipped to help this person, have personal experience with healing from similar events that this person has gone through, and would like to continue, help this person find their own answers by walking this person through an age regression, or through past life regression if this is the issue, and allow him or her to find out what happened. It is best when the persons own unconscious reveals what is there when it concerns these deeply traumatizing events. The unconscious is built on purpose to only release this information when the person is ready to handle it at the conscious level. This is why so many people who have been abused do not know about these events until much later in life. There is a wiser self that knows that the conscious mind was not ready and did not have the tools to handle this information. This is a safety valve that is built into the human psyche. Knowing Your Place Sometimes a person asks a question that he or she hopes is a yes. If the answer is no, it is important to be able to deliver this answer in as gentle a way as possible so that the person might be able to receive this. You may find yourself having to break hard news to people while it is difficult to find the good points of the answer. Your job however is to give these people inspiration, and hope. Even if the answer is no to a hoped for yes, try to find the benefits a person will receive even if the answer is no. It is important to deliver bad news gently and with grace. Allow your heart to open wider as you deliver bad news. Be compassionate. One of the benefits of being the translator between the unconscious to the conscious is that you are allowed to edit, whereas when channeling it is best to refrain from editing the content. If you feel that certain information is harmful or unethical, you are welcome to leave this information out. You must make these decisions yourself, rather than the guide making these decisions as in channeling. A higher power does seem to come and alert you, however, when you are about to deliver harmful or unethical information. You will know when this information is to be withheld. 32

33 How To Develop Your Own Psychic Abilities As you perform exercises for your intuition, it is much like going to the gym and exercising your body. Intuition is like a muscle that becomes strengthened once it is used often. Also, you ll believe in your own abilities more when you have more proof through your experience that your intuition can be accurate. The first thing to know about learning to use your intuition is to stick with your first response to each inquiry, even if it makes no sense at all. Usually it makes sense to the person you re doing a reading for. If it doesn t make sense right away, later the person reports that what you said was accurate. For instance, it is not unusual to give a reading to someone who doesn t agree with the answers that were given during an intuitive reading, but a year later this same person will come to you and tell you everything said was actually quite accurate. This scenario sometimes causes readers distrust in their abilities. However, the first message is always the most accurate, even if it doesn t seem so at first. Stick with your most immediate response to every inquiry. Do not think about your answer, or try to be clever, or impress anyone. It is important to let it flow. Realize that you may get a lot wrong in the beginning, do not feel that you are not intuitive if you are more often wrong than right in your guesses. As time goes on you will develop the skill and get more of them right. Just as a baby takes time to learn how to walk, so it goes with developing psychic abilities. Eventually you will be able to run with your abilities. Shakti Gawain has a few pointers for developing intuition. She says in her book Developing Intuition: Practical Guidance For Daily Life (2000), Developing your intuitive ability begins with paying attention to what s going on inside of you so that you can become aware of these inner dialogues and catch them when they are happening, or shortly afterwards The vast majority of our intuitive feelings, however, are so ordinary and mundane that we might not even think of them as intuition. She goes on to say that another key for getting in touch with intuition is learning to relax your mind and relax your body sufficiently so that you can allow your attention to move out of your 33

34 head and literally drop down into a deeper place in your body, closer to where your gut feelings reside. Simply letting your awareness move into a deeper place in your body in this way is tremendously helpful in opening the door to intuition. Acting on your intuition is very important for developing it. As you get intuitive flashes or hits, act on them so that you can verify your intuitive abilities. Your psyche responds to trusting your psychic abilities. The more you trust them, seemingly, the more accurate they become. Usually, you will only receive a piece of information, the only piece that you need in the moment. This is why it is sometimes difficult to act on intuition, for all the information does not always come all at once. However, if you take the step that is presenting itself to you in the moment, the rest of the steps come later. Using your intuition, and acting on it, can sometimes results in surprising turns of events for the better. However, it may not be appropriate to make major life decisions based on your budding intuitive skills. It is best to test your intuitive hits on smaller matters in the beginning. There will be a trial and error period until you decipher how to distinguish your intuition from all the other thoughts and feelings going on inside you. You have many voices inside you, and they re often in conflict with one another. It can be difficult to sort out which one is actually intuition speaking. The first step is to become familiar with all of these inner selves. It is important to do some subpersonality work on the self, and once you know the primary personality selves, you will know what the intuition voice is not. Intuition is beyond the personalities of the self. It is important to listen to the body in accordance with intuitive direction. Often the body is an excellent barometer as to what is happening in your life, or the life of someone you love. Shakti Gawain says in her book Developing Intuition: Practical Guidance For Daily Life (2000), It is important to recognize and become aware of the intuitive impulses we receive in our bodies, and to trust these impulses. If we are not aware, however, our bodies will find ways to get our attention. This often happens through accidents or illness. Don t forget to use all your senses in your psychic abilities. Your physical body will have certain reactions to questions; your emotional body will also react. You will receive images, smell smells, hear sounds, taste flavors, feel cool or hot, these are all ways that your intuition communicates with you. Remove Your Doubts Removing your doubts is an important part of the development of your psychic abilities. If you believe that attaining psychic abilities will be difficult, then it will be. If you believe that your 34

35 path will be easy and quick, then you will attain your psychic abilities without having to spend as much time working on it. Enid Hoffman says in her book Develop Your Psychic Skills (1981), The trouble with beliefs is that we so often mistakenly call them facts. Most people find it difficult to separate belief from facts Most of the time we are unaware that a belief we hold is negative or limiting; we are only aware that a certain area of our life is not working well. Instead of looking to our inner self to see what we really believe, we tend to look outside ourselves for external causes for our troubles In developing your psychic skills, it is imperative to look carefully at your beliefs about reality. Remember, these are only beliefs, which can be changed, and not facts about reality which you cannot change. Laura Day gives us a list of frequent ways people dismiss legitimate intuitive insights, which hinders success in our endeavors to attain spiritual powers. These responses to intuitive information must be taken out of your thinking processes in order to be successful with training intuition. 1. That doesn t make sense. 2. That isn t logical. 3. That is just made up. 4. It simply isn t possible to know for sure what will happen in the future. 5. That can t be right. 6. This isn t realistic. 7. This is silly. Establish A Need For Having Psychic Ability One thing that is of utmost importance in attaining a psychic ability is to have a need for it. If you have no emotional need for it, then it is not something you will be able to attain. For instance, if you have very little interest in becoming a doctor, not even spending 8 years in universities will make you one. You will not be able to attain the goal, for your heart isn t in it. It would be a very miserable 8 years if you pushed yourself to do it even though you didn t really want to. So you must ask yourself what the usefulness of any particular skill is. It does not have to be complicated. It can be as simple as wanting to prove to yourself that it is true that consciousness is able to manipulate matter, as in psychokinesis, or that you are evolving the development of humankind by attaining your psychic abilities. 35

36 Enid Hoffman says in her book Develop Your Psychic Skills (1981), Need seems to provide the access to the psychic skills. Need provides the access to all levels of our consciousness Need provides the compulsion. There appears to be a great inner force that works toward fulfilling our needs. Our inner self will attract what we must have to fulfill the need Whatever it is that you want to achieve, ask what it will do for you in your life, and then pursue it. Do not forget to establish an emotional need for your psychic abilities! Things To Be Aware Of And How To Handle Them As said earlier in this course, becoming psychic will change your life. It will change it for the better, but there may be some adjustments and unfamiliar territory as you enter into this new way of life. Expansion Or Tightening Sensations One of the first things you may be aware of is a sensation of tightening around your head, or tingling when you are first opening your psychic perception centers. This is natural and is symbolic of the expansion of your consciousness. It is much like stretching your physical facilities to accommodate your expanded consciousness. As time goes on, these types of physical sensations will disappear as you grow more accustomed to your new levels of awareness. Visuals Your visual facilities may also change. You may begin to see sparks of light or rays or trails, especially in your peripheral vision. This is the beginning of being able to perceive the spirit worlds and astral planes. You may also start to see auras, fields of color around people, animals, plants and even inanimate objects. This is natural for a budding psychic, and nothing to be alarmed about. If unpleasant images or hallucinations appear, you can simply turn your attention away from them and they will disappear. You will also find that pleasant images will appear. You can choose what you want to give your attention to. 36

37 Hearing Voices If you begin to hear voices, realize that there are many spirits who are excited about being perceived by a human, and wish to communicate with the physical world through you. You can choose to listen to these voices or not, just the same way that you can choose to hear what someone is saying or tune out. Simply focus your attention on something else, and the voices will fade into the background and disappear. You are in control. You do not have to be available to every spirit who might be clamoring for your attention. If you choose to listen to them and give your attention, pick one voice to listen to at a time so you can perceive what this entity is trying to convey to you clearly. Of course, if this entity is of an unpleasant nature, or asks you to do something that is not in congruence with your own moral code, ask this one to leave your presence and not come back. If it needs your help, determine if you are able to help it, and if so, tell it to go toward the light. If it keeps talking and will not leave, simply give it no attention and eventually it will leave because it is not getting what it wants. Taking On The Pain Of Others You may feel the pain or physical discomfort of others through your empathic response to their situations. You might find yourself taking their pain into your own body in your healing sessions with them. If this happens, work with this pain as if it was your own and ask for the assistance of guides to help you channel healing energy into this painful area. Through your empathic connection with the other person, healing it within yourself will heal it in the other person. If the pain does not desist, then order it to leave, since it is not your own. As you become more proficient in your skills, you will not take the pain of others into your own body. It is not necessary. You may find yourself taking on emotional states of others just as you might have taken on physical pain in your body. You may suddenly find yourself feeling angry or depressed. Remember that feelings are contagious only if you allow them to be. Simply sit in meditation and send this emotional state back into the ethers of the universe (don t send it back to the person it originated from, for you are a conduit of healing for that person). Imagine that the emotional energy is returning to the raw state of energy that is the material the universe uses to create. All energy can return to its raw form and be reused and recycled in a positive way. Return the energy 37

38 to source where it can be transformed and transmuted into raw material and recycled for creation purposes. You can also send this energy into the Earth for transmutation. Unseen Forces If you feel unseen forces, be at ease. They do not have power over you. If the unseen force is pleasant, you may want to allow it into your presence. If it is unpleasant, face it squarely and firmly and command it to leave. You are in control of your reality and you can choose what you want to experience. You are too aware for games of fear with low level entities, so do not be afraid. You have the power to engage or not engage. All you have to do is decide what it is that you want to give your attention to. You have free will, and nothing can intrude on your awareness without your permission. Restlessness Or Unbalance Sometimes, in your zealousness to attain your psychic abilities, and especially if you have experienced positive progress, you may get overwhelmed. Your nervous system might become over stimulated and you may find yourself restless and jittery. If this is the case, take a break for a while from your endeavors and be at ease with simply being ordinary. When you feel ready, take up your psychic development exercises again and approach them in a balanced way, maintaining your health and well being. When It Concerns Your Own Life One thing that is commonly reported by psychics is that it seems nearly impossible to do readings for themselves or for close friends. It seems that sometimes there is a veil over the psychic s own life and future, and this might be in place so that a psychic cannot evade karmic contracts, especially if they are essential to spiritual growth and understanding. There may be psychic laws in place that we have no understanding of yet. Fortunately, however, enough does get through to make the psychic s life better! Don t be surprised if you didn t see it coming. If you were meant to see it coming, you would have. Embrace whatever happens in your life and know that there is a reason for it to happen. Use Psychic Abilities Benevolently Always use your psychic abilities as you attain them to help others, bless or heal. Be sure to use your superhuman abilities benevolently. If you misuse them, the karmic repercussions can be quite immediate, swift and painful. The laws of karma still apply, even to people who have risen above normal human abilities. The results of interfering with another person s free will, liberty, 38

39 or right to happiness can trigger boomerang effects that will only harm yourself in the long run. You must never use your abilities to impose your will or take advantage of another person. While the temptation to use your Jedi mind tricks might be appealing, you must refrain from interfering with the free will of another. What you sow, so shall you reap. The larger your abilities, the larger the harm to yourself that you can do by misusing them! What To Do About Psychic Attacks While you may be privy to the knowledge that using your psychic abilities in anything but a benevolent fashion only brings harm to yourself in the long run, others may not be so conscious of this. There are people who purposely practice black magic and attack people psychically. You will meet many people who come to you with complaints that they have been hexed or cursed by another who is practicing black magic or voodoo on them. These people are in a terrible state of fear and anxiety, and they feel helpless against the power of this psychic attack coming from another person. Your job is to help people understand that psychic attacks only have power if they give the other person that power. I especially like Joseph Murphy s analogy in his book Psychic Perception: The Magic Of Extrasensory Power (1971): All the water in the ocean could not sink a ship unless it got inside; likewise, negative thoughts of others could not enter unless [we] open the door of [our] mind and give them entrance. Someone can have all the negative thoughts about you that they want to, but unless you allow those thoughts to enter your consciousness, they are not harmful. It is alright if someone is not happy with you, or does not like you, and it is even alright if another person fantasizes about harming you, psychically or otherwise. However, you are immune to these harmful thoughts if you realize the truth of who you are, that you are the creator of your universe, that you are eternal self that never dies and cannot be harmed no matter what, and if you choose to be immune to these harmful psychic attacks, you are. It is as simple as that. If you send love back to the person who is sending you harmful thoughts, even compassion for 39

40 his or her state of unhappiness, then you have gone a step above and beyond your duty to your fellow human being. You have then become the source of love, and the source of love cannot be harmed. You have risen above the occasion and you are not even present for the harm to happen. This is different than protection. It is simply being unavailable for harm to find you and realizing that you have the power to say no to harm if you so choose. Protection Many believe that protection is necessary, but the very idea of needing protection contributes to the thought that the psychic harm is real. However, for those who find it necessary, a useful visualization for protection is to think of oneself as a ball of beautiful love and light, radiating from the inside out, like a star with long rays of light reaching out. This is all the protection that is needed. Rather than thinking of oneself as being enclosed or confined inside a protective cocoon or bubble, as if there is some membrane keeping something out, it is better to think of oneself as being so bright and loving that darkness simply cannot penetrate and must be turned into light itself if it is to be near you at all. Let go of all fears of the other person or the belief that the other person has any power whatsoever to influence you. Simply be the light and love that you are, and all the rest will take care of itself. One of two things will happen to the ill wisher: either he or she will become harmed by the misused psychic energy, for if it has nowhere to go, it will return to its sender, or he or she will have a change of heart and shift into light and love. Can Mind Altering Drugs Aid In Psychic Development? In the 1960 s and 1970 s the field was wide open for experimenting with drugs in laboratory situations, LSD in particular. Many psychics participated in these experiments, but the experiments proved that mind altering drugs inhibited psychic development in the long run. While they may have produced extraordinary perception journeys, they did not assist in psychic training, nor did the psychics perform as accurately as they did without the psychotropics. Many of the psychics who participated in the experiments in an ongoing format fell ill or lost their psychic abilities in the long run. It seems that the drugs inhibited the particular faculties that the psychic centers use. On the contrary, those who had never had psychic abilities, yet took the drugs, suddenly had awakenings of their psychic abilities. If they only took the drug a few times, and then no more, their psychic abilities could grow, whereas those who continued to take the drug lost the abilities as quickly as they appeared. In conclusion, it was found that while psychedelics might trigger 40

41 psychic abilities in a person who had no experience with such things, continued use shut these facilities down in the long run. Dr. Hans Holzer says in his book Are You Psychic? (1997), As the years went on, the dangers of drug taking had become apparent. Many psychics who had taken even small amounts of LSD in the hope of having extraordinary psychic experiences became ill, and had to discontinue the practice. It does seem that there is a price to pay when taking hallucinogens in an ongoing basis. While it may be exciting in the short run, the long run does not seem to pan out. Another argument I would like to personally offer against using drugs to attain psychic experiences is that your psychic abilities will open when they are meant to. Psychic abilities are the result of rising kundalini, and might be thought of as mini kundalini experiences themselves. Mental institutions are filled with people who have had kundalini experiences that they were not able to understand or incorporate. There are many who are hallucinating, but do not realize that they are simply seeing the spirit worlds and do not know how to live in both worlds in a functional way. When using psychedelics, you can create the opening of the kundalini too early in your spiritual growth and suddenly find yourself in a state of unbalance emotionally, mentally and spiritually. It is important to let the kundalini open your psychic centers in a way that is not harmful to you. This can only happen in a natural way without coercion or force from outside of yourself. Psychedelics can make some people very crazy, and they don t know who they are until they have tried it, but then it may be too late. (Another issue is that the dosage cannot be determined since most of these substances are obtained from illegal and unregulated sources, and an accidental mega dose can be quite detrimental.) This is not to say that psychedelic experiences and mind altering journeys are not useful in some sense as far as educating a person that there is much more to reality than meets the eye, but that is where it should stop. In the long run these substances shut down the brain s functions. It is a trick to think that you are entering higher states of consciousness when using these substances, and this is what the great attraction is. One could think of it as the cheater s path to enlightenment, but the ultimate truth is that eventually it leads to insanity and self 41

42 delusion rather than enlightenment. It really is a peek at what it possible with the mind. Then it is up to you to find your way to it through natural means, such as meditation, spiritual growth and bringing your attention fully into the present. I can tell you from personal experience that these states of mind are fully possible without the mind altering substances, and that this is the true goal. A person who is fully in the present, has trained the psychic centers and is able to perceive on the deeper levels than what meets the eye, and has a fully opened heart goes far beyond where these substances can take us. These substances are only the tip of the iceberg, but spiritual discipline will show you what lies far beyond that. Yes, it takes more work, it takes more time, and it takes great vigilance, but the rewards are great and the experiences are truer and deeper. Also, there is far more lucidity and clarity, without the imbalance that psychedelics create. The mental imagery that comes from psychedelics comes from an alteration of bio chemicals in the body. This can be done without the drugs as well, and you can train yourself through meditation. In closing on this argument, I leave you with a statement from Dr. Hans Holzer s book Are You Psychic? (1997): While these altered states may mimic authentic states of bliss or even ecstasy, they are nevertheless due to interference from outside agents rather than to genuine contact with another dimension. Psychic Games To Play There are several psychic games you can play with your friends and family. You may have even played these games as a kid. Here are some very useful games you can play when you are developing your psychic abilities. They are quite simple and can be played anywhere, anytime. Color / Number Your friend thinks of a color and transmits it to you. Your friend does this by closing the eyes and concentrating on the color. You act as receiver and pick it up as your friend focuses on the color. You can also do this with a number between 1 and 10. If you re feeling particularly psychic, try a number between 1 and 50. Dice Another easy game is to toss a pair of dice, or even just one, and guess which number will appear before you throw them. Another variation of this exercise enters into the realm of telekinesis. Try influencing the roll of the dice. Decide what number you want the dice to be, and see if you can influence them to be that number. (Tip: try only one die in the beginning, using the numbers 1 6 as your range, rather than 2 12). 42

43 Cards From a deck of cards, draw a card, hold it in your hand, and let its image come into your mind. Receive it through your intuition. When you have decided what its suit and value is, turn it over and see how accurate you were. You can also do this with ESP cards, which can be created easily. Draw shapes on the back of cards, like squares, stars, circles, crosses, wavy lines, triangles, etc. Have someone draw these cards and see if you can guess what they are. The Envelope Have someone place an object in an envelope for you. You may want to have your friend create 5 or 10 of these envelopes so you have several tests for your abilities. While you sit quietly and hold one envelope at a time in your hands, see if you can perceive what is in it. What is its color, its shape, its texture, its purpose? Use your intuition. Don t use your hands. Simply receive this object into your mind s eye. Write impressions down, or say them out loud. Then open the envelope. You may find that you had many things right about the object even if you didn t guess what the object was. Eventually, you will be able to name the object if you practice enough. Telephone When the phone rings, try guessing who it is that is calling you before picking up the phone. If you were expecting the call from a particular person, you can t count these as psychic hits. Psychic Exercises To get the most from these intuitive exercises in this course you might want to use a voice recorder. Read the exercises into your smart phone or other recorder, giving pauses between the instructions so that you will have time to perform what you have just instructed yourself to do. You may also want to use a tape recorder to record your answers so that you do not have to come out of trance to write things down. Writing down your answers to questions is laborious and can bring you out of trance and back into the ordinary waking mind. You can transcribe these answers later. 43

44 Laura Day says in her book Practical Intuition: How To Harness The Power Of Your Instincts And Make It Work For You (1996), Another advantage to speaking out loud is that doing so gives your reflective mind less time to interfere in the intuitive process. The other problem is that it is difficult to keep up with the flow of intuitive impressions while writing. Laura Day also says, In fact, being able to keep up with your impressions is a good sign that they are not intuitive. Yet another reason for speaking your answers out loud is preparing yourself for the ability to channel if this is something you re interested in. Here are a few pointers for training your intuition that Day gives us: 1. Giving a reading is not taking a test, so don t worry about whether your impressions are right or wrong. 2. Trust your intuition. Don t try to figure out the answer, even if it doesn t make sense. 3. The impressions you receive don t have to make sense to you. 4. Intuition is a natural sense, you don t have to try to receive impressions. Be allowing. 5. Be willing to make mistakes. No student of any subject performs perfectly in the beginning. 6. Record everything, even impressions that seem like interference. 7. If you don t feel you re getting an intuitive response, make something up or guess. Later you can examine it for accuracy. Exercise 1: Getting In Touch With Yourself Answer the following questions with your first and immediate response. These are questions you can ask yourself any time in your life to receive immediate answers in any given situation or life period. This is a useful way to do a reading for yourself. Go with your first and immediate answer, don t think about the answer, just let it come. 1. In this moment, what do you want? 2. In this moment, what do you need? 3. In this moment, what is your greatest fear? 4. In this moment, what is your dearest wish? 5. In this moment, what do you need to be happy? 6. In this moment, what is your ambition? 7. In this moment, what is your greatest challenge? 8. In this moment, what is your most formidable obstacle? 9. In this moment, how are you your own worst enemy? 44

45 10. In this moment, with what part of your life are you most satisfied? 11. In this moment, what is missing in your life? 12. In this moment, in which area of your life would you most like to see change in the coming year? 13. What is your mission? Exercise 2: Becoming Aware Of Senses No matter where you are, ask yourself the following questions and respond with your first impressions. This exercise helps you get used to using all the senses to perceive what is around you rather than just one or two senses. 1. What do you see? 2. What do you hear? 3. What do you taste? 4. What do you feel? 5. What do you smell? 6. What is going through your mind? 7. What is your mental state? 8. What is your emotional state? 9. What is your physical state? 10. Are there other senses that you can perceive? (There are more than the physical five senses and the intuitive sixth sense.) Exercise 3: How Can You Tell If You Are Seeing The Past, Present, Or Future? Each time frame has a different flavor, and it is an individual perception for everyone. You may notice that when you re looking into the past there is a different sensation than when you are looking at the present or the future. We will look at what is the difference when you look at the past, present or future. Write down your impressions as you go through each of these places in time: 1. Think of a moment in your childhood, observe the scene, what is happening? 2. Think of something that happened last week, observe it. What are the details? 3. Think of something you did today, only a few hours ago. 45

46 4. What will you be doing tomorrow? 5. What will you be doing a few weeks from now? 6. What will you be doing a few years into the future? 7. What will you be doing ten years into the future? 8. What will you be doing near the end of your life? 9. What will you be doing in the afterlife? Notice how there is a different sensation, or a different flavor, for each of these time periods. For instance you might notice that when looking at the past, things seemed concrete, perhaps even darker, more detailed, or some other sensation. When you re looking into the future things might seem vague, lighter, or some other sensation. Find out how you perceive the past, present, and future, and then you will know whether what you re seeing in your intuitive reading is coming from the past, present or future. Exercise 4: Making Use Of Opposites Instead of giving yes no answers, for these can be rather vague and do not give a lot of information, discover what you associate with various feelings that are on different sides of the spectrum, or two polarities. Sometimes a yes or no answer is in order and appropriate, but sometimes more information is needed, and sometimes more information is being conveyed as well. Here are some examples of interpreting polarities. Someone may ask a question and suddenly you get a hot feeling. This could mean there is growth, activity, healing, good, positive, yes. Perhaps you suddenly got a cold feeling. This could mean rigidity, death, pain, negative, no. Now use the opposites below and determine what they might mean in a reading if you receive these images or feelings. Each reading will have an individual interpretation of these, but for now just get a sense of what they mean to you in this moment. hot/cold day/night hi/low heavy/light good/evil healthful/harmful 46

47 nourishing/depleting growing/shrinking smooth/rough clear/entangled developing/eroding rising/falling birthing/dying forward/backward beginning/end hard/easy white/black love/hate Exercise 5: Learning Your Own Symbols Symbol dictionaries don t work because everyone has a different interpretation of most symbols. There are common archetypical symbols that mean pretty much the same thing to everyone, but these are only a few out of millions. Learn your own inner language. For instance, what does a large body of water mean to you, a kitten, or a car? What is the first sensation, the first feeling that comes to you when you think of these images. These images speak to you in more than their literal sense. A good place to begin discovering your inner language is dreams. When you wake up from dreams write down the symbols that were in your dreams and what they meant to you, what feelings came up around these images, and what your rational mind says they might mean in your life. Your inner symbols will be the language that is spoken to you when someone comes to you for a reading and asks a question. For instance, if a person asks you a question about a possible business partner, and you see a sleazy uncle that you have, you might tell this person that this business partner might not be such a good idea. Your inner symbols are important to know. Knowing your inner language of symbols helps you to translate more quickly and immediately in your intuitive readings. 47

48 Getting In Touch With Your Intuitive Vocabulary Report your responses to the following questions: How do you feel when someone tells you no? How do you feel when you re happy? What do you feel when you see a positive visual image? A negative one? What smell do you find distasteful? Which would you find pleasing? What do feel when you see the ocean? What do you think of when you see (pick a family member)? Make up more questions on your own. Make a long list. This will become your dictionary of your inner language of symbols. Only you can interpret your symbols. You can get answers to questions by knowing how your system responds to particular vibrations and images. Exercise 6: Useful Questions For Finding Out The State Of Another Person This exercise can be used for any purpose. What are the qualities I admire in this person? What are the qualities most people admire in this person? What things could this person teach me about? What words does this person need to hear to have a happier life? What would be a good challenge for this person to work on? What problem or challenge has this person recently overcome? What good change will happen for this person in the coming year? Which people are or will be difficult in this person s life? What is a common mistaken assumption made about this person? If this person were an animal, which animal would he or she be and why? If this person was a flower or wildflower what would he or she be and why? Feel free to make up more similar questions. 48

49 Exercise 7: A Group Exercise With a group of friends, have everyone write his or her name on a piece of paper and place it in an envelope. The envelopes, paper, and color of the ink should all be the same. Each person makes up the envelopes. Everyone picks one. No one knows who he or she is reading, but everyone must begin to intuit the energy of the person whose name is in the envelope. It is especially interesting to see what happens when people get their own names. Each person must describe what they perceive about the person in the envelope. This exercise can be repeated many times so that everyone gets a chance to read the energies of various people. Exercise 8: Awaken Your Psychic Centers Using your right hand, place the forefinger directly on the center of your forehead about 1 inch above the bridge of your nose. If you would like to you can place your thumb and middle finger on either side of the nose. Take a deep breath, maintain this position, and hold it for the count of 10. Then exhale. Do this five times without moving. Feel the energy coming into your third eye, and the energy in your body. This exercise stimulates the pituitary gland and the pineal gland in the center of your head. These are physical terminals of your two major head centers, the sixth and seventh chakras. When they are in harmony with each other, the centers work together to bring you a higher sense of awareness. Practice this every day. Exercise 9: Psychokinesis Exercises Place a candle in an enclosed room, free of drafts and air movement. The air must be very still. Sit and stare at the flame, willing it to move sideways until it burns at a right angle instead of vertically up into the air. Staring is not necessary, but willing it to move is what makes it move. Concentration should not be effortful. It is, rather, focused attention. Effort will only deter your endeavors. (You might think of the movie Matrix in which the young boy who bends spoons tells the hero, Neo, There is no spoon. This meant that all matter is illusory to begin with, so it is malleable and fluid under the direction of consciousness.) Another angle is to visualize the result of the candle flame leaning sideways, even before it happens, and create an attitude of cooperation between you and the candle flame so that the candle flame changes for you in cooperation rather than succumbing to your will. Once you have fully visualized and set up the instruction for the candle flame, release the thought and allow it to happen, make it so. This is an important step. 49

50 Another mind over matter exercise is to use water in a bowl for this endeavor. Sit and stare at a large bowl of water before you. With your mind, visualize the water swirling around in a circle in the bowl, faster and faster. Now release the thought and allow it to happen. Enid Hoffman tells a great story in her book Develop Your Psychic Skills (1981) about how important it is to release the thought: Let me tell you a story of a student of mine, who was experimenting with this exercise. He did the exercise correctly, right up to the releasing part, but as he stared at the water, it did not move. The phone rang With a sigh, he rose from the chair feeling like a failure, but determined to try again after answering the phone. On his return, he found that a lot of the water had splashed out of the bowl, all over the table The interruption forced him to release the thought because he had to direct his attention to something else We may think we have released a thought, only to find out later that we really haven t. After working with things like fire and water, which are easier to move than solid matter, then you can move on to things like forks, spoons, and other such objects. Another great practice object is a compass, moving the needle from its northerly direction. Magnetic fields are easier to influence than solid matter as well. When you are ready to try your skills on solid matter, hang a string of bells. Using your attention, will them to move, establishing an atmosphere of cooperation between you and the object, believing in your consciousness being the force that can allow an object to move if you lift your belief in physical laws for a moment. It is more a matter of allowing than efforting. You can also bend forks, spoons and keys. Metal responds well to telekinesis. A ping pong ball is easy to move, rolling it away or toward you with your will. You can also do this exercise for the purpose of levitation. Use a matchstick, a plastic coin, a toothpick or some other very light object. (You can graduate to levitating cars later!) Feel its weight, the force of gravity on it, and its texture. Then feel the weight of the object lessening and the law of gravity lifting from this object. This has been done, and you can do it too. Practice and belief are of the essence. Do not become discouraged if at first you do not succeed. There may be new neural pathways in your brain to create, and certain beliefs and thought forms that you must adjust before you can do this. Keep practicing and confronting your disbelief in your abilities. Relax your mind more and more, and know that you are eternal consciousness, and that even solid matter is mostly made of air, and this is a quantum physics scientific fact! You can actually make things disappear and reappear too, blinking out of existence for a moment. This sometimes happens when such intense focus and energy is put on an object that its 50

51 vibratory rate changes. Because you will be surprised, your concentration will break and the object will reappear. More To Know About Your Psychic Abilities There are four main types of psychic skills that are involved in intuition: clairsentience (clear feeling), claircognizance (clear knowing), clairvoyance (clear seeing), and clairaudience (clear hearing). You ll discover your own unique take on this ability. You will receive most of your information through one or two senses. You might notice that you are predominantly a visual person or an auditory person, or a person who feels your information rather than sees it. Let s find out by answering the questions below what you re unique style is. What symbols or images do I receive that always mean the same thing? What is my preferred sense? What is my most frequent interference style? What interruptions give me the most difficulties? How do I remedy my reaction to interference? What sense do I trust the least? Does my preferred style change when the time changes; past, present or future? Spirits And Guides Be aware that sometimes spirits have something to do with psychic abilities, helping or hindering. Guides are very useful when developing your psychic abilities. They are attracted to humans who are trying to hone their skills and abilities in intuitive areas. You ll want to make sure that you pick only friendly spirits to work with, the more evolved the better. Elementals are disturbing nature spirits who are fine in their own environment, but disruptive in human circles. Some entities are disoriented and haven t yet realized they have died, and cannot connect with the human world anymore. Some entities who have recently discovered that they are free in the astral worlds without the human body are enjoying their newfound abilities to play pranks and jokes on the living. They are not malicious, but 51

52 they are not useful for spiritual endeavors concerning psychic abilities. Of course, there are malevolent spirits with whom you should definitely refrain from communicating, in the beginning stages. Later, as you gain more skill, you may be able to help them, but as a beginner you should stay away from dark spirits. Doing A Psychic Reading A good rule to follow is that if people don t ask for your intuitive hits on their issues or situations, don t offer them. Only if people ask you for a reading, or agree to one, should you do so. Don t minimalize these abilities by offering them up to people who are not really interested. You must be sure that you are acting appropriately if you want to maintain integrity in your reputation as a psychic. You must also keep everything confidential, no matter what. Do not discuss what you discover with anyone but the person who the information was for. No one else should ever be told anything that came up in another person s reading. What you discover in readings is private, and possibly very sensitive, information. Have your clients prepare questions before coming to you. This gives a person a chance to frame questions correctly. Give a few pointers on how to frame questions correctly. These questions also help as a focus for the client so that he or she does not leave thinking, Oh, I wish I had asked that question, but I forgot. Having clients prepare questions ahead of time helps them make sure that they ve got all their thoughts in order and won t forget things that they wanted to ask, especially if they become emotional during the reading. Before you give a reading it is important to let your clients know how you work. Let them know: 1. you only need the question, no other information or background story 2. you aren t always right, and sometimes the answer is right later but doesn t seem right now 3. you re client still needs to exercise judgment and is welcome to embrace or discard anything you say 4. you re not a therapist, and you are not licensed as a psychologist 5. you are not a medical doctor and any information you give is not based on medical knowledge 52

53 If people become reading junkies, running to you every time a problem comes up, you might need to ask them not to come for a reading for a while. They should not become dependent on you, ignoring their own lessons and life decisions. It is important that you do not become the deciding factor in all of a person s life decisions. If a person comes to you more than a few times a year, he or she is becoming too dependent. Report everything during a reading, for even though it may not make sense to you it might make very clear sense to your client. If you do not get anything and draw blank, this in itself might be the answer. However, this is not always the case. Sometimes this information is veiled, and it is being veiled by the client s higher self. Some things are things the client is not eager to know, or shouldn t know. Sometimes the person being asked about, if the client is asking about someone in particular, is doing the veiling. Do not be afraid to say that you are drawing a blank. For instance, if this someone has asked if they should move to New York, and you are drawing a blank, you can tell them the you re not sure if it is that you re not getting anything, or that you are just not seeing this person in New York. Speak right away after the question is asked. Don t let your reasoning mind have time to interfere with the intuitive images you are getting. Don t pause very long either, unless you maintain an empty alert waiting space, or your reasoning mind will have a chance to kick in again. Also, don t worry about using proper grammar, or even making sense, just let it flow. Your First Reading You will need either something to write with and paper, or a tape recorder. Tape recorders are of the utmost usefulness, for writing is difficult and laborious if one is in a deep trance. First get centered. Follow your breathing, give yourself verbal suggestions, observe your sensations; in general, find a relaxed state. Whatever technique you like to use to get into a meditative state, use it. Next, allow the person you re doing the reading for to ask a question. Take a deep breath and allow yourself to relax completely, letting the questions sink into your unconscious. It may feel as if your intuition has run off like a little puppy running after a stick that was thrown. Just sit and wait for the puppy to return with images and feelings. 53

54 When images and feelings begin to arise, give voice to them. Sometimes you must open your mouth to speak before the images and feelings appear. Write everything down, or make sure that it is being recorded. Whoever is receiving the reading should be doing the writing and watching the voice recorder. Speak until there is a lull in the flow of images or feelings. When there is a lull, again just wait until they begin again. Then speak what they are. The other person who is receiving the reading might like to ask more questions, for questions usually generate more questions, especially once you begin to offer information. Do not analyze or interpret your impressions yet. Just translate, bridging the worlds between the unconscious and the conscious. When the session is over, make sure you do some sort of grounding exercise like moving your body, taking a deep breath while opening the eyes, or even yawning. Some people like to do something very earthly, like eating, or drinking a beverage, or standing up and taking a short stroll. These are all grounding exercises. Conclusion Shakti Gawain says in her book Developing Intuition: Practical Guidance For Daily Life (2000), Like any other art or discipline, it requires a certain commitment. It is an ongoing process in which we are always challenged to move to a deeper level of self-trust It s natural for it to take some time and it may be a little difficult and confusing at certain moments As you learn to live from your intuition you may find that the process of making decisions changes. Rather than just trying to figure things out in your head, you follow your intuitive feeling for a while and let things unfold. In the process, the right decisions usually get made. Learning to follow your intuition can sometimes feel a bit like living on the edge. In a sense, it s learning to live without the false sense of security that comes from trying to control everything that happens to us. It s recognizing that as we follow our inner guidance, wonderful things are going to unfold for us, things that we may not yet even imagine. 54

55 Developing your psychic skills will be a wonderful part of your spiritual journey. It is not the end goal of your spiritual journey, for spiritual powers are not a measurement of your level of enlightenment. Your ability to be in the moment with an open heart is the true measure of enlightenment. However, developing your psychic skills will assist you in your spiritual endeavors to help humanity. You will help others on their spiritual path, and you will be able to facilitate healing in a way that only a metaphysician can. In the process you will help yourself to become familiar with how the workings of the universal mind operate, and you will help yourself to grow even more in your spiritual understandings. Developing your psychic abilities will be a lifelong endeavor, and will bring you great joy and adventure in your journeys through life. 55