A Practical Psychic

Back To Blogging

2011-11-04T08:53:00.001-07:00

Well, it's been a long time since I've blogged. I was writing and editing my first full-length book, and it's finally complete and published. You can purchase it or read the introduction on my website: http://www.apracticalpsychic.com/book.htm

That took a lot of time and energy, but now that it's done I'm still feeling compelled to write! The spirit people are throwing information at me for my next book on spirit messages already, yet I'm committed to not dropping my blog again. I can do both, right?

I've been spending a lot of time in recent weeks with the Blessed Mother. She started showing up in my meditations, in headlines, on the books that seem to fall off the shelves. I mean to say that I keep thinking about her, and I keep noticing references to her. Most religious traditions have a female energy that balances out the male energy, so if you're not a Christian, just bear with me and every time I mention "Mary" or "The Blessed Mother," just put in Shakti, Lilith, Sacred Feminine, Earth Mother, Buk, or whatever else my represent the divine feminine.

Specifically for me, this is the Blessed Mother. Something has been nagging at me to read about the Marian culture, to seek out paintings, to delve into stories of the various Mary sightings around the world -- Fatima, Lourdes, Medjugorja. As you might have guessed, when I get this kind of persistent nagging, I give in to it. I even started exploring the Rosary, which, despite being raised a Catholic, I had no idea how to recite.

So now, for some reason and for what outcome I'm still at a loss to say, I am saying the Rosary every day. Probably not as it traditionally recited, but I'm still using my training wheels on this one. What I've noticed first of all is that the repetition of a prayer really puts me into a pleasant alpha state of mind. I don't always concentrate on the prayer itself -- I'm so familiar with the Our Father and the Hail Mary that I can recite them without thinking. So I have to bring my conscious mind to the act of reciting it. When I do I am lulled into a beautiful meditate state, and I'm filled with such peace and serenity when I'm done.

I don't know where this is going, as I've said. But it's helping my mental state, my appointment book is more full than it has ever been, I'm giving increasingly accurate spirit communications, and I feel more courage. I need more courage. I'm going to continue to pursue this particular thread to see where it leads me, and I'll keep you all posted.

I'm committed to blogging every Friday -- don't let me off the hook!

Sunday's Sermon at Albertson Memorial Spiritualist Church

2011-03-20T13:07:00.000-07:00

Here we are at the beginning of spring, and I just feel so hopeful!

I don’t know about you, but I have 3 beginnings in every year: January 1 (for obvious reasons), the start of spring (because I can’t wait to get outside and start some projects after a long winter), and right after Labor Day (the traditional beginning of the school year).

That makes 3 opportunities to begin again, or to start something new.

In the Christian calendar we’ve recently begun the season of Lent, which as you may know is a season of sacrificing. As a kid I’d give up dessert or some other fun thing, which I hated doing. Lent is followed by remembering Christ’s death on the cross and the joy of his resurrection three days later.

Whether or not you actually believe Christ rose from the dead, the idea of resurrection and renewal is an extremely important concept that is inherent in being human, because it’s the idea of HOPE. In the New Testament, in 1 Peter 1:3, Peter calls renewal and hope the same thing -- they’re interchangeable -- when he says “Praise be to God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.”

It’s not just the Christian texts that hope and renewal go hand in hand. In the Qu’ran it’s written "And never give up hope of Allah's soothing Mercy: Truly no one despairs of Allah's soothing Mercy except those who have no faith." (12:87). The Bhagavad-Gita, the Old Testament, The Tibetan Book of the Dead, texts of the Baha’i faith -- all refer to the hope that comes along with rebirth or renewal.

When I was a little girl, my parents had a book of Greek myths, and included in these was the story of Pandora.

Pandora was, according to the story I read (though there are many versions of the ending), the first woman on Earth and she was created as a punishment to mankind; Zeus wanted to punish people because Prometheus stole the fire to give it to them. Pandora was created by the gods; each one of whom gave her a gift (beauty, curiosity, stubborness, crafts).

She was also was given a box or a jar containing special gifts, which the gods told her never to open. Hermes took her to marry Epimetheus, brother of Prometheus. Prometheus had advised his brother not to accept anything from the gods, but he saw Pandora and was astonished by her beauty, and he accepted her right away.

Pandora was trying to tame her curiosity, but at the end she could not help herself anymore; she opened the box and instead of gifts, all the illnesses and hardships that gods had hidden in the box started coming out. Pandora was scared, because she saw all the evil coming out and tried to close the box as fast as possible. The last thing to fly out was Hope.

The purpose of the myth was to explain why there was suffering and misery in the world, and many contemporary religions brought this myth into their own teachings. In the Christian resurrection story, Jesus offers himself as a sacrifice on the cross so that we won’t have to succumb to these evils ever again. He’s the last thing out of the box, in the Christian story -- He is the hope of Christian people.

Hope exists on a really huge continuum. We use the word “hope” so lightly sometimes. I just used it the other day when a friend told me about someone getting married for the 3rd or 4th time, and I said, “Hope springs eternal!”

We hope the Yankees win. We hope the weather’s nice this weekend. We hope that nice person asks us out on a date.

And on the spectrum of Hope, we can use the word somewhere in the middle:
We hope our friend gets that job. We hope we can quit smoking.

And we can call on Hope with the full weight of the word: We hope cancer will go into remission. We hope the war overseas stops and our loved ones come home in one piece. We hope Japan will benefit from our prayers for courage.

Hope allows us to carry on. Hope is more than just a stepping stone, it’s like bannister we can hang on to as we navigate through life. Faith gives us the power to keep going, to take another step, and hope gives us something to hang on to while we’re doing it.

Every single renewal or beginning, has right alongside it Hope. Every morning we wake up with it. Every new relationship, new job, new start, new spring, new year. Today I ask you to use Hope freely, for everything you do. It’s out here in the world to counteract every bad mood or challenging event. It belongs to you! You can never have too much of it!

No one can take it away from you unless you allow them to. Think for a moment about anything you might have given up on. Did someone or something rob you of hope for carrying on?

In the myth of Pandora’s box, the gods of the day released untold evil on the world, and all that was needed to counteract it, was Hope. On the one hand, they sent war, famine, disease, crime, hatred, poverty, pain and on the other hand, hope. Hope, only hope, to balance out all of that negativity. Doesn’t that tell us something about the power of hope?

We know that even on the other side of the physical transition of death, life continues. WE know, as spiritualists, that life is eternal. Jesus died for us so we don’t have to, so that we can hope for eternal life, that’s the beauty of the resurrection story. Buddha continued to reincarnate long after he reached perfect compassion, as do the many bodhisattvas, so we too can hope for nirvana; that’s the beauty of the reincarnation story.

Hope goes hand in hand with January 1st, springtime, the beginning of the school year, and every single second of every day. It is constantly renewing itself in us. Sometimes it’s hope alone that gives us the power to start something new, or to try once again to conquer something we know we need to change.

Some wise person once suggested I make a list of the top three values of my life, and then to make every major decision based on whether the outcome would fit into the framework of that value system. It was hard to settle on just three, and I revised my list several times, but in the end Hope was among them. And having the quality of being Hopeful among my values, it actually led me to make some changes: to reshape a friendship that was structured mainly around complaining about the government, to stop watching terrible news stories, to include specific requests in my prayers, and as a result I enjoy so much more serenity and genuine optimism than I ever thought possible. The quality of being Hopeful, begat more Hope.

And when I get down to the nuts and bolts of what I do in my work, the thread that ties everything together is hope. When people come to me to hear from their loved ones in spirit, they’re asking for hope. When they come for healing or hypnosis, they’re coming for hope. I’m in the Hope business.

I bet when you look at the basic building blocks of what you do, it’s creating Hope also. Whether you’re a CEO or a babysitter, you’re manufacturing or sustaining Hope.

So what am I asking you to consider then, if we’re all already in the business of Hope -- if Hope is our birthright and our constant companion? I like to call it “taking inspired action.”

First we start with Faith, that life means something; then we have Hope to hang onto as time passes. Now we can stop here, and many people do; they may be prayerful and pleasant and good people, but I bet they feel sort of unfulfilled. This may be the kind of person who shrugs and says “it’s God’s will” when they lose a job or a home or a marriage; then they wait around, with Faith and Hope that all will work out in the end. Not a bad plan, but one that is missing an essential ingredient.

With faith that life has meaning, and hope that comes in with every new day, we can use our free will to take inspired action. I think that’s what’s meant by the old saying “God helps those who help themselves.” I believe that -- having been a student of the gnostic tradition -- that God is available, personally, to all of us at all times, and is always trying to remind us that we can tap into Him for direction. I believe God speaks to us through our own ideas, inspiration and experiences. So when we follow one of those ideas we’re taking inspired action.

Now, there’s a difference between reacting to something as we habitually do, and taking inspired action. Let me illustrate what I mean with this: I’ve recently -- and hopefully -- been inspired to begin a personal campaign to once and for all shut down those old tapes that are playing in my head, and to listen to God’s direction and opinion of me only. No more old tape playing Mother’s voice insinuating that I’ll never amount to anything. In this personal campaign I’ve decided whenever I get defensive, I will honestly look at what old belief I am so fiercely defending.

The last time I was here at Albertson Memorial Spiritualist Church, I was speaking about returning to school, and an old friend who suggested I might be taking on another project so I didn’t really have to find out whether or not I would succeed or fail if I put 100% into being the best psychic medium I could be. Boy was I furious! You would have thought the Huns were attacking, that’s how defensive I got.

That’s my flag now, that’s that little Inspired Action guy waving a flag at me saying “X marks the spot! Dig right here!”

So I did, and I learned something about myself and I was able to turn down the volume a little bit on the old voice that said “your value is solely related to the degrees you acquire and the things you accomplish.”

The old me -- the defensive me -- was reacting; the new me is taking inspired action. It doesn’t work 100% of the time of course -- but I’m hopeful. And this Spring I hope to get closer to God, because I was inspired to take this kind of action. I hope to hear God’s voice and direction more clearly than those other imbedded voices. And I’m the one who needs to stop reacting to them, and to take action to clear them out. Hope makes this whole process so much easier.

So I’d like to leave you with a couple thoughts: What can you resurrect or renew or begin now? Hope is just right here, waiting to step in and add some fuel to your dreams and goals. How can you take inspired action in that renewal?

Secondly, If you know someone who seems without hope, go visit them, send them a card or flowers. You don’t need to solve their problems or fix their issues, just remind them about hope. Hope is self-perpetuating. Plant a little seed, step back and watch out. It’s practically unstoppable.

Make it a point to leave everyone you encounter feeling more hopeful than before they ran into you; you know you’ll be impacting the world in a way that truly balances all the negatives out there when you keep hope alive.

The Christians Don't Want Me (As I Am)

2011-02-23T06:45:00.001-08:00

I wish you could hear my deep sigh of disappointment. It keeps coming out of me over and over.

Over the past several months I've been talking here about this yearning I feel to involve God more publicly in the work I do; to serve God through healing or therapy or ministry or by whatever pathway He sees fit. To that end, I've been investigating attending a seminary or furthering my education -- and I settled (almost) on attending Alliance Graduate School of Counseling. By studying there I would receive a degree in Christian Mental Health Counseling, which would lead to licensure in NY (and 40 other states). So I could be a "therapist," I could take insurance, my shingle would select for those people who already involve God in their healing -- or are open to it -- and we'd all meet with more success.

Except my application requires a Pastoral Reference, which means I have to have been attending a Christian church for over a year, and have a relationship with my pastor who would of course know me well enough to answer the very specific questions on the form. Which I have not been doing. For about one month I have been attending a local Episcopal church on the recommendation of a client, and I've enjoyed it very much. The pastor is a woman, which is almost an automatic check in the "Pro" column, and she's well-spoken and friendly and so far her sermons have made some of the Old Testament Epiphany passages relevant -- even the one that says if a divorced woman remarries she is committing adultery. But I've only been to services three times!

I called the Admissions director at AGSC with this kind of important bit of information and while she recovered pretty quickly, the initial silence on the other end of the line was deafening. How on earth could I hope to go to a Christian graduate school if I wasn't a practicing Christian? (Another topic for another time: isn't the point of going to school to learn or begin something new? Isn't school supposed to be for those who don't know, not those who already do?)

She came up with a not-too-complicated plan: I'd meet with my new pastor, tell her of my intention to go to school in the fall and ask her if she'd be willing to complete one reference form now, and then once again in September before school began and we'd presumably have gotten to know each other better. I emailed the pastor (let's call her Mother Beth) gave her a bit of my history (including what I do for a living), told her about the Pastoral Reference form and asked if I could meet her for lunch or coffee.

We met yesterday and it was all I could do to keep from crying. Not because of her: she's a lovely, articulate, non-judgmental person. I gave her a brief outline of my spiritual history, which includes being raised in the Catholic church and practicing as a Catholic until my husband wanted a divorce and my parish priest told me I was no longer welcome in the church and wouldn't be able to receive communion (maybe now you can understand my hypersensitivity to the Old Testament divorce/adultery passage). Followed by 15 years of searching for a spiritual community that didn't require that I apply to the people in that community for the privilege of celebrating God's love with them. I think I tried it all, everything from Orthodox to New Age -- but always wanting to come home to the the Holy Trinity.

So here's the part in the story I'm telling her where I always duck, because it's here where I always get rejected:

Mother Beth: "Tell me about what you do for a living."

Me (deep breath, tiny voice, looking at the floor): "I'm a psychic medium."

...lots of discussion about how I do what I do and how it feels for me to do it (which, by the way, is WONDERFUL)...

Me: "So. Is that okay with the Episcopal church?"

Mother Beth: "No."

...lots more discussion about why it isn't, including the forces of evil spirits who can come in and snag me and I wouldn't know it and then I'd have lost my moral compass and by the way even though 40% of the Bible is prophecy and Jesus could prophecy and He told us that "everything I do, and more, you can do too," doesn't really mean that me, improbable Priscilla Keresey, is the kind of person he's talking about...

Actually she was very gentle about it, and concerned about my community of accountability -- like, WHO would watch over me or who would guide me to make sure that I am not being snagged by evil spirits and I said "That's why I want to be part of a spiritual community! Please let me in!" (Another topic for another time: I actually don't believe in evil but the Christians do and I certainly wasn't going to argue that point with a pastor, who has much more academic knowledge to back up her side of the debate).

By this time though I was so fragmented, I was replaying every rejection I ever got in my entire life -- and now rejected AGAIN by God! My heart was breaking, and I felt so sad that I could hardly speak. And I was angry too: it's not like I'm a whore or a tax collector (who even Jesus loved and had supper with).

Mother Beth assured me I was welcome at the church, and she hoped I would continue to come. I told her I would, but I didn't mean it. How can I? How can I go and listen to the word of God in a community that thinks I'm not Godly? When I left she wouldn't let me buy lunch even though that was my invitation, and I didn't even take the reference form out of my purse. She didn't mention it either, so I guess we both knew it wasn't going to work out.

Maybe if I was welcomed into a Christian community I would see my own off-track ways and repent. But I just don't think I'm off-track. But maybe that just means I've already been snagged by evil spirits and my moral compass is so out of whack I can't even see myself that I'm off-track. I actually think what I do helps people.

Maybe I'll start a church or a religion of my own. One that says, how God made you is perfect. You are all welcome. We as a church are here to support you. You don't have to apply to be loved by us and by God. You don't have to obey rules to be supported by us. Carry your own lamp and light your own way, because if you see the light in your own heart you are seeing God.

I guess I better get on the phone and call the Admissions Office to let them know I'll be staying outside for now.

Sunday's Sermon

2011-02-18T17:19:00.000-08:00

In my work I use hypnosis, intuitive ability and energy healing to help my clients achieve their goals. in all of these modalities the person must choose healing; I cannot force hypnosis on an unwilling person; I cannot make a person accept my psychic intuition about their future or the cause of their medical condition, and I can’t compel a person to let in healing energy if they are unwilling to perceive themselves well.

The reputation and nature of these modalities is cause enough to select for the clients most open to change using these tools. Most of my clients come to me because they have an awareness of an obstacle, limiting belief or bad habit that stands between them now and what they perceive to be success.

Our minds work in mysterious ways, sometimes which are thoroughly baffling to us. I have clients who are completely certain they want to be thin, yet they sabotage every small success they achieve towards their weight loss goals. I have clients who swear they would do anything to be pain free, yet resist all efforts towards healing. I’ve worked with people who know their alcohol or drug use is undermining everything that’s important to them, and yet they cannot seem to stop.

I learned in my hypnosis training that when we sabotage ourselves it is in part due to conflicting subconscious desires. We’re literally of two minds. For instance: a woman may not want to lose weight because it may mean she will need to be intimate with her spouse again, and she really doesn’t want that. This is not something the conscious mind might even be aware of, but her subconscious motivations -- or secondary gain -- are quite clearly being expressed when she takes a second helping, binges on dessert, or is just “too tired” to go to the gym.

A man with knee pain so severe can’t walk more than a few steps comes in with a conscious mind motivation to get well. But his secondary gain, or subconscious motivation, may tell him “hey, you’re getting a disability check, you’ve worked so hard, you really need a rest. If this knee heals you have to go back to work and you’re just still so tired.”

A young teenager who abuses drugs and alcohol may see the downward spiral she’s riding, and believe and voice a desire to change. But her subconscious mind might recognize the frightening feelings of vulnerability in sexual maturity, or hear in her mind’s ear the admonitions of an over-cautious parent, and numb those feelings with alcohol. The subconscious mind always chooses safety over risk, and sometimes it feels so much safer to avoid or insulate or repress uncomfortable feelings than to process them.

Part of my job as a hypnotist, intuitive and healer is to listen for and recognize these subconscious motivations and to gently help the client acknowledge and then change them. For some clients this secondary gain is so strong we don’t succeed. They don’t come back for their next session; they get lost on the way, or get sick; sometimes they just come in and fight with me!

On my intake form, I ask my clients if they practice any form of prayer, meditation, faith or religion, and if they believe in God. Aside from that, I never initiate a conversation about God, nor do I include any reference to God in our treatment plan. The only time the subject comes up is if the client brings it up. I always felt that the client knows best what he or she needs to do to heal, and it’s my job to listen and then reflect that back through the tools of my practice.

Recently I did a kind of survey of the clients I know to be successful. How do I know they’re successful? They have stayed in contact with me, they’ve sent me referrals, and they return for follow-up sessions.

I have one client who has lost over 100lbs in less than one year, has completely come out of her shell -- independent of her weight loss by the way. She has gone from being thoroughly depressed, terribly obese, hating her job, living with an apathetic husband and caring for her elderly parents -- to a vibrant, optimistic, slender and motivated woman -- still living in the exact same circumstances but accepting her present situation with grace and serenity. She sent her sister to me who was also quite overweight, and over the same amount of time the sister has had only intermittent success.

What’s the difference between these two?

I saw another client who was desperate to change her abusive relationship, but fearful about leaving. Working together using the sixth sense and with help from her people in spirit, she could see a different future for herself, and confidently took her destiny into her own hands. Another client in a similar situation calls me regularly for my psychic input, yet continues to relinquish control of her life to outside circumstances and individuals.

Why did one of these women succeed and the other fail?

I began to go through my files and found some surface differences between what I would call the successes and the still-not-successes. But the one, constant, profound difference across the board, was that the successes not only believed in God, but practiced some kind of faith.

Let me say this again: those people who succeeded believed in God, and practiced that belief.

I know I’m good at what I do. My kind of therapy self-selects for open-minded people to begin with. And yet, there are still clients who fail to achieve their goals.

I truly believe we can help one another and we can help ourselves, but at some point, if we want true healing, we must make room for divine intervention. I know the 12-step programs, of which I’m only vaguely familiar, also include surrender to a Higher Power.
So let’s talk about how to do that. How can we invite God in, to complete the job we start with our own minds?

Let’s keep in mind that I’m talking about ALL kinds of healing: physical, romantic, financial, emotional, career... every field in which we might feel lacking or incomplete. I’m talking about healing from fear, doubt, grief, anger, resentment -- healing the past, old hurts or bad memories, and healing the present.

We can begin with prayer -- that is, we can ASK. As it’s written in Psalm 30:2, “I called to the Lord my God for help and he healed me.” One of my clients once said to me, when I suggested this to her, “I never talk to God, I can’t just show up one day and ask for help!” And I said, “why not?” God loves you. Just because you never prayed before doesn’t mean you’re not allowed to pray.

One of the things we can do is to stop thinking about God as a parent in the same way we think about our human parents. I don’t know about you, but I would NEVER ask my mother for help. Well, that’s not entirely true -- I’d ask her for certain kinds of help -- like, what color should I paint my kitchen cabinets -- but I’d never ask her for financial help for instance. It’s too fraught with conflict and obligation. I’d be paying her back long after the IOU was settled.

I don’t think God holds things debt over our heads like that. I don’t think he’s keeping score about how much we’ve already asked for and weighing it against what we’re asking for now. Remember, God is limitless. There is no end to God’s resources. He’s the creator!

So when you recognize that you need healing in any area -- losing weight, giving up alcohol, getting a job -- remember, God’s not measuring your request against all the other requests you’ve made in your life.

So ask for help. Don’t know how to do that? We’ve been given instructions: Try what is written there in Psalm 30:2 -- call to the Lord for help. “Lord God, please help me. I don’t know what to do. I’ve tried and tried to lose weight. I can’t see my way out of this. Please show me what to do. Please heal me.”

What happens next? You listen -- to yourself. God will speak directly to you through YOUR experience. If you’re waiting for a big booming voice from the sky saying “Don’t eat that” -- you’ll be waiting forever. God speaks to you with that still small voice we’re always hearing about in self-help books. It might feel like intuition, a hunch, an urge to do or not do something. It might just be expressed as the courage to sit with an uncomfortable emotion rather than numbing or distracting yourself with food.

To paraphrase the second-century gnostic Monoimus: “Abandon the search for God and take yourself as the starting place.”

The Scriptures are loaded with references to having God within us. Probably the most famous is Luke 17:21 “Neither shall they say, See here! or, see there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you.”

When you listen, you yield. Have you ever been in a conversation with someone who asks you a question and then argues with your answer? This happens for me in my psychic readings a fair percentage of the time. Someone comes in with a question, and already having the answer they want in mind. If I should give them a different answer, they argue with me or they ask me again and again in all kinds of different ways. They’re not listening; I’m giving them information on how they can see a situation differently or how they can direct their energies differently, but I’ve monkeyed with their plan and at that point they just shut down.

So after you ask, listen. Yield. Let go. Say, “God, Please help me stop drinking. I can’t do it on my own. I’m too embarrassed to go to a meeting or to admit it to anyone else but you. I need help, please help me. God, I’m listening. YOU tell me what to do. You direct me.” And when you get the idea or feel the courage, YIELD to it. Surrender to it. Follow where you are being lead.

We all know God helps those who help themselves, right? Or is that just a New England, Yankee thing? We help ourselves when we pray, when we listen, when we make good decisions. We don’t help ourselves when in spite of the answers or direction we’re getting we stick with what WE think is best.

If you involve God in your healing -- whatever it may be you seek healing from -- I promise you will meet with success.

Before closing, I’d like you to consider something else, quite profound and at the foundation of all prayer and healing. Consider -- just for a moment -- that you are NOT broken. John Dryden, the English poet who lived in the last half of the 17th century wrote “God never made His work for man to mend.” If you can wrap your mind around it, pray for God to reveal you to yourself, as you really are. Whole, complete, beloved. Pray for God to release you from your vulnerabilities, doubts and fears. Pray to see yourself as you were when you came into this world: innocent, beautiful, full of promise, open to everything, loving everyone.

Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy-laden and overburdened, and I will give you rest. [I will ease and relieve and refresh your souls.]- Matthew 11:28

There's Always Tomorrow

2011-01-25T08:17:00.001-08:00

Every tradition or oracle or divination technique has something to teach us.

I just picked up a book on the I Ching -- and man, is this different from what my college boyfriend showed me. Back then, he showed me how to toss a coin and then look up the meaning in his reference book. I thought he was so cool.

That was more than 20 years ago, so when I found a copy of an I Ching "how to" book in the bargain bin I thought I'd toss the coin again and see what was up for me in the year ahead. Except this book is WAY more comprehensive and in fact was a little annoying to handle when I'd just expected to sit down with my coffee and chat about the future. I had to slog through about 6 chapters of history, theory, ways to read the coins, marbles and yarrow sticks, supple and strong lines, young stable yin transitioning to old yang, etc. I was just about to give up -- Good Lord, I don't need to learn another tool when I haven't got my own system down yet -- when I hit on perhaps the most profound description of a challenge or problem I'd ever encountered.

According to this author (can't bother to get up from the computer to find the book and tell you his name, sorry), the spirits are always trying to communicate with us -- our ancestors, spirits of nature, "angry spirits" a.k.a. old grudges or bad habits from our past, God and the angels, even our imagination is a spirit.

If we have a problem, or are stuck somehow, this author says the ancient Chinese believed it was a spirit trying to get our attention. See, the spirit people want to help us, but they can't speak our human language so they endeavor to get our attention by throwing up a road block for instance, in the hopes that we'll recognize this blockage and start to look within, pay attention to our intuition and other signs, so we can see our way through or around something. What the I Ching and other divination tools offer us is a way to tune out our regular way of thinking (conscious mind) and look at something symbolic which hopefully will get us to see the problem in a new way -- or to find the solution in a new action or thought pattern.

The I Ching in particular guides us through change. So part of this "obstacle message" includes real-life advice on how to navigate the change that will inevitably happen when we can clearly see what transition is taking place. Fate is involved too; what fate has brought us as far as challenges go, and what our responsibility is to fate and fulfilling what we're called on to do (once we finally get the message).

Once I got over my astonishment at the simplicity and directness of this approach to problem-solving, I applied it immediately to myself. So okay, what's a problem I have? How about this little guy:

"What the #@$% am I meant to be doing with my life?"

I know it involves God, and helping people -- but HOW? Therapy (did I tell you I'm thinking about going back to graduate school? )? Psychic-mediumship? Channeling? Energy Healing? Hypnosis (please, no!)? Teaching about self-help? Writing about it?

Well, according to this author, this issue has been coming up in my life because my spirit people, my guides and ancestors and maybe God himself, are trying to get my attention. They want me to stop looking at my life the traditional way, stop thinking about it so analytically and rationally, relax my mind a bit and listen to what they're telling me about which direction to go in. Hallelujah! It's not because I can't focus (thanks Mom); it's not because I'm a jack of all trades and master of none (thanks Dad); it's not because I'm restless or bored (thanks Sam). I'm actually not doing anything wrong, or if I am, I'm only guilty of not recognizing that someone is trying to help me.

You might have thought I'd jump right on this and toss the yarrow sticks. Nope, not yet, and I honestly don't know why. Maybe I'm a little freaked out about finally getting my questions answered. For heaven's sake, once that happens I'll actually have to DO something about it. No more "I don't know where I'm supposed to go so I'll wait for a sign." No more half-succeeding: I'll either succeed 100% or fail brilliantly. Yikes.

Maybe I'll do it tomorrow.

Clear Your Mind and They Will Come

2010-12-06T11:52:00.000-08:00

I had two back-to-back message circles last week: one Friday evening and another Saturday afternoon. I've gotten kind of cavalier in my approach to conducting these sessions, and I've noticed recently that my performance has been (for me) sub-par. I know my guests are thrilled with the connections we make, but for me lately I've seen fewer tears of joy, heard less astonished laughter, and felt somehow less satisfied at the end of our time together.

Usually I prepare for a circle at my house by saying a rosary, or several decades of it if not the whole entire thing. And when I say, "I say the rosary," I mean I say the Our Fathers and the Hail Marys. I don't know how to do the other parts, the holy mysteries, joys and sorrows. As the process has become more familiar for me and my confidence has grown, I've taken to saying the rosary as I putter around the house putting chairs in place, getting the tissues out, etc. I haven't exactly been on my knees with my attention focused on either one of my Divine Parents.

When I conduct a circle somewhere other than my house I usually say the rosary in the car on the way. I also toss out the standard pleas to the spirit people to show up and be clear with me so I can make the positive connections with their physical people.

Before Friday's session I decided to meditate rather than say the rosary, so I sat in my living room (after all the chairs were set up) and just quieted my mind. I concentrated on my breathing for a moment or two and then let the images, feelings and impressions sort of wash over me. The guests were a bit early, which started my dog barking, which yanked me from my blissful serenity rather more quickly than I prefer to surface. Yet once everyone was settled, I was thrilled to conduct one of the best seances I think I ever have! Such delightful details came through, of the sort that make the spirit people so real, so at home and so present that we're all convinced over and over again of eternity. Poignant gestures, jokes, and apologies flowed so perfectly I think I had a better time than my paying guests. Two hours came and went (there were 9 present) so swiftly that I was reluctant to end the evening.

Afterwards I made an immediate connection between my state of mind and the success the spirit people had in impressing such distinct details on me. It didn't matter that my meditation was cut short, that I'd failed to say my prayers or even to beg the spirit folk to show up loud and clear. I set out to do the same for my Saturday session.

But instead I took a nap. I awoke at 3:35 for a 4PM circle, and had just washed my face when the first car pulled up the drive -- 20 minutes early! Though there were only 4 present, and each guest made a positive and confident connection with a spirit person, I felt so much less successful than just the day before. Why? Because I meditated and cleared my mind just a bit.

There are lots of good books on meditation, but I don't think you need one to get started. I think "clear your mind" just means: when you find your mind wandering off to something you have to do, some memory, etc., just stop thinking about it and go back to thinking about something unprovocative, like your breathing, the ambient sounds around you, or a spot somewhere behind your forehead.

My next circle is Wednesday, and I intend to meditate beforehand; maybe last weekend's experience was just a coincidence, but I don't think so. The contrast was just too obvious. So the next time someone, some book or some guru says "clear your mind," just try it -- I know it made a huge difference in the service I delivered!

God Gave Us Beer So We Can Be Happy

2010-11-16T09:28:00.000-08:00

So it's been more than a month since I last checked in. Honestly, I haven't been doing anything even remotely metaphysical as far as self-development goes. I spent a whole lot of time getting the Putnam Valley First Annual Psychic Fair off the ground, and it was much more successful than I'd dreamed. People even in towns like mine seem much more open than I'd anticipated.

And now that things have settled back down again, I can once again turn my attention back to my favorite subject: me. Well, more like: me and whether or not I'm fulfilling my purpose here on earth.

I had lunch yesterday with a friend from college whom I haven't seen in 25 years. A couple of summers ago we started talking on the phone for the first time since graduation, and that's because I've been doing readings for him; yesterday was a purely social visit so I enjoyed a more balanced exchange of ideas.

Let me preface what I'm about to say with this caveat: I'm not an elitist, at all. If anything I'm probably anti-elitist, coming though I do from a kind of well-heeled New England family with country club memberships and generations of good teeth and robust leisure time. Both of my parents are college-educated; we have always had a summer home; every one of my siblings has a career and married well; favorite Sunday afternoons at home (even now) involve discussing books, invigorating exercise in the fresh air, and cooking, dining and cleaning up together. Yet something about the snobbery associated with that lifestyle (though never existent in my upbringing) was always so off-putting even to me that I sought out friends, work and sweethearts outside of that realm.

Anyway, caveat disclaimed, what I enjoyed most about my lunch with Jude was talking about God, service, politics and life-calling with someone who is smart the way I am. Yeah, yeah, I know. But it was so sweet to be able to talk to someone I didn't have to explain myself to, or provide back-story for! I could look this man in the eye, over a beer at The Slaughtered Lamb in the West Village, and describe a spiritual conflict I was struggling through -- and listen to his thoughtfully weighed responses that had nothing to do with his point of view but which were inherently designed to draw more from me.

I'm reminded of a brief sojourn with Toastmasters years ago; we had to learn to speak extemporaneously (and cogently) on a subject chosen for us -- even if we knew nothing about it. I guess Jude was listening like that: he doesn't really know me, it's been decades since we talked without money being exchanged, and yet the eloquence in his listening and subsequent responses was of the kind that blossoms naturally out of a great liberal arts education.

It's only in the presence of that kind of listener that the speaker (me) finds herself more clearly crafting the question. Posing my life-purpose questions aloud in front of anyone who listens less actively -- insert anti-elitist caveat here again -- doesn't encourage further refinement because the listener doesn't demand more from me.

Before yesterday, I had been asking myself these kind of variations on the same theme:

- what does God want me to do?
- how can I best serve the world?
- am I supposed to write? paint? teach? speak?
- shouldn't I pursue a single path: hypnosis, psychic readings, healing, writing or teaching?
- who am I supposed to be talking to, working with, teaching?
- is it also okay to want to be rich?

...et cetera.

In the 24 hours since my lunch with Jude, my mind has not stopped circling in on the question I really need to be asking myself:

- how can I show the people who are ready to listen that they are free to love themselves the way God loves them?

It's kind of like I just had a really great working lunch with a successful colleague who has helped me refine my mission statement in the business of being Me. By virtue of his particular brand of listening to me, Jude has helped me to define my target audience: those people who are sitting on the fence between "I-got-it-all-figured-out-New-Agers" and "That's-all-woo-woo-bullshit-if-I-can't-see-it-it-ain't-real-ers." I love healthy skeptics! When someone comes to me for a reading, a Message Circle, energy healing or hypnosis and they are unsure if they even believe in what I'm doing -- and they have a positive experience -- they tell everyone. They usually have wide circles of friends and co-workers and they are happy to contrast their skepticism with their positive results to anyone who will listen. Can you imagine a more weighty testimonial? Like Dr. Brian Weiss, the conservative MD who during one of his psychiatric sessions witnessed his patient regress to a past life -- and then wrote about it -- there is no one more believable than a skeptic who takes a risk by broadcasting their own counterintuitive experience.

And it didn't end there with me and Jude. Me, really -- Jude probably has no idea the self-exploration he's triggered. What the refinement of that question has meant for me is a closer understanding of my life purpose. The obvious next steps involve the discovering of "how:"

- I can write about it
- I can bring in through mediumship or channeling the wonderful overarching perspective of the spirit people to help put fears, self-doubts, hopelessness into perspective
- I can minister (teach, speak, heal)

These look like the same questions I asked above don't they? Except now they're not questions, they're actions to take. Now there is no question mark at the end but rather a period, defining work to be done and statements to be made.

It's the last bullet in the list that sings the loudest to me, and I know that God and the spirit people are integral parts of this action, and that the last bullet incorporates the first two.

As I return to my meditation, my cries for help to my guides and to God now follow a thread, because I now have a subject about which I can ask - teach me!

And you can be sure, what I learn (and how I learn it) I'll share with you.

So here's what I would recommend: find someone you went to college with (or high school, trade school, whatever) and tell them what you want to do with your life, or what your challenge is, or where you are lost. Listen closely to how they respond to you, because if you're listening you'll find that their insight will bring you a little closer to what you really mean to say.

A problem defined is already half-solved.

September Predictions

2010-10-15T11:08:00.000-07:00

Here's how I did with my September predictions:

Something of George Washington's or some new discovery about George Washington will surface. A letter by or a painting of him that hasn't been known about will come to light from a private individual.
Well, not exactly on target with this one. The only thing I could discover "new" that came to light about George Washington was a new biography that was published on September 30, 2010, by Ron Chernow called "Washington, A Life." The New York Times reviews the book here.

A new kind of dinosaur bone will be discovered, something large and carnivorous like a T-Rex but a different species. This will be found in a landscape like a high desert; it is sandy, wide-open, some shale-y or sandstone kind of rock, but not flat.
A listener on my radio show directed me to this link, confirming the find: http://apracticalpsychic.blogspot.com/2010/09/dinosaur-prediction-is-accurate.html

A royal family in one of the Scandanavian countries -- I feel it is Norway -- will be making an announcement that is a cause for celebration, such as a wedding or engagement. It will bring the royal family back into the public in an adoring or romantic kind of way.
I'd have to say I got this one dead wrong. I did find something like a wedding in Sweden, where the crown prince Carl Philip moved in with his girlfriend on September . The link to that story is here.
However, what's more interesting is the princess Martha Louise of Norway has announced that she can talk to the dead and to angels, and as a result many citizens feel she is unfit to rule. The bishops actually came out against her. You go girl! That story is here.

A species of bat will either go extinct (the last one in captivity) or a bat from a species that was thought extinct will re-emerge.
Technically I got this one right.. IF I'd said that the species will emerge in a place where it was never seen before. A kind of bat was found in Somerset, UK, where there has never been a confirmed sighting of this type of bat before. A quote towards the end of the article says "There were no previous records of this type of bat here and it is great to have an extra species to add to the Somerset list." Read the whole September 2010 story here.

Reverend Sun Yung Moon and/or his church will be in the news this month because of a very large gathering or a group wedding.
Looks like this happened October 10, 2010, not September. There was a very large gathering for the Unification Youth in New Jersey in September. Also, Rev. Moon regained control by buying back the Washington Times. Not sure these predictions were specific enough; I was on about the wedding but got the month wrong.

A cross on a church in the south of the United States will burn or topple. I feel this is metaphorical rather than literal.
Although apparently it's literal. A cross at a church in George was burned, but appears to be accidental.

A very bad storm will hit the New England coast at the end of September, causing a great deal of damage to homes especially on the Connecticut coast.
Did okay with this one. Tropical storm Nicole hit the coast with torrential rain and 60 mph winds on September 30th. Connecticut Light & Power which provides power to most of the state, had 4,538 customers in the dark at 10 p.m., including 85 in Greenwich and 258 in Stamford. Though this may not be the storm I foresaw, because the one I saw was truly damaging. Hopefully I'm wrong on this one, and Nicole was the storm I was seeing.

I'm not sure predictions are my strong suit. It's hard for me to cast around out there in the ether to find something, though I probably did better than chance. But who knows if this information is something I had subconsciously stored away -- for instance, maybe somewhere, on some level of my mind, I knew that Rev. Moon always has huge group weddings at this time of year? I don't know whether what I'm doing is really predicting or not. Clearly some, like the dinosaur find, are pretty on-target; but is the chance that I came up with that the same as the odds are that I would?

I'm going to pursue predicting for a while longer, to see if I can satisfy my own curiosity about it. Don't know that I see the relevance of it, at least in the sort of things I've been "predicting" so far. Where it would really be helpful is in predicting terrorist attacks or assassination attempts, that sort of thing. But God help me if I start predicting that stuff, because I'll probably get arrested. I'm not even sure I want to be a doomsday predictor.

What a drag it must have been to have Nostradamus at a party. I so don't want to be that guy.

Dinosaur Prediction Is Accurate!

2010-09-23T06:22:00.000-07:00

A listener on my live Tuesday night radio show (http://www.blogtalkradio.com/APracticalPsychic) sent me an email a couple of days ago to let you me that she'd just seen an article about a new dinosaur species discovered in Utah. Here is the link to the article she referenced:

http://www.aolnews.com/nation/article/bizarre-new-dinosaur-species-found-in-utah/19644271?icid=main%7Chtmlws-main-n%7Cdl1%7Csec1_lnk3%7C172219

Here's a short quote from the article, posted online September 22, 2010:

"The new species "would've both been quite spectacular," Michael Getty of the Utah Museum of Natural History, who spotted the first Utahceratops, told AOL News. And quite big: "The skulls alone can be in excess of 6 feet long, [among] the largest heads on any land animal that ever lived," he said.

"...Today these horned dinosaurs would quickly starve in their once-lush homeland. The bone yards that yielded the fossils lie in what is now the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, an isolated, rocky desert granted strict federal protection in 1996."

So what was correct about my predictions and this find? Let's see. I predicted:

"A new kind of dinosaur bone will be discovered, something large and carnivorous like a T-Rex but a different species. This will be found in a landscape like a high desert; it is sandy, wide-open, some shale-y or sandstone kind of rock, but not flat."

Well, for starters the general concept was on target. What was discovered was indeed a new kind of dinosaur, not just more bones of an already-catalogued species. So that's one check in the positive column. However, while it was indeed large, the Utahceratops was a plant eater. I got the size right, but the nature of the beast incorrect. When I was interpreting this impression I was noticing mostly the size of it, comparing it to something giant like T-Rex -- but I extrapolated to give it more in common with the carnivore and should have left my prediction with the size. Clearly I need to focus on more detail when I'm making predictions. What about the landscape? I just Googled this area of Utah for a description of the environment:

"...one of the most formidable chunks of intact wilderness left in the continental United States, the tortured topography of escarpments and high-desert canyon lands now known as the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument."

(excerpted from http://www.accessmylibrary.com/article-1G1-65540682/high-dry-grand-staircase.html)

Those of you reading this who are practicing predictions keep this in mind:

Be careful to note when you may be extrapolating. Just because you get a T-Rex skull in your impression, don't automatically leap to further conclusions than are being offered. What I'm going to do next time is ask some questions regarding the impression, such as: "is it the size that I'm being shown?" and "is it carnivorous or vegetarian?" etc. Not of course that I'm going to be getting more dinosaur predictions, but with other impressions for October's predictions.

Thanks to Karen for sending this link to me!

Predicting The Future

2010-09-07T08:46:00.001-07:00

Many people ask me about predictions, and because I have little experience in this area (and because I can never turn down a challenge) I thought to myself: I can do that.

I mean really, how hard can it be? I already make individual "predictions" for my clients -- what's so different about doing it for the world in general?

My friends suggested I try it in the privacy of my own living room first, but I know that people who follow this blog want to know what I'm doing and how I'm doing it. I don't make any secret of the fact that psychic ability is a skill, not a magic gift, whose challenges I have to hide from the public so everyone thinks I was just born knowing this stuff.

So I posted my first set of predictions on my website (and forgot to post them here -- maybe in some way I AM nervous about putting myself out there!)

It wasn't very comfortable getting to the predictions because I felt like a damn idiot sitting in my meditation on my couch and casting around for things. Predicting is HARD! Without anything in particular to focus on, I had no idea whether what was coming into my head was just shit I was making up or I was really dipping into the likely future of the planet.

And let me tell you, there are a LOT of subjects out there to predict. My conscious mind got all in the way, because while I was waiting for information (well, you tell me!) I was thinking, "Maybe I should think about a country. What about Spain? What's going to happen in Spain this week?" And I got... nothin'.

Okay, so Spain will just be business as usual. And so it went. The environment? The economy? Do I really need to be a psychic to predict which way those things are going?

I knew I wanted to stay away from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; I wanted to stay away from tsunamis and mega-volcanoes and genocide. I guess I want emotionally-neutral predictions to start with. And God forbid I make a prediction that is negative regarding the United States or the President -- I'll be in Gitmo with every other suspected terrorist.

So I finally took my own advice and just went with what was coming to me. Here were my predictions for the week of 8/22/10:

1. Fire on an oil rig in the Gulf
2. A solar flare or a super nova event
3. The passing of a Latin American leader
4. A very severe storm affecting the coast of Connecticut at the end of September (this one doesn't really count. I made this prediction in 2005 but since it's a pretty sure thing in my mind I threw it in so I wouldn't be a total failure if nothing else happened).

1. Fire on an oil rig in the Gulf
September 02, 2010|By Richard Fausset and Bettina Boxall, Los Angeles Times, Gerald Herbert / Associated Press: Reporting from Atlanta and Los Angeles — The opening scene was all too familiar. Black smoke rising from a burning oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico and workers plucked from the sea. But Thursday's fire on an oil production facility 100 miles off the Louisiana coast appears to have ended without disaster. None of the 13 workers on board the platform was injured. The Coast Guard found no evidence of an oil leak, and by Thursday afternoon the fire was out.

-- I can see I have to work a little more on getting the timing down, as I was one week late with this prediction --

2. A solar flare or a super nova event
URORA AUSTRALIS: Earth is exiting a solar wind stream that has been causing bright auroras around the poles--both poles. "The tail end of the solar wind stream produced a nice outburst on Aug. 27th," says Zupanc. "Despite having to contend with a nearly full Moon, the auroras were easy to see."

-- Not exactly on target, but close. I need to be more specific with my predictions --

3. The passing of a Latin American leader
Mexican authorities announced on Friday (8/28) that six police officers had been arrested on suspicion of participation in the kidnap and murder of Edelmiro Cavazos, mayor of the town of Santiago in the north-eastern state of Nuevo León. Some of the officers are accused of having kept watch to ensure no other law enforcement officials witnessed the kidnap, which took place at Cavazos’ home on Sunday evening, while others are accused of direct participation in the crime. Among those detained are individuals who had been on duty guarding the mayor’s house at the time of his kidnapping, and all six arrestees have confessed their guilt. Cavazos was found dead on a rural stretch of highway three days after being sequestered. At least four other people are suspected of involvement in the crime.

-- Close, but not specific enough; I need to offer more details -- for instance, I need to say the leader was murdered, not just "passed." --

4. A very severe storm affecting the coast of Connecticut at the end of September.

-- Stay tuned. And if you live in Connecticut, bring in your lawn furniture. I'm not kidding! --

Not bad overall, but I can see that I need to be more specific, more confident, and more timely. I decided instead of weekly, I'm going to make monthly predictions. Instead of just sitting on my meditation couch, I decided to take a page from Edgar Cayce's book and recline, go into a "sleep" and just start talking. I don't have a faithful secretary to record my words, so I held onto my little MP3 recorder.

I won't lie to you, I still felt silly, and I'm not sure I reached any deeper trance than I had before. But I counted UP instead of down, so that I would feel in my imagination that I was ascending to a place where I would have an overview of things. I asked for my guides to meet me there -- the Gentleman did but I didn't recognize anyone else -- and then I just said, show me what I should share to develop this skill and to help people who want to do the same. Ideas came to me and I spoke out loud into my recorder. The ideas were not profound, not brilliant, not "different" feeling than other thoughts, but I know enough to say them if they pop into my awareness.

So here are my predictions for the month of September, 2010:

1. Something of George Washington's or some new discovery about George Washington will surface. A letter by or a painting of him that hasn't been known about will come to light from a private individual.
2. A new kind of dinosaur bone will be discovered, something large and carnivorous like a T-Rex but a different species. This will be found in a landscape like a high desert; it is sandy, wide-open, some shale-y or sandstone kind of rock, but not flat.
3. A royal family in one of the Scandanavian countries -- I feel it is Norway -- will be making an announcement that is a cause for celebration, such as a wedding or engagement. It will bring the royal family back into the public in an adoring or romantic kind of way.
4. A species of bat will either go extinct (the last one in captivity) or a bat from a species that was thought extinct will re-emerge.
5. A native community in southern Alaska or northern Washington will come into the public eye over a territory dispute with the U.S. Government. Something like a totem pole will be at the center of this dispute or will represent the cause of the native people.
6. Reverend Sun Yung Moon and/or his church will be in the news this month because of a very large gathering or a group wedding.
7. A cross on a church in the south of the United States will burn or topple. I feel this is metaphorical rather than literal.
8. A very bad storm will hit the New England coast at the end of September, causing a great deal of damage to homes especially on the Connecticut coast.

I know I don't mention specific dates, but that's a refinement I choose to develop after I get the skill itself down. I believe that may be of more value than something like, say, "I feel that on September 28th something very exciting will happen in the US." I'd rather get the "something exciting" correct and work on specific dates later.

What do you think?

Highlight from 8/17/10 Radio Show

2010-08-23T11:26:00.000-07:00

Listen to this short clip (3:46) to hear Diane's mom and stepfather come through on my radio show A Practical Psychic (http://www.blogtalkradio.com/apracticalpsychic).

On The Verge of Something

2010-08-23T06:54:00.000-07:00

I'm just not sure what it is.

Friday I was sitting across from my client in my office, chatting before our session. As she was speaking, I had the strangest sensation that I was about to go out, and by that I mean go out of my body permanently. I felt like I was going to die.

I didn't feel any pain, or the onset of any fatal trigger in my organic body, I just had this amazing awareness that if I chose to, I could at that very moment step out of my physical existence and totally into spirit. It seemed like a part of my mind was also witnessing this instant of choice too, like I could see my chin fall to my chest and my eyes close, and could see my client's reaction. I stayed, obviously; maybe the choice wasn't really mine to make, but more illustrative of the power my higher mind could exercise. It was a funny feeling, not alarming exactly, but kind of awe-ful, and I felt a distinct curiosity along with quite a desire to follow through with it.

Since then I haven't really felt quite right. It's Monday morning now, and for the last three nights I have hardly slept at all. It seems I wake up every hour or even more frequently than that. Last night during one of these waking moments I felt like I could go out again, right then. Physically I feel very odd, kind of like my mind is splintered from my body. I feel in myself and like I'm observing myself at the same time. The part that is observing me has a distinct lack of emotion about these sensations and the idea of going out and while that freaks me out a little it's also rather comforting. If a wiser part of me thinks it's no big deal, who am I to argue?

My heart feels funny, as do my throat and my head, and I'm not talking about a physical funny feeling but the impression of a funny feeling. The pup I'm raising hasn't slept either. Last night he was moving around what seemed like every 30 seconds, and he's doing the same thing this morning. Something is really agitating him, but my animal communication skills have never been much good (no practice) so I can't say what's going on with him. With me though, I just feel somehow out of sync, or out of phase with the frequency of normal life now. I've got an itchy feeling to get moving already! though I have no idea what that means.

I remember a year or so after the September 11 attacks there was a blackout in the city (of New York) where I was working at the time for Hunter College. Since 2001 the College had an evacuation plan that meant if you worked in a certain area of the building you should meet at a certain corner a block or two away in the event of anything truly disruptive; it was simply a way to account for all the employees. So when the blackout came in the late afternoon and we all began to grasp the magnitude of it, the employees began to make their way from the buildings. As I walked to my designated meet-up place (the northeast corner of 69th and Park Avenue) I had my eyes on the sky like every other city resident who had seen our towers fall.

What stands out most about my state of mind on that afternoon was a kind of stunned sense of waiting. I was moving but wasn't really aware of walking; I had the sense of walking and watching myself walk at the same time, all the while waiting for what we were all sure was coming. Just a detached, unemotional brand of waiting, which is what I was feeling with my client on Friday and last night on the edge of sleep.

In my meditation this morning I felt the urge to write, so this is what came out when I picked up a pen:

"Either way I go, there will you go too.
The pope, the pope whose ear has turned to the World
closes shut like a clam shell, the pearl still inside.
In Span a ring is given and a proposal made
and a famous Scout has a cancer.
Cannons shout a plane from the sky and Taps is played
for a well-know black man."

What? My thoughts exactly. Who am I channeling now, Nostradamus? But wait, there's more. This week I've written to expect:
- Fire on an oil rig in the Gulf
- A solar flare or super nova event
- The passing of a Latin American leader

Maybe I'm channeling predictions now, like the great Jeanne Dixon. God forbid I get anything about an American leader -- I'll likely be accused of meddling in a terrorist plot; I'd be accused of provoking that bland waiting which would be just too ironic.

Spirit Communication Highlight

2010-08-12T10:33:00.001-07:00

Because Blogger won't let me upload an MP3, I took my audio file and dropped it behind one of the backgrounds available in iMovie so I could create a video.

This is 5:55 of a spirit message that came through for a caller on my radio show, which is usually psychic impressions only. I thought I'd now edit the most interesting or unique mediumship events into a "highlight reel" to play on my site, my Facebook page, and here on my blog.

Look for more of these in the future.

The Gentleman

2010-08-09T12:08:00.001-07:00

I'm still continuing with my kundalini yoga practice, though I'm doing it at home because there aren't classes nearby. It's not quite as amazing as the first one, which could be because I'm alone, I'm using a DVD and I'm doing the same thing pretty frequently. Some interesting things have happened in the meditations that follow however.

People often ask me at my Message Circles what the spirit people DO out there, so I decided as part of my Circles and during my meditations that I'd ask. Usually in Message Circles the spirit person comes through and identifies him or herself through characteristics, illnesses, gifts, or sometimes a name. They also will offer evidence of their presence in the physical guest's life by commenting on a recent doctor visit, a new paint color for the baby's room, or what everyone had for dinner last night. I ask them for these kind of details not only as evidence of their identity, but as evidence that they are still part of the family even though they are in spirit.

Last Thursday after yoga I sat for a few minutes of meditation. The Gentleman (who shows himself as a skeleton to me, and first introduced himself during a past life regression several months ago) came in after a few minutes. I asked him to show me what happens after a spirit leaves a body, and he showed me that the spirit goes into a deep sleep. When I asked him, "for how long?" he just shrugged -- it depends on the time they need to adjust. While the spirit person is in this deep sleep, he showed me something like a scan going over them. It looked like what I've seen on TV of submarine computer consoles: kind of a sweeping line that detects bumps and blips in little flares of light.

This is what the scan was showing over the sleeping spirit, and the scan went back and forth until all blips and flares of light were gone, revealing just a line moving uninterrupted back and forth over the spirit person. Is it cleaning? Resetting energy? I don't know, he wouldn't answer me. He kind of clacked his teeth together when I asked, and of course it always looks like he's smiling so I got nowhere with that.

"Then what?" I asked.

He showed me that the sleeping spirit VERY SLOWLY begins to emerge from this deep kind of sleep, and the pace at which the spirit person awakens has everything to do with their capacity to adjust to their new place and the information about the change in themselves.

He shut me down after that, and my meditation was suddenly over. You know that feeling when you're meditating (or doing anything -- jeez, even having a relationship) and suddenly you just say to yourself, "Okay, I'm done." That was that.

But that night I had my regular Thursday evening Message Circle, and about 4PM I was sitting on my couch reading when I began to yawn uncontrollably. This has been -- though not for a while -- a strong signal from a spirit person or guide that I'm wanted for some important communication. I kept yawning. Well, I WAS tired, I thought to myself. I do have this 6 month old puppy. But it persisted (classic sign of something to pay attention to), so I put down my book, got into a comfortable meditation posture and said, "Okay, what?"

Nothing happened.

I thought I saw the Gentleman for a moment but then there was nothing. Okay, so I was tired after all.

In time I went started my Circle, and in response to my intention and general unspoken question to the spirit people, I got an answer to "what do you do?" Well, sort of.

One physical guest's mother came through first, we identified her, and she continued to hang around, interjecting between every other spirit person. Finally at the end of our Circle she came through with her message, which she conveyed through the tale of St. Christopher.

For those of you who don't know, the story of St. Christopher begins when a traveler approaches a fast-moving river. He notices a small child on the bank who asks to be carried across. The traveler (Christopher) agrees and puts the child on his shoulders. As he fords the river, the baby gets heavier and heavier until Christopher is leaning heavily on his staff and staggering through the dangerous water, risking his own life. When he finally reaches the other side, he puts the child down and says, essentially, "What the f***!?"

The child says he is Jesus and he is so heavy because he carries the weight of all the sin in the world. And Christopher is canonized (Patron Saint of Travelers) and then de-canonized some decades later.

So Angelina the spirit mother tells this story, and remarks that she herself carried a terrible sin, or so she thought. She hid this sin and judged herself very harshly all through her life. When she finally went out, she learned that what she had carried had no weight where she was now, and that it was her OWN judgment, not God's, that made that burden so heavy. All that wasted energy! She told us to drop our hard self-judgments, to forgive ourselves.

She has taken on some sort of teaching or even preaching kind of work where she is, she told us, to get the word out to physical people to believe that God will never judge them as harshly as they judge themselves.

Later that night I couldn't sleep. I tossed and turned all night, and when I did drift into short periods of sleep I was entangled in very disturbing dreams and energies that I can't remember. At one point the Gentleman showed up, and I asked him to help me sleep. He stood behind me and put his hands on either side of my face. Then he moved to my feet, and finally put a hand on a rib on my right side, and -- finally -- sleep.

In the morning I felt like I'd gotten not only a jolt of his healing energy, but a way to lay my hands on my clients. In my meditations since then I haven't gotten more clarity, but my people are always telling me I must practice more patience.

Looking For A Spirit Person

2010-08-03T10:01:00.000-07:00

Generally when I conduct Message Circles I say a short prayer, close my eyes, put out my "Open For Business" sign to the spirit people, and then wait. In a moment or two the spirit people will begin to take shape in a way that is specific enough for me start identifying their details and assigning them to whoever is sitting around me.

If I'm doing this at my home, I can tell when we're nearing the end because the feeling of energy from my porch (where I ask the spirit people to wait) begins to diminish. If I'm doing the Circle at another facility or someone's home, I just go through each spirit person until I find, when my eyes are closed and I'm listening, that no new information or details are coming to me.

At my July Message Circle at Opal Moon in Croton, NY, I had gone through this process, related all the spirit people who were there for me, and was getting ready to close the Circle. A family of three women asked if I would bring someone through for them who hadn't come in, and whom they really wanted to hear from. I don't often follow through with such a request because they usually come at the end of the Circle, and that sort of request lends itself more to a private reading. After all, no one else in the Circle got to ask for a specific message.

I hadn't really been satisfied with the spirit people I had brought through for this family though. There hadn't been any real hits, or zingers, that had the family members laughing or crying or absolutely identifying their spirit person. My feeling is if I don't give the client this level of detail, then I'm just like any other run-of-the-mill medium who could (for all I know) be making the whole thing up. Yes, I'm one of the most skeptical people out there!

So I asked for the spirit's first name, and went looking. What that means is I close my eyes (I'm pretty visual, and this helps me concentrate) and instead of waiting for something to appear on the inside of my eyelids, I kind of push out into the darkness that is there. I stretch my vision as if I'm peering towards a very far off horizon to see if I can detect any movement there or any change. I may do that looking left, center and right. I try to be patient, all while my conscious mind is taunting me: "You suck. These poor people can see right through you. They can see you don't know what you're doing. They can see you're a fraud."

Yeah, that stuff goes through my mind. I don't usually believe it, but when I have to look, summon, or fight for an impression I begin to doubt myself. Because the clock is ticking, everyone's waiting, I'm already ready to close up shop and go home.

I also tune in to my feelings. I concentrate super hard on locating or identifying any twinge or emotion that begins to even faintly crop up. My feeling is if a spirit person didn't show up at a Circle, either they have a very good reason for staying away or I am not picking up on their frequency. So in this exercise I just heighten my awareness as much as I can. It's difficult to describe, and kind of difficult to do: I can't sustain it for more than a few seconds. It's like diving into a pool to retrieve something from the bottom of the deep end; I can only dive down for a few seconds before coming back up for air. And every time I have to come back up I'm aware that people are waiting for me to deliver. It's pretty stressful, which is the perfect way NOT to feel when trying to find a spirit person.

Finally, after about three whole minutes of this kind of work (try it, it's MUCH longer than you think!) I thought I felt something. I leapt on it like a terrier and began to drag it back from the far horizon closer to my experience.

The feeling I got was a very slight feeling of being "off" or out of balance. I brought it up to the family, with my usual connection of recreational or pharmaceutical drug use. They could confirm some of the medicinal drug use. I felt I saw either a hand weight or a baby rattle, neither of which they could identify. And it went this way back and forth, a "sort-of" identifying detail, then one we couldn't place. We got a little closer to identifying him clearly when I saw him stick out his tongue at me, and it was evident he was making fun of me. The family would concur that he would do such a thing. Still, it wasn't enough for me or for them. He showed that he smoked, they agreed -- but so what, lots of people smoked. Still not enough for me.

He showed me a heartbreak connected with him, which the family validated. But then the next detail wasn't a hit. I wasn't getting enough detail, a few physical things, but finally an overall feeling from the spirit that he was losing patience with me. First he was making fun of me because I wasn't interpreting his symbols clearly enough (which the family validated, as he had a taunting kind of streak when alive), and threw up increasingly ridiculous symbols for me to try to interpret. Then he stopped, kind of with a feeling of "Enough! I'm very busy! Wrap it up!"

His mother asked, "what does he say?" and immediately the response came to me, "they don't have their hooks in me any more." Which caused quite a lot of laughter from the family, and had a two-fold meaning: he had been an alcoholic, and died from complications of that addiction after time in the hospital hooked up to things. He talked about a richness or texture in his perception now that he wasn't able to enjoy before, which seemed to describe emerging from the fog of alcoholism.

So these were pretty good hits, but I still wanted to give this family more. So I begged this impatient spirit for one more detail, one really specific message that would comfort his people. He talked about Edgar Allen Poe, and his poem about the Raven, specifically the line about knocking at the chamber door. He said this knocking, this door, would be how they would know him when he came to visit. One family member gave a happy shout: another medium had delivered the same message that inexplicable knocking would actually be this spirit announcing his presence. His mother said just days ago she'd thought she'd seen him at her door. He wanted them to know they weren't making it up, it was really him when they either heard knocking or had the visual impression of him it would be by or in a door.

Finally! The spirit person seemed to pack up his energy really quickly as though he had to rush off. I wanted to ask him where he was going and what he was doing that he had to get back to. I wanted to know why he hadn't voluntarily shown up during the Circle. But even before I got those thoughts formulated he told me, "Not now," and left.

In my practice now I plan to ask some of these questions:

"What occupies you in the spirit world?"
"Are you traveling around this globe, other worlds, dimensions?"
"What does it look like there?"
"Are you aware of past lives, or of a plan to return?"

I hadn't ever bothered with these issues before, because I wanted to get their identity out to their people more than anything. I think I felt there was always time to get to this "unimportant" stuff. And frankly, I'd read some books by other mediums who described the afterlife in ways that just didn't seem plausible, or seemed too New Age-y. Castles in the sky, great libraries filled with scrolls (who needs to read when you're a spirit?), heavenly meadows and angelic beings. It just seemed like crap. That's human stuff, isn't it?

The Art of Letting Go

2010-07-06T07:26:00.000-07:00

I recently heard from a client of mine who was feeling a little shaky about a big decision she had to make. That decision involved following her heart toward a gender preference that meant leaving her husband. Her concern was for her husband, whether he would find passionate love, whether he would be okay when she left, and when she should initiate this difficult discussion. She was feeling a lot of fear and doubt.

She'd emailed me these questions and so I had the opportunity to take some more time than I normally might in replying. I decided to practice channelling this information from the spirit realm rather than offer her my impressions from the psychic realm.

Psychic impressions, by the way, come from physical objects in the physical world. A voice, photograph, handwriting, a piece of jewelry -- all can convey information about the past, present and future. I heard my client asking for more though. In addition to straightforward answers to her questions, I heard her asking for reassurance, courage, and a way to employ faith. Because it isn't legal or ethical for me to offer advice that I'm being paid for (I'm not a paid licensed therapist, nor am I acting just as a friend who might offer free advice), I have to compose careful replies in accordance with my profession's limits.

I truly applaud courage in doing what the heart compels, especially when it comes to choosing personal comfort over another's, and I can appreciate the internal struggle that precedes and follows those heart-centered decisions. I sat down at my computer, closed my eyes for a moment and asked for the right words to answer her, and I began to type. I can type with my eyes closed, so this is an easy way for me to get the fleeting impressions down quickly before they dissolve, and it also allows me to get my conscious mind out of the way -- because I've been typing since the sixth grade (my mother had high hopes I'd marry a rich man, but if I didn't at least I could work as a secretary) there is something like a direct line from my brain to my hands. I can actually type something and have a different conversation at the same time; since this is kind of what's going on when I channel, typing while I "meditate" lends itself to my own peculiar brand of inspired writing. I've heard from many sources far better at channeling than I am that it's better to write long hand, but because typing is so much more immediate for me than handwriting, I'm going to stick with this format.

After I asked the question, "How can I help her? Please give me the words to say to her," I just started moving my fingers on my own. They weren't being moved for me or anything like that, I was just priming the pump, "emptying the bucket," with this movement. The first few words had some conscious interference but then I found that sentences were coming through my fingers. I was totally aware of what I was writing, but it seemed like my fingers were ahead of my brain, rather than the other way around. Rather than writing from my own thoughts, this was almost like I was taking dictation (I guess all that secretarial training worked out after all, since the man I married didn't get rich till after our divorce).

This is what I typed for my client:

"When I do Message Circles or other mediumship work, the spirit people always have such a wise perspective on our struggles in life. In general they say to us, 'Trust that nothing is really as big a deal as you think it is. Trust that everyone will be okay, including yourself. This will all make sense when you're dead.' Then they fill the room up with lots of laughter and joyful energy.

"That's what letting things unfold is all about: trust that if you feel your heart (not your head) is guiding you or directing you, and you follow it, that you will never have been wrong or be regretful. In the meantime, everyone will be okay, and in the end, everything will make beautiful, perfect sense.

"In answer to your questions, you don't have to figure out the right time frame to talk to your husband. When your mind is made up, and your heart has had enough of perserverating, you will be ready to confidently, compassionately, share the truth. It's better to let the time present itself, than to force it to happen.

"You may feel that you're in a terrible state of a heart torn in half, but it is unwise to force this final conversation. Finally, one day, you will wake up and it will be 'the day.' Despite ultimatums and deadlines, this conversation has to bloom organically from within you, with your own perfect initiative. And while the conversation may not be easy to have, it will be easy to begin. Ignore the pressure from your thoughts or from external sources, and you will be guided to the right time.

"As for whether your husband will find passionate love, of course the answer is this: you cannot let that stop you or delay you from your own passionate life. It is none of your business how he plumbs his own feelings or whether or not he seeks passion. You are not responsible for the richness or fullness of his life, and as long as you carry that responsibility, you will prevent him from finding out for himself, and at the same time dilute your own experience. It's a natural thing to do when you care about someone. But be assured that released from a half-passionate life, he will be free to seek out -- if HE chooses to -- true fulfillment.

"Talk about your fears and doubts to God, or your angels, or your beloveds in spirit. Get every terrible thought of yourself out, if you have to tear it out by the roots; how to do that? For once and for all, for the first or last time, say out loud to God every single fear you have, every decision you regret, every action you're ashamed of. Let every sorry, wretched thought come out. Only God is listening. Let Him hear your secrets, which He knows and has forgiven before you were even born. There is no part of you so black or so hidden that God's light cannot shine into.

"Leave all of that there with God or your beloveds. They want you to put those burdens down now. You are here in a physical body to live fully and with the purpose that is stamped in your heart. Be cheerful when you can. Accept that you are forgiven even in advance of the things you have not yet done."

When I was done it occurred to me that I was writing about "letting go," that vague directive all the self-help books and gurus tell us we need to do. But what the hell does it mean? How do you do it?

I think you do it this way:

1. You select a spirit/angel/God (or person) to hear you. You must be able to feel in some part of you, somewhere, that this spirit/angel/God or person will not judge you. You don't have to fully accept it at the beginning of this process, but you have to have an inkling that you can really divest yourself of every ugly self-assessment without perceiving that some of your own harsh judgment or shame will be projected back on to you from whoever is listening.

2. You take a deep breath and wade in to all the muck and mire of yourself. Confess everything. Hold back nothing. You will know you are holding back nothing when huge, tsunami-like waves of emotion overtake you; you may be in tears, sobbing, wailing, furiously gnashing your teeth or rending your garments, roaring, shaking, curling into a fetal position and sucking your thumb... it will be raw and maybe scary, but it's important to let this emotional energy OUT. These are the emotions you kept under control for so long because it felt like if you even let a crack develop in the dike holding them back, that all the pressure of their accumulated years will push forth and be totally unstoppable.

3. At some point in this you will feel finished. You may laugh at yourself; you may feel dried out, emptied out, or shed of a great weight; you may just feel exhausted from the effort. Now this is the very important part: conclude that you will leave all of that right where you left it, at the feet of your spirit/angel/God/person. This is where you must make the decision to "let go." This is what letting go means. You dropped these burdens by expressing them. Hanging on to them means you keep revisiting them or replaying those thoughts in your mind or in your present self-assessment. Letting go means not letting your thoughts return to them once they have been emptied from your psyche.

4. You must trust that, having heard the worst of you (in your perception anyway), your spirit/angel/God/person says simply, "okay, that's done." AND IT'S DONE. Your spirit/angel/God/person has declared that you are now DONE with that, so who the heck are you to disagree and keep revisiting it? Have faith by making believe if you have to.

5. If those kind of thoughts or regrets return, you say to yourself something like, "that's done," or "no more of that."

There may be varying degrees of things to let go of, anger at being laid off for instance may not be a soul-wrenching sobfest for 2 hours, but a furious raging for 30 minutes. Letting go of abuse or trauma at an early age may take hours of deliberate wailing -- or it may not. When you give yourself permission to exercise the art of letting go, you will intuitively know how long it will take and when you are done.

Breathing Makes a Huge Difference

2010-06-22T07:26:00.000-07:00

That's a no-brainer, right?

The act of breathing is actually a no-thinker and an all-reptilian-brainer. In the lower brain stem (the "reptilian brain") the medulla oblongata controls our breathing among other things, and it is so inextricably tied to our survival that the urge to breathe exists independently of our will to breathe; that is, it bypasses cognitive function.

In "Deep Survival" by Laurence Gonzales, the author refers to instances where scuba divers remove their regulators while under water and drown, even though their tanks still contain air. For these divers, the feeling of being smothered (deprived of air) -- from the regulator covering the nose and mouth -- overpowers their cognitive function which tells them that that covering is actually providing air: their physical urge to breathe is stronger than the mind which is telling them they ARE breathing. So, off comes the air supply and they suck in water and drown.

Breathing = survival = breathing.

But what if you want to do more than survive, or what if you want to experience a state of mind that transcends the human or reptilian experience? Can breathing differently elevate survival to a different level?

Yesterday I took my first ever real kundalini yoga class in New York City. It was 90 minutes of breathing and chanting and holding my arms over my head in impossible positions for a really long time -- longer than I would have ever thought I was capable of. First we panted with our tongues hanging as far out of our mouths as possible. Later on we held the left nostril closed and did right-nostril breathing for what seemed like half an hour. We also did "breath of fire," which is like panting but breathing through the nose only.

Several times in between the postures and the breathing we laid down on our backs (presumably to recover). About half-way through the class during one of these respites I experienced such utter stillness in my body, my thoughts, my emotions and all my senses that I felt I could almost stop breathing entirely. I was floating in such a blissful state that I knew when we started up again I would be tapping into some other power than my own muscle or mental strength.

I've always been very athletic: a jogger, aerobics teacher (it was the 80s, give me a break), a high-altitude mountaineer, a skier and snow-boarder, swimmer, waterskier, roller-blader, hockey player, hiker -- you name, I'd jump right in. I have an intimate knowledge of my limits and possibilities, I have extraordinary physical and mental endurance accumulated over decades of physical challenges with nature, others and myself. Especially in the mountains, at times when my life was really in danger, I dug deep into my body and mind and powered through -- what a great feeling that was!

Before this class, I experienced the joy and rush that comes from mind and body connecting and powering through difficulties. In this class I experienced the otherworldly feeling of mind and body disconnecting from the idea of being a singular unit of power and connecting with everyone else in the room, and with some huge, crazy energy. I'd had moments of that before, in meditation, but because I generally meditate alone it was a much different feeling.

So while I'm lying on my back, disconnected from myself yet feeling more powerful and connected than ever before, my Council began to show up. There they were in their usual semi-circle, and I swear they were actually celebrating. One of them even came up and put a medal around my neck, which was kind of a gentle joke like, "you finally got it!"

No words passed between us in those few minutes, but I got the distinct impression that I was supposed to keep doing this kind of yoga, because breathing was going to transport me to a place where I could understand what I was supposed to do next. It was like when I was a junior in high school and I went to visit my older sister at the College of the Holy Cross: after a blissful weekend of underage drinking and meeting handsome boys at a mixer, I felt like two more years of high school was beneath me. I belonged at college! I was ready. This high school shit was for babies.

I couldn't have been more wrong, but I couldn't see that at the time. I needed two more years of maturity and learning before I could begin to understand what was expected of me socially, intellectually and spiritually at college (I went to Holy Cross too).

And that's like what happened yesterday. Before that class I thought I knew the route I needed to take to channel healing, and I thought I knew I was ready to be there. But my guides had always had something else in mind: more maturity? More training in the basics (like breathing)? So when I kind of went back to square one, I got the feedback and encouragement I was looking for.

Who needs this basic stuff like how to breathe, this "high school" shit?

Me. I need it.

Forensic Psychic Readings

2010-06-04T08:09:00.000-07:00

I've always wanted to be able to help locate missing people or pets. Ever since I was a young teenager I've wanted to work with the police to find lost loved ones. Something about being never seen again has always caused me a lot of emotional upset, though I have had no personal experience like that.

Once when I was about 4 years old I was walking behind my parents and aunt and uncle on a dirt road in New Hampshire, right by my family's summer home. Apparently I wandered off, following a kitten. The adults were ahead of me chatting with each other, and I must have fallen behind. I have vague memories of this, and recall being in a kitchen with a lady who seemed ancient. My mother showed up screaming at me and, according to therapists I've seen over the years, it turns out this is the entire cause of my abandonment issues. I don't remember much fear at being lost, more confusion at the terror of being found; I didn't think I had abandonment issues anyway.

Not too long ago a colleague wanted to try a new past life regression method, and I volunteered. I love that stuff! I am a real believer in multiple chances at life -- it's no more a miracle to be born twice than to be born once, right?

The most emotional moment for me reliving this otherwise ordinary existence as uneducated household help in an urban estate in the South, was when the man who plowed the fields showed me a human skeleton his plow had turned up. I was horrified to see the bones and the belt buckle (which was all that was left), not because of the body itself but because somewhere, at some time, someone never came home. Someone walking or traveling just ceased to exist and died and was buried and decomposed, without his loved ones ever knowing what had happened. Even in my altered state of consciousness, wrapping my mind around this concept really freaked me out and was the most upsetting moment in the whole regression.

I know it's worse for the family left behind, who never know the circumstances or location of death -- or if death has actually occurred. I can't imagine the pain of the family of Nathalie Holloway, who five years ago disappeared in Aruba. She just disappeared. She vanished. It's probably clear she'll never come home -- but where IS she?

I don't think the spirit haunts the area or cares very much about the circumstances. I've met enough spirit people who themselves met violent ends, and they seem cool with the whole thing. They've got a completely different perspective than we do, here still in the physical.

Lost people are a horrifying fascination for me. Like watching some terrible accident, I can't look away. I can't stop myself from trying to feel the family's pain or grief. Just the other day walking in the woods I wondered out loud to a friend, "how many people do you think lie buried in the ground all over this continent, throughout time? How much of this ground is made up of bodies that just never got back home?" He gave me weird look and said I was being morbid, but honestly, that shit draws me in. And it's not just the family's pain I am drawn to, but to the last thoughts of the lost person. What are they thinking when it becomes clear that they won't be found? Sadness? Worry about family members? Or are they too busy watching their lives flash before their eyes to even consider whether their remains will be found?

So, since I was a young person (and apparently in a past life too) this topic has held a fascination for me; yet I never did anything about it. I never trained search and rescue dogs, I never offered my services to the police. Once back in the early 90s, when I was doing 3D animation for a living I looked into age progression, which uses computers and designers to anticipate how a child who went missing years ago might look in the present. I looked into it, that was all.

But yesterday an opportunity came to me during a regular psychic reading. As usual, I asked my client before our reading began what questions she would like me to look into; I got the usual -- love life, career -- and then she said, "Tonight a group of us are getting together to look for our friend Thomas, who went missing last Sunday. If you see anything about his whereabouts, please let me know."

Oh boy.

So I started the reading, figuring I'd get to Thomas later; I couldn't concentrate on this girl's love prospects to save my life, so I said, "Do you have a picture of him?" She showed me his Facebook picture and we went back to the reading.

I wanted to say so badly, "this guy is still alive." But my stupid logical mind was saying -- no way. Four days after driving drunk away from a party? No chance. But his friends and family had been searching for two days already, and no one knew where he went to when he left the party -- home to NYC or somewhere else?

So I said, "I see the Taconic Parkway. I feel like there is an animal in the road who he hit or attempted to avoid, and that he went off the road at highway speed. The car threaded through small enough trees and came to a stop well off the road, out of sight from the Parkway. The impact did not kill him. The car didn't hit a big enough tree to cause the kind of impact that would kill him. I see him lying on his side in the leaves, with either blood or vomit in his mouth. I see a registered campground nearby. And I hope you are prepared to learn that he isn't alive."

I kept repeating that the car crash didn't kill him, but my logical mind kept adding in that he wasn't alive.

About 30 minutes after my client left she called me to say Thomas had been found: off the Taconic Parkway, near a registered campsite. He was found outside his car, lying on the ground with internal injuries and a back injury -- and he was alive.

Obviously my information didn't help in locating and ultimately rescuing him, but I was pretty psyched to learn that it matched that closely. More importantly, I ignored key information my impressions were giving me about whether he was alive or not -- and that's not a mistake I'd want to make when dealing with a family. I also wonder whether what I picked up on (which was likely happening AS I was giving the reading if not just before) was a result of the rescue already being accomplished.

I won't know unless I have another opportunity, and while I'm not yet ready to offer my services I would welcome another chance to tune in, if one should come my way.

Just Taking A Break...

2010-05-19T06:32:00.000-07:00

I've been off the blog for a few weeks, thanks to a new puppy I'm raising for Guiding Eyes for the Blind (www.guidingeyes.org). I haven't slept in weeks! House-training is a 24/7 effort, and slowly but surely we're getting there. In the meantime, I've been bleary-eyed and stumbling around in a sleep-deprived stupor. Whenever I pause to meditate I fall asleep, so until house training is achieved, channeling is on hold!

But I'll be back soon, and don't forget to listen to me on www.blogtalkradio.com/apracticalpsychic every Tuesday from 6-7PM, EST.

Here's what the little Einstein looks like:

Back to Basics

2010-04-18T14:09:00.000-07:00

I'm learning something new about the way my mind works.

As a hypnotist, you'd think I really would have this down by now, but just because I've had a lot of theoretical knowledge, passed on a lot of instruction to my clients, and have myself used hypnosis and self-hypnosis for amazing positive changes, doesn't make me an expert on using the power of thought to create something.

I have read probably every book published on the law of attraction, including an original great by Dr. Joseph Murphy, "The Power of the Subconscious Mind." I've read Neville, "The Secret," and listened to the channeling of Abraham by Ester Hicks. I've distilled (I think) the basics from all of this reading into a practice that has proven results: plenty of abundance, lots of clients, good health, parking spaces when I needed them, etc. In other words, I've been very successful at directing my thoughts towards a level of feeling that is positive and attractive, magnetizing well-being into my life in a fairly predictable way.

So why was I struggling so much with this channeling business? Every time I've wanted something in my life, I've focused on it and manifested it in my life. I believe if I'm inspired to do something, than the inspiration alone is an indication that I ought to be doing it, and therefore the way will be made, if not easily, then attainably, for me. I guess I mean to say that if God put the desire to be, do or have something in my life, than the plan to be, do or have that something is already in motion somewhere and I simply need to turn my attention to it and activate the law of attraction.

Well it's been a desire of my to channel healing energy since I can remember. In fact, though I can't remember a whole lot of my childhood (thanks Mom), one thing I do remember is feeling that somehow I was really special, and that God had a plan for me that had something to do with healing. Like, literal healing. Laying hands on people and seeing dramatic results. I knew this so joyfully, though in the intervening years I came to truly dislike myself, feel worthless, of no value to the world... real low self-esteem stuff. But that's another story.

Anyway, I believe this long-held, deep-seated desire to heal came into the physical person of myself, along with my spirit. I believe God gave me this desire, and that God knows the secret desires of my heart. Despite decades of wandering from my real path, now I'm back on it and recognizing what I was meant to do all along: healing. So it seemed obvious to me that I could now simply plug back into that awareness and begin healing (others). What's holding me back?

This is what I've learned about my mind: I DON'T KNOW HOW TO CONCENTRATE.

This has become more and more apparent to me, and what's really become apparent is that I have to be in a state of concentration first, before I can get out of the way and let God's healing energy come through. I have to concentrate on NOT being in my regular conscious thoughts, or even in my imaginative subconscious mind. My mind wanders all the time! In the healing work that I've done thus far, I've had moments of utter bliss, where I have gotten myself out of the way and been more of a witness to the energy that passes through me. When I've been in that state I've recognized the power of it and the necessity of being there and staying there: and that took concentration. If for example you've ever tried meditating, and you know the point is to be in the space in between thoughts -- the minute you get there, you say to yourself, "I'm doing it! I'm not thinking!" -- which of course immediately starts you thinking again and then you're not in that place anymore.

And that's what I've been doing. The minute I get into that healing state of bliss, my mind recognizes it as the place to be for the work that I'm doing, and in that moment of recognition, I'm out of it again.

I found a great book, called The Master Key System, which is an early 20th century correspondence course on developing the power of the mind to create health, abundance, etc. I'm excited about this because the first 6 weeks are practicing various levels of concentration. Today I spent 10 minutes (that's right! 10 whole minutes!!) concentrating on ONE THING. So while I'm not concentrating yet on channeling the healing energy, I'm preparing the soil so to speak. I'm exercising my mind, so that when I achieve that healing, blissful state (so far pretty much by accident and pure drive & desire), I'll be able to sustain it. Think of the healing that can happen then!

And I know that this will definitely help the channeling I want to do for spirit guides, and for spirit people who want to come through. If I can stay really focused, if I can really concentrate on how their energy feels, and keep it there without letting my mind interfere, I know that the level of information I can bring through will be even greater. Yeah, I have some pretty cool moments: I'll be doing a gesture the person did when alive, or use a phrase they used all the time, but that's just like a dip in the pool of that spirit's energy.

I'll keep on practicing. I'll keep on telling you what I'm learning. I know this channeling business isn't a gift, but a skill, and anyone who really wants to develop a skill studies, sticks with it, practices, learns from many teachers, and over time becomes comfortable and fluent in that skill.

Maybe, when I get this whole process down, I can distill it into a classroom kind of setting, or a book with action steps to take so that everyone can heal everyone. What a great day that will be!

Please let me know if you have any ideas, inspirations, or if you channel, what it is you do to get "into the zone." Not just for me, but for everyone reading.

Good News for my Gardenia!

2010-03-21T14:02:00.001-07:00

Channeling healing on my gardenia appears to be working! My guides have repeatedly sent me back to "practice" in the real world. My gardenia was generally failing, all the leaves turning brown, overall signs of shrivelling... but after my very brief "oh all right!" healing session -- every single stalk has several leaves of new growth!

There's no denying it. Practicing on living things helps.

And, after my acknowledgement of the obvious yesterday, I signed up two healing clients for Monday: a woman and her son.

I still don't know what I'm doing (or not doing), but maybe that's the point.

I'll keep you posted...

Channelling Transcript #2

2010-02-24T07:51:00.000-08:00

Amazing things are happening. Last night on my radio show (www.blogtalkradio.com/apracticalpsychic) I found myself verbally channeling guidance for one of the callers.

I distinguish that feeling from a regular psychic impression because it came not so much in the form of an impression that I had to interpret, but as something more like ADVICE, which I am never ethically allowed to do as a psychic. I found myself telling a caller, after sharing my psychic impressions with her about a past love relationship, that if she wanted to break through an old pattern or habit with him she needed to reconnect with him. It was slightly more complex than that, but all I can say is that I became aware, during the mini-reading I was giving her on the air, that a different "flavor" of information was coming through, and I felt strongly compelled to pass it on to her.

I believe that's come as a result of my practicing channeling. I'm not practicing every day, but a couple of times a week. I'm still expecting a big feeling of some sort, or something dramatic, which I haven't yet experienced. What can I say: I'm a skeptic and I need convincing!

Following is a transcript of the second verbal channeling session I did a couple of weeks ago. I was asking specifically about channeling for other people. I always had this idea that I could really help people by offering a service called (something like) "Your Life in Perspective in 20 Minutes," during which time I'd help people see their situations in a new way. Psychologists call it re-framing, and if done successfully can really give a person a whole new empowerment as they see and begin to experience their "problem" or relationship in a different, more productive way. So that's what I was asking about and intending answers to as I went into my channeling meditation.

2/15/10
Now you are to listen. You are to write and paint. It is good that you have covered your head. You ask us about reading us for other people. These are the questions, these are the answers. We will help you help people see themselves as they are now: see what is the shadow side and see what is the light. As they are able to look at themselves they will be able to see that they can create and make choices from one moment to the next. We will speak through you and help them to see what exactly they are doing at this time. We will hold up a mirror for them. We will help you reframe information and repeat back to the people in a way in which they understand that they have a choice. We will help you show people that they are all choices. We will guide you at the time. Put out this information. The right people will come to you who need our guidance. We will help you determine if they are open to our guidance or not. Maintain a prayerful attitude! This seems like secret knowledge but it is not! Not everyone wants to see themselves. I will show you yourself through the people you read. You were told to begin with a plant (I hadn’t yet done that). Call for me. You will feel in your stomach the butterflies feeling first; you will feel numbness and tingling in your jaw, you will salivate a lot. Wait until you feel me step into your energy. You will feel the palms of my hands on the backs of yours. I will move them. I will conduct energy down through them. You are an instrument in that way. That is all.

(I turned the tape off and then back on because I wanted more answers about my healing practice): You are healing in the future. We have already told you this. June is a big month for you. Continue to practice. Get the feel on your plants. When WE decide you are ready, WE will send the people to you. You will save a life in June, if you practice with us.

And that was the end of that transcript. I'm reminded as I write this though, that spirit people often channel into me during Message Circles. Last Monday night one of the people in our Circle said she recognized a friend of hers in spirit coming through, but became totally convinced it was her when I began to gesture with my hands in the exact way she had done before she passed. I don't recall gesturing at all, though I often talk with my hands. Perhaps that was a form of "unconscious channeling."

Next post: I have been pursuing answers to a personal issue for a long time, and when I channeled last I asked for guidance on this relationship. When that is transcribed, it's up on the blog!

Channelling Transcript

2010-02-16T13:25:00.000-08:00

On February 10 I did my regular meditation as channelling practice, and decided to verbalize what I was getting and record it, rather than attempt automatic writing again. My brain just gets in the way of that. I wrote down a few questions and set the intention to ask for the answers. In my meditation I achieved a comfortable state of mind, pushed "record" and what follows is a transcript of that channelling session. What appears in italics in parentheses are the questions that popped into my mind while my guide was speaking. I mean, while I was speaking out loud. You know what I mean.

Q: Is hands-on healing work a part of my future? Will I channel healing or do it another way, using a technique?

A: (indistinguishable). I will stand behind you and put my hands over yours. With the palms of my hands covering yours; my hands rest on top of yours.

I will cover your eyes. Prepare yourself for hands on healing with meditation. Continue to practice channelling. Practice the energy on your pets and on your plants. Get the feel of my hands over yours, imagine that I’m standing behind you (my voice gets very scratchy and sounding really odd here) and I am moving your hands. The palms of my hands on the back of your hands and I will move your hands and I will direct energy down through you.

You will heal the eyes. You will heal the heart, (emotions?) physical heart. Go to your plants. Get the feel of how it is to stand with me behind you. I will stand behind you; extend your arms and I will extend mine over yours and will push down through the tops of your hands the healing energy. You must be comfortable with standing. It is necessary to be in the right space of mind before each healing session. You must call me and ask for me and I will come. You must come through this door [that I visualized] and you must call for me and ask for me and wait for me to stand behind you. You must not talk during the session nor hear talking from the people on the table. You must imagine simply me. I will direct your hands. You need not know what is happening with the people. If you become aware of things you must say them afterwards. You will heal breasts, and lungs, and spine.

Q: How can I be free from my old beliefs and needs?

A: You will be free of your own beliefs through illness. (what?!) Yes, you will experience illness, you will recover. You must learn to love your body and all that goes wrong with it, to truly identify. There is the shadow side, there is a false side that you must also recognize and embrace. You will work with the medical establishment in your own healing and in the healing of others. You will use the energy rising like kundalini from the bottom of your spine. You must only practice the technique I tell you. You must only worry about feeling me, don’t concern with feeling the patient. The energy is there that you may feel if you choose to, but concentrate on feeling me and feeling me. I will do the work, you need not understand. focus your attention on feeling me. You will heal yourself. Take the time to associate first with your body, and when you learn to dissociate from your body you will then be able to recognize that your emotions and old beliefs are simply part of your body. You embrace them first and heal from them and then you are dissociated from them. (I don’t get it) It doesn’t matter. You will be known for your healing.

Q: Will you help me to finish my Live & Learn Guide books and will they be useful to the world?

A: The writing is important. We will help you. But still discipline is required from you. Ask for help. Ask for help every day when sitting down. This will make it easier.

Q: Shall I also use a channel for mediumship?

A: There will be a different guide to help you channel mediumship. You must call for a different guide, the one who looks like a lion. (what’s he called?) Lyon. (Leon?) Zahamxe is my name. You must call for Leon/Lyon.

Q: What else do I need to know?

A:The whole council works with you. There is alchemy. You are an alchemist. You are changing. You are changing the energies. You are channelling the changing energies. You are apprentice alchemist. You transform what is dark and lead into gold. Through words, through healing, through being.

We all work with your energy so that in your presence people are changed. In the energy of your presence people are changed. You do not need to use your mind. You do not need to speak. You can share your experiences if you like, but it is more important that you ARE. Reading is for your mind. We are much bigger than your mind. Your mind allows you to be among the people you are now, but you are so much more than this. You are energy, an energy that is right, and everyone’s energy that is right, and the minds talk them out of the energy that is right. It is good to feed the mind, to engage the mind, but it is completely separate from the body, completely separate from the energy. Know that these are 3 separate things. While they may affect each other they are 3 separate things. There is no mind/body/soul, there is only soul. Being. Energy. Let the mind entertain itself with reading and studying, let the body feel good with exercise and good health. Remember that you are energy and that we are energy working with you. We are energy using your physical body and your mental mind to create alchemical changes in other people. Don’t work so hard, don’t try so hard, just be. When you channel for mediumship, remember that you are energy and that you are connecting with energy and energy recognizes itself and all your communication will be easier. (Should I cover my head?) Covering the head brings sensation to the top of the head. Calling your attention there. Also separates the sensation of body, being in the body, with energy. Return and practice. Later you will write. Focus first on channeling healing. There is a child whose knees are healed by you. There is a woman whose knees are healed by you.

Breathe more.

... So that was it. Verbal channelling was DEFINITELY easier than automatic writing. I'll transcribe the next couple of sessions and post them soon.

Developments in Channelling

2010-02-09T11:21:00.000-08:00

In the past week or so I've had several readings and message circles. Readings have been over the phone and in person. Even some over email. My accuracy seems to be increasing ALOT for these readings; message circles seem to be flowing really efficiently as well, even though from time to time I have someone who wants to test me. Last circle I had a woman testing me, and it turns out that she had a specific someone in mind she wanted to hear from -- and until she connected with him she didn't want to hear from other spirit people. Three others came for her! She wouldn't validate any of them -- or rather, she did validate them but dismissed more information. I never did connect her with who she wanted to hear from, and I know she was disappointed, but for the first time I understood that I had done everything the spirit people asked me to do. It's a two-way street, and no one, spirit or human, is going to continue to pursue a conversation when the other person isn't paying attention to them. I felt less "at fault" than I ever had previously. For some reason, the meditation I've been doing towards channelling really has put me in the position of a witness or just as a messenger, with no personal investment in the outcome. It's just my job to deliver the information -- whatever you do with it isn't my concern. I think I really got that at the end of my last circle.

As you know I'm concentrating during my meditation on channelling, and today I had a pretty cool experience. I've seen before what seems to be a council of spirits during some of my meditations. They were here again today. I see an older man like a monk, with his hood up; I sometimes see a crone or a female witch-like spirit; I often see a native American there; from time to time I get someone with a paddle or Masonic symbol; once I got an Mayan or Aztec holy man (feather cape and all); and frequently I have an "alchemist" there -- or that's how he announces himself.

When I say I've seen them, I mean that I get the impression of a face or person. If you've every made one of those crafts in grammar school, where you paint a piece of cardboard black and then scratch off the outlines, that's sort of what the image "looks" like. Like a negative or a face sketched in white on a black background.

Today I specifically followed a meditation I read about in a book called "Opening to Channel." I imagined a door, going through it, and requesting the presence of a guide that I would, in the next meditation, verbally channel. Just starting the meditation I became aware of the old monk at once -- I don't always see these guys in every meditation -- maybe once every couple of months, and sometimes not for a really long time. I saw the native American too. When I saw the monk today he pointed towards a bright rectangle that I took to be the door. The bright rectangle looked as if I'd looked at a window then shut my eyes -- the image of the square of light still there against the inside of my eyelids. As I passed him I saw the Alchemist step up to me and put his hands over my head.

I drew near to the door (in my imagination) and felt it rush up to me and then I felt like there was light all around me. Even with my eyes closed it seemed like the light in the room had gotten much brighter (it didn't, it's overcast today). Then I became aware of the monk again, or another one, standing in profile with his hood up.

I went around towards him and I saw someone kneel down in front of him. I took that to mean that was what I was supposed to do, so I imagined going to the front of him and kneeling down. I thought I saw him put his hand into my left breast and leave something there (I recently had a needle biopsy that showed nothing to be concerned about, but I've been feeling pain and a lump there ever since). I asked in my mind, "did you put those calcifications there?" and I seemed to see him reach in and touch me inside my breast again, and I don't know if he was taking out something or just healing or pointing something out to me. That needs more meditation.

Then it seemed that he put his hands on my head and on my shoulders, and then that he put something over my head like a veil or a hood. I felt that he turned me around and sent me back "down" -- like I was going down stairs. I asked, "are you the higher guide that I will verbally channel?" and I got silence at first, but then discovered that I was nodding!

My head was actually nodding. And then I saw some letters: ZAHAM... and I expected more to come but there was nothing else. I thought perhaps an X and then an E, but when I pushed for confirmation I got none. Zahamxe? Is that a name?

Nothing more from that, and I felt that the time in this higher realm was over for the day, so I eased myself out of my meditation. I did feel a strong message that I need to cover my head for my next meditation so I'll just put a little scarf over my head and see what develops.

Physical Feelings

2010-02-05T13:09:00.000-08:00

I've noticed lately as I meditate with the intention of channelling, that I get a numb-ish feeling in my ears, temples and head when I being -- almost like everything is muffled or I'm under water.

Today as I sat down to begin my channelling meditation in addition to this feeling I also got a very firm pressure on the top of my head, as if someone where pushing down with the palm of their hand. The pressure kind of moves into what feels like my sinuses -- my cheeks, temples, head and ears all seem to feel an increase in pressure from within.

Maybe I'm diluting my request. I want to channel healing energy for the healing work I do. I'm a reiki master, cranio-sacral therapist, and I've thought about going to Barbara Brennan's school in Florida... but honestly I'm really understanding on a deeper level that it's not a TECHNIQUE I need to learn, but something that requires a paradigm shift.

Anyway, I'm focused on channelling healing energy. Also I'm requesting or intending a way to channel spirit people (for my Message Circles) and higher wisdom for this blog and other writings I may do in the future. Maybe these require 3 different types of guides.

One thing I've noticed, which came up for me once a few years ago, was that there is what seems to be a council around me sometimes when I meditate. Some seem like old men with hoods on their heads, occasionally there are visiting council members who are from ancient times or cultures. Mostly it seems like wise old men. Maybe that's who was pushing on the top of my head today.

Did a bit of automatic writing yesterday -- at least I think so anyway. I was asking about a healing client I've done some work on before. She was coming for a session, feeling VERY off, and I truly wanted to help her. Here's what I wrote (though I was conscious for it):

Hello

Take her point of view. Mix with her energy.

Change your energy [and her's will be changed. Give it back to her].

Gear yourself.

So I tried that, and she did feel better this morning when I saw her. She seemed to think it helped her. But I don't want these kind of vague results. I want Jesus putting mud on the blind man's eyes and his sight returning. That's the kind of experience I'm looking for. I know, I know, but Jesus told me I could do it. He said "Everything I do, you can do, and more." He also said, "Heal yourselves."

Any thoughts?

Channelling Session Re-Discovered

2010-01-27T12:36:00.000-08:00

I recently moved my files from a laptop to a beautiful new desktop Macintosh. As I was going through some of the old documents I found the following, which I typed during what seems to have been an automatic writing session. I have foggy memories of doing it, though it was just this past July.

Here's why I remember sitting down to do this: Many years ago (like, 20) I got married to a guy I'd been living with. I was not very mature in many ways, and I remember being insanely jealous if his college ex-girlfriend, with whom he'd remained friends. This lady was tall, slender, beautiful, interesting, perfect in every way... or so it seemed to me at the time. I was a little obsessed with her and with how far short I fell compared to her. She spoke french fluently and had parents living in Switzerland. How cool is that? I'd taken french for years in school but couldn't speak a word of it, I'd never been anywhere, and I was short and chubby (or so it seemed to me at the time).

Well, my husband and I divorced after just a few short years of marriage, for reasons that I'm sure had to do with my immaturity, but we managed to stay on friendly terms. Perhaps 2 or 3 years ago he told me that his ex-girlfriend was suffering from an advanced stage of uterine or cervical cancer and was undergoing some extreme treatments. In the intervening years I did manage to grow a lot, so hearing her name wasn't quite so threatening anymore; I wouldn't have thought it possible 20 years ago, but now my heart went out to her. That was the last I heard about it because my ex and I communicate very infrequently these days.

So one day last March or April, I had a dream about this woman, who I'll call H. I was troubled because I felt she had passed away and troubled by my reaction to it because of all the power I'd given her when I was an insecure young woman. I googled her, but couldn't find any information about her; no email, address, website, Facebook page... nothing. I really felt her around me. It's a very strange feeling when someone your own ages passes away, something about it just feels so close to home. I asked her if she had something to say to me and sat down at my keyboard.

Here's what I typed out that July day in 2009, unedited except for correcting the obvious typos that happened at the time. I've also added punctuation to make sense of what originally came out in one long sentence:

"I was pregnant and now I’m pregnant again. I'm holding something that doesn’t belong to me. I took on something that somebody gave me, an idea about my body and I believed it. Don’t believe it. I played guitar, I carried xmas trees. I was strong. Now I’m like a dragonfly, and you can come on my back into amazing places. For me it’s like a humming bird, things move so fast and you have to stop time to see me. You have to stop time to heal. Sit in meditation; it helps. Watch your breasts. What is beautiful in the beginning becomes exceedingly unattractive later. Time is nothing and everything. I have a mouth to speak. No I wasn’t afraid. I was at the funeral home, I stood by my head in the casket and watched the people. I am everywhere now. Your eyes are blind and cannot see. Then you have to take off the lenses just slide them down your nose. Do this gesture and look for what you cannot see. Breathe on your tongue, out like kundalini yoga. Breathe. My right leg was stuck. I went headfirst to the other way. It was like a dive into cool water, I felt it all around me and when I emerged on the other side I spread out like vapor. Yoga. For a time I will help you. But this isn’t your business here. I remember being in the womb of my mother, I remember tickling her on the inside. I was upside down. There are many of us, like a starfish if you divide it, it only multiplies and doesn’t die. We exist in many places at once. We are so much bigger. I don’t have all the answers, I’m still learning. Sometimes I am alone, but it feels nice and normal. My mother has beads or a necklace she wore over a white shirt, red beads like prayer beads. They said the wig on my body was awful. I laughed with them. Write with a pen on paper. And I will sign it. I am with two others, on either side. My mother and father are both here with me."

There are a couple of sentences I couldn't decipher at the beginning, when I was asking for H to help me. I remember asking her if she had something to say and if she would help me get it said. Some of the first sentences were kind of gibberish, like:

"Just go ahead. Is it possible you are waiting for something that is already here?"

Wonder why I immediately forgot that session and rediscovered it now. What's interesting is that H was right about my breasts. I had an abnormal mammogram on my left breast in October, when back for another, went back for ultrasound, and ultimately had a needle biopsy in November. Everything was clear, thank God.

2010-01-26T11:41:00.000-08:00

On January 22 I began the process of meditation with intention according to the steps I outlined last time.

I was doing my regular meditation first, which includes my visualization, prayer, gratitude, etc. -- but intending to finish with the automatic writing or channelling part towards the end. I was feeling so delicious and relaxed as I sat on my couch with the pen resting on the open pad in my lap, that I think I might have been drifting off... when it sounded like the pen dropped onto the paper. Which it couldn't have done because it was already resting on the paper.

I picked up the pen, held it over the paper and said, "okay, if you want me to start now I will." I started yawning and started feeling that funny jerking feeling again, and then the words flashed into my mind as I started writing:

"Annemarie"

then:

"tell my brothers"

and then something else which I can't decipher... something like "...thousands like me"

I still think I'm supposed to be having a different type of experience. My understanding of trance mediumship, sometimes called trance channelling or automatic writing if it involves pen and paper, is that the medium is unaware of what words are coming in and then being expressed, either verbally or through the pen.

The last two times I did this I felt the words pop into my mind first, or simultaneously with the writing. Are the guides just warming me up?

One of my teachers told me about a time he went to a seance, and the medium did a brief meditation at the beginning, and then held them all spellbound as he talked about the spirit world. When he was done, he suddenly started apologizing to all the sitters present because he'd fallen asleep instead of conducting their seance. And the sitters were flabbergasted that he would even say such a thing since he'd been talking to them for over an hour.

Those tales of automatic writers using both hands...

Something tells me I'm not quite there yet. I'm an impatient learner though!

Since that session I've done several readings and Message Circles, and while I'm certain the ease of conducting those has greatly increased, it's still my intention to trance-channel healing when I'm doing healing work; to trance-channel spirit messages when I'm conducting a seance, and to trance-channel messages through automatic writing when I'm alone and/or blogging.

Got that guides?

Yesterday I sat again to practice, in the same position with the pen on the pad in my lap. During the meditation I felt as if something lightly pushed my hand across the pad to pick up the pen. After that I was very aware of holding the pen, and just focused on praying myself out of the way.

Here's what I wrote:

"I don't want to be among..."

then:

"Let me know..."

then something also illegible. Though I didn't really see or become aware of the words till I was finished writing each meaningless phrase, I felt more guidance this time. Like I was allowed to listen in on a couple of snatches of conversation.

For the past couple of days I've been yawning a lot, which someone told me a long time ago is the presence of energy-shifting spirits. Maybe they're widening my mouth so they can squeeze in and talk for me.

My friend also said I'd been whistling all day, the same tune. I wasn't aware of it, but he noticed it because he said I never whistle. Do I? I have no idea...

Today, 1/26/2010 I tried again around 2PM. Very wonderful deep trance but when I asked my guides to give me a sign, some sort of signal that I could FEEL, so that I would know the process was about to begin, the phone rang. I'd forgotten to silence it.

And that was that.

How I Plan To Begin

2010-01-21T13:52:00.000-08:00

Because I believe psychic ability is a skill and not a gift, I'm going to chronicle the development of a new psychic tool so everyone can follow along with what I'm trying that's working, not working, etc.

I've enjoyed a several hours of inspired writing. My whole Live & Learn Guides series I believe was crafted through inspired writing. This differs from automatic writing in that I'm aware of what's coming THROUGH my mind and onto the paper (in this case, computer screen). Automatic writing happens when the person, or channel, absents herself from the process and a spirit, guide, Master or Teacher, actually moves the hand. Usually the channel has "blanked out," or felt like s/he fell asleep or into a deep trance, and has no awareness of what was written until the session is over. I've read accounts of automatic writing where one hand is writing something, the other hand writing something entirely different, and the person having a conversation with someone at the same time.

Channelling can be learned, and that's my goal and what I promise to chronicle as I develop this skill. I'm already a practicing psychic/medium, which skill was learned and developed through intention and practice.

So every morning in my meditation now I'm going to set the intention and sit with a pen and pad and see what happens. Eventually my goal is to sit down at this blog and channel whatever spirit has to offer.

Here's my process so far:

Step 1: Get into my meditation place and begin the mental and physical relaxation process

Step 2: Set the intention. I say, "Guides, Spirits, Angels, Ancestors, Spirit People, I desire to channel your guidance. Show me how to do that. Give me a feeling that I will recognize that is associated with your presence and the onset of automatic writing. Let me know with some physical sensation that the process is beginning."

Step 3: Wait, with the pen in my dominant hand, with the tip resting on the paper. Try, try, try to get out of the way. I do this with a visualization of making room in my arm for a good and higher power to slip in and start to move.

Step 4: When my arm started to move this morning, I wasn't sure if I was making it up, feeling anything special, doing inspired writing or what. But as I did when I developed my psychic abilities -- I just plowed ahead. No one has to see it (except you guys). I'm not telling anyone what I'm doing (except you guys). Jeez, they'd think I'm crazy. I think I'm crazy. But I'm doing it anyway, and here's what happened...

I felt like my arm was spasming a little bit, jerking in a small way. I fought the urge to open my eyes. I felt words coming into my mind, popping in (even though my conscious mind was saying "you're not doing it right! You're supposed to feel tingling or numbness or something first!"). So decided to let the jerking happen and let what was in my mind spasm onto the paper. What follows is what I wrote, and what questions I asked:

What I found myself writing: "My name is Jeremiah"
"I died in a coffin box."

I asked in my head, What do you mean? Were you buried alive?

What I found myself writing: "I was laid in a coffin."

I felt in my mind that this meant as he was dying he was moved into his coffin. Then I had the thought of the year, and, honest to God, before I even HAD the thought completed --

I found myself writing: "1787. 26 years old."

Then again: "Havermeier."

I asked in my mind, are you a good spirit?

What I found myself writing: "All of us are good."

I started to form a new thought about his profession and before it was completed --

I found myself writing: "Doctor."

I started to form the question, will you help me? and

I found myself writing: Yes, I'll help you."

Then I abruptly opened my eyes and the session, or meditation, or whatever it was, was over. I quickly looked at what I'd scrawled which was just barely legible, and re-wrote it so I could share it here.

Today I meditated much later than I usually do. I'd done a healing session on a friend, and while doing it I became aware of a lot of spirit healers around us -- whether they were her guides or mine I don't know. There was an Incan/Mayan/Aztec-looking male (apologies to those distinct and amazing cultures: I couldn't tell which was his origin) who seemed to be an alchemist. There was a doctor with a syringe. There was another person looking in a microscope... Lots of traditional healing modalities represented by the spirit people. My friend enjoyed her session and was feeling very much better after she left.

It was after this session that I found time to meditate and to begin practicing my new skill. I asked to be taught, I declared my desire to learn (for God's glory, not mine) and tried my best to get out of the way. So I was interested to hear from a young departed Doctor.

Can't wait till tomorrow to practice again!!

Spirits Communicate About Health Solutions

2010-01-18T14:41:00.000-08:00

I purposely avoid learning about anatomy and illnesses, so that if a spirit person communicates or if I get a psychic impression about someone's health I don't extrapolate. For instance, let's say I knew something medical about diabetes, its cause, treatment and cure. Then in a reading, I get the feeling "diabetes," I might be naturally inclined to pay attention to my conscious mind, which would very helpfully be offering up opinions about the cause, treatment and cure. So while it's impossible to completely avoid knowing things about illnesses, I don't actively seek out information.

Yesterday a wonderful young couple and their twin 5-year-old girls came in for a reading. The girls suffered from something I'll call Illness A; one girl had gotten it at 3 years old and it had completely taken over her body. The other twin had gotten it earlier, but was manifesting a less severe case of it.

I know nothing at all about Illness A, except I've heard the word and know what it's primary symptom is.

The couple asked about their daughters' future (Illness A is not terminal by the way), did I see it reversing, and how that might happen. They asked a couple of other questions not related to their daughters, and those impressions came to me first. When I finally got to what was their first question, about their daughters' illness, I felt the presence of a female come stand next to the wife. This spirit was plump, apple-cheeked, held a rolling pin, had an "A" name, and showed me a stroke. When I conveyed all of this information, the wife identified the spirit as her brother-in-law's mother. Really?

I asked the spirit why she had come (when more closely-related spirits might have come through). The spirit immediately drew my attention to what we women modestly call "down there," and pointed to the wife. I told the wife what I was getting, and said, "I don't think she's indicating her own reproductive or sexual organs, but yours. I don't mean to be personal, but are you having or have you had difficulty in this area?" The wife said she had -- she hadn't menstruated for 4 years -- but that she had resolved that health issue and now everything was fine.

I felt like the spirit was clubbing me over the head with her rolling pin when the wife was saying she had "resolved that ehalth issue." So I asked, "what did you do to correct this health issue?" and she answered that she had taken an ayurvedic approach. More head clubbing by the spirit.

I asked her, "have you tried an ayurvedic approach with your daughters?" Apparently some time ago they HAD tried, but didn't stick with it because both husband and wife knew that the practitioner wasn't the right one for them. I knew this spirit had come through particularly because she could get the wife to talk about resolving another health issue, and the spirit knew that this approach would also help the little girls.

Obviously we have to wait and see, but I believe this spirit came in direct response to my question -- to the parents' question -- about the best way to resolve Illness A.

Spirit people haven't done things like that for me before; in the past I've used psychic impressions only to predict how an illness will play out. It was a really great gift from the spirit world!

I gave each of the little girls a hug before they left, and I felt spirit woman all around them. I believe she'll help in every way she can!

Here's An Idea!

2010-01-10T12:54:00.000-08:00

Last Thursday night I conducted a Message Circle at a local healing arts center. There were 10 women in attendance, none of whom were related to each other. When family members attend together, even just two, they can pull in a lot more spirit communication than people who come with a friend or who come alone. But we had no related people in this Circle so I expected a pretty even distribution of spirit activity.

There are other patterns I've noticed in Circles, besides what happens when family members attend. Sometimes one person can be what I call the "chimney," or can sit in what I call the "chimney." In my home, the "chimney" is one particular seat on the couch. Whoever sits there gets many spirit people coming through, not only for themselves, but many spirits who come in for other people show up in that spot. For instance, on this particular couch cushion a sitter in my Circle will generally get many more details from their spirit people, or the spirit person will hang around a long time making jokes, or will keep coming back for more attention even after they've been acknowledged. The person sitting there may also get more variety of spirit people than the others in attendance. Because everyone pays the same price, I endeavor to give everyone equal time, but whoever is in the chimney gets the richest detail and most visits.

I never tell people about this spot at the beginning of the Circle, because I believe people sit where they choose for a reason, and who am I to redirect them or influence their experience?

I've noticed that the chimney spot may also be the place where everyone's spirit people come through. I usually "give" a spirit to a person because I'm pulled in a certain direction when I become aware of a specific spirit. I may be talking to one person on one side of the Circle when I'm interrupted and feel like I need to talk to someone on the other side. So the spirit people generally "stand" in front of who they are here for. But when the chimney is particular strong, many of the spirit people will appear in front of the chimney seat or chimney person, and then I have to find who they really belong to. It's important to remember if you're attending a Circle to listen carefully, even if the medium doesn't seem to be directing a spirit to you. There may be a chimney in the room. Or YOU may be the chimney, so while you may know who the medium is describing, don't be too quick with the "No" response and let it develop perhaps for another person.

So last Thursday night during my Circle at Opal Moon (www.opalmoon.net, by the way), I felt a chimney forming opposite me in the Circle, and the chimney was connected with the person, not the seat. It seemed like everyone I was describing, even while I was directing my comments to other people, actually belonged to one woman named MaryJean. It was getting impossible to read someone else!

Finally, and at times it felt like slogging through molasses, I finished reading everyone. It took 2 hours to give a spirit message to everyone in the Circle, which is just way too long. And I don't think the last person I read was at all satisfied. But that's a topic for another blog.

Here is the fascinating thing I learned at last Thursday's Circle. While we were closing, and I was "consoling" the last person I read who was feeling a little gipped I think, because she didn't get as many real "A Ha!" details as everyone else did, Mary Jean the Chimney said... "I almost didn't come tonight."

I had a brief moment of thinking, "And if you hadn't, this lady here would be a lot happier!" But Mary Jean continued on. She said she had been meditating every day, wanting to hear from 4 or 5 people in a Circle. She hadn't committed to coming to our Circle till the last minute. Indeed, I'd been told to expect 9 sitters, and there were 10 when I arrived.

Mary Jean said, "I had been asking and asking for my people to come through to me, somehow. Every day in meditation I'd been reaching out to them and asking for them to make themselves known to me. This morning I heard about this Message Circle, I signed up, and I said Grandma (and others), I'm going to this seance tonight, and if it's REALLY YOU, please show me."

Every single one of her people came through, with details that convinced Mary Jean her spirit people heard and answered her. She convinced me too.

Now, do I tell people to meditate and ask for an "appearance" by their spirit people? And what if the spirit people are busy and don't show? I try to manage peoples' expectations regarding Message Circles so that they keep an open mind. In fact, one young woman at Thursday's Circle heard from no one she expected to, though there was a young 15-year-old girl who kept coming through for her. Fortunately she was open to hearing from anyone, and by the end of the Circle she could identify this girl, though she'd died probably 20 years ago and was only a schoolmate. She sent me an email the next day really confirming the appearance of this spirit girl. If you come to a Circle wanting only to hear from Dad, and Dad and I don't connect, the disappointment can disrupt acknowledgement of a great uncle, childhood friend, or co-worker who maybe was "less important."

For now, I'll recommend this: if you know you want to hear from someone -- ASK them! Seems like if you ask, they are more likely to appear. I know that if you come prepared to "test" the medium (as one in my Circle did last Thursday night, right down to the crossed arms and legs and body position turned away from the Circle), you're not going to enjoy yourself as much, and the medium is going to have a hard time reading for you. Ask, whether you're going to a Circle or not. And when they show up, be confident that it isn't coincidence -- you're being answered.

The spirit people keep teaching me, and I feel like I'm in school for the long haul. Fortunately for me, I love being a student!

Message Circles

2010-01-05T11:40:00.001-08:00

I had a couple of Message Circles the week before the end of the year. What a blast!

My home is an old summer cabin, with a porch on the front that was enclosed some time in the 1950's. I put replacement windows in it, insulated it, and now I can use it as my office. But I've noticed that when I give Message Circles in my home, it's the place where all the spirit people wait their turn to come in and be described.

The morning of a Circle I feel the energy on the porch begin to spike up. When I walk out here my ears hum a little, I feel an excited, butterflies-like feeling in my stomach and the air feels like invisible popcorn. There have been times when, because of bad weather or change in clients' plans, a Circle is cancelled. I always know when they're going to cancel because all of a sudden the porch will go back to feeling regular when I'm out here, like any other room in the house.

I just finished doing a reading for a woman who was unsure whether she wanted to hear from people in spirit. She came just for intuitive consultation on a business move, a relocation, and the futures of her two sons. But I started to feel that "popcorn" feeling about 1/4 of the way in, which I ignored and silently told the spirit to please step back. But that female spirit wouldn't leave me alone, kept bugging me, and finally I just had to ask my client, "may I tell you about someone I feel around me?"

She gave me a really hesitant kind of look, so I just charged ahead without giving her a chance to say "No."

"She's showing me cancer that moves from the stomach to the liver, and she shows me holding a necklace out to you that looks like an American Indian piece: turquoise and silver and kind of big and chunky. This is a necklace that she gave to you, that was hers. She shows me her right ear, and indicates hearing trouble here."

My client starting crying and I said, "this is your mother."

Our "just psychic" reading turned around at that point with her acknowledgement of her mother. Then came her aunt, and her Dad. They all had something really important to say to her, which helped her client feel really connected.

The spirit people draw attention to themselves or come in, in a couple of different ways for me. If there are several, I'll get that feeling of little air "pops" around my skin. Sometimes I get a picture if my eyes happen to be closed. Usually I just feel like someone has planted themselves right in front of me, interrupted me almost, and I just start to get ideas about who they are, what they passed from, male or female, etc. I'm not often clairaudient, so I don't usually hear names. I will get an initial, or if it's a name that has a noun associated with it (Rose, April, etc), I'll get a picture of that.

When I'm conducting a Message Circle, even more so than a one-on-one reading, I totally lose track of time. I feel like I myself am somehow suspended in the spirit world. And there is so much joy there! Even if the spirits passed tragically, they come through joking or being very light-hearted about something. Everyone in the Circle ends up laughing, and facilitating that laughter feels so wonderful for me.

I could do Message Circles every day for the rest of my life and never grow tired of it. It doesn't tire me out at all -- I almost feel like I'm one of the eternal spirit people -- oh, wait... I AM one of the eternal spirit people! I have so much energy when they're over, it takes me a couple of hours to settle down enough to go to sleep. Sometimes when I'm asleep they come into my dreams to finish their thoughts, or I am aware of them moving around the porch.

What a great job!

Ghosts of Christmas Past

2009-12-18T07:13:00.000-08:00

There is so much stress around the holidays, I feel like a caricature of myself.

I started this blog because I want to share my psychic experiences, and those interesting ones of my clients. Along the way I want to channel, or become adept at automatic writing, or in some other way let a wiser spirit person, Teacher or Guide come in and kind of "take over," so that through me words of wisdom or comfort can come through.

I can't even meditate these days. I keep saying to myself, I'll start again when the holidays are over, but the truth is I really need to learn to do the things I want to do ESPECIALLY when there is stress. Anyone can work out when they're fresh; anyone can be unconditionally loving when no one is testing their patience.

I just re-read a great book called "Letters from the Afterlife," by Elsa Barker, written in 1914. It's a terrific read, and the author channels an acquaintance who passed away. It may be out of print now, or once was, but it's definitely worth reading. I loaned another book on automatic writing to a friend who is attempting automatic painting. I think she's doing all right.

So I'm going to take a moment, right here and now, to enter a quieter state of mind despite the pressure of the Christmas gifts I still have to buy. Just typing this now I feel a cottony pressure in my head, so maybe something really might happen. Here goes:

At once I felt a chill through my whole body. Then an increase in that cottony feeling, which I get when I'm sort of leaving the conscious installation of mental thoughts. My hands are pulsing (then the phone rang - why didn't I turn that off?). I'm typing with my eyes closed.

I see the shapes and motion I always do as I go into meditation, reading or mediumship. What is this exactly? Looks like one hand reaching and putting a ring on another hand; sometimes looks like two seatbelt ends coming together, sometimes like the first hand is passing the ring to the other. Today it went right to left. I'll have to pay attention to whether or not it always goes that way.

It's no use. I'm just too impatient today. I'm staring at this list of things I have to do. "Blog" was near the top, and I just feel pressure to cross it off and get to the other items. It's already 1:45! And most of my list is un-crossed-off! Arrrgh. I'll try again tomorrow.

You Never Forget Your First Time

2009-12-14T13:31:00.000-08:00

This is my first ever blog. I've never even read a blog before. Then two nights ago I got an intuitive hit telling me to look into this blog stuff, not only for sharing my 6th sense but because a spirit person (or people) just may have something to say.

I'm a psychic medium (so is everyone by the way). The medium part really blows me away, because it's just so much fun to feel the spirit people come into my room and start telling me about themselves. Then, when I translate what I'm getting for my clients, the fun really begins: there is astonishment, laughter, happy tears, disbelief... and I get so much joy from both the spirit and the client. I never know what the spirit people are going to say, or who is going to show up. I only ask that they give me details that are so specific, only the client can validate them. The unique personality of each spirit comes across through the choice of details they choose to present to me.

Last week a young couple came in, and I could tell the young man (I'll call him "N") was a bit skeptical. I began to tell him about a young man in spirit who had perished in a car accident. The spirit showed me a medal he'd won at a sports event, which was now in the N's possession. N agreed that this spirit was his brother -- but he still seemed to hold back his full belief. So I asked the spirit brother for something super-specific, and he showed me a huge erection!

I started laughing out loud, asking for something -- anything! -- different from that, but the spirit kept persisting. Finally, after hemming and hawing for about 3 minutes I finally got it out, and N burst out laughing. His brother was a real ladies' man, and was commenting on his sexual prowess as well as his (and N's) endowment. His girlfriend confirmed and validated this last point! We were all laughing, and N was satisfied that this indeed was his brother (because what medium in her right mind would say something like that at a reading?).

More spirits came in for validation, and both N and his girlfriend enjoyed the rest of their time in our reading. Before the spirit brother left, he had one more message for N: the spirit brother saw that N was afraid to come up to the casket at the wake, that N was afraid to look at him. Before I could get the rest of the message out, N said: "but I finally did, I looked at him."

His brother in spirit was so pleased that N did view the body, and wanted him to know that while his body was there in the casket, that was not his real self.

As a witness and participant in these moving and personal moments, I feel so much gratitude to the spirit people and the clients. I know from personal experience that our loved ones are just "over there" and we can experience them if we just shift our sight for a moment.

Life goes on.