THE WELL-BALANCED PSYCHIC
Humility is the surest sign of strength.
—THOMAS MERTON
Rows of glaring hot lights made everything in the television studio seem unreal. I was sitting in the audience next to a woman whose sister claimed that she'd been cursed by a witch, waiting my turn to appear on a talk show focusing on psychic fraud. Already onstage were the cursed woman, a well-dressed attorney's wife; her current psychic, a flamboyant bleached blonde with an excess of cleavage; and a 300-pound man—also a clairvoyant—who owned a psychic phone line that doubled as a sex line during off-hours.
I was mortified. When I agreed to appear on the show I had imagined a panel of regular people, each of us describing the potential for fraud. Not this circus! Worse, I was to appear last as the so-called expert, commenting on what each person had said, tying the show together. Recognizing the awful spot I was in, the cursed woman's sister squeezed my hand sympathetically and sighed, saying, “Honey, good luck.”
Until that moment, even with all the work I had done, my exposure to psychics who were such blatant caricatures was minimal. It mattered less to me at this point whether they were authentic or not. What really upset me was the flaky, off-the-wall stereotype they projected, one major reason why reputable people mistrust psychics. Of course looks aren't everything, but in this particular area they communicate a lot.
The well-balanced psychic doesn't wear long white robes or carry a crystal ball. She doesn't grab your palm in the middle of the supermarket and insist on giving you a reading. Nor does she blurt out unsolicited information. She's an ordinary person; the most remarkable thing about her is that she appears unremarkable. Her power is internalized, integrated. She doesn't have to flaunt it. As she uses her gift discerningly, radiating an understated sense of calm, we see before us someone with no need to glorify herself, someone who is profoundly simple.
The identity of the psychic has, sadly, been tarnished. It must be rehumanized, its integrity reestablished. The essence of holiness in the psychic has to be restored. There is a film I love, Resurrection, that follows the life of a woman who passes through various stages of acceptance that she is a psychic healer. Although for a time she is pulled into publicly demonstrating her power to the masses, she eventually opts to use it in a more humble fashion. In the movie's final scene, she is the proprietor of a gas station in an isolated stretch of California desert. When a young cancer-stricken boy happens to pass through one day, she embraces him without saying a word, secretly and silently healing him. She does it not out of a need for recognition or applause, but from humility and a pure desire to help.
It is not only because of frauds, however, that the general public often views the psychic in a poor light. Consider the position of traditional medicine: If you look at the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual IV (DSM), the Bible of the American Psychiatric Association, you'll see that the psychic is equated with psychosis. It is referred to only as a symptom of a mental disorder, a biochemical instability that needs to be wiped out by powerful antipsychotic drugs like Thorazine. There is nothing positive, healthy, or sound about it. Unfortunately, the overall sentiment among most mainstream physicians is that the psychic is nonexistent, a sham, or a disease.
I think that such medical attitudes are shortsighted. Though many psychotics are convinced that they can read your thoughts or predict the future, in a well-balanced person the psychic can be learned or is a natural evolution of spiritual growth. Not only was I never taught this, but until the DSM was revised in 1994, I hadn't heard of the topic of spirituality being officially addressed in psychiatric circles at all. Now everything that pertains to it is lumped into a four-line category called “Other Conditions That May Be a Focus of Clinical Attention” and limited to situations that involve the loss or questioning of faith. No specific mention of the psychic is ever made. Even now, only a minority of psychiatrists will acknowledge it, and fewer still view the psychic as a gift.
During my training, patients were either psychotic, needing medication, or they weren't. The boundaries were well defined. It's no wonder, then, that in the mid-1980s psychiatry was looking like a spiritual wasteland to me. I had gone the psychotherapy and medication route, seen its advantages and drawbacks, but longed for more. I was hungry to find ways to include the psychic and spirituality in my practice, but there were no good models for this that I knew of. Then I heard about the Spiritual Emergence Network (SEN), a teaching and referral center just outside San Francisco founded by Stanislav Grof, a psychiatrist, and his wife, Christina. The SEN made an important distinction between mental illness and spiritual emergency. The premise of the SEN was that certain personal crises can lead to spiritual expansion. Volunteers and staff generally referred callers from all over the world to health professionals—psychiatrists, psychologists, and licensed therapists—who were clinically trained and also experienced in dealing with the psychic. This was exactly the compassionate, smart, responsible alternative I'd been seeking, no psychic phone line or flaky opportunists. It was a godsend to know that such a group existed, an “expanded model of mental health care to help people in crisis by using scientific and spiritual methods.” I contacted them and immediately volunteered to be the Los Angeles regional coordinator.
Through the SEN I received calls from all sorts of people, from housewives to CEOs, many of whom were having powerful mystical and psychic experiences. I heard panic in their voices. Often afraid of going crazy, they needed great courage to reach out. They were all too aware of what traditional psychiatry had to offer, and were terrified. Heavy-duty drugs, electroshock therapy, or even intensive psychotherapy were naturally no consolation to them. At the SEN, I learned not to feed into their fears but to help them find a spiritual context, to appreciate their struggles in a new light—not in terms of dysfunction, but as an entry into something far greater. I saw that when these people were supported rather than judged by conventional standards, their crises could evolve naturally, sometimes resulting in tremendous breakthroughs. This could lead to a truer appreciation of the psychic in their lives—and on occasion a real talent was awakened.
Soon after I started, the SEN referred a Latino woman, Theresa, to me. An advertising executive who had hardly slept for ten days, each night Theresa wept uncontrollably, frenetically pacing, wringing her hands, groaning. She had never felt like this before, was horrified to be losing all control. Raised in a tiny village in rural Guatemala, for most of her life Theresa had held strong beliefs in sorcery and herbal cures. Trained as a curandera, or medicine woman, she had been shown how to use her psychic dreams and visions to heal. As a result she was wary of conventional psychiatry.
At twenty, after moving to Los Angeles, she stopped practicing her native traditions. She badly wanted to be a success and nothing was going to jeopardize that. In the conservative, high-powered business world, her spiritual ideas would only make her appear strange. Instead, she shortened her name to Teri and dressed to kill, as if she had memorized every single word Dale Carnegie had ever written. She conveniently lost sight of the old ways and for eight years climbed the corporate ladder, becoming recognized as one of the top women in her field. Then one night she had an unexpected vision. When she came to see me, she was still straining to keep up her professional façade, but there were dark circles under her eyes.
“You'll probably want to commit me,” she finally blurted out. “I had the most horrendous vision. Last Monday I woke up in the middle of the night and there was my oldest sister standing right in the corner of my room. She had a gaping hole in her chest the size of a basketball. A flood of white light was gushing through it. I was petrified. I knew she was going to die.”
That night Theresa tossed restlessly until dawn. She loved her sister but was furious that this vision had intruded into her now completely Westernized life. Later that day she received a call from Guatemala. It was her sister—she had just been diagnosed with lung cancer. Theresa had tried to put her past aside, but it had caught up with her and could no longer be ignored.
I was certain that Theresa was not psychotic. Rather, the premonition had caused her anxiety to skyrocket. Unprepared for these two worlds suddenly to collide, she had tried to split off her visionary part, but it had insistently broken through. Right away, I understood what a gigantic clash this had created in her. My role would be to help Theresa reunite these two aspects of herself.
“That can't be done,” she argued. “Either I'm a curandera or a businesswoman. The two don't mix.” My heart went out to Theresa. It was like hearing an echo of myself just a few years before. I knew what I had to do: I told Theresa my story—how I struggled with the same psychic split and overcame it. If I had stayed more removed, this point would have lost much of its power. My approach was similar to that of twelve-step programs: I presented myself as someone who's been there, sharing the ups and downs of the journey. At first Theresa was suspicious. How could we be so similar? In fact, the first few months we worked together, she thought I was merely humoring her. Though she heard my words, she didn't really believe me.
My challenge was to help Theresa view her psychic abilities in a new way. For her to become a modern-day seer, her antiquated stereotype of the village witch had to go. As we talked through her fears and old ideas, her past no longer a secret, the anxiety she had suffered slowly faded away. But still our work proceeded in baby steps, until eventually she was ready to use my office as a safe place to try to open up psychically.
One day she announced that she wanted to do a reading. This was the moment I had been waiting for. At that session and many times later she gave me readings about my life, and I gave her feedback about their accuracy. This meant I had to be prepared to reveal information that could be extremely intimate. There was no point in denying what Theresa correctly picked up just because it was too private. That would defeat the whole purpose. Being this personal with a patient always requires a judgement call. But I sensed that Theresa could handle it.
I remember the time she said, “I see an image of you with your feet cut off. You can't seem to get your balance.” At the moment, she couldn't have been more right. That entire day had been ghastly: A friend struggling not to drink was once again out cold in a hospital chemical-dependency unit; my VW's battery went dead while I was visiting her; and because of having to go tent another car I was late for an appointment with a patient, who left before I could arrive. I openly shared this with Theresa, not to belabor my frustration but to help her translate the metaphor of her vision.
At another session, Theresa asked, “Do you know an elderly man who's having breathing problems? He has a very round face and a great sense of humor.” I placed him immediately. This was my father's best friend, a perennial joker in his early eighties. He had been hospitalized at Cedars-Sinai the day before, in the ICU with a dangerously high fever from acute pneumonia. I gave Theresa feedback to let her know she was right. Little by little, through exercises like these, her confidence grew. I felt as if I were training a prize fighter who'd been out of the ring for many years. Though rusty and unsure, with practice she comfortably grew into her prescience, learning to wear it like a loose garment—not just with me, but in the business world, with her family, and especially while her sister was ill.
Theresa was an intelligent, open-minded, high-functioning person who just happened to be in the middle of a crisis, a perfect example of someone overwhelmed by a spiritual emergency. While at the SEN I was struck by how many people fit this description. They were seeing visions, hearing voices, and often feared for their sanity. But to categorize their symptoms as psychotic and write them off merely as a sign of mental illness would have been a terrible disservice. Without the right kind of help, the emergence of the psychic as a spiritual turning point would surely have been missed.
Despite my love for this approach, there were of course times when it just wasn't appropriate, especially when it came to the chronically mentally ill. As much as I believed in the intentions of the SEN, with some patients I got terribly frustrated. As regional coordinator, most troubling was the barrage of calls I received from blatantly psychotic people who were convinced they were psychic: the burned-out manic-depressive who'd been in and out of the mental institutions for years, the schizophrenic on Thorazine who swore that the FBI was out to get him. The most hopeless and forsaken of the chronically mentally ill came to me, hoping I would validate their special powers, something no psychiatrist had done before.
This put me in an awkward position. Much as I wanted to be encouraging, with patients whose psychosis had become entrenched it was impossible for me to separate it from the psychic. In good conscience, I could only work with them using traditional medical techniques. They were struggling—to get a job, live on their own, eat right, take care of personal hygiene. The last thing they needed was to dwell on the metaphysical. Even those rare few who I thought showed some evidence of psychic ability were too emotionally unstable to risk pursuing it: For me to have emphasized the psychic would have only aggravated their psychosis.
So there I was, professing to be psychic, offering to bring out the psychic in others, yet refusing to help them. They couldn't fathom my reasons, often felt betrayed by what they perceived as hypocrisy and lack of support. It was demoralizing to be pigeonholed as yet another unsympathetic psychiatrist, even worse than the others because I was misrepresenting myself. I had to fight my urge to give in to them. But I knew better. I also had ethical and legal obligations: If someone felt homicidal, I had to notify the police; if someone felt acutely suicidal and had no family to give supervision, I was bound to call in either the police or a psychiatric emergency team. My responsibility was to protect the individual.
No matter how difficult it was, I sometimes had to watch patients like these walk out my office door, believing me to be one of the bad guys. I would send them to county facilities, give lists of programs and referrals to therapists by making the first call, if necessary suggesting the names of shelters for the homeless. Some did take me up on my efforts and tried to turn their lives around. Others, however, felt that I was just another doctor who had let them down. I could feel their pain that I wasn't providing what they wanted.
In psychosis the psychic often gets distorted. Certain people have a basic biochemical imbalance in their brains, which causes some internal wires to get crossed. I'll be sitting in my office listening to a perfectly sincere woman professing how psychic she is—she can read my thoughts, she claims—and I know for a certainty that she's wrong. No matter how careful I am in saying this to such people, however, they just can't hear it. I get the feeling that they're reaching out in the right direction, but get tricked by a false façade, fall through a trapdoor and become lost. The truth they allegedly see is usually disjointed, foreign to the world we know. Many ordinary psychotics cling to the belief that they are psychic as if it were the last life raft on a sinking ship. Nothing I say or do can change their minds. When I try to focus them in a different direction, they simply won't give it up. It's as if being psychic will somehow legitimize who they are, endow their lives with dignity and meaning.
One patient, “Solarus,” a.k.a. Steve, raised in a conservative Jewish family in Brooklyn, spent two years in a Turkish prison, convicted of possessing marijuana. If his parents hadn't made a deal with the Turkish government, he could have been sentenced to death. Steve spent many months in solitary confinement, brutally abused by his captors. His bleak prison cell contained nothing more than a bare wooden sleeping bench. There were no windows, no light. The mistreatment and deprivation made him crack. During that time, he began “channeling” an entity called the “Sun Spirits,” who convinced him that he was on a mission to save the world. Adamant that they were protecting him, he believed he was their messenger.
After being released from prison, Steve holed up in an apartment in a sleazy section of Hollywood. He rarely went out, refused to bathe, and raved incessantly about the Sun Spirits. His parents were at their wits' end, and sent him to me about a year after he returned from Turkey. He agreed to come in only because I was psychic and would therefore understand.
Desperate to be believed, Steve arrived intent upon proving that what he was experiencing was real. He looked so vulnerable. I had a strong impulse to comfort him; his entire identity was at risk. He reminded me of a child who had gone astray, starving for validation. But I had to be careful not to get hooked in because of similar feelings I had while growing up. To be helpful, I knew I had to remain objective.
Steve channeled the Sun Spirits for me, but nothing about them felt authentic. When the voices came through him, they were often critical and cruel. “You're ugly and fat,” they would snap. “It's pathetic that at twenty-six you can't even support yourself.” Then in the next breath they would proclaim, “Love is everything. We've chosen you to spread the word.” I felt compassion for Steve, appreciated the hell he'd been through. It was a miracle he had made it out of prison alive. I didn't want to take the rug out from under him, yet I had to be honest. His demonstration didn't convey the wholesome, true feeling of a genuine psychic experience. There was a psychotic flavor to it, a bizarre, condemning tone that rang false. The Sun Spirits seemed more a reflection of Steve's disowned feelings, mainly negative. It was clear that in order to cope with and survive the trauma of prison, a part of his personality had splintered off.
This was definitely not what Steve wanted to hear. He had big plans to market himself, to get his message across to the public by going on the spiritual lecture circuit. In fact, he had found an adoring girlfriend who considered him an enlightened being and was planning to accompany him on the road. Because I wasn't willing to agree that his channeling was psychic, I could make no impact on Steve. He never returned to see me. The last his family heard of him, he was with his girlfriend somewhere in the Midwest, penniless, trying to attract a following.
From working with Steve and many others like him, I developed a feel for when it's appropriate to encourage the psychic and when it isn't. Timing is critical. Most important, you must first start with a solid emotional base. Otherwise, exploring the psychic may only make matters worse. This is especially true if you try to force an opening when you're not ready. Overdoing spiritual workshops or consulting teachers excessively may place too much pressure on you, so much so that in your zealousness to progress, you get frustrated or burned out. Then, too, there's the glaring example of overeager people with visionary aspirations ending up floridly psychotic on hallucinogenic drugs. Over the years, I've seen too many of them land in emergency rooms, strapped to a gurney with hard leather restraints, bound at the ankles and wrists, being shot up with Thorazine to bring them down. Just as a tree needs to have its toots firmly planted in the earth so as not to get blown away, your foundation must also be sturdy. Only then will there be no danger that you'll get overwhelmed. With patience, the psychic can evolve organically.
One of the healthy, positive routes you can take to the psychic—and perhaps the most powerful—is creative expression. There's something inherently balancing about it when you're swept up in the flow. At these times, you're giving birth to what is most true in you, not solely from the standpoint of the intellect but from your deepest recesses. Overthinking kills creativity, as it does the psychic. The magic comes when you give up mental control and allow a greater force to take hold. In this groove you can be showered with original ideas and intuitive insights. All systems alert, you're so ripe for inspiration that it floods right through you.
My friend Janus, a screenwriter, rarely thinks about being psychic. But she is. Early one morning, she was awakened by a dream in which the plot of an involved story was perfectly laid out. It was about a crooked evangelist who's afraid he has performed a legitimate miracle when a young boy is healed by his touch. Janus sprung out of bed and rushed into the kitchen where her husband was drinking tea. When she told the dream to him, he was enthusiastic: “Write it down,” he said, “it's a terrific idea.” Immediately she flipped on her computer. When the story actually seemed to write itself, she knew she had a hot script. Janus's husband, a producer, eventually sold it—and it was made into the film Leap of Faith, starring Steve Martin.
Janus frequently dreams her story lines. To her, it's the most natural thing in the world. “The most magical moments in my work are when I step out of the way,” she says. “Dreams are the ultimate means to do this.” Whenever she faces a problem in her writing, she consciously puts herself into the troublesome scene as she drifts off to sleep. An observer in her own dream, she watches the action and the motivation of the characters play out. This gives her a running start on finding a solution. I know many writers who routinely use similar techniques.
Robert Louis Stevenson, for example, drew on his dreams for the classic thriller Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, the story of a prominent doctor who is transformed into a serial killer. I was fascinated when I first read Stevenson's account of his creative process: “I had long been trying to write a story on this subject, to find a body, a vehicle, for that strong sense of man's double being which must at times come in upon and overwhelm the mind of all thinking creatures…. For two days I went about wracking my brains for a plot of any sort; and on the second night I dreamed the scene at the window and a scene afterwards split in two, in which Hyde, pursued for some crime, took the powder and underwent the change in the presence of his pursuers. All the rest was made awake and consciously.”
From his description, I knew that Stevenson had tapped into a psychic source. My feeling was confirmed when he spoke of the amazing “Little People.” They instructed him beat by beat what each section of a story would be, even keeping an eye on the needs of the literary marketplace. Stevenson saw his conscious self as the “Little People's” agent, transcribing their ideas verbatim.
To me, this is the epitome of psychic creativity. Every time I hear about artists who are directed through dreams, voices, or visions I am moved. An extraordinary fluidity and layers of possibility exist in these states. The intensity of the creative process, the surrender required to get to the really good stuff inside, is exactly what fuels the psychic. Stevenson's approach made great art because he was able to travel to inner places most people never have access to. It wasn't something he tediously labored over. The very spirit of his work carried him there.
When you immerse yourself in creative projects, whether or not you think of what you're doing as psychic, you place yourself in an intuitively supercharged state. Passionately focused on your work, you set your intellect aside and shift out of ordinary awareness. Once in a creative rhythm, a wellspring of colors, sounds, and images appears. You, as the artist, simply take dictation. The painter Joan Miró worked in just this way: Rather than interpreting his dreams, he replicated them intact, in brilliant colors on canvas.
Of course, you won't be constantly racing ahead at full speed. Just as the psychic ebbs and flows, so do rhythms and cycles of the creative. When we go through those frustrating days or even months when it seems like nothing much is happening, it's futile to force it. There is no way to hurry a rose to bloom. These are breathing spells, intervals of gestation, moments when we must relax and allow the wisdom we have gained to incubate gently. The poet Rilke describes the artist's path when he says, after the storms of spring, summer comes “only to those who are patient, who are there as though eternity lay before them.”
It's easy to lose sight of this. Sometimes when I write I find myself tense and laboring at the computer, muscles tight, jaw clenched, getting nowhere fast. I'm trying too hard, need some time off, perhaps to hop into my car and drive up the coast. With the top down, my hair wild in the breeze, my spirit can soar again. While I'm listening to a tape of Muddy Waters—I'm crazy about the blues—collecting seashells on the beach, watching kids bobbing up and down on the Santa Monica Pier merry-go-round, or thinking about nothing in particular, fresh ideas have the space to float in.
Then there are those graced periods when my writing is effortless, the psychic flowing so abundantly I can hardly catch it all. Entire days can fly by when I even forget to eat. I keep notepads stashed near my bed, by the bathtub, on the passenger seat of the car. I won't hesitate to pull over by the side of the road, stop a conversation in midstream, or wake up in the middle of the night to get down my ideas. These are exhilarated moments of being in sync, when the energy I've gathered during the dormant phase comes into fruition.
I believe that all forms of creative and psychic expression originate from an infinitely fertile spiritual source. In the same way that artists create, visionaries peer into the invisible. The painter Paul Klee recognized this when he said, “Art does not reproduce the visible. It makes visible.” To me, the shared challenge of both psychics and artists is to translate the intangible into material form. This can take the shape of a novel, a painting, a song, or may come through as a prediction about the future. The kind of information we pick up depends on our intention. Any creative endeavor can provide a medium to help the psychic grow.
I have a patient, Molly, a painter who is proof of this. For my birthday, she once gave me one of her watercolors, a painting of a grove of deep green California oaks nestled high atop a chaparral-dotted Malibu crest. I have it hanging on my office wall. It's more than just beautiful: It actually seems to manufacture light. The otherworldly colors are vibrantly braided within each brushstroke; a fine golden hue flickers right through. The first time I saw it, I instantly sensed its power.
During creative spurts Molly possesses the same quality of presence and openness that I've been privileged to feel during my best readings. For her, there is no time more joyous. “I don't even have to think about what I'm doing,” she says, “I feel energized. Ideas seem to shoot through me right onto the canvas.” This is a psychic state; it feeds Molly's art and in turn is fed by it.
Like Molly, I always know when I'm really on. Then, doing a reading has the freedom and expansiveness of riding a horse bareback across a sunlit flowered field. There's a depth of sight and effortlessness that takes over when I can let go just enough to surrender. This is the real thrill of the psychic, the same vital energy fueling creative flow. Without it my prescience would surely be diminished, the artist reduced to mere technician, a tiny speck of light compared to a radiant orb.
I am in awe of how infinitely creative the psychic can be. One day at lunch a friend excitedly told me about a Brazilian psychologist and clairvoyant, Luis Gasparetto, whom she had just witnessed. “He has no formal artistic training,” she said, “but he claims that a number of the great masters—Renoir, Picasso, Modigliani, Van Gogh, and others—psychically express themselves through him. He whips out drawings in no time that look like the originals.” I wanted to see for myself. Unfortunately, that was his last Los Angeles engagement scheduled for a while, so it wasn't possible. Curious, I tracked down a videotape of that night and scrutinized him to see if he was for real or somehow faking it. I'm a tough audience when it comes to these things. The integrity of the psychic is just too important to me; I won't diminish this gift by accepting “magic” or trickery.
Lying back on my bed, I switched on the VCR. Gasparetto, a youthful man of about forty, barely spoke a word the whole time. His eyes shut, listening to classical music at full blast, he used both his hands and feet simultaneously to produce as many as four drawings in a matter of minutes, all similar enough to the style of the great masters that an untrained eye might easily confuse the two. Reaching for tubes of paint, never once looking at them, he later remarked, “I choose the colors by instinct. I sense them in my body, feel them in my skin.” Without ever using any brushes, he squeezes the paint onto a canvas, applying pressure with his fingers, the heel of his hand, his knuckles, and his feet, furiously spreading it around, sometimes even working upside down. It is truly an astonishing sight: He moves at such speed, and his limbs are so finely coordinated, that he looks more like an automaton than a human being.
I do not know if this man is actually channeling the great masters, as he says he does. I believe, however, that he is extremely open to the creative flow and that his intuitive connection with the style of certain artists allows him to impressively reproduce their paintings. In this he is quite gifted. I saw in Gasparetto a refined demonstration of the psychic and the creative working together in harmony.
Unfortunately, I've also run into gifted people who don't al ways use their power well. I've seen genuine psychic ability mixed with a lack of maturity and discernment. This is a lethal combination. Motivated by gigantic egos, seduced by an insatiable need to control, these individuals lose their sense of balance and their priorities. Too many times I've known of people like this who prey on the innocence and naiveté of vulnerable seekers. I get furious whenever I hear of someone voluntarily handing over her power to irresponsible teachers who greedily snatch it up.
I met such a man recently. A friend of mine called late at night to rave about a Peruvian shaman, a wondrous healer he felt I just had to see. The shaman would only be in town for a few days; my friend could arrange an appointment. I usually don't consult healers other than my own spiritual teacher; I prefer to stay focused on one path. But between my curiosity, the fact that I'd had some annoying stomach trouble lately that could really use help, and my friend's insistence, I agreed to check him out.
The signs were ominous from the beginning. The shaman charged an exorbitant fee for his services—to be paid strictly in cash—and made claims of fantastic cures. My friend argued, “He's better than Carlos Castaneda's Don Juan. What difference does money make if he's for real?” The whole thing didn't feel right. But after all this time and study, there was still a part of me that wished for a miraculous cure-all, a healer who could wave his magic wand and make everything okay.
Right after breakfast one morning, I drove to a Brentwood home straight out of Architectural Digest where the sessions were being held. This man was in such demand that people were herded into the living room, waiting their turn. I felt odd, disturbingly like a child. Here we were, by all appearances a group of successful professionals, turning to him to fix us. It was sad, absurd, and naively hopeful all at the same time. Finally, after two hours, when everyone else had gone, my name was called. I was led into a private room in the back, as if entering an inner sanctum. The shaman looked so authentic that he could have been hired by central casting. A bone-thin, hunched over Mayan in his late sixties, he spoke no English. The woman who sponsored his trip to the United States served as his translator. This is going to be good, I thought.
After greeting me, nodding his head, he then uttered some words in Spanish. The translator asked, “What are your symptoms?”
“Lately I've felt these waves of anxiety,” I said candidly. “I haven't been sleeping well, and my stomach's been killing me.”
Never once looking me in the eyes, the shaman picked up a small mirror and ran it up and down the underside of both my forearms. He pinched the skin on my wrists. Then, staring grimly at the floor, he shook his head and mumbled something under his breath in Spanish. The only word I recognized was loco, and the rest didn't sound much better.
“What did he say?” I asked, panic beginning to overtake me.
The translator hesitated, as if not wanting to break the bad news. “He apologizes but he can't do anything for you.”
“What are you talking about?” I managed to squeak out.
“I hate to tell you this,” the translator said, “but there's no hope. Soon your stomach will get so bad you won't be able to eat. You'll grow thinner and weaker. Eventually you'll just waste away and die.”
I was shocked. For a few horrible seconds, half of me believed him, deferring to this man as if he were an all-knowing sage. I felt about an inch high, terrified that I already had one foot in the grave. “Isn't there anything more you can advise?” I asked. The shaman turned his back to me, as if irritated, and replied he'd have to consult his dreams. The translator looked at me with such pity it made my skin crawl, and solemnly whispered, “I'm so sorry.”
Suddenly, the melodrama of it all shook me to my senses. I felt like I was playing a leading role in a B movie. Why was I listening to this man? He was using fear tactics to hook me in and I, a trained psychiatrist and psychic with years of solid spiritual practice behind me, was taking the bait. The entire scene had been one giant setup. Of course, the obvious next question I was expected to ask was “How much more would it cost for you to look in your dreams?” But, thank God, I didn't. Grateful that my presence of mind had returned, I knew that nothing he'd said was true. The spell now broken, I was furious, and blasted them: “You mean to say you've known me only five minutes, condemn me to suffering a horrible death, and then send me off completely stripped of hope! How can you be so irresponsible? Even if you are right, where is your compassion?”
I left, marveling at how ready I'd been to sacrifice my power to a complete stranger, sucked in by the awe of his followers. Such blind devotion should have been a tip-off. Just because someone claims to be a great shaman doesn't mean he is. Unfortunately, I later discovered that at least a couple of people fell for almost exactly the same line that this man handed me and ended up doling out ungodly sums of money to be healed. The irony is that some actually felt better. Whether they were simply suggestible or this man had some real skill, I don't know. What I do know for certain, however, is that controlling people through fear is unconscionable, a red flag that a psychic is unbalanced, and should be avoided.
Meeting this man was a harsh reminder of the dangers of so-called healers who are domineering and motivated by greed rather than compassion. Because I was going through a hard time and wanted immediate relief, I was susceptible to being tricked. No matter how knowledgeable we are, we may be tempted to go to any lengths to get well. But sustained healing can take place only when a teacher ignites resources we already have within, not if he professes to do it for us, creating a false dependency.
I am also angered by charismatic psychics and spiritual teachers who exploit students sexually, promising an inside track to spiritual advancement. Some of these “gurus” may even believe it themselves; they have no remorse.
Once, out of curiosity I attended a talk given by a popular but controversial spiritual teacher based in Los Angeles. By this time he was infamous for having sex with his female students, but still the lecture hall was packed. I saw at once that he was incredibly funny, attractive, and radiated a charismatic appeal. Actually, he was too charming; I was immediately put off. Nonetheless, I recognized from his responses to the audience's questions that he was a stunningly sharp clairvoyant with an astute understanding of how energy moved. Seductive, full of himself, and talented: a deadly mix.
Soon after that night, accounts of his flagrant sexual escapades with students appeared in the press. Promised enlightenment, many women had gone along with him, not because they wanted sex, but as an act of unconditional surrender to their guru. He would buy them jewelry and fine gifts, wine and dine them at expensive hotels—then move on to another conquest. Not surprisingly, these women felt abandoned, abused, outraged. Many had given him large donations they couldn't afford, had sacrificed their jobs, even their families. Finally they got fed up and left the group, often struggling to rebuild their lives from scratch. His following scattered, and with the press on his back, this man eventually was run out of town.
It is never necessary to have sex with our teachers in order to grow spiritually. Even the ancient mystical discipline of Tantra, which focuses on sexuality as a vehicle for transcendence, is never forced upon anyone. If a teacher ever insists that sex with him—or her—is the only way to enlightenment, run in the opposite direction as fast as you can.
In my own life, as a therapist and psychic, I've strived to be clear about sexuality, maintaining firm boundaries with people I'm reading. Looking into someone's life so closely, particularly if I don't know them well, can breed an instant intimacy that may be easily misinterpreted. Once I was introduced to a man on a remote-viewing project I was doing. Thrilled to learn I was a psychic, he asked to come to my office for a reading. This was not unusual—I often give readings to people I work with—so I gladly agreed. But from then on, he began laying it on too thick about how incredibly wise I was, blushing like a smitten schoolboy: He'd clearly developed a crush on me. I was flattered, but I knew it wasn't real. He had the unmistakable glazed look of someone all too eager to relinquish his own power and project onto me an elevated status that had no bearing on who I was. Realizing how unhealthy it would be to feed into this, I gently explained what I thought was happening and put a stop to the whole thing.
I've seen many psychics and spiritual teachers fall into the trap of getting sexually involved with their students. It's a predictable challenge, and needs to be anticipated before serious damage occurs. Some teachers deal with it by becoming celibate. Others reach a crossroads where their integrity is tested—and many fail. Catered to by adoring students, they succumb. In the best of circumstances, they admit their indiscretions, sincerely learning from their mistakes. But a malignant few remain power hungry, ravenously feeding on attention like sharks but losing sight of their real purpose.
Psychics and spiritual teachers are human beings. No matter how wise, they all have obstacles to overcome. Beware of those who are eager to impress, encourage dependency, or charge outrageous amounts for their services. The most artful psychics and healers I've known, ones with authentic maturity, are straightforward and humble, and they charge reasonable fees. They don't coerce by fear and have nothing to prove. A true healer's skill lies in kindling your power.
A holy bond is formed in any healing relationship. Whenever I'm working with someone in therapy, it's always more than just the two of us involved. A third entity is born: the spirit of the therapy itself, an expanding spark with an inherent intelligence and character. It's a compass that marks the way, clarifying my job if I listen.
My office hours usually go nonstop from nine to five. For most of the day, I'm psychically wide open. I feel like a telephone operator on a gigantic switchboard, handling a rush of incoming calls. Listening to my patients both intuitively and with my intellect, I simultaneously track a myriad of images and sensations along with their words. Logic often lays the groundwork, the psychic filling in missing gaps, color, and detail. I'm hyper-alert, my body alive, but at the same time I'm detached, witnessing the session as an observer. I rarely know what I'm going to say until the moment I say it. Very little I do in therapy is preplanned. Trusting the direction the session is taking, I try not to exert undue control or superimpose my own agenda.
When I first began weaving the psychic into my work, I was afraid I wasn't doing enough if I simply allowed myself to be guided. In medical school I had been programmed to be ever vigilant, to scrutinize every situation, take full charge. Unless I shouldered the entire load, I was convinced, I'd be cheating, cutting corners. Thus I often ended up trying too hard when it wasn't necessary. At night I would drag my body home exhausted, limp as a rag doll. I didn't have the slightest idea how to conserve my strength.
Now whenever my energy is depleted, I know to back off. The tougher sessions especially begin to exact a toll. To avoid this I pause for meditation breaks, psychically disengaging throughout the day. Reconnecting with my spiritual source feels like standing beneath a waterfall, being bathed in pristine water. It's my shield and protection, easing the heaviness, infusing the light once more. Only then can I be fully present in my work.
Sometimes my role is simply to mirror the psychic in someone else. But I have to be careful. Too often, patients expect me to give magic answers. They make me into an authority figure, disempowering themselves by believing they can't be psychic as well. Time and again I try to confront that illusion, realizing how destructive it is. But even in people who know better, this impulse is amazingly tenacious.
One of my patients, Sam, a computer whiz at a local think tank, hounded me constantly. Naively in awe of anything psychic, he imagined me to be all-knowing. Even worse, he craved solutions to his problems without making an effort himself, which got on my nerves. ‘'Can't you just tell me this one thing,” he'd persist, grilling me about his problem of the day. Had I allowed it, Sam would have been willing to defer to me completely. It never dawned on him that he could do this himself. “Why don't you give it a shot?” I urged when he once again demanded a reading. Sam resisted, citing all the usual excuses: “I don't know what I'm doing. What if I'm wrong? Only special people are psychic.” Nonsense. Because I was fond of Sam, knew how capable he was, I stood firm.
Finally we struck a deal. He'd initially risk a reading himself, then I would follow with mine. We began by practicing. Typically I'd repeat a name of someone I knew well and then “send” it to him. He'd relate his impressions, right or wrong, and I'd respond with feedback. As we proceeded this way, intuitive images came to Sam more freely, and he began putting pictures and feelings together like pieces of a puzzle. The insights he gained from this method later helped him to deal with dilemmas he had been pressing me to read. There's no substitute for jumping right in and doing the work.
I have no hard-and-fast rules governing when to give a direct psychic response. It's a matter of discretion: The timing has to feel right. If someone is an ardent disbeliever, out of respect I steer clear of the issue unless an interest is expressed. Nor, as I've said, do I stress this point in the emotionally unstable, who might misinterpret the information. Then there are people like Sam, obsessively enamored of the psychic, who need to view it more realistically. The same is true for those who wrongly turn to it to overmanage their lives. “Let's tune in to the whole week,” one patient of mine frequently asks, expecting a blow-by-blow accounting of the next seven days' events. I don't encourage this, however. For critical issues, maybe. But first she must do a reading herself. Then I'll chime in. I believe that the joy of life is in discovery, not in plotting out our every move. Even if that were possible.
To me, the best use of the psychic is when I can help define a problem, allowing a person to apply such knowledge constructively. With someone who is well grounded and doesn't over-glorify the psychic or abuse it, I'm more apt to be direct. Also, if I sense that real danger is involved—for example, the time when a patient came to me alarmed his plane was going to crash and I intuitively agreed—I will be forthright.
Joan, a movie producer and long-term patient, had been listless for over a month. In the middle of shooting a film, she could barely keep up with the harrowing schedule. Usually overflowing with energy, she found her fatigue so debilitating that she called from location and asked me to tune in. This wasn't like Joan, who rarely sought psychic help. I knew it was important. Picturing her body's afterimage, I intuitively scanned it, the way a Geiger counter picks up radiation, to detect if anything was wrong. This is where my medical knowledge really comes in: Sweeping across from head to toe, I visualize each organ, individually crosschecking my responses to see if there's a glitch. If something isn't right it stands out, lighting up, its texture and consistency altered, a feeling similar to running your hand over silky fabric and coming to a tiny irregular knot. Focusing on Joan's blood, I sensed it was thin, some vital element missing. Since Joan's production schedule was so hectic, it was almost impossible for her to make time to see a doctor. But when I told her what I saw, she arranged an appointment. Though her health was otherwise fine, the doctor discovered that Joan had a severe case of anemia.
During psychic readings, I don't reveal anything without considering the implications. Always I ask myself, Will this information be helpful? Even with people like Joan, when I believe it will be, I'm still careful about my presentation. There are so many ways to go wrong. I know of a well-meaning psychic who was asked by a single mother to do a reading of her newborn daughter. The psychic revealed the possibility that the child would be learning disabled. On hearing this, the mother looked as if she had been run over by a truck. This was the last thing she wanted to know. As a forecast of the future, even if true, all it accomplished was to plant fear in her—in this case no useful purpose was served. Though another mother might have wanted this knowledge, it was still a judgment call. The balance between when or when not to speak out can be incredibly delicate.
I find this to be particularly critical in potentially life-threatening circumstances. Dropping a bomb on someone that they have cancer or AIDS can often cause more harm than good. Then there's also the chance that my perceptions are inaccurate. Readings are not infallible. In such situations, I tend to err on the conservative side, stressing the gravity of my concerns without getting specific. I point people in the right direction by strongly urging them to get checked out medically, but they must take it from there.
In some instances, it's inappropriate to do a reading at all. Just as I would never walk through somebody's front door without an invitation, I never look into someone psychically unless there's an opening. When I try to tune in and it feels like I'm hitting a brick wall, I know to back off. An invisible force field repels me. Even if someone has requested a reading, something inside them is resisting. Images I pick up don't congeal, or they blur like a fading watercolor. Other times I just draw a blank, or feel there's nothing substantial to grab on to. Any attempt to push through such protective barricades would be an invasion of privacy.
Psychic balance entails communicating what you know with respect, being discriminating but also trusting your heart to guide you when to act. Confidence doesn't come overnight, but when you make the effort to balance the psychic, you gain both energy and stability. At home with your prescience, you are now free to enter new realms, at the same time still well grounded. Like a martial-arts master, you stand poised and centered, intuitively in tune wherever you are.
Not that this means you can't be at ease, free of pretense, a part of the ordinary, daily world, in any situation. Some of my most impressive psychic insights have come to me while driving, shopping, walking by the ocean, or even sitting on the swings at Venice Beach. I often go there when I'm stuck and need to figure things out. Facing the boardwalk, hands gripping the cool chain links, I push off barefoot from the sand. Swinging high, I take in the fabulous pageant of people passing just a few feet away: couples jogging in matching skin-tight magenta shorts; a group of young black boys gyrating to a rap tape; futuristic-looking roller skaters who could have stepped straight out of Bladerunner. As I continue to swing my mind clears, psychic images rush by. Answers occur to me as naturally as if I were on an isolated mountain peak. In the midst of this whirlwind of activity, there's a special sweetness in knowing I can be completely at one with it all.