PSYCHIC EXPERIENCES IN EVERYDAY LIFE
Recognize what is right before your eyes, and what is hidden will be revealed to you.
—THE GOSPEL ACCORDINGTO THOMAS
It was a typical busy Saturday, the time I set aside each week for shopping and chores. Already I had been to the car wash and hardware store; now I was browsing for a birthday gift for my father. Main Street in Santa Monica is one of my favorite places. I love the scent of jasmine, lavender, and vanilla wafting from the shops, the smiling faces of people strolling by, the heat of the sun baking my bare shoulders.
As I roamed from store to store engrossed in my search, suddenly, out of the blue, I thought of Barbara, my best girlfriend in grade school. I hadn't seen her in years. We were joined at the hip while growing up, did everything together—she was even with me the night in Seal Beach, right in front of her family's summer home, when I first got kissed by a boy. But at fourteen, as I started using drugs and became a full-fledged hippie, Barbara and I drifted apart. One of the last times we spent together, we took a walk in our neighborhood in Westwood, and—I think just to please me—because I was smoking a cigarette she lit one up, too.
Yet there I was, over twenty years later, not just thinking of her but flooded with images of my friend. Warmed by these memories, my shopping finally complete, I walked over to the Rose Cafe for a snack. As I stepped through the door, scanning the bustling space for a table, I spotted a familiar face. A beautiful woman now, but looking much the same: It was Barbara.
“Judi, is that you?” she exclaimed, calling me by my childhood name. I sat down with her, thrilled, and we began to bring each other up to date. Learning that I was a psychiatrist, Barbara beamed quietly, happy for my success. “And what about you?” I asked. I'd heard she was a photographer. “Well,” she said, pausing for a moment, “our timing is unbelievable…. I'm getting married tomorrow.”
I had to catch my breath. There had been so much love between us as young girls. For our paths to be crossing at such a significant moment sent a chill running through me. Growing up, we'd always been there for each other, present at the milestones of our lives. I hugged Barbara, whispered “Congratulations,” but soon it was time for her to go. As we parted, I knew from the deepest inner authority, that meeting Barbara was no mere accident. It was two old friends again being drawn together, if only for a moment, a merging of past and present; just how the psychic often intervenes in everyday life.
In ancient Celtic mythology, the Isle of Avalon is a mystical place of extraordinary power where the psychic reigns. In The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley tells us, “There was a time when a traveller, if he had the will and knew only a few of the secrets, could send his barge out into the Summer Sea and arrive…at the Holy Isle of Avalon; for at that time the gates between the worlds drifted within the mists, and were open, one to another, as the traveller thought and willed.” According to the myth, because so many people lost faith in the psychic and no longer acknowledged the influence of the Unknown, the mists grew so dense that Avalon became unreachable and lost forever.
In the same way, our own mystical nature has become obscured. It's actually there for each of us; its apparent disappearance is simply an illusion. Like the ancient traveler, we're blinded by the mists of fear, self-centeredness, and lack of faith. We've forsaken the mystery. And even if we were willing to make the effort to retrieve it, where would we look? The good news is, we can stop searching; the psychic is ever-present in our day-to-day lives.
The psychic may touch your life dramatically, though more often in so mundane a fashion that such simplicity may cause you to overlook it. You can write off some instances as chance collisions of people, places, and time. But suppose you alter your focus a bit. Suppose you view such random-seeming occurrences—known as synchronicities—as inspired coincidences, signs that something other than the haphazard is at work. There is magic in doing this, an acknowledgment that a greater force is moving through our lives, linking us all together.
Perhaps you have experienced déjàvu, the sense of having been somewhere or known someone before. There is no logical basis for your feelings, but they are so real you could swear that they're true. At another time you may psychically pick up an event as it is actually happening. This is clairvoyance—different from precognition, which is when you accurately predict an event before it occurs. Finally, if you've ever been labeled “overly sensitive” and seem to take on other people's moods or even feel their physical symptoms, you have encountered psychic empathy—a common yet overlooked expression of prescience.
In our modern world we're moving at such a rapid pace we miss seeing the extraordinary in the little things. But it's right there, between the lines, where the mystery lies, the place where we'll find the key to the parting of the mists.
SYNCHRONICITY
Have you ever experienced perfect timing, a moment when everything just seems to fall into place? For a brief interim, you step out of the random chaos and find that all forces are aligned, with nothing preplanned, and yet all is in order. Events come together with such exactitude that it feels you've been launched onto a preordained course. You can't stop thinking about someone and you run into them on the street; a person you've just met offers you the perfect job; you miss your plane and on the next flight you sit next to someone with whom you fall in love. This is synchronicity, a state of grace.
Once, attending a doctors' staff meeting at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, I met a surgeon named Michael. Immaculately dressed in a three-piece suit, tanned and handsome, he asked me out to lunch. In the Hamburger Hamlet at the edge of the Sunset Strip, we engaged in small talk for a while. He appeared quite straight-laced, speaking about his prestigious country club, golf on the weekends, Wednesday night poker. He was a nice enough guy, but not my type. Except for being physicians, we didn't seem to have much in common.
Usually when a date isn't going well, I try to ease out of it gracefully and as quickly as possible. But this was different. Although my first impulse was to eat fast and then politely leave, I couldn't say exactly why, but I found myself talking about my spiritual beliefs. Then, abruptly, the conversation turned to death—the words just flowed out of my mouth. Whenever this had happened to me in the past, there always turned out to be a good explanation. Thus, even though it felt strange to be conversing this way with someone I knew so little about, I decided to trust it.
Michael, I learned, had never talked in detail about death to anyone before, but on this particular afternoon he couldn't hear enough about my description of an afterlife, how the spirit is eternal, how death is not an end but simply a transition into other dimensions as real as our own lives. For two hours we sat in huge fanbacked wicker chairs in a restaurant that looked like it belonged on Gilligan's Island while he listened, transfixed, urging me to continue whenever I slowed down.
Throughout lunch, I kept thinking, This is one of the weirdest dates I've ever had. Not that I was uncomfortable with the subject matter, but there was just something unsettling about the way it was happening. I kept having the urge to change the conversation to something more commonplace: medicine, film, the weather. But the piercing immediacy in Michael's eyes, his hunger to absorb it all even though he claimed no spiritual leanings of his own, were cues that something important was up. Although the reason wasn't clear, it was obvious that Michael badly needed to hear about death.
We finally said our good-byes and walked out to our cars. As I headed west on Melrose toward my office in Century City, I wondered, What just happened? Why did such a profound topic arise with someone I hardly knew? Before I had a chance to come to any conclusions, my beeper went off. I had an emergency admission at the hospital, had to get over there right away. The rest of my afternoon flew by. By the time I finished seeing patients, it was late evening and the lunch conversation had receded into the background, out of my conscious thoughts.
A month later, a friend called to tell me that Michael had been killed in a freak motorcycle accident on the Ventura Freeway. For a moment I was stunned. Michael dead? It seemed impossible. He had his whole life ahead of him. People like Michael get married, have children, lead charmed lives. They aren't supposed to die young.
Images of Michael haunted me the rest of the day. Although we had only met twice, I felt I'd known him a long time. Suddenly the seemingly offbeat direction of our conversation at lunch made sense. There was some unconscious part of Michael that had intuited his impending death, yearned to know everything he could about it. I'd been the messenger.
Michael's early death was tragic. And yet, death is a part of life: It seemed inescapable that there was a certain tightness to my conversation with Michael. I felt privileged to have been witness to such a turning point, glad I hadn't run from it. Neither of us had seen the larger picture, the far-reaching implications of our talk, yet I had sensed that something important was happening. Now it was evident that a synchronous event had positioned Michael and me together at a critical point in his life.
The psychic often intercedes in the most subtle ways. Since I hadn't foreseen Michael's death, I didn't have the option to tell him about it even if I had thought it appropriate. (Nor would such a warning have guaranteed that his death could be prevented.) Being psychic doesn't mean I'm superwoman with the power to alter the future. Or that I know everything about a person at any given point in time. Usually, unless I'm specifically tuning in to someone with a particular question in mind, I receive only what's needed for the moment. I have come to respect that. In Michael's case, I felt consoled, seeing how interrelated we all are, aware that in some small way I could help someone prepare for what was to come.
Fortunately, I'd known enough not to impose my will on our meeting. You may find yourself in a similar position. Remember a time when a situation just didn't seem to fit. Perhaps you felt that a crucial piece of the picture was missing, but you couldn't quite articulate what it was. It could have been a man who looked and acted like an old boyfriend asking you out on a date. Because the similarities were so striking, you decided to accept. Or maybe you ran into a woman you hadn't seen for years. Even though you may not have been close to her, you felt the urge to have a long talk in which something important to you was revealed.
The secret is to go with the mystery. When a situation doesn't make immediate sense, a larger overall message may appear if you let it unfold naturally. This doesn't mean you should place yourself in circumstances that are potentially destructive. You need to stay alert, use your head, know when to walk away. But you must also try not to discount or underestimate the implications of synchronous events. In some instances, the relevance is instantly obvious; in others, as with Michael, it takes time. We have to trust the divine ordering of our lives.
Synchronicities are an expression of our psychic rapport with the world around us. I am thrilled whenever they occur, and I look to them for guidance. Synchronicities delight me, reaffirm that I'm on the right track. Though I believe that everything in life has meaning, synchronicities are a direct acknowledgment of our prescience; they highlight our collective link. Whenever patients come to me wanting to be psychic, I advise them to pay careful attention to and record synchronous events to appreciate how frequent they are. This makes the psychic more real. I've trained myself to notice synchronicities, and I encourage you to do the same. So many can be lost if you aren't specifically watching.
Once when I was driving up Sunset Boulevard to a friend's house in Laurel Canyon, I happened to turn my head and look into the car next to me. Startled, I did a double-take: I was sure the woman at the wheel was a patient of mine, Jane. Though I waved at her, however, she sped right by me without response, and I then realized it wasn't Jane at all, just someone who bore a close resemblance. Such cases of mistaken identity, I've learned, especially if my confusion is so marked, often have special significance and are synchronicities. In this incident, my attention was drawn to Jane, so I knew to tune in to her psychically and find out what was going on. Right away, I sensed her despair. I tried to reach her that night but she wasn't home. The next day, when Jane came in for her scheduled appointment, she was frantic, having just discovered that she'd been fired from a teaching job she loved.
You'll come across signs of synchronicities everywhere. The trick is just to stay aware. The stronger your reaction is to even small clues, the better the chance they are psychically meaningful. Suppose you're driving to the market one afternoon and notice that the license plate on the car in front of you has your brother's name on it. Immediately this grabs your attention. You haven't seen him for a while, wonder how he's been. Twenty minutes later, just as you're loading your groceries into the trunk, he drives up beside you. Or maybe a portrait of a close friend crashes to the floor, its frame shattering. The next day you learn that she'd been in a car accident that very afternoon. Or a particular song keeps going through your mind that reminds you of an old girlfriend—you were crazy about her, haven't heard from her in a year—and when you go to the mailbox, what do you discover? She's written you a letter. The key is to recognize these connections. Go out of your way to emphasize the psychic all around you.
Some synchronous meetings are serendipitous and can be harbingers of good fortune. When you take advantage of these golden moments, your life can change for the better. Such opportunities don't only crop up during important business meetings, extravagant parties, or special events. If you stay on the lookout, they won't slip through your fingers. Synchronicities are enmeshed in the fabric of the ordinary. They can happen to you when you least expect them: in the Laundromat, at the car wash, in line at the bank.
Patty had come to see me because of an ongoing sense of restlessness and depression. “It's not that my life is terrible,” she said in our first session, almost apologetically. “I have a good job I've been at for over ten years. Being a librarian is okay, but something is definitely missing.”
Secretly, she told me, she'd long had a dream: She wanted to run a small café serving healthy, low-fat, but delicious cooking, using all freshly grown ingredients. She could actually picture the tables, the curtains, the blue vase of flowers on the counter where she would serve tea. Vivid as it was, however, her dream seemed too much to try to realize. Though she was an excellent cook, loved to invite her friends over for festive dinner parties, and was known for her inventive recipes, she had no restaurant training, little money saved, and few business contacts.
Still, Patty's dream wasn't totally unrealistic. If it had been, I would have expressed my concerns. At least I wanted to help her explore. Too many people get stuck in jobs they hate or that give them no real satisfaction. They long to escape but can't see the way. “First,” I advised Patty, “allow for the possibility that your dream can come true. Your belief is essential. Then,” I continued, “look for signs everywhere that can guide you. Pay attention to coincidences—and notice if opportunities present themselves. When you're receptive, they can often be put right in front of you.”
Patty had never approached life like this before. She confessed that she wasn't totally convinced, but, intrigued, she agreed to experiment. This didn't mean, however, that she would just sit back and wait for something to come to her. She began by creating a few special pasta dishes that she persuaded some local delis and restaurants to carry. Though Patty's food was selling well, it was also clear she'd have to expand to make a profit. But how?
In this period, she attended an alumni function honoring a famous graduate of her university. When the event was over, a friend of one of her old college roommates mentioned that he needed a ride to the airport. Since it was on her way, Patty volunteered to give him a lift. As they drove, Patty asked what line of work he was in. “I own a string of restaurants in the Phoenix area,” the man answered. One thing led to another, and Patty began sharing her ideas with him. His interest was immediately piqued. As a result of this conversation she made a new friend who later provided her with the advice, support, and contacts she needed to begin taking steps toward opening her own café.
By training herself to look for synchronicities, Patty didn't miss out on this one. Previously she couldn't even imagine her dream coming true, let alone that someone would be placed in her path to help. Too shy to speak up, she might have let this same situation pass her by. But now, more confident about her own goals and receptive to such “coincidences,” Patty knew how to make the most of this conversation. She was at the right place at the right time. But it was more than that. Patty had created the proper mind-set to recognize a synchronicity as it occurred. This simple shift in attitude allowed Patty to open herself to an incredible opportunity.
As you become more alert, you will encounter a variety of synchronicities in your life with many different purposes. Just as certain synchronous events can highlight circumstances that may benefit you—in relationships, career decisions, or any important choices you're trying to make—others can keep you out of danger. In some instances, instead of being drawn toward something, you may be directed away from it—and later discover it was a situation that could have harmed you. Without effort of your own, factors beyond your control align themselves in your favor. When this happens, it's a blessing, plain and simple, and you need to accept it as such.
I have a patient who at the last minute was asked to help with her eight-year-old daughter's school camping trip. It was to take place about one hundred miles away in Ojai the following day. That Sunday night she and her husband jumped into their Land Rover, left their home in Santa Monica, and headed up Highway 1, along the coast. Early the next morning, January 17, 1994, the big Los Angeles earthquake hit—a walloping 6.8 on the Richter scale. My patient's neighborhood was one of the most devastated. The damage to their home was horrendous: sliding glass doors shattered, a gigantic wooden beam in their bedroom ceiling dangerously split apart, massive cracks gouging practically every wall. Because my patient and her husband were synchronistically called out of town, they escaped almost certain physical injury.
Synchronicity was a favorite topic of the Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung. He defined it as “a meaningful coincidence of outer and inner events that are not causally related.” He spoke of a collective unconscious, a universal pool of knowledge, independent of culture, belonging to us all. It's the basis, he believed, of what the ancients call the “sympathy for all things,” and it is my conviction that synchronicity stems from this commonality. We're all swimming in the same waters, riding the same waves, can feel the reverberation of one another's movements.
Many of you view yourselves as isolated islands, but you are more tied to others than you think. Acknowledging this common thread is yet another way for you to awaken and lead a richer life. It can remind you of the global interconnection we all have, helping you to feel less alone, dissolving artificial barriers.
Of course, synchronicities can occur with total strangers, but for me they happen most with people I love—little everyday things that are a touching reflection of our closeness and never cease to warm my heart. We don't even have to live in the same city or talk a lot: Out psychic bond is always there. For example, my friend Jack lives in upstate New York, and we see each other only a few times a year. Recently, he told me, he was on vacation in Boulder, Colorado, browsing in a used-book store, and I suddenly popped into his mind. Nothing particularly unusual—just things we had done together in the past, conversations we'd had. An avid science fiction fan, he went to that section and, still thinking of me, reached for a book that appealed to him—A Wrinkle in Time, by Madeleine L'Engle. When he opened to the title page, he was amazed to discover my name—Judi Orloff—handwritten and dated November 1961, when I was ten. As a child, I always made it a point to write my name in all my books in case they ever got lost. When after high school I moved out of my parents' home, I donated stacks of these old books to Goodwill. Somehow, twenty years later, one of them ended up in Boulder and my friend had come upon it.
When Jack mentioned this, tears came to my eyes. The intimacy of this synchronicity, affirming the strength of our friend ship, endeared him to me all the more. How could such an incident have ever been planned? That Jack would be in this particular bookstore at exactly the right time to discover one of my favorite childhood mementos triggered a rush of feelings in me. Most tender, though, was the incontrovertible sense that we are all bound together by such love. If we only look for it, the evidence is everywhere.
The smallest of synchronicities, when you view them from this perspective, have meaning, if only to reinforce the understanding that we are all related to one another in some way. Although some synchronicities may affect you more than others, all have value. Whether or not I fully grasp its import at the time, I have come to see each synchronous moment as possessing rare and perfect harmony—like the accuracy of a bull's-eye, the precision of a hole in one, the impeccable sequence of a royal flush. Synchronicity is a sign that we are psychically attuned, not only to our immediate friends and family, but also to the greater collective.
DÉJÀ VU
My friend Rachel was on her way to be interviewed for a position as a counselor at a residential drug and alcohol treatment center. As she got closer to her destination, a dangerous area of downtown Los Angeles, she found herself in a neighborhood full of crack dealers, hookers, and gangs. Driving along in her Mustang, windows tolled up and the doors locked, she had serious second thoughts about working in such a community. But the instant she made a right-hand turn off Alvarado Street onto Lake, something changed. She could have sworn that she'd been there before. Not only did she seem to recognize the street, but she also knew the exact layout of the ramshackle Victorian house she was about to enter for the first time.
When she walked into the house, it was exactly as she had pictured it. The stairway winding up to the second floor, the sensation of the worn nylon upholstery of the office couch against her skin, the faded pictures on the wall, even the miniature collie in the backyard had a strange familiarity. Suddenly the situation took on a new light. There was a rightness to it, an absolute inevitability that was undeniable.
During the interview with the director of the program, a tough, street-wise woman with soft, brown eyes, Rachel felt that she was with family. This was the beginning of a productive three-year position, setting her career in a totally different and exciting direction. For most of her life, she'd been sequestered in the affluent world of West Los Angeles, but this recovery house with twenty sober addicts and alcoholics, some recently released from prison, became her second home.
Rachel had registered similar instant recognitions before, but they had never felt this compelling. Over the preceding few months she'd been lost, unable to commit herself to jobs that were offered, questioning whether or not she even wanted to stay in L.A. With this new recognition, however, Rachel had been set back on course. A sense of relief washed over her as she knew with certainty that this was where she was meant to be. The deterioration and shabbiness of the physical environment were immediately less important; what mattered were the sense of purpose she felt from the first moment she arrived and the strength of her instinct that she belonged and was safe.
This common form of psychic experience, déjàvu, has happened to many of us. It may be instantaneous or it can creep up on us with time. The expression is from the French for “already seen.” When it occurs, it seems to spark our memory of a place where we've already been, a person we've already met, an act we've already performed. It's a signal to pay special attention to what is taking place, perhaps to receive a specific lesson or to complete what is not yet finished.
There are many theories to explain déjàvu: a memory of a dream, a precognition, a coincidental overlapping of events, or even a past-life experience in which we rekindle ancient alliances. In the final analysis, it doesn't matter how we choose to define it. What matters is that it draws us closer to the mystical. Déjàvu is an offering, an opportunity for additional knowledge about ourselves and others.
If I'm experiencing déjàvu, I immediately stop and take notice. These moments may be overwhelmingly clear, or they can be elusive, come in a quick flash and then be gone. To slow down the experience, I try to observe everything about it. I listen carefully to what's being said, see how it might relate to me, stay aware of what I can learn or how I can contribute positively to the situation. When particular memories, images, or feelings are evoked, I allow them to work through me, watch where they lead. Careful not to overanalyze the situation, I make an extra effort to remain intuitively open during these times and absorb it all.
During my psychiatric residency, I rented an apartment on the boardwalk in Venice. I loved being there. Its funky architecture, the fresh ocean air, the breathtaking sunsets, the rich mix of people—it satisfied all my needs. But when I started a private practice and my income increased, I was advised by my accountant for tax purposes to buy a place. For a long time I resisted the idea, but finally I gave in. My criterion was simple: I just wanted to live by the beach. Easy enough, I thought. But nothing I saw felt right. Frustrated, I was just about ready to give up when a real estate broker called about a new listing. I was tired and braced for disappointment, but halfheartedly I agreed to meet her anyway. The minute I walked into the place, I instantly knew I'd entered my home. It was strikingly familiar and inviting, as if I had actually lived there before. With nearly every nook and corner recognizable, I didn't need anyone to show me around. The physical surroundings were beautiful, but it was more than that. Psychically, it felt like the house and I were being reunited—it was calling out to me, welcoming me back. How could I not trust my response? Two months later I moved in, adjusted to the change easily, though getting cozy in a new home had often taken me a long while, and have happily lived there ever since. Be on the lookout for occurrences of déjàvu in your daily life. They may be easy to miss or overlook. You might have had one and thought, Isn't this interesting or strange, but didn't make any more of it than that. Instances of déjàvu are psychic moments when a door cracks open, an especially critical point that invites you to observe in detail and probe the situation in front of you. Don't let this experience go unremarked. Discuss it with someone you know who would understand so that you can get their input, too. Bringing a déjàvu experience out into the open energizes it, acknowledges its significance, gives you a chance to take a thoughtful look at what it means.
Writing of a trip to Africa, Carl Jung described an unmistakable feeling of déjàvu when he viewed a slim black man leaning on a long spear looking down at his train as it made a turn around a steep cliff on the way to Nairobi. In Memories, Dreams and Reflections, he writes, “I had the feeling that I had already experienced this moment and had always known this world which was separated from me only by distance in time. It was as if I were this moment returning to the land of my youth and as if I knew that dark-skinned man who had been waiting for me for five thousand years.” Although this world and this man were something alien to him and outside his present experience, Jung saw the whole thing as perfectly natural, and somehow he wasn't at all surprised by it. He called this a recognition of what was “immemorially known.”
In Western culture, we are brought up to consider anyone who isn't an immediate member of our circle of friends and family as a stranger. Yet at times you meet people you feel you've known for years. The usual formalities of etiquette seem unnecessary. You can talk to them about anything and they understand. You laugh easily together, perhaps share the same jokes. An offhand remark, the tone of their voice, the way they take their coffee, all seem commonplace. It isn't that they remind you of someone else or that their personal qualities are endearing. You relate to them not as strangers, but as people with whom you have shared history; you are members of the same tribe.
This has been the basis for the most significant and enduring relationships in my life. Within the first few minutes of meeting someone I am certain if we're going to be close friends. The feeling that I've known them at some other time or place, that outs is a reunion rather than an introduction is always there. At the beginning, there's a gut-level connectedness and ease between us not present with other acquaintances or friends.
Though I've learned to rely on my instincts about this, at times it's hard for others to understand. Particularly about guys I date. “He's such a nice person, why don't you give him a chance?” I've heard from well-meaning family members and friends. Logically, I knew they were right and, for a period, doubted myself. After all, I very much wanted to be in a relationship. Maybe I was somehow sabotaging my dearest wish. So I tested it out, spent time with men who had extremely fine qualities but with whom I didn't feel that instant connection. Without fail, it never worked out. Every major relationship I've ever had with a man has started with a feeling of déjàvu.
I'm not suggesting that you don't pursue relationships that interest you, or that they won't be successful if the déjàvu component isn't there. When you have a strong positive feeling, honor it. If you have a neutral feeling, you may want to explore. But also take notice if you experience déjàvu. This is different from electric chemistry, a strong physical attraction, or even an instant rapport. Although those aspects may be present, déjàvu is the sense that you've actually known this person before. You can't force it or pretend it's there—the experience stands on its own. Observe for yourself how this type of relationship differs from others. Use déjàvu as a cue that something very special is going on, and investigate the psychic aspects of your bond.
A patient of mine, Carol, an interior designer, knew that she was going to marry her husband the first day they met. It had been three years since a harrowing divorce ending an unhappy first marriage. Carol was still recovering, and definitely wasn't looking to get involved with anyone new. Her life was finally settled again, and she liked it that way. She figured that when the time was right, she would get into a relationship. But there was no rush.
Then, at a friend's party, she spotted Tom. Something about the way he smiled, the glint of his sleek, silver hair, his voice, and the sinewy shape of his hands was so familiar that she was certain she had known him before. After they talked, it was obvious their paths had never crossed, but he had the same feelings. Following their first lunch date, they became inseparable.
“It's remarkable, the way we related,” Carol told me. “From the first moment we were comfortable with each other. Little things—his smell, touch, even the way he said my name immediately seemed second nature to me. At times, we even instinctively know each other's habits and tastes. Like the other day, Tom sent me lilacs when he had no idea how much I loved them. Or when I played him an obscure Billie Holiday song last week and found out he had the same recording. I can be myself around him. More so than with any man I've gone out with. It's so wonderful that it's hard to get used to!”
A few weeks after meeting Tom, Carol announced to me that they were getting married. I felt torn. On the one hand, I thought it probably would have been safer for them to wait a while and get to know each other better. Yet I also respected that Carol was highly intuitive and trusted her feelings about Tom. She wasn't an impulsive person. Besides, everything she said made me believe this experience was a déjàvu. She and Tom had an intimacy from the start, the kind that usually develops in couples after they've been together for many years. Both Tom and Carol agreed that there was an inevitability about their meeting, a predestined quality, as if they'd just been waiting for this moment all their lives.
Three months later they were married. Over the years, their romance has only grown, their initial closeness and understanding continuing to carry them through the inevitable ups and downs of a marriage. Soon they will celebrate their tenth wedding anniversary.
Relationships that begin with déjàvu may happen more quickly than others. But even those that take off like a whirlwind tend to retain a certain groundedness and substance. There's an organic, unpressured rhythm to the way they unfold, seemingly possessing a life of their own. These are the graced relationships, feeling more like a reunion than a union. They still require commitment and effort, but the couples I know who have “recognized” each other in this way have all remained together.
This is not to say that a déjàvu experience with someone means you're going to marry them. It could be that you'll enter into a short-term relationship that especially helps you to grow or begin a long-lasting trusted friendship. Whatever the outcome, déjàvu is a sign that something extraordinary is occurring and to take heed.
Not all déjàvu experiences are positive. You may run into a person you're sure you've known before and every cell in your body screams out, “Stay away!” which is something definitely worth listening to! Different from other psychic impressions, there's a past history here that resonates. You may not be able to pinpoint the exact nature of your connection, but you must stand firm and respect your feelings.
This happened to a friend of mine, an entertainment attorney who had no previous experience with déjàvu. Expert at his job, he's a sweet person, the type who gets along with everyone. At a business meeting, however, he spotted another attorney from behind. He had never met the man, but instantly loathed him. “I can't explain it,” he told me. “It was as if I knew everything about that guy before I even saw his face. Like somehow we'd been involved with each other's dealings before, even though we hadn't. One thing I was sure of: He's not to be trusted.” On the basis of his déjàvu, he stayed clear of this man, not wanting even the slightest contact. About six months later, he was amazed to see this same lawyer's picture plastered on the front page of the business section of the Los Angeles Times. Notorious now, he had apparently masterminded some financial scandal in which he'd embezzled millions of dollars in corporate funds.
Whether your reaction to a déjàvu experience is positive or negative, the possibility of having one is inherent in partnerships of all kinds, particularly the more intimate ones. It can occur in your business, friendships, and family, often leading to pivotal outcomes that affect the direction of your life.
Finding a spiritual teacher can also feel fated, much like finding a mate. One of my strongest feelings of déjàvu happened when I first met the man who was to become my teacher. The moment I laid eyes on him I was sure he was the one. Suddenly I understood what I'd been searching for so long: There my teacher sat, right in front of me. This whole scene was so dazzlingly familiar it felt we'd been together a thousand times before. More than just an old friend, I instinctively knew him to be my spiritual guide, the person who ultimately understood me best of all. On that day, a journey began that has continued for the last ten years.
There are situations in life that are glitches in time, when the rules bend and the mystery takes hold, enchanted moments that sparkle with ethereal light. These are déjàvu. They can take place anywhere, at any time, and with anyone. You're traveling for the very first time in a foreign country and come upon a winding cobblestone street in a village. Odd as it may seem, you instantly feel as if you've lived there before. Or perhaps you're in a restaurant and sense an inexplicable kinship with a woman sitting in the back corner booth. Don't let these possibilities pass you by. Take notice, rely on your instincts, and investigate. There's no way of predicting where one of them might lead or what it will teach you. Identifying the psychic is only the first step. Summoning the courage to take a chance and act on it, to have faith in what is not yet visible, will make the experience your own.
CLAIRVOYANCE
On the evening of April 29, 1992, while taking a shower, I had a vision of a horrifying scene. I was standing in the center of a bustling city. Overhead, a giant, seventy-foot loaded revolver was aimed down toward the ground. All at once, city sounds were blotted out by a thunderous blast. The gun fired a deadly spray of bullets, ricocheting off nearby office buildings into the crowd. There was chaos—the sound of glass shattering, people screaming, the stench of smoke. A few bystanders lay wounded, drenched in blood on the sidewalk. I shuddered from the violent force of the explosion, but survived unharmed.
My first inclination was to take this vision personally. What was I so angry about that might have triggered such a destructive sight? I couldn't come up with anything. No arguments with friends or family. No conflicts at work. No excessive inner turmoil. This was a cue to me that what I'd seen wasn't related to my own state of mind but was psychic—and I had no idea what it meant. Though riveted by the vision's clarity, all I could do was wait and find out. As I dried myself, I was aware that it wasn't unusual for me to see such vivid imagery in the shower. It's often there like magic the moment I step in, as if I'm entering a psychic telephone booth. I have experienced many of my most compelling premonitions in the shower. Free of tension and unpressured, with hot water drenching my body, all kinds of pictures (not exclusively psychic) pop up spontaneously and then disappear. But this one was particularly graphic and stuck in my mind.
Minutes later, when I flipped on the TV to watch the six o'clock news, I understood. The Rodney King verdicts had been announced that afternoon: In south central Los Angeles, hundreds of fires blazed as angry demonstrators torched buildings, looted local stores, and assaulted passersby. Heavy gunfire flared, and a thick layer of brown smoke hovered above the skyline.
My eyes glued to the newscast, I was appalled by the apocalyptic turn the city had taken. Nonetheless, the violent nature of my vision had focused me, put me on alert. I was better prepared to deal with the tumult, wasn't caught off guard as I might have been. Although I hadn't identified my vision as explicitly clairvoyant (it's sometimes difficult for me to tell if a psychic impression is current or will take time to materialize), it had lessened the initial shock, made it easier to stay centered despite the madness that was gripping Los Angeles.
Clairvoyance means “clear seeing.” Though often used as a synonym for psychic, there's a distinction. Clairvoyance is not seeing into the future, but hones in on events taking place in the present, whether right next door or all the way across the globe. It can keep you in touch with the pulse of your community. The more highly charged a situation, the clearer it is for you to perceive psychically. This is why social and political unrest can serve as a trigger for clairvoyance. The riots are a perfect example. Such upheaval on so grand a scale makes for an especially loud and strong psychic signal analogous to cranking up the volume full blast on a radio. While I luxuriated in the shower, at my most relaxed and receptive, the riots escalated. I was primed to pick them up. The more intense the emotional and physical impact of any incident, the more it gets amplified on a psychic level, like a hot news flash.
The potential to be clairvoyant is in all of us—it's not limited to professional psychics or enlightened spiritual masters. Although often left dormant, clairvoyance is a human skill that, with the proper direction, will rise to the surface. In certain instances, as with my experience of the riots, it may occur spontaneously. But you can train yourself to be clairvoyant, make it a discipline.
The first step is to become conscious of your feelings. Begin to live in your entire body, not just your mind. So many of us walk around obsessing maniacally, numb from the neck down. It's no wonder that psychic insights can seem alien. But if you really define in a fresh way what each emotion feels like—anger, fear, sadness, joy—you'll be much more ready to notice precisely how your body responds. Know your feelings inside out in their most exaggerated form so if they're more subtle to pick up clairvoyantly you won't miss them. Your body acts as a psychic receiver, often first registering impressions deep within its very core.
To sense these changes, you will need to still your mind. When it's jammed with thoughts, the psychic can be blocked out. Try to plan at least ten minutes each day to sit calmly uninterrupted. Practicing silence, whether through meditation, yoga, contemplative walks by the ocean, or even a soak in a warm bath, frees up space. This quiet time, while you aren't doing anything but just “being,” conditions your mind to open to a myriad of impressions, only some of them psychic.
The key to cultivating clairvoyance is to work at it sincerely. Even if you have never had a single psychic experience, you can put yourself into training. There's a simple exercise I teach my patients—I use it myself whenever I tune in to someone clairvoyantly—and you may want to try it, too.
First, make sure you're physically comfortable and free from interruptions. Turn off the phone. Shut the door. Be certain that no one else will walk in and break your concentration. Next, take a few full, deep breaths, relax your body, set aside your concerns of the day, and drift into a meditative state. There is no rush. Spend as long as you like to settle in.
Now, choose a friend you're particularly close to and begin to focus on her first name passively. Pick someone who is easily reachable, who you know will be candid later when you ask for feedback on your reading. Hold this name gently in your mind. Try to think of nothing else. Visualize only her. In the beginning, it's helpful to pose definite questions—start with the general and gradually work your way to the specific. For instance, you can simply ask yourself how she is feeling today. Open to the fullness of each sensation that arises. Don't force anything or resort to logic. Clairvoyant impressions will come. Perhaps an invigorating wave of energy will sweep over you. Or you may feel incredibly irritable out of the blue. Scan every inch of your body for even the slightest changes. Do you have a stomachache? Nausea? Are you depressed? Have your shoulder muscles tightened into a painful knot? Don't hold on to any feelings for too long. Allow them to flow organically. Sense these variations within every cell.
When you're ready you can go into more detail. Once again, you begin by formulating a very specific question. Where is your friend right now? What's she wearing? What's she thinking? Is she alone or are there other people there? Specifically break down every element. Ask each question separately and allow sufficient time for the answers to unfold. You may pick up only snatches of scenes, solitary images—or maybe you'll even watch an entire scenario play out. Release any previous expectations; let yourself be surprised. Clairvoyance can be like seeing for the very first time. There's something sacred about it, tuning in so closely to another human being or event that you can actually merge with that experience.
Clairvoyant impressions often come in snapshot-like flashes, the images, smells, tastes, sounds, and textures vivid but fleeting. They're typically presented to you in a series rather than as any single, fully formed picture. For example, if you're tuning in to a friend's present location you may first see the stunning profile of a towering snow-capped peak, then a second scene below it of a single-story rustic log cabin perched above a dry creekbed. But you must wait for the third image to reveal your friend, sitting outside knitting in an antique willow rocking chair, alone on the front porch. These impressions may be elegantly detailed and fit together like intricate pieces of a puzzle that might not make sense right away. You may feel a sense of urgency about them, see an unusually striking sight, have a palpable sensation. Listen to the nuances of your reactions, noticing when something feels “off,” “on,” or unusual. Jot down all your impressions. Otherwise they too easily fade.
When the reading is finished, call your friend as soon as possible to check out these impressions with her. This gives you direct feedback about your accuracy. When you make mistakes, don't be discouraged. This is the way you grow. The mistakes I've made over the years have been just as valuable to me as my “hits.” If I'm off about something, I try to figure out why. So many times I've overlooked or discounted images because they seemed meaningless at the moment, only to discover how correct they were later. From this I've learned that it's vital to remain neutral, to report everything and not overanalyze or make arbitrary judgments about what I see. Feedback is central to developing as a psychic. It can validate our perceptions and allow clairvoyance to mature.
The process I've described—tuning in, giving yourself permission to go wild and allow your impressions to take form, no matter how outrageous, then getting feedback on your reading—is the basic formula for refining clairvoyance. Use it to illuminate any circumstance that is confusing to you. Clairvoyance is a gift to be treated respectfully. With practice, it can come to feel so second nature to you that it naturally intermingles with all aspects of your life.
A patient of mine, Dana, was an energetic and ambitious production assistant at a major film company in Hollywood. Lately, though, she was beginning to wonder if she was losing her mind. At work, nothing she did seemed right. Her boss, an executive producer, snapped at her constantly and, it seemed, for no apparent reason. He had always been a joy to work for, but recently something had changed. Dana was afraid that she was one step away from being fired. On the surface, none of this made sense. Since Dana was good at her job, and had never had problems with her boss before, I advised her to look at the situation clairvoyantly.
Dana was no psychic novice. For the past year, as part of psychotherapy, I had helped her develop her clairvoyant skills. By now she felt comfortable doing readings on her own. I suggested that she set aside a half hour to focus on her boss. “Even if you get all the information you need in the first few minutes,” I said, “it's a good idea to allow for more than enough open-ended time.” Sitting in her favorite brown suede armchair in the den while her three-year-old daughter was away at preschool, she meditated quietly and began to tune in to her boss's name. Trusting that whatever impressions she received would be related to her answer, she knew not to interpret them until she was done.
Within minutes, she noticed an annoying pressure in her forehead, which gradually built until her head felt as if it would explode. The throbbing was relentless. Dana wasn't prone to headaches, and never appreciated how excruciating one could be. But she went with the pain, didn't succumb to the temptation to open her eyes and cut the reading short. Inwardly she stayed focused and asked, “How is this headache related to my boss?” Fot a while nothing came. Then suddenly she saw a single, sharp image of him looking dreadfully ill. He was at the drinking fountain right outside his office. He leaned over, swallowed a tiny red pill. At once the situation become clear. It had never occurred to Dana before that her boss might be sick, that this could explain his erratic behavior.
With a little bit of asking around at work, Dana found out that she'd been right. Her boss, she learned from a co-worker, had been suffering from horrible headaches for months. Only recently had he broken down and seen a doctor. The diagnosis was high blood pressure, for which he was now taking medication. With this information, the elements of Dana's reading now came together: the pill, the headache, the sense that he wasn't well. This put a whole new slant on things. Dana decided not to take his moods personally and to see what happened when he felt better. Her strategy paid off. Not long after, he visibly brightened, stopped lashing out at her, and became the easygoing guy he'd been before.
Clairvoyance, as a discipline, can be learned, but at times it may also come to your aid when you least expect it. The more pressing the problem you're trying to solve, the more passionately you care about it, the more readily the psychic will be engaged. When you are wide awake all night long wrestling with a complicated decision, you can unconsciously send out a distress signal and elicit a psychic response. Just as you're convinced that you've reached a dead end, the answer spontaneously comes.
A colleague of mine, a well-respected pediatrician who had no belief in the psychic, jokingly mentioned to me what he described as a “daydream.” He was sitting in the doctors' dining room at Cedars-Sinai eating lunch, totally absorbed in a newspaper article about President Clinton's plans to reduce the deficit. In a brief lapse that couldn't have lasted more than a few seconds, he inexplicably pictured Clinton telling him that now was the perfect time to refinance his house. The truth of the matter was, he had felt pressured about money for quite a while. For over six months he'd been relentlessly scouring the local banks for the right loan, with no success. He had exhausted all potential lenders and was about to give up—until he was startled by this unsolicited message.
The whole thing seemed absurd to him. Even if he had believed in the psychic—which he didn't—of all the messages to come through, why this one? It was so mundane. But what if it were true? He really didn't think his daydream would pan out; it was such a long shot, yet he couldn't resist the urge to check on it. “What do I have to lose?” he grumbled, making one last call to his bank. As it happened, on that very day, a new type of loan had become available, perfectly suited to his financial needs. When I gently prodded him, asking, “Do you have faith in the psychic now?” he just shrugged.
“It was a lucky guess. That's all.” He smiled at me as if we shared a forbidden secret. He wouldn't admit it, but I knew he had been affected by the chain of events, that something inside him had shifted.
Sometimes, however, there are situations when more is at stake than a home loan. One Saturday afternoon, a patient's mother made an emergency call to me, panicked with an overwhelming feeling that her nineteen-year-old daughter Katie was in trouble. She'd left a number of messages on her answering machine, but Katie hadn't returned her calls. Lately Katie had seemed depressed, disturbingly distant, but refused to talk about it. Her mother didn't want to intrude on her life, but she was consumed with worry. “What should I do?” she asked. “Is it okay to drive over to Katie's apartment?” I knew what a hard time Katie had been having, was concerned about her myself. Still, my allegiance was to my patient, protecting her confidentiality, not violating a trust. But sensing the truth of her mother's instincts, knowing how crucial it was to follow such feelings, without revealing any specifics I simply encouraged her to believe in her hunch and go.
When Katie's mother rang the doorbell and got no answer, she let herself in with her own set of keys. At first it looked as if nobody were home. Then she spotted her daughter collapsed on the bed unconscious, an empty container of sleeping pills and a half-finished bottle of vodka beside her. As she took in this horrific sight, her own heart nearly stopped. Had Katie not been rushed to the hospital, there's a good chance that she would have died.
Clairvoyance can serve as a basic survival mechanism by sending out a series of red alerts. I have heard many stories of parents who instinctively knew when their children were sick or in need, although separated by thousands of miles. Clairvoyance is at its peak when you love someone; you're bound to them by an invisible psychic web. If something is wrong you can sense it. This connection enlivens clairvoyance, enables you to receive signals much like a radio tower. The more open you are, the subtler the signals you're able to detect, the stronger your wherewithal to avert potentially dangerous circumstances.
For every major decision in my life, I bring to beat a combination of logic and clairvoyance. They complement each other beautifully. If I'm about to take on a new project, explore a different direction in my career, make an investment, plan a vacation, or enter into an intimate relationship, I try to look at what I may take on from every conceivable angle. The facts of any situation are important to me, but if they don't check out clairvoyantly, no matter how alluring the proposition I will invariably turn it down.
For readings to be dependable, I must remain neutral, but this isn't always easy. If I am too emotionally involved with the person or situation I'm focusing on, it's nearly impossible to set my feelings aside. Whenever I want something badly or am overly invested in the outcome, I can't stay detached enough to get an accurate take on it. My own desires and expectations muddy the picture. There's no way that I am going to be able to see clearly.
One night I got into a horrendous argument with my boyfriend. Out of nowhere, it just blew up in our faces. He got incensed about some remark I'd made but was too upset to talk about it. I was left in the dark, and the more I pursued the subject the angrier he became. Before I knew it he had grabbed his denim jacket and stormed out the door. Well, I felt as if I had committed the crime of the century, but had no idea what it was. Worse, there's nothing more maddening to me than being shut out. Unfortunately, I couldn't do much about it at that moment, so I attempted to tune in to the cause of his anger clairvoyantly. Good luck! How could I have expected to be neutral about such a volatile event? I was far too angry and hurt even to attempt to do a reading. It was ridiculous. I couldn't get enough distance from my own feelings even to begin to sense his.
To use clairvoyance you must recognize your capabilities and limitations. Although clairvoyance is not a magic bullet or an infallible instrument, it does offer you a more penetrating vision, a chance to make smarter choices, to respond more sensitively to others. Whether you study with a skilled teacher or begin to train yourself, the spirit with which this is undertaken must always be for the purpose of love: living it, communicating it, spreading it around. Then perhaps, with this knowledge, you can pause and take a deeper breath, find true solace in the wisdom you have gained.
PSYCHIC EMPATHY
Have you ever found yourself chatting with someone at a party who seems perfectly nice, and then you suddenly notice that your energy has been drained? How about that time you went to a light movie feeling fine and left sullen and depressed? In each case, there's a good chance that you were picking up the moods of the people just a few feet away. Or perhaps there have been times when the guy who sits next to you at work is in such a sparkling mood that his exuberance is contagious. You feel incredibly happy but wonder why. These are instances of psychic empathy, which many of us have, often without realizing it.
Empathy comes naturally when you're sensitive to somebody else's emotions or ideas. A good friend gets married and you celebrate her happiness. A business associate loses his job after his company goes bankrupt, and you too are shaken up. Your sister is diagnosed with cancer and you feel her fear and pain. When you respond to another person with a generosity of spirit, it's a sign that you're an open-hearted loving human being who truly cares.
Psychic empathy, however, goes farther. It's the capacity to merge with someone else and, for a moment, see the world through their eyes, to sense the world through their feelings. Psychic empaths are so uncannily attuned that they can feel what's going on inside others both emotionally and physically as if it were happening to them. If you're such a person it may be impossible for you to distinguish these sensations from your own, leaving you doubting yourself.
Not limited by the same boundaries as other people, empaths all too often feel more than they ever bargained for. Also, since empathy can become automatic, ingrained in your habits, you may not appreciate its impact on your life. Of all the psychic phenomena, it may be the most overlooked and misunderstood. Frequently confusing and disorienting when unidentified, empathy can become a gift once you discover how to adapt to it. Unfortunately, because empaths suffer from so many symptoms other than their own, they're too easily written off as hypochondriacs by physicians who are puzzled by their complaints.
Murray, a good example of such an empath, doesn't date. He can't. In the sixth grade, without realizing what it was, he experienced psychic empathy for the first time. In each of his classes, he was assigned a seat next to Laura because their last names started with the same letter of the alphabet. Laura suffered from terrible stomachaches. So did Murray, but only if he was around her. When he reported these stomachaches to his parents, they sent him to a pediatrician for a medical checkup. Nothing was found. His parents and teachers didn't know what to make of his complaints. It took Murray to figure it out. Once, when Laura was absent for over a week, Murray noticed that his stomach felt fine. With exceptional insight for a boy his age, he concluded that his symptoms somehow must have been related to her. As an experiment, he asked his teacher to change his seat—and from that day on the stomachaches never returned. But though Murray was sharp enough to realize that Laura's distress was influencing him, he never did solve his more essential problem: how to use his empathy in a positive way without being overcome by other people's feelings. Since empathic symptoms are most exaggerated around their source, the more intimate Murray is with someone, the more overwhelmed he gets. This makes dating next to impossible.
I too was an empathic child, but unlike Murray I didn't know that my feelings were related to anyone else's. When I was told I didn't have a “thick enough skin” or I was “too sensitive” and needed to toughen up, I bought it. My friends couldn't wait for the weekends to hit the shopping malls or to go to parties, but I was never as up for it as they were. Since at times I felt overloaded in large groups of people (I could never predict when), ordinary pleasurable activities could turn into a nightmare for me. At these moments, I would try to clamp down hard and block everything out, afraid that if I weakened my guard the intensity might blow me to pieces. I was a gigantic sponge, unknowingly absorbing the pains and emotions of people around me, often without even the thinnest membrane between us. I could be sitting on a bus and suddenly get a dull ache in my lower back, never guessing that it was coming from the elderly man sitting beside me. Or I might be in the checkout line in the market, standing too close to a woman who was sad, and not know why I felt like crying.
I had become a human chameleon, a condition ingeniously portrayed in Woody Allen's Zelig. In this film, Zelig has such a weak identity that in order to be liked he actually turns into whomever he talks with. During the film, he becomes a Nazi SS officer, a Chinese laundry man, a Hassidic rabbi, a mariachi singer in Mexico, and an obese fellow tipping the scales at 250 pounds.
It wasn't until I started working in Thelma's lab that I spoke with other psychic empaths, many of whom were healers. I was stunned to find out that there was a name for what I'd been feeling, and that such ability could be put to good use. For so long, it had felt like a third arm I didn't know what to do with. But empathy was second nature to these healers. They were so accepting and nonchalant about it that for the first time in my experience it didn't seem strange.
One afternoon I had lunch with a wonderful woman with a waist-long gray braid who was in her early eighties. She had been a psychic empath since childhood. A psychotherapist and healer with a thriving practice, she used her talent to diagnose patients by sensing their ailments in her own body. Even so, the symptoms she picked up didn't stick to her. Through meditation, she had learned how to become empathically attuned to another person's physical and emotional state but not take them on.
“How do you do it?” I asked her, fascinated.
“I simply see myself as a channel,” she said. “I let the feelings flow through me without overidentifying with them.”
This sounded reasonable at the time, but it has taken years to really understand and apply what she meant. An astute therapist once pointed out that the qualities I absorbed from other people were the ones I wasn't clear about in myself. Take anger, for instance, which sometimes creeps up on me unnoticed, or may simmer just beneath the surface. If, however, I remain oblivious for too long, my psychic empathy lets me know by kicking in full force. Then I not only sense other people's anger more keenly, I also attract it: Everyone around me now seems angry about something, and the negativity registers in me. But once I resolve the source of my own anger, the “hook” is gone, thus I no longer pick up these feelings as readily in others or empathically take them on.
Magic? Not really. The most basic principle of psychic empathy, the secret for you to disengage from a barrage of unwanted emotions, is to remain as conscious of your motivations as possible. Don't allow depression, fear, anger, and resentment to build, thus unwittingly magnetizing them toward you. The clearer you are emotionally, the less problematic empathy becomes. The difference is that when you're at a restaurant and a disturbing wave of angst comes your way from the man in the next booth, it won't glom onto you and sap your energy. The energy drain comes only if your buttons are pushed. As long as you don't resist or engage the angst in any way, you're able simply to notice it and say “Ah-ha. Isn't this interesting”—and then let it pass right on by.
But what about physical symptoms? How can you avoid taking these on? This is a little different. It's true that if you're prone to migraines you'll also tend to notice them empathically in others, can probably spot them coming a mile away. This generally applies to any physical vulnerability you have. And yet you may also pick up many ailments that you have never personally experienced. The art is to learn how to detach from them.
Meditation can help. Your body will be your guide. By centering yourself through the daily discipline of sitting, you can learn to become a neutral witness to your sensations. If you feel a slight pain in your back, notice it coming and going like clouds drifting in the sky. Don't resist or overemphasize it. Simply observe. The point is to get distance from the pain while still remaining aware of it, as if watching a movie. This gives you the flexibility to choose whether or not to engage the feeling. It may take you a while to catch on, but give yourself time. By not latching on to the pain or tensing up, it becomes more fluid, softer, may even disappear. There's great freedom in this.
My friend Hay den didn't even realize she was being zapped by psychic empathy until her husband pointed it out. Hayden is one of the kindest people I know, unselfishly supportive of friends and family. She loves to give, but there was a downside. When speaking with someone who was anxious, depressed, or suffering physical pain, Hayden noticed, she'd also start feeling the same way. Drained, she often needed hours to shake off the discomfort.
Hayden's husband, an intuitive himself, was concerned. He suggested that she might be picking up people's feelings through psychic empathy. Recognizing this to be true, Hayden could begin to deal with it. She treasured being empathic—it allowed her to love with all her heart, to be present to the fullest. She didn't want to give that up. But to preserve her energy, she could no longer shoulder everybody else's worries. It wasn't good for her or them. Hayden solved this dilemma by reenvisioning her style of giving. Besides meditation, a strategic change in attitude can allow you to detach. Hayden knew intellectually that she wasn't responsible for other people's pain, nor could she fix them. But though she had tried to act on this understanding before, now, given her predicament, she really had to live it. For Hayden, this was the key. It gave her permission to back off a little, to be just as caring but from a more centered place so that she could use her empathy well and enjoy it.
In my work, empathy gives me a head start on what my patients are feeling and allows me to track them, not only mentally but in my own body. When I open the door to the waiting room to greet a patient, I can often sense how she's doing before she even says a word. It's as if invisible tendrils are protruding from her body all the way over to me. We touch each other, though not physically. So delicate is this sensation, that it reminds me of how a butterfly feels, wings still fluttering imperceptibly when it alights on the palm of my hand.
The heightened sensitivity that goes along with being a psychic empath can be a mixed blessing. Some people never get to the good part because it seems almost too much to bear. I believe that many agoraphobics are terrified of leaving their homes because they're actually undiagnosed psychic empaths. They can't tolerate crowds, and will go to any lengths to avoid them. Being on busy streets, in hectic department stores, in jammed elevators, or packed like sardines in an airplane is overwhelming, so much so that they must get out, and fast. Surrounded by throngs of people, there's just too much psychic stimulation. That's why they feel safer at home, driven into isolation simply to survive.
But not all psychic empathy is this extreme. More commonly, it appears in our everyday lives in subtler ways. I'm friendly with an elderly Jewish couple, Bertha and Saul, who have been married for over fifty years. Constant companions, they're so close it's as if they live in each other's skin. Sometimes this drives them crazy. Their rhythms have so blended that they are a single unit and respond to each other viscerally. If he gets a pain in his hip, she feels it. “What's the matter with you?” she asks him without his uttering a word. Then there are times when Saul detects a recognizable pang in his heart and says to his wife, “Don't deny it, Bertha. You're longing for your sister to call.” “You're such a know-it-all,” she snaps back, annoyed by how easily he can see right through her. Because they've lived together for so many years, they've become as one.
This also happens with many parents and children. A patient of mine who had a five-week-old baby boy woke up in the middle of the night, her throat constricted, gasping for breath. As a new mother, before even thinking of herself, her first instinct was to check on her baby. Panicked, she rushed into the nursery and discovered that her son had a terrible cough, was burning up with fever. The moment my patient identified the problem, her normal breathing returned, as is sometimes true of psychic empathy, and she immediately placed an emergency call to her pediatrician. Empathically developing her son's symptoms turned out to be a godsend. It grabbed her attention, enabled her to act quickly and get him the treatment he needed right away.
My friend Liz was so empathically linked to her cousin, who was in Cedars-Sinai hospice dying of AIDS, that she felt his highs and lows as if they were her own. It wasn't that she tried to do this. They were simply that close. Raised in the same neighborhood in nearby Hancock Park, they were inseparable as children. Before he got sick they talked at least once a day and told each other everything. She had been at his side for each beat of the illness, sharing it all, down to the smallest details. Whether she was at the hospital or across town, at moments she would get nauseous, dizzy, or depressed just as he did. Toward the end, she also experienced waves of unusual peace. Of course, this wasn't always comfortable for Liz. But she viewed such intense response as a sign of their deep affection and wouldn't have wanted it any other way. Love is like that, she realized—this was its true beauty. Their mutual connection allowed Liz to fully be there for her cousin when he needed her, to participate lovingly in his death.
The communal state of psychic empathy feels more natural to me than the arbitrary walls and self-imposed prison cells we construct to isolate ourselves from one another. When you first begin to recognize empathy in yourself, you may need help acclimating. Don't hesitate to consult someone who is knowledgeable about the challenges involved. This may be a therapist, a skilled psychic, a meditation teacher, or a healer—it's best if they have had some direct experience in this area themselves. Once you're no longer frightened by psychic empathy, you can view it as a seamless extension of love with the potential to unite us all. Its very existence suggests a oneness, a brotherhood and a sisterhood that each of us can embrace. A deeper compassion arises in you along with an appreciation for our similarities.
I believe there is an invisible network connecting all sentient beings. But it lies dormant until the psychic acts as a generator to activate and enliven it. Our everyday lives provide a potent backdrop, a laboratory of sorts in which we can experiment with a plethora of possibilities. A light touch, a sense of play, and an abiding respect will invite the psychic in and show us the lay of the land. The psychic needs to be neither exaggerated nor diminished, but rather recast in the context of the modern world so that we may integrate it. We must recognize it in the much-discounted miracles of simple things in our daily life. Then a marriage between the mystical and the ordinary will part the veils of the mists, so that Avalon may once again exist—not as an enchanted remote isle, but alive and pulsing in our streets and in our hearts.