What Are Psychic Senses?
“My sixth sense has always been my greatest gift.”
—sonia choquette
Psychic senses are the coolest thing since sliced bread. Scratch that. Psychic senses were cool way before sliced bread! When we tap into these mystical abilities, we are given the potential to experience something far greater than we ever could have imagined. Psychic senses open us up to a new dimension of understanding our world and our lives. It is through these intuitions that we gain an in-depth awareness that there is more to this existence than the naked eye can see.
Your Higher Power
Psychic senses are what allow us to receive impressions from the universe that aren’t based on anything we can touch. These impressions are messages from the other side—from spirit guides; angels; our deceased loved ones; and God or Buddha, the universe, or whatever or whoever you believe to be your higher power. This sixth sense is what lets us see, hear, taste, touch, smell, feel, know, and just psychically perceive these communications.
For many who practice religion, this is a tough row to hoe. Have you ever heard the term “Catholic guilt”? In a nutshell, it means you have to believe everything that the Bible, in its Catholic interpretation, tells you to believe. If you don’t, or if you don’t act accordingly, you should, and usually do, experience a somewhat disproportionate amount of guilt. Almost every religion has its own version of Catholic guilt, especially if it preaches it is the only acceptable religion. You need not feel that guilt when practicing with intuition, as long as you practice for positive reasons. Your intuition is a natural part of your spirit, and even the Bible talks about connecting to God and the angels. You can be religious and also be spiritual. It is your choice, and you should do whatever gives you comfort.
Religion and spirituality are not one and the same. They are inherently different in that religion is based on manmade doctrine or stories transcribed by men, while spirituality is about your own personal connection to the universe and God and every living being on the planet and then some. You do not need to be religious to be spiritual nor do you need to be spiritual to be religious. To this point, His Holiness the Dalai Lama said, “My religion is simple. My religion is kindness.” Your beliefs can be, and actually should be, a constantly changing evolution of ideas, thoughts, and feelings. Your higher power is just that—yours.
Throughout this book I will talk about our connections to the other side. I may use God or the universe as an example, but feel free to insert your own ideas and beliefs. To truly understand where your messages come from, you need to ponder what you believe.
Take a minute to think about what you believe in. Do you believe in God in a traditional sense? Do you believe in Buddha? Do you feel connected to angels? How about spirit guides or even a guardian angel? Do you feel that your loved ones live on in spirit? What about the people who are known as ascended masters, such as Jesus, Buddha, Kwan Yin, and Mother Mary? Do you think our connections are based more on quantum physics and a type of space-time continuum? Does the universe stand out as what brings us together?
Write down your beliefs. What, if anything, resonates with you? Do you feel strongly about one over the other? Do you believe there are multiple messengers? When you imagine yourself asking to connect, who or what do you feel you’re asking? Again, there is no wrong answer!
Open to Interpretation
We have to have a way to interpret the impressions we’re given. Often, we experience intuitive messages symbolically and need to translate them. Much like deciphering pictograms or even lyrics to a song, interpreting intuitive messages is easier when you’ve developed your gifts and learned to translate the psychic symbols you receive.
Our messengers from the other side want to help us to understand, so they will send us information in a way that we can interpret. They use whatever means necessary to transmit their messages so we will recognize them.
I recently did a reading for Lori. She sat in my office for an hour, and I relayed to her a good deal of information. But the thing that really gave her the aha moment, or the moment when she knew there was no way for me to know the things I was telling her, was when I told her I saw all types of soldiers from different generations. I literally saw, in my mind’s eye, soldiers in varying uniforms including Civil War, Revolutionary War, etc.
“Wow! I can’t believe this! When I came in for my reading, I asked my angels to have you talk about the soldiers and then I would believe you were really connected,” she said with total enthusiasm.
“Well, I feel like they are coming toward you in waves, kind of like you’re discovering them,” I told her.
“This is incredible. I recently started researching my ancestry, and I’ve found numerous soldiers from many different wars in my family tree. I can’t believe you got them!” she exclaimed.
“That’s awesome! Now, I’m also feeling like your great-great-grandfather or someone in his generation is stepping forward, and I’m seeing a steak and iron. So either you are low in iron and you need to eat red meat or your great-great-grandfather, also a soldier, used to work on the railroad driving stakes into the tracks,” I laughed.
“I’m not so sure, but I will find out. And I will make sure I add some extra iron to my diet!” she chuckled back.
She left the office with a bunch of answers as well as a few questions. Within the hour I received an e-mail from Lori. “You are never going to believe this. When I got home there was an e-mail from my father. He sent it to me during our session together. He told me that he just unearthed some information about my great-great-grandfather. He was a soldier and he worked for the railroad, building the tracks, hammering the stakes. What are the odds he would send me an e-mail while I was in session with you? Melanie, thank you so much for this. It is truly amazing!”
What is truly amazing to me is that by utilizing my psychic senses I am able to decipher and read the messages sent to me by my guides and the deceased loved ones of my clients. It is also incredible that they are able to share this information in a way I can interpret so I can relay it to my clients and they can understand. I give the other side total credit for this and am fascinated by how well it works when we allow our intuition to open up.
Imagine Tuning In
Most of us come into this world with our external, natural senses: sight, hearing, smell, touch, and taste. But we are also born with internal senses, the clairs that allow us to see beyond physical reality and to know what otherwise couldn’t be known. Clair is derived from a French word meaning “clear” and is the prefix for all of the psychic senses. By its very name it is suggesting that psychic senses come through clearly, though it is somewhat of a misnomer. More often than not these clair senses are fuzzy or subtle at best. Practicing with them provides us the chance to interpret them more intelligibly.
Living with our physical and metaphysical abilities fully engaged provides us with a fuller, more comprehensive existence. Closing off any of those senses not only does us a disservice, it can also have a detrimental effect on our psyche. Albert Einstein, possessing one of the greatest minds known to humans, said, quite emphatically, “The only real valuable thing is intuition.”
When we are young, we are told we can be anything, do anything, accomplish anything. Why then, does our intuition get shut down? Is it because we don’t know any better? Or because we stop believing in our gut instincts? Or is it because it’s safer to conform and not stand out? Usually, it’s a combination of all of the above, with a little bit of skepticism from others, mainly adults, thrown in. As we grow up, we lose the belief that anything magical or unexplainable can be real. We turn to rationalizing and distrusting everything that can’t be proven, touched, or seen for ourselves. And then, we grow up some more and realize that intuition is real, but we call it gut instincts or mother’s intuition.
Imagine not trusting your gut feelings on a regular basis, or putting aside faith because it can’t be proven. This is where your intuition comes in. Without these senses, we’d be spinning blindly with nothing to hold on to. It is our instincts we rely on to get us through crises or that guide us on the correct path to overcoming adversity or challenge. Jawaharlal Nehru, the first prime minister of the Republic of India, said, “A leader or a man of action in a crisis almost always acts subconsciously and then thinks of the reasons for his action.” In other words, our subconscious directs us before our conscious has a chance to consider it.
Tuning in to your psychic abilities can help you make sense of your present and your future. It enables you to see distantly in time and space without physically being there. Scott Cunningham explains our longing to connect to our psychic senses: “The motivation for obtaining a glimpse of tomorrow varies with each individual, but the desire itself is as old as human consciousness and our perception of time.” (Cunningham, 2003) Your intuition can help you handle stress and point you in the right direction toward achieving happiness. The first step is opening up your awareness by using your natural gifts and enhancing the other gifts. Psychic senses allow you to look beyond the three-dimensional world and into an entirely separate, yet adjunct plane of existence.
Perhaps most importantly, we are being challenged in our current state of affairs to act locally and think globally. As a nation and, more expansively, an entire world, we are facing more than we appear to be able to handle, but we are still required to act with political, social, and economic intelligence. Our own intuition can help provide us with insight into possible directions and answers to our most pressing issues in our personal communities as well as all over the world. Imagine knowing how to heal poverty, global warming, natural resource depletion, economic instability, famine, disease, war, religious persecution, and so much more.
Exercise: What Your Psychic Senses
Can Do for You
I named a few areas where your psychic senses can help you. What aspects in your life or the lives of others do you think utilizing your psychic abilities can assist you with? Write them down. Have you experienced any of them personally? Do you know of anyone else who has?
Forrest Gump?
Many years ago I was attending a workshop at the Omega Institute for Holistic Studies. James Van Praagh was teaching an advanced mediumship class to about four hundred students, myself among them. (I don’t think I’ll ever stop enjoying being a student!) Toward the end of the week, he asked for volunteers to go up on stage and do readings for random audience participants. I didn’t volunteer. Others who were sitting around me kept urging me to raise my hand, insisting that I had been “right on” with my readings all week. I never told them I did it professionally because I wanted to just be part of the student group. I simply told them I wanted to give other people a chance to practice. Silently, I said to myself, “If I’m meant to do this work, I will get picked to go up on stage somehow.”
Next thing I knew, there was a woman on stage who didn’t mean to volunteer, but she ended up there after asking James a question. She wasn’t really sure what she was doing, but James told her to just pick someone and try to connect. She picked me.
Essentially, she said, “I don’t know why I picked you, but I felt I had to.”
Little did she know I had just talked to my guides and my loved ones on the other side. Sure enough, after she said that, James said, “Well, it’s your turn to come up.” The universe truly is magical. I challenged it to get me on stage, and it rose to the occasion seamlessly.
So, I took the stage. Although I was a practicing psychic, I wasn’t used to performing in front of so many, so I admittedly was a bit nervous. On the walk up, which seemed interminable, I silently asked the universe and my guides, spiritual helpers from the other side, to assist me by sending me information I could detect with my psychic senses. Again, the universe complied.
I began getting messages. I psychically heard, clairaudiently, “Bubba Gump Shrimp,” and I felt like I was in the Forrest Gump movie. Then, I was clairvoyantly seeing my own cousins who captain their oyster boats. And I was feeling very hot. I wasn’t quite sure what any of it meant yet.
I scanned the audience and felt my energy drawn to one particular woman. I asked her, “Do you have a nephew or someone who works for the Bubba Gump Shrimp Company down South?”
As I was asking her, I also clairsentiently felt pain—the kind of pain that comes with what I assumed to be an overdose of drugs.
“Well, I do have a nephew who works on a fishing boat, I believe it’s a shrimp boat, in Florida,” she replied.
“I think you need to make sure to connect with him. I feel he may be in trouble with drugs,” I continued. “Though, I do feel like there’s time to help him.”
“Wow. I don’t know how you knew that, but I was just talking with my sister, his mother, and she said she was a little worried. Thank you so much for that! I will definitely be in touch!”
Many of my psychic senses were tuned in, allowing me to channel the information to the woman who really needed it. James Van Praagh, to his credit, stood back and let me do my thing, apparently nodding his head in approval the whole time. It’s great to be validated.
My guides, and those of the woman I was reading for, sent me information I could understand to help me comprehend the messages I needed to share. I perceived them through my psychic senses. Everyone has these senses, and while you will not always use them for the purposes of reading others, once they become part of your life, you will be all the better because of it.
Tuning in will help you be more aware of your surroundings. You’ll be increasingly sensitive to the energy around you, and the energy of others and what they’re projecting out into the ether. By utilizing these senses, you’ll make more informed decisions and become less judgmental of others—less concerned with the mundane details and more appreciative of what truly matters. Your intuition is what helps ground you and keep you in touch with reality. It’s time to tune in to it and validate your natural gifts; there’s no need to wait. As spiritual author Wayne Dyer said, “Go for it now. The future is promised to no one.”
Exercise: Understanding
Your Psychic Senses
The best way to get in touch with your psychic abilities is to begin focusing on them.
Get out your journal and turn to a fresh page. Write down whatever impressions you pick up on when you think of each of the following psychic senses. Include how each of the words makes you feel. Do you feel comfortable? Nervous? Happy? Worried? Excited? What thoughts come to mind when you examine each psychic sense? Do the different senses seem to make sense to you? Or not? Which ones are you drawn to? Which ones do nothing for you? What feels right? What, if anything, feels wrong? Also, write down any experiences you can associate with any of the senses. Above all, allow yourself to enjoy how each one feels!
Clairvoyance (clear seeing)
Clairaudience (clear hearing)
Clairsentience (clear feeling or sensing)
Claircognizance (clear knowing)
Clairgustance (clear tasting)
Clairalience/Clairolfaction (clear smelling)
Clairempathy (clear emotion)
Clairtangency (clear touch)
Telepathy
Psychokinesis
Ready or Not, Here They Come!
You’ve begun tapping into your incredible potential. The possibilities are virtually limitless. You are naturally intuitive and are now opening to all of your psychic senses. These abilities will help guide you on a path traversing all of the ups and downs in what is sure to be a dynamic and informed existence. Are you ready?