To go beyond a beginning level is a deepening of awareness and the gifts you currently have. It’s not about secret methods or joining any advanced clubs. And, it’s not about using bigger words or a stronger vocabulary to make you feel like it’s, in some way, more developed or important. Knowing this, we can all move forward and share our experiences of what it means to go beyond our own personal beginning.
I always tell people that everyone can play a note on a piano, but not everyone will be a Beethoven. It’s the same with psychic abilities. All who study will not develop the same or want to use their gifts in the same way. However, it all stems from playing that one note; we must go back to the basics in order to build upon our abilities and advance them beyond a beginning level. It’s about growth—moving from a complete novice level to one who is more adept in the metaphysical world. And, it is about working harder (practice), seeking more, and intensifying the basic principles of intuition to expand your metaphysical intelligence.
Before We Go Deeper
There’s no special magic or different set of skills needed to deepen your abilities. Taking it back to the basics does not mean starting from the beginning or starting from scratch. It is simply a way of deepening your connections and increasing your potentially limitless psychic gifts. Though there is no magical switch to turn on, practicing will increase your skills. What is magical is the way you can advance your understanding of the way it all works—this is your metaphysical intelligence. Gordon Smith, a practicing medium, teacher, and author shares that “no matter how much you think you know, or how far you think you have come on the spiritual path, there is always something to be gained by remembering the beginning of that journey.”1
There is no formula to use that tells you what degree of psychic ability you possess. As a matter of fact, there really is no measurement to grade you on, there’s no steadfast rule to follow. While one person may have a better or deeper connection to the metaphysical world than another, we can never really compare two that may be on the same level. Take, for example, math. You can’t jump to advanced calculus before learning how to add 2 + 2, but once you’ve mastered basic addition, you might excel at geometry where someone else more easily develops their understanding of algebra. You, for instance, may excel at tuning in to a sitter’s (client’s) past, while your friend may be better at precognition, or intuiting the future.
As with math, however, you need a general understanding of how to connect psychically before you can go deeper. If you are reading this book you probably have at least some basic intuitive knowledge or a vested interest in connecting to the other side. You will get more out of the exercises and chapters here if you are acquainted with psychic abilities already. While sometimes the exercises may seem rudimentary, it is up to you to go deeper.
Who You Connect With
There are so many ways to connect and receive information through your psychic gifts. You may already be accessing the other side via any number of these, but do you know where your messages are coming from? Many people are unaware of who they are actually “talking” to when they tap into their psychic senses—they just know the information is there. This is perfectly fine, usually. You want to be sure you are not connecting to anything harmful or any entities that may have undesirable intentions. Discovering who is sharing data with you will enable you to broaden your abilities and even expand your gifts.
So often we feel our loved ones around us, so we assume it must be them reaching out. Sometimes it is. But, frequently, it’s your guides, or even your angels communicating with you. They have been with you for a long time, probably even lifetimes, to help you. We each, individually, have a multitude of guides, ready and waiting for you to ask them for assistance.
There are some key features to remember about each type of helper. Deceased loved ones have either met you in life, are part of your family, possibly even a few generations removed, or are as close as relatives, like special friends, and so on. Relatives do not have to be blood related to come through as loved ones; they can be in-laws or adopted relatives or even foster care family members. Spirit guides can be distant relatives you’ve never met from many generations ago or people that are just here to help you. Unlike spirit guides, angels have never walked the earth.
So, now that you know who everybody is, let’s talk about what they can do for you. Deceased loved ones were real people and know a lot about you. Therefore, they have gone through the same types of struggles as well as the same types of joy that you may be experiencing. They also retain many of the characteristics they possessed when they were on this side with us. Because of this, they are the perfect helpers to ask for everyday assistance. However, you need to ask them for help with things they were good at when they were here. For example, I wouldn’t ask somebody for help with sports if they were terribly clumsy and never played a sport their entire life. But, I would ask someone who was an athlete for help with athletics. When my mom was alive she was an incredible nurse and healer. But she was terrible with finances. So, I ask her for help with healing all the time, but I make sure to stay clear of asking her for help with money!
Spirit guides are a bit different from deceased loved ones. We have many guides on the other side to help us. We have some general guides that stay with us and can help us with a little bit of everything. And, we have some specific guides that can help with whatever we need. Using the same example of sports, we can ask for an athletic guide to help us when we need to accomplish a goal in a sporting event. We can also ask a book-smart guide to help us pass a test at school. And when we need to have a good time, we can ask for our joy guides to come to us.
Angels help us with the big things, like saving lives. They’re there to help you pull your best friend out of a car wreck or to give you the strength to swim back to shore after being drawn out by the tide. They also help nudge you in the right direction to fulfill your soul’s purpose. There’s a hierarchy of angels starting with the archangels and going down to the basic, everyday angels. In general, archangels have more power and can be in more than one place at the same time, which is different than regular angels.
If you’re still not sure who you might be talking to you can ask. Asking who they are might present you with a fuller picture of what they can accomplish for you or what they can help you to accomplish. It also gives you a greater opportunity to utilize their gifts and abilities to communicate messages to you in a way that you can understand.
Defining Your Abilities
Defining what psychic abilities are is essential to every budding and developed psychic. Whether you are a professional or you are simply hoping to increase your innate awareness, it is important that you have a grasp on the multitude of psychic senses available to you. Knowing what each sense can provide you affords you the opportunity to build up your strengths as well as strengthen your weaknesses. Focusing on each sense individually can help you expand your psychic comprehension more fully. We’ll go through the basics of each ability here now. The alternative is to fly by the seat of your pants and just hope the information comes to you in a way you can understand, which in some cases will continue to happen.
The Clairs
You can’t even think about developing your psychic abilities without diving into your clairs. Clair is the French word for clear and we use it to describe each of our psychic senses. Clairvoyance, or psychic vision, is one of the most widely recognized senses and is often confused as having the same meaning as the word psychic. Clairvoyance, however, allows you to see images or even the deceased, psychically, in your mind’s eye. There are two psychic senses that are similar: clairsentience and clairempathy. Clairsentience is a commonly utilized psychic ability and it is what allows you to feel physical and emotional states and things that are not yours. It is also the psychic sense you use when you have a gut instinct about something. Clairempathy means you feel someone’s emotions, like taking on their happiness or sadness. Clairaudience is the ability to hear psychically. When you hear messages in your mind, such as words or music or even sounds, it is your clear hearing you are using. Claircognizance means you just know things for which you have no basis or evidence for knowing. A somewhat universal form of claircognizance is knowing someone is about to call before the phone rings. These are the most common clairs and are a crucial part of developing your abilities deeper. There are a couple more, though. Clairalience is another psychic sense, which is the gift of discerning scent, and clairgustance is when you taste psychically. All of these are psychic senses you might have experienced.
I am often asked which senses I use to connect. For me, I use a combination of all my psychic senses. I let the information come to me in whatever form it’s sent and ask for clarity if I don’t understand it. I’ve always felt things about people or places, clairsentiently, believing that everyone else did this as well. And, I’ve known things, claircognizantly, growing up. As I began developing more, my clairvoyant and clairaudient senses became enhanced. Receiving messages with all available psychic gifts can present you with a bigger picture. The more input you have, the more you can translate it into words. Just like with our five physical senses, having access to more data affords us the opportunity for more accurate communications.
I did a phone reading for a client many years ago. She was a new client I had never spoken with previously. Before every session, I do a quick meditation to tune in to my next client. I write down any impressions I receive, including information I perceive with all my psychic abilities, without censoring the data or qualifying how I get it. This client, Kim, was no different. One of the images I saw was of babies on a cloud. To me, this is symbolic of having lost children, either through miscarriage or abortion or stillbirths. I felt this was unintentional loss and the babies had not made it to term. Kim had miscarried during a couple of pregnancies. I was using both my clairvoyance and my clairsentience to receive this specific information and to clarify exactly what it was I was getting for her.
As the session began, I went over everything I had written down. I told her she had babies on the other side, watching over her.
“I feel like they never made it here on earth, but that they’re around you often, available to help you when you ask for it,” I continued.
“Wow. That’s amazing. That makes me feel better about what’s happened,” she replied. “But, I have to ask, do you think I’ll ever be pregnant again? My doctor said I wouldn’t be able to.”
She explained she already had children after I told her I saw her with kids, but she told me they were with her ex-husband.
“I would love to have at least one with my current husband,” she explained.
I tuned in, allowing all my senses to pick up anything I could share with her and what I got was at first promising, but then felt a bit sad as well, though I wasn’t sure why.
“I am getting that you’ll be pregnant again, against all odds, and you will be due in June. But, it may not have the expected outcome.”
“Okay, wow! Thanks!”
Later, Kim contacted me for another reading. During the reading she told me she had gone to the doctor, the same one who had told her she wouldn’t be able to conceive again, and he confirmed she was pregnant with a due date in June. Unfortunately, shortly after, she miscarried again. That explained the sadness I had been getting.
I told Kim of the sadness I had experienced, and I shared that I thought a miscarriage would occur again if she did indeed conceive. I asked her how she was.
“I’m okay with it. At least now I know, and I feel like I don’t have to try anymore. I have wonderful kids that I’ll focus all my energy on. I’m just shocked that you were able to see that I would be pregnant when my doctor told me there was no way! And, you got the due date of June!”
I felt bad for Kim but was happy she was able to move on. By using many different psychic abilities, I had tuned in to Kim and got some detailed information for her. I used my clairvoyance to see her pregnant, my claircognizance to know June would be the due date, and my clairsentience to feel the sadness around the miscarriage. I used clairempathy to feel her sadness at the loss of the baby as well.
Tuning In
So, how do you tune in? Do you stick to only one or two of your psychic senses? Feeling comfortable with a couple modalities should not stop you from exploring the others. Everyone tends to have a prevalent psychic sense or two. And this is great! But there’s more out there for you, and if you’re already connecting, this is your chance to go even deeper. It’s not just about expanding your senses, it’s about developing them. You already have the capability to utilize all your intuitive senses, they just need to be activated.
We have always had psychic abilities—they are part of our birthright. Often, though, they lay dormant within and need to be accessed and spiritually charged to start them up again. Whether you’ve been shut down as a child and feel like you’ve lost the association with them, or you have been focused more on some abilities so you don’t feel the link to the others, this can be fixed. The best way to reactivate your psychic gifts is to set them in motion by using them. It may feel a bit strange at first, or even take you completely out of your comfort zone; change can be awkward. But, it doesn’t have to be difficult. To move forward, to rediscover your gifts that may be on the back burner, you need to discover what your dominant psychic sense is.
Exercise
Before you begin, and with most of the exercises to follow, bring your journal to a place you won’t be disturbed. Be sure to go somewhere you can be calm and comfortable.
Discovering your dominate sense can help bring you to your next level of awareness. You may already be conscious of which psychic sense you use most. If so, you might, instead, uncover which sense is your main helper sense.
Begin by taking five deep breaths and close your eyes. Feel your toes relaxing. Take another breath and as you exhale, allow that relaxation to rise upward through your legs, into your hips. On the next long, deep breath, that feeling of total relaxation travels through your abdomen and into your chest. Breath again and allow that same feeling to reach all the way out to your fingertips. One more breath and the relaxation spreads through your neck and your face, loosening your jaw and facial muscles. Let the relaxation move right up to the top of your head.
Now, imagine yourself standing in front of a door. On the other side of the door you’ll have access to your psychic abilities. In a moment, you are going to open the door and you will meet your guide, someone who is your helper from the other side. It may be one you’ve already met or may be someone new.
Before you open the door, set your intention to notice which sense presents your guide to you. On the count of three, with your physical eyes remaining shut, you will open the door. One, take a deep breath. Two, put your hand on the door knob and turn. And, three, open the door and pay attention to how you perceive your guide.
Did you see them? Feel them? Hear them? Smell them? Taste a flavor? Just know who they are? Did you feel their emotions?
Now, take it a step further. Did you experience them first with one sense and then another immediately after? Take note of what you met. Did you receive impressions the way you expected? Or was it different in some way?
Let’s keep going. Using your sight, describe in detail what your guide looks like. Using your hearing, listen to what they have to tell you. How do they feel to you, and how do they make you feel? Is there anything you know about them that you didn’t immediately? Can you taste anything while standing there? Is there a prevalent scent?
After you’ve exhausted all your psychic senses, take a couple of deep breaths. When you are ready, open your eyes and immediately write down your impressions in your journal. Which sense did you use first? This is generally your dominant sense. Which did you use second? This is usually a helper sense. Does this fit into your normal practice? Was it surprising?
You did great! This is just the beginning. You can touch back to this exercise and do it again while reading this book to see if your answers vary. You might discover your dominant sense changes with practice.
Using all your psychic abilities gives you a broader span with which to work. Don’t limit yourself by only utilizing the gifts you feel most comfortable with. When you tune in to do a reading for yourself or someone else, allow the information to come in every way. Focus on each individual sense and see what information presents itself. You may not receive impressions with every sense, but be open to whatever you do get. In our quest for psychic knowledge it is always best to expand our awareness to include each sense we have in our reserve.
Recognizing the Level of Psychic Abilities
Recognizing which psychic ability you are using is not essential, but when you are accessing your gifts, it is a critical step to develop your intuition in the beginning. This is because understanding which abilities you use helps ensure you are not just tapping into your imagination.
Ascertaining which gifts you employ when you try to tune in is only important when you are trying to practice and develop those particular skills. When you are at a level that you sense things without worrying about what specific ability you are using, most likely you are beyond a beginning level. Knowing exactly how you’re getting the information becomes less important. Think of it in terms of driving a car; when you are a brand-new driver, you need to know how to do everything, like where to put your hands on the wheel and how hard to press the gas, and so on. But, after you’ve driven for a while it becomes natural, and you don’t think about it, you just do it. It becomes automatic, much like the more you practice using your psychic gifts, the more natural it will feel, and you won’t have to dissect how it works.
Release the Fear
There are two very different paths to living, whether it’s in the metaphysical or the physical realm. One is very easy and the other is more difficult. Author and spiritual teacher Marianne Williamson states, “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.”2 Being afraid to come into your power can hold you back.
Coming to a place where you are comfortable using your psychic gifts can be a scary path for many. Acting in fear and trying to increase your grasp on your abilities is a study in futility. Fear does not allow positive energy to come to you. It actually blocks positive energy. Love, however, opens you to receiving goodness. It creates a positive space to expand your power and bring a higher level of fulfillment. But, it can be extremely hard to let go of the fear that holds you back. We tend to be conditioned to be afraid of anything we believe we can’t control. When we don’t have total control of our intuitive gifts, it can cause confusion, which can lead to fear.
I have been a professional psychic for almost twenty years, doing one-on-one readings. But, I also love to be up on stage, teaching others and giving messages from deceased loved ones. This combination is what truly energizes me and even gives me a rush. The problem with doing this is I have let fear hold me back on many occasions. It is not fear of not being good enough, per se; it is more the fear that nothing and no one will come through for me to connect me to my audience. After all, we can’t demand the dead talk to us, right?
Stage Fright
Many, many years ago, I was sitting in the front row of a nighttime show at Omega, a holistic learning institute in Rhinebeck, New York. I had been attending a weeklong workshop and had done a good job at not sharing that I was already a practicing psychic. (I’ve found telling people tends to change the dynamic with the other students and I was there because I enjoy learning and contributing like the others present.) But, on this night, the last night, our teacher John Holland, a respected psychic medium, was putting on a medium demonstration. He came on stage and opened the show by explaining what he would be doing and told us a few funny anecdotes, part of his process. He then told us he would leave the stage and be back in a little bit to start readings, again, part of his process.
John went into a back room somewhere and my fellow students and I began a conversation. We talked about what brought us there and if we were having a good time. I was very comfortable with the two people I was sitting between. They were a mother and daughter duo and we had worked together a bit during the week. They told me they thought I had done really well during the week and was very good at tuning in. I informed them then that I was indeed a professional psychic. They said in tandem, “Well, that explains it!”
They asked me what I wanted to do. I replied, “This. This is what I want to do. I want to teach to large groups. I want to read for large audiences.”
Of course, the next thing they asked was, “Then, why don’t you? You’re good enough!”
It was hard for me to explain the fear that held me back. As I said, it wasn’t a fear of being on stage in front of people. I had done that often enough already. Putting myself out there, to do readings when I had to depend on the messages coming through was what scared me. Counting on dead people to talk to you can be unnerving when you are in front of hundreds of people who are waiting with bated breath to see if their loved ones are going to come through.
“Okay, but, why wouldn’t they?” they asked. “The deceased want to use you to help them. Of course they will come through. You’ve already proven you can understand them.”
Again, hearing their words did not quell my anxiety of actually doing it—being on stage at the mercy of the deceased.
“I know that’s the logical way of thinking, but none of this is logical. It doesn’t work that way. Putting myself out there … it just causes my heart to race!” I told them with a chuckle, a bit self-consciously.
It was at that moment that John Holland came back out. He began walking up the stairs to the stage. As he did, he started telling the audience he always has a moment of alarm, worrying that nothing will come through. Then he told us, “But, in this line of work, you have to trust that the other side wants to communicate and will use us as much as possible.”
That was awesome. He had the same fears as me. But what was really incredible was the next part. He stopped, mid-stair, turned, and looked right at me. In an audience of hundreds, he pointed to me.
“I trust they will always come through and so should you!” and he continued up the stairs to the stage, leaving me and my two friends with our jaws on the floor.
Don’t Be Afraid
Aside from worrying whether a spirit from the other side will come through, one of the greatest fears for a budding psychic is whether or not they can trust their reading as being accurate. Sharing the messages we receive is a daunting task if we’re not sure of what we are getting, or we doubt the legitimacy of the missive. Needing to be right, or the desire to only give information that can be immediately validated, can create incredible angst when trying to divine messages for someone. The fear that we are wrong or that it’s only our imagination is a rational concern. Holding back what comes through can actually hinder your session but, often, it is hard to trust the information is genuine.
We don’t want to be wrong. Yet, we don’t give ourselves the opportunity to be right if we don’t honestly share the psychic impressions we get. I tell people all the time, “Give what you get!” Don’t discount the information you sense. What may seem irrational or ridiculous to you can mean everything to the person you are reading for, and usually does. Get over yourself! It’s not about you. Stop holding back because you are afraid to be incorrect. Take the chance you may be right. And, you know what? You may be wrong sometimes, too, but that’s okay.
Our own fears hold us back. Yes, it is true that we must have an affinity for the work, or at least a deep understanding of how to connect to our intuition, but we must trust the process. Being afraid of anything in life will cause us to not be able to move forward. Taking the leap of faith and trusting the information you share is what you are authentically intuiting is what will separate you from the other intuitives who hold back.
Going Back Again
No matter how much you already know, you’ve likely discovered something about yourself in this first chapter. Whether it’s learning which is your dominant psychic sense or it’s learning who the communications come from, going back to the basics has recharged your psychic batteries and presented you with a different way to think about your gifts. This is also a great time to look at how you feel about those abilities. Acknowledging that you probably have some fears holding you back is a good way to address those fears. Working through the exercises, and even repeating them, can provide you with a higher level of understanding and, in turn, warrant greater confidence in your gifts. By taking it back to the basics, you’ve prepared yourself for extending beyond the beginning and laid the foundation for understanding symbols and signs.