The Reluctant Psychic
Like a ship without a compass, most of us sail blindly through life with no real idea of where we’re going.
Then, every so often, we run aground and assume we’ve reached our destination.
We all search for happiness. Yet few goals are quite as elusive. Often we think we’ve found it, only to lose it again, or to realize we never really had it in the first place. For some of us, happiness keeps turning to disappointment. For others, happiness is always around the next corner.
We’ll spend years getting an education and training for the career we’ve always dreamed of, then end up stuck in a job we hate. We’ll search the world for true love, only to get tangled up in a five-year relationship that shouldn’t have lasted five minutes.
The problem is that most of us don’t know what it is we actually want. We end up sailing from one place to the next, hoping to find who or what we’re looking for through luck rather than design.
The Instruction offers an alternative to this hit-or-miss approach. It explains how to create a happier and more purposeful life by finding out who you are and why you’re here.
Like everyone else on the planet, you have a soul. And what your soul wants is for you to follow the life plan it created before you were born. Your life plan is the map your soul uses to help you navigate the Physical Plane: the three-dimensional world your body and conscious mind inhabit.
Your life plan has clearly defined elements, yet it allows for total free will. It includes a complete personality, a set of goals, challenges to be overcome, people to meet, fears to be faced, and lessons to be learned.
To discover who you are and why you’re here, all you have to do is look at your life plan—which is precisely what this book will show you how to do. It will walk you through the ten elements of your life plan, and reveal the secrets of living the life your soul intended.
What’s the importance of living the life your soul intended? The answer is that by understanding your soul’s purpose, you’ll no longer sail aimlessly through life. Instead of being that ship without a compass, you’ll set course knowing your current location, your destination, and what you’re going to do when you get there.
To discover what your soul wants, I’m going to take you on a journey to the Soul World, a place where the answers to all of life’s mysteries can be found. As we step through each of twelve doors, I’ll reveal the Instruction, a unique system given to me by elevated spirit guides. Its purpose is to help you better understand yourself and enhance your experience of life on earth.
By the time the journey is complete, you’ll have discovered who you are and why you’re here; how to overcome many of life’s challenges; and how to use what you’ve learned to live the life your soul intended.
But first, a little about who I am and why I’m here.
In the mid-1990s, I arrived in California amid a cloud of emotional pain and confusion. Behind me was a two-decade-long trail of drama, heartache, and disappointment. Ahead of me I could see nothing but more of the same.
Then I had an epiphany: an incident that literally changed my life.
Ten years earlier, I’d been a cartoon illustrator living and working in central London. On a trip to Brighton on England’s south coast, I met a gifted psychic named David Walton. In a dimly lit shop basement, I sat opposite him as he relayed messages from spirit guides on the other side. Everything he said struck me as being astonishingly accurate. That is, until he predicted something so unlikely I couldn’t imagine it would ever happen.
He said, “You’re going to end up in California.”
When I told him the idea didn’t particularly appeal to me, he leaned forward, shook his head gravely, and added, “There is nothing you can do about it. Nothing.”
A decade later, I found myself in a tiny studio, nestled in an alleyway under the imposing shadow of San Francisco’s landmark Fairmont Hotel. The room was eerily silent—so much so that I could hear my heart beating.
I was stressed out to the point that I could barely think straight. I slumped down on the sofa and wondered what to do next. It had been years since I’d meditated, but it seemed as good a time as any to start again. I closed my eyes and took a couple of deep breaths.
That was when I heard David Walton’s words as clearly as when he’d first said them: “You’re going to end up in California. There is nothing you can do about it. Nothing.”
I shot to my feet, as a wave of adrenaline shocked me out my inertia. I looked around, half imagining I wasn’t alone. After a minute or so, I calmed down enough to think more rationally. That was when I realized I was living a psychic’s prediction of my life.
• • •
Growing up in Aberdeen, Scotland, I had many psychic experiences, though I never saw them as such. I read newspaper articles convinced I’d seen them a week before, and I often knew what would be playing on the radio alarm clock before it switched itself on.
My first impressions of people were usually right, though I always had the tendency to override my intuition and see the best in everybody. (“You’re too good for this world,” my favorite aunt would say.) And I often knew what people were going to say before they said it. I had to learn to bite my tongue and wait until someone had actually posed a question before I answered it.
When I was sixteen, a man in a thirties-style hat and coat approached me at a table in the reference library and, despite the no-smoking sign, asked for a light. He kept looking away furtively as if he were being followed, so I couldn’t really see his face. I searched my pockets for matches, and when I looked up, he’d completely vanished.
When I asked the lady sitting beside me if she’d seen where he’d gone, she didn’t know what I was talking about. It would be years before I learned that I’d seen a ghost, one who’d approached me because he knew I’d be able to see him.
Despite all of this, I never thought I was psychic. I didn’t particularly enjoy any of these experiences; they simply left me confused and unsettled. In fact, because I could see so many things before they occurred, I used to wonder if I somehow made them happen. (“If I hadn’t spent the last hour thinking about the car getting a flat tire, it might never have happened.”)
When it came to making wise choices, my lack of understanding and natural tendency to ignore my intuition made me quite inept. Actually, it was worse than that. My intuition might tell me one thing, but I’d do the exact opposite.
Around the time I left home to become an art student, I met the girl who would become my first wife. What she saw in me I don’t know. She was pretty, well-groomed, and highly intelligent. I was spotty and kind of frayed around the edges; my hair was down to my waist, and I smelled of Winsor and Newton oil paints. Still, opposites attract, as they say.
We married (against my better judgment) and, almost immediately, the relationship took a nosedive. To my utter incomprehension, her affection for me was replaced with hostility, and over the next three years I suffered a constant barrage of put-downs, criticism, ridicule, and sexual humiliation.
By the time we split up, I was a bag of nerves, and my self-confidence was nowhere to be found.
Like many sensitive people, I’d grown up hearing I was “too sensitive.” By this time, I was in full agreement. I blamed my “flaw” for the state I was in. To ensure I’d never be hurt like that again, I decided to reinvent myself by adopting a protective alter ego. Out went the gentle idealist, and in came a tough-talking, cynical new me.
I surrounded myself with noise and drama to block out my feelings. I played in rock bands and partied every night. I bought a convertible sports car and took to wearing a black leather jacket to look more macho.
I hoped to insulate myself from my emotions by denying who I was. In doing so, I severed contact with the spirit world and that part of me that was psychic.
From then on, I was on my own. Like a leather-clad Mr. Magoo, I blundered through the next couple of decades, taking every wrong turn and making every possible bad decision.
I began dating lots of women, hoping to find Miss Right. There was a schizophrenic, a junkie, plenty of alcoholics, a dominatrix, two who tried to kill themselves, and one who tried to kill me.
People warned me about my self-destructive behavior, but I wouldn’t listen. To paraphrase an old blues song, I’d been down so long it all looked like up to me.
Though I never met Miss Right, I started bumping into psychics wherever I went. On one occasion, a woman sidled up to me in a crowded London pub, introduced herself as a fellow psychic, and told me I should be doing it professionally. Me? A professional psychic? I thought she was mad.
Yet, despite my cynicism, I found psychics fascinating. Around that time, I started making regular visits to a gifted clairvoyant named Bettina Luxon. Every time I sat down at the kitchen table in her cramped North London flat, she’d tell me I was psychic. I used to joke, “If I was psychic I wouldn’t be here.”
Yet Bettina was insistent. With her encouragement, I began practicing such things as separating a pack of cards into piles of red and black, face down. The results were quite encouraging. I even managed to successfully read a couple of people.
Then, before I could develop my skills any further, my life spiraled out of control once again.
Despite warnings from David Walton and Bettina, I got involved with a sociopath. (When they told me she had no conscience and could never be trusted, I heroically jumped to her defense.) On one of our first dates, she got blind drunk and kicked me in the balls so hard I nearly passed out. Most people would have taken that as a warning sign. Not me. Thanks to my dismally low self-confidence and abusive past, I didn’t believe I deserved much better.
If I’d listened to my intuition, I would never have let her within fifty feet of me. As it was, I didn’t trust my judgment—or that of the psychics. And once again, any intuitive ability I might have had vanished as my life became one long round of verbal abuse and physical threats.
I financed her business, and after four insane years she brought the whole thing crashing down. (She’d tried to start it up elsewhere under a similar name to write off the debt I was owed.) I lost the lot: the business, my savings, my home, and my possessions.
So, when I met the New Yorker who was to become my second wife, I had nothing to keep me in London. I emigrated to the States like generations of Scots before me.
For the first time in my life, I felt I’d found true happiness. She was affectionate, supportive, and highly entertaining. I used to joke that she was the person for whom the word “eccentric” was created. Unfortunately she was also severely alcoholic.
On our wedding day, literally minutes after we tied the knot, my new bride got into a scrap with a taxi driver and tried to drag the poor guy out of his cab. It was another warning sign, but I was blinded by love, and quickly convinced myself that everything was going to be just fine.
It wasn’t, of course. Our five years together began with high hopes, but as time went on the bad times began to outweigh the good. Moments of tenderness and intimacy were overshadowed by her alcohol-fueled rages and blackouts. My ability to use my sixth sense had resurfaced briefly, but soon, overstimulated by noise and chaos, it disappeared beneath the surface once again.
Finally, things deteriorated to the point that I called Bettina in London. Before I could even tell her what was going on, she said, “Get out now—before you get hurt.” This time I didn’t ignore her.
And a week later I was in California.
Who Died and Made Me an Expert?
The epiphany that took place on my first night in San Francisco inspired me to begin exploring the world beyond. I wanted to know how it was that psychics do what they do. How can anyone tell the future? Where do they get their information?
I took a recommended reading list I’d been given by a psychic I’d met in Atlanta and loaded up on books I hoped would help answer my questions. Some of them were full of nothing but vacuous blather; others were total eye-openers. I read a book a day for several months.
During that period I’d been working hard, illustrating Chester Cheetah for Frito-Lay from my temporary office in the corner of Kinko’s copy shop on Van Ness Avenue. After the job was delivered, I decided to take a break. I packed a bag and headed for Hawaii.
The psychics had always told me that my deceased Uncle John was one of my spirit guides. Kathleen Loughery, a trance channeler I met on the island of Kauai, was no different. Toward the end of my session with her, she said, “Your uncle is here, and he’s ready to start working with you.”
I left Kathleen and walked out into the glaring sunshine in what I recognized to be a slightly altered state. I drove (cautiously) to Borders bookstore and, as I stood facing a bookshelf, suddenly saw a face to my right.
I froze in amazement. It was my Uncle John, looking just like he had twenty years before. The image was dimensional and sharp, though it only lasted a second or two at the most. At the same time I got a message: “Let’s get started.”
So I did.
I moved into the tranquility of a houseboat in Sausalito, just north of the Golden Gate Bridge, where I gradually regained my confidence and, along with it, my old self.
I spent the next two years learning to communicate with what John described as the Soul World. John is currently on the Astral Plane, where those who are between lives prepare for their next incarnation. He introduced me to my elevated spirit guides on the Causal Plane, the next level beyond. This is where those who have completed all their lives on the Physical Plane eventually go to become guides and teachers.
The Three Planes
Throughout this book, I’ll be discussing three planes of existence. They are:
The Physical Plane
The first and most solid plane is the three-dimensional world we inhabit here on earth.
The Astral Plane
The Astral Plane is the nearest non-physical world to this. It’s where we go when we die, and is the home to Astral guides.
The Causal Plane
When we’ve completed all our incarnations on the Physical Plane, we move beyond the Astral to the Causal Plane, where we eventually become elevated spirit guides.
Our guides on the Causal Plane have access to everything in our soul’s life plan. They know all about us: our fears and hopes, our successes and disappointments, and, above all, what we’re here to achieve.
And though I found accessing the Causal Plane a good deal harder than the Astral Plane, the rewards were much greater. Not only could I understand what other people were all about, I got to see where I’d gone wrong in my own life.
The source of all my problems, I found out, was my inability to accept myself and my purpose. Instead of choosing partners, for example, who appreciated my gentler qualities, I’d always gone for those who I hoped would help me be something I wasn’t. No wonder things had a habit of not working out.
As I gradually learned to be myself again, my life was transformed. I began to make wiser choices, simply because I knew myself and what was in my best interest. And as I explored my life plan, one of the most significant things I discovered was that I really was being guided to become a professional psychic.
But, why me? Why was I chosen to do this work? The answer is that, when it comes to drifting off course, I’ve truly been there and done that. In my Causal guides’ views, my own personal experience, combined with my natural gift, made me well qualified to help others get their lives on track.
Yet it was in this particular area that self-acceptance issues continued to surface. When, at long last, I felt ready to embrace my destiny, I found one thing still holding me back: my utter embarrassment at actually being a psychic!
I’d finally overcome my resistance, and accepted my calling, but now I cringed every time I saw my name in print: “Ainslie MacLeod, Psychic Guide.” Why on earth, I’d wonder, couldn’t I have been “Jim Smith, Plumber”?
So, if you think talking to invisible entities in the Soul World is weird, join the club. I still find it quite bizarre that I’ve ended up doing this. Yet I have to admit I feel profoundly privileged to have this fantastic opportunity. My job is endlessly fascinating, and my learning curve is on a permanent 45-degree trajectory.
The skeptic in me remembers how I used to read a book like this and wonder, Who died and made this guy an expert? The answer, in my case, is . . . my spirit guides. I’m simply the messenger. I’m not a psychologist, a therapist, a guru, or anything other than just a psychic and a serious investigator of the soul.
This book doesn’t describe any kind of philosophy or religion. It’s nothing more than my interpretation of information given to me by my Causal spirit guides, illustrated by examples from sessions with my clients.
But why, you might ask, should you believe what my spirit guides have to say? The answer is validation. Let me give you an example.
A few years ago, a young woman came to see me with general life questions. Nothing much my guides said could be immediately verified. Then, to her surprise, they told her she was pregnant. She just smiled and shook her head. Less than a week later, however, she found out they were right.
The reason they told her this was to help her accept all the other information they’d given her. But, of course, not everyone can get such immediate validation.
When I talk about there being billions of souls throughout the universe, or that humans on Earth only began to have souls fifty-five thousand years ago, I can’t prove any of that. I’m simply quoting my spirit guides.
Are they asking you to suspend disbelief and simply accept what they tell you? Certainly not. They want you to question everything and continually ask yourself if the information rings true. By doing that, validation will come from you, using your own intuition.
When I agreed to devote the rest of my life to being a psychic and exploring the soul, I was offered, in return, a key to the Soul World. It has allowed me to access everything from the reason we have an appendix to why we go to war. But most of all, it’s helped me understand what each of us is doing here.
So if, like me, you have a thirst for knowledge and a hunger to learn the purpose of your existence, allow me to be your guide on an amazing voyage of discovery.
Together we’ll investigate the mystery of who you are and why you’re here, and uncover the secret of living the life your soul intended.
The Instruction
The Instruction is designed to give those who are open to it an understanding of how the Spiritual Universe works, and to help those on the Physical Plane become more connected to their soul’s purpose.
—THE AUTHOR’S CAUSAL SPIRIT GUIDES
One evening, my spirit guides ended a session by telling me to take a five-day break. During that period I couldn’t access them at all.
Five days later they were back, and this time they spoke British English, rather than American English. They told me about a system they called the Instruction, and that I was to become its teacher.
I channeled the outline of the system over a three-week period, and its many subtleties were explained to me during months of subsequent sessions with my spirit guides.
When describing the elements that make up The Instruction, I’ve tried, as much as possible, to “show rather than tell.” For that reason, I’ve used real-life examples from sessions with clients throughout, changing only the names and some identifying details for reasons of privacy.
The Instruction offers complex information expressed in a simple way. Making sense of it doesn’t require a degree in metaphysics, yet there are a number of terms that are used frequently in the Instruction that you should know about:
The Illusion
The Illusion is the barrier between the Physical Plane and the Soul World. It prevents enlightenment, or the recognition that all humanity is connected. Everyone is vulnerable to becoming caught up in it.
The Illusion breaks down when exposed to introspection, which is why certain souls are more able to overcome its influence than others.
The Instruction is a way for any person to break through the Illusion and achieve enlightenment. The secret is to be willing to try.
Advantages and Risks
Each element of the Instruction has an advantage and a risk. The advantage is what can be achieved by following your soul’s guidance.
Risks are essentially the absence of the soul’s influence. Advantages can be used to turn around a long-standing risk and help an individual to live the life his or her soul intended.
The Soul World
Throughout this book, you’ll come across the term “Soul World,” which is used by my spirit guides to describe that part of the spiritual universe that contains both your soul and your spirit guides.
It’s impossible to discuss the soul without exploring political and social attitudes. As you’ll discover, nothing shapes your beliefs like the influence of your soul.
An inescapable fact is that younger souls tend to be more conservative, while older souls are usually more progressive.
I want to make it clear that when I discuss politics and the soul, I have no agenda. In presenting my understanding of the way the soul affects us, I’ve tried to be as even-handed as I possibly can be.
Enlightenment
The ultimate purpose of the Instruction is enlightenment.
And what exactly is enlightenment? Well, according to my spirit guides, if you can manifest your soul’s age and type, embrace the goals and lessons your soul chose for you in this lifetime, overcome the obstacles and distractions in your way, and act out of love rather than fear, you’ve got it.
Enlightenment, to put it simply, comes from living the life your soul intended. The Instruction is the key.
A Simple Meditation Technique
The great philosopher Confucius said, “I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.” This is the reason that the Instruction requires some level of involvement on your part.
As you travel through each of the doors in this book, you’ll be encouraged to answer questions and undertake a number of simple exercises. They’ll help you to assimilate the knowledge you receive in a deeper way than simply reading about it. These exercises require you to meditate and call in your spirit guides.
A student of the Dalai Lama once asked him, “What is the best way to meditate?”
“Whatever works for you,” he replied.
For the purposes of the Instruction, however, it’s better to avoid using a mantra, background music, or a guided meditation. The aim is to still your mind so your spirit guides can work with you.
The following is a simple method my spirit guides suggest. They call it the Open Heart meditation, where you open up to your spirit guides to receive their assistance.
1. Sit upright in a comfortable chair, your hands cupped in your lap. Close your eyes and take a few deep breaths. Bring in your spirit guides using the following words: “I call upon my spirit guides, acting in my highest interest, to join me in my meditation.”
2. Ask your spirit guides to give you tranquility and clarity.
3. Once you sense their presence (a feeling of tranquility and clarity), ask your spirit guides to answer your specific question. For example, “Please help me identify my soul type.”
4. Then ask your spirit guides to help you complete the exercise that follows.
5. When you’ve finished. Thank your spirit guides, and tell them, “Session over.” (The reason for doing this is so that you don’t go back into the physical world in an altered state.)
Allow me to address some frequently asked questions on the subject. First, your spirit guides will communicate by giving you clarity, not by using words. If you don’t achieve some degree of clarity in twenty minutes (and it shouldn’t take anything like that long if you’re already relaxed), stop and try again later.
How do you know if the meditation is working? You should sense the company of your spirit guides. It’ll be subtle, but along with clarity and tranquility, you’ll gradually become aware that you’re not totally alone.
Every single person, no matter who he or she is, has spirit guides who want to work with them. You’re no exception. Your spirit guides are actively interested in helping you. You only have to ask. Consider them as friends who care deeply about you.
It’s best not to call in your guides for these exercises if you’re in a crowded place like a train, or at work. You’ll get the best results when you’re alone.
And here’s one last piece of advice from my own spirit guides: “Use intuition, not intellect, in all cases.” What they mean is that the kind of clarity you get from them is sensed on a gut level, rather than resulting from lengthy analysis.
The first destination on our journey through the Soul World, takes us to a place where you can attain true self-understanding. By uncovering your life’s purpose, you’ll achieve a sense of direction that will lead you confidently toward the future your soul has planned for you.