Channeling, from what I’ve observed, is a way of tapping into deeper insights, whether the person doing the channeling interprets them as being from the Higher Self,  a dark but highly evolved corner of the brain, a spirit guide, or some sort of alien entity.  Honestly, I don’t care so much about how the person perceives the insights they share as I do the message they have to offer.

I’ll include of few of my favorites in this post, by the way. RuneHealing’s new channeling videos are now up on Youtube, though you may already be familiar with his meditations to clear negativity and his energy work videos.

As an observer, I’ve noted a few things about people who channel that have helped me distinguish real from fraud.

1. The message itself tends to contain information or insights that the person wouldn’t normally know or know how to express. I’ve seen teens do this, and there is just no way they would ever know such information on their own. Sometimes it’s private information; sometimes it’s very wise insights. It’s amusing to hear a 14-year-old deliver an incredibly beautiful and insightful message and then ask the adults present what it means. The real-deal folks tend to be very consistent in their messages.  I’ve followed the teachings of one particular channeler for the last decade and the message never falters, unlike with just about every other teacher or preacher I’ve know whose message changes at least slightly as they grow and change as individuals.  The source of the information, whether Higher Self or  guide or what, very definitely seems to be a different personality to me, at least in the cases where I know the channeler well. Not radically different but at least as different as a sibling or twin.

2. Very often, the voice and sometimes vocabulary will change. Those who listen to Esther Hicks of Abraham-Hicks when she channels are familiar with the change in voice to a clipped “Good morning” of “Abraham.”  To me, the vocal change has been the most notable difference in people I’ve known personally who do this.  I can tell they are tapped in or hooked in or connected to this source of insights when their voices change, usually to something lower and with a different tenor or texture.  I’ve worked with new channelers who were completely unaware of the vocal change until I brought it to their attention.

3.  Often, but not every time, I will notice a change in the channeler’s eyes.  I’ve seen pupils widen many times.  Other times, they stare at a spot in space, lost in a trance-like meditative state.  Again, this isn’t every time, but for a couple of people I know well, it’s been a startling thing to witness and usually matches the vocal change.

Do I channel?  Hmmm, not in the sense I describe above, but I understand it moreso as a writer and often…as a very good friend.

I have written books that felt like SERVICE.  Like a mission.  I had to work at those books.  Other books, I have felt as if I was tapping in to something that was both deep within or far outside myself. When my Lauren Hartford writing team decided to put together our pagan/Universal Law “instructional novel,”   Fire Burning in Water, I finished my part of the novel in a matter of days, with almost no editing required for my part.  The words just rushed out onto the page with no pre-planning.  It was more like transcribing the story as someone else told me, even though I didn’t hear words….just knew the next thing.   I could not hold back.  I HAD to write, even though I didn’t know what was coming next.  My part of the story was not exactly uplifting (it’s an alternate reality with some retro-causal theory thrown in), and I found that my part of the story was upsetting to me.  While I was writing it, I could not get a long-lost friend out of my mind.   A very bizarre experience for me!   As a group, we decided to change up my  part of the story just a little but it’s still essentially as I received (?) and wrote it.  About 2 years later, I received news on my old friend and his disturbing situation.  Almost everything I had written had come true for him in the month before the news and secrets I had never expected played out just as they had in the book. 

Was I channeling a spirit guide or alien entity?  Um, not that I’m aware of!  Maybe it was just a matter of tapping into something I recognized about that person at a subconscious level and letting it out before I was willing to recognize his secrets and addictions on a conscious level. 

The way I most commonly am accused of channeling is when I’m writing a heartfelt letter, usually an email because I have awful penmanship and keyboards let me move fast.  Sometimes, it’s like I have to say something to them and don’t know what’s coming out.  I simply start typing and hit send when I’m done…and find out later that I’ve freaked them out a bit because I’ve told them something way too personal that I didn’t know and given them help with a situation that I had no idea existed.  I do have to be careful with that in my novels, because I will have someone on my mind while I write and later will be accused of spilling their secrets when they’ve never  told me.

Again, I don’t really consider those examples to be channeling in the way we normally think of channeling.  It’s just a feeling of “must…write…this…now.”   Then I write stinging or unusual insights. My voice is my writing voice and yes, I do get intently focused and trance-like when I’m writing like crazy, so maybe it is.    

But think about it.  We all probably tap into that insightful source–wherever it originates–more than we realize.  Some capture that in video; others in writing.  I’m sure artists and musicians do the same.  It’s a flow of creative energy to me, but I’d love to hear from more scientific minds on how they express “channeled” thoughts.

Photo copyright by Aislinn Bailey.

At the beginning of 2010, I paused one night in ritual to think ahead to the next year and what it would bring me.  In a moment of clarity, I caught a “whiff” of things to come.  Many have come to pass–beautifully–but some, I couldn’t see happening.  Two in particular, I did not understand.

I was very certain that I would be focusing much more on weddings this year.  I saw lots of white lace and all the trappings of formal weddings–really, not my style.  I had stopped dating around and had become more focused on seeing one particular man whenever he was in town.  I was very fond of our time together and yet, I couldn’t see our relationship ever progressing to marriage.  Although we always had a blast together, he really wasn’t up to the intellectual and spiritual standards I would expect in a husband.  I’m not saying that I won’t ever remarry and I’ve met a couple of wonderful men who met my standards, but this one just wasn’t it.    In spite of my emotional attachment and fondness,  the image of white lace wasn’t anything I associated with my relationship with him. 

By May, I was seeing a lot more white lace and bridal gowns.  First, one of my dearest friends asked me to officiate at her wedding this fall and second, my daughter Aislinn shot her first wedding with one of my oldest friends.  Since then, Aislinn has worked with enough mentors and wedding photographers that it’s now become very clear to her that she wants a career in wedding photography. Some of the larger weddings she’s shot over the summer were turned into trips we took together, and I lounged in hot tubs at resorts while she sweated (literally) over happy couples. 

So weddings manifested for me in a big way this year, mainly through Aislinn but also thorough some good friends.  They’re a big part of our lives right now, and I am thoroughly enjoying weddings–something I really have never been that excited about. This is most definitely a blessing.

The other thing I didn’t understand was a vision of lots of young men around me.  Handsome, well-dressed men in their 20’s, well-educated, and full of passion and ambition.  Young professionals.  A pleasant vision, yes, but confusing.  Why would I have all these fine guys around me?  I normally date young men, yes, but ones in uniform.  None of these were.   The other problem–if it could be called a problem–was that at the time, I’d stopped seeing other men in favor of just one  who had my full attention, so I didn’t see myself dating around a lot.

One  day at work, I stopped by to see one of the new interns–we seriously have about 60 or so new interns in my career field–and I’d reviewed one of his projects and written him up on several issues.  I knew it was two minutes until his lunch break but told him I’d set up a time to train him so he wouldn’t make the same mistakes again.   He told me he’d chat with me more after lunch because four or five new interns were coming by to go to lunch with him.  Then he nodded over my shoulder as several young, professional guys–all in their 20’s, well-educated, well-dressed, nice-looking guys–arrived behind me.  I turned to see them and immediately thought, “Holy wolf pack!” 

Seeing them all together reminded me of the werewolf boys in the Twilight vampire movies but also made me realize how many other young professional guys were showing up in every meeting I was attending, regardless of the project I was working on.   Usually the men I work with are stodgy, older engineers so I hadn’t even thought about all the new interns arriving.  Young men galore!  Not in a romantic sense, but every last one is so pleasant and mentally enjoyable as I help train them in their careers.  They are most definitely a blessing.

Don’t you love the way things joyously unfold?

Ley Line #2: The River of Life…or…Souls?

Whereas most houseguests don’t notice the first ley line in my house, those of us who live here didn’t really notice the second one—we still don’t—until visitor after visitor pointed it out to us.

I don’t think that this particular ley line has been present during my entire tenure in my house.  I’ve had many very gifted visitors in my home in the past decade and none of them have noticed this particular stream of energy.  It’s been suggested that recent Earth changes might have caused some ley lines and energy vortices to move, particularly earthquakes, tsunamis, and tiny pole shifts.  But that’s not the really fascinating thing about this ley line.

This stream of energy is more like a river.  It’s not straight at all and has a far different quality to it than the creativity stream or sweet spot.  I don’t think it’s a “vile vortex.”  There IS a tranquility to it, surprisingly, but it’s otherworldly.  It enters my front door, flows down the hall, veers to the East into another room, sharply to the North, and then spiraling down through the wall.  (see map)

Followers of the Egyptian pantheon have likened it to a River of Life leading souls back home.  It’s like the path just outside of the gates of Heaven, leading peaceful souls back to the Source.  There is no sense of danger, anger, or upset in this powerful stream.

For the past few years, houseguests have reported hearing footsteps or light conversation in the path of this stream.  (I don’t hear or see them.)  Strangers have come to my home and inquired about the ghosts coming inside and heading quietly down the hallway.  At least a dozen unrelated persons have described this River of Souls to me, both in the nature of what they see and hear, its explicit path, and the lack of harm or ill will they sense.

Basically, they don’t bother me and I don’t bother them.  They’re curious about me and me about them.  I know there are many things unseen in our world—call it paranormal, call it dark matter, call it spooky—but I do find it fascinating  to think of the movement of the unseen world in a particular pattern that forms a stream of energy.

Photo copyright by benprks

I think maybe Barbara Walters owes “dangerous” psychic James Van Praagh an apology, but that’s mostly because—as an empath—I’ve worn Van Praagh’s shoes.  I know what it’s like to be ridiculed for sending someone to get medical help.

If you’re not familiar with the inciting incident, it happened on Barbara Walter’s TV show, The View, which hosted James Van Praagh of The Ghost Whisperer. The well-known psychic was there to promote a new book in the summer of 2008, and he privately warned Barbara Walters of a potential medical issue, which concerned him.    He could have done a little showboating and announced it publicly for the publicity and sensationalism of it, but to his credit, he didn’t.  To his surprise, Barbara Walters announced on a later show, when he wasn’t present to defend himself or  their personal conversation, that she’d seen a doctor, that she was “absolutely normal,” and then ridiculed him as “dangerous.”   He was denounced over the Internet as a fraud.

Fast forward to May 2010 and Barbara Walters announced upcoming heart surgery.  That may seem like a vindication of the psychic but, as always, skeptics found something else to use as supporting evidence of fraud—his prediction hadn’t been dead on with the diagnosis.  He’d warned her of bad blood around the heart and white blood cells.

I admit, it’s hard for me to side with Barbara on this one, and there’s a reason for that—and it has nothing to do with how much I’ve admired her skills in her career.  She was a role model to me when I was in my 20’s.

As for the veracity of the psychic’s predictions?  I’ve never worked with him personally, so I can’t attest to that.  However….

First of all, I have no idea what Barbara Walters’ doctor had to tell her after the psychic’s warning.  We have only her word.  I haven’t seen her doctor’s notes and, really, that’s none of my business and I never had to hear about her health at all except that Barbara Walters herself made it public.  Second, I know from my own experiences and from having worked with highly accurate “sensitive” people that how a psychic “sees” or “knows” something varies and is not always a perfect picture of the diagnosis or an exact time for the moment everything will break.  It’s simply a snapshot of the energy around that person, whether it’s already manifested or on its way.  And, unless the psychic is also a cardiologist, it’s unlikely that he would know exactly what a visual image means.  However, if a psychic with a high accuracy rate told me he saw “bad blood” around my heart, I’d be getting my heart checked out and not just for “bad blood” but for anything heart-related to see if there was anything wrong or anything related that I could prevent from going wrong.  To me,  the key would be to GET THE HEART AND BLOOD CHECKED OUT, not is there technically unsavory blood around that particular organ.

Recognizing the “Gift”

But I really can’t speak for Van Praagh.  I can speak only for myself.  I’m an empath, not a psychic…though I occasionally have a bit of that, too.  As an empath, I feel things…unintentionally.  I usually don’t  seek out these experiences but they certainly get my attention when they show up!

I’ve been this way all my life, but I didn’t really come to understand it until 2005.  That was the day I was observing at an “energy healing” in a church in Pensacola, Florida.  It was the first time I’d ever seen anything like it, and I moved in close to get a better view.  I was a little skeptical, so somehow I ended up about 3 feet from the healer and her subject, who was an elderly woman.   As the healer was preparing to begin, I suddenly felt an odd sensation in the back of my skull, like none I’d ever felt before.  It was cold, metallic, hard, alien.  The healer noticed that horrified look on my face and asked what was wrong.  I told her privately what I felt, and she asked her subject, “What’s wrong with the back of your head?”

The old woman frowned up at her and asked how the healer knew.  Decades ago, she’d been attacked and the back of her head bashed.  She’d been taken to a military hospital in a foreign place where part of her skull had been removed and actually thrown in the garbage because they didn’t expect her to survive.  Then she described the metal plate in her head in the shape and location where I’d felt it.

I tried to chalk it up to coincidence until  the next woman relaxed on her massage table.  I stood where the woman couldn’t see me and gestured to the healer that it felt like a rope around my neck.  When the healer asked her about prior traumatic events in her life, the woman mentioned some heartaches here and there and…oh,yeah, the man who tried to strangle her with a rope years ago and how that injury still bothered her from time to time.

The rest of the day, I stayed by the healer’s side, gesturing privately what I “felt” about each person’s medical or psychological condition and each time having it affirmed by the subject.  Far from being freaked out by this experience, it was a relief to me to have some understanding of what had always unnerved me.

Understanding the Ridicule

Before I had any clue that I was an empath, I would have feelings about things and keep them to myself or talk myself out of listening to my intuition.  I was my own skeptic!  I’m not a fan of telling random people whatever I sense about them and being a psychic know-it-all, but in cases of health, I do feel an obligation.  Before I understood it, I rarely acted on it because if I prevented something bad, then I was ridiculed about how “well, that didn’t happen.”   No, my grandfather didn’t die for another three years because of a feeling that he was in trouble and my sending help… and my mom didn’t get shot when going to a certain place I begged her not to… but Granddaddy’s heart meds were dangerously out of balance and the man my mom didn’t go see did shoot up that location very soon after that.   In both of those cases, the risk of ridicule was outweighed by my love for those people.

But what about ridicule when being wrong could end your career?

In 1999, the man in charge of my entire organization was a man I’d previously worked for and had thought was the best boss in the world.  He wasn’t so great the second time around.  He’d turned bitter and verbally abusive, with a penchant for publicly ridiculing people and betraying secrets that fell under the Privacy Act.  During one of our conversations where he’d spotted me at lunch and insisted I sit and listen to his tirades, I got a weird pain in an odd place in my body.  I ignored it, but I couldn’t ignore the feeling that something serious was wrong with the Big Boss.  I stewed about it for a while, then send him a private email.  In it, I explained that I sometimes got strange feelings and it was probably just nothing at all but I felt I needed to tell him.  I knew that if he didn’t believe, the promotion I deserved would dry up or that I might be branded a crazy person.

Worse.  He poo-pooed (his terminology) my quiet, private plea for him to see a doctor.  Just when I thought he’d brushed me off and it was forgotten, he began to point me out in conference rooms of a hundred colleagues, ridiculing me, calling me a “druid witch,” and telling other  leaders in my career field how “difffffffffferent” I was and probably wouldn’t be a good choice to put in charge.

But….  But he didn’t ignore my plea as it might seem.  He went to a doctor within days and very discreetly spent around two months out of the office recovering from some unexpected and discreet surgery that he never gave any details of.  He didn’t mention my warning after that, and I didn’t get a promotion until a couple of years after he left, and got it then by leaving to go to a different organization where they didn’t know I was a “druid witch.” (I’m not a druid, thank you.)

Understanding the”Gift”

That scenario has played out a number of times since, though never again with anyone that important to my career.  There’s always a risk of ridicule, though most people keep it quiet or just avoid me altogether.

One was a colleague who walked into a room and I felt a heaviness in his chest immediately.  After some deliberation (he had friends in very high places and my previous boss in my old organization had burned me as I already described), I decided to say something and risk everyone in my new office thinking I was nuts.  I didn’t sense “bad blood” or see any images as Van Praagh did with Barbara Walters.  I simply felt a heaviness I’d come to associate with a heart-related problem.  I discussed it with him privately and he admitted he’d been having some problems but had ignored them.  Within a week, he was seeing a cardiologist and had gotten a life-threatening problem under control.  He relayed the outcome, and then neither of us spoke of it again.

I often feel people’s stress.  It follows them like an invisible but palpable cloud of heavy, dark energy.  It feels like the weight of the world on their shoulders.  But those I normally don’t flag to the person  who’s hurting.  At least not in an obvious way.  I may readily say, “Hey, you look like you have the weight of the world bearing down on you,” and they’ll often open up and talk about it.  Still, in cases of emotional distress, I tend to steer clear of recommending therapists.

I also have tended, burned as I was, not to point out health issues to high-ranking people who could do more damage to my career.  There was one exception, around 2006.  He was someone  I’d worked with for almost two decades and had always admired his work.  He was in a different career field but worked with me frequently.  This man was extremely conservative and well-respected in his professional life.  I was in meetings with him three times and felt the crushing heaviness in his chest before I finally asked to see him in the hall during a break.  He had such a great scientific mind, and I was almost positive he would laugh at me…though he was gentleman enough not to ridicule me publicly.

He didn’t.  I told him with great sensitivity that I was an empath and that I, ahem, felt he might want to see a doctor because I, ahem,  felt he had something heavy around his heart.  He didn’t bat an eyelash.   He just smiled for a few seconds.

Finally, he said in a low voice, “Dear Lorna,  I’ve managed to keep it a secret until now, but I’m under the care of a heart specialist.  I already know something is wrong and exactly what it is, but I appreciate that you were willing to put your professional reputation on the line for something you had no proof of because you wanted to help me.”

We never discussed it after that.  One day, I was in an airport and saw him leaving the gate where my plane had arrived.  He said he’d just finished a great book on his previous flight and thought I might be interested in it.  He dared not take it with him to his meeting with VIPs.  He pulled it from his business papers and I read the title.  It was a book about alien technology, probably that last subject in the world I would have imagined him reading about leisurely.  I took it as I boarded my plane, thanked him, and didn’t mention that I already owned the book.

If you find this review helpful, see the suggested reviews listed at the bottom of this article.

Esther and Jerry Hicks’ The Teachings of Abraham DVD X of the Law of Attraction in Action series, Let Loose!, is a 2-DVD set, a little over 3 hours long, that’s been excerpted from their July 2008 Stamford, CT, Workshop.  I bought it from the Abraham-Hicks website for $30.  HOWEVER, I’ve “attracted” a better deal for you, and you can get it–new–for 1/3rd to 2/3rds of the list price here.  Still, this one was worth the full retail price.

So that I’m not telling you exactly what Abraham advised for every question asked on these DVDs, I’ll tell you areas of concerns I’ve had that were answered for me.  Funny, how that happens.  I don’t have to ask a question myself–the answers will come to me through the questions of others.

My big epiphany during my third listen to this DVD was that it never works for me to match my vibration to someone else’s.  This could simply be said as “stop trying to be what other people want me to be because that’ll just make me miserable.”  If you’ve listened to much of the Teachings of Abraham, that probably seems obvious but it hit me in a way that surprised me.  I may have wanted a relationship with a particular person in the past who shared a vibration and then…didn’t…but any time I ever tried to figure out what was going on with a romantic partner so I could adjust my own view of the world, even subconsciously, the result was disastrous.  I cannot worry about what’s going on in some  silly man’s head because it doesn’t matter.  The only thing that matters is what’s going on in mine, and if the vibration is the same, then life is all the sweeter.

The DVD segment on psychics in many ways echoed one my articles, “3 Reasons Psychics Are Bad for the Law of Attraction–and 1 Good One.”  The Abraham-Hicks approach is a little closer to what I detailed in “3 Keys to Not Giving Away Your Power to Spiritual Advisors,” but with an extended explanation.  I found the description of how a psychic reads vibrational energy to be quite fascinating and worth the price of the entire DVD if you’ve ever visited a psychic, a Tarot reader, or some other intuitive.  For as much work as I’ve done personally on reading the energy of someone else or connecting with them empathically, I now have a much different awareness both of how to help clients I’m coaching to change their world and how to change my own when the predicted future looks bleak.

One of the “hot seat” questions led to a better understanding of a recent difficult time I went through (aka, “contrast”).  The discussion was on asking for help and how sometimes help comes to you and sometimes you are the help for someone else.  Between this segment and another on lawsuits, I found a deeper understanding of some concerns in my life over the past few months.  I’ve noticed on workshop downloads, DVDs, and in the live workshop I attended in Orlando that people in lawsuits really want to know how to pivot to something better-feeling because it seems that nothing like a lawsuit can drag you out of your sweet spot, aka “the Vortex.” The choice seems to be one of whether to continue fighting in a lawsuit because it’s the right thing to do (for various reasons) or to let it go and be free of it.  Hey, these things can be tiring, right?

I’m not in a lawsuit, but I have had to deal with some investigations I never wanted to be involved in.  I had a choice of letting it go and not having to focus on the grueling daily aspects and simply move on or…fight for what I felt was right.  Through this DVD, I was able to see that I may not be “in the Vortex” while putting my efforts into standing up for what’s right, but I do feel a whole lot better than if I let unethical and illegal matters that have affected so many people, plus myself, be swept under the rug. I would feel like a failure, a coward, and a victim if I kept silent.  Instead, I am the one who has been able to help others.  They all asked the Universe/God/The Powers That Be/etc, for help with their situations and I was the one in this tapestry of connections who brought it all together into a design we all understood and could take action on.  I asked the Universe for help in one simple matter and got it, but by sharing my clarity with other interested parties, all their lives have changed.

These were the most pertinent questions this DVD answered for me.  The rest was of good quality, too, and Let Loose! was certainly worth buying, listening to, and sharing with friends.

For the best price I’ve found, buy here.

“I smell Granddaddy!”

She was visibly upset.  She’d walked into a room in the house where I grew up, presumably after Grandma’s brownies or see where my mom was, and she’d smelled my dad’s scent heavy in the air.  It’s been a long time since any of us smelled his particular scent but she recognized it right away.  Not in a bad or ominous way…just a signature of energy.

I didn’t tell her that the exact spot where she noted the scent was the spot where he died more than three years ago.

Most people think of intuition and psychic abilities as being expressed through seeing something, some form of energy.  For me, I’ve always been able to feel it and occasionally an image will form in my head as a metaphor.  For a long time, I felt deficient because so many of my friends saw The Dead, or auras, or other energies.  I have on occasion heard them, but not in any reliable sort of way.  Smell? That’s the strangest to me.

A clairvoyant woman I was friends with for many years used to sense her mother near, and would then smell carnations.   She didn’t, to my knowledge, ever see her mother but she smelled her scent, sometimes waking to it in the middle of the night.  Another woman would swear her father was nearby because she’d smell his cherry tobacco when there was no cherry tobacco anywhere for miles.

I’ve had this happen more than once myself.  Sometimes others smell it, too, and then it’s gone.  It doesn’t stay for long but the memories conjured are deep.  I don’t often have this happen with The Dead but with people in danger or far away or focused on me.  I will often hear later of some trouble they were in at that time or that they were thinking of me.

Although no one has ever been allowed to smoke in my house, I occasionally smell Marlboro cigarettes in my house, just a whiff and then gone.  Both my daughters have smelled it at the same time.  Sometimes, I will smell Bill’s Polo cologne even after all these years.  I will follow it through the house searching for the source and it seems to come out of nowhere and stay confined to a particular area with no explanation.  I have smelled F-15 jet grease in Todd’s hair and the antiseptics on Frank’s hands after a shift at the ER.  A whiff and then gone.  This week alone, I have been in my car, just me, and suddenly smelled the nicotine-laced perspiration that was peculiar to Justin and, soon after, a cologne-and-skin scent I haven’t smelled since I was last in Southern California.

I’ve always had a “sensitive nose.”  During my pregnancies, I could smell a cigarette smoker in a car two vehicles ahead of me, with their windows and mine rolled up and my vent recirculating air from within.  Typically, I can smell it one car-length ahead.  Then again, these are real and present odors, not some olfactory flash of energy.

I have no idea what the connection is, but thus far, it’s only to the living.  There’s a sense of intimacy to me with these smells, and on some level I do find it disturbing, especially when I no longer wish any contact with that person.   It doesn’t last long, and though it rarely feels dangerous or upsetting, I find it’s best to burn incense in my home to mask whatever fragrant energies are thinking of me.

My intuition is strong this week, I suppose.  At least, it was while I was at the farm….

I’m barefoot in waist-high grass so thick I can’t see the ground. I can barely walk in it, let alone run.  It’s like swimming through mud.   It’s as thick in one direction as the other so I decide to keep walking and hope for higher ground on the far side of the old pond that was once encircled by oaks before lightning and the widening of the pond took most of them. I edge closer to the pond where the grass isn’t as heavy.  I pause for this telephoto picture of the sunset sparkling off the other end of the pond where the meteorite-type rock was found when the pond was dug in the late ’60’s by a highway crew needing dirt.  Then…

For some weird reason, I get an image in my head from the Bible.  It’s Samson, scooping honey from a lion’s carcass.  I get this incredibly uneasy feeling.  I actually look around in the grass for a carcass…maybe a deer or coyote. I start to feel as if I can’t breathe and my antennae are on full alert, telling me to leave.  Not to go back the way I came but “AWAY” from where I’ve been.  It’s through taller grass and the ground is damper and less solid but I’m to leave, now, and take that particular path.  I do, and the feeling subsides as I walk Southeast toward the creek.

My brother arrives for lunch the next day and I’m talking about the wheat, the grass, the thistles, the creek, the pond.  That’s when he says, “Yeah, Mama did tell you to be careful of the bee hive in the tree down there, didn’t she?”

Er, no….?  Ooops!

I’d been quite close to it.  Never saw or heard them, and with my zoom lens, I’d had to stay farther back to get the shots I wanted unlike my last visit a month ago when it had been chilly weather.

I hadn’t thought of Samson and the riddle of the bees and the lion in years, but that sudden image and the feeling that went with it was enough to tell me that something was wrong.

Two months ago, I participated in some “spiritual work” with some trusted spiritual leaders who always have an interesting point of view.  I very much enjoy these sessions where I am a student rather than a teacher and where I am challenged to see things in a new way.   I’m a big believer in continued learning, no matter how much of an expert you are or how much you think you know.  There’s always more.

I’ve had terrible arguments in the past with spiritual people who considered themselves experts because of how long they’d been a member of a particular church, circle, or group.  When I challenged them to learn something new–just investigate it to see how it fit with their beliefs–I was quickly slapped down.  They seemed very comfortable in the little niche they’d carved out and not at all interested in any type of spiritual “continuing education.”

It’s because I like to learn that I’ve investigated other religions, attended Voodoo ceremonies, sat through lectures on aliens and other dimensions,  watched for orbs in cemeteries, studied as much as possible for the layman about zero field theory, listened as a didgeridoo was aimed at my second chakra, talked to people who talk to the dead, and oh, so much more.  I never really reject any of it–but I assimilate it in different ways, turning it over in my head and figuring out what it means to me.

During the January session, one of the women was trying to help me work through a relationship question.  I wasn’t sure how I felt about a particular friendship.  I had not shared this with the group, but I was on one hand intrigued by the uniqueness of the person in my life and on the other, well, a little nervous because it was most definitely new territory for me.  The woman helping me talk through the situation began describing to me the relationship as she saw it:  a platypus dawn.

I had not heard even the word platypus in months or years when she said it, though in the two months since, I heard it frequently.  That’s more than just selective filtering–I really am hearing it quite often.

I don’t want to say that the platypus is my new totem animal, though to some degree, that would make sense.  A platypus totem is rather powerful and reflects the need to work with the energy of the truly unique and be able to flow and change direction as need be.  Not a bad meaning at all, especially after working with the wolf totem for so long and then the bear.  It does seem to be a good representative of this particular friendship.

What this woman described to me was a new dawn, a new era in my life.  She described the pink skies of dawn and the platypus coming up out of the water.  She told me that it was the uniqueness that was the key.

That platypus has been the problem.   I really adore men who are “different.”  They don’t have to be openly different, but in their private lives, there tends to be something unusual that no one would ever guess.    Sometimes that “difference” can be very new territory for me, such that I’m not just acknowledging the uniqueness but a part of it.  (I’m being general here, not cryptic.)

So I’ve had my doubts about my platypus relationship with its double-edged sword of uniqueness.  I think the bottom line has been how far is too far when it comes to different ways of thinking.  I’m not so used to being “out-platypus’ed” in a relationship, so this could be interesting indeed.  Especially if what I’ve seen so far is just the dawn of it.

My third workshop for the Florida Pagan Gathering was fairly crowded. I never saw several of the attendees at anything else related to the weekend events. Maybe they were aliens or angels or something just dropping by!
In any case, that was the workshop on building worm holes, Field theory, inter-dimensional portals, etc. Fun stuff. Turns out, the people most interested in discussing the material afterward with me were ceremonial magicians and lots of folks kept asking when the book is coming out. Um, well, I must get it written….

But at one point in the workshop, I was talking about how to use the portals for healing and communication, to focus and amplify energy. The room got very quiet and the conversation very serious, with me hypothesizing that other life forms might be able to lower their energetic frequency and help us raise ours so that they could communicate with us.

At that moment, that brief lull of one-second silence after suggesting other life might want to tell us what they want from a relationship with humans, a student’s cell phone went off, its musical ringtone blaring to attention….

“I like…big butts and I cannot lie!”

The eyes are the windows of the soul, indeed!  Yes, her eyes really are that color and those are lichens on the ground in this beautiful natural setting.

Photo copyright by Aislinn Bailey, AisPortraits.com, Niceville, Florida

Some cultures believe (or did initially) that a photographer could steal your soul if he took pictures of you.  I’m not sure about “stealing,” but I now believe that it is entirely possible to capture a soul in a photograph—or if not the soul, then certainly the “energy” of the person.  After observing a few experiments with energy work, courtesy of an interview subject I’ll call “Ruby,” I will never look at Facebook or MySpace profile pics in quite the same way.Though I’ve always loved photography and dabbled in it myself when I was younger, I’ve been blessed to have five professional photographers come into my life within the past year, plus my daughter joined their ranks over the summer.  I love looking at their portrait work, and I sometimes feel like a stalker because I can’t stop looking at their beautiful photographs.  They have a special way of capturing the personality of each subject.  Yet, with professional photos, it’s usually more of the personality than the soul that is captured, in much the same way that a statue or oil painting captures the famed of the past.

My latest experiment seemed to reinforce that professional photos are manipulated too much really to show the soul (vs personality) of that person at the moment.  Instead, they seem to show the energy of the photographer because these portraits become partnerships between photographer and subject.  The subject often assumes a posture suggested by the photographer, a tilt of this head this way or that, just the right lighting, and—if all else fails—a few deft minutes on the Adobe PhotoShop CS3 or CS4 to add sparkle to the eye or depth of color to the cheeks.  Not that a professional photographer can’t capture a soul, but whereas personality can be captured by a professional, the soul is usually best seen through candid shots, particularly those god-awful camera phone or webcam pics.  A professional photographer will make every attempt to make a person look good, regardless of the state of the subject’s soul at a given moment, whether joyous or troubled.

These photo experiments began when Ruby, who often works with radionics and psionics, asked if I had a photograph of someone we were participating in a healing circle for.  We didn’t know what was wrong with the guy but he’d been feeling lethargic with no obvious clue as to why.   I grew up seeing pictures in Baptist church bulletins or on the walls of Sunday School rooms where we noted who was sick or in need each week and prayed for them.  The photographs aided the prayers for healing because they allowed the prayer committee to focus better on the person and visualize them as they were when they were in good health.  None of this is scientific, at least not in the classical sense, though it may one day be better explained via zero-field theory.  However, for spiritual people who work regularly with energy—whether Christian, Wiccan, or some other religion—the nuances of the unseen connections between people are enjoyed without prejudice.

What Ruby, who is a “highly sensitive person” to the extreme, did was to pull out a pendulum and let it swing casually over the photograph.  It was a recent photo,  and a full-body view.  The pendulum swung wide and then in small intense circles as she moved her hand over the photograph.  She asked me to write down the results of her own interaction with the energy she felt from the photo.  So as I interviewed her, she interviewed the photo—and I merely watched the pendulum twirl clockwise or straight or counterclockwise in answer to her questions.

The dowsing went on for almost 1.5 hours.  Ruby asked a long assortment of questions that covered everything from the psychological to the sexual to the gastro-intestinal to things I’d never heard of.  I never saw her hand waver once, though if it had been me, I think my fingers would have been cramping within five minutes.  I was fascinated by her process and took copious notes.  She would ask how in-balance certain chakras were and work from there to see how close on a scale of 1-100 the person was to total vitality.  On ones that were out of balance, she’d use a different scale to find the magnitude of particular problems, looking especially at barriers to vitality.

Ruby uncovered a host of minor problems that were a drain to our friend’s health—and by the way, he’d given permission to do any kind of prayer or energy work for him so he’d feel better.  These minor problems were all rather normal except for two that were extremely high:  parasites and heavy metals.  She asked me to pass along the information to our friend, which I did.  He reported later that he’d gone through a detox program for parasites and later heavy metals and that after the heavy metal detox, he’d felt particularly good again.  He’d regained his energy.

That was my first experience with this sort of thing.

The next time, Ruby noticed a photo in my home of another old friend of mine.  It was an old photo, taken at a time when he was still married to his first wife, and he appeared quite happy and all-smiles in this great candid shot at the beach.   There was always something about the photo that bothered me, but I could never put my finger on it.  She commented on some things going on in his life at the time the photo was taken, things she couldn’t have known, but the photo felt that way in spite of the smiles.

According to Ruby, the energy of the person (not to be confused with personality) is something that she can feel in a picture.  Couldn’t I feel it, too, to some degree? she wanted to know.

The short answer was yes.   I could look at the picture with all the smiles and fun and there was just something…off…about it.  There was a sadness there, a sense of loss.  Always had been.  There were problems in his marriage at the time.  But I’d never really thought about it.  When I relaxed and let my mind wander, I could almost sense his energy in the photograph.  There was a certain sadness in the eyes, in spite of the smile.  I think anyone who looked closely enough would have spotted it.

“Do you have other photos of him?”  Ruby asked.  When I told her I didn’t have any recent ones, she suggested we search for his image on Google.

We found  it.  I tested  her belief that I, too, could feel his soul in this picture.  He was smirking in this one but there was a heaviness around it.  He was smiling but his eyes weren’t.  I didn’t know what had happened to him, but one look and I could tell he was in trouble—even if it hadn’t been a mug shot.

We found another photo of him online. Not a professional photographer’s work, but a decent photo. He looked nice, dressed up, professional.  But there was a deep feeling of darkness and oppression in this photograph.  He still looked much the same as when he’d been a close friend, but looking at his picture, I didn’t even recognize him.  I felt no connection at all.  It was as if I were looking at a stranger.

Ruby suggested I check out other photos to see if I could discern the state of the soul of someone I hadn’t seen in a long time and didn’t have a current history on.  In a way, it was fun because I got the hang of it quickly, yet it was too often very sad and I stopped after two or three tries.

I looked up several friends from the past and, regardless of the smiles, either their traumas or their hardness showed through the eyes.  Even if they were the picture of health, the feeling of oppression was still there.  These were clearest in quickly snapped camera phone photos and especially in webcams pics.  Some of these people had changed so much that I felt no connection of friendship to them at all anymore.  They looked much as I remembered but they felt like strangers.  I decided not to reach out to re-acquaint myself.  As an empath, I just felt too sad whenever I looked at their images.

There was one, though, that struck me differently.  I had not seen the woman in years, but she looked 10 years younger than the last time.  Back then, she’d been married to an alcoholic who abused her regularly.  In her new Facebook picture, she was laughing in the rain, drenched by a nearby car’s pounding through a puddle, but literally dancing.  Even if the photo had been of only her face, her smile was magnificent.  It went all the way up into her eyes and lit up the screen.  Absolute joy radiated from the photo.  When I reached out to her, I found out she’d left her husband, gone through counseling, started a new life, and was enjoying every minute of what  the world has to offer.

Some photos capture the appearance.  Others, the personality.  The ones that capture the soul, though, can tell a sensitive person exactly how you’re doing and how life’s treating you.

Hold the bashing.  This is not a pro-abortion article or an anti-abortion article.   If you think it is, you’ve missed my point because you’re looking to bolster an opinion you’ve already made.  This is something altogether different that almost no one talks about.

First, a little of my own history:

I have two beautiful, intelligent, compassionate daughters who are everything I could ever wish for. The older daughter was almost miscarried at 10 weeks, and the younger one sent me thrice to  emergency Labor and Delivery  over the three months before she was born.  I’ve gotten pregnant more than once while on birth control pills, which my newest gynecologist believes is because I tend to ovulate unusually early.  I have also miscarried several times–two pregnancies I felt ambivalent about and one I really wanted–but something rather unusual happened with the last two that made me rethink everything I used to believe about abortions, miscarriages, and incarnation.

What I believe and why:

Over the decades, I’ve come up with my own beliefs about life, death, autonomy, trauma, and spirituality. That’s the benefit of reaching middle-age–you’ve got enough data to slot and see what shakes out if you care to look.  My conclusions don’t fit cleanly into popular belief systems but then, I’m not a fan of just accepting what I’m told is true.  I have to experiment and experience life for myself and draw my own conclusions.  I fully admit that my brain seems to be wired a little differently and that I see things differently, but then, I’m finding more and more people have similar beliefs but are too afraid to discuss them for fear of being ridiculed or ostracized. I guess I’m used to it.

Most of the anti-abortion debates (or pro-life or whatever-rhetoric-will-best-evoke-the-required-necessary-response) center around when life begins and who has control over that life.  My personal belief, based on many things I’ve experienced and observed, is that yes, life begins at conception.  However, en-souled life begins sometime after that.  I don’t know when.  I think it’s different for each child.  (Why shouldn’t it be?) From my own full-term pregnancies, I definitely felt that both babies were en-souled–the souls integrated with their bodies, in other words–definitely by seven months.  Some people believe that occurs at the point of quickening, which made a lot more sense when we were less technologically advanced and didn’t have the advantages of ultrasound technology to detect a living fetus.  I wasn’t able, in my own experience, to sense the soul fully integrated when I first felt my babies move.  Who knows–maybe souls wait until the body is physically viable before committing.   I can’t say definitively–I had no idea in 1989 and 1992 what to look for.  To be honest, I was not as aware of the non-physical aspects of life, especially what’s on the other side of death or birth, when I was pregnant with Shannon and Aislinn.  That was before I began to meditate or explore shamanic journeys or look beyond the physical world.  I don’t know when exactly that Shannon and Aislinn’s souls integrated into their bodies but I do believe, based on what happened with two miscarriages, that it wasn’t within the first couple of months.  That doesn’t mean that they weren’t…around.  I’ll explain that later.

In working through these issues emotionally, I shall always be boundlessly grateful to shaman Kristin Madden who shared her own metaphysical experiences during pregnancy in her book Pagan Parenting and to shaman S. Kelley Harrell.  I was fortunate enough to have Kelley share her profound insights into what I consider being a portal to allow these souls to enter this world.  I was constantly amazed at how aware Kelley was of all the nuances of pregnancy and childbirth as she experienced them herself, and I wished that I could have been that aware during my full-term pregnancies.  Maybe it’s because she became a mother later in life than I did, but I tend to think it’s because she’s one of those highly sensitive people who understand the spirit realm in ways that most people never know exists.  The unusual things I experienced with my last two miscarriages, after I’d become much more aware myself, seem to be fairly common among other shamans I’ve spoken with, but other than a strange tale my mother always told me, I’ve rarely heard anyone who doesn’t have a specific gift for such things talk about it.

The spooky stuff:

I grew up hearing my mom tell the story of how,  before I was born, she saw me in the processing plant where she was working at the conveyor belt.  She saw the little girl coming toward her and was upset that a child was in such a dangerous place alone.  Except that as the child neared, the little girl disappeared.  She wasn’t in the physical realm.  That child was me, and I do recall being about that age when I visited my grandmother at the processing plant with my mom.

My dis-incarnate children, at least for the last two miscarriages, did not come to me as children.  Not at all.  They came as adults. The first time, I was not as developed spiritually and the effects weren’t as pronounced, but holy crap, this last time was…breath-taking!

I have had this happen to me only twice in my life since I became spiritually aware, and both times, I was newly pregnant and didn’t know yet.   Both times, until I figured it out, it scared the daylights out of me.  This has otherwise not been a normal occurrence for me.  I’ve had a lot of strange things happen in my life–things that qualify as “high woo-woo”–even early in my life when I was a devout Christian.  The miscarriage experiences have an entirely different texture from anything else I’ve experienced or observed.

The first time, it was a man of about 25.  No more.   He was tall, wiry, with brown hair to his shoulders and much like mine.  Other than that, he looked like his father.  I refer to  him as “Dagan” because I felt he should have a name.  The first time I saw him, he was in the periphery of my vision but not there when I turned.  He was close, as though I could reach out and touch him.  Here’s where I feel I’m writing science fiction:  he was somewhat…transparent.  If you’ve seen movies where people fade slowly from reality until you can see through them or if you’ve played with PhotoShop and reduced the color on a background to, say, 20% instead of a nice solid 100%, you have an idea of how he appeared.  For a while, he was right in front of me in this way, solemn and wearing long, dark clothes, like a robe.  His presence made me anxious and he backed away for a while, keeping his distance, but appearing in my dreams and meditations where I felt I had a little more serenity.  He talked to me sometimes in those meditations but mostly, he just watched.  At the time, I hadn’t even completed my cycle or taken a pregnancy test.  Within another few weeks, I was having tell-tale signs, and Dagan continued to hang around, always close by, even when I didn’t see the thin shade of him there.

Zena, which is what I call the woman who appeared the second time this happened, gave me a much more intense experience, but I was also more  able by then to assimilate news of anything that was paranormal in nature. She came out of the blue like a bolt of lightning. I must have been two or three days pregnant at most as I now know I’d had some implantation symptoms just as I’d had with Dagan.  Those were the only two pregnancies where I noted implantation symptoms, but then, maybe I just wasn’t paying attention before.  I called her Zena because she was very tall and somewhat fierce.  She looked much like Aislinn, except taller, very willowy, and with long hair the color of dark chocolate.  She was beautiful and appeared to be about 25.  The first time I encountered her, she was standing directly in front of me, inches away, and was as transparent as a reflection.  I had a weird feeling in my solar plexus chakra that night and had to be held to calm down enough to sleep. I didn’t, for several days, know who the woman was but was starting to suspect I knew.  She was right there in the ether in front of me.  I knew who and what she was, but I didn’t dare voice what I felt.   Her ghostly appearance and the way she was always soooooo close to me was the first of the pregnancy signs.  The others showed up a week or so later.

Negotiating the Miscarriage:

I’ve recently been introduced to several shamans (not the ones already mentioned) who talk about the deep trauma of women who chose to terminate their pregnancies for various reasons and live with deep guilt.  They help these women find peace with their decisions, but they’ve also discovered what I call the “energetic abortion” or the “negotiated miscarriage.”  They urge women who are facing untimely or unwanted pregnancies–not always the same thing–to go into a meditation and talk to the soul who wants to come through as a new baby.  By becoming pregnant, they’ve opened a doorway into our world and those souls are standing at the door and waiting for the vehicle we call our physical bodies to be ready to carry them into life.  Rather than go through the trauma of a unilateral decision and an abortion clinic, the woman talks to the unborn soul and they work out what’s best for both. The report I got back was that in most of these cases where the woman is able to communicate with the waiting soul, they experience a miscarriage, which is also known as a “spontaneous abortion,”–not to be confused with a medical or surgical abortion.  This method of soul-level negotiation, according to one source, allows women to find peace more easily with a untimely pregnancy that ended without outside interference.  I know my background in contract negotiation is showing through when I say this, but it was something agreed-to by both parties.

That’s not exactly what happened to me.

Sometimes it’s the unborn soul who re-negotiates.  And that’s when it’s terribly hard on a woman who miscarries with no insight into why, especially if she can think of a billion reasons to blame herself.  It’s hard enough when you do have insight.  I have no idea why I miscarried earlier in my life, except that Shannon wouldn’t be here now, at least not in her current form, if that baby had come to term.   It might have been Shannon’s soul in another body but it wouldn’t have been the same because I was pregnant again only four months later, to my surprise.  My circumstances had changed somewhat over those four months, and the timing and marriage were suddenly much better.

With Dagan, he showed up at a time when everything in my life was falling apart.  My husband and I were fighting all the time and I was contemplating leaving.  In fact, I never even told him I thought I was pregnant. I started to, but before I could get the words out, it was assumed to be another argument and I got cut off.  I felt too wounded then to say anything and just kept it to myself.  Then one night a month later,  tensions were high and I was so miserable.  I fell asleep and Dagan came to me in a dream.  He told me he was going to leave, that the time wasn’t right.  I agreed that the time wasn’t right but I didn’t want him to go.

“If I stay,” he told me, “you will never leave him.  You will stay here, where you’re unhappy, for me.”

I woke up bleeding.

He did, however, tell me that there would be other opportunities for me to mother him and that he might come through then.  I know I did feel his presence a few times after I got into a new relationship that failed, but eventually I let Dagan go.  I knew that soul was ready to come through and had waited for the opportunity, but without a relationship in place, the opportunity never solidified.  I do think that by now, he is in the world with some other woman as his mother, but it’s not me and never will be.  It was his choice, and we re-negotiated that sacred contract between us.

With Zena, it was different.  I was worried about how a pregnancy would affect my health at the time, but she was very much wanted and I would have welcomed her into the world, even if that meant raising her alone.  I went into a meditation to try to meet with her.  She already had a strong physical effect on me, especially in my third chakra.  I was under a lot of stress at that point, and my normally low blood pressure shot way up.  I told her in that journey to meet her, soul to soul, that I would welcome her regardless of the physical hardship but I was willing to let her go if it was for the best, if something in particular happened that would have a disturbing outcome for her.  We were both waiting to see if that would happen.  For much of the time, she was not very communicative.  She was watchful.  The last time I saw her in a meditation, the decision had been made. She was not coming through for me–her sacred contract was with her father.  It was more important for her to come through as his child for him than to come through for me.  If the pregnancy continued, she would be with me but not with him. This was about what she needed, about what he needed.  And I had to give that some room.

After the meditation, she was no longer standing in front of me.  She was no longer anywhere around me.  The next morning several of my pregnancy symptoms had abated. More the next day.  By then, I found out what we’d feared had happened, and she was gone for good.  For me, at least.  Not for him.

If I knew now….

If I were doing this all over again, say having a baby with some exciting new man in my life, I think I would definitely be more aware than ever before.  I’d also meet that waiting soul in meditation and welcome him or her and make sure there were no surprises.  I’ve made peace now with my children who never were my children.  These last two were negotiated miscarriages where we both had a say, or at least some input, into the decision to go.

I have a lot of friends who read Tarot cards–and every last one of them is pretty good at it!   Invariably, when we get together, we somehow end up drooling over the beautiful artwork of the newest deck among us and “throwing cards” for each other.  Whether we do this separately or in groups, it always turns into a brainstorming session where there are new insights to be discovered in how we’re approaching our own peculiar situations.  I’ve noticed that no matter how many different groups and how many different readings, certain trends tend to emerge.

An extremely talented psychic who uses multiple decks of cards in his readings once told me that almost every reading he does falls into one of two categories and rarely does he see anything remotely differently.  They’re either about romance/relationships or they’re about–to a lesser degree–job/money/career situations.  These seem to be the two most important questions on seekers’ minds, and I can attest to that, based on the questions and interest my articles and books on the Law of Attraction receive and what people most want to attract into their lives.

When I was married and trying to get my writing career off the ground, my questions were always about…of course…my writing career.   When I was single and trying to figure out what my heart wanted now, my questions were about romance and relationships.  That’s rather typical, I suppose, that you’re more acutely aware of what you don’t have currently but would like to achieve.  These are those “rockets of desire” that Abraham-Hicks talks about in their Law of Attraction books.  My questions for the past year have been a mix of both as I’ve tried to navigate where it is I next want to go with my career and creative work as well as feeling the pull toward partnering up in a long-term relationship

The work issue comes up occasionally for me, and the readings are always very similar:  huge shake-ups–to the core–in my Department of Defense career field but with me being in a good place.  All that turbulence around me but I’m okay, happy even, and finding more and more balance between the day job with the nice paycheck and the creative work, like here at The Spiritual Eclectic or writing novels I love.  Regardless of which friend is reading, which deck is being used, where the reading takes place, or the date of the reading, this has been the trend over the past year, but with an ever increasing smoothing out for me in terms of my own path, even though the path is jagged all around me and drops off into nothingness at times for others.

The similarities in readings related to my romantic life have been even more remarkable.  They all reflect each other well, and there are rarely any surprises, although some interesting new developments are now showing on the horizon.  Throughout the past year, the theme that has emerged prominently has been one of “romance at a distance.”   Quite accurate for this past year.  Every man in my life was either already living hundreds of miles away or living close-by but deployed/moved within a few months of our meeting.  One, a young Navy Seal demi-god named Tyler, left for a sudden new assignment two weeks after our first date, though neither of us knew it when we met.  The only local romantic interest who didn’t leave the area during the year was away on business far more than he was at home.  So the repeated readings of “romance at a distance”–a term used independently by several readers–proved to be accurate.  It was also the fluidity I needed to get me through a year of much change and regeneration when I knew I didn’t need to be in a more settled relationship.

I was sure last fall that one of my relationships was going to be going into a higher spin–and not certain which one either–when Lord Midlight read for me, looking at a six-month period that ends today.  I had met someone new and interesting over the summer and the first words out of his mouth were, “I”m back from the desert and I’m not going anywhere.”  I knew absolutely that this man was going to be in my life through the late summer and autumn months.  Lord Midlight told me, without batting an eye, that these six months would be filled with “romance at a distance” and that I’d be perfectly content with it that way.  And…I was.  The new guy had too much baggage and though I tried off and on for five months to create a good connection with him, it fizzled until there was no fizz left.  Though it was an active dating period for me and I had some grand times with consistently sweet and sexy young men, my real romantic spice was with someone who was seldom in  town.  Little things happened between us that really endeared him to me, fulfilling my feelings of a higher spin in one of my relationships. Lord Midlight and the others who’d read for me over the autumn months were all right–romance at a distance but very hot when it was in town. And, with him, though I wanted to see him more often, I really liked our relationship the way it was.

The most recent readings I’ve had have all continued to show that trend, all repeating that same phrase:  “Lots of romance coming 2010, in a big way, and solidifying later in the year but at a distance–and you’ll be perfectly content with it that way.”

They’ve all found it necessary to point out that not only will I have a fulfilling relationship that has some aspect of physical distance between us, but that I’m–gasp!–okay with it that way.  There’s always some hint of confusion that I could be content if I’m not with someone 24/7.  The readers’ own filters become obvious as they, in light of their own relationships, don’t quite understand the contented nature I could find in one at a distance.

Having this pointed out to me so frequently over the past year, and especially over the past month or so, I’ve been thinking more about it and about what I want in a relationship.  Though I’m feeling more and more of the pull toward a long-term partnership as all sorts of things line up in my astrological transits–various Juno transits and conjunctions, Juno conjunct Vertex, solar return focuses on the fourth-fifth-seventh houses, progressed chart configurations–there’s a part of me that rebels.  I realized this only last night under circumstances that might make other women feel a little lonely or upset or needy.

I was alone in my home.  My daughter was out at a photo shoot.  Of the two men I had expected to see over the weekend, one had an adverse reaction to the H1N1 flu shot and the other had an obligation to his child.  Friends I’d hoped to spend some time with were out of town. My other daughter was busily finishing a task for her psychology research lab and didn’t have time to talk.  Even my 80-year-old mom was out checking on a sick friend and wasn’t available when I called.  I was most definitely alone and going to be that way for the evening.

But instead of feeling lonely–at all–I relished my time alone, my independence, my home with its jasmine incense burning and candles flickering and the aroma of dinner cooking in the oven.  There was a very sweet feeling in my house and I was content with it.  I also cranked out a ton of creative work that I enjoyed every second of.  I took a break and sat down to dinner and a Netflix episode of Torchwood and that’s when it hit me.  If I had a man in the house full-time, he’d be playing video games or watching TV or listening to distracting music while I was working on this particular night and would expect me by his side for the evening, even it I was more enthralled with my own work.  The truth is, for as much as I like having a man in my home, I like my alone-time, too.    So I’m perfectly content with having a great time with a guy when he’s around but I’m also content when he goes off and does his own thing–his job, his creative work, his friends, his athletics–and leaves me to mine.  I also had to wonder if maybe my enjoyment of my alone-time is an energy that pushes away having a live-in mate because I’m secretly not wanting to give up that part of me again as I did for so many years when I was married with small children and two careers at the same time.

These aren’t things we’re supposed to admit to a romantic partner–”I adore you but could you please go play with your friends for a little while now and let me have some me-time?”–and my last few romantic partners became defensive no matter how sweetly or logically I put it.  It’s strange even to admit it to myself because it’s a delicate balance.  However, my Tarot-reading friends have forced me to confront this part of myself that says I must, for my own sanity, hold aside a part of myself to relish just being me and me alone.  The rest of the time, I can be deliciously emotionally merged with someone but yes, there must be a little safe-room there for me to take sanctuary in and it’s in no way a rejection of anyone I care for.  Instead, it’s an affirmation of my caring for my own SELF.

So yeah, romance?  Bring it.  And if he’s not around 24/7  to hover over me or get underfoot, well, I guess I’ll just be content about having it that way.

Can you feel psychic connections across time and space?

As in, can I connect with someone from 2 years ago or from 2 years from now? I don’t know.

I haven’t been able to, at least not much. Or have I just never really thought about what’s also known as energetic connections, empathic connections, and quantum entanglement?

I’ve connected with people in the future–their feelings, at least, and some in the past, particularly with past life work. I’ve seen intuitives do this at least 5 years in advance. So it should be a yes to this question since time isn’t really linear.

As for space, with people I’ve had deep personal psychic connections with, I’ve felt them readily (and unintentionally) as far away as Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York from here in the Florida panhandle. Somewhat in DC and the Los Angeles areas. Strongly on the other coast of Florida and in Georgia. I can often feel a friend in New York when times are rough for her, despite her happy outlook. I can frequently feel another dear one in Virginia. I’ve also felt the empathic connections as far away as Afghanistan and Iraq but didn’t have a strong connection to them at close range, so I was surprised to pick up even that, especially at that distance. It’s how I knew my friend Maverick was safe even when we lost communication for several months. I was able to reach out to him and know he was okay, though very scared. That’s definitely a huge benefit when it comes to psychic connections.

I can discern a difference in geographical coordinates, as in, if a person here is 2 miles from me and I can feel him strongly, I know when he’s away on a business or pleasure trip. I learned this when a friend moved away and I could discern terrible anxieties in him 6 hours away, though not as strongly as when he’d been upset while living here. It’s most closely explained in thinking of talking on the phone to someone down the street and getting a loud and clear voice but if he calls from London, he sounds farther away and I might get some static. If he’s crying on the phone, I can still hear him, but I can tell he’s not down the street anymore and that he’s upset.

So yes, psychic connections can be felt—though not always clearly—across time and space.

Empathy, empathic abilities, and what I call “energetic connections” (or emotional connections) between people are all about feeling what someone else is feeling. Some of us empaths, or “highly sensitive people,” have these abilities more than others, to the extent where it seems like a curse. If you’ve formed an emotional, empathy-type connection to someone who is terminally sick, mentally ill, or overstressed, the emotions can be debilitating. On the other hand, merging with a lover takes biological to chemical to alchemical thrills.

Examples of such connections:

- A mother’s intuition where she feels her baby’s pinched finger as if it were her own flesh.

- Suddenly feeling something is horribly wrong and getting a call 10 minutes later that a loved one has died.

- A High Priestess who forms a strong bond with the Initiates of her coven and can sense when one of them is in trouble—or doing quite well.

For more information on empathy and “highly sensitive people,” and for the most extensive article archive online concerning “energetic connections,” we recommend the empathy, energy, and psychic categories of this website.

I am totally in love with this artist’s work.  Please check it out.  Photo Copyright:  alicepopkorn; creative commons license.

Psychic Spying can backfire in the worst sort of way—you can not only alert the person you’re snooping on, but divulge your own deepest, darkest secrets.

Several years ago, I was at a metaphysical festival in Florida where I met various healers, intuitives, and vendors of all sorts of New Age items and services. While waiting for my daughter to return from a booth hawking fairy designs, one of the less busy psychics handed me a flyer with her resume, testimonials, rates, and—imprinted in bold letters across the top of the page—a message that said

N O    P S Y C H I C    S P Y I N G

Beneath that, she detailed how she wouldn’t check up on your romantic interest’s other, er, interests or anything that wasn’t directly related to you. She also wouldn’t snoop on your children to see if they were having underage sex or hanging out with a forbidden playmate, or if your husband was thinking of having an affair.

I laughed when I read it because I knew exactly what she meant. A shaman I talked with more recently, with my daughter present for the appointment set-up, warned me that he wouldn’t tell me the results of my daughter’s reading because she was over 18 and was entitled to her privacy. I grinned at him and explained that it had never crossed my mind: we’re already close and she tells me most everything I want to know and beyond that, I have a rather stellar intuition of my own.  A few hours later, my daughter and I shared a lengthy car ride and compared notes gleefully.

But the point on psychic spying is well-taken, and for reasons that most people don’t realize.

I don’t consider myself a psychic, though I am very intuitive and often have the knowing. No matter. I have clairvoyant friends of such high caliber that I don’t compare. However, I am an empath, and I understand how these energetic connections and psychic connections work.

The reason a psychic, shaman, empath, etc, may refuse to participate in psychic spying goes a level deeper than ethics. Some will certainly do it for the money or curiosity. Others will do it if there is a personal threat to you or it is directly related to you, such as checking to see if a potential business partner is financially responsible and will continue to be so with your money… or if the guy who just proposed has a hidden history of abuse or would begin one with you…or if a mentally unstable rival is likely to go after you with a knife. These are the same things you might find out with a good private investigator but one who has some insight into future probabilities.

But there’s another reason why many intuitives will not indulge your need for psychic spying.

When people try to connect with me through clairvoyant means, I as an empath usually not only know it but I can follow it back to them and see things about them that they’d rather keep hidden. Dark, bad things. I’ve had this happen with boyfriends’ ex-girlfriend drama queens, only to realize that the exes were far crazier than the guys had suggested. In that moment of connection, I could see how disturbed and disturbing some of these clingy young women were, including things that they’d never shared with the mutual men in our lives.

By far, the most disturbing encounter was an over-protective friend of a woman I was in business with. Our business partnership had disintegrated because we had different visions for a project, and no matter how I tried to keep it professional and calm, the woman became unstable, controlling, and abusive. It was personal to both of us, but she was far more emotionally involved and needed to blame someone for the project’s failure—that someone being me.  She was sure I’d gotten rich at her expense and couldn’t understand that our joint venture had been very costly to me financially.  That’s when her shaman friend stepped in to “help” her by paying me a little visit energetically and doing a little bit of psychic spying. The purpose was to see if I was the liar I’d been made out to be.

It felt as if the shaman friend had walked into a dark room where I stood, and that she was standing in the shadows behind me, watching to see if I would celebrate her friend’s troubles or make some motion that would betray my intentions. I was aware of her but she didn’t realize I knew she was there. I had nothing to hide, so my guard was down and I let her see—fully—that I had nothing to hide and that I’d been truthful. At that moment, it was as if all the light around me focused on her and I turned to see her, to look into her eyes. In the same instant, I saw something in her that she’d never let anyone see. I saw her deep craving for self-amputation, and I reeled unexpectedly, showing her that I’d seen, that I’d seen it all because she carried her secrets with her to try to learn mine. She fled the room.

You see, here’s how psychic spying works when the person spied upon is an empath or intuitive—and you really never know: it’s as if you look into a hand mirror to try to see me in a different part of the room without me knowing you’re looking at me. Got it? You can’t see your own face or eyes in the mirror–just me because I’m what you’re focusing on. However, all I have to do is be alerted that you’re looking at me and I can look at the mirror in your hand and I won’t see myself in it–I’ll see your face and eyes.

It’s the same with energetic connections and psychic spying. The thing about these connections is that it’s never a one-way street, not if the other person is just as talented as you are.

Whether you call it psychic abilities, clairvoyance, or intuition, most of us have it—a least to some degree. A former circle-mate of mine used to call it “the gift of knowing.” She wasn’t what I would call a gifted psychic, but she did have what she described as “flashes of knowing.”

Later, as I began to open myself up to the possibility of possessing clairvoyant talents, I also began to trust my intuition, that little voice inside that told me something was right or wrong, or that something was coming or something was leaving my life. Ironically, though I never considered myself to be psychic, I became much more so after leaving to trust my own judgment and intuition on personal matters.

I’ve been blessed to have personally known some really accurate psychics who could call up answers and insights within seconds – some of which I wanted to hear and some that I didn’t. Some gave bad information because they interpreted it through their own filters, translating the injured baby in my arms as my own rather than a relative’s. Some have been 98% accurate and with others, a single success would have been exceptional.

The best explanations I had of psychic abilities is that they are a snapshot of the energy of a situation at a particular point in time. A lot can change, though. It’s said that “A prophecy fulfilled is a prophecy failed” and that “forewarned is forearmed.” What these forecasts give is a chance to change the future to something better. The prediction that a man will die at age 37 might be a wake-up call to quit smoking two packs a day and lose 50 pounds. It’s not necessarily a done deal!

I think I best like the way Stephenie Meyer explained Alice’s psychic abilities in her bestselling Twilight vampire books. Alice could see briefly into the future, but only so far as the course ahead was certain. If the future was uncertain, then the psychic vampire couldn’t see it, but once a decision was made, she could clearly predict future events. The psychic ability was linked directly to the decision tree of the person(s) involved.

For more information on understanding and developing your own intuitive abilities, visit the category to the right for Psychic.

Visiting a psychic can be an incredibly bad thing in terms of the Law of Attraction, even if that psychic is the real deal.  Whether it’s for entertainment,  spiritual counseling, or just to talk through personal issues, a psychic advisor can help you attract what you want—or what you dread. Here’s why:

1. Psychics give you a finer focus on one possible future and helps you draw it to you, if you believe it.

It’s been said that you can prove any psychic wrong, just by focusing attention on making sure it doesn’t happen.  Both history and fiction are loaded with examples of kings who tried to prove astrologers and soothsayers wrong, even killing the messenger.  The old hag stands before the heirless king and foretells the coming of a new king, a boy born in the next year.  After the worried ruler has her executed, he then slaughters every boy born in the next year, causing  two young lovers to flee the land before her belly shows.  The baby is born in secret, only to swear to avenge his people when he becomes a man. Yeah, we’ve all heard this story.  The baby becomes a powerful man who takes the throne 20 years later.  The king’s strong focus on keeping his kingdom actually fulfills the prophecy by creating so much ill will that he is easily overthrown when the time comes.

It doesn’t matter if you see a psychic at a faire just once or if you have your favorite clairvoyant on speed dial—whatever you’re told becomes part of your subconscious associations with that idea, event, or person.  If a psychic tells you that love will elude you, that prediction is part of your new programming.  You may take her at her word and give up on romantic partnerships or you may decide to prove her wrong and alter how you interact with potential mates.   If you believe her, you will either subconsciously look for ways to make it happen or dread it so much that you bring it to you on a silver platter.

Scammer “psychics” may offer a free or cheap reading and then just happen to discover “dark forces” around a client—which can be easily removed for the low, low price of $400.  Not that some people don’t have darkness around them, but this is hogwash.  A scammer can not only take your money but also help you to attract darkness around you because the possibility of its presence is implanted into your subconscious.  Most people, if told they’re under a curse by someone who “sees all,”  will worry about it every time life goes askew.

The up side of this laser-beam focus on a particularly outcome is that a real psychic can tell you what to watch for and you may be able to change it—if you allow yourself to believe that you can.   For example, if you realize, via an intuitive counselor, that your colleagues misunderstood something you did at work, then you can take action to communicate more clearly with them and fix the problem.

2. How a psychic sees the world can affect how you create your future.

If you visit a psychic, make sure it’s one who’s positive-minded and happy.  Otherwise, everything that’s introduced to you can portend a dark and dreary future.   In Carolyn Myss’ Advanced Energy Anatomy audiobook, she rails against people who seek out psychics because of what the seekers allow into their world from a psychic.  Myss doesn’t give much respect to intuitive counselors (other than herself because, as she tells us often, she’s right so do it her way) but she does make a good point that reflects my own experiences with the mindset of others.

If a psychic advisor lives in a world that’s harsh and dark, that will be the nature of the reading.  If he or she is a well-grounded, compassionate, happy, go-with-the-flow type, then the reading will be more positive.  Each will pass on to their client exactly how they see the world.

An intuitively-gifted acquaintance of mine took a six-week course in Tarot reading and came home depressed every Wednesday after the class was over.  She learned the meanings of all the cards but only the negative meanings.  Every card indicated something terrible, and she looked for it.  Her amateur readings were dreary and depressing.  Her Tarot teacher was called out of town on an emergency shortly before Lesson #5, and a substitute was called in. The substitute was upbeat, fun, and very balanced in her readings and teachings.  The student learned that readings didn’t have to be dire and learned to look for the positive in the cards to balance the potential for negative because each Tarot card represented a whole range of manifestations.  Her outlook and the tone of her readings pivoted 180 degrees.  Suddenly the dreaded Tower Card in a reading didn’t just mean the likelihood of catastrophe but a gentler sense of regeneration, of getting through some difficulty but landing on one’s feet, rebuilding in a better way,  upgrading to a better future.

A spiritual leader once told me that if you leave a counseling session with feelings of doom, the counselor has not done his job.   The purpose of seeking advice is to get better insight into how to handle a situation, whether it’s in the present or future.  If you leave a Tarot reading or any type of counseling that involves divination and feel god-awful, do not ever taint yourself with that person again.  Even if your insights are not 100% positive, you should feel better coming out than going in because you should now feel better prepared to deal with your situation.  If you feel bad leaving, you’re far more likely to bring a negative result into your life.

3.       How a psychic interprets information can affect how you create your future.

From a psychological viewpoint, I’ve been quite fascinated with how intuitives receive and pass along information.  So much of it is in the interpretation of what they see.  Some just have a “knowing” that they cannot explain.  A feeling.  Others rely on flashes of insight, often in visual form.    Whenever speaking with intuitives who “receive” visually, I like to ask them to describe what they see rather than just telling me their interpretation.  I find that the visual is often correct—much like picking up television signals that are broadcast—but the interpretation is seriously off-kilter—much like seeing only a two-second preview of a TV show no one’s ever heard of and trying to figure out what it’s about.

For example, one particular psychic told a client that she saw the woman’s husband moving out.  This prompted the client to go home and confront her husband with all sorts of insane drama that, if it had continued, certainly might have caused the husband to move to the other side of the planet to get away from her.  Fortunately—or unfortunately?—something happened first.  The psychic had had a very clear vision of the husband, upset, carrying boxes out of the house with clear markings on them such as “Important papers—office” and “Picture frames—family room.”   He wasn’t divorcing her though.  A water pipe burst in their home and flooded two rooms, calling for a complete overhaul of that part of the house and some quick packing of what could be salvaged.  The psychic had personally experienced several relationships ending with men packing boxes and leaving, and since that was her frame of reference for the vision, she interpreted it as the break-up of the marriage.

Don’t be afraid to ask psychics how they receive their information.  Whether it’s channeled through some angel or entity, visions, or just a deep knowing, you must always take into account the source of their information and the filters they use in their interpretations.  If a psychic hesitates to share hid process, you’re left with blindly accepting his word and focusing on those possibilities—and bringing to you something that might not be the best possible future.  With the Law of Attraction, it’s easy to manifest predictions you believe in because you quickly get into the vibration of “it’s already here.”

The best way to use a psychic for your Law of Attraction work:

I’m not saying that you should avoid psychics altogether, even authentic ones.  In fact, there’s a wonderful way to use psychics to check your Law of Attraction work to see if you’re on the course you want to be on, or, in Law of Attraction lingo, to see if you’re vibrating at the frequency of what you desire.  This can help you uncover hidden hindrances.

When a real psychic looks into your life, he or she is looking at an energetic snapshot of that moment in time.  This doesn’t mean that it will definitely happen that way.  It’s a heading check for what you are bringing into your life or have brought into your life already.   If a real psychic sees relationship problems on the horizon, it’s an opportunity to adjust your own mindset so that you can bring something more positive into your life.  When a friend of mine used to read for me about once a month, every reading had the Tower Card in it.  Month after month after month.  She was dumbfounded because no one else she worked with had more Tower Cards than I did.  But emotionally, that’s where I was and what I was manifesting—hardship I could steel myself for and rebound from because I was strong.  I made a conscious decision to bring positive, healthy, happy relationships into my life and the Tower Cards disappeared from my readings.  I got in to that mindset, that vibration, of feel-good relationships.  Instead of monthly disaster, I started seeing lots of 2 of cups, 4 of wands, 10 of pentacles, and 10 of cups showing up in reading after reading.  For me, it was confirmation that I’d made the mental shift to a better place and from there, I could manifest those happier relationships rather than all that Tower Card drama.

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I believe in coincidences. And they believe in me.

I don’t believe they happen randomly, so I guess you could say that I don’t believe in them in that sense. Instead, I believe in them as messages and patterns. Or, if you will, gifts from the Gods.  They are the road signs for the future.

Coincidences have always fascinated me. It’s those weird little synchronicities like looking at a specific and unusual word in a magazine article at the same instant you hear someone on TV say that word on a channel you rarely watch. Or having a dream about someone you haven’t thought of in 15 years and the next morning, over breakfast, you run into a mutual friend with news of him–and when you return home, you find he’s friended you on Facebook.  A few nights ago, while watching 500 Days of Summer a second time with my daughters, I loved Zooey Deschanel’s character’s musing about how she met her ideal man through a wild coincidence that might have been avoided if she’d been anywhere else on the planet at that moment.

Deepak Chopra’s new book, Reinventing the Body, Resurrecting the Soul:  How to Create a New You, suggests that coincidences should be given strong attention because they are the Universe’s way of helping us get onto the right path or even to change course. This is where my “Three Data Points” process comes into play.

In the late 1990’s, I had a supervisor who wasn’t exactly fast about reacting to anything and even less so about being proactive. I could tell him that there was a critical issue with a certain contract and he’d just nod and tell me he’d take my input into consideration. Then a colleague would run to him soon after, same problem, and he’d do no more than listen and “consider” the problem. Finally, if a third person brought the problem to his attention, he might take some action because, he told me near the end of our association, it wasn’t just one person’s reaction to an event or person. He needed to see a pattern before he could act.

It took a long time to get work accomplished with him because he always needed to see more data before the problem became “real.”  He wouldn’t even consider a solution until he was was done considering the problem.  Thankfully, we never had a fire break out with only one of us shouting a warning at him or he’d still be waiting for

1. A fire alarm, (data point #2)

2. The smell of smoke,  (data point #3) and possibly

3. The actual flames lapping at his feet.  (data point #4)

As frustrating as his “Three Data Points” decision-making process was, I’ve come to apply it to coincidences. I’m too likely–and too busy–with Life to notice odd occurrences sometimes, but if there’s a pattern, I’ll move on it.

If something is called to my attention three times or more in a very short period, I perk up and take notice. That’s when I start to ask myself if there’s something there I should act on. Usually, there is.

We all look for signs, yes, and our minds selectively filter what we are focusing on, even if the focus is subconscious. Anything and everything can become a sign to go right, go left, or go down the middle–or turn back. It’s already there, programmed into us, but we need help recognizing it and finding our way. Coincidences are those road signs.

I’ve almost always had great luck with checking out patterns of coincidences and turning my life in that direction. Some amazing people and projects have come into my life because several people mentioned them to me within a few day’s time.

My best example–and the first time I really understood the value of patterns of coincidence as a spiritual message for my life path–was when I finally received healing for my back injury 27 months of excruciating pain later. I had obeyed the Worker’s Comp people and not tried a chiropractor while neurologists and classical physicians couldn’t diagnose the problem–and most of my doctors (at that time, Worker’s Comp) never took the proper X-rays that uncovered the source of the pain. Meanwhile, my injury had healed but my body was contorted for so long to deal with the pain that my face, arms, and back would often go numb if I moved in a certain way. I followed the “rules” for all those months and was pigeon-holed and abandoned by the medical and legal system I tried to work within in order to get help and stay gainfully employed.

In the midst of my pain and frustration, when I was walking with a cane and could not even carry my own light tote bag on a business trip, one of my fellow passengers said, “Have you ever seen Dr. Johnson? The chiropractor in Niceville? He really helped me when I hurt my back.” Okay, data point #1. No big deal. Just a simple question.

Then, a few hours later, a stranger in the grocery store saw my pained expression and how hard I was leaning on my cart to keep from hurting. “I go to a chiropractor in Niceville,” she said. “Dr. Johnson. He’s great and doesn’t keep you in chiropractic care for the rest of your life.”

Hmmm. That sounded familiar. Data point #2. Just an innocent and helpful comment. Geez, I thought, I wish those morons at the Department of Labor would approve me to see a chiropractor but I don’t want them to drop my case if I go against their warnings to follow their rules or else be deemed a fraud. If I knew they wouldn’t invalidate my case, as they’ve suggested, I’d go see Dr. Johnson today and see if he can help.

Not an hour later, I was at the pharmacy, nearly dead on my feet and tears in my eyes because I just…hurt…so much. A safety technician from work was within earshot, talking about a fishing conversation he’d had with his good buddy. Yeah. Dr. Johnson. The same Dr. Johnson I’d heard about twice within the previous few hours’ time.

Data point #3. I took it as a sign from the Gods, and by four o’clock, I was in the chiropractor’s office, having X-rays made that were more extensive than any of the previous ones taken by begrudging and hard-to-find doctors certified to accept teensy payments for a Worker’s Comp patient with a back injury.  It took him 5 minutes to tell me what was wrong–and I burst into tears at being believed.  The next business day, he realigned my contorted back, and the pain disappeared instantly.  It took another 30 days of adjustments several times a week and about three months of re-building and re-shaping the muscles in my back to hold my new form, but I was healed.

Just that quickly.  If I hadn’t recognized that odd pattern  of  messages to see a specific chiropractor and taken action, who knows where I’d be today?  I’m productive and active now, but my path would have been quite different if I’d failed to see the road signs leading me to someone who could help.

These days, my intuition leads me, like a light shining on the path ahead, but every now and then, if I’m not paying that much attention, a series of what would seem to be coincidences will redirect me to an even better and smoother road.

Yep, I believe in psychics. Definitely.  I’ve had enough of my own otherwise inexplicable coincidences,  and several of my church members, friends, and colleagues have “the sight” with a high degree of accuracy.  I’m not talking about “Oh, a man’s coming into your life and it may be romantic or just friends and he may have brownish or blondish hair and I think his name might begin with a J or maybe an M or, well, it could be a T or an S, and I think you may already know him. Does that sound familiar?”  By accurate, I mean something more akin to this:  “There’s a major new romance coming into your life in exactly 18 months.   He’s extremely tall and muscular, dresses like Paul Bunyan, and can always make you laugh, no matter what.   There’s a small child in his life but he doesn’t live with her–she may be a niece or god-daughter.  He’s been out of his last committed relationship for [time period] when you first meet.  Likes boots and belt buckles and wears flannel plaid shirts sometimes.  He was born on _____.  Oh, yeah, and his first name is _____.”    Nothing like a psychic who’s good and gives you specifics!

Unfortunately, you may not be asking for those specifics–or about potential relationships.  Or what if you’re happy in your current relationship and not looking for a new one?  How would you feel about an accurate psychic stirring up your emotions with projections of that sort?  What if you didn’t ask at all, but just got a load of upsetting possible futures dumped on you by a stranger?

I’m all for people nurturing their talents, especially metaphysical talents, but there’s a type of arrogance that some gifted psychics have that can cause great harm.  It’s not even meant to cause harm and the psychic usually doesn’t consider himself or herself full of ego.  In fact, it’s often the opposite.  It’s a firm belief that possession of a psychic gift means they’re on a mission to deliver whatever message they’re given by their Gods, angels, spirits, etc.  It’s often done with pure intentions, and because it is,  the psychic often will not take responsibility for the damage that’s done.  “It’s in God’s hands,” he’ll say.  Or, “I’m just the messenger.”  Or, “If I’m not supposed to deliver the message, I won’t see it in the first place.”

Over the years, I’ve parted company with several friends who were gifted intuitives–and some who were not–for this very reason.  Unsolicited or ill-delivered psychic advice.  One of the most painful pre-parting messages was, in the long run, 100% accurate in the seeing of it, but the message was delivered 3 years too early, and caused a lot of destruction, largely because the psychic was told specifically to stay out of it.  Another was 100% accurate, also, in the seeing of it but misinterpreted the reason for the events, and again…she was specifically told to stay out of it.  Once said, some words will always stick with you, eat at you, but nothing like the unsolicited advice of someone who frequently sees the future and can’t keep it to themselves.

One of the first times I was exposed to author Carolyn Myss’ work, it was probably close to ten years ago.  She’d spoken in a workshop or interview about how gifted intuitives needed to–pardon the paraphrasing–mind their own business and not go spewing advice to strangers without knowing how it would affect that stranger.  I took it then as a matter of being responsible with such a gift.  One of my intuitive friends was critical of Myss’  comments, saying that if the gift is from God, then the psychic has a mission to tell that person, no matter the results.

A lot of time has passed since then, and I’ve come to agree with Myss.   It’s bad enough getting too much advice from friends and family and even strangers when you’re trying to get back on your feet emotionally after a difficult couple of decades, but when those friends, family,and strangers are psychic and their advice becomes an emotional rollercoaster of negative possibilities you hadn’t considered, the best you can do is hide in a cave and not answer your cell phone when they call to tell you about their latest dream what might make you unhappy.

So for those of you are truly are gifted, I am pleased that you’ve been blessed (or–I suppose–cursed, depending on how you look at it) and that you have this inner guidance to give yourself and to those who ask.  But please, let us ask for it instead of shaping our reality without being invited to participate in the process.  Don’t just grab a stranger off the street and blab what you see when you have no frame of reference for it.  We may prefer to work through the process alone without your interference, and if God really wants us to know the message we don’t want to hear or don’t want to hear from you, then the message will find us without you.  You are, after all, one of many conduits and the best conduit is our own intuition.

Super sensitive. That’s what I am. I’m still trying to assimilate the weirdness (thus far) from yesterday’s eclipse, August 5, 2009. I had some strange physical effects, and it felt like the veil between the worlds was thinner than ever yesterday. In fact, I know it was, based on what happened late in the evening.

Physically, my senses were…MORE

Photo by  Northeast Photography; creative commons license

There’s an edginess that’s been in the air for the past couple of hours.  It’s the kind of feeling you get after a fight with a lover or when a dream just got deferred. I can’t pin it down but it’s been intense.  Weighty.  It’s nothing new…but I wasn’t expecting to have it interrupt my pleasant evening.  Someone else’s feelings, that is.

This makes me wonder how many people suffer from depression because they’re so highly sensitive to the emotions of others.  This isn’t like that horrid feeling when Shannon, Brian, and I walked past the meat market, er, I mean bar, in the restaurant a week ago and Brian and I both went, “Ewwwww, what’s that feeling?” at the same time.  It’s always gratifying to be in the company of other empaths who pick up emotions at the same instant I do.  It’s a blessing to have others like that around, really.  They totally get it when you say, “Hey, who just had an emo moment?”

Tonight’s wash of emotions happened fairly suddenly, and I don’t feel thye’re  ”mine.”  I’m going through my usual checklist, and hey, good health habits make it easier to isolate!  It’s even better when the feeling goes away, often rather suddenly and inexplicably.  Except for not knowing WTF just happened.

Here’s my empath’s checklist, applied to this particular instance:

1.  Why am I feeling this way?  Did this wave of emotion come on out of the blue, almost like turning on a lightswitch?
I have no clue why I’m feeling such sadness and upset.  It came on suddenly in the middle of a pleasant evening.  I didn’t just have a fight with anyone or receive bad news, yet I certainly feel the effects as if I had.

2. Did something happen to trigger this wave of upsetting emotion?
No.  I’ve been on an even keel all day at work, even with people having meltdowns all around me.  I’d had plans to do some decorating projects tonight, and I was looking forward to that after watching a movie.   I’ve also had time to watch a movie I’d been dying to see and liked a lot.  There were no incidents that happened right before  the emotional wave.

3.  Am I well-rested?
Yes.  Sometimes lack of sleep will have an emotional impact, but I slept well last night and spent half an hour in meditation tonight.  The latter might be a clue, though, because  during my meditation, I felt very connected to a friend of mine who’s having family problems.

4.  Is my blood sugar out of whack?
No.  Sometimes, fluctuations in my blood sugar will make me either antsy or down but I can usually associate that with particular eating habits and know what to expect.  So far this year, my diet has been very healthy and I’m giving my body what it needs.  Also, the timing isn’t right for any type of “sugar crash,” even if I’d been less mindful of my diet.

5.  Are my hormones out of whack?
Hmmm, well, I am feeling the need for some male company, but no, no raging hormones.  I’m on a new prescription after an abominable time with the last two consecutive prescriptions but I’ve been on it enough days that I’m rather sure I’m not suffering a sudden new side effect. (Being a human antennae for emotions isn’t on the packaging!)

6.  Is there something in my environment that I’m hearing, smelling, seeing that has triggered these feelings?
No.  That includes any annoying noises or flickering lights.

7.  Is there something going on in my immediate environment that’s emotional turmoil for someone else?
No.  In fact, this started before my daughter came home from work cheerful and continued afterward.   I was home alone in a pleasant atmosphere.  There was no tension in the house and no upset with my daughter.

8.  What was my day like overall–before the wave of emotions?
Overall, good.  Pleasant interactions with everyone around me.  Good news on many fronts.  Some financial relief in one area.  A great workout.  Some interesting new things I learned.  A very solid, though busy, day.

9.  Are my stars out of whack?
Whether you believe in astrology or not, I sometimes find that personal astrology chart is facing some harsher transits.  In this case,  I’m actually supposed to be under some very, very pleasant influences this week with lots of good and positive emotions.

10.  Is this the usual pattern for my mood changes?
No. I can get into a mood and stay there for two or three days, whether it’s blissful, sad, anxious, or whatever. My moods don’t swing every 15 minutes–if they do, I know for certain that I’m being influenced by someone else’s emotions, usually someone who’s ADHD, bless ‘em.  In this case, the emotional wave lasted about two hours and crested, then faded as if someone had fallen asleep or escaped into some mindless pastime.

11.  Do I have loved ones who are having obvious–or not obvious–difficulties that might be related to this wave of emotions?
Yes.  I do.  At this point, I’m usually either calling them or checking in on them when I can.  Some aren’t always available.  And some will lie to me that everything’s just hunky-dory so they don’t worry me, but I’ll find out later how upset they were.

12.  Are there certain words or phrases that come to mind with these feelings but seem unusual for me?
When I first realized I was empathic, I had been talking for hours to a suicidal acquaintance.  When my emotions crashed that night and over the next couple of days, I found myself thinking thoughts that were phrased in a particular way that wasn’t anything like me, at all.  When I figured out where I’d heard those phrases before, I figured out that I’d taken my work home with me, in the worst way possible.  IN this case tonight, I am getting certain words, glimpses almost, that give me clues to the identity of my troubled loved one.

13.  Am I overreacting?
This is where it helps to have a good friend who understands I’m an empath.  She knows that if I don’t seem like myself that she should call my attention to it.   I’ve been through a lot of loss in my life, including relationships I didn’t want to see go, but back in October, she saw me fall to my knees sobbing at a professional conference of 200 of my esteemed colleagues and got me out of there.  To me, I couldn’t separate my sense of loss from breathing and lost all perspective.  She got me out of there and started quizzing me, then it became obvious to me that I was going through not only my own mourning for a loss but feeling the raw emotions of the other people involved in the situation.    Though I’d been through much worse in my life, the double and triple wallop of emotions was more than I could take.

After running quickly through my checklist, I can usually figure out that these emotions aren’t mine but ones I’ve picked up from someone I care deeply about. Often, I’ll be on the phone, running through my list of loved ones and calling them just to see if they’re all right.  Almost always, if I can reach everyone I think it might be, I find the culprit.  Once I realize not only that the empathic wave isn’t mine and especially if I know whose emotions I’m picking up, then I can usually release it and get back to my pleasant life already in progress.

Around the riverbend, life is sometimes pretty amazing.

Photo by Chan Worley, Copyright all rights reserved. Used with permission.

Inexplicably, things suddenly seem shinier than they have in previous years.  Given the state of the world at the moment—and the state of my current social trend toward being, well, unsociable after several of my dearest ones had to move away—I had thought this would have been a darker time.  Instead, two weeks before the longest night of the year and the seasonal and spiritual celebrations of Winter Solstice, it feels as if the Light is returning already.  And yes, I’m really shocked, but pleasantly so!

My meditations have been noticeably different in the past few days. The Full Moon meditation (see link) startled me when I found sparkling sunshine all around me, especially after the previous two painful meditations and even more painful outcome.  In my private, regular meditations in my “Enchanted Forest,”  as of this week, it’s become a beautiful enchanted forest FORTRESS.  Last night, the venue was dark, a gentle and warmish night-time in the forest halls, with winter’s leaves on the ground and candles…oh, candles of all sorts!  Tall, short, pillar candles, tea lights.  All white. All burning brightly.  All lining either side of the forest halls and sparkling back with romance and charm.  It reminded me almost of my back patio with its sparkling Christmas lights outlining the edges.  Though my Enchanted Forest is always a beautiful and safe place, it had been decorated especially for me, like a surprise.  And it was a very joyful place to be, even when I’ve been there a couple of weeks ago and found it dark and cold, so that I quickly lit bonfires and found a hurting friend sitting, shivering in wait for me.  This was as opposite as it could have been—flickering, sweet lights—and the sacredness of the closeness I felt in that moment was tangible.

At the same time, my themes for the next year are beginning to gel.  Re-purposing is a huge part of the next year for me. I’ve looked at it in the past as re-formatting or re-packaging and gotten a good start on it but with new technologies and new markets, my guidance tells me it’s much more than that.  It is finding a new purpose for the things I already know and have, a higher manifestation of where I’ve been.  This isn’t just finding a new market for an old product or service but rather, a new incarnation that will be freer for me.

I think that I must have enough material in inventory that I would not have to create anything new for the next year and could still be as busy as I could ever desire to be.  Worst case,  I could produce about 10% of new material and fling out new creations to new audiences for reasons very different from in their previous lives.  I have one project alone that I created 12 years ago for a free workshop I did for a tiny professional audience.  The information is still valid, still timely…at least 80% of it anyway. Maybe more with a little re-writing.  That 80% equates to about 8, maybe 10, different projects in different formats for different audiences.  Online workshops, ebooks, DVD’s, audio files, and e-courses are all very real possibilities.  Out of ONE project that’s been on a shelf for most of the past decade.  The material is done—it’s just a matter of some tweaking and applying current technology to its distribution! And that’s just one example.

Another is the material I put together for my monthly gatherings.  I have a rather unique spin what I teach, and there’s no reason it can’t be re-purposed into projects for other audiences.  The work is done, regardless.  So why just put that work on a shelf and ignore that additional good things it can do?

But it’s not just the work itself that I’ve done and now need to give a good push and go reap the rewards.  No, it’s also the work I’ve done on MYSELF that I need to now recognize and go reap the rewards.

And that’s a very nice Yule present from me to…me.

Pausing on the beach on Thanksgiving Day, Grayton Beach, Florida, (c2008, by Shannon Bailey) …

(see second photo below)

This is a Powerful Pause. I’ve been paying attention to my intuition for several years now, and sometimes I’m able to step aside and take a look at what I “know” is coming as opposed to what I wish would come.    Whether you call it the ebb and flow of life or a matter of pause and action, these are definitely patterns to pay attention to, and right now, for me, I am once again in a state that I call a “Powerful Pause.”

About a year ago, I had inklings…knowings…of some of the things that were to come.  It was like being in the middle of a huge sense of preparation in all areas of my life but quite a bit in the social/romantic sector.  There were moments when I had flashes of a man in my house, living with me in a wonderful and pleasurable relationship that I could hardly imagine, but they were humorous flashes of insight, too.  Like fussing over the towels for the shower.  Just mundane daily activities that were magically happy in each moment.   There were times  of walking  the path down by the marsh where the fireflies glow and the falling stars fill the night sky, and I felt a man’s arms wrapped around me, watching the twilight on the waters of the Bay.

But none of this was happening in my daily life back then. I was busy with work, family, friends, creative projects.  Tremendously busy.  And then I had an urgent sense of needing to prepare my nest which I calmed with summer repair projects and re-construction that desperately needed to be done.  It was a sense of “prep time!”  and pausing to get everything ready for a new stage of my life.  I feel as if I got a really good taste of that new phase of activity and intensity before it retrograded back into another phase of preparation.  Almost like the Gods said, “This is how good it can be.”

So now I am again in a state of a Powerful Pause.  I am refusing to see this time as bad, non-productive, or terrible. 

Thank you for reading!  The complete version of this article is now included in Give Your Life Direction.

Photo by stitch; creative commons license.

If you’re looking for a sign, this is it.

How many of us are torn—or think we are—about a direction to take, and so we look for “signs” that will push us in one direction or the other?  We already know the answer but either don’t trust our intuition or want to ignore it because it’s not what we want to hear.  So we look for signs.

Signs can be anything. I’ve sent a email that I had serious doubts about sending, knew not to send it, but felt that logically I had to do it.   When the email bounced back to me—dot cum is not the appropriate suffix!—I took it as a sign that I wasn’t to send it and didn’t pursue the matter further.  A few days later, I found out that the intended recipient would have used the message against someone else in a devastating way.

I’ve taken long drives, just praying for some guidance about whether I should proceed with a divorce, and turned on the radio to hear Sheryl Crow singing “A change would do you good!”  I took it as a sign.  It wasn’t that a major life-changing decision hinged on whichever song happened to be on the radio at the time, but it was a sort of confirmation for what I already knew.  That was a ….

Thanks for reading!  The complete version of this article is now included in The Long-Awaited, Honest-to-God Secret to Being Happy.