Copyrighted by Lorna Tedder. Originally published in Life in the Third Degree.
I love watching paradoxical time-travel movies where there’s an established timeline and one slip can change the whole future…or keep it from happening. Living that kind of paradox, however, is no fun at all.
I have a psychic friend, Mark, and I really hate to call him a “psychic friend” because of the fraudulent connotation that term has. Actually, I have quite a few psychic friends, but I’ve learned to appreciate this one for his dead-on talents and his work with angels. I’ve met a surprising number of earnest but ungifted “psychics” as well, plus even more who are downright frauds.
Over the past few years, I’ve attended spiritual gatherings, which usually have genuine clairvoyant talent, and I’ve wandered through metaphysical and psychic fairs, which tend to have well-meaning intuitives who are hit-and-miss.
“Can I practice reading you?” one such newbie asked me last fall. He had a kind face and I’m intuitive enough myself to know that he really wanted to impress me and do a good job for me. And that he needed the practice.
“Sure. I’m going through a divorce, so maybe you can tell me something I don’t already know.” I let down my guard so he could read me.
He closed his eyes and concentrated. “Ah, I’m seeing that your marriage has ended and you’re trying to figure out a way to get back together with him.”
I think my silence was jarring. “Er, no, not really.”
He proceeded to tell me how long the divorce proceedings would drag on, what issues would be brought up in court, and which church I needed to attend to make a good impression on the judge. My ex and I settled two weeks later, with none of the predictions coming true…fortunately. Actually, of all the predictions he made, 0% have come true. But maybe he’s a psychic in reverse….
Being around people who consider themselves to be psychic gives me a real appreciation for those who are indeed psychic. Like Mark. I’ve read that a “good psychic” is about 80% accurate, but with Mark and his predictions for me, it’s closer to 98%.
He’s read me periodically since 2002, so I’ve learned where that 2% discrepancy comes in. For me, at least. His connection to other people may be different.
One is if he tells me there’ll be a death. The first time I heard this from him, I panicked and spent a lot of time with a particular family friend so that I could enjoy the time I had left with her. She didn’t die within the time frame Mark gave me, and I was relieved. But about six months after the end of the time frame, an incident happened that shocked me, and I could not have imagined such a thing would be revealed to me about her true character. I’ve not said more than a dozen words to her since. I later learned that the way Mark sees death in my environment is not necessarily as a physical death but even more likely as an emotional death. My family friend is dead to me, and I mourn her loss, but there’s no going back.
The other area where there’s room for discrepancy in my readings is with time frames. In 2002, I was preparing for an interview for a promotion in my office. I asked Mark about my job, and he responded enthusiastically, “You’re outta there!”
I was dumbfounded. I didn’t want to be “outta there.” I wanted the promotion. I started but-but-but-ing with Mark and told him about the big opportunity in my office and how it was virtually guaranteed, and he said again, “Sorry, but you’re already gone.”
Two months later, the promotion for the job I was already doing went to someone else. I was devastated, especially since I’d be expected to train my new boss. Within another two months, I was promoted into a job in another office, an atmosphere that was infinitely more nurturing and very kind to me during my marital woes. Yet for the way Mark saw my future, something that wouldn’t happen for another four months had come and gone, and been gone.
The same was true again and again in Mark’s readings of me. Events he saw as happening within a few months came to pass exactly as he predicted, but a year later. Heh. Maybe I live too fast or too slowly.
But Mark always emphasized that I had a choice, especially when we discussed my divorce proceedings a month after I’d filed. My ex was on his best behavior at the time and I was having second thoughts. It’s very seductive to think that maybe things can work out, after all. Mark told me what he saw, depending on which course of action I took, but that I always had a choice and that I could determine the outcome. I decided to wait and see what happened with the attempts to work out some issues, but not stop any of the legal proceedings. The cease fire failed shortly thereafter, and I guess I was glad I hadn’t stopped the proceedings.
Mark told me a number of other things about my future—including detailed information on names, events, projects, and places that could never be mere guesswork—some of which have already come to fruition or are coming true now, but in one area, it’s become the subject of an argument among some of my friends, who are Christian, Wiccan, and Buddhist. Since these are my female friends, it is, of course, the fact that Mark saw me five years into the future with a new man and a new life and everything working out so well on so many levels. He gave me specifics of that relationship without telling me who the man is. This revelation and how I get to it has become the subject of heated discussion. Uncomfortably so.
Jean passes along some advice that bolsters solitary evenings: “There is a Divine design for your romantic life; all you have to do is show up.”
“Cool,” I tell her. “So is showing up the same thing as stalking someone?”
Vicki tells me to be happy with myself (I am) and that will rub off on whomever I meet, but that I don’t need to sit still and wait for life to come to me.
Terri, on the other hand, cautions me to “let things unfold naturally.” She worries that doing anything spiritual to find this man will be a violation of ethics.
Not that I’m planning to make a poppet of this guy, mind you.
She cautions against prayer as well because prayer does have power. She thinks I should stay home, avoid seeking romance, and let him come find me when the time is right.
(I have this image of guy parachuting through my roof by accident while I’m at my computer, working on a romance novel. I look up from desk at his legs hanging out of the ceiling and say, “Where have you been all my life?”)
But according to Terri, anything other than being passive is my forcing my will on someone else and not the “natural” state of things.
This makes me wonder if there’s any particular reason that Terri hasn’t had a date since 1988.
The problem is not whether I take any action myself, but that I have been told the future. In a time-travel movie, the dauntless heroine would now be daunted. Does she, knowing what’s to happen in the timeline ahead, take action with the knowledge that taking that action might change the future? Or was the future shown her dependent upon her taking such an action?
Mark also told me that my writing/publishing career was about to take off but that it wouldn’t happen until after my divorce was final. Now, if I let that unfold “naturally” and do nothing, I really don’t think publishers will be beating down my front door with major contract offers when they don’t know I’m here. No, I have to take action. I have to let it be known that I’m writing again. I have to prepare and submit proposals. I have to be proactive instead of passive. If I’m given the talent and ability to make things happen, then isn’t that a failure to live if I don’t use those talents and abilities?
If our daunted heroine didn’t know the future, how would things unfold naturally for her? Wouldn’t she naturally do something, make something happen, take action? Since when did “letting things unfold naturally” equate to being passive about your life?
I’d like to think that in my own life’s story, I’ll be the action/adventure heroine who makes the future happen and loves every minute of the outcome. Because once the future becomes the past, there’ll be nothing I can do to change it.
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