In the beginning, Maggie was frustrated. The distracting dialogue in her mind was unrelenting. Whatever intuitive impulses she had were so faint that she could barely make them out. This is common for many of us. Our intellects have often been developed at a great expense: the annihilation of our instincts. To recover them, we must learn to listen in a keener way.
The power Maggie's altar held, and the dedication with which she approached it, made it an effective tool for change. Slowly, Maggie's intuition began to surface, at first small knowings, then larger ones. If she became confused, or slipped into old patterns with her boyfriend, she returned to her altar to consult her intuitive voice, just as she would a close friend. When she did, it told her the truth about things. It taught her to listen. It taught her to see.
If an altar appeals to you, it's an ideal way to create a peaceful environment in your home where you can meditate. Just knowing that you have a special place all your own, where you can be yourself without pretense or fear, can be amazingly reassuring. It provides a backup when everything else in life may be falling apart. Your altar can be a place of return: to your prescience, your inner knowledge, your mystical nature. It restores a sense of the sacred, propels your psychic quest. A concrete, practical step available to us all, an altar can be a reminder of the sublime, an honoring of the great mystery.
Maggie is an example of someone who was curious about the psychic. Jeff, however, came to me in a great deal of fear. He had always considered himself an intuitive person, but recently he had made two accurate psychic predictions that had badly shaken him.
On one occasion, he dreamed that his sister had fallen seriously ill. Since he knew that her health was excellent, however, he didn't pay any attention to the dream. A week later, jogging in the park, she had a sudden heart attack and nearly died. Shortly after this, Jeff had a clear premonition that a close friend who was in financial trouble would lose his job. Within a month, the friend was unemployed. Foreseeing these events frightened Jeff, made him feel out of control. He was at his wits' end: He had never wanted to be psychic. Why was he making these predictions now?
I met with Jeff, hoping to pinpoint what might have set them off. He walked in visibly shaken, a painfully polite, articulate businessman, impeccably dressed in a suit and tie. Everything about him cried out order: shoes shined to a T, hair blow-dried, not a strand out of place, a cellular phone and appointment book securely fastened in a brown leather satchel. He was organized—perhaps too well.
I found out he was a member of the Self-Realization Fellowship, a nondenominational church in the Pacific Palisades. Every Sunday, he and his wife would attend early morning services and then take a stroll around the parklike grounds. But over the past three months, their routine had changed. Instead of their walk, they stayed on for a two-hour group meditation in the main chapel. Each of Jeff's predictions had happened the next day. Jeff had never meditated before, let alone for such a long period of time; it was the obvious trigger. He had opened up too fast. Without intending to, by stilling his mind Jeff had become more psychically receptive.
He was unprepared for this shift, finding any sort of change difficult. Obviously alarmed, he asked, “Why did I predict such upsetting things?”
I recalled my own experiences as a child, how distraught I had been about my early negative predictions, the heartache my mother went through. When not put in the proper context, seeming to come out of nowhere, prescience can be hard to assimilate. That's where I wanted to help—to dispel Jeff's fears, just as Thelma and Stephan had done for me.
“Many beginning psychics feel exactly as you do,” I said. “Disasters, deaths, and traumatic events are simply easier to pick up. It doesn't mean you're a bad person or there's something wrong. Crises of all kinds carry a stronger emotional charge and therefore transmit a louder psychic signal.”
If only I had known this before, so much of my confusion might have been avoided. It was a lesson hard learned, a fact basic to psychic growth, information we can pass on to one another. There's no reason to take this psychic journey alone. We can benefit from our shared knowledge, form a network, so no one needs to feel isolated anymore.
“Negative predictions come with the territory,” I continued. “That's why children or new psychics are more likely to pick up a head-on freeway collision with bodies strewn all over the road than to see the same car arriving safely at its destination. The same principle is true of appreciating the nuances of an intricate piece of music. To the untrained ear, the most dramatic aspects are what stand out. But eventually we can perceive an undercurrent of tones indistinguishable before.”
No matter how logical or reassuring this sounded to me, Jeff didn't look consoled. He didn't want any part of being psychic. He considered it an unwelcome responsibility. A creature of habit, he preferred what was already known and comfortable.
“If all my premonitions were positive,” Jeff ventured, “it might be okay. Then they'd be easier to accept. But knowing about crises before they happen, particularly with people I love…no, that's not for me. It's much too painful. Even if I could warn them, I wouldn't want to be in that position.”
Jeff was a private person, and he didn't like interfering with other people's affairs. Without the option to choose what he would or wouldn't see, for the time being he gave up meditating, and his premonitions ceased.
I had to respect Jeff's decision. He recognized his limitations and stuck to them. Nonetheless, I couldn't help feeling let down, as if I'd watched a space shuttle launched into the heavens and then seen it forced to turn back because of lack of fuel. Even so, I had to be careful not to become a cheerleader. My fear of the psychic was behind me: I had earned the advantage of hindsight, had already reaped the rewards of this path and wanted to share them. But Jeff wasn't interested. Clearly, pursuing the psychic is not for everyone.
I have a friend, a stunning blond in her early seventies, a fearless adventurer and world traveler, always wanting to try something new. Although curious about the psychic, she had never felt a real need for it. Still, not wanting to miss out on anything, she once asked me over a Thai dinner, “Do you think I should learn to be psychic, too?” I smiled, knowing that this question was only her way of trying to please me.
I laughed. “No,” I said, “unless you really want to, there's nothing to gain. It's never right to force it.” She looked relieved, and we continued our meal. I had let her off the hook.
Even if you have a desire to be psychic, the path may not always be clear. That's only natural. Difficulties can arise, but fear can be the greatest obstacle—of being called crazy, of getting out of control, of being misunderstood, of being wrong. Fear is insidious, but we can't let it stop us. Our society conditions us to be scared of the psychic. If we dream of the future and it comes true, many of us have a knee-jerk tendency to think it “strange,” or “disturbing,” when our ability is natural, evidence of innate knowledge. We must undo our negative beliefs, no matter how ingrained. Recognizing that fear exists is the first step. But fear can burgeon, leeching out all inspiration, poisoning our dreams.
Some of your fear may be reality based. Too many individuals have exploited the psychic as a means to control or manipulate, or for greed. Is it any wonder, then, that in much of Western culture the term
psychic
has fallen into disrepute? Sensationalized by the press, scorned by traditional science, discounted by intellectuals, to again be considered holy, the psychic must be redefined in human terms. It allows us to connect with one another more deeply, with empathy and respect, to join together as a collective force. Old stereotypes of psychics as crystal-ball readers or carnival performers need to be left behind, replaced with our faces and names. We are the rightful bearers of this knowledge, the guardians at the gate.
At first it may be disconcerting to discover that we are vaster and more capable than we had ever imagined. Some of us may initially contract around this knowledge, needing time to feel safe enough to peek out from our hiding places and look around. After all, we're entering unmapped territory. Fear is bound to surface, but it doesn't have to force us to shut down.
The purpose of cultivating ourselves psychically is to open. And then to open even more. With prescience, we come to know ourselves well, become more sensitive to friends and family. Better able to respond to their needs, we can be lovingly in harmony with our relationships. The choices we make become truly well-informed, based on our innermost desires, not on some artificial notion of who we are supposed to be.
Ignoring this part of ourselves can lead to depletion and depression. It's like trying to function on only two cylinders when we have a turbo-charged engine that can travel at lightning speeds. We putter along, make do, but suffer from the chronic drain, our energy reserves wasted.
So many patients have come to me in this state—tired and irritable. Out of touch with their psychic voice, they strain to get through life by forcing decisions that really don't feel right. Their actions are dictated solely by what is visible: The quest for the invisible doesn't count. With no spiritual context, they have lost touch with the mystery. Yet we need not live in this state of disconnection. Recovering our psychic voice provides the link.
By listening to it, we can cultivate the ability to hear, see, and feel, to become more acutely attuned to the nuances of our lives. We meet ourselves again, come face to face with our own shining. We've forgotten so much: the ravishing beings we are, the strength of our spirits, the wisdom we possess. All this needs to be reclaimed.
The psychic doesn't arrive fully formed or without effort. It thrives on our attention to subtleties, a refined interior focus. The difficulty is that many of us don't know how to reach deep enough to achieve this. We skim just above the surface, never quite taking the plunge. Along with meditation and altars, there is one more method to help prepare us to see: the use of ritual.
Ritual imparts a sacredness to our activities that may not be readily apparent. Ritual can give our lives a brightness, a vibrancy, a focus. Many of us take ritual for granted, forget how it shapes our relationships and lives. Imagine a world with no weddings, holiday festivities, birthday parties, or even funerals—our markers, our dearest touchstones unacknowledged and forgotten. How much we would be missing!
Just as ritual evokes the specialness of certain events, it also brings color and emphasis to our inner lives. By creating a forum to celebrate it, we specifically invite the psychic in. When conducted with reverence and humility, ritual enables us to shift out of our conditioned patterns of viewing the world—to cultivate a respect and awe for the mystery that surrounds us.
I was introduced to the use of ritual at Brugh Joy's conference when I was beginning my psychiatric practice. We were scheduled to have an afternoon of healing. Fastidious preparations were being made; there were various rules to follow. I wondered what all the fuss was about. Everyone dressed in white, all forty of us silently filed into a huge candlelit meeting room. I cringed, thinking, What would my doctor friends say if they saw me now? Thank goodness they weren't there. Feeling more than a little foolish, and painfully self-conscious, I took my place beside one of the many wooden massage tables positioned around the room. When our turn came, we were to lie down so Brugh and the others could impart “energy” to us through their hands. The scene was set: Pachelbel's “Canon” played softly in the background, a tinge of sandalwood incense wafted through the air, colorful bouquets of flowers lined the floor. These were careful touches, aimed to convey a mood, to enhance the subtleties of what healing felt like firsthand.
Pretty soon, my awkwardness disappeared. The beauty of the room, the loving instinct this environment seemed to elicit in everyone, made my experience of healing all the more moving. It wasn't that I couldn't have felt this way in a less elaborate setting, but what ritual afforded many of us for the first time was a distraction-free structure made sacred by music, color, scents, and a group intention to heal. Particularly in the beginning we need all the help we can get to unmask our sensitivities. Ritual can hone them, eliminate static, enliven us so that we can more easily see.
Most important, out rituals need to be inspirational. It's pointless if they are unfeeling or rote. I have a friend who belongs to an orthodox religion. He prays five times each day, according to a format he passionately believes in. Recently he came to me, distressed that despite his prayers he couldn't feel the presence of God. Berating himself, he believed that he was doing something wrong. But instead of reevaluating the ritual and perhaps finding another that better suited him, he persisted in this same form. Devoted to his faith, he's still hoping to achieve a breakthrough.
The type of ritual we choose is extremely personal; it awakens a power dormant within. The efforts we make, either simple or intricate, assume meaning if we are sincere.
Another friend of mine was taught an endearing ritual by her grandmother. With the coming of spring, my friend's grandmother—now nearing ninety years old, and a painter—would brush her long gray hair and then toss the hair from the brush up into the air so the birds nearby could use it to make their nests. As my friend was growing up, every March she and her grandmother would do this together. Now in her forties, my friend has taught this honoring of spring and renewal, a connection to nature and new life, to her own daughter.
A ritual I learned from my teacher, which I perform twice monthly, is to pay tribute to the new and full phases of the moon. On those days, I eat vegetarian food, meditate longer, recite special prayers in front of my altar, and try to be particularly reverent. The purpose is to achieve balance and purification. A part of the Taoist tradition, this practice joins perfectly with my own beliefs.