As I slowly approached the women's side of the wall, I felt I was being drawn into the vortex of a tornado. At least a hundred women, heads covered with shawls in muted colors, were wailing at the top of their lungs. I felt besieged by their outpouring of grief. I wanted to run from it, yet I just stood there. As usual when overloaded, my first response was to go numb. Mechanically, I lifted my arm and placed my neatly folded prayer into a crack between two mammoth golden-brown stones, as was the custom. Then, as if a switch had been flipped, my feelings returned, but magnified, larger than life. Like a hypnotic incantation, the moaning and wailing of the other women lured me in. I hadn't intended to cry, but soon tears filled my eyes. I was startled; I'd been feeling fine. I was sure I had nothing to cry about.
Uncontrollably, my body began to tremble as a wave of sadness hit me. So many personal losses came back at once: memories of smaller disappointments, my grandfather's death, relationships I'd worked so hard on that failed. And my weeping didn't stop there. Gathering momentum, I cried not only for myself but for my family and friends, for all the troubles and injustices in the world that came to mind. Finally, I cried just to cry. In a tremendous release, I completely let loose. It was a cleansing, purifying catharsis, as the despair washed through me and became something more. My cries and the wailing of every woman at the wall blended together with all that had come before us, merging into a single sound. I was immersed in a whirlpool of grief, not just my own, but a larger grief that seemed to be arising from the heart of the collective.
As if coming out of a trance, I noticed the sky growing dark. I could hear the evening prayers of the Muslims echoing mournfully throughout the city from a central mosque nearby. I looked up at a clock tower, stunned to see that two hours had passed when I'd only planned to stay a few minutes. The old city of Jerusalem glistened, the last rays of sunlight reflecting off the winding cobblestone streets. I walked briskly back to my hotel. Exhausted, I couldn't wait to jump into a steaming hot bath. But I was also exuberant: Beneath all that grief at the wall, I'd felt a collective oneness, an ecstatic and merciful unifying force. At that point, I'd only been meditating a year and had gotten just glimpses of it. But now there it was—right before me, glorious as could be.
It took many months for what happened to sink in fully. Yes, I was somehow catapulted into a profound feeling of connection. But how did I get there? I needed to know. Slowing everything down, examining it in stages, I came to appreciate more than ever that the Wailing Wall itself was sitting on a powder keg of energy—amplified over the centuries by every person who'd ever come to grieve. Even those who don't think of themselves as psychic can't help but feel its pull. I'd no idea how tremendous it would be and within minutes had been launched into a hyper-alert psychic state. First, without intending to, I began to cry. But that was just the starting point, one layer that soon melded into another. Surrendering to my sadness, I let it carry me as it grew in intensity, until its very force lifted me from my own emotions to an experience of collective grief. I could never in a million years have willed this to happen. And then, not resisting the frenzy of this collective grief, I felt it evolve into a sublime oneness. I knew we all were of a single heart, the ancient memory of love binding us through time.
Love has a way of moving us beyond the artificial boundaries we've created. It's the uniting ingredient, no matter what path we choose, transcending religious differences. Just because we adhere to a particular faith doesn't have to limit us from appreciating the good in them all. Without love, we are spiritually adrift. The world can appear impoverished, fraught with an endless series of insoluble problems. Separation from love is the primary cause of our pain. With love, we have the courage to take our difficulties in stride and turn them into demonstrations of faith.
As the psychic ripens, we become better equipped to perceive love, not only in ourselves but in our family, friends, and even in the darkest places on earth. Whether we've just won the lottery or lost our job, we're ultimately being challenged to become more compassionate, large-hearted people. Then we can live as fully as we were meant to, not being so hard on ourselves or feeling victimized by every bump in the road. When seen through loving eyes, our lives begin to take on a different cast, to exude a new vitality and meaning. The aim becomes, as Raymond Carver suggests in the poem “Late Fragment,” “To call myself beloved and feel myself beloved on the earth.”
To be psychic means so much more than being able to see into the future. It can be our entry into a full-bodied spiritual life, where love abides and everything has a purpose. From the very start we may sense this, but with refined prescience it's like standing in a moonlit room as vague shapes and shadows gradually materialize into recognizable forms. Every step of the spiritual journey, no matter how small or when we begin, leads us closer to the intuitive wisdom of our hearts and to love. We can't help but grow stronger. Love gives us the power to transform any seeming calamity into an asset and source of comfort. It's a magical tincture that enables us to spin straw into gold, to become alchemists for a more bountiful and enlightened future.
H
ONORING THE
G
IFT
Watching the moon
at dawn,
solitary, mid-sky,
I knew myself completely:
no part left out.
—I
ZUMI
S
HIKIBU
(974–1034)
The story I have told you about my life—how I struggled with my psychic abilities as a child, lost them during medical training, then found them again—has been of my awakening. Over time, I have learned to honor the great gift I was given. At first, however, it didn't feel like such a gift. I was often totally discombobulated by it, half the time worried that there was something terribly wrong with me. What saved me were the angels who appeared along the way—mentors and teachers who had traveled this path before and shared their wisdom with me. This made all the difference.
Once a source of real confusion and fear, the psychic has now become my greatest passion. My drive to make sense of it and put it to good use has made me the person I am now. Had such knowledge been handed to me on a silver platter, who knows how things might have been? Easier, in some sense, I'm sure. But circumstances were different when I was growing up: For many years I had no place to turn for counsel.
Today, you have more choices. My hope is that my experiences can guide you on your journey, so you won't feel as lost as I did. The times dictated there'd be little support for me as I fought to find my authentic voice, and because of this I have come to consider it all the more precious—my life's blood, my strength. I am never going to lose it again. Looking back, however, I wouldn't change a thing. Even the hardest parts. The psychic was a gift I had to grow into.
By no means am I alone. There are so many of us out there, no longer willing to be silent, ashamed, or secretive about our visions, at last gathering the courage to speak our own truth. I was once more struck by how loud this mass outcry has grown when I was recently invited to appear as an expert on a popular network TV morning show about the paranormal. To prepare for the taping, I was sent a huge pile of letters to read. The producers had been deluged by mail from viewers who sounded like clones of the earlier me. The questions asked, the concerns expressed, were so familiar I could have written these letters myself. I was overwhelmed, touched by the isolation these people were feeling, their heartfelt desire to be understood.
Vickie F. from Charlevoix, Michigan (population 3,100), wrote about being psychic:
All through school I had friends who thought I was weird so I learned to suppress the feelings. Can anyone help me?
From Big Springs, a west Texas oil town, Theresa said,
I get the heebie-jeebies when I go to someone's home or feel the violence or the warmth there. Either I've lost my mind or I'm extremely intuitive. I'm writing this letter to you because I don't know where to turn.
And from the tiny fishing community of Homer, Alaska, Vickie G. echoed the experience I had when I was nine:
My grandfather came to me to say good-bye on the night he died. I will never forget it. I was so afraid people would think I was nuts.
These women, and three others, were chosen to be guests on the show and flown in from out-of-the-way places where they had no resources to call on. They were completely on their own. And I thought I had it bad! The idea of such sensitive people, so geographically remote, with no healthy psychic role models in sight was mind-boggling to me. I felt instant empathy for them. I was in an ideal position to help. What an incredible opportunity for me to recirculate all the knowledge I'd been given. This is just what the journey is about. To create a chain among us, each person sharing what we know with another and passing it on.
The afternoon of the taping we all arrived a few hours early, at the producers' request, and met backstage. Seven women, including myself, from backgrounds as diverse as you could imagine, sat together in a windowless studio waiting room with a lavish buffet to snack on. One by one, they began to recount their stories to me—some with reluctance, some unable to get the details out fast enough—as if gathered together around the warmth of a village fire. I was moved, amazed. Each seemed to be speaking the others' experience. We were all of one mind. None of them had ever publicly reached out before. Even some of their friends and closest family members didn't have a clue that they were psychic. I was barraged with questions: “Why do I make predictions in the first place?” “Should I tell people about them?” “How did I know that my cousin was going to die? Could I have prevented it?” “Do you ever get used to this?” “Are you scared?”
As I shared my story, I watched them slowly relax. A strength of mine is that my fear of the psychic is behind me and I can communicate this with confidence. Also, the fact that I'm a psychiatrist lends me a credibility I wouldn't have without the degree. In Western culture, particularly, an M.D. is a symbol of authority that can really work for me in such a still-unaccepted area. Clearly the members of the group, although befuddled by their abilities, were quite sane.
By far what troubled them the most was that they kept psychically picking up tragedies before they occurred: deaths, accidents, illness, particularly in those closest to them. But so many times their attempts to warn loved ones or avert disaster were thwarted. “Some people won't believe a word I say,” declared Theresa. “They just don't want to hear it.” Even for those who did believe, warnings often weren't enough to prevent the disaster.
The main message I wanted to communicate was twofold: Beginning psychics are notorious for getting only negative images simply because on an intuitive level these images are the loudest, so emotionally charged. But with training it's common to open up to a constellation of impressions and receive positive information, too. In addition, just because you see a vision doesn't necessarily mean that you have the power or responsibility to do something about it. Intervening may or may not be possible. Understandably, I knew this point would be difficult for them to accept—the impulse to want to spare people unhappiness or trauma is always there—yet by acknowledging our limitations my aim was to ease their guilt. I felt privileged to be in a position to interject hope where there was none before.
The experiences of these women remind us that visions, intuitive knowings, and dreams are not alien to our nature. Mistakenly, we identify them as something other than ourselves, but in a profound sense they are as life-sustaining as every breath we take.
On the most practical level, the psychic allows me to communicate with the important people in my life, including my patients, in such an elegant, multilayered way that I can understand them better—deepening all my relationships. Further, by sensing their energy I feel who they are more completely and in turn may sensitively respond to their needs. My father, for example, is not one to talk a lot about feelings. But whether I'm in his presence or not, because of our psychic link, I know in my bones when he's upset and can register waves of joy when he's happy. The same is true of my closest friends. They are a part of me, intimately connected, our souls actively intertwined. It's much tougher to feel lonely because as a psychic I'm never really all alone.
So many riches would be stripped from my life if these abilities faded—like first being able to take in dazzling colors and then suddenly being left with only black and white. The psychic messages I receive daily are gratifying down to the cellular level. The guidance itself is a blessing, but beyond the actual information I pick up, by tuning in I fuel the connection with my spiritual source, continually adding fresh kindling to the fire and tapping directly into primal energy. Every nuance of my being is touched by it. It feeds me.
When you first become introduced to the heightened awareness of spirit that often comes with psychic experiences, it can take your breath away. The freedom you feel, the love flowing out of your heart—its absolute gorgeousness—sends shivers up and down your spine. Though such intensity is usually short-lived, the true bonus of being this open is bringing the wisdom you've glimpsed to bear in everyday life. You might not have ever known you had so much love inside. And now you do. It's waiting, ready to be called forth at any moment—even in the most mundane situations.
Reach beyond the current world in which you live. Use this book as a map to a world inaccessible to most people. You can access it. At any moment you can connect with a life of love and understanding. On the outside you need to change very little; what counts most is the shift you make in your own thinking. First you must want to travel this path. There is no rush. Open your heart, allow yourself to dream, let your spirit soar. Envision a grander sense of what is possible.