What Is a Psychic Reading?

Whether a person uses cards, runes, pendulums, dowsing rods, casts stones, gazes into crystal balls or points or just closes their eyes and speaks without using any tools at all, they are all forms of psychic readings.

Each of the tools is simply a way for the reader to focus their attention on what the seeker wants to know about. All of these tools (plus many others we have not named) are ways to help move consciousness out of the normal state and into the trance state. It is in the trance state that the reader goes beyond the everyday and out into that place where they are bringing through messages for the seeker.

What we do at the beginning of every session is to set an intention. So, for example, one person may want to get more insight into what their best career move is. Another may have questions about a relationship they are in. Someone else may want to contact the spirit of a loved one who has crossed over. Someone else may need help with a ghost in their house. Another person may want to know about their past lives. Someone else needs help understanding their dreams. There are as many reasons to want a psychic reading as there are people.

I know how to use all kinds of tools, but I have done more with cards over the years and I find that they open the way to other dimensions faster. There are some people who feel that way about runes, crystals or drumming.

The most important thing for a reader to do is to tune in. During the experiments that the CIA and the military were doing with psychics in the program known as remote viewing, the readers were simply given map coordinates and were asked to tell what they saw at those map coordinates.

Each method of psychic reading uses different training and different people respond more to one method than another.

Another method I have used is psychometry, where you can get impressions and messages by touching a thing that has another person's energy on it, such as a piece of jewelry, a pen, a pocket knife, a baseball cap, a stone or coin that they used to carry for good luck, or other things.

There are lots of ways to practice developing your psychic abilities and like all other things that we want to become good at, it requires practice.

Many times a person's first experience with psychic ability is accidental. In other words, something happened but they don't know what it is and they don't know how to repeat the experience.

Learning to learn is the first step. Psychic readings come in all kinds of forms.

Navigating in Difficult Times

People who have never sailed can easily picture that a sailboat is pushed forward by the wind catching in its sails. An amazing fact for those who have never sailed is that you can also sail into the wind, in the opposite direction it is blowing. This all has to do with tacking.

Today, our worlds are changing faster than they have in the past. Many of us have found ourselves suddenly facing changes in our careers and jobs due to unforeseen circumstances and decisions that were not of our making.

Many of us have also faced unexpected developments in our relationships or our health. In each of these instances, we have to change course in order to survive and regain our sense of balance.

Sailors on wind driven vessels, both large and small, refer to changing course as "tacking." This refers to changing the set of the sail so that the direction the boat is going changes.

The unexpected chambers that we find ourselves in can be navigated if we are willing to consider the unusual or outside the square options as well as the obvious directions. And this has become increasingly necessary as the doors that used to be open to us now close.

So if we take a lesson from sailing, we turn a setback into an opportunity. In order to do that, first must come the vision. One we have a goal and a desire, we take actions to get there.

Doors open into unexpected chambers when we think with our hearts and listen to our intuition. Moving in the direction of love rather than fear, we may find unexpected pleasures behind the doors we now open. We find solutions where we did not see them before.

It is like looking at the image on a tarot card and suddenly noticing a detail that we had overlooked before and realizing that it is providing us a much needed clue for what we need to do next.

Tacking into the wind is a great analogy for using different ways to achieve our goal. If the wind is no longer carrying you in the direction you wanted to go, you must shift the set of your sails because that is what you can control. You cannot change the direction of the wind. You can only recognize what has changed and then adjust your settings in order to maintain your balance. It is challenging, but of course it can be done.

Are the winds and waters of your life calm or troubled? Can you navigate to more tranquil environments? If you don't know how, there are people who can help you. It increasingly involves thinking outside the square, and the doors may look like tarot cards, or runes, crystals, invisible movements of energy or a person whose eyes can see things that you cannot see yet.

If you are willing to do open these doors, you will find yourself sailing toward your destination.

American Mystic

Tonight I picked a movie off Netflix instant downloads to watch and it was a great find. It is a documentary called American Mystic by Alex Mar and I loved it. I think that this is one of the best films on the subject of alternative forms of spirituality I have ever seen. The viewer really gets the feel of why these people do what they do and what they get out of making their spiritual practice an important part of their lives. I deeply appreciate that the film neither took the approach of "look at those weirdos" that many documentaries do, or the other type of documentary that is all about trying to explain different theories of spirituality. 

You really get to just be with these people for a little while and see what they do and hear them talk about how they feel about it. Because of this approach, you will probably hear things in the movie that you don't understand, and that's fine. The curious people will go look something up to try and find answers to their questions. And prompting thoughtful questions is a good thing. I love the movie. You can check it out for yourself and see what you think. If you are just noticing the movies that are hyped all over the place, this is one that, like me, you probably never heard of. Glad I discovered it. The photo below is of Alex Mar, the director. The one at the top is the way the jacket of the film looks.

Everyday Trances

Everyday life is a trance state that we often don't know we are in. The rhythms of what we do hooks us into a sense of reality. We often forget that we have free will and can change that reality. Who says that we have to keep it that way?

Trance is effective when we have repetitive tasks to do. Routine work just flows along when we are in a trance groove.

Notice also how in spiritual rituals there is always some repetition in the things we do to create the trance state that alters our focus, our reality, so that the ritual will flow.

Trances in themselves are neither good nor bad. They just are. When we recognize them, we can decide if we want to stay in them. When we have work to do, whether it is the trade your time and energy for money kind of work, or the just doing something because you like it kind of work, we expand our efficiency and our satisfaction with what we do by using trance as a tool to achieve goals. Rhythm is the key. Find the rhythm and use it.

In all of life there is a rhythm. In all of the things we want to do or need to do, there is a rhythm. Find it and you will be happier. Find it and you will love your life.

Pencil Magic

During the space race, NASA wanted astronauts to make notes while on their journeys. One little thing tripped them up. Zero gravity kept the ink in ballpoint pens from flowing to the point of the pen. The Americans assigned inventors to solve the problem and they invented little pumps that would fit inside the pens and would pump the ink to the point in zero gravity.

The Russians chose a simpler solution. They used pencils.

That story makes me smile.

I'm a pencil kind of guy. I always favor the simplest approach that will get the job done. In many areas of life, we may often look for some complicated solution, but the answer we need is actually very simple. In magic, you may often hear the expression, "hidden in plain sight."

How many times do we find ourselves in a situation and we dance around taking the simplest solution?

How many times are we the person who has a problem to solve, but we miss the simple solution right in front of us?

How many times do we think of explanations for why we are not on track, rather than just following our gut instinct and going for it?

Pick up the pencil and start writing. I still use pencils, old yellow #2. Classic beauty, simple efficiency.

Jot down your thoughts and ideas. It is good to help sort out your thoughts and reflect on the possibilities. Make to do lists and make notes about your observations about what is happening now and what you want to differently. Use that pencil to make appointments and get things going. Look farther ahead to see what you want to have happen later this year.

The great thing about pencils is that they allow you to make changes. Appointments change, priorities change, and pencils allow your plans to change. In the working ideas phase, flexibility is everything. And as you progress toward your goals, flexibility is still a great asset because there is always more than one way to get there.

I always have a pencil on my desk because it also reminds me of another thing. It is about spontaneity, creativity and action. People pick up pencils to sketch out ideas in pictures or words. Picking up a pencil encourages a person to be creative and let the ideas flow out, as compared to setting it in stone, setting it in type, or putting it in ink. Our lives are a work in progress, and the actions we choose to take to advance ourselves are often experiments and ideas that we are trying out. When we pencil something in, we are putting it on the list of things we are going to do and the action of penciling something into our list or calendar is usually a prompt action in response to a fresh idea or a fortuitous meeting with someone.

When I used to do woodwork and picture framing, we always used pencils to mark the spot where we would take the more permanent action of making the cut, inserting the screws or joining it with other parts. Pencils were just one of the important tools we used so we always had one tucked behind our ear.

And of course pencils are always ready to write and if we make a mistake we can erase it and do it over. The pencil is always the action that opens the way for other action. Even in today's world where we all use computers, we still hear people who are negotiating anything from a home sale to a proposal for work to be done to use the expression that urges us to "put a pencil to the numbers" or "sketch it out for me."

Pencils come out when our creativity is flowing and we are beginning to act on those creative impulses.

Got you thinking about pencil magic?

The Genius of Jonathan Winters

Jonathan Winters was one of our greatest comedians because you never knew what he would say or do next, and it would always turn out to be insanely funny.

Many popular comedians have a routine that we like and they do it over and over again. You can bet that the same jokes they tell on their recordings are the same ones you will hear in person.

He was an obvious inspiration for early Robin Williams when he used to do those manic routines where he would shift characters, voices and directions in mid-sentence, leaving the audience in stitches.

There are other ways in which he differed from other comedians, then and now. Politics and celebrities often set themselves up as easy targets, but that was never Jonathan's route. He just found life to be funny, and he peopled it with quirky characters who he could invoke with a change of voice or a bit of costume or props, but very little. His voice and facial expressions did most of the work. He always said that he didn't do jokes, he did characters.

He believed than anything is fair game for laughs and the things that popped out of his mind would leave scriptwriters at a total loss.

Laughter is one of the fastest ways to raise our vibration, and so I always enjoy including comedy into my life, whether on the radio, video or comedy clubs and those times when something humorously inspired pops into my head and out of my mouth.

Jonathan Winters was truly inspired and it was good to pause for a moment and pay tribute to a great source of laughter.

Doors that Open into Unexpected Chambers

Arthur Waite, the author who created the pivotal tarot deck popularly know as the Rider with artist Pamela Colman Smith, advised us "to look at the images in the deck as doors that open into unexpected chambers."

Images are powerful means of communication. One time when looking at a card, the central figure in the holds the answer to our question. Another time, looking at the very same card, a detail in the background captures our attention. Another time we look at the card and it is a detail in the foreground which speaks to us. Other times when we draw the same card, different stories come to mind. Why? It is our feelings that guide us.

On a given day, in a given reading, we suddenly get the feeling that this aspect of this image, together with the other cards that have been drawn, drive the narrative that answers this person's questions. Feelings are an expression of intuition. We may not know what was on the artist's mind when they drew that picture, but we know how we feel when we see it. And that feeling leads to communication from the doors that have opened into unexpected chambers.

Here is an image exercise you can apply to yourself. When we hold images of ourselves, how do we feel? When we visualize ourselves doing the work we want to do, how do we feel? When we visualize ourselves how do we feel? If the image we are holding of ourselves is not one that makes us feel good, then we are not being true to ourselves and we need to reformulate our vision until we do have one that feels good.

That is why we often do not achieve our goals. When we look ahead and we do not feel great about the direction we are going, we lose the energy to press on and achieve it.

The pictures that serve as doors that open into unexpected chambers will lead us to surprising places when we look at those pictures and feel them.

Those who make vision boards create such pictures for ourselves. Those who retell their life stories from different perspectives create different pictures for themselves. Those who use their imagination to create pictures of themselves in their future open doors that open into unexpected chambers.

What do you see now?