Intuitive Development, Part 5: Clairaudience

I know what you're thinking. Tell people you hear voices and you could wind up in the loo...oh wait...we don't call it that anymore. Amy would have kicked my ass for that one. Whew...that was close!

Let's start again: It's advisable to use caution when telling people you hear voices, because they may be tempted to institutionalize you. There...much better.

If you've ever been in a situation where you feel like someone deliberately sent you a telepathic message, welcome to clairaudience!

Also known as "clear hearing", clairaudience is pretty common. If you've ever seen a message just by looking at someone's face and hearing it in their voice, well, you might have a touch of this one.

Mediums will often use this method to communicate with spirits. Animal and plant communicators fall into this category as well. 

Admit it: The lady across the street who talks to her bushes may not be so weird after all. 

Intuitive Development, Part 4: Claircognizance

Think about that one friend you have who just knows shit. I know it seems really annoying but it's also kind of cool. That's a person with claircognizance!

I've met a few of these folks and they're extremely impressive. They don't even know HOW they know things; they just do!

If your mind is always swirling and never stays still, or you have an amazing bullshit detector, likely you have at least a touch of this form of intuition.

My mother doesn't usually consult psychics. But when a close friend had a psychic to her home for readings, my mom had one with her. She came home with a legal-sized double sided page of notes the woman made for her. And the stuff turned out to be all true.

While this psychic's gifts were unmistakeable, my mom relayed a clairsentient conversation the psychic had with another person from the party. A man had left the house and came back in a few minutes later. He asked who drove a specific kind of car and apologized for having slid his car into it. On snowy nights in Massachusetts, so this is a pretty common occurrence. 

It turns out the man had hit the psychic's car. When he prepared to give his insurance information to her, she said, "Don't bother. It's going to be totaled next month anyway!"

PS: This psychic was also my first exposure to tarot cards. My mom asked about me and the psychic asked my mom to pick two cards. My mom turned over "The Fool"--"Your son is lazy!" said the woman. As my mom turned over the second card, the Wheel of Fortune, the woman continued, "But he can do anything he wants!"

Intuitive Development, Part 3: Clairsentience

Do you walk into a room and know something's wrong? Do you feel energy vibrations and pick up something that happened recently? Or can you sense spirits when they're around?

All of these qualities are really clairsentience, and of all of the types of intuition that there are, this is the most common one. Many people overlook it because they may not even understand that they have it. 

While tuning into your intuitive gifts may seem challenging, clairsentience is where many of us begin. 

The different forms of intuition are not exclusive, by the way. We can have some or all of them. But many people are clairsentient and it's not a gift to be ignored or downplayed. It can be downright powerful. 

You can pick up energy like a sponge, soaking in whatever is around you. So you may not always understand what moods are yours. If you have Pisces Sun, Moon, or Rising, you may find that you have at least some of this gift naturally. 

To hone in on it, start taking stock of what a person, place, or animal feels like. If you were happy and you walk into a room and are suddenly angry, why? It may be that you hit a pocket of rage or negativity left by others before you. 

This is also a great skill for first impressions. Jen has a feeling she calls "the ick", and it's a form of clairsentience. When she feels it, it means "Watch out!" It's saved us from bad people and quite a number of car accidents. 

Intuitive Development, Part 2A: Getting It Back After Pushing It Aside

I have known a few people who, for one reason or another, are intuitive but chose to not honor their intuitive gifts. It was a natural talent that they chose to ignore. 

There are a few reasons why I could understand someone going this route. A person might not believe in the gift, or it goes against what they believe spiritually. Many people also walk away from it out of blind fear. They're afraid of what they see, and as someone who briefly did that as a newbie astrologer and tarot reader, I totally understand. Finally, they might feel guilty about knowing, or might feel responsible for what they see, especially if it's not something positive. 

If you find yourself in this situation, it's important to understand why you walked away. 

Was it an event or a series of events that caused you to question it? How does being intuitive make you feel? It's a part of who you are but you might be struggling with the idea of being intuitive.

Were you ridiculed for it? Sometimes people who share their gifts with others aren't ready for the response. People can be nasty, even when you're trying to help. And as an intuitive, it's easy for people to write you off as "crazy" or "new age" because their logic believes that what you're doing isn't possible. 

Maybe you were wrong once or twice and thought, "Well, it's not perfect so I just don't have a gift." You may have discouraged yourself from continuing to develop.

Finally, a small group of people believes that you can't possibly know because that knowledge is forbidden to us ordinary mortals. When I hear this argument I just sort of chuckle. It's an easy way to write off the anger and fear that talking to others might bring out in themselves, though.

Everyone is different, and your reasons for walking away from your intuition will be yours and yours alone. But bringing it back starts with trying to figure out the reasons behind your original decision to leave it behind. 

 

Intuitive Development, Part 2: Getting it Back

A lot of people talk about wanting to become more intuitive, but I'm meeting more and more people who were intuitive who aren't anymore, sometimes by choice and sometimes because they feel like they lost it somewhere along the way.

Let me start by saying I don't think your intuition can ever be lost. It's a gift you have, but like so many others, it's "use it or lose it." I've found it with my French; I studied it for so many years and lived there, but it's rusty. It takes me a little more time to say what I want to say, and sometimes it takes a little more focus than it used to as I try to comprehend others. But the ability is still there. When I went back to France, it took me a few days, but I was very comfortable. 

With intuition, it's the same idea. Once you start focusing on it, you'll find that more of it comes back. And I believe the universe knows when you're listening and it responds accordingly. The more you're paying attention, the more open you are to the messages, the more you'll receive. 

And by "focusing on it," what I mean is honoring your intuition by believing it, expecting it will come, accepting the messages you receive, and acting on them. 

Intuitive Development, Part 1: Four Tips to Begin

So a lot of folks have been asking me about how to develop their intuitive skills. This often happens in the context of tarot readings, but when people hear about what I do they want to know how they can help themselves tune into their own intuitive selves. It sounds complicated, but it’s really not difficult to start helping yourself. 

1) Believe in your ability 

Lots of folks think they know what’s going to happen. And likely you do! But you doubt yourself. You start to say things like “I’m sure I’m wrong,” or “I never listen to my intuition!” Stop the negative talk in your own head surrounding your gifts. 

2) Don’t let being wrong sway you 

If you’re waiting to know everything that’s going to happen with absolute accuracy, I’m sorry to say that you’re going to be waiting a long time. But if you start listening to those whispers, you’ll be surprised at what you hear and how often you are correct. 

3) Practice and patience go hand in hand

Like any other skill, intuitive development takes time and practice. Patience is vital as you move through the process, and the more time you devote to honing the skill the better it will be. Know, however, that you won't always see the progress you're making right away. 

4) Celebrate and honor small wins

The universe doesn't give big pronouncements like you see in many movies about intuitive gifts. It starts with small things, like knowing that you were going to bump into your boss at the same place less than a minute later going through the same door, only this time on opposite sides. Having it happen was annoying, but I was thrilled that I knew it was going to happen!

Tarot Tuesday: Do My Tarot Cards Dislike Me?

Yes, I know. You're reading the title and thinking, "Wait...what? How can an inanimate object dislike someone?"

This is an interesting phenomenon I've seen with tarot practitioners. From time to time I'll hear one of them say, "Oh I've tried the [insert deck here] and it really doesn't like me so I stopped using it."

This is patently ridiculous. The cards are a tool, and they're used to connect with the intuitive self. They have no opinion about the reader.

The reason I find it sad and funny is that it could be the reader's way of trying to blame the deck for what could be their own intuitive shortcomings. For the most part, however, I think it's an overly dramatic way of saying the following simple statement: "I didn't connect with the images on that particular deck."

Not connecting with a deck is normal. Some images you're going to prefer, and others you won't. For example, I have a Thoth deck, but I don't use it much because I don't really connect with the imagery. That's my personal preference, but I don't think the Thoth deck is somehow upset with me. 

The cards are a tool. In the hands of an intuitive person who connects with them, they help interpret intuitive messages. But they don't dislike you! 

You'll just have to trust me on this one, folks.

The Long Island Medium: Is She a Fake?

Being a psychic, tarot card reader, or medium is not an easy job. You have to tell people things they don't want to hear, for one thing. People also have pretty high expectations of what you're going to be able to tell them. But perhaps the most difficult challenge some days is the reputation that we have as a profession: People question our integrity constantly, and while I don't think that's a bad thing per se, we have to prove ourselves time and time again. Have one off day and your client can decide that you're not "for real" anymore.

The article here from Jezebel contains allegations that the Long Island Medium, Theresa Caputo, is a fraud. While this particular piece is recent, there are allegations that go back a number of years. One site in particular claims to have a source codenamed "Kim" that says Ms. Caputo admitted she makes stuff up and doesn't really talk to spirits. Theresa is also accused of "cold reading" clients, a common claim among those who denigrate psychics on general principle. 

According to Wikipedia:

Cold reading is a series of techniques used by mentalists, psychics, fortune-tellers, mediums and illusionists to determine or express details about another person, often in order to convince them that the reader knows much more about a subject than they actually do.^[1] Without prior knowledge of a person, a practiced cold reader can still quickly obtain a great deal of information about the subject by analyzing the person's body language, age, clothing orfashion, hairstyle, gender, sexual orientation, religion, race or ethnicity, level of education, manner of speech, place of origin, etc. Cold readers commonly employ high probability guesses about the subject, quickly picking up on signals from their subjects as to whether their guesses are in the right direction or not, and then emphasizing and reinforcing any chance connections the subjects acknowledge while quickly moving on from missed guesses.

Let me start off by saying that I don't believe everything I read on the Internet, and I hope you don't either, because if that's true, pro wrestling really is fake and I'm totally crushed. I say that tongue in cheek, but you understand what I'm driving at. I'm not going to string someone up because of a few articles. 

With that said, we all know what can be done with the magic of television. Like every reality television show, "Long Island Medium" is edited. Of course they're not going to show you the times when she's off the mark. They're going to show you when she has a tremendously positive impact on people. 

We also know what can be done with information. With a few keystrokes you can find out quite a bit about someone you've never met and easily fudge the rest. Some of Caputo's detractors allege that her knowledge of people comes not from the deceased but from background checks performed by her staff, with live shows carefully choreographed for maximum impact. 

One of the allegations this site makes is that Ms. Caputo is "all about the money". A number of the arguments are somewhat compelling, but this one makes my bullshit meter go off. We all like to get paid, and if you have the ability Theresa supposedly has, you're out to help people but you want to make some money, too. She has the right to charge people whatever the market will bear. So on this one I say "Don't hate the player; hate the people who show up and pay her to perform." You can't cite that as a reason she's a fake. That's like hating professional athletes because we pay them millions; who do you think makes their jobs so lucrative?

To be fair, Ms. Caputo has an awfully big target on her back. She's the star of a very popular television show, and her practice is very lucrative. People are willing to wait for years for a consultation with her, and they pay top dollar without batting an eyelash. Speaking as a psychic, that's a good problem to have if you can manage it. But the more in the public eye you are, the more you are on a pedestal and the more people want to knock you off of it. 

I'm sure there are a lot of people who are extremely upset she has any kind of public acclaim, such as those who claim that psychics and other intuitives are "practicing the black arts" and other horseshit like that. (Incidentally, if you look up "Theresa Caputo Fake" on Google, you'll find a video that starts using bible verses to back up its claims.) So groups like that would want to bring her down, too. 

Of course, you'll also find plenty of other YouTube footage, like these from SciFake, that claim to prove Theresa is not for real. But even that isn't definitive proof; psychics can have off days, too. It's there for your edification. I encourage you to check out both sides of the issue. 

As a practicing psychic, my biggest problem with Ms. Caputo is an ethical one: She confronts people  to tell them what spirits were saying to her right off the street without getting someone's permission, or at least that's the way it appears on the show. For me that's a huge no-no. Unless someone asks you for a reading, even if you never pull out cards to get the information--it just comes to you through your intuition--that information doesn't belong to you and it's unethical to share it or ask about it. But Theresa appeared to help a lot of people and give them peace as they were going through tremendously difficult times as well. While I don't go out of my way to watch her show, I don't make it a point to watch, either. If it's on I won't turn it off.

So is Theresa Caputo a fake? I honestly have no idea. The information is compelling in some respects, but constitutes specious logic in others. One very close friend shared the possibility that maybe Theresa is gifted, but that she had to feed the publicity machine and in doing so started using other methods to "help" her. That's one of a hundred possible scenarios, ranging from "She's the real deal!" all the way to "She's a total fraud!" The truth is likely somewhere in the middle. 

One question I can answer is "Would I have a personal reading with her?" Speaking personally, I'd say no; I'm not willing to spend that kind of money or wait over two years for a slot. And for the record, these recent allegations wouldn't have changed my answer to the question. 

If it turns out that Ms. Caputo is a total fraud, then she has a HUGE karmic debt to pay off, and she will no doubt find herself in a world of shit from people who believed in her. Karma, as we all know, can be a bitch, but in deference to ladies everywhere, karma can also be a bastard. :)

In the end, you'll have to decide where you stand. But I encourage you to read everything you can and draw your own conclusions. Ms. Caputo just inked another season of "Long Island Medium", so she won't be going away anytime soon. 

News Flash: Psychics Can Be Wrong Sometimes

In many types of writing, you're supposed to to put your bottom line up front. So here it is: Psychics, even the really talented ones like Sylvia Browne, can be wrong. 

She told one of the Cleveland kidnapping victim's mothers during a reading that her daughter was very likely dead. Thankfully that wasn't true, and the victims in Cleveland were freed and brought home. You can check out the article here.
 
You may be wondering why, as a professional tarot reader, I'd draw your attention to such an article. It's because that's the reality. For any number of reasons, we can be wrong. We're not infallible, but then again, no human being is. Also, the Tradition of the Witches Circle has a basic tarot class going on right now, and this lesson is always a good one.

Any kind of divination, which includes psychic reading/clairvoyance, tarot reading, rune casting, and any other form of divination, is a "snapshot in time". We see what is going on in that moment. But the future is dynamic and changes constantly. I have confidence in my ability, but I'd be lying if I said I always get it perfectly.

Like any other profession, psychics have a bad days. We're human and we're subject to the same foibles every one else is. We get tired, sick, or depressed. We get distracted or unmotivated. We have biases, especially when we know our clients well; when the client is a loved one it can be especially difficult. And sometimes, we just miss things. Or the Divine/Universe decided we didn't need to know, so we didn't "see" it and couldn't tell you.

The point is that even though I enjoy a very loyal clientele, and love reading cards more than most things on this planet, I urge anyone who consults a reader to take the reader's advice into perspective of the larger picture you have of your own life. It shouldn't be your only resource, however. Solicit opinions and get information from those around you that you trust.

For example, if a reader tells you that you could be fired, ask some hard questions at the office. Get feedback from your boss and others to see if this is something you really should be worried about. Let's say you have a tarot reading that you'll be fired in six months. But you take the reading seriously and start taking more initiative at work. Six months later you're still gainfully employed and got Employee of the Month last month. GOOD FOR YOU! You heard what you needed to hear so you could be successful.

If you do any kind of divinatory reading for other people--my example below will be using tarot, but substitute as you will--here are a few guidelines I follow:

• I don't read when I am sick, extremely tired, in a bad mood, or feeling depressed. It not only impacts how well I can connect with the Divine, but it can have a negative impact on the delivery of the reading to the client.
• I don't drink alcohol when I'm doing paid readings. If I'm reading for a friend, I never have more than one.
• If I feel uncomfortable reading for someone, or do not feel I can be objective, I decline. Stand your ground on this one. It's very rare that I don't read for someone, but when I say no, I stand my ground.
• I ask permission before bringing divinatory items--like cards or runes--into someone else's home/space. If they're not comfortable, then respect their wishes; it's very important not to let your ego drive the bus on this one.
• Unless it is explicitly stated that you may share a reading and with whom, I keep what I "see" to myself. You're just getting the message across and a client's personal information isn't yours to share.
• I remind clients that this is a "snapshot in time", and that the information should be taken in that context.

Thanks as always for tuning in!

UPDATE: Here's a response from Sylvia Browne about the reading. She says she's been "right more than wrong", and that "only God is right all the time." Well said, Sylvia! 
    

Book Review: "I Believe: When What You Believe Matters" by Eldon Taylor

You hear it over and over again: Mind over matter. Even as I write it down it sounds tired to me, like a really bad fitness instructor exhorting his class of unmotivated students to push even harder. And yet, it really does matter...a lot.

I Believe: When What You Believe Matters by Eldon Taylor will give you many, many more reasons to check yourself and what you are telling your subconscious mind.

Before you dive right in, check your skepticism at the door. As you look over the Table of Contents you'll see a lot of different subjects, and it would be easy to say, "Oh yeah, in one chapter he's going to tell us that cancer patients cured themselves by believing that they were cancer-free." With chapter titles like "Love and Pain", I can understand your skepticism entirely.

But I read this book in pieces, not as a whole. I'm not sure if it was designed to be read that way, but I felt like it was a great inspirational reference guide when I was struggling in a particular area.

My favorite chapter overall was Chapter 4, "Integrity Inviolate". To me, there are very few things more important than your personal integrity in everything that you do. We live in a world of over-promise and under-deliver. We say we're going to help a friend move when we really plan to have a migraine, for example. We're all guilty of it, so I'm not judging anyone. But Taylor's experiences, like the story about his son receiving $40 extra cash out of the ATM, are great reminders of what we should be shooting for as people.

Chapter 3, "Be Honest With Yourself and Embrace Your Flaws" came in a close second. I loved how looking at your "flaws" differently, and changing your mindset to what you consider a flaw, could revolutionize your world view, and it was one that resonated with me.

Finally, Chapter 14, "Instinct and Intuition", was a good reminder about biases in the way we perceive intuitive messages about ourselves. Of course, this is one of the many reasons people consult psychics, and I am always gratified when a client says to me, "I've been getting the feeling I should [INSERT ACTION HERE.] Can you tell me if you think it's a good idea?" But if you're empowered enough to figure it out on your own without an intermediary, that's ideal.

If you're ready to re-focus and make some life changes, I Believe is a great choice. If you're not ready for change, then this book, like any other book, class, or mindset won't help you much. But even if you're 50% ready for change, this book will re-energize you and show you through Taylor's narratives the benefits of believing in and having faith in yourself above all things.

In Search of Lost Time: Nantes--Days 4 & 5, part 1

My most “leisurely” day on this trip was Day 4. I got up, had breakfast, went over to the Cathedral and got some more pix from the inside. Then it was back to the Institute with some bread and cheese from a place called “Monoprix”, a French department store that was a favorite among Americans during my last stay. While I was eating with the students, I had to restrain myself from saying, “Well, back in my day…” all the time. Everything changes in 21 years. The 350 hand-written letters shocked them, I think.

I was back for a second day because the center had some visitors from the US State Department, and I was invited back for the presentation. That was fine, but I enjoyed talking to the students. I think some were scared when they heard me speak French because they might have thought they should be speaking like me after a year in Nantes. As much as I learned in Nantes, I learned so much from studying and teaching French after I got back.

(Seriously, folks…if you want to learn something until it is automatic, teach others. I promise you, I will never be able to forget French irregular verbs or some of the tenses—especially the passé composé and the imparfait—because of the amount of times I’ve had to teach them.  I actually enjoy teaching them…that is the scary part!! Just call it Jupiter’s influence—I have Jupiter in its dignity in Sagittarius. But I digress. )

After the talk was over, I headed back for the hotel for a while to type an email to Jen. Just like my last trip, I took some time—at least an hour a day, in this case—writing to her about my adventures. I also started doing some of the dreaded packing with my purchases. I wore a lot of old clothes to France that I just threw out afterward so space wasn’t a problem.

I headed back out later for dinner and what would be my final trip to Le Tiki Bar. My friend the bartender and I had some more great conversations, and he gave me a taste of one of his “infusions”, a homemade brew. It was tasty. Hooray for Neptune!

On the way back to the hotel, I had a snack at an old sandwich stand I used to hit, and once again, found some more lost time as I approached it in the same location as they were so long ago. They still had the sandwich I used to eat on the menu, a steack américain frites. This is an amazing concoction of steak topped with French fries. I used to get it once a week and sit in the Place de Commerce and eat it, watching the people go by. I decided against the steak this time, but got a great merguez sausage with fries instead and ate it on my way back to my hotel.

Day 5, Saturday, was my last full day in Nantes, and by necessity a shopping day. I went out to the eastern end of Nantes on the tram line, and hit not one but two hypermarkets. The first was fairly disappointing, but I did pick up some Christmas gifts.

The second was more of a pain in the ass. The French now use those scanners; the French word is une scannette and scan their purchases the way we can here. By an incredible coincidence, the French verb to scan is scanner. Go figure.

Anyway, I took a photo of the scanner area since I didn’t know the vocabulary as I walked into the store, and went upon my merry way. In a true Saturn moment,  about 30 seconds later  a security guard stopped me, saying that I “was not authorized” to take pictures here.

He told me to follow him toward the other end of the registers, so I do, whereupon he calls his supervisor to tell him or her what’s going on.

There were no signs telling me I couldn’t take pictures, and if there were they must have been buried in the fine print someplace. The last time I was asked not to take a photo was near the American Embassy in Paris many years ago. That’s something I can get behind, of course. The only thing I could think of was that they didn’t want me doing research for another supermarket chain on what their prices were or to copy their setup.

After repeating to me several times that I was not authorized to take pictures, and having no idea what he was going to do next, I pulled out the camera and turned it on. “This is the photo I took,” I said. “I’m a foreign tourist learning new vocabulary.” He repeated all this to his boss. “I’ll delete it right now.” And I did. Doing so seemed to placate him, and he dismissed me and ended his phone call.

As I headed back toward the children’s books—I had to buy some for my new nephew, Marcus, who will learn French if I have anything to say about it—I just got the sense that this wasn’t over, that I was going to see this security guard—who I named “Monsieur Zèle (Mr. Zeal)”—again before leaving.

My intuition was right. I’m in line to pay behind a woman doing her Christmas shopping so I’m just hanging in line. When my turn comes, I walk through a detector at the end of the cash register to wait for my purchases, and it goes off.

Who shows up but Monsieur Zèle; quelle surprise! He asks me to remove any articles in my bag, and I open it to see the purchases from the LAST hypermarket. They never removed the anti-theft devices.

I pull them out of my bag to show him. He looks through the bag and says, “Do you have a receipt for these purchases from the last store?”, not forgetting to correct my pronunciation of the last store’s name while doing so. I pull out the receipt and show him, and after a careful comparison of my purchases to the receipt, he grudgingly leaves, and I apologize to him for the inconvenience as he turns his back to walk away.  At least the cashier was totally nice to me. And this was one of those many times where I said “I’m so glad I speak French fluently enough to explain myself.”

 

At this point I decided that it was a good idea to get the fuck out of dodge before Monsieur Zèle decided  to find a reason to stop me again. I get that you don’t want me taking photos or stealing, but this “guilty until proven innocent” thing they had going just sucked. 

This was Jupiter's trip, but was one of the few times that Saturn reared his ugly head, thankfully. French customs officials and police were a lot nicer than this fucking dickhead. But hey…he was doing his job, and clearly this was Saturn’s way of reminding me that he was present, after all.

Don't get me wrong; Saturn's a great planet, and he's a tremendous influence in my life. But vacation isn't the place for him. I'm sure he'll have a thing or two to say about that, but there it is. 

Book Review: Learning from the Future

Learning from the Future

Mary Hykel Hunt

O-Books, 2011

$14.95

A very different perspective on intuition and precognition, Learning from the Future is an exercise that allows people to learn about what could happen in times to come by using a trance-like state.

Hunt has been extremely intuitive all of her life, but while helping a client one day, she wondered if just like using past life regressions, you could “progress” a client in a light hypnotic state into their “future” to see what will happen. She began using the technique with more of her clients and has found it to be extremely effective.

The nature of time is something that many of us do not often think about. Hunt discusses how physicists and others think of time. If there was one part of the book that kind of fried my brain, it would be this section. The bottom line is that for the purposes of this technique, time is not seen as a thing ever-flowing forward, but a series of possibilities that can overlap.

By using the technique in this book, a person can go forward into their progressed future and talk to their “future selves”, which will give them information about what has happened to them—in other words, what they have experienced to bring them to where they are now. If the client doesn’t like the future they see—as a tarot reader I like to think of it as “the message”—then the future self gives hints of which changes need to be made to access a more positive outcome.

In many ways, this book opened my eyes, and the stories that Hunt includes about her clients are totally fascinating. And it seems like a plausible theory. People who read tarot cards, or use runes or crystal balls, to tell the future do something very similar. But using this technique doesn’t require a reader of any kind or any materials; the book describes how a client can do this work by himself or herself.

One other interesting facet of this technique is how Hunt deals with the idea that the future self that the client sees might just be his or her fantasies. Once the client is in the technique, s/he will interview the other self and ask it whatever questions are desired. They are to be open-ended questions so the other self can elaborate as necessary. If the client is concerned that s/he is only seeing what s/he wants to see, then the client can ask the future self “Are you real?” If the self answers, then the information is accurate, but if the image disappears then the client will know that they were in the realm of fantasy.

Hunt recommends that while any time period can be used for looking into the future, she has noted that three to five years seems like the optimal duration for each experience. She also encourages clients to do the exercise periodically so the client can receive the most up-to-date messages.

Learning from the Future may change the way you understand intuition and precognition, and if you’re interested in giving it a try I highly recommend this book. This would be especially useful to those people who say they are not intuitive or cannot do any divinatory work. This new approach may show you how wrong you are. 


NOTE: This review will also appear on www.facingnorth.net. 

Book Review: The Psychic Way: Fine-Tuning Your Intuition by Barbara Ford-Hammond

The Psychic Way: Fine-Tuning Your Intuition

Barbara Ford-Hammond

Sixth Books

$19.95

Imagine going to an ice cream shop. As you walk through the door the walls covered with a hundred freezer drawers. Inside each drawer is a different flavor of ice cream, but only just a spoonful of each, and every flavor is one that you enjoy. You open a drawer, sample the ice cream, and savor the flavor, only to have disappointment set in when you realize it’s gone. But you smile because you’ve got a whole bunch of flavors to try, and it keeps you going. And because it’s only a small amount—just a taste—there’s no stomach upset afterward.

You’ve just experienced what reading The Psychic Way was like for me. It is filled with lots of different techniques to improve your intuition. A number of them I’ve used before, and some I haven’t, but I felt like each one was just a morsel of total bliss. I found myself wanting more of, well…just about everything! And that may well be the point: To give the reader an idea of what kind of intuitive development techniques s/he might enjoy to explore them further through practice as well as books and classes.

Take the chakras, for example. Lots of us work with them, study them, meditate with them, and teach them. Ms. Ford-Hammond has a chapter in the book on them. It has a nice intro for those new to chakra work, a quick list of the chakras and their associated colors, and some exercises to try. Whole books have been written about the chakras, but if you’re new to it, you just get a taste. If you like it, maybe you’ll take a chakra class at a local metaphysical store, or buy a book on chakras, or do a Google search to increase your knowledge. Don’t like the “taste” of chakras? There are plenty of other flavors to choose from. If not for this book, you might never have known that you did or didn’t like the “taste” at all.

One of my favorite chapters was called “The Clairs”. I’m talking about clairaudience, clairvoyance, clairsentience, claircognisence, and several other “clairs”. Many people have intuitive feelings and don’t know what to call them. I have no doubt that a number of people who read this book shouted, “Oh wow! That’s me!” when reading the individual descriptions of the techniques. One point that I thought was valid was for the student to understand that these can be mixed together; like the five senses, you may rely on one in particular, but together they can be quite powerful. For someone just touching the edges of their intuitive power, this could be a very important message.

I also liked the stories. After you read some of the accounts in this book, you’ll question what you call “coincidence”. The narratives hammer home the point that any person has the ability to develop their intuitive gifts.

One of the few disappointing aspects of this book was that like the fictional ice cream shop, there were not enough stories, and some of the chapters weren’t long enough. I was just starting to enjoy reading about auras when the chapter ended four pages later.

This book is great for beginners and anyone unfamiliar with the intuition and how to make it more effective. If you’re looking for a way to develop your own gifts and you’re not sure where to turn, it’s a great resource. Personally, I’d give it as a gift to people who doubt their intuition or who are really interested in learning more but don’t know where to begin.

Sometimes you want a big bowl of your favorite ice cream flavor: Swiss chocolate almond, peanut butter ripple, peppermint stick, or just plain old chocolate. But The Psychic Way lets you experience a lot of different flavors in a neat little package, and is a great place to start. And keep those freezer drawers closed so the rest of us can have a taste!