Famous Psychic Syndrome

Many people feel that psychic sense is a HUGE THING. Too many believe if they find they have psychic sense they should use it professionally, and, too often, launch into the psychic reading business without actually having a clue of what they are doing.

With only a few exceptions, all of the best psychic sensitives I know have never been professional, and aren't interested in being professional. I'm not a professional psychic reader. I'm a teacher. And it's not an example of the old saying "those who can't, teach," it's about not wanting to be placed in a situation where I am expected to perform, instead of giving information that comes to me simply because I'm the right person to receive it and pass the information along to where it needs to go.

When we are asked to perform, we set ourselves up for a higher rate of failure. But people want the performance. That's why the best known professional psychics and mediums are, without exception, better performers  than they are psychics. That's not saying they are all frauds, just that public appearance places the skill for entertainment over the other. How attractive a psychic is depends most on the performance side of things. But the ones who last in the profession, last best because of the psychic ability.

How many of the famous psychics of the past can you name? Those who lean heavily on the performance side of the equation become forgotten - unless some scandal keeps them around as great trivia bits. Otherwise, they are visible only as long as they continue to perform, much like many performers.

I have received many e-mails over the past few years from people who think only a famous psychic can help them. They refuse help from anyone else. But famous psychics' main gift isn't saving people. Famous psychics make people aware. They open the doors. It's usually the most quiet and practical psychics that give the most help. No flash, no fancy moves, no stages, just common sense.  You have to dig to find the great ones.

The best ways to find a good psychic counselor is to attend psychic gatherings and conventions, and talk to a lot of people. Gravitate towards the practical, easy to approach, people. Read blogs and articles on the Internet with this goal in mind: take the ones who treat psychic ability and paranormal experiences as a normal part of their lives and give practical advice about such things, seriously. Those who make their abilities out to be sensational are in the business of making a show.

The Break Is Done

I wanted a bit of a break before beginning this blog anew. For those of you who have been members of the Chip Coffey discussion board, or once read my materials on The Psychic School on Squidoo, you probably know that, now, both are gone. I removed the school because of changes at Squidoo; Chip recently removed the discussion board without notice. I want to say again I appreciate and remember the feedback we had from about 9,000 members from 2008 until 2013, in over 2,000 threads, of which about 1750 were still up and being read until 2013. Some of the ideas developed there will be shared once again in this blog, but I have to say, the members who spent so much time and care taking part in the discussions on the board in the past, I will not forget, you were terrific, and you are missed. I am glad some of us have kept in touch and become friends outside of the board.

I am a writer now, who will be developing psychic, paranormal, and reincarnation subjects into stories and plays I hope a wide audience will enjoy. The first novel A Small Tale of Shakespeare, is available through Amazon.com. It's a novel about how the reality of past life recall often has nothing to do with our ideas of reincarnation - especially if you happen to know a tiny woman who remembers being William Shakespeare!

Let me know if you have any questions about any psychic topics. I'm here when you need me.

Sandra

Laying Belief Aside To Open Awareness

We are the makers of demons. No one else. Behind every demonic idea is a human mind.

There will be more on this topic, again, and again, as this blog continues. It's the cornerstone of what I teach about psychic ability. Shared on another website today:

Belief is a powerful detour from what the sixth sense is, which is normal. I grew up with all the legends and stories and the fears people had because of them. Then I laid down the idea I had come from a long line of natural witches, I laid down the fears the church had instilled in us, and I just paid attention to what I was experiencing, and how it all worked. I found that problems with the dark side only existed for those who believe in them. Belief in darkness creates the darkness. When you step away from the belief and replace it with a stronger belief in yourself, one that makes the fear calm down, the magically dark problems aren't there. Any idea of fate or destiny goes away and is replaced by the CHOICE we have in how our gifts are used, and what we experience. We need our psychic sense free to handle the darkness that comes out of everyday things. Belief distracts us. Lay the stories aside, clear your mind, and find out what you actually have within you.

Why You Should Develop Your Psychic Ability

The following article was originally published on Squidoo.com as part of my project, The Psychic School on Squidoo. It was intended as a learning tool for the fans of Chip Coffey and the A & E series, Psychic Kids. The Psychic School was removed from Squidoo in 2013.

If Only We Could Know...

It was a heart breaking moment:

“He has died...”

After a little boy became lost in the snow 48 hours before, a woman of the Chip Coffey community contacted our group for help. Two of us tried, but we weren't getting any signal from him, and I became stuck, pointing out the direction he went from his house, but not able to go past a certain point. I can't pick up anything at all when someone is unconscious - it's like getting a blank slate. We sent them prayers and energy and hoped. But it was too late. If someone could have sensed the location earlier, his life might have been saved..

It's a failure that often can't be helped. We haven't known enough about how the sixth sense works.

Psychic ability is like any talent or gift: some of us have a lot of it, some a little. But everyone has, within them, some seed of this ability that can be developed, and should be. I am going to give you some reasons why you should develop yours as much as possible.

How often have you seen an animal seem to have a forewarning that something is about to happen? Have you ever lost a pet in unusual circumstances, only to have that pet find its way to you against all odds? It's not just that animals are aware of things by keenly using their five senses - they are often using a sixth sense. Watch a cat move out of the way for an invisible presence, or a dog bark directly at something that, for you, is not there at all. They are able to pick up things we have blocked from our minds.

All conscious animals have a basic sixth sense. Some have it more than others. As humans we have different degrees of it, the most basic level being known as intuition, or gut feeling. But how many of us ignore our gut feelings altogether?

“He seemed so nice.”

“We never saw it coming.”

“We could all see it, but she didn't seem to have a clue.”

“But she was my best friend! How come I didn't know?”

“If we could only have found that child an hour earlier!”

Being caught off guard and not being able to see a problem coming happens because we have gotten so used to just paying attention to the surface things, and not paying attention to the unseen. Or perhaps you do get gut feelings, but ignore them because you think you are crazy - everything on the surface seems just fine. We want to deny anything that doesn't seem right.

Learning to pay attention both to your intuitions and to what is going on around you helps you break through layers of denial and to stay aware. It could save you from harm.

I was walking home after dark one evening when my warning signals started going off. Two normal looking teen boys were walking about 100 feet behind me on the same side of the street. Nothing on the surface would tell me anything was wrong, but my alarm system was going off like crazy. I crossed the street. They crossed the street after me - I didn't have to look around - I knew it. I started making a plan. Looking around the otherwise deserted street, reaching in my purse for my keys, and opening up my psychic portal to stay completely aware of what they were doing. I saw a well lit part of the street where I hoped I would have an advantage - a grassy bank, where at least if they tried to take me down I could manage to fall and stay somewhat upright. I crossed the street again to get to it. I felt them make an agreement and got ready.

They broke into a run and split up so one could get in front of me, and one behind me - except I quickly turned sideways, with that bank behind me, and the keys held like a knife in my hand. I called on the warrior in me then dropped my voice two octaves and in my craziest loudest voice yelled “Come on baby! Come to Mama!”

I scared the bejesus out of them. They climbed that grassy bank in terror and got away. Later after I talked to the police I would give myself time to shake with the fear I had hidden, but in that moment, I had been warned, I managed my fear, I made a plan, and I got out safe and sound.

That's what paying psychic attention to your surroundings can do for you.

In another instance: I had a feeling I couldn't shake, and a series of weird little mishaps mad me get off track with the city transit. I couldn't catch a bus in the direction I needed to go - they weren't appearing! It was pouring rain, so I got on the next bus going in the wrong direction. That's when it hit me, as I was paying the fare.

“I know this will sound strange,” I said in a calm normal voice to the driver, “but I have a feeling you need to pay close attention on this trip.”

She hated me saying that. She complained as we continued down the road, saying how nervous that made her. I apologized, and again in a normal and calm voice I told her, “I've learned not to ignore when I get something like this. Just pay attention and it will be okay.”

She listened and paid attention, but kept grumbling - until a white pickup shot out of nowhere and came into our lane, heading for a head-on collision. He missed us by inches, and took off. If she had not been paying close attention, at his speed and angle, the damage to her would have hurt her badly.

If I had not gotten on that bus, she would also have been alone when it happened.

We are not always meant to prevent a situation, but if you pay attention to the warnings and act on them in a sensible way, you can stop something terrible from happening.

Sometimes, paying attention keeps you out of company you shouldn't keep.

He was good looking, well dressed, charming, attentive, polite, just a lovely conversationalist. I sat back and didn't join in the talk at the table. At one point he got into the chair next to me. I stayed polite, but didn't let him in my space. He felt the wall.

“Don't you like me?”

I just looked at him and didn't say a word. He went away. The friend I was with said, “what's up? Isn't he cool?”

I said, 'No. He's dangerous.”

“Nah....”

A few weeks later Mr. Charming was arrested for murder in a drug deal gone bad.

When you use your psychic sense you can feel when something is wrong, and protect yourself by staying away from trouble.

Sometimes it warns you of inevitable things, and sometimes, it overrides all barriers – even death.

My mother died suddenly on a day that was quarrelsome and unhappy. It was Thanksgiving, and everyone else in the family decided to be somewhere else - there were only my ill parents and me. She died suddenly of a burst aorta, but I had somehow felt something terrible coming - I just was blind to what. I don't think she was - I think she knew, and didn't say, because she was restless and even more miserable than usual for weeks. You couldn't mention Thanksgiving to her without her looking sad. But all our foreboding did not stop it from being a bad death, with no goodbye.

And yet: I already knew there really is no such thing as goodbye. I trusted what I knew.

She first came back two weeks later. I was in bed when I heard her call my name from out in the hall, sad and lonely. I started talking to her from the bed - I didn't want to disturb her. But my father, who had Alzheimer's, flew out of his bedroom, looking for her everywhere.

She was gone. It took me hours to get him calmed down.

The next day he said the last full cognitive thing he ever said to me. “You know, Mama's sad. Not mother, not grandmother. That's death..”

I started talking to Mom all the time, not caring if I couldn't see her. A few days later she came back in a dream and I woke up to realize she was sitting, invisible, on the side of my bed. We talked everything out. We reached resolutions we could not reach while she was alive. And she realized that even dead she DID have the ability to be a mother and grandmother, still. She stayed active in our lives until she reached a point where she was ready to move on, because she was able to fulfill her motherhood in the ways possible to her on the other side. In another post, later, I'll share her full story with you.

We all have the possibilities for resolution. Not just in contacting people after death, but in solving problems, finding what we have lost, healing what is hurt, doing what we can to make amends, with tools that we don't seem to have on the surface of things. We have so many more possibilities than you can know, if you never get in touch with your own psychic sense...

Get ready to learn some of the many ways psychic sense can be used on a daily basis. In the coming posts, you'll find common - and many surprising - ways that information comes to us solely on the back of the energy within us, around us, and from far away.

Moving The Psychic School to here...

The Psychic School at Squidoo has been closed, and the materials are being moved here. I have learned the past few years that  while websites like Squidoo.com say they are interested in quality writing, and have attracted some wonderful writers, what they don't say is just how much they wish to take advantage of those writers, with little consideration. I would rather keep my materials under my control and keep the presentation and pages simple and easy to use. So bear with me, I have to undo all the html claptrap Squidoo loaded us down with as I shift the documents over here. The material will be updated, and well worth the wait...

To Preserve Freedom...

My mind turns on three basic foundations of thought, that might seem at odds on the surface, but they keep each other on balance, at least the more I've learned about them: rational, critical thinking; psychic sense; and creative vision. These things collide in my dreams when the universal consciousness is under stress. What do I mean? I don't just dream my anxieties. As a psychic dreamworker, I pick up a lot of other people's anxieties as well. Which means, during the past few years especially, my dreams are often hell to have. I had a lot of destructive dreams in 2012 in particular. They became dreams of war. No, you know by now I wasn't prophesying war. I was picking up mindsets of people who were in chaos. But let me explain something in the next posts, that I realized in the most vivid  dreams of that election time:

I have had many prophetic dreams. When I dream of actual war or some kind of destruction coming, I dream of great storms and black tornadoes (signs of negative change) everywhere. I will dream of specific geographical indicators of where trouble will occur. In these dreams I wasn't seeing those signs. In fact, the world was beautiful and in order. There were no drastic changes in the weather. I dreamt a lot about the president, dreams in which we were in schools, in restaurants, and at sports events, clear puns that speak of learning lessons, a nourished public, and healthy competition. I never have a bad dream when the president is in it. The dream is always clear and precise. This particular dream I h'm recalling from 2012 did not have the president in it, but, finally, another bad dream made itself clear, which meant this one made me both highly stressed and relieved!

In this dream, in a world with clear skies and full of spring growth, when my family was gathering together again, a part of the population in our town decided they were at war. The world wasn't, just our local people, who had decided that to protect their freedom they needed to destroy those who would take the freedoms away. They wanted the Walmart saved, the fast food chains protected, the streets of the little town secure. They wanted my hometown returned to the way it was years ago. They announced the war, revved up for it, and made those of us who did not go along with that idea prepare to go into hiding or protect ourselves. Yet the world was still all right. The sun was shining. Spring was everywhere, in a dream full of beautiful colors. I took in everything I could of the beauty, not knowing what would happen next. 

As I was traveling down the road past fields full of azaleas and flowering trees, right when the war was supposed to be starting, I realized the war had already been fought and won. All the people who had decided that there were enemies among us, enemies who wanted to destroy our freedoms, were gone. They had destroyed themselves. They had achieved what they wanted to do. They turned the enemy into nothing.

Look at the mindset of those who have ever made a war. What was their purpose? Were they focused on that purpose? How did it turn out? The focus of those who are fighting the hardest in America right now is over freedoms we haven't actually lost. They wanted to destroy who would take away their freedom. They were the enemy of their own freedoms. So they were self-destructing. 

Two years after this dream, they are still self destructing. They have no heroes, no leaders, and the followers are tired. They are wearing down. And yet the world is still beautiful. And I no longer dream their nightmares.

Illusive Reality - Personal Perception

There is something that must be understood in order to achieve clarity: In all personal reality, there is illusion. Then, how can I call it reality? Personal reality is how we construct our personal perception of the world around us. Physical reality is a stable expression of the material universe, one that follows universal laws that are the same in all circumstances, as far as we know at this point in time. Personal reality is fluid, and can alter in any moment, depending on these four things: Physical sense, mental awareness, doubt, and belief. These four things are always affecting our perception of what is happening within and around us. They are the factors that shift our perception constantly between clarity and imagination, and make our lives truly individual, unique experiences.

Who is this woman?

“Who is this woman and what has she got to do with Psychic Kids?"

This all started with an accident.

In June 2008 I was looking for people who had worked with the Atlanta Shakespeare Company or at The Atlanta Shakespeare Tavern in regards to a book I was writing about the Tavern. I asked a friend there where Chip Coffey was nowadays. Now, I had met Chip in around 1999, while I was performing in the Tempest. He was the artistic director of Kaleidescope Children's Theater, which performed in the building our company owned. I wanted to ask him about his company, and also ask him if he ever encountered our company ghosts. I seriously did NOT know anything about Paranormal State, or Psychic Kids, which had begun at that time. Our mutual friend said "didn't you know?..." Well, that news made it easy to go looking for Chip, and it doomed my book.

Why?

I found Chip's discussion board (which he had started a few years earlier), filled with fans. But Chip had become so busy with both shows, he couldn't be there. This busy board was filled with people wanting answers to psychic and paranormal problems, someone to tell them how to do things, not just wanting readings or to know his personal details. And there were some people giving answers. Some of them rather unhelpful answers.

Three things caused me to make the decision that stopped my focus on my book for good: A teenager came on wanting help to learn how to master and control demons, another boy was terrified that he was possessed by demons because he had massive headaches and zigzag vision (these are symptoms of the same form of migraine I suffered for years) and - all the people on there, looking for what they could do, instead of wanting someone to tell them about their futures.

Within a month I messaged Chip and said, "you need a moderator, and I want to do it." He agreed.

This went back on a very old vow of mine. I was never comfortable being a Psychic. I don't like reading people. Even though I'm precognitive, I don't like telling the future. So, yes, I have the abilities, but I never wanted to develop them and become a professional Psychic. Most of my abilities developed themselves over time, without consulting others about what to do, and this gave me a rather unusual perspective: I didn't learn from the various traditional methods, I learned from experience, mixed with a huge very Virgoan dose of being an analyst who takes notes of everything, and having a thought process that is half skeptic and half believer. I learned what works by paying attention. And I learned what works by lots of trial and error.

In earlier years when I tried to bring up the methods I had found that worked, this seemed threatening to other psychic teachers, because it was different from what they had learned to teach. They didn't know what to make of it. That's just it - it is only different. In as many ways as we have learned to use our abilities, and find so many experiences in common, the thing that governs our experiences are rooted in our individual beliefs and traditions. My chosen method  is this: Let go of belief as a rigid thing, and instead learn how to choose belief and use it responsibly. Rely on common sense. Pay attention to what is happening all around you and within you and learn from what you perceive. And keep it simple!

I treat psychic sense as a natural sixth sense, not a supernatural sense. It's a sense with which some are more farsighted than most others, but everyone has this sixth sense. It allows us to perceive what goes on inside our brains, our thoughts and emotions. For those who are far-sensed, or psychic, it helps us pick up information that is coming from outside conscious energy directly into our brains.

Like any other of our senses, it's got its strengths and weaknesses. Personally, I feel it becomes compromised the more we expect of it, so I prefer to just be open to what comes to me, rather than expect it to deliver what I'm looking for. This openess has always given me the clearest information. It resulted in my motto: "you can't tell a gift how to come."

What do I do exactly?

My psychic strengths are:

Empathic psychometry, directly by touch, which allows me to feel the different levels of energy in a person. As a singer and musican, this helps me do something unusual: I can give people I touch an idea of what their essential energy is like through music. This helps people get in touch with their essential selves.

I am a dreamworker. I live a complete life in the dreamstate, and what I learn and do there is as important to me as "reality." That is a huge topic, I'll only touch on here. My precognition and clairvoyance comes largely through dreams; that is the state in which I am most psychically aware.

I am a medium. In fact, I am something that I've ended up calling a beacon - my energy is so high, I draw them to me. I had the disconcerting experience two years ago of drawing a stuck spirit from England, who felt completely trapped, but was with me in my Kentucky home. That taught me a lot about the illusion of location! Odd twist on an old theme: I rarely see the ghosts of dead people. I often see the ghosts of living people. The dead usually make physical contact and sort of push and pull me into what they need. As I'm growing older I am also hearing more voices.

I teach about past life recall. I have a lot of experience with reincarnation and past life recall and have been advising people about recall for eight years now. I have three verified past lives, one as Christian Bayer, an 18th century Bavarian; Esther Waterhouse, the wife of the painter John William Waterhouse, which was my latest past life; and a famous past life that I don't openly discuss unless a memory becomes relevant, and until people get to know me a bit better. I have varying degrees of recall about lives stretching back to pre-historic times.

I work in a close partnership with a spirit guide I call Brendan, who reminds me every time I write those words, that I take him for granted, and I do. But I also appreciate him more than I can say, as I appreciate all my spirit guidance, seen and unseen.

My psychic weaknesses are:

My imagination and my emotions. I always have to thin them out and put them aside. I call this constant process Psychic Laundry.

What's the most usual thing I do? Sense the underbelly of people's feelings. I can't help it. But I keep those feelings private, it's their privacy, and in many cases it's things they don't want to be aware of. I respect that. I try to be very careful what I tell people, but sometimes people realize that I know things they don't want known, and they react by disliking me intensely. I am too clear a mirror.

What's the most unusual thing I do? I'll have to think about that one. I do a lot of things.

Those who do a lot of things teach. That's why I am a psychic tutor.

Other than psychic work I am a musician, writer, playwright, actor, artist, and craftswoman. This divides my time up into little pieces, and not only has NOT made me financially rich, but keeps me dirt poor - I can't seem to do without any of it. It all helps me look at things from unusual angles, and what I find when paying attention teaches me so much, and I hope helps others as well. Love, for me, is an attraction to all things amazing, in people, places and things. Life has been a struggle, sometimes extremely so, but it's never been without that love.

I'm going to stop waiting now... If I had a child who told me he or she were seeing ghosts: I would first listen, and show them I was calm and not afraid, and help them face the fear and deal with that incident. It would also help them to know I was listening to them, and not brushing them off. If it was their imagination, they would not bring it up in the same way again. But if they did, I would listen closer: were the details pretty much the same as they were before? Then I'd look into any natural causes that would make that activity happen, if not in the house, then watch what else was happening with my child. Was my child unable to concentrate? How emotional would my child get? Were there any repeated manic actions? A persistent lack of control or distress - that's when you're getting into needing medical help. Don't assume anything - be open and pay attention. And above all do not frighten your child. When they come to the natural point where all children MUST face some kind of "boogie man," whether it is imaginary, medical, emotional, or, LEAST common, actually paranormal, it does not help if the most unwanted boogie man of all jumps out at them: the fear in you.

Let go of the fear and take up the wonder. Teach this to your children. They deserve amazing things.

Psychic Shielding

If you’re going to use psychic ability, you need to understand that you ‘re working with energy. Just as in the case of working with any form of energy, there are dangers involved. You need to know how to protect yourself.

This is easier than it might seem. Remember everything is made of conscious energy. Consciousness is open to suggestion and intention. If you intend to protect yourself and have confidence in your intention, the protection is going to happen. When something unwanted comes at you, shove it off!

But what if you’re still not quite sure you can do it? Does that seem too easy?

You might be surprised how different the most effective protection is from what we’ve been taught all these years - in fact, it’s the exact opposite of what we’ve been advised to do!

The method I’ll tell you about is quick, efficient, and conserves your energy for more important things. Things that make you afraid aren’t important – they’re trying to knock you off track. If they do, they win. If you can show you’re perfectly capable of knocking them off track – the battle is quickly over. And you still have energy for the good things.

How do you do it?

Turn out the light. Flip the switch. Don’t be afraid of your own darkness.

You’ve heard of surrounding yourself with white light. That’s something you need for daily living. White light reflects fully balanced energy – it’s not just positive energy, it’s all of it working together. White light symbolizes how you should live your normal life. But when things go wrong, you need to focus on the one thing that repels trouble. Negative energy repels negative energy – just as we were taught about magnets in science class. If you try to use only positive energy, it will attract the negatives.

It doesn’t mean you’re being bad. It’s all in how you use it. I think of bad as something loaded down with personal baggage. If you keep your personal baggage out of what you’re doing, you’ll be lighter and quicker in your actions than any opposition might be.

Just as in martial arts, the strength of the method is not in how much power is used in the blow, but in the speed with which you return to your normal state. Don’t hold onto the force – let it rest for the next time it’s needed. That is a perfect psychic shield. Use it well.

Grounding and Creativity

Because you are working directly with conscious energy, knowing how to ground yourself is as important as knowing how to shield.

There are a number of methods that teach you to imagine attaching yourself to the earth in some way. That’s not grounding, that’s securing yourself. There’s a huge difference. Security is a great and necessary thing at times. But grounding means keeping yourself from building up dangerous levels of your own energy, or allowing excessive energy that hits you to flow off without causing you damage. For that you need something that will conduct the energy away from you, and channel it in a benign way. For that, it’s best to simply turn to the science of energy grounding.

A ground is matter that allows energy to flow off and disburse instead of building up. Energy does NOT seek containment – it needs to flow. So if you give it a place where it can do that, it’s going to leave you alone.

To ground yourself, make contact with something bigger than you are that is porous and has a lot of different ways that allows the energy to flow off. The best thing for this – the earth of course! But wood, brick, or other porous material can help. Don’t touch metal – you’ll make yourself part of a live circuit! Any material that conducts energy shouldn’t be touched. Anything small than you won’t have enough mass to attract the energy away from you. Think big – go find a wall to stand against. Go hug a tree!

All you have to do is touch it. Our energy is conscious and smart and knows when it feels the way it can go. You don’t have to hold on for dear life, just make good contact with it and let the stuff flow off.

The important thing is: let it go. You might be holding it back without knowing it. You have to open the gate between yourself and the ground. You do that by simply believing in what you are doing.

You can also use this to ground yourself emotionally. Not so much by going to hug a wall, but to let bad feelings flow into doing something bigger than yourself. This is something called sublimation – not subliminal messaging, but talking the energy of something that doesn’t feel good and applying it to a bigger and better use. Even negative energy and feelings have good uses, if you make the effort to find them. Creativity is a great way of grounding yourself emotionally – just think big!

Repetitive Dreams and Dream Symbols

I've been trying to find an easy way of explaining this for years, but I usually end up giving an example: I have a fear of mice. Now, I am old enough to know better than to let that fear get to me, I understand mice, but that doesn't mean the fear has gone away. If a mouse comes through the house at night, and I hear it in my sleep, I will have a nightmare - not of a mouse, but of something much scarier, that has the scurrying qualities of a mouse, an intruder who gets onto my bed that I can't get off of me. This is my fear of what a mouse might do maginfied a hundred times! In this way the nightmare vents my fear.

A repeating dream is a message that our mind needs us to recognize, to figure out. The best way to do that is look past the details to what is basically happening in the dream. The dream stops when we either resolve the issue without realizing it in our daily lives, or we figure out the dream. You know the full details of your repeating dreams - look at them again. For years I had repeating dreams of aliens coming down to visit me, sometime a few at a time, sometimes hundreds, always frightening. One night in the middle of the dream I became lucid (conscious in the dream) and I said, "I know what you are now: my fear of the unknown." Just that little thing. The second I said that, the aliens disappeared and were replaced by a celebration that was almost like I'd won a million dollars! ;D

If you have repetitive dreams or dream symbols, I wouldn't worry. If something does come back, write it down when you wake up, then read it. You may be able to see  what is basically happening in the dream, perhaps something as simple as a common fear. Then let it go.

Differences Between Ghosts And Spirits

Can we physically determine whether we are in contact with a spirit, or a ghost?  I'm not certain yet. My two cents: Now that I've had a few conversations with Brendan, my spirit guide, around a K-2 meter - I'm sort of a ghost magnet, sometimes, so when a spirit that is trapped on or truly engaged on this plane is around me, there are readings around me - but, so far, not when Brendan is active. I haven't had a K-2 around when he physically interacts with me so I don't know if this would change in that instance or not. Otherwise, Brendan isn't on the same plane - Brendan seems to communicate with me non-locally. It's all being perceived within my brain. Would this change when he does the knocks and touches me - don't know - it may not. How can we know until we have a way to measure things? Most of the time, though, I feel connection even with attached spirits is a non-local thing that only the person receiving would pick up. We each work with different channels, just like trying to pick up analog radio. You and I could be in the same room and pick up different things, unless the spirit is working really hard to just get back on this plane, period. I feel the ghosts who leave the best evidence in a space could care less who is around - they are just focused on getting back to this familiar plane. Then anyone can pick up they are there. If they are focused on communication, then they will concentrate on just contacting one person from whatever plane they are on. That's what I feel makes sense, from what I've experienced over the years.

On A Question Of Ritual

Someone asked me once if ritual had to be something that is strictly passed down, and I answered "someone created it at one time. Create your own." I continued:

"Any time you use magic ritual you protect yourself and make a safe place in the energy of the universe. You focus on the intention of the ritual to open it, you perform a ritual you absolutely believe in to manifest the intention you have, and you close the ritual, sealing your intention in the energy of the universe. Control every step. In this way your ritual is given its own "life," a beginning, purpose, and end. When done you "open" the safe place you made in the energy and return to your routines.

If you look at any traditional ritual, in any religion, faith, or magical practice, you will find the signs these steps are taken. You can find them even in a regular religious service, like a mass. So each of us can have variations in ritual according to what we believe in, but we should always keep control over what we are doing. It makes the manifestation stronger."

A Psychically Aware Life

Some people believe a psychically aware life is a fantasy. Not if one is truly aware. I have reality. It's simply to pay attention, and never assume that anything is as one believes. One must accept and embrace this approach: "I don't know, I just sense!" - and leave it at that. Then just pay attention with all your senses. Once that is achieved, there's nothing more to say, or learn.

Be well. Let go. Pay attention. SENSE. I'm going to go and sing songs now...

Casting Out The Real Demons

Sometimes it's hard to clear the air after you've been subjected to the negative actions of chaotic people. I mean the truly chaotic, the ones who cannot break their illusions, can't tell what is right and what is wrong, mix them up, fall into a chasm, tumbling through jumbled values. The overriding wish most of us have is that sanity will be restored in them so we can feel all right about ourselves, but it's not going to happen. They will tell you things to try to drag you down with them. You cannot raise the truly fallen angels up.

They have to do it themselves.

In those times you must shut all psychic doors and abandon them. You  have to work through your own guilt at doing it. You have to work through their abusive cries. And find the things that make you most certain that you know your own good, your own wisdom, your own wings. Don't ever let the fallen make you feel that you cannot fly.

Not Blessed Are The Demon Makers

What is a demon maker?

This is where the psychic and psychological weapons of human beings really collide.

A demon maker is a person who at the least is trying to malign or destroy a person or group of people that the demon maker is opposed to, in an obsessive and often extremely jealous degree. The energy and focus that the demon maker puts into this effort can, on a psychic level, not only put intense pressure on the target psychologically, but energy wise, affecting both the emotions and health of the target.

The demon maker is the worst of the psychic vampires, because a demon maker really wants to destroy you. A demon maker will convince others to join the attack as drones, drones that don't realize that the demon maker is using their energy to fuel the demon maker's own attack.

Truly psychically gifted demon makers can go as far as projecting demonic images and causing paranormal activity - I have experienced this. This occurs when the demon maker does not want to appear to be the actual aggressor. But, on average, a demon maker uses more mundane ways to disturb and damage the energy and environment of something or someone they want to control. For example, anonymous Internet trolls are demon makers. If they band together and use mob energy, under the direction of an open and virulent demon maker, they can do a lot of damage.

I have been under attack from such a group lately. I don't want to write about it here, because that will open my shielding. But I do want to stress how important it is to use psychic shielding, protection, and grounding during an attack like this. You have to push people like this off of you in every way you can. You also should use a prayer or statement of intention, calling for backup and protection from conscious energy other than your own, in a situation where firmly pushing them off and letting them go is not enough.

This is the intention I am using in my own situation, which has been very bad - my energy is clearer now:

 I call on the guides and guardians of conscious energy to disrupt and remove the human demon makers [name them] who are attacking me. Send energy their way that will disrupt their lives as they have tried so hard to disrupt mine. And by those disruptions, one by one, may they learn that a demon maker cannot lie to the conscious spirit, and may that lesson wake them up to the sane world. May our guides and guardians, however we see them through our faith, take on the burden the demon makers are trying to force on us. And may the guides and guardians of the demon makers fall silent and still at their backs, to help them learn this lesson.

Such an intention, said or written within the framework of your personal faith ("I call upon the angels...") helps strengthen your protection. Also state that the demon makers cannot reverse this intention on you - that if they try, it will only make your intention stronger.

I will be using this intention a lot this coming year. My demon makers have launched an Internet attack that accuses me of many things I am not. Demon makers become so obsessed with conquering their target that they will resort to any method they can come up with. Demon makers are dangerous people. Don't let them feed on you - block them, and protect yourself in every way you can. We don't need people like this in our lives.

But how do I use my psychic gifts?

I think the hardest answer for people to accept about psychic ability and learning to use it is that the rules are simple: Be prepared to say no to whatever you feel you can't handle, but let go of fear. Let go of the noisy thoughts in your head, and prepare for someone else to say something. Tell the universe you're ready to sense, and mean it. Don't assume. Let go of your beliefs and get ready for anything. Pay attention. Shut the door firmly on your sensing when you want no more.

That's it.

We can't explain to you how you'll sense things, because we don't know how you will do it. Everyone has a different way of expressing the sixth sense. You learn what yours is by practice. Practice is usually best achieved by meditating, getting used to always letting go of the noisy thoughts. At first, you might not realize anything happened; then you'll remember you just got a picture in your head, that you heard a voice, that you felt a sensation that didn't seem usual. And you'll think - is that it? Yes. It might just be someone communicating with you. You'll know for sure the more you practice.

Keep a journal of what you feel is psychic experiences. Read about other people's experiences, but don't assume their experiences and yours are just the same. What helps about reading other people's experiences is that you learn the struggle to understand is the same for everyone.

We are leaving behind us the days when psychics were only fortune tellers, when mediums were expected to be entertainment, when false practitioners took up the most space in the psychic world. The readers who used to fake psychic ability have moved on to pretending to be exorcists that remove the "damage" psychics do, because they figure that's where the money is. There will always be charlatans, looking for the money. What's important is that there are truly gifted people out here, professional and private, who are learning to just use the sense they have, and encourage others to do the same, no matter what level of gift or awareness. Turn to them.

That's all. Listen to the universe. It's ready to speak to you.

Psychic Forensics - Solving Mysteries

This is a term that the paranormal investigator Stacey Jones uses to describe paranormal investigations, but, for me, it means investigating disappearances and crimes.

This is one of the top three things most people expect out of psychic ability. We used to get requests for this on Chip Coffey's discussion board constantly before I put up a notice that we would not do this. It's the one thing most people learning to use their psychic sense wish they could do.

Be careful what you wish for.

First of all, let me repeat what I say often: Psychic sense is not a magic ability. It is a normal sixth sense as prone to mistakes as any other sense. Have you ever seen the chef Gordon Ramsay blindfold professional cooks and ask them what meat they are tasting? Some of them are not able to tell the difference between the taste of beef and chicken! You can see something in the distance and when you arrive find it's not what you thought it was at all. You can believe you hear something in the static of a phone that isn't there. Our senses are NOT infallible, because our brains are ALWAYS interpreting what we are sensing according to what we already know.

When trying to sense what happened in an disappearance or a crime, you come to the task with baggage already in place. I've seen a talented sensitive completely misread a crime because she was a mother, and her fears for her own children made her interpret things in the wrong direction. I usually only get feelings, which doesn't give me much to work with. Asked to help find a missing young man, I immediately got a sense of simply being wiped out of life from left to right. There was barely time for shock. This was all the young man knew. It turned out he was on a dark road he didn't know, texting while he drove, and the road curved, sending his car from the left to the right straight into a retention pond. That was it.

The conscious energy of someone who has crossed over usually knows very little about what happened. When you're having a crime committed on your body or an accident is happening, your mind isn't taking notes - it's going into shock. The feelings are the strongest memory. And, in spite of what many people hope, I have not experienced any communication from the dead that convinces me we become all seeing, all knowing after we die. If we ever do, that is something for our higher selves. After death we are dealing with the memories of the ego first, our higher consciousness later. Frankly - our higher consciousness does not care how we die. For the purest form of our consciousness, all that is transition. When the concerns of the ego are lost, so are the pains of memories.

I found, through sensing two separate cases, that if psychic ability is going to give really helpful information, it's going to have to come from the person or persons who commit the crime. In the first instance, I completely refused to give impressions: I saw the murder, but I also saw a line of policemen that went on forever, each holding the murder weapon. It turned out this was what the relatives of the victim suspected, and we went no further - it was dangerous for them.

The only case I have ever actually been able to help on was given as an anonymous lead. Not only was I getting impressions, two sensitive friends were getting impressions that they kept contacting me with, even though they knew nothing about the case. A college professor killed his wife and two of her friends, then disappeared. The victims were friends of a friend of mine. The moment I heard of the crime, I went to Google maps and pinpointed where he had gone. But I didn't trust myself. I said nothing. Still the impressions kept nagging me, impressions that came not from the victims, though the victims were coming to me for help. I was getting impressions from the killer, and I knew it. He had died about a day after they did.

He was bragging. He had pulled off something amazing and no one would ever find him. What?

I knew exactly where he had gone, because a few days later they found his vehicle parked near the reservoir I had zoomed in on. I waited for them to find him. They didn't. They kept checking the airport and looking everywhere else. I was frustrated. He is near the place where the vehicle was found, why aren't they finding him? Finally, with a feeling like a bad child pleased with himself, the killer bragged: "I buried myself before I shot myself."

I thought - no, that's not possible. But I heard from my two friends that they were getting impressions that backed up what I got.

I finally called my friend who knew them all, and asked her if she minded if I told her something psychic. She said go ahead. I gave her as much detail as possible. She said she knew a member of the search and rescue team, and would contact him. This began her job as a go-between, as I sent the directions of where to start looking. I told them they had to use cadaver dogs.

The next day, on the news, I saw a video of the police cars parked exactly where I told them to start looking - the point on Google street view which was closest to the place I needed them to go. It took them a day and a half to search with cadaver dogs. I was so tense I went to a movie on Saturday morning. When I got home, the friend had left a message on my phone: "They found him. Just like you said."

He had dug a shallow grave and lay down in it with his gun, then dragged a wooden pallet covered with dirt and limbs and leaves slowly over himself. It was hard work. His hand was not steady when he shot himself. It took time to die.

I stayed anonymous with the police. The friend asked them if they would give me a reward and was told "we would have found him anyway." I hadn't expected any would come. The dogs got the credit. That was good. They finished the work three sensitives started.

It was very strange watching the news of this play out on national television. I had done something that garnered this much attention, and few people knew about it. It didn't make me happy. It just awed me. What differences we can make at unexpected times, in silent ways, simply because we pay attention to our psychic sense, even if we don't want to.

Why am I telling you this? I want you to know I have had many many impressions about crimes. Sometimes I'm right. Most of the times I'm wrong. This would be true for any psychic. We can hope impressions can help, but that is all. It is frustrating when you're wrong. I didn't feel happy when I was right.

I was left with one last problem: a killer spirit who was furious. I had ruined his perfect getaway. One night I woke up agitated from a deep sleep and started doing searches on the Internet for articles on him, pictures of him, news about someone else he had targeted. I was furious, furious, furious, I should be able to - able to -

I realized his energy was trying to use me. I shoved him out, and contacted friends for help, asking them to send energy to help me keep him pushed out. His energy was an arrogant and furious slime. I never want to feel that again.

This is why I do NOT recommend anyone do this kind of work. The person who can handle it with clarity is a rare soul. I've met a few. But no one should just try this out. It takes experience and knowledge most people don't have. It also takes a good knowledge of psychology and a respect for the law. If you do something the wrong way you could mess up a case for the people who are supposed to bring criminals to justice. You could mislead a search team. Then you'd have to live with it.

The failure that haunts me the most is the child who wandered off into the woods in winter. He didn't know where he was. He thought he was going in a direction he wasn't headed to. I only picked up what he felt. I only picked up what he knew. I felt him slowly grow sleepy and fade off. I had nothing else to help me locate him.

They found him still alive, but he died of hypothermia.

That's still hard to know.

Think about what may come at the end, before you start trying to do anything like this. If you have no confidence in what you sense, if it does not nag at you and stay consistent, you have nothing to contribute to a search. You have to know that you are ready for a tremendous responsibility.

9/11: Black Cloud, White Cloud

It's the dream I don't forget. I wish I had the skill to do it half the justice of the images. August 30, 2001. I walked out of a desert cantina to see two straight pillars of cloud standing out in a flaming sunset across the desert. The left one was black, the right one, white. I knew I was seeing something extremely important. I, and those around me, stared at the twins for a long time. It was the first of the dreams that warned me of what was coming. But I didn't understand until the event came. These were the twin towers. Black cloud, white cloud. I learned later, when I saw the first version of the documentary created by the Naudet brothers who filmed one of the planes hitting the World Trade Center, that "black cloud" was an epithet for a fire fighter rookie who brought a deadly fire with him, and "white cloud" was an name for one who brought a fire that didn't harm anyone. The Naudets and firefighter James Hanlon had been filming a rookie when the planes hit. Though the black cloud brought thousands of deaths, the white cloud protected the rookie's ladder: none of his company died. It was the only one who lost none of their men.

This is what precognition usually is. Enough to warn you, not enough to stop the event in any way. Why, we don't know. A warning to bear witness, not a chance to change things.

I have done this a lot. It's always difficult. It's never as much as we want to see, or as little. It is a vision that lets us know there is so much more to the universe than we will ever understand. And that, truly, is all you need to know about precognitive dreams. Write them down. Don't try to interpret them unless they nag you to do so - then you're meant to do something. Then wait. This is the ultimate shock and awe. It's something that needs your strength and clarity and patience. Nothing more.

It's all in how you look at it.

I've been going through a rash of people using my profile picture for Psychic Sensibility as "proof" I am an agent of "Satan.". I always laugh.

I like this picture because when people comment on it, I know where their mindset is, and I'm forewarned about  how our conversations about the paranormal might go. What do you see? Is the mask behind me a demon? A green man? A werewolf? Satan "himself?" An angel? Or a feathered representation of Aeolus, the Greek god of winds and weather?

It's the last, of course: See the soft feathers now? No horns, no fur, just the breath of a smile. I love this mask as a symbol for what I always talk about - psychic sense is nothing more than an ability to read the "weather" within conscious energy - psychic sense tells you which way the wind blows.

Do not assume that you know what you are looking at when you try to judge something on first appearances. The only ones who ever get it right are the ones who have seen these things before.