#symbolsystems

One of the more challenging aspects of getting started in the discipline of psychic development is the apprehension many of us feel about whether or not, when tuning in with our clair-senses, we are simply “making stuff up.” Especially if we do not immediately find ourselves able to distinguish between our own thoughts and those that are translating Spirit or energy in an evidential way, our egos can quickly get tripped up and shut down our psychic receptivity. Today, for those of you who might struggle with this,  I’d like to help set your minds at ease. Guess what? Imagination and clairvoyance exist on the same continuum! They are not at odds. You can’t have one without the other. The word “imagination,” after all, stems from the word “image.” In order to imagine something, you must be able to picture it. Similarly, clairvoyance is an act of creating an image in one’s mind of something we cannot otherwise see.

Clairvoyance is, arguably, the most talked-about and well-known clair-sense. It consists of the ability to see things beyond what is physically in front of us, and to communicate with Spirit through the language of visually conveyed symbols. It is also one of the clair-senses that is taken most seriously. There is something about visual information that feels so tangible and real to us (as one often hears, “I’ll believe it when I see it!”), that it is easier for people to accept than, say, clairaudience, which can more easily be mistaken for “hearing voices” - a potential symptom of mental illness. People who have functional eyesight will generally be easily visually stimulated, and many of us have our first psychic experiences as an extension of a fairly universal human experience: that of dreaming. This can work both for and against us, depending on what our particular sensitivities are. Since we are so intimately familiar with envisioning our thoughts, memories, plans and dreams as primarily visual experiences, how can we trust something that comes so naturally to us, and can be manipulated so effortlessly through thought, to convey information that is independent of our inner workings?

One of the first psychic visualization exercises I ever did, when I first started learning about psychic healing at 14, was a simple exercise involving imagining a person’s aura as a rose, from Amy Wallace’s excellent manual, “The Psychic Healing Book.” In the exercise, you read a person’s energy by imagining a rose, and then observe the color and texture of it to determine the energetic state of the person. The healing is then done by manipulating the image of the rose, to restore the energy of the person to optimum health. Now, if you were to ask two people to tune into someone’s energy and do this exercise based on the same person, they might see different things. This doesn’t necessarily mean either of them is wrong. It just means that their particular nervous system is interpreting the energy in their individual way, and picking up on different things as translated by the image they see. This is the same principle as when evidential mediums develop their own “vocabularies” of visual symbols to convey specific information: a ring signifying marriage; a pot of gold symbolizing sudden wealth; a syringe signifying drug addiction; a heart symbolizing love. It is also similar to the system of correspondences I maintain with my guides when they communicate in verbal shorthand. I know, for instance, that the word “forgive” can also mean “heal,” “let go,” “walk back” or “neutralize,” and the expression “greetings to…” may signal welcoming a new influence, or situation, not just a literal person. Another person reading these messages might think they were gibberish, but because my guides know how my mind personally references things, they know I will interpret them correctly. Our way of making sense of psychic information is highly individual, and the act of doing so is a process of making the ephemeral, tangible. This goes for all the clair-senses.

So, does this mean that we can just see whatever random pictures pop into our head, and they will be correct? Well, yes and no. It’s all in the interpretation. The whole point of learning to do psychic or mediumistic reading is to be able to gain access to useful information that can help people for their highest good. There will be right and wrong answers. This is where developing your talents within a group setting can be really helpful, since you can compare notes and learn how different people perceive information. You will eventually want to be able to verify whether the interpretations of what you are seeing, hearing, feeling etc., are correct or not. However, in order to get to this phase, it is first important to establish a system of communication, and that is where your imagination comes in. Figure out what works for you! If we can let go of the fear of mistakes and just allow ourselves to explore how we receive impressions, we will progress much faster than if we are worried of making fools of ourselves. Furthermore, the more we engage our imagination and creative thinking using all of our senses in our everyday lives, the stronger our ability to receive psychic information will become. It’s like a muscle that can be trained.