Chicken! Question on discernment and practicing. How do you practice discerning between the real answer and your brain providing answers you want to hear? Or like if using your ping method and you get nothing back?
Hey you!
One of the most important things I've done to discern between real & brain-garble answers is understanding my limits.
Developing discernment can be less like building a new tool, and more like uncovering a buried one with those little archeologist brushes.
These limits and barriers can be discovered by doing lots of different exercises under lots of different conditions. A lot of these exercises should be approached with the mindset that you're trying to learn more about yourself than anything else.
If your mindset is, "if I'm bad at these techniques it counts as a failure and indicates that I'm Not Psychic," you're gunna have a bad time. If you are able to reframe as, "this technique is an opportunity for me to learn about myself, so it is a game I cannot lose," things get a lot less stressful.
Extra infos in no particular order:
Practice what is verifiable. I could discern auras all day long, but that's not verifiable unless I can go up to the person and ask them to confirm my interpretations. (Non-verifiable practice can be calming and take the pressure off, like creative mode on video games; no need to force yourself to do only verifiable practice all the time :))
The verifiability is what we need in order to gather information: was my discernment accurate, or not? By plotting these data points over time and as our skills improve, we will learn so much about our own abilities.
Not all of us can discern the same things, right? I've never been able to do the "guess what this card is" game. So if one technique isn't working for you, or one 'domain' always falls flat, switch things up and move on.
A major part of me knowing what's "real" info and what's just brain garble is the experience to know the 'domain' I'm trying to read on just isn't within my abilities. You want me to tell you what card it is? Well you're getting brain garble for sure, I can't discern those types of things.
Lend your mind towards examining many variables. If trying the ping method, consider these variables when talking to plants: Plants used in spells versus those who are not. Young vs old, plants you take care of vs strangers, day vs night, sunny vs rainy, healthy vs diseased, isolated vs near other plants. Hearing nothing back might be because a tired plant was in the middle of a growth cycle and didn't have time to talk to you, not because you were unable to hear.
Or, the card reading trick with playing cards vs tarot cards. Store bought runes vs hand-made ones. Be quick to consider variables and slow to discount yourself.
(Other variables include you: your amount of sleep, food intake, recreational chems such as caffeine and alcohol levels, etc.)
Try focusing on your body, not just your mind. Your body may have vital sensations and signs (vital, pun) to help clue you in to your intuition.
I believe every act of discernment (about mundane situations or otherwise) and every act of focusing on psychism and intuition will improve your overall magical discernment.
Not every practice session needs to be 30 minutes you pencil in to your calendar. Try practicing all the time, with small things. Like... is your favorite mug going to be in the cabinet when you open it? What will the next commercial be for? Try to find 2-4 single-player games you can practice regularly throughout the day, so that when you feel like practicing, you always have something nearby.
By practicing lots of different verifiable techniques and always striving to gather data, over time you can gain a deep sense of how your abilities work. This includes your own personal awareness of how it feels inside your body+mind when you are discerning correctly, or not.
Over time & with practice, you can develop your own techniques for improving your discernment. Stuff that's unique to you and custom built for you :) but you can't get there until you start with practice.
Developing psychism & discernment is a bit like playing the guitar.
On one hand, it is a muscle you must develop and strengthen. This takes time. If you have 0 musical experience, even if you practice the guitar every day, it takes time for you to be able to strengthen your fingertips and hands enough to play it (and then develop muscle memory).
On the other hand, it is a skill you must cognitively learn and understand. This also takes time. Your hands can be strong but you can fail to understand the music; you can understand the music but have delicate fingers that can't hold down the strings.
Psychic techniques are nothing but notes and chords for you to practice. They are not keys that "unlock" anything.
I really do believe that people find techniques and think it's like a magic wand - that the technique itself is a key or doorway to power, and if they complete the technique and fail, it either means A) the technique doesn't work, or B) they are not psychic.
Techniques are just chords. You use them to simultaneously develop your muscles, and learn about the instrument you're trying to play.
If you require several weeks of regular practice before you are able to tap into your psychism, there's no technique that will suddenly develop that. Just like there's no spell to make you wake up tomorrow with bigger muscles and also you understand Kung-Fu.
So don't be discouraged :) just practice, practice lots of different things, verify everything you can, learn bunches, and remember to take a lot of breaks.
