“A snowball is simple, direct and familiar to most of us. I use this simplicity as a container for feelings and ideas that function on many levels.”
~ Andy Goldsworthy, British Environmental Sculptor

Psychometry is a form of psychic reading in which a physical object is “read” in order to learn more about the object itself or about its owner.

Though some people find this a very simple form of psychic exercise, others find it down right impossible.

There are several milestones on any psychic journey and psychometry can be a good entry point for some beginners. If however you have yet to master the practice of meditating, you may find the techniques of beginning psychometry a bit frustrating.

The easiest objects to read are those comprised of geological elements. The energetic density of these objects makes them highly likely to record strong impressions of the world around them.

Reading an Object

Begin with a stone or a piece of jewelry. Do not use a stone that has multiple points.

Seat yourself in a comfortable position.

Take the object in your receiving hand. This is usually the opposite hand from which you write.

Close your eyes and ask the object to tell you its story.

Envision the energy of the stone flowing up your arm and filling your whole body with itself.

Allow the information contained within this energy to enter your mind. Know that it will be easily understood by you.

Do not hold any expectations of how explicit or vivid this information will be.

Simply allow it to share with you whatever pictures or feelings it choses.

If you are having a problem with getting any sensations, just switch the object to your other hand and try again.

You may see flashes of light, you may feel as if you have been through a great earthquake or volcanic explosion.

You may feel sadness or elation of the person to whom the object belongs.

You may see the creation of the jewelry or the mining of the stone.

Once you have ridden this wave, however long or short, of information, thank the object and let go of it.

Be sure to record your experience, anything t hat you may have seen or felt, how long the exercise lasted and how vivid it was for you.

You can practice this again and again with a different object each time, referring back to your vision journal to gauge your progress.

“Intuition is the supra-logic that cuts out all the routine processes of thought and leaps straight from the problem to the answer.”
~ Robert Graves, English Poet and Mythologist

I get many, many emails about tarot interpretations which, along with dream and rune interpretations, seem to be some of the most popular interests of people just beginning to delve into the psychic realms.

The funny thing about them is that they are great door-openers, so to speak, for people looking to begin living with more intuition and who wish to develop their own psychic abilities. And yet, they are some of more widespread blockages that end up standing in people’s way along the path.

I am not saying that I never use these tools, I most certainly do. What I am saying is that people can get so hung up in the interpretation of the symbols, in analyzing the tool, that they forget the actual implementation of it.

Divinatory Symbolism

Symbolic interpretation is a means to an end. It gives you insight by externalizing the search for information. These tools are intended as a means to overstep the guardian Ego, and get it to come along on your search for intuitive or spiritual advice about generally mundane concerns and subjects.

In my work as an intuitive and channel, I have met a plethora of people who are distinctly addicted to divination. They do not make a decision without consulting their cards, or having someone else consult cards for them. And they’re own personal energy or mood is easily changeable based upon the dream symbols, runes or tarot cards that dance before them.

If you are concerned about giving away your power to a tool of divination or to a psychic in particular, have a quick read of Erin’s Pavlina’s article Maintaining Your Power in the Face of Psychic Prediction.

Let me be clear, these tools DO give us valuable information about our path. They do not, however speak in absolutes. They speak symbolically. Thus, by nature, they are a non-direct, nonspecific, source of information. The only knowledge that they can provide is what comes from our understanding of their message and our implementation of it in our life.

What I always tell people is to remember that, without exception, the message provided in dreams or tarot or runes is one that is infinitely changeable. What we are being shown is a likelihood, of what will manifest if we continue on in the situation exactly as we are today, if our actions do not change. If however, or intent and actions or reaction in the situation does change, then so too does the outcome.

Beginner’s Tarot Practice

Why use tarot at all? Do they really serve any purpose in a spiritual life. Well, yes. If your aim is to connect with and begin listening to your own intuition and to begin learning to hear messages from the universe, then tarot can be an exceedingly useful tool.

At first it is, of course, all about a learning curve. Many people begin by using the interpretation provided them in the booklet which came with their deck. This is okay, if you wish. But I was not taught that way. I was taught to meditate on each card to come up with its meaning and to never use the “reversed” or inverted meanings of the cards.

Essentially I wrote my own book for my deck. And different decks can have slightly different meanings.

Anyway, let’s forget where you’ve gotten your interpretations from and just go with: you’re a beginner who has a set of card interpretations.

The first thing is memorize your meanings. Ladies and Gentlemen, you cannot keep pulling out the booklet for every card. If you’re doing this, you haven’t yet learned anything. Knowing the meaning of each card allows you, the reader, to spend your time looking at the actual symbolism displayed on your cards. It also allows you to explain the meaning of each card to the person that you are reading for.

Why do this? Your book already knows the meaning so why should you need to?

Well trust me, it is going to bring you to where you need in order to bring intuition (and hopefully psychic abilities) into the picture.

Bringing in Intuition

Now, lets say that you have done 100 readings using just your knowledge of your card interpretations. Undoubtedly some of them have been fantastically spot-on, touching a chord with both you and others. Also many of them have probably been rather poor, not offering you anything in the way of insight or truth.

Not to worry. You should have a hang of the process and the meanings of your cards by now. So let’s move forward with this skill set…

Now what you need to do is begin focusing more on the intuitive thoughts going through your mind during the reading and also begin trusting these thoughts so that you allow yourself to communicate these feelings to the person you are reading for.

The whole point of using tarot, or any symbolic divination for that matter, is to open up to your own intuition and help you get to a place where you are doing true divination. That is, reading the person and the energy around that person and not reading the cards. The cards are essentially for the benefit of the person who is getting the reading, not the person who is doing the reading.

Begin by trying to incorporate intuitive thoughts or seemingly nonfactual “vibes” into readings for people whom you know really well. This will allow you to simply laugh it off if what you say ends up being completely off the mark. But the point is to allow your seemingly random inner thoughts and vibes to be spoken during the reading, to begin trusting the messages coming to you from the spiritual realm.

Eventually you will come to a place where you yourself no longer need the cards and begin to understand that they are simply a tool to help you focus, but are not the focus themselves.

All of things that I write about on this blog, tarot, meditation, exercise, diet, psychology etc., they are all simply tools to help you connect with your intuition and spiritual self. They are not the focus, but a means to the end, for getting in touch with the unseen forces within you and for overcoming the Ego in order to strengthen your innate talents.

Good luck with all your seeking!

“You must see your goals clearly and specifically before you can set out for them. Hold them in your mind until they become second nature.”
~Les Brown, Author & Motivational Speaker

It seems like everyone is trying their hand at intentional manifestation these days. And I couldn’t be happier to hear it. Because, as we practice at focusing our intent for optimum manifestation, we each become more aware of the negative messages that we are sending out in our daily lives. And, in so doing, we tend to lessen the number of those messages that we are broadcasting, which can only result in the evolution of a more positive world.

What isn’t positive, however, is the frustration that many of us can often feel when we work to manifest something and it doesn’t seem to turn out properly. Try as we might it seems that the focus of our intent on one positive thing, long enough to bring it into manifestation for ourself, is something that we just cannot achieve.

Many people determine, prematurely, that the power of intention simply doesn’t work or, that their own thoughts are too hopelessly negative to allow them to use this power. But this is not necessarily the truth.

We live in an externalizing society. We are taught to believe that all that we could or should be doing to better ourselves is something outside of ourself. Thus the internal and natural abilities which are involved in intentional manifestation, the imaginative and visualization skills we need to employ, have not been properly nurtured or developed in our lives.

In developing the skill of focusing our visualizations on our intent, and seeing it as real, we can become more and more gifted at the actual manifestation of our deepest desires.

Here is a Visualization Focusing Exercise that you can practice at to strengthen these abilities:

First, choose a solid object that is about the size of your hand, but not bigger than you can hold in your hand. Make sure that the object doesn’t have too many colors or too many sharp angles or jagged edges. *The classic item used in this type of exercise is an apple.

Next, sit comfortably, as if you were preparing to meditate. Hold the object in both hands and stare at it. Examine it and how it feels in your hands. Look at its different attributes and slowly turn it, touching and observing the look and feel of all of its sides.

Continue memorizing its features. Feel its weight, its texture. Observe any nicks in its surface and how the light reflects off of, or casts shadows, upon it. Sit with it for as long as you feel necessary to really know what holding it looks and feels like.

Now, set the object down on a table or the floor in front of you. Place it so that you can clearly see it but cannot touch it. While looking at the object, place your hands in the same position that they would be in if your were holding the item.

Here you begin to visualize (ie. pretend or imagine) that you ARE still holding the item. Feel its weight, see its color and shape in your hands. Allow yourself to imagine running your hands over its surface. Feel its texture against your skin.

You may close your eyes, if the “feeling” sensation is easier for you. Or keep them open, if the “seeing” sensation is easier for you. DO NOT mistake looking at the actual object in front of you for actually visualizing it in your hands. You may glance at it in front of you but the point is to SEE and/or FEEL it still in your hands.

You can sit with this exercise for as long as you like until you feel some measure of success. And you can begin again by picking up the object and following these same steps as often as you like. Don’t give up, your ability will improve with time and frequency of practice.

Use the same object every time, or change objects when you wish, the choice is yours. Changing objects may make it more difficult but some people like a challenge.

Once you succeed and are comfortable with your ability to feel or see the object still in your hands for a long while after setting it down, you can then move to setting it out of sight and trying to achieve the same level of visualization.

After you get really good at it, keep practicing at further distances. Sit with the object in the morning before leaving the house and then try the visualization while on your lunch break at work.

Then, once you master a simple, hand-sized object, you can try your hand at smaller objects, like keys and buttons, or more jagged and complicated objects, such as a banana, a wrench, a Rubiks cube or a dvd case. Maybe you will be able to sit on a motorcycle or a bicycle and then use your visualization abilities to recreate that sensation long after you finish your ride.

This process can and will lead you to being able to stand in an empty field and see that dream home being built, or stand on a stage and feel the 20,000 people cheering for you.

Focus on developing your hidden skills and strengthening your belief in your powers of imagination and intention. If you want it, you will get there!

“The only real valuable thing is intuition. ”
~Albert Einstein, Physicist, Philosopher and Author

Intuition is the holy grail of the Self-Development movement. There are so many books out there promising to help you find your inner voice, trying to teach you how to trust what your inner self tells you.

But it is not always that simple. It can take years to distinguish what the Quakers call “that still small voice within.” And the hearer can go back-and-forth between believing and not believing that what they are hearing has real value.

We have all experienced flashes of inspiration from time-to-time: A quick knowing that tells us we should slow down while driving, only to come around the corner and happen onto a fresh accident scene. A twinge in our mind that someone is untrustworthy only to find out later that they stole our credit card when we weren’t looking. The little voice that says “Take your umbrella” on a day that was supposed to be sunny, to then find your lunch break smack dab in the middle of a hail storm. These are certainly not mere coincidences.

Our mind and, more importantly, the spirit that powers our mind, are rare gifts and possess abilities that we simply cannot fathom. At the beginning of our journey, when we are trying to focus on building a connection with our own unique gifts and faculties, it is understandable how much emphasis is placed on cultivating a trust in your intuition.
Techniques abound, though I find that the non-imposing information provided in Shakti Gawain‘s work is the best starting point for many people. In her book, The Path of Transformation, she outlines ways to overcome some of the common blockages to inner guidance:

*Don’t make the process a bigger deal than it is. Stop trying to make anything amazing happen.

*Try identifying the different voices inside of you by asking yourself a question and then writing down the different tones of voice in different colors of pen.

*Try not to get caught up in needing an immediate answer. Inner guidance usually just lets us know what we need in the moment. It seldom gives us long-term information.

*Try not to confuse your intuitive feelings with other emotions or impulses.

*If you feel blocked for a really long time you may need to do some emotional healing work. It can be difficult to contact our intuitive feelings when we are holding our emotions inside us.

*Remember that developing inner guidance is a lifelong process that goes in cycles of flows and lulls. Don’t be too hard on yourself.

The more that we listen for our the voice of our intuition, the louder that we will hear it. That is simple truth. But what about the other voices in our heads? (No, not the schizophrenic type of voices.) What about the ego? What about the inner child? How can we distinguish exactly which voice we are listening to?

This very problem arose when I was counseling a woman just beginning her self-development journey. She was recently divorced, had left her job and moved several states away from where she had lived. It was her first time away from family and the very first time in her life that she had been alone with her own thoughts for more than a couple of hours.

On the surface, she knew that her marriage had been painful, that it was not leading where she wanted her life to go and that her ex-husband had been lazy and abusive. But she kept contacting me with worries and loneliness, kept reaffirming to her friends and family that she missed the past, that she missed the dream of that marriage. It is fine to feel hurt and lonely after a break-up. It is fine to feel confused about the future. But this was something more.

She was letting her discontentment with who she was in the present moment color her version of the past. We all have done this, at one time or another.

But, rather than trying to see this process as simply that, a process, and viewing it as an observer to her own growth, she kept on doubting whether or not she had made the right decisions in leaving her ex-husband and striking out on her own. (They say that the devil you know is better than the devil that you don’t.)

In order to validate the feelings that she was having, she convinced herself that it was her intuition that kept plaguing her with the wrongness of her decision. “My gut keeps telling me that there was something in that relationship for me and that I was too blind to see it.”

She would call me and tell me that she should go back to him. She felt that she knew it was the right thing, because she kept coming to that decision over-and-over again in her mind. Since it was so persistent, it must be her intuition.

But the intuition is subtle, much more fluid than that. It is not a force that knocks hard against a brick wall, it simply looks for another way around.

The only way to gauge for ourselves whether or not we are talking to our inner guidance, whether or not we are making our decisions based on our true intent and our true inner knowing is to ask. More specifically it is to question. By constantly questioning ourselves, by constantly holding ourselves and our motives to our own highest and best intentions, we begin to build an inner compass. As this questioning of our own motives becomes more automatic we can begin to sense whether or not the choices we make seem true to us intuitively.

This in itself is a process. We begin by simply asking ourselves what is the right path for us to take and listening or feeling for the answer in our gut. Intuition does not usually go through many long thought processes to explain and justify the decision that it chooses, it simply flashes the answer at you with seemingly no grounds whatsoever.

In this woman’s case I simply asked her, “What does this voice that you are currently hearing say to you?”

She replied in a very emotional manner, “It says that I am suffering now because I made the wrong choice. It says that things with him really weren’t all that bad and that now that I have left him I will never get to have children. It says that I should go back and try to rekindle the flame with him.”

To me it was obvious that this was a voice that spoke out of fear rather than truth or possibility. Then I asked her, “Well, is there another voice? Do you sometimes hear a gentler voice, one that doesn’t seem to have any fears?”

“Yes,” she said.

“And what does that one say?” I asked, “Does it say something along the lines of ‘I know that I have been brought here for a reason. I know that I can make a go of it in this new location and that I can create anything I want for my future. I feel free to be myself for the first time in my life and, since there is a reason for everything, I know that I am moving in the right direction?’”

“Well, yes,” she finished, “That is almost exactly what the other voice says.”

“That voice,” I explained, “is your intuition. It has nothing to base its beliefs on, it just knows.”

So, what was going on here? Was she developing split personalities? Not at all, she was as sane as anyone else. But it can sometimes be so easy to get caught up in the feelings of the moment. To desire an answer so strongly that we mistake the voice of Self Doubt for the voice of Intuition.

To discern the difference we need only ask ourselves if this is truly our intuition, and we will usually sense the answer. Intuition is a gentle force. The voices of the ego and friends are much more forceful. These other voices want you to come around to their way of thinking, whereas the voice of intuition would be happy if you’d just hear it.

“It seems to me that those songs that have been any good, I have nothing much to do with the writing of them. The words have just crawled down my sleeve and come out on the page.”
~Joan Baez, American Singer/Songwriter

Automatic Writing Explained

Automatic writing is just that, writing automatically without thinking about what you will write. It is a technique that is used in various forms of therapy and in writer’s workshops around the world. Though, when employed as an extra-sensory practice, it involves opening oneself up to not only your own subconscious but also to spiritual beings and entities who might have some positive information and wisdoms to share with you.

Amongst superphysical, or psychic, abilities it is automatic writing that many people find the easiest to develop. And, I don’t say this just because it happens to be the first psychic communication that I myself deliberately attempted, but because the nature of this ability is one that can often get past the conscious defenses of our mind and allow us access to spiritual information.

This is true because, when we first become interested in spiritual abilities, we are often hampered in our over-confident attempts at psychic development by the protective ego, or conscious mind, which does not want us to experience anything that it cannot explain using reason. This is partly self-defense on the part of our mortal mind and partly self-defense on the part of our unique being. What if we come up against something that we cannot handle and suffer a breakdown or, worse, death? In other words, our fear of the unknown is often the very thing that keeps us from being able to experience the psychic unknown which we truly are trying to embrace.

How does automatic writing help overcome this problem? Well, simply put, the mind is a part of the physical body and as such will default to the physical senses if given the opportunity. Hence, putting a pen to paper. With a pen in your physical hand, the mind does not find it so ludicrous and fearfully unexplainable that information should be coming through you. After all, isn’t that what we’re supposed to do with a pen and paper?

So, pen in hand, you are more likely to be able to let spiritual beings speak to you and through you. And that is what you are aiming for, to allow non-physical information to permeate through you, as a physical being. This is the nature of psychic ability of any kind, the knowing and understanding of things not physically apparent.

With the development of automatic writing you may also find yourself hearing or knowing things in the split-second before they are written. These abilities, clairaudience and claircognizance (or clairsentience) are commonly developed in tandem with other types of extra-sensory gifts so they should not be alarming.

How To Do It

I myself began by putting pen to paper, on a mere whim, one summer afternoon many years ago. The process is simple and does not require any particularly difficult preparations.

You need a clean surface for writing, a very good-working pen, a stack of blank paper and a little peace and quiet in which you will not be disturbed. Then you need to have the clear intention of communicating with the spiritual realms, with a knowledgeable and positive being. When you are ready, think of your intention, close your eyes and enter a peaceful, slightly meditative, state of mind. Then hold the pen lightly, imagining the energy flowing down to you from the universe, from your mind and down to your hand. Allow it move if it wishes and see what comes through.

Though you may get interesting communication on your very first try, you are more likely to get a page of meaningless scribbles, if anything at all. This is quite normal. Keep trying and see how the scribbles develop. After a number of attempts you will know in your gut if this method is for you or not.

In the beginning, if you succeed in writing something automatically, you may find that your own belief in what you have written is wavering. This is a natural consequence of having successfully tricked or disengaged the conscious mind. Since your waking brain was not involved in the process of creating these words, which are before you now on the paper, it is disbelieving of what they are. So your mind will attempt to fill in the blanks of its own memory, to insert itself in a process of which it was not a part. So do not be fooled if you begin to doubt that you “did it right.”

Do not doubt the spiritual nature of the information obtained by assuming that you were exerting too much control on the process. It is common to wonder and worry that the information may have actually come from your own mental dribblings and not from a spiritual source. But the reality is that, when you have opened yourself up to the process, then any kind of amazing, and even mundane, information can be conveyed without the engaging of your conscious mind.

Spiritual development and the extra-sense are something rarely acknowledged or talked about in our modern western society, so it is not surprising that we find these things hard to understand or even believe in. But through trial and error you will know what is true for you and you will come to understand your own abilities. That is what being alive in this physical realm is all about.

“Inner seeing has nothing to do with physical vision; it’s the perception of life directly.”
~Frederick Philip Lenz, III, Ph.D., Spiritual Teacher of American Buddhism

Someone wrote and asked, “When did you first know that you had the sight?” Good question. I, of course, do not have a very simple answer.

Firstly the sight is ofttimes a complete misnomer as many psychics do not actually SEE anything. I think that this is what can give rise to dismay amongst people who are attempting to develop their own sixth sense, they sit there hearing things and feeling things and never trust that they actually have a gift because they have not actually seen Uncle Bob come walking out of the mists and bow down before them in his burial attire.

Back to my gift…I suppose that I was a very precocious child, I was hungry for knowledge from a young age and had an inherent rightness about my way of speaking. Many may choose to coin this “Know-it-all Syndrome.” (Think Hermione without the wand.)

I truly do not remember ever thinking that I had a different gift then anyone else, and if I did it certainly revolved around reading and writing more than trancing and speaking in tongues. But I would tell stories to my friends. Everyone loved to listen to my stories, all of my little friends getting their free bit of after school entertainment out of me.

I would tell stories about the ladies in their funny hats and long dresses getting off of the train at a depot that used to be right where we are standing, about how cars used to be huge and shiny and have funny fins on the back of them, how a little girl used to play in the closet with her doll house just like we were playing now. Everyone loved how vivid my stories were and I felt like I had a gift. But the truth is that they weren’t my stories, I know that now.

My Mother always said that I was an Old Soul, something she could see deep in my eyes. She had a knowing of her own, seeing something in me before I was even born and naming me Vera Nadine, perhaps in the hope that I would become exactly what I am becoming today. I use to entertain her friends, and I think scare the pants off some of them, by singing songs from the 1940’s that I could not possibly have known on my own. Maybe it wasn’t me singing.

One summer, at camp, I walked along the forest path toward the lake with several other little girls and touched each tree for a time, the others pausing to listen as I told them the story of that tree, what it had lived through and seen, how it was feeling and when it would die. It only occurred to me many years later that I wasn’t lying to them but reading, at a very early age, the energy imprint of that living being…a signature that all things carry.

A part of me always knew that I wasn’t lying, that what I was saying wasn’t entirely made up out of my own imagination but tied, in some very real way, to an indescribable thing that I couldn’t see or touch but that was truly there somewhere lending its voice to my words. Call it child’s play or call it magic but I believe that my gift is inherent, something we all have that seeks expression.

Years later, after having attended a Protestant church for almost ten years with my extended family (neither of my parents condescending to attend with me mind you) I made confirmation alongside a boy named Damien (yes, really) and told my Father that I would not be going back there anymore. I didn’t find any truth or spirituality in the standing and sitting and mournful singing. Since we had agreed I could do as I wished after making confirmation, he didn’t fight me. (The whole fiasco I deem to have been arranged by him to appease his family’s desires to have me in church rather than by his own desire.)

Now I believe that spirituality and religion can coexist, but that they are not mutually exclusive and that the one can sometimes put a pretty firm end to the other and vice versa. After leaving Protestantism I embraced a solitary Pagan path and began researching more about earth-based religions. This is something that I worked at and learned more about all through high school. I do believe in magic, that is the ability to transform energies to your benefit, and know that I did some small bits of it as a teenager.

During this time I continued to be the learned-know-it-all and for some reason people always came to me when they had a problem that they could not solve or needed a shoulder to cry on. I also began attempting what I thought was Proper Divination, adopting a set of Tarot cards from a high school sweetheart (I still have them Lucas.) and toting them to a multitude of keg parties and Denny’s restaurants. I helped some people with what I told them, but always seemed to be more accurate when I forgot about the little booklet that had the card meanings and just “lied” to each person about what they meant based on what I thought that person needed to hear.

Why do I keep saying that I lied? Well because that is what I thought for so long, that I had lied to these people, that I was just being creative and making up stories to entertain. It is only just recently that I realized why I felt this way. It is because children are not raised to believe in the unknown as a thing of value, unless of course we are talking about certain select few deities, and therefore they believe that anything unseen is a figment of their imagination. But this is not always so.

Was I lying to these people about talking trees, what the tarot said for them or whether or not a little girl had once played with her dolls in the nearest closet? I do not think that I was. I think that I was simply exercising a gift which for me at the time had no definition, no recognizable value or purpose. Now that my connection to the divine is solid to me, has structure and definition, I see where these occurrences fit in to its development.

Freshman year of college my own spiritual path was illuminated for me in many ways, I met an older lady who was a priestess of the Goddess and had been taught many years earlier by another elderly lady whom she had met in her travels. She agreed to teach me her way of belief. I was so excited and by coincidence I also took a class that semester in the Myth and Reality of Witches…yes it did fulfill a General Education requirement.

I will not attempt to dispel all of the myths or explain all of the realities here, suffice it to say that the one strong reality I left the class with was that this was what I was meant to be, what I already believed and that I wanted to know other people who believed the same stuff….that there was a balance to all life, masculine and feminine, black and white, wet and dry, up and down and that we as spiritual beings having a physical experience could live in harmony with the rest of creation and in honoring it could harness its energy for the greater good.

My years of study with this woman included mostly work on the self, such as integrity of the word, cleansing negative habits, living in self-discipline and learning to slow the body and release the mind through meditation and path workings. She also instructed me in ways to connect to and commune with the different aspects of nature so as to better know their energies and be able to use them in a beneficial way.

As spiritual seekers, no matter what our mixture of beliefs or our chosen religions, we are all striving towards a true inner balance, a connection to the divine and toward personal impeccability. The truth is that this perfect impeccability cannot be fully achieved in manifest, physical form but it is the striving and the acknowledgment of our own imperfection that makes us impeccable.

When I was ready to go out on my own, armed with a strong spiritual foundation, my first guide finally came to me, not in a meditation but in a waking moment of self-despair. I had lost someone that I loved very much and could not reconnect to them in a constructive way and as I sat doodling crop circle-like forms on a blank paper (something I have done since puberty) a voice sounded in my head and my hand started writing words. That was Gretchen. Many other guides have come and gone since but she remains the constant.

Gretchen has helped me accept my chosen purpose in this life and has aided me in developing my gifts further so that I may help other spiritual seekers in this lifetime. I am sure that more gifts will develop in time just as I am sure that you are reading this because you suspect your own gifts and are wondering if it can be possible. I am here to tell you that it is so.

“Personal transformation can and does have global effects. As we go, so goes the world, for the world is us. The revolution that will save the world is ultimately a personal one.”
~Marianne Williamson, Inspirational Author

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This article is a repost from our old blog – originally dated January 2009.
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Wow. A new year already. The numerology seems to suggest that this year will be the beginning of a new life, for everyone.

Sorry it’s been a while since I posted, my focus has finally shifted wholeheartedly to writing my book and I am finding it hard to concentrate on the blog articles at present.

But this one, or perhaps the invitation for this one, simply arrived in my scope of vision. A relative of mine asked for a bit more info on intuitive development which made me realize that this is indeed most likely to be what draws people to this blog. It is not just simply my stories of spirituality and psychic experiences, but a desire to have these things become an integral part of your own lives.

Now, this person asked for more info on developing intuition. I, of course, read way too much into things and become over excited, always wanting to help increase the vibration of this planet by guiding others to spiritual awareness and enlightenment. (Total Light-worker Syndrome.)

Anyhow. I have decided to create a multi-approach and multi-subject list of good reading materials for moving you along your path toward intuitive abilities and spiritual awareness.

There are beginner, intermediate and advanced books here. They deal with many facets of energy and spiritual awareness. Some will be too weird or too heavy for the absolute beginner. This does not, however, preclude you from being able to read them. The beauty of reading in these subject areas is that you know when you are ready for a book, by whether or not you like and understand what you are reading when you pick it up.

This is about intuitive development so, as Serge suggested while I was writing this, just scan the list of subjects and titles. Use your own intuitive vibe to choose which few books you’d like to read first. Then see where that reading leads you to next. I suppose you could call this “going with the flow.” When something is right, you just know.

My belief is that two things are essential to the development of intuitive gifts:

1) Meditation, lots of it, in many and any forms.

2) A shift in awareness, a willingness to look at things from a new point-of-view, I would call this “mindfulness,” the act of becoming consciously aware of all the multitude of things that we do mindlessly in our modern world. (Such as speaking, eating, bathing, buying, judging others and being entertained externally, in ways that disengage us from our spirit and our environment.)

Have a look below and see how you can begin developing the necessary spiritual awareness to connect you to our natural energies and intuitive abilities…

Spiritual Awareness
The Power of Now
The Book of Secrets
There is a Spiritual Solution to Every Problem
A New Earth
Being in Balance: 9 Principles for Creating Habits to Match Your Desires
The Way of the Wizard
**Awakening: A Daily Guide to Conscious Living

Beginning Intuitive
Developing Intuition
**Trust Your Vibes
The Time Has Come to Accept Your Intuitive Gifts
**Personal Power Through Awareness
**Living With Joy

Intermediate Intuitive
Psychic Pathway
Awakening Your Psychic Skills
Living in the Light
Spiritual Growth: Being Your Higher Self

Contacting Spirit Guides
Ask Your Guides
Opening to Channel
Contact Your Spirit Guides To Enrich Your Life

Meditation
**Meditations: Creative Visualization and Meditation Exercises to Enrich Your Life
Wherever You Go, There You Are
Meditation for Beginners
**The Miracle of Mindfulness
How to Meditate: An Illustrated Guide to Calming the Mind and Relaxing the Body
Teach Yourself to Meditate in 10 Simple Lessons

From the blog front page, if you want more topics and materials click here:

Audiobooks & Meditations (these are a mix of the subjects throughout this post)
**Unlocking Your Intuitive Power: How to Read the Energy of Anything
Developing Intuition: Practical Guidance for Daily Life
Guided Meditations: For Calmness, Awareness, and Love
**Guided Mindfulness Meditation
Stress Reduction and Creative Meditations
The Essence of Being in Balance
**Meditations for a New Earth
Spiritual Growth: Vol 1 Raising Your Vibration
Spiritual Growth: Vol 2 Being Your Higher Self
Becoming an Intuitive Healer: A Professional Development Course for Health Practitioners
Guided Visualization Series Vol. 1
Living the Light Body
**How to Meditate with Pema Chodron: A Practical Guide to Making Friends with Your Mind

Earth Spirituality (ie. Paganism, Native Ways and Wicca) * I am in no way stating that this spirituality is the only path to developing psychic skills, only that its openness to individualization and its balance between masculine and feminine divinity has led me to my own development of these innate gifts.*

Contemporary Paganism: Listening People, Speaking Earth
Wicca: A Guide for the Solitary Practitioner
The Elements of Natural Magic
The Spiral Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Goddess
Spirit of the Witch

Oneness & Light-working
Oneness
The Calling
Family of Light
Bringers of the Dawn
Earth: The Pleiadian Keys to the Living Library
Affinity: Reclaiming the Divine Flow of Creation

Hermetics & Power of Intention
The Kybalion: A Study of The Hermetic Philosophy of Ancient Egypt and Greece
Spiritual Alchemy
The Amazing Power of Deliberate Intent
Path of Alchemy: Energetic Healing & the World of Natural Magic
The Law of Attraction
The New Hermetics: 21st Century Magick for Illumination

Energy-Healing
**Hands of Light: A Guide to Healing Through the Human Energy Field
Vibrational Medicine
Quantum Healing: Exploring the Frontiers of Mind/Body Medicine
Intuitive Wellness: Using Your Body’s Inner Wisdom to Heal
Plant Spirit Shamanism: Traditional Techniques for Healing the Soul
True Balance: A Commonsense Guide for Renewing Your Spirit
Energy Work: The Secret of Healing and Spiritual Development
Plant Spirit Healing: A Guide to Working with Plant Consciousness

There are of course many more specific and advanced subjects that people may choose to study, or may naturally develop, along their own path of intuitive development and spiritual awakening. These include, by aren’t limited to, Astral Projection, Trance Channeling, Aura Reading, High Magic, Astrology, Divination, Herbal Medicine, Yoga, Hypnotherapy, Reiki, Feng Shui, Acupuncture, Aromatherapy and many others.

However, many spiritually aware people are happy to just develop an intuitive relationship with their spirit guides and their higher self. This is what enriches life and makes it a full and rewarding experience. All else is just icing on the spiritual cake.

~

To my relative who inspired this informative post, I love you. I love you not just because you are family, I love you because I know the curiosity, and joy, and excitement, and trepidation, that run through you when you begin looking into the limitless and beautiful world of things that can be felt but are unseen. I want you to know that I will help in any way that I can. And I love you because, in general, I aspire to love all people, and I can see how we are all one, at all times, no matter the form or the circumstance.

I am not yet completely altruistic. I don’t claim to be a bodhisattva, to have achieved Buddha mind, I am far too opinionated on world matters and personal behaviors to be that yet. But I am sending light energy and peaceful support to all spiritual seekers in this changeable place that we call Earth.

“You and I are essentially infinite choice-makers. In every moment of our existence, we are in that field of all possibilities where we have access to an infinity of choices.”
~Deepak Chopra, Physician, Author & Lecturer

These are the first words that my guide ever spoke to me, back in the days when she and I only communicated through automatic writing. Then she convinced me that I could hear her well enough to fore-go the pencil and just listen… Now we are up to the point where I speak out loud for her if the occasion calls for it. Nevertheless here is some of our early stuff and some of the most direct stuff she’s ever written with the intention of reaching a wide audience….

~

A vision appears before me of ceramic people all sitting in a row. They stare sadly out to their world. It is this world. None see the others, each – a single machine. Thoughts permeate their minds, but never long enough to become actions. It is in this way that I began my life as well. But I see things differently now. You can too. But the journey is always unsure. Let me show you.

Life begins simply enough, two bodies enjoying sensations and combining life forces create another and it grows. These mechanics give way to birth and a spirit comes to join its new flesh. Thus begins our odd journey. Screaming out of the womb we enter into the “world.” But what is this world that we enter? Some would say it is reality. Most would call it life. I am not so sure that we see it all correctly. It is our perception of this place that we train to our desires over time. I do not desire to see evil, so I do not. Perhaps, you do not desire to see reason, so you won’t. It is all relative to what we find unnecessary. Each is on their own plane of existence. We populate one world, but have many others within us. I am here to test this theory.

Tell me what you desire and I will show you something that is possible. You may have it all, if you tell it to be. This is a truth of the ages. One which time has buried. The race that you run does not exist as to the real purpose of life. Check your person for the true meaning of breath and energy and it will not be for you to work at nothing your whole life. It is in you to transcend this path and walk in a place of infinite light. It is not a dream what you dream, it is a possibility. All can go to their heaven and live every day. I am not here to tell you to quit the mundane necessities of your world, but to show you of other life lessons. All men can love life and life can love you back. People are here to learn the world, not to break its forces. Teachers exist if you seek what is unseen. Nothing you learned in school can make suffering less or happiness more. All must seek a true life purpose within their own spirit. Body is but temporary and that which you need is already provided. All else is folly and an illusion of man.

Take a chance to view your life from a place of innocence and tell me what lessons you see there. Life is long and yet short for a time to grow. The spirit manifests itself but little in your daily workings if you do not try to cultivate it. I wish to show you how, but you must read this as a person willing to trust, to work and grow.

Here is the first truth: you are not merely mortal. You are an eternal changeling, spirit incarnate. Believe what you will. You may begin from there. Whence you came is not flesh, it is the vessel and you the pilot within. Live every day secure in this knowledge and fear not the tests of this life. You do not need to take them. This is the answer to all difficulties of time. Take only those that you must, lessons only and not negativities. They are made by you, taken by you, expressed only in your terms. None other can affect your path but you. These friends about you, you chose each of them. The family of this time and place you chose from another. They teach what you need to learn. Learn it well and live all lessons whether hard or easy. Each a purpose unto itself.

“Nothing is there to come, and nothing past, but an eternal Now does always last. ”
~Abraham Cowley, 17th-Century English Poet

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This article is a repost from our old blog – originally dated July 16. 2008.
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As a part of the channeling for our book manuscript I have been branching out and accessing new sources of information. Attempting new things is always a bit daunting, especially when you don’t know what to expect, but succeeding in new areas of channeling is always very exciting to me.

The most recent experience has been in accessing the Akashic Library. Of course, explanations of what the Akashic Records are abound so I won’t get too detailed here, suffice it to say that this wealth of information exists only ethereally. It is an energetic record of all that has ever been or will ever be in the universe. (Hey, you don’t have to believe it if you don’t want to, but really, what do you have to lose?)

There have been many descriptions of what this place looks like by those who supposedly have visited it. You will find that these descriptions vary widely and that those which bear a striking resemblance to one another do so because a person has read widely about the Library before attempting to go there.

I follow a different path, as I tend to absorb only the most perfunctory information about psychic phenomena before I attempt it. I just don’t want the wealth of other people’s opinions to cloud what I might experience.

With that in mind I have come to understand that the Akashic Library, or any positive psychic phenomena for that matter, always presents itself in whatever form will be most comforting and acceptable to the individual. This makes sense, as the Library can be whatever it wants to be, given its entirely ethereal and non-manifest nature.

So here is what I saw and how I experience the Akashic Library:

Firstly, I laid down and was tucked tightly in, like a wrapped mummy. I generally channel in a crossed-legged position, sitting in my meditation room. But when doing very deep work, such as past-life regression or anything requiring a disconnect between spirit body and physical body, I use this tucked-in technique. The object is to simulate the feeling of being in a womb or the grave, this makes you feel safer and signals to your psyche that the need for the spirit to remain firmly rooted in the body is no longer true.

Next I call to my higher self, whom I generally do not invoke in regular channeling (as she is very large, very strong and very far removed from our plane of existence.) I ask her to take me to the place between places, the realm in which all exists in energetic form and where all things past, present and future are recorded in the light.

At this point I begin to feel my physical vibration speeding up and the spiritual energy rising slowly up above my body.

Next, I ask my two guides, Gretchen and Astra, to guide me safely upwards into the other realms and lead me to the entrance of the Akashic Library. I begin to visualize us walking up a winding, white stairway, that stands unsupported in our ether. The walkway ends at a place that is universal, filled with endless wisps of cloud and starfields.

We float briefly in this formless place and arrive at a hovering set of marble stairs, leading up to a set of great oak doors. This looks a bit like the entrance to the New York Public Library, oddly enough. Once inside, I walk through a short, unlit entryway and then approach a reception area, a small space with a rounded desk in the middle. Behind this desk sits a woman, who asks what topic I am researching and then points me toward one of the doors that leads off of this space.

On my very first visit she asked my topic and handed me a key. This was not just any old key, but a key that was bigger than my hand. It was a huge solid gold skeleton key, which is encapsulated inside of an outer covering of clear quartz. Essentially, it is a quartz key with a solid gold core. At the end of my first visit I was instructed to keep this key and I remember storing inside of my own torso somewhere.

At each visit, after briefly reaffirming my topic to the person at this desk, I enter the same door that I first used and step onto a very small landing. I walk from this landing, down the three steps, and into a dark, round room. This appears to be a black room with nothing much in it.

I hold the key in my hand and state my topic out loud. At this moment a long circle of huge books appears just above my head, wrapping around the walls of the room. These books are simply hovering, not on a shelf of any kind. And they are not entirely solid, but seem almost like holograms, as they continually spin around me. Each of them is perhaps 7-inches wide at the spine and each book cover or book spine is a different color, no two the shame shade.

Sometimes, this array of books spins quite quickly – a blur of colors above my head – and other times quite slowly. It eventually comes to a halt as it reaches the chronicle which will contain the information that I need. It is at this point that the book I require becomes quite solid and it slides out from the circle and opens itself in the air before me. The book then hovers, open, but not yet within my reach.

It is then that a “person” who has been standing silently in a darkened edge of the room steps forward and offers to help me access the information. This person, who has told me to call him “Z“, is in fact very hard to distinguish as male or female and his androgyny is very changeable depending on the information that we cover. He can sometimes be very feminine and motherly and other times rather forceful and priest-like. But he is always there and acts not only as a reference librarian of sorts but also as a translator, a guard and a guide.

As Z steps forward, the book comes now within reach and I hold it as he interprets the information for me. Each of the pages is indeed covered in symbols that could be an alphabet, and usually these are accompanied by one or two relevant images, but I cannot read these texts. In the beginning I did try to understand them by just absorbing their energy, but the conscious mind (which filters all that we try to understand or communicate) was unable to function in this place.

Z, then, acts as an interpreter for the information encoded here in the Akashic Records and I believe that his job is not only to help you by translating the required information for you but also to keep you from accessing depths of information that may hurt you or someone else. I believe that the type of key you are given at your first visit is some sort of determining factor in what information Z is willing to translate for you.

At any rate, once the book is open and in my hands, I then nod and the person who I have asked to assist me with the channeling session begins asking our predetermined questions. Depending on the answers, my assistant then alters the questions accordingly.

This is a much deeper level of channeling, nearing a complete trance state, and is rather intense. Though my limit for most client channelings and other, simple, channelings is about an hour, the limit for these sessions in about half-an-hour. Each half-hour session results in about 4-5 pages of raw material and will eventually lead to a book about the untold history of humankind.

At present our focus seems to be mostly on human spirituality and our relationship to our planet via our food choices. We’ll see where it all leads.

Wish me luck!

Also, please feel free to submit your questions and comments for, or about, the Akashic Library.