Tag Archive: clairvoyance


Visual Phenomena and Psychic Awakening

Filed Under: Chakras/Auras, Intuitive Development, Psychic Ability by Soul Arcanum — Comments Off on Visual Phenomena and Psychic Awakening


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Dear Soul Arcanum:

I have begun to see things I never used to see. For example, I see various shadows and lights in empty space; they are so subtle that they are almost imperceptible. I have been to the eye doctor and even a neurologist and they can find no reason for this. The reason I am writing to you is because in the past week or so, I started to see light and color around people’s heads. At first I thought this was another issue with my vision, but then the word “aura” popped into my mind, and it hit me that maybe what I’m experiencing is more metaphysical than physical. (I have only seen these auras around two individuals; I don’t see them all the time.) I feel really spaced out these days; I can’t focus like I used to, which has made it hard to be productive in my job as a paralegal. Do you think what I’m experiencing is spiritual in nature? I hope so, because I’ve been afraid that I have a brain tumor!

K.

Dear K.:

While I’m very glad that you’ve seen doctors about this, it breaks my heart that you went through all of that testing fearing that you had a brain tumor. In other times and places, these sorts of experiences were better understood. Can you imagine how different your experience would have been if you had been immediately directed to the neighborhood shaman, guru or spiritual healer, and promptly received a clear explanation and helpful advice? It seems like “modern science” is even eradicating spirit in cultures with the strongest foundations of spiritual knowledge, for I keep hearing from people in India who are experiencing classic psychic phenomena who are writing to me half a world a way for help. When I recommend they find a local guru to help them, they say they wouldn’t know where to find such an individual! In any case, it is helpful that you’ve ruled out physical causes, for now we can feel free to explore metaphysical explanations.

There are hundreds of “symptoms” associated with spiritual/psychic awakening. (I hesitate to use the word “symptoms” because this connotes pathology, so from here on out, we’ll call them “signs.”) In your question, you present two of the most common: seeing/sensing subtle energy and feeling spaced out or out of touch with mundane reality. These signs are especially common in early spiritual awakening. I experienced the exact same thing way back when I first began to explore spiritual practices. I had had a number of spontaneous psychic experiences prior to choosing to actively explore spiritual matters; it was these experiences that ignited my interest in metaphysics. When I began to spend a lot of time in altered states of consciousness via practices like meditation, all sorts of interesting things began to happen.

For me, seeing auras came first. It is normal to see auras around some people and not others, especially when this is happening spontaneously as opposed to it happening as a result of your own conscious effort. The first time I ever saw an aura, I was in a university lecture for an Eastern Religions class. I had been dabbling in meditation for a few weeks at this point. The lecture was held in a very large hall with the professor on a stage with a spotlight on him at the podium. As is common in long lectures, I kept drifting in and out of a trance state. As my mind wandered, my vision went into a soft focus so I was no longer really focused on anything or anyone in particular. That’s when I noticed something amazing: the professor had a huge yellow light all around him! At first I assumed this had something to do with the spotlight, but when he wandered away from it and into the shadows on the stage, the light remained the same. That’s when I realized that it was coming from him instead of from some outside source.

Like you, it took me a moment to realize that I was probably seeing his aura. Needless to say, I don’t think I heard much of the lecture after that, for all sorts of thoughts began to race through my mind. I found myself thinking about pictures of Jesus and the saints and how they were depicted with this same golden light around them. I wondered if the artists who painted them this way were clairvoyant or if these subjects were so spiritually bright that their auras shone forth for all the world to see. I thought it was fascinating that the aura I was seeing belonged to a professor of Eastern Religion. What sort of spiritual development might he have undertaken over his many years of studying various mystical paths? Certainly he would be more spiritually developed than the average person; was this why I was seeing his aura and no one else’s? I wondered how many of my fellow students might be seeing the same thing I was, so I started looking around the large auditorium, but everyone else seemed to be experiencing nothing more than an ordinary lecture. I tried to see their auras to no avail. I dove more deeply into meditation after this, however, and over the course of the semester, I did begin to see auras on most people when I tried to make that happen.

Some time after this, I began to practice astral projection, which involves spending a lot of time in a deep meditative state. That is when I began to notice what appeared to be shadowy lines and structures in otherwise empty space. It was like seeing a vague shadow of another world. I would see walls and beams and objects so faint that it wasn’t clear what they were, it was just clear that “something” was there. It sounds like you are seeing the same things I was.

These perceptions happen when we’re in a “spaced out” or trance state of mind. As we begin to awaken spiritually, we naturally get “spacey” like this, for our left brain and its psychic/intuitive abilities kick on more and more. It’s also normal to feel drawn into introspection and called to explore deep questions and issues instead of mundane reality. The more time you spend in trance/deep reflection, the more subtle energy you tend to perceive. This is true whether you are purposefully entering altered states of consciousness via practices like meditation, taking mind altering drugs, or simply lost in deep contemplation.

As you naturally evolve spiritually, your vibration rises to the point where you’re able to perceive a higher range of frequencies than you could before. You also become more and more sensitive, which makes you more perceptive and more consciously aware of what your psychic senses are picking up. When you then focus your attention beyond this world by entering a trance state, you begin to perceive things that exist beyond the physical. (This is why meditation naturally leads to psychic development.)

I encourage you to research the many other signs of spiritual awakening, for if you’re not experiencing them now, you may be soon, and I don’t want you to worry that something is wrong with you! This is a normal, natural process. Try to relax, go with the spiritual flow, and trust that whatever you need will come to you as you move forward.

– Soul Arcanum

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Clarifying Confusing Psychic Terms

Filed Under: Psychic Ability by Soul Arcanum — Comments Off on Clarifying Confusing Psychic Terms


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Dear Soul Arcanum:

I’ve been learning about mediums and psychics and am trying to figure out how their abilities differ. I’ve noticed that many psychics call themselves clairvoyant and have learned that clairvoyance means they can perceive events and information without the use of their ordinary senses. Here the term “see” is used in place of just “know” or “understand.” Other ESP abilities I have learned about include telepathy and precognition. I understand this to mean that a clairvoyant reads the energy of a client by perceiving the client in their mind without the use of their ordinary senses. Why would a psychic only define herself as a clairvoyant and not mention her precognitive or telepathic skills? As for mediums, most mental mediums generally describe their abilities in terms of the “clairs” – clairvoyance, clairsentience, clairaudience, etc. I don’t understand the difference between having a “clair” type of ability and being a medium. I have had some readings with mediums in which it seemed the medium was reading the energy of a spirit like a psychic would read the energy of a person, and others where it seemed the medium was channeling direct messages from the spirit. Can you clear these matters up?

Carolyn

Dear Carolyn:

I understand your confusion. While it may seem like clairvoyants use the term “see” as a synonym for “know” or “understand,” I believe they are saying HOW they tend to receive the psychic information they are in the process of understanding. Clairvoyance is my strongest psychic sense. When I say to a client, “I see you and your boyfriend traveling down a road, and in the future, this road splits and you take one path and he takes another,” I’m describing what I am literally being shown in my mind’s eye. I may then go on to explain what I “understand” from this by saying, “From this, I get that you and your boyfriend are going to eventually split up but it won’t be for a while yet.” Clairvoyance is thus not so much a psychic sense in and of itself as a style of psychic perception. If I were primarily clairaudient, I might instead say, “I’m hearing that you two are destined to split up, but I keep hearing January and the words turning point, so I feel this won’t be overtly set in motion until next January.”

If psychic ability were language itself (a way to communicate with other people, spirit guides, etc.), we might say that clairvoyance is a particular language like English. Other psychic languages like clairaudience, clairsentience, etc., are like French and Spanish. In order to clearly communicate with particular spirits, we have to be able to speak the same psychic language. Since spirit guides are far more adept at inter-dimensional communication, we might say for the sake of simplicity that they are fluent in all the languages. This means we just have to be fluent in one of the psychic languages to be able to consciously seek guidance from Spirit.

Keeping this in mind, you can perhaps now understand why a psychic would label herself clairvoyant and not go into her telepathic or precognitive skills. By saying that she is clairvoyant, she is saying that she speaks a certain psychic language. This means she can perform all sorts of psychic tasks in that language. If she is communicating telepathically or predicting the future, she will do so largely through mental pictures. A clairaudient can perform all the same psychic tasks but she will do so mainly through mental dialogue. Someone who is fluent can use their fluency to talk to other people and to write letters, emails and texts and perform all sorts of other communication tasks. Someone who speaks only French would do these same things in their own language. Further, you may speak a little bit of a foreign language, so if you are telepathically dialoguing with someone who speaks primarily that other language, you may able to piece what they are saying together much as you would if you were traveling in another country.

As for the difference between a psychic and a medium, the psychic speaks a particular language but lacks the equipment to use it to connect with other realms. This is like being fluent in English but not having a phone with which to call people far away. Usually, one progresses from psychic to medium, though sometimes mediums don’t realize they are psychic until spirit communication spontaneously occurs for some reason. (This reason is often the death of a loved one and a strong desire for a sign or message on either party’s part.) To follow through with our metaphor, this is like being able to speak a language like English or French being a prerequisite to being able to pick up a phone and use it to communicate with someone far away. (Hand gestures and body language won’t help you with this sort of communication; you must be able to communicate on a metaphysical level.)

You are right that mediums have different ways of relaying messages from spirits. When psychics are first learning spirit communication, they do tend to read the spirit much like they might read a person living in this dimension; since they have already developed that particular skill, it is what comes naturally. This enables them to visually describe the spirit if they are strongly clairvoyant, relay the spirit’s name or other information if they are primarily clairaudient, or describe the way the spirits feels if they are strongly clairsentient. (We see this in mediums who tune in to a spirit and say something like, “I feel pain in my chest; did this person die of a heart attack?”) Someone whose strongest psychic sense involves smell may relay that they smell cigar smoke or a certain perfume or other scent when tuning in to a particular spirit.

Of course, the more a psychic develops her various psychic senses (learns other languages), the more she will be able to access psychic information from a variety of angles and thus get a clearer sense of what she is perceiving. Being “multi-lingual” also means she will be able to connect with a wider number of spirits. If both the medium and the spirit are highly visual, communication will take place in a visual way. If one is visual and the other auditory, communication may be difficult. If the medium is able to see, hear and feel metaphysical information, she will be able to communicate with spirits who speak any of these telepathic languages. (Not speaking the same language is a key reason why a medium may not be able to clearly connect with a certain spirit.)

The more skilled a psychic becomes at spirit communication, the better she will get at linking with the spirit and allowing the spirit to channel messages through her instead of reaching for information and then trying to interpret what is perceived. This sort of channeling requires a profound shift in vibration and a deep, unbroken trance state; in order to maintain that state, the use of one’s psychic senses must be natural and easy. Most mediums who are able to do this are also particularly adept at clairaudience, which is why they are able to “hear” what the spirit wants to say and verbally relay that. These are some of the various reasons that not all mediums work in the same way or produce the same types of readings.

Since all of these processes are subtle and extraordinary, it is hard to describe them in words. I hope the above has cleared up some of your confusion!

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Determining the Meaning of Psychic Symbols

Filed Under: Divine Guidance, Intuitive Development, Psychic Ability by Soul Arcanum — Comments Off on Determining the Meaning of Psychic Symbols

 

Copyright Soul Arcanum LLC. All rights reserved. :)

Dear Soul Arcanum:

I’ve been searching for a site that offers interpretations for visions. Sometimes a slide show will dominate my field of vision. Usually my eyes are momentarily closed when this happens, like when I’m brushing my teeth or showering. This has happened a handful of times in my life, and my most recent experience is puzzling. It was a cup and saucer, and a pot poured the cup full of black coffee. It looked like a commercial. In trying to figure out what coffee means, I’ve guessed that it’s a stimulant. Coffee isn’t my cup of tea, but I do drink it away from home. My late father was an avid coffee drinker. I’m stumped as to what this vision might be showing to me, and searched for a site that lists the meanings of certain symbols. I’ve visited a local psychic and her interpretations are often strange to me. Are psychic symbols personal or universal? Can this be taught? I read your article on developing your ability to have visions and found it very helpful. Thank you.

Eileen

Dear Eileen:

The intellectual interpretation of psychic visions is more complex than one might assume because we are in constant interaction with all sorts of subtle influences on an unconscious level. It’s therefore wise to finely develop our intuitive faculties, but more on that in a moment.

The meanings of symbols in dreams and psychic visions are indeed ultimately personal. This is confusing because there are some symbols that are nearly universal and many that are natural given our cultural conditioning. For example, nearly everyone would interpret a smiling face to represent happiness and a frowning face to represent displeasure. In the U.S., most people would interpret a green traffic light to mean ‘go.’

In this article, I’ll refer to the model of the psyche developed by Carl Jung because his terms are so well known. Imagine that our minds are composed of three different aspects: the conscious (that which we are aware of), the personal unconscious (that which we have personally experienced but are not currently conscious of), and the collective unconscious, which is like the personal unconscious expanded to include all of humanity throughout time. I would expand this further to include all that is, has been and ever could be. Having a psychic vision is like the conscious mind receiving a message from the personal or collective unconscious.

To determine the meaning of a dream or psychic vision, I believe in beginning with the personal, for this usually eliminates a lot of fishing around. Thus the first things I would ask someone having your vision is what associations they have with coffee, and what feelings this vision evokes for them.

You have already done this and come up with your father, which explains why he may use this particular image to try to get your attention. Someone else may associate coffee with waking up, in which case such a vision could be a prompt from Spirit to ‘wake up and pay attention.’ Yet another person could be hunting for a job and see this image because they’re being guided to apply at a company related to the coffee industry, or perhaps they’ve been praying to find a soul mate, and this is a sign that they’ll meet the one they’re looking for in a coffee shop.

Once you’ve identified your own personal associations with a vision, ask yourself how it makes you feel. There is always some emotional charge to a psychic vision, so if it feels utterly flat, it may not be a meaningful psychic vision at all. Even when such visions have a strong emotional kick to them, there may not be a meaningful purpose behind them for you. This is where we get into the subtle influences that can complicate the whole matter.

One of the first things to rule out when you’re spontaneously hit with a psychic impression is the possibility that you’ve simply wandered into a thought form. Two of the most common places I always encounter thought forms is on bridges and airplanes. I will be about to cross a bridge when suddenly I have visions of the car going over the side accompanied by a wave of fear. Similarly, I’ll be taking off in an airplane when I’m suddenly hit by thoughts of crashing.

These are not my own phobias. For one thing, I never give these matters a second thought when I’m not in those situations, and for another, once I remind myself that these aren’t my own thoughts and feelings and I disengage from them, they completely disappear.

Just as houses have a certain feeling to them, so do places and things like air planes. When we approach a bridge, we have to travel through a space that is full of the fearful thoughts and energies of all the people who have traveled there before us who are afraid of going over the side. Similarly, air planes carry lots of fearful thought forms and energies. People who are sensitive naturally pick up on these, where others remain unaffected.

It’s also possible that you’re picking up on another person’s desire for coffee. You mentioned that you usually have this vision while you’re showering or brushing your teeth. If your spouse or another person you’re close to is craving his first cup of coffee or even drinking it downstairs in the kitchen, you could pick up on it, especially if they really love their coffee, for this would give the idea lots of energy.

I believe we can even pick up TV and radio transmissions, so the fact that this vision looks like a commercial is interesting. It’s possible that you’re tuning in to a certain commercial showing on TV even when your TV is off or tuned to a different station. Many people have had the experience of hearing a certain song in their heads only to turn the radio on and discover that song is playing.

So given all of these possibilities, how do you determine what this vision means for you? Since you associate the coffee with your father and he is in the Spirit world, I would assume that this is a nudge to try to get your attention. It’s probably not a message in and of itself, but more like a spirit calling card. To determine what he’s trying to tell you, you’ll have to wake up and start paying attention on a subtle psychic level when you receive this prompt.

To confirm that this is him, you can also ask for him to nudge you in a different but particular way. For example, I always know that my grandmother is trying to get my attention when I notice images of her house and yard running through the back of my mind. You can pick something that you strongly associate with your father and mentally ask that he use that image to get your attention.

Once you’ve been nudged, you’ll have to step things up in terms of using your psychic faculties to determine the message coming your way. It’s also important to realize that there may not be any grand message, for often spirits just want us to know that they are sending us love from beyond. To open up to deeper messages, you might meditate and open your heart to hear whatever spirit is trying to tell you, or journal on the vision and see where that leads you.

To move beyond the level of brief, cryptic, spontaneous visions, further psychic development is essential. By developing a strong relationship with your spirit guides and controlled use of all your psychic senses, you can cultivate the power to shift into a state of consciousness where all you have to do is ask for more information and it will come to you. To begin this journey, I recommend you find a local Spiritualist Church where you can join a development circle or ask the minister for other local resources.

Soul Arcanum

 

 

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Is Clairvoyance Superior to Tarot?

Filed Under: Intuitive Development, Psychic Ability by Soul Arcanum — Comments Off on Is Clairvoyance Superior to Tarot?

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Dear Soul Arcanum:

I recently attended a Spiritualist service for the first time, and I loved everything about it, with one exception. I have been reading tarot for a few years now, and when I mentioned this to a minister there, she was clearly disapproving of my interest in the cards. This really surprised me. I thought that at last I’d found a church I could fit into, so I was pretty disappointed. I understand that you are a Spiritualist minister, so I’m asking you: is it somehow better to be a medium/ clairvoyant than to read tarot? Is there something wrong with reading tarot?

Carol

Dear Carol:

While Spiritualists generally pride themselves on being undogmatic, I too have encountered this attitude toward tarot amongst their ranks. Obviously, it’s unwise to generalize all Spiritualists as sharing the exact same perspective. Many Spiritualists do, however, assert that divination tools are simply unnecessary when we can directly communicate with Spirit, and may be limiting if they become crutches that impede our psychic development. Of course, the main goal in Spiritualism is not predicting the future, but rather proving the continuation of life beyond death, so in some ways we’re comparing apples and oranges here. Generally speaking, however, tarot readers are more limited in the information they can access than mediums/ clairvoyants.

My own psychic journey actually began mildly with “sensing” when something was going to happen, who was on the phone, etc. Then when I was pregnant with my first child, my psychic doors just blew open, and suddenly I was experiencing unprovoked and confirmed spirit communication right and left. At this point I had no control over the spirit communication. It was not something I sought or could initiate, so I began to study something that I COULD control and initiate: tarot. My early professional readings were therefore tarot readings with some spirit communication thrown in if we were “lucky.”

Soon, however, I was led to a wonderful Spiritualist school for the development of my mediumship, where I learned how to initiate spirit communication and more or less control it. It was there that I first encountered some negative opinions about divination tools and in particular tarot. Interestingly enough, as I began to ask Spirit directly for answers, I often got those answers in the form of a mental image of a relevant tarot card. As tarot was the most developed symbolic language in my consciousness, Spirit used it to communicate with me. Despite the disapproval I encountered in school, I did not throw my cards away, for I had come to appreciate some benefits of working with tarot.

For example, when reading in person, I’ve learned that many people are far more comfortable if they have a visual aid they can focus upon. If they see the cards laid before them, even if they don’t know what they mean, they think they can see where I’m getting my information from. Even when I explain that everything is coming from Spirit (and that this is a good thing), many people are reassured by seeing those cards. Similarly, I’ve known some wonderful psychics who read palms, cards or use some other divination tool, who are all the while simply relaying what they get from Spirit anyway. They can’t or don’t want to explain how they’re doing what they’re doing, so they present a method that they know how to explain. I’m all for doing what works so long as the results are positive. If some people are more open to hearing Spirit when they have something tangible to focus upon, that’s fine with me.

Also, I’ve found that tarot spreads can provide the focus, direction and detail necessary to a full and satisfying reading. From Spirit’s perspective, so much of what we worry about is not ultimately that important. So if a client asks, “Should I be worried about losing my job?” Spirit’s answer might simply be, “No. You’re learning valuable lessons through this experience, and you will be provided for and guided every step of the way.” While that’s reassuring and all, that client still probably wants to know if she should be updating her resume or not! In my experience, the best readings offer both the wisdom of higher planes and the mundane details that are so essential to making wise, informed decisions in this world.

Despite all of the above, I no longer use tarot in my readings, for my aim is always to bring through the very highest sources of healing and empowering guidance. I also feel that Spiritualists have a point: in terms of accessing Spirit, tarot and other divination tools are a few times removed from the heart of the message, and the less dependent we are on symbols, the purer our messages will be. Reading tarot is like speaking to Spirit through several intermediaries instead of just going right to the source. First Spirit must orchestrate the selection of those cards that will convey the right messages. The reader then has to accurately interpret the symbols and meanings she personally associates with the cards in light of the situation at hand, and effectively communicate what she’s gleaned to the person asking for guidance. There is a whole lot of interpreting going on here, so there are many junctures where the true message/meaning may be lost or distorted.

Symbolic clairvoyance is a bit purer, for we aren’t dependent upon and restricted to the symbols in the cards, but even this has considerable room for error. If we associate snakes with deception, then to communicate deception, Spirit will show us a snake. Every time we are shown a snake, we may then translate it into “deception,” which would be a mistake, because we need to learn to distinguish between symbolic and literal information. Perhaps the snake is not a symbol at all, but a real live pet, or even a validating bit of information from a loved one whose nickname was “Snake.” Sorting symbolic and literal information is also an issue with clairaudience. For example, I recently did a reading in which I brought through several loved ones from Spirit. I offered two names of loved ones in Spirit (and these were verified by my client), and then I started hearing “Edward…Edward John…John Edward.” On a hunch I then asked Spirit to explain, and perceived that this was a reference to the now famous medium “John Edwards.” This clicked with the client, who said that she is a big fan of John Edwards and had been longing to get a reading with him, but wasn’t sure it would be worth the money and effort it would require.

So with tarot and even clairvoyance and clairaudience, readers often just have to offer whatever they pick up in hopes that the meaning will be clear to whoever they’re reading for. The reader herself may never know whether the information given is symbolic or literal. If, however, the reader has developed the ability to communicate with Spirit above and beyond symbolic language, he or she can simply ask Spirit and get a literal response.

Even if spirit communication is not your goal, if you just want to be able to predict the future and offer psychic guidance, it’s wise to be able to communicate directly with Spirit like a medium, for then there are no limits to the range and quality of information you can bring through. There is nothing “wrong” with reading tarot, so don’t throw your cards away. Just recognize that you can access a higher, clearer connection to Spirit without them, and keep stretching your abilities!

– Soul Arcanum

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