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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