Physical Versus Environmental DNA? Can We Imprint Our Environment?

DNA is like the coding that makes you who you are. It determines eye color, hair color, disease propensity, ethnicity, and some quirks of character too. But is it possible that our DNA allows a recording of life experience so that future generations do not have to make the same mistakes? Is there another kind of "DNA" that involves the environment? Is it possible for us to lay down events in locations like some kind of beacon for others to sense? Let's see - 

Experimenting with Psychokinesis Part 1: How Does PK Work?

Psychokinesis ("PK"): The supposed ability to move objects by mental effort alone.

After a lifetime of being a sort of human magnet for metal and energy that screws up electrical, I decided it was time to stop and take a look at when and how these things occur and begin a series of experiments on the top of PK or psychokinesis.

Psychometry Read on Bigfoot Hair

Upon occasion, I get asked to do a psychometry read on an object. Psychometry is the psychic ability to touch an object and gather information by those associated with that item. 

Recently, I was given some potential Bigfoot hair to do a read. The person who gathered it from a hitch on a pickup truck at a campsite. Something had been wandering around in there and other signs left them to believe there was a Tall One in the camp area. The person carefully collected it and sent me a small portion that I would be allowed to touch and then send on for microscopic evaluation. Here are the results - 

Improving Your Psychic Skills

My best advice to psychics is to avoid the three major pitfalls.

1. Ego. Ego dictates you want to make people happy, you want to score, you want to provoke a positive reaction. Too many psychics bait with questions, look for expressions and reactions and follow those paths that could be dead ends. We want to shock and awe and so a gasping breath or widened eyes make us pursue that line too far. I personally ask the person say nothing, I turn away to not see them. I speak, spilling it all out while they take notes if they wish. We then speak once I am done with all I could elucidate. I do not let the ego into the interaction so I can follow open paths to their conclusion and not find dead ends or elaborate to the extreme.

2. Intellect. Our intellect is tied to the ego, whether we like it or not. Intellect says "this person does not look like a kind generous person, they look like an uptight social climber with designer clothes, they can't possibly be the volunteer rescuer that I am reading." So you talk yourself out of things because we evaluate visually about race, status, personality and more. One time, I did a reading on a man I didn't know at a singles hetero party and he handed me a wedding ring that I proceeded to tell him was from a man. Now, intellect told me "Sharon, there is a fraction of a percent chance this is possible," but I trusted the read, not the odds. Overthinking is overstinking.

3. Interpretation. You are only as good a psychic as your ability to take symbols, feelings, associations and figure them out correctly. One man I did a reading on, I told him his brother and he were 10 months apart and he was the elder, responsible one, and his brother was the baby ne'er do well. Well, the personalities and age difference were right, but he was the younger responsible one and his brother was the elder drifter. So, I had made my own interpretation based on popular concepts about responsibility and birth order.

Drift and Sift Technique

This is my name for what we do in alpha state as we drift off to sleep. The reason the dead visit us, we have alien encounters, and we come up with brilliant inventions, is because we drift and sift in bed as we nod off. You must disengage the logical mind, the ego, and the to-do list. You shift from mind to body in rest.

For some, listening to some alpha wave music might be a good idea. Something like this - 

Get really comfortable. I prefer to lay down and it's always nice to do this when there is some sunlight in the room so that behind your eyelids you see that orange color.

Slow, comfy breathing, let your body get heavy and sink right into its setting, letting muscles go. No thoughts. No images. No words. Just utter and complete surrender.

Concentrate on the floaty feelings as if your body is sinking, your mind is rising to the sky.

Images might pass by, feelings, deja vu. They key in sifting as you drift is to allow things to come and go without attaching concern to them.

You might suddenly remember a summer at the public pool - don't know what instigated that memory, but let it come and go without feeling you must conform it to an agenda or assign it value or meaning (as we do with conscious thinking).

Do not be surprised if you have a great epiphany, some wondering invention idea, a solution to a problem you've been having, or a sense of someone with you in a spiritual way. When you truly allow yourself to be without goal, to just float without an anchor, you gather a strong sense of self, but also an amazing pull of a tide of the universe. Suddenly, it's like you are tied to everything and part of a universe instead of a me-verse. It's in this drifty haven that you will learn to identify what the universe presents you with.

Some call it flipping through Akashic Records, but I like to think of it as swimming in the multiversal knowledge and experience.

Psychometry: Can Spirits Attach to Objects?

(A captain's carved chair from my summer home as a child)

My personal answer to "do spirits attach to objects?" is - no, souls do not attach to objects; energies do.

How Psychic Investigators Can Benefit From Psychic Mediums

*This is a guest post written by Danielle of Psychic Waters*

Paranormal investigators specialise in investigating buildings and locations that have witnessed supernatural activity. They have been able to find ghosts and solve unusual mysteries. Paranormal investigators would benefit from the assistance of psychic mediums. 

Spiritual and Healing Consultants: Finding What You Need

Finding the right spiritualist for your particular needs is critical to becoming whole. The next step is finding the practitioner who suits you, who feels right. I'd like to discuss a bit about finding the type of guide you need and where you might them.

How-To Develop Your Psychic Skills

Psychics.

How are they made?

Well, I like to think of it as practiced. One needs to have the right exposure the first 3 critical years (look on right hand side of ghost hunting theories for post about psychically critical first 3 years).

But, to really tap it, you have to become liquid and not solid.

You have to let go of your mind's beliefs, assumptions, need to control, and the concept that you have a body with parameters.

Once you become liquid - you can flow.

What does flow feel like? 

I suggest regular daily testing your PSI skills. I use the Boundary Institute. I have learned not only what my strengths are in the types of skills, but learned that synchronicity that happens in mind and body when you have chosen correctly. It is a bit like being "off" the time line and without linear time to what you are doing. 

You are in a state of suspension.

The reason some people resist the flow is that empaths often feel bombarded by and influenced by others feelings. 

Flow is not the same as drinking in.

Flow is enter AND exit.

Think neutrinos not particles. 

To be effective, you must not see yourself as an end point. 

You are unobstructed, flowing, liquid, and no ego is in the picture. Ego tends to make us want to overthink for fear of failure.

When I do PSI testing - I test exceedingly quickly. I do not stop and consider for even a fraction of a second. 

That beating the clock attitude lets you surpass the analytical mind to access decisions by "randomness" and it's in that randomness you find PSI gold.

The Psychometry of Hoarding

I'm asked about objects and psychometry (psychic ability to read information from an object about the person who handled it prior)- 

I am a psychometrist, so there is no one better to ask about it, I would guess. My skills in this realm are painfully acute. 

I grew up in a Civil War hospital and dug up relics around the estate, picking up information on all who had passed there, as I was a psychometrist and didn't realize this was a psychic talent. I thought this was something all people got from objects. I was in my 20s before I realized it is not part of standard senses, but an extra sense. 

I tend to see it this way - it is not so much an extra sense, as a sense that needs deciphering and focus. We are all getting the input. We just aren't all focused on it because it's much more subtle than visual, auditory, olfactory, tactile, and aural. Trying to describe it to others is kind of like trying to explain how smell Coppertone tanning lotion makes you think of your cousin, your childhood pet, and oil floating on a mud puddle. What made you make those connections? Impossible to explain that wiring. 

Like deja vu, the brain can make connections you were not aware you were laying down, even energies you have encountered before and recognize in some inner level when you run into it again. 

What organ handles the receiving and interpreting is not yet known, but I have suspicions it is all within the brain. It comes from tactile encounters with an object, a reading of an electromagetic/electrical nature that the brain then interprets. It might be in the past man utilized this more readily when he chose certain locations and certain rocks for their construction. 

One thing I do know is that rocks have energy up the wazoo but do not store knowledge of people handling them. Objects have energy, but the stronger aspect is the memories/emotions which easily drown the energy to most people who touch them. In fact, positive/negative and male/female energy is easily ready by even unpracticed people. 

Have you ever bought something in a store and explained it as, "it just called to me. I had to go back and buy it because it haunted me." Well, you might have been using more than just a visual sense of loving the look of the object, but that you knew in a very core sense that your energy and its energy were compatible.  

Why do lonely people hoard? Perhaps the very purpose is to gather energy from as many objects as possible to drown out their own simmering stew. It is not just a visual chaos but also a psychic one. It's feeling less alone by having all the energies encompassing you. It's not just your baggage glaring in your psyche, but everyone else's distracting you.

We all know that one friend who needs to be out partying and hanging with crowds and hates to be alone....

In fact, having less objects to a hoarder is threatening for the very reason that the hoarder losses the compacted and conflicting energies that share their environment and can no longer feel "company." Now, they simply feel their own bundled up nerves, thoughts, and energy and its center stage.

So, is a hoarder more psychic? No, actually less. They are so overwhelmed by their own feelings that unless they are overstimulated by other energies and emotions en mass, they feel very lonely in their own stew. 

Go into a museum some time and really note how you feel. It isn't just the visual displays. You are surrounded by many objects - like in antique stores, where your mind has trouble focusing on one thing, you feel strangely scattered, sometimes having moments of deja vu out of the blue, or feeling wistful or sad. Welcome to the distraction a hoarder appreciates! This constant current becomes a kind of "normal" for them. This is much the same as collectors who cannot stop - that is a form of hoarding. It is also a visual security that they are not alone, they are flanked by their "things." 

For a hoarder to truly recover a sense of self again amid the distraction of clutter, it would begin with some time away from home. Most hoarders are not eager to leave the nest, but a little time outdoors, far from objects is a good way to begin to spend time with the clutter in their own minds. It is a case of getting familiar with your own milieu. There is great discomfort focusing on oneself. It is never pleasant, but necessary to learn that it won't kill them. This is the same sort of aversion therapy that is used on phobics. One needs to learn they won't die or go crazy.

I had panic disorder in my late 20s. It was short-lived because I got proper skills that I use every single day and that changed my life 180 degrees, but at first in the heat of the panic, I did not want to be alone with my own thoughts. I wanted my husband (at the time) to stay home with me and the thought of being alone with my own internal turmoil was horrifying. Within months, I got skills that recovered me completely for the past 25 years and I went on to help over four dozen other people to recover, wrote articles, gave workshops and ran a self-help group for years. My book about this is 99 cents on Kindle - here. 

If you ask a hoarder what object can I throw out? They will not be able to part with even the most nasty and useless item. Why is that? It is a form of OCD in that the very thought of getting rid of an object that might have importance to the greater collective is horrifying. 

When I was a kid, I remember wanting to take a certain amount of steps per sidewalk square. A mild and typical form of OCD in the child state. I didn't know what would happen if I didn't do it, but I would go back and rewalk a square to get it right. 

Sometimes, we fill our scared or angry mind with busy work to keep from dealing with the real issues. It's the same reason that someone might drink or another person spends too much money. The problem is, if you don't learn how to handle the original issues you are escaping, you end up with a secondary issue - alcoholism, debt, OCD.... 

I used to live with someone who thought "if I like these items, I should have more, and more and more" and it became about quantity. 

Aggressive collectors can be that way - and it is a form of OCD. There is something in knowing that you possess objects, even if they have no true value or merit or even aesthetic significance. The key is quantity. This keeps ones focused on acquisition of the next in the collection, the feelings of elation as it is in your view in your home, but eventually it can end up being packed away in a closet in boxes, never taken out looked at, but just the result of a burst of desire to mask feelings with so many energies, they are more distracting. 

Imagine a person turning up the TV because the neighbor's stereo is loud. Soon, with volume loud enough, you don't focus on the neighbor's stereo, but your show instead. Hoarders put in so much object energy, they don't feel the energies in their own psyche - they are drowned out.

As an experiment, one could clear out one room in a hoarder's home. No objects in there. Maybe just their bed for sleeping. You can be pretty much guaranteed, they will not sleep in that bed in the cleared out room. This is, whether they acknowledge it or not, a sign of inability to be separated from the chaos.

To some of us who own our sensitivity and our internal dialogue and emotions, we dream of paring down our lives, being out in nature, or with only a few beloved objects and a clean, organized, spacious setting. But, for others, crowds and crowding make them feel strangely cushioned by the energy around them, whirling, crowding, pushing in, and drowning out the internal. 

Cognitive behavioral therapy is the ultimate cure for hoarding. But, having an understanding of the psychic implications is helpful. When a hoarder begins to relinquish the busy stuff, a simple dog or cat companion can help to give a satisfaction of another energy in the space and actual interaction with a living being instead of their psychic traces on items. 

The Three Obstacles to Accurate Psychic Reads

There are three enemies of any good psychic read. You've probably seen it happen on those TV psychic reads when the psychic misses the mark and skids down a wrong path and tries to back pedal, maybe saying something like, "I must be picking up on someone else's relative." 

These three enemies are; ego, intellect and interpretation.

EGO   

Imagine if you're known for 3-point shots in basketball and every time someone hears you play basketball, they expect you to make a 3-pointer for them to see. A little pressure? Yeah. And, being asked to do psychic reads on a whim is not an easy thing, or even doing it for cash or for someone you love. Any pressure makes the desire to produce all-consuming. Sometimes, as a psychic, we want to provide something unique and exciting. When we get a person who is excited by what we just said, then we tend to want to pursue that line of information harder and it may be a dead end. You just tell the client that her mother used to collect cookie jars from the 1940s and she squeals with excitement and now you want to focus on mother's other quirks. 

It's normal to want to please people or give more information than you have, but you must stop yourself from going to the point of no return. Sometimes, you're tapping a dry well. This is why, if I do a reading, I turn away from the person and ask them to remain quiet. I don't want to feed off their reactions. Sometimes, too, if we see a shift in facial expression or posture we become insecure and that brings in the wrong part of the brain, the ego realm and the thinker.

INTELLECT  

Intellect says, if a person comes to you for a read and you know them well, say a good long-time friend, if you pick up something like "her mother used to call her `stinker'" but you know her mother and you can't imagine her saying that, then you will dismiss it. 

If a person comes to you who looks wealthy and hands you a wedding band, you don't expect to see poverty and hunger, so you dismiss that when it could be that the person grew up poor and is now consumed by acquiring money. 

You must not doubt your reads. You must let them go, set them free without edit. I do like to perform reads not looking at or hearing from the person and I prefer someone I don't know at all because it won't color what I get. I spew out everything, rattling on, following anything that seems to give more information and then double back and take another path. I don't want confirmation from them, I don't let myself doubt it.

Our intellect will try to seep through and evaluate the odds of something being right, to try to break it down logically, or begin that analytical evaluation that has nothing to do with the PSI aspect of the brain's talents.

Example:  I once went to a singles party and a man, who obviously thought psychics were a joke, dared me to do a read. He pulled a wedding band off his wedding finger. Intellect would have told me that he was handing me his wedding ring and was separated. I could have pursued insights into that arena, but I didn't. I do like I always do, hold it and let myself be blank as if I don't even know what this object is or what it means. 

I told him what I saw, even though ego would have stopped me (because my chances this were right was probably less than 1%) and intellect would have stopped me (this is a wedding ring and he's at a singles party), but I proceeded to tell him that the ring was given to him by a man and that it had been in a junk drawer for a long time. The man gave him the ring telling him that it meant more to this man than it had to himself. 

When I looked up, the man was white as a sheet and trembling as he put the ring back on. His brother had announced he was gay 8 months ago and took off his wedding ring and gave it to his brother and said that it meant something to him that it had never meant to himself. This man had put it in his drawer in the kitchen with all the junk stuff for the past several months and just took it out and put it on as a show for his brother that he was okay with the decision to leave his wife and family and pursue his true life course as a gay man.

Sometimes, you must take a giant leap as a psychic and say things that make no sense to you, because that is what was presented from a genuine wellspring of knowledge that is beyond your own limited concepts.

INTERPRETATION  

A psychic is only as good as her/his knowledge. A frame of reference for novel information is critical. I had a time I was doing a reading about a person and I got a famous rocker buried in a graveyard in France and if I were not educated about this celebrity, I would have had to stop there, but instead, I was able to produce the celebrity's name; Jim Morrison.  

Sometimes, we have not defined our categories. For me, all indigenous people were sort of lumped together in my head, so a Jew and an Inuit could be read the same. I had to research more about the looks, customs, art, and textiles of these people so that I could now say, this was a Native American person," instead of just taking a stab in the dark, "this was a Polynesian person."

Example:  I had a read one time on a young man that I didn't know. He handed me a necklace and I told him of having a brother and they were 10 months apart. His brother was a blow-off, troublemaker, and lived very far away. I also mentioned his brother needed him. I assumed (interpretation) that because this man I was reading was very responsible, he was the elder. As it turned out, his brother was in the drug trade in Hawaii, and he hadn't spoken to him in five years, but his blacksheep brother was 10 months OLDER than him. So, interpretation is a lot of times about assumptions and making connections.

Some signs you might be pushing yourself into the murky territory of gray readings; you push to try to get more information and grasp tiny glimpses and expand on them, you are afraid to say "I am drawing a blank," you talk yourself out of telling something you find, you find yourself wanting to look to or listen to the person you're reading for prompting.

Conclusion

Being psychic isn't a science as much as an art because as much information as you receive, you are the interpreting filter. We find and retrieve information in psychic reads much like how we learned subjects for tests in school. For me, it was spatial. I stored info in odd places, so if I were to look up at the right corner of the chalkboard, I could retrieve and read information that was once written there, or if I cross my legs, I would suddenly recall that when I crossed my legs before, we were learning about this particular subject. For some, it could be photographic, others auditory, and others physical. Once you realize how you store and retrieve information you have learned, you will be better using that route for readings.

Be aware that you can allow information from this other realm, as I like to refer to it, but you cannot push into that realm. It's similar to this - we are 3-dimensional beings, but we can walk over to a photo and put our finger on it. That 2-dimensional image cannot come across the room and interact with us. It lacks our dimension, so it must wait for us to intersect. Allow it to come toward you, do not press back.

Good luck and please report back on your efforts to develop fledgling skills.  Enjoy!

Proper Psychic Conduct

I have a pretty strong opinion about proper conduct for psychics.

This is because I work my skills and I take it very seriously. I do not make a living at psychic readings, but that does not stop me from realizing the value of psychics and the cautions consumers must have. If I do a reading for a friend or acquaintance, I take it as a great responsibility. Here's my advice - 

Every wording is critical.

And you don't just info dump on people and then walk away.

You are 50% intuitive, 50% counselor.

You give info and insight and then you counsel how to absorb that info and frame it.

You don't reveal something about the person and then await a pat on the back, you let them know you see these things about them and the struggles inside, that you can point out examples that show their efficacy as a human trying to do the right thing.

Reaffirm their soul.

They should leave a reading feeling they truly saw their own soul mirrored.

I part company with many supposed psychics who use questions and baiting, reading a client's expressions to work more as a mentalist than a true psychic. I personally prefer to not see the person, not hear them, just rattle off all that I obtain without any nuance from the person that might lead me following info down a dead-end path. 

There are many ways a psychic can bait a client. Here is an example:

"You have been feeling guilty about something that you need to let go." (If this doesn't apply to 80% of the public, I don't know what does. It is a "fortune cookie" broad sweeping bait)

"You lost someone close to you recently." (pretty good assumption, as the majority of people seeking psychics either lost a job, lost a relationship or lost a loved one). 

"You said your mother died when you were young. Were you close?" (why not let the client just do the read, huh?)

"Your father sends his love and wants you to know he's very proud of you." (who doesn't want that message?)

My attitude toward paying for a psychic's services is that it can be a very soul-satisfying one when there are proper boundaries on both sides. I have long considered the role of "intuitive counsel" rather than the culturally accepted "psychic reading" role as a potential avenue I might like to explore some day, as I offer such things for friends regularly with great satisfaction. An ideal situation is a psychic who is part intuitive, part reframing, and part life coach.

Setting the boundaries with the client for future relationships is key and letting them know what to expect, that you will not make their decisions, push for information out of your ability to obtain, or speak for the dead if you are not experienced in mediumship. The expectations between psychic and client can be quite realistic and unbelievably fulfilling when coming from a place of compassion. 

One thing true psychics have in our favor is that our compassion is pretty extensive, as we know every way humans can experience this physical realm and realize none of them are right or wrong, simply personal evolution.

The reason psychics are so very sought after by people is the same reason that counselors are helpful, one feels that they are being understood and heard by a compassionate and wise person. This is an important relationship for both the client and the psychic, when it is done with ethics, a goal for independence, and enlightenment. 

Vlog Friday: The Spirit Realm

This is the first of a series of vlog discussing the spirit realm and mediumship, how to understand the universal perspective and how to interact with the spirit realm.

That man on the stage I speak of, if he were in the play and had no recall of life before the play and couldn't imagine life outside the play and believed that the play WAS his life, that is our perspective here in the human state. We are in a play and do not recall before the play, cannot imagine after the play. We think this stage is all. It is not.

***At 11 am EST, there will be another posting about ancient giants of the Ural Mountains - a riveting post!***

Proof of Sixth Sense Right Before Our Eyes!

We don't speak of it often. It's like it's some secret knowledge no one wants to acknowledge- the sixth sense.

I grew up with abilities and had no idea that others weren't using these skills or that they were considered psychic. To me, a psychic was someone who told your future by reading your palm and spoke with a funny accent, was haggard and old, not someone who is using another sense to know more than the five senses allow us.

A friend reveals her issues in her marriage and her impending layoff at work and her best friend scoops her up in her arms and holds her while she cries.

We don't ever break this down, but if we did, we might realize the power of humans extends beyond the parameters of their 3-dimensional form.

Person #1: Has emotional distress, is putting out the emotion all around her in what some refer to as her aura.

Person #2:  Feels that hurt from her friend and makes physical contact, enveloping the friend in her own concerned and caring aura, penetrating through to change the outcome of person #1's emotional turmoil.

Soothing:  If we pet a cat, our blood pressure goes down. If we cuddle someone, our good hormones release.  If we are angry with someone, they step back, their arms cross, they turn away.  If we are anxious and wrung out, others are unsettled around us. We place our hand on a loved one's hand and they suddenly feel strong enough to handle the tasks ahead. 

Humans send.
Humans receive.
And perceived boundaries of the human form do not stop this.

It is not the gesture of someone putting their arms around us that comforts us, it is the transference of their very compassion into us that soothes. 

And what is that transmission process? Is it something akin to radio waves that we can't see but that carry information or is there some connecting "tissue" of the universe that runs through everyone and everything that can be accessed and manipulated?

Psychic testing - guess where the red dot will show in the huge rectangle - my guess was the tiny blue square. Odds 2431.4 to 1. 

Odds 655.9 to 1

How can we beat odds to know things we couldn't know unless we were tapping some unusual body of pre-knowledge/time shift/universal knowedge?

odds 1999.0 to 1

Great minds, like Dean Radin, and institutes like Boundary Institute, work hard to bring science to the understanding of psychic skills by looking at statistics to determine how statistically it's possible to show a skill at hand that is not the "norm." The concept of "entanglement" is helping to shed some light on the understanding of psychic skills. On an atomic level, things can carry the same information for even miles away from one to another. 

The fact is, every day, we utilize things outside of the designated 5 senses. We aren't sure how we process these extra bits of info and some call it intuitive, gut feelings, or even coincidences and deja vu, but until we talk more clearly with one another about our senses, we may not realize the extent to which we have "other" senses. 

People with synethesia, for example, may go their whole lifetimes and not realize that they see numbers as colors until someone asks them to imagine a number and automatically they see it in their mind in a specific color. If we don't discuss what is a variant, we don't even know we have it. Like my psychometry ability, I never realized I was gathering more information than others about the nature of an object.

It's necessary to start looking at odds and statistics and begin to open our minds to the fact that every day we touch someone, every day we don't like someone after shaking their hand, every time we are gripped with bad feelings and then get a call from a loved one in the hospital, we are utilizing the ability to gather information from "other." 

The "sixth sense" isn't a magical thing only a few have, we all have it. It is just a matter of science finally recognizing there is a sense that is not tied to just skin, eyes, ears, nose and mouth, but the seat of another location in the body able to process input and interpret. 

The day will come. We already know it exists. We just haven't shown the "seat" of it yet.

The Psychic's Biggest Roadblocks!

I'm trying to finish writing and editing 4 books at a time right now, but I have not forgotten my "From Fledgling to Full-Fledged Psychic." If there is only one thing I can tell people who want to develop their psychic abilities it is to:

BEWARE THE EGO, INTELLECT AND INTERPRETATION!

If there is an unholy three that ruin a good psychic's reads it is these three issues.

Ego: When you're psychic, people immediately shove a palm at you and tell you to read them. I can brag I'm good in bed, but no one asks me to lay down and show them (at least not anyone who wants to remain on the mortal plane a bit longer). We are asked to perform at will and for anyone who wants it. The ego wants to provide information, even when we are struggling to find that tenuous thread that puts us on the right path for that person. You've seen psychics like John Edward spew out things that the person cannot identify, like someone with a name that starts with "N." They get a baffled look on their face. The psychic is pushing too hard to make a connection. They don't always come and how we get those connections is different for each psychic. For me, it's eye positioning. Sometimes, a psychic should know when to shut his mouth.

Intellect: I ran into this with Ben Hansen from the awesome paranormal investigative show "Fact or Faked: Paranormal Files." I handed him a heavy chunk of stone and asked him to read it. He looked it over like any left-brained male and said that he saw some cliffs like in Utah. I had to stop him. "Do not intellectualize. You must look at the rock as if it dropped from the sky and you don't know its origins." He was thinking in his head (I'm guessing) "This rock reminds me of the ones in Utah on the bluffs..." Sometimes, I get something on a read that I know can't be true about someone because they are a friend. "I don't think this friend ever had a 3-way relationship before, she's too conservative." Your intellect can talk you out of much which is why I prefer not to read friends if I can help it. I prefer strangers. I have no preconceived notions and I try not to let appearances affect me. One time, I read a man who was a very successful businessman but I read poverty in him and that's what his origins were. Had I not said it out loud and dismissed it, I would have missed an avenue of exploration about him that would have yielded much more information.

Here's an example: I have read lots of jewelry that I could have assumed a lot from it. One time it was a man's wedding band he was wearing at a single's event. What I got shocked my intellect and my ego both. I did not want to report what I read because it was ridiculous and I would sound like an idiot and be wrong (ego), but I know to go with first impressions, so I blurted out, "A man gave you this ring. He thought it meant more to you than to him. It's been in a junk drawer a long while." In this case, I was totally right. His gay brother gave him his wedding ring and told him that it symbolized more to him. He put it in a junk drawer for 6 or 8 months and finally put it on as a symbol he was okay with his brother's confession.

Giving psychic reads isn't about being right, it's about going down the right path.

The best ways for you to avoid the interruption of intellect and ego is to read someone you don't know (no preconceived notions) When you think you know someone, you can come up with a lot of observations that are accurate, but then you know their personality, worries, situation and more. So far as tamping down your ego, you need to not look at the person and tell them not to make a sound, just let you rattle off your findings. A dream read for me is someone who has a piece of jewelry (metal and stones are easy reads) and whom I don't know and who is willing to sit behind me and stay quiet the whole time. Why not look at them or get responses? The ego pops up and you take yourself down the wrong path. You see, we're human even if we are psychics, and if someone gasps, we realize we just hit on an area that affected them, so we want to follow it more, but it might have completely hit a dead end. What we get at this point could be the intellect and ego working together to make assumptions based on what we just read. If we read that they lost their fiance in a car wreck, we might then upon hearing their reaction say "it has not been an easy thing for you to get over" (no kidding, they just started crying).

Interpretation: It is so critical to reads that many people who claim to be psychics are shot down because they interpreted wrongly. They got the info, they just didn't know how to translate it. They see someone having a relationship problem and assume it's their lover when it might be their brother. It takes a psychic a long while to learn to organize types in her head and relationships.

In my mind, I have a "grouping" system for comparison. I did a read recently on a piece of an object given to me by someone in my paranormal meetup group. I brought it back in with a list of things that came to mind while reading it. Apparently, my read was dead on, except I wrote "Jewish." To me, indigenous people and ceremonial and pagan practices are all very similar with ritual, customary foods and drinks, ethnic touches.

When I wrote "Jewish" it had a sense of ritual, old knowledge, and the woman I associated it with was elderly and arthritic and seemed rather quiet and proud which is how I reflect on Jewish elderly women. It ended up being a piece of HoHoKam indian pottery found in a location I described. To me indigenous and Jewish are locked in a similar vault in my mind.

Another time, I read a young man and told him his brother and he were 10 months apart and he was the more responsible elder one and he was the goof off younger one. I was right in the 10 months apart and that he was responsible and the other brother was the goof off, only he was the younger brother. I interpreted he was the elder by his personality traits.

The only way to overcome interpretation issues is to read often and lots to learn how your mind stores a "sister," "aunt," "boss," and such. They will come to you as a type in which you relate to your own experiences. When I think of a sister, I think of someone who while growing up drove me nuts more than made me happy, who was closely tied physically but not necessarily a chosen friend. To another psychic with a different life experience, a sister may be the confessor and adviser.

So, this is going to be the premise of a chapter, but at this point I'm wondering if I should just do a chapter for each of those three topics since they are so critical to being an accurate psychic and having advanced "full-fledged" skills. Let me know, I could definitely use your intelligent feedback. You are my think-tank on all such matters.

Daily PSI Testing

You want to know if you're psychic? Well, daily online testing isn't likely to answer that so much as teach you how to develop your inherent skills. We all have unlimited psychic potential, but our brains have not been practicing the connections. If you practice archery every day, you will eventually get proficient at it. It goes without saying that anything you apply yourself to regularly, you will begin to excel at it. Psychics have nothing different than other people except that they worked their skills more over the years. I personally attribute my abilities to an interesting combination of having to be ahead of a family that was very dysfunctional, growing up digging up relics from the Civil War and handling them, as well as visiting historic sites often, spending a healthy amount of time alone to contemplate and commune with my environment, and some delightful brain issues such as being spatially gifted and time synesthetic and having facial amnesia. Perhaps this has all come together in a menagerie that had me using those connections in my brain and developing them. There is no reason why, as a full grown adult we cannot develop our skills through regular practice. In fact, I'm working on a book "From Fledgling to Full-Fledged Psychic" about this subject.

I suggest you go on daily to do PSI testing. I go to Dean Radin's wonderful site. I suggest you try testing in the morning, afternoon and evening to see if here is a circadian rhythm to your talents. Then, I want you to figure out what you do in your body and mind when you pick the right one--was it a feeling of seeing the card before turning it, or was it the very first one you chose without thinking or did you run the cursor over it and feel where it felt different? Did you body feel tight? Relaxed? Excited? When you find out how your mind and body work when you choose the right ones, you will begin to know how it will feel when you are having a psychic premonition.

Report back.

Don't forget tonight is Ghost Hunters--new episode

Exciting ESP Research--Proof of ESP!

Take the time to watch these and you will be blown away. This is so exciting and I am thrilled to see that science is taking ESP more seriously. It's not woo-woo and it's not some kind of paranormal thing, it is perfectly naturally a part of our abilities, just like our ability to conceptualize our own consciousness and importance, life and mortality, God concept and more.

If you don't have time to see all of them, see the last one--amazing experiment!

Psychic Read On Video

Okay, y'all. I know you've been wondering what an Autumnforest psychic read is like. Well, Julie and I finally filmed one. I told her many months ago that I was interested in videotaping a psychic read so folks could see how it goes. She had forgotten. I had forgotten. But, as she left for the trip this past weekend, Julie remembered and brought an item. The team was sitting around the table in our huge schoolroom that we were staying in, hanging out and having deep philosophical paranormal conversations, when she pulled out this doorknob and said, "read it." I did like I always do during a read, ask her to remain quiet while I say everything I can get and I look away, focusing my eyes around until I find the spot in space where I seem to hone in on the item. It's hard to describe that process, but as I read the doorknob, I held it in my reading hand (left) and looked off to the lower right away from Julie and spoke. I never realized until seeing this, how much my right hand moves as I describe the reading. It seems to help me sift. After my read, you will hear Julie commenting on all the things I said.

Psychic Perspective on Time

How do psychics read the past, present and future? Well, here's what it's like:

A woman is driving in a car to the store to get some milk. A man stands along the roadway and sees her car coming. So far, she hasn't arrived yet and will be part of his future. As she passes him, she is in his present. As she drives away, she is in his past.

As the driver in the car, she can look into her rear view mirror and see where she was, look out the windshield and see where she is going, but the entire event is present-time to her perspective. It is one event; she is going to the store.

As a psychic, my perspective is like the driver of the car. To most people, their past, present and future are separated by mental walls that neatly (like a photo album) cut their lives into pieces that must be retrieved. The man on the roadside looked down the road and sees no car yet (his future) and watches it pass (his present) and when the car is out of sight (his past); it is gone to “another place” and is now tucked in his memories.

To a psychic, it's all present, all here, all part of the experience, constantly right there in the glass and the mirror and within the car. The sense of time during a reading is not relevant in the least.

The 3 Enemies of Psychic Reads

I'll tell you a little something about me, I've had no formal training in how to use my gift. It's something that simply is there and I know myself and I know the ability and I don't want a strange teacher coming in and corrupting the relationship I have. Psychic skills are much like how you crammed for tests in high school and college, it worked for you and you knew how to remember things by your own methods. It's the same for psychics.

What I'm going to share with you is something that I have come to know on my own, not something I was told, but something I learned from doing a great deal of psychic reads. Here's the secret I've learned:

Ego, Intellect and Interpretation are the three biggest roadblocks for psychics wanting to give accurate reads.

These side traps are not related to your psychics skills, but rather your very human and analytical side.

1. EGO

When I do a reading, I demand two things of the person I am reading for:

1. I must turn my back on them and not view them.
2. They must not say anything or make a sound, just let me talk until I'm done.

Why such strange requests? The ego. Your ego is a fickle thing. It tends to prod you to keep going when you should just stop. You know that person who says something funny and when people react with laughter, he keeps taking the joke a bit further and further until it's uncomfortable? Yes, that is the ego at work.

Should I see expressions or hear reactions to my reading, I will pursue that which gets a reaction. The problem is, I could be taking myself in entirely the wrong direction, trying to produce more and more information where there is a dead end.

If you've ever seen a TV psychic give a reading, you've seen this dilemma. They start with a reading, produce a name or detail that excites the client and then tosses in something that makes the person's expression fall flat in bewilderment. The psychic often times blames it on the deceased one retreating and perhaps someone else in the audience's family member prodding his way into the reading.

The truth is, you can be a good psychic and still go further and further until you produce random and sometimes unrelated information. We are not perfect beings because we have insight, we are simply talented and even a talented baseball player will strike out upon occasion under the crowd's stress.

The desire to produce a result when perhaps there is no connection is ego-motivated. We want to give a service when asked to do so, but sometimes we simply draw a blank, cannot make a connection, are having a crappy day. It's better to just say “this is probably not going to work right now. Let's try later.” The ego; however, will often times make you spit out things when you should have just shut the hell up.

Any time someone hears I'm psychic, they begin to shove their hands or jewelry at me and want me to perform on the spot. I'm only glad I don't tell them I'm really good in bed. I don't want to know what they'd be asking me to prove on the spot!


2. INTELLECT

Mentalists are people who have learned through observation and prompting, how to learn more about a person. The process is not intuitive, but keen deductive reasoning based on intelligence and conclusions.

A psychic, however, is not at all immune to using cues to help them realize if what they intuit is accurate or off the mark. I can observe someone in designer clothing and perfect manicured grooming and assume a good deal about her, but if the ring she is having me read tells me something of a rough life and hunger, I am likely to conclude I am off the mark.

Our intellect is our very worst enemy, which is why I tell psychics to go with immediate impressions, just shoot them off without stopping and judging their value. The best way to develop your skills is to simply sit with a subject and let your hand write anything and everything, sketch, doodle, put together a few words, adjectives, verbs, nouns, names... Do not edit. When you are done, hand the person the piece of paper. Let them interpret how and why you wrote what you did where you did on the page and see the reaction. It can be quite astonishing.

The worst thing you can do is question the authenticity or worth of what you get or let yourself be swayed by what you know about the person, what you see or hear about him.

I always say I prefer to read strangers. I have no preconceived notions about them. When I know someone, I question everything I get because little voices like this sound off in my head, “she never mentioned losing an uncle at a young age.” “I know he's never been in love with a foreign woman.” “She would never have done something that crazy.”

INTERPRETATION

I believe that capturing information is something that is always there, always accessible for everyone, but interpreting what you're getting and why you're getting it is what separates active psychics from people who think they are not psychic.

I was given a piece of a pottery shard by someone. I have a frame of reference for people who are indigenous, but they are similar which makes it hard to define. I described where he found the shard, the elderly arthritic woman associated with it, but I surmised the woman was Jewish. She was a Native American. My frame of reference was not developed enough to define between types of indigenous people.

I read a young man once and said that he and his brother were 10 months apart and I was right, but knowing that he was more responsible, I assumed he was the elder. He was actually the younger one.

Most psychics get a combination of things; audio, visual, sensory, emotional, and tactile. For me, a great deal of what I get feels like memories. If I asked you to recall your high school graduation, you probably remember where you sat, who you sat with, some fool who flashed the crowd, the sound of the crowd, the feel the cool air from the football field of the heat of the auditorium. That's what I get, as if someone's bits and pieces of memories are inserted into my mind. Now, I must figure out where I am and what is happening. Difficult, huh?

You often have to be patient in interpretation. You are put into a context and if you have no relationship to it, such as you are reading a New York City sophisticate and you are a Midwestern farm gal, you may not have any way to understand what you're getting, so I always advise psychics to read, watch documentaries and History Channel shows and get a body of experience for references.

Next time you go up against a psychic and you think "oh, jeez, he's no more psychic than my dog," remember that it's not enough to have a talent. Like blades of grass in the way of a perfect par golf game, one little glitch in that unholy triad of ego, intellect and interpretation can ruin the focus and give a very off read.

So, What's It Like to be Psychic?

If you've grown up using your skills without realizing they were skills, as you've aged you've learned how to mute the volume. I grew up thinking everyone knew a lot by touching an object. You know how if you pick up your grandfather's smoking pipe, you might start to fondly remember his warm smile or his deep throaty laugh or how he liked to slap you on the back when finished a sentence? That's what it's like for a psychic who specializes in psychometry. We touch an object and we have "memories" that play out in our heads from emotions to visuals, from family and friend ties to incidents.

If you send a bloodhound out into the woods, he will smell a badger, pine needles, wet soil, wildflowers and animal excrement. But, he's out there to hone in on one scent his trainer wants him to follow. To hone in on a psychic read, it's much the same. Lots of images, feelings, glimmers of moments in time pass by you and your mind gets very active but your focus has to slow down and grasp the right stream of information. When you lock in on it, it feels "right" and as if it's "fact."

Today, I spent a bit of time honing in on the Long Island Killer. I have a tendency to be more interested in the serial folks. I even had the killers for DC shooters pegged which I think shocked some people when I said it was a middle-aged black man and a younger black man. It feels like "fact" and something that is already part of history. That sense you get in your body and mind uniting to say "this is it!" is the AHA! of psychic reads.

I did put my notes onto an official site where it is dated. I won't share too much about them because I think it makes me vulnerable if I'm exposing something that will make someone nervous. Suffice to say, Long Island wasn't a dumping ground for convenience. It was a statement putting these women there.

In my upcoming book "From Fledgling to Full-Fledged Psychic," I hope to take the skills you already have (even if you don't realize it) and help you develop the muscles. Each of us have a propensity towards one type of psychic skills with others being lesser forms that support the main one. I am very excited to be able to help people realize senses they use and didn't even realize how they worked or where they're stored in their brains.

So, what's it like to be a psychic? It's no big deal. No psychic can say until after the fact if they followed the right path when doing a reading. I don't ever consider it a real science. I also don't ever for any reason, even with the people closest to me in life, open up to their minds unless they ask me to. I think that life is more exciting when you're left in the dark. I hone my skills as a human being when I have to adapt to new realities.

How do I touch objects every day without going nuts with the info? I don't open to the info. I don't stop and focus on it. I just simply touch something and focus on what its purpose is and not on who has touched it before. However, in a haunted location, I open up to the history. It's rather liberating those moments when you can just let it in. It's like it's been behind a dam for a long time and there's finally a release.

So, that's kind of what it's like to be a psychic, at least, my kind of psychic? I can't account for all of us. We're all as different as you are from your neighbor. For me, it's just another parallel dimension that has no definition but butts right into my dimension in waking state and sleep.