Respect for The Human Condition

Consider taking one day off this week from laughing at other’s misfortune.  Take just one day of your week where you will refrain from making fun of and making derogatory remarks about others.  While you are taking this day off from being laughingly judgmental of others take note of how many times others are respectful or not respectful to you.  Keep a tally of both on a sheet of paper with two columns and at the end of the day see which list has the most entries.  Then ask yourself how you feel about the way you were treated on the one day when you did not engage in making sport of others for your own amusement.  Even if you work from home or don’t socialize very much you can still participate.  You do not have to set one foot outside of your door on this day, but if you answer the telephone or have a presence on a social network it is extremely likely that you will have a long list of insults and humiliations that were heaped upon you in just one day’s time regardless of whether or not you make any actual physical contact with people.  Your experiment is void if you return any of the “disrespects” that you received.   If your list in the “I was respected” column is longer than your list in the “I was disrespected” one, you probably don’t live in America.  It may seem to you that many of the “disrespects” were all done in good fun but for this one day they should be regarded as not fun and not well intentioned.  Did it bother you to not retaliate when someone remarked to you or about you in a rude way?  How many people were deserving of getting their ass kicked?  If you had been in a position to kick their ass would you have done it? 

A man named Dannion Brinkley was struck by lightning, declared dead and taken to the morgue some years ago.  He awoke from the “dead” and had a profound experience while he was technically “on the other side”.  I won’t go into his metamorphosis as a result of his experience.  Instead, I would recommend that you read his book “Saved By The Light” or watch the film that was adapted from the book, which stars Eric Roberts. The book is available at Amazon in both print and Kindle edition.  The film can be viewed on YouTube. 

When Dannion came back from the other side he was confronted with himself, big time!  He had been a bully and a smart ass all of his life.  He had hurt a lot of people and had been a reckless jerk.  He realized that he had a lot of making up to do in order to go on with his life with respect and meaning for himself.  He had to take a trip to the past in a very painful way.   He took on the task of making amends for his past behavior like a true adult but there were many people who were not forgiving. 

If it were possible I would wish a lightning strike upon a large portion of the human race.  As bad as things have gotten in this world I don’t know that anything else would be effective upon what people now regard as fun and acceptable behavior.  I can’t imagine anyone liking being rudely treated and harassed.  Why so many people believe that acting like jackasses to others is something they are entitled to has various causes, but it is in part a symptom of a long list of role models in film and television, and many in our own homes who display this type of behavior in our faces constantly.  It is truly a difficult thing to escape unless you live in a cave, which I have a few times considered doing, but in the absence of a cave with electricity and running water I haven’t quite made it to the point where I am willing to go completely off the grid.

Johnny Ramone tells in the documentary “End of The Century: The Story of The Ramones” about how he was such a bad-ass that he would get up in the morning just looking for ways to cause trouble for others.  He tells that he was walking down the street one day and “It just hit me.  It was like a voice going, what are you doing? Is this what you’re here for?  Is this what God put us here for?”.  I wish that this kind of epiphany would be visited on so many people right now.  Our behavior is causing the loss of countless lives every single day, when those who have been abused decide that they have had enough and either go to their workplace or school with guns in retaliation.  This type of retaliation is a result of the loss of respect for others and a loss of sanity.  It is a learned behavior that is created, not in-born and not something that we can blame on our birth chart.  How the bullies and the loudmouths out there can go on believing that their actions are of little consequence requires a complete disconnect from being human and total selfishness.  Just recently when actress Emma Watson spoke out about the need for more gender equality and caring about the rights of others there were some who were so jaded and ignorant that they created a web site to promote their view of what should happen to Ms. Watson as a result of her just caring what happens to others and daring to suggest that we should learn a better way.  Although the original “You’re Next” website turned out to be a hoax, the cheers for it’s sentiment beforehand were distressingly 100% real.

If you are incapable of taking stock of what is happening in your world and looking at what your contribution to the madness may be, you are in serious danger of being a factor in this never ceasing to corrupt and gaining so much of a stranglehold on what is considered to be normal behavior that we will never be able to evolve it out of the culture.  It is possible that you may not realize the extent of your own contribution, but if you can, for just one day this week be mindful of what you are saying and doing with regard to others.  You will be taking a seemingly small, but in reality giant step toward making more people aware of what they have been doing to others on a daily basis.  Change happens one person at a time and you may find yourself in a situation where you cannot make others stop this kind of behavior toward you but you need to be mindful of what it will take to begin the change in a culture that has been harassed and bullied so much that it is incapable of taking the abuse any longer without making this an even more unsafe place for everyone. 

Does it really take lightning to strike us in order to discover that we are here for only a short time and we have the ability to make that brief visit to planet earth something that we can be truly happy about?  If it does, consider stepping outside during the next thunderstorm because we need you to discover your true worth and contribution to what you can make of this life.  Start with just one day of being a non-contributor to the disrespect of the human condition.  You are the new role model.  Our current ones are failing miserably.

 

Shall We Begin?

If you can’t remember ever having a psychic impression before in your life, you aren’t alone.  In fact most of the population is with you.  This is especially true now days when just about anything that you want to know can be found somewhere on the internet.  The trouble is, the internet is not capable of issuing you a warning when you might be about to step in to a dangerous situation and it cannot warn you when you may be associated with people who can only cause you trouble.  It cannot alert you to health problems, tell you what is going on with loved ones before they have a problem or be there 24/7 with an answer to whatever difficulty that you might be having emotionally. Intuition/psychic awareness is rather like the world wide web but its accuracy is only as precise as the interpreter of the input.  It can be a bit like going to a foreign language site without Google translator to get information if you don’t know yourself and have some confidence in what you are seeking.  Once you have broken through the protective mental gate that separates you from your higher self you will be amazed at your own ability to navigate through life at a quick as lightning speed with a confidence that you will never experience any other way. 

I have worked with a few people who were entertaining the possibility that they might be psychic and have found that there have been two kinds of students who have the most difficulty.  One is the guy who takes out the tarot cards and assumes that he is a master interpreter from the get-go.  His confidence is high and he won’t acknowledge a mistake in his ability.  These types usually will become bored with the whole business after a month or two.  The second type is the person who sees no connection in anything.  You can give this type a reading and they will not connect even the dots right in front of their face because they cannot focus.

Distraction and inability to focus on the situation at hand is a huge problem and without focus, forget it.  You will get nowhere. If your mind is constantly on your friends and social networking  it will be a huge impediment to your ability to look within. Try to set aside all distractions for a brief period each day, thirty minutes or so, to start with.  Most people call this meditation but I have never been able to relate to that word for some reason.  I have no idea why.  It is easier for me to think of it as just centering or finding your balance.  When you can let go of all thoughts of the outside world for a brief time you are on the road to success.  Some people find that lighting a candle or staring at a Lava Lamp is extremely helpful.  One of the major stumbling blocks to this in the new millennium is that there are a million distractions today that didn’t exist before. 

Distracted people will not make good psychics even with 10 sets of tarot cards and a crystal ball in front of them, but then neither will the person who is so cocksure that he/she doesn’t need to do anything but show up and look cool. Let us assume that you are a new breed of seeker and you have an open mind and some sense of self. 

When I first began to toy with the possibility that I might be able to develop psychically I started with automatic writing.  This was not terribly successful for me but it did help me develop more focus.  I can probably count on one hand how many times it was truly accurate but I stayed with it for several months because for one thing, it got me started writing, which has been helpful in many ways.  It started me focusing on myself more and not on the people around me so much, which I always had a tendency to do.  I guess I was so sure that I was not going to do anything that would amount to much that I tended to cater to others who seemed to need support.  This was a part of my personality at the time but it was also a learned behavior that I picked up from my Mother.  She is a Pisces and she has always put the needs of others first.  As long as they were appreciative of her efforts she was happy to do so, but when they were not she was angry and spiteful and some of her more selfish traits came out.  Since I didn’t really have the spiteful gene or much of the selfish one I was more out of balance than she was with the Pisces behavior which is very much in opposition to my sun sign personality, Virgo.  Automatic writing was something that I could go into easily because, with the exception of Gemini, Virgos are the thinkers and analyzers of the zodiac.  I wasn’t too frustrated that it wasn’t of much use.  I didn’t really expect it to be at that time.  I was going through a divorce and just having the ability to focus on ME and no one else helped a lot.  It wasn’t long after this that I graduated to tarot cards.  I can’t even remember why I made the decision to try them.  I think I was just curious as I would always look at the new age section of a bookstore when ever I found myself in one and there were usually several sets of different types of tarot cards there among the books.  I was just in a bookstore one day and had the money to buy them so I did.  Very random, very non-specific.  Be mindful of the random and non-specific things because many of them are anything but random.  Anyway, I brought the cards home and opened them up and took them all out of the package and thought,  I will never be able to figure these out!  There are too many of them and they don’t mean a hell of a lot to me as far as imagery.  This was a Rider-Waite deck which is one of the most widely known decks in the world and probably the oldest.  I didn’t get a lot out of them at that time.  Later I would discover more unusual and ornate decks which seemed to speak to me a bit more and I began to actually try to read some things -  only for myself, of course.  It wasn’t until I found a divination deck called the “Wisdom of Solomon” that I began to have any real success with the cards.  And these cards were not even tarot.  They were a set of cards with something like alchemy symbols on them and each one had a focus word on it.  Oddly enough, there was nothing really to focus on except the word that I could relate to as I knew nothing about alchemy, and strange as it may seem that simple thing helped me begin to get real psychic input even if the word on the card had nothing to do with what I was seeing mentally.  I was on a roll for sure with these cards and I wish that I still had them today.  Not to read with but to remind me of what a wonderful thing it was to make that breakthrough.  Later on, after I had graduated beyond them, I passed them on to a friend whom I was trying to help through a major crisis in his life.  They did not help him at all because ultimately he did not care to find his true self.  He just wanted to get through the bad patch in his life and go back to being a slacker and a slob and a cocaine addict once he was doing better.  What a waste of a fantastic divination tool that changed my life.  These cards are out of print now or I would definitely have replaced them.  When I have seen them for sale by used booksellers they are always asking an astronomical price for them, and Virgo that I am, I cannot justify the expense when it is only for sentimental reasons that I want them.  They mean a lot but not as much as paying the rent does.

It was much later that I began to feel that I could do better than being just a card reader.  I had just met a man who would be my mentor for several years and coach me until I was able to transition away from my “training wheels” as he called them and utilize only my mental faculties to read from then on.  It was a hell of a ride when that breakthrough came and I was such a hard case and lacking in confidence that the universe had to scream and yell at me to get my attention and make me do it.

I have heard of other people, some very famous who believed bizarre things when they began to receive psychic input.  Some believe that they are in contact with aliens from other planets.  I can see how this happens.  It is not something that you necessarily want to admit to once you get past it and get your bearings but it does happen.  It is also easy to wonder if you aren’t in contact with demonic spirits.  You really might not be sure what is going on, even if you have a mentor, because you might not want to tell anyone about the experience.  I  have honestly wondered if it wasn’t possible to go off the deep end mentally when the flood gates of psychic input open.  I was very lucky that I had some support people and a good grip on my intelligence and belief in my true self from my background in astrology or I might have wondered it myself.  The biggest problem that I had was listening.  I would dismiss a lot of what I received as just random thoughts so it came to a point where the fantastical was about the only thing that I would pay attention to.  That didn’t last long.  There came a time when there were voices in my head that would not shut up.  I would be sleeping but only in a mild state and I could hear voices yelling.  It was pretty intense for about two weeks.  I would put on headphones when it got to me too much and turn up some hard rock music to drown out the sound of these voices.  They weren’t actually telling me anything either.  If it had been a voice telling me to commit some evil act I would have been terrified and ran to my mentor but it wasn’t like that.  Sometimes I would get songs stuck in my head and they would play over and over again.  Most of the time it was just segments of a song but I did not understand it and I truly did not want to hear Ozzy Osborne singing Paranoid for an hour and a half.  Years later while watching the TV show “Medium”  I felt very relieved to see the main character, Allison DuBois, have an experience just like this.  The song playing in her head would not stop torturing her and she actually submerged herself entirely in the bathtub, hoping to drown out the music.

So one day this all got to be too much for me. I decided that I would go and buy a pistol and blow my head off to shut this up.  I got into the car and the voices in my head were screaming at me all the way to not do this.  I was determined to shut this off and at that point I didn’t care what they said, I just didn’t want them to say anything.  As I was approaching the store where I intended to buy a gun, I suddenly became violently ill.  I began to panic at that point and knew that I had to go home.  So I turned the car around and drove back home wondering if I would make it there before I vomited or passed out.  I did make it home safely and as I walked in the door of my house I was aware that the voices had stopped.  I almost couldn’t believe it.  They had been driving me crazy for so long the silence was frightening.  I smoked about 200 cigarettes and just sat and wondered what was happening to me now.  What did happen is that I began to understand one of the most prominent ways that I would receive psychic input from then on.  It would be with music. 

I told my mentor about this incident a few days later and he was furious with me for thinking that suicide would solve my problem.  He chastised me for quite a while but seemed pleased that the universe gave me such strong signals to get hold of myself.

It is a good thing that I have such an extensive knowledge of different kinds of music because the universe has a lot to tell.  I have discovered that I can set my iPod to shuffle and invariably the first song and sometimes several additional songs that play will speak to me about something I am dealing with.  If a particular song that has information for me is not in my music collection I will hear it playing in my head  until I either buy the song on iTunes or figure it’s message out on my own.  It is so easy to ignore psychic input when you are working or socializing so the music can get pretty loud if I am not paying attention well enough.  I have wondered what it must be like for people who work away from home to get these impressions and not be free to analyze what they are being told privately.  Interestingly enough, I had already left my job when the bulk of this began happening to me.  It is probably just as well because I cannot imagine being able to keep a job in the public sector now and do what I do.  My mentor was extremely fortunate to have an employer who understood his life and ability. He is truly one in a million in the area where I live.

Your journey in to being all that you are capable of may not take you anywhere near the roller coaster ride experience that mine has, but it is certainly a possibility if you struggle with your confidence.  My mentor was so distraught with his capabilities early on that he tried to drown them in alcohol.  He related a story to me once about having been so drunk that he was near to passing out on his couch when an entity in spirit came to him and forcibly yanked him out of his physical body and dealt with him severely.  When he came back he was so terrified that he ran to the nearest church and related the incident to an amazed congregation.  He was extremely fortunate that they were understanding and sympathetic.  I know for a fact that I would not receive this kind of help, but we are all unique in our journey and he was lucky to have gone to the right place at the right time.  He managed to give up drinking after this and work with his many abilities until he was able to teach them to others.  I feel so fortunate to have been one of his students and to have been hand-picked by him to receive such wonderful support and instruction. 

If you have already found your true self and can make use of all that the universe has to offer you, congratulations.  If you haven’t found your way yet, I hope that you will find it in a peaceful and wonderful way.  Your first step should always be back to the past to get your unique foundation to help you.  If your personal journey happens to be found on the road to hell and back try to remember that you are not alone in how it is manifesting.  As scary and crazy as it sounds you truly will have control over yourself, once you come out of it, that can make you feel uniquely qualified to lead others and make your world and theirs something truly worth the ride in the journey they call human life.  So many people have just survived and wondered at their existence.  They have lived life never really knowing why they were here and what they could have done other than work, eat, sleep, and try to survive what others have imposed upon them.  All of us experience these same issues but some of us can rise above and realize our full potential.  If you are one of those people, the universe is probably speaking to you now.  Answer it by discovering the true you.

He Was Born in the Summer of His 27th Year

That life changed for singer John Denver in a wonderful way during his 27^th year is something that should give us all hope for getting through one of the most critical and difficult times that we may experience in our lives. (Refer to the John Denver song, Rocky Mountain High.)  If you have never heard any of John Denver’s music it would be worth your while to go to YouTube and listen to some of the songs he created after his life changed so dramatically when he discovered a new reality for himself by coming to Colorado.  It can be a time of magnificent rebirth, as it was for John, or it can be a time of devastating misunderstandings of what you are being called upon to do. Why the 26^th through 28^th years of life come to a crisis point at this particular time is something that I cannot answer any more than I can tell you why 3:00 a.m. dreams are purported to be so significant.  I can tell you that in my experience these dreams absolutely do have a message that I have either been seeking or need to know nearly all of the time, but I have not ever been privy to the actual reason for this.

You only need to look at some very famous people in the music world to get a clue about how difficult these years in life can be.  Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Kurt Cobain, and Amy Winehouse are a few of the more prominent people who lost their lives during these years. Certainly the music business in and of itself can be a difficult career path to navigate, but having seen my own life come crashing down around me at that age and seeing it in so many other people’s lives it bears taking a serious look at what may come to you if you haven’t yet reached that age or are living through it right now.

Being aware of the possibility that these years of your life can be extreme in the life lessons that they bring is a step toward combating their ill effects.  I have heard people whine and complain about turning 30 all of my life but it seems to me that if you have gotten past age 28 without too much damage 30 should be a breeze unless you are overly narcissistic.  There are many things that you can do for yourself to ease these life lessons that are most likely going to come to you if you are willing to take some steps to make the transition less stress filled.

It would be impossible for me to know what your particular challenges are going to be when you reach this age but I can tell you that remedies for coping with their effects will help you in difficult times even if you aren’t experiencing these years but are dealing with a crisis at any time in life. They are not difficult to afford or manage but they are probably things that you are not accustomed to doing.

The first thing that I would suggest is that you address the issue of your physical well being.  It can help much to start taking large doses of vitamin C every day.  This can help clean your blood of impurities and give you energy.  Start out slow with vitamin C as some people are able to tolerate larger doses that others are.  Begin with 1000mg daily and if you do not experience any problems add 1000mg more every 3 or 4 days until you reach 5000mg.  If you experience any stomach issues at any point in your progression, know that you have reached your particular tolerance level and cut back to the previous dosage level if this happens.  If you make it to 5000mg with no ill effects then keep at that level.  Do this as long as you feel comfortable.  It can only benefit you.

Another thing that you can do is start taking the supplement, Ginko Biloba.  If you are currently taking any prescription medications, check with your physician before taking this supplement as it can interact adversely with some medications. Take the recommended dosage listed on the label.  What Ginko Biloba will do is help you with clarity and focus.  It can help you think better and manage stress better, which can be a huge help when you are feeling stressed, depressed or sluggish.

This is probably a good time to remove yourself from toxic people in your life.  If you are married, in a relationship or have children this may not be prudent, but if you can, talk to your spouse or significant other about what you are going through and ask for a little more space for yourself and more down time.  Make time for just you and ask that you not be interrupted unless the house is on fire or someone needs you desperately.  Friends and family who tend to be energy drainers on you should be avoided for a while if you can manage it at all.  If they are not of an understanding nature I would not suggest that you tell them what you are going through, just be unavailable as much as is possible.  Be busy or out of town.  Whatever it takes to get the people who upset your equilibrium out of your environment while you take care of your own needs should be done. Do not feel guilty about this.  You are here to take care of you, and once you have done that you can be of assistance to others if you want to be. 

Another thing that I would strongly suggest to get you through your crisis is to start keeping a journal of your thoughts and feelings and anything that comes to you mentally that seems significant.  Prepare yourself with a lot of paper and pens or use your computer to write down whatever you are feeling whenever you are feeling it. Hide your journal away from others.  Put your computer notes on a flash drive and keep it out of the reach of everyone.  It is none of their business what is going on with you unless you want them to know it.  If you get angry, write it down.  If you feel like screaming at someone, write it down.  It is better to do this and ask yourself why on paper than it is to lash out at people.  This is your crisis, your depression, your anger, and your whatever you may be feeling.  To invite the participation of others is usually a recipe for getting told that you are acting crazy or being childish.  You may be doing both but if they tell you that, it is not going to change the way you are feeling in the moment.  It is more likely that it will just piss you and them off and make matters worse.  It is only in the quiet of your own mind that you will find your answers.  Others do not have the information necessary to work out what is going on in you.

What you do only for yourself will help you cope better with whatever situations you encounter during this time of change and upheaval.  Do not anesthetize yourself with drugs or alcohol because you will find yourself using them so often that they will do much more harm than good. You need to have all of your wits about you to deal with the problems that you are facing.

The good news is that this will not last. You will get past this and probably feel like a new person, although maybe a little worse for the wear.  The not so good news is that a crisis like this will be headed your way again when you are at or around age 53.  It can last from that age until around age 56 or 57.  The problems are likely to be of a different sort since you will have gained much life experience since the first one.  These are rites of passage that are built in to the human experience to help you evolve.  Many cultures and religions had the foresight to make some of these experiences easier to cope with since they incorporate them into ceremonies with support for and celebration of the moment in time, although they tend to focus on the passage from childhood innocence to accountability.  Western culture, by and large leaves you to your own devices with the stages of evolution.  The closest thing that we have is public school which tells you when you are supposed to be ready for the next stage in your life, but they do not work very well with many people.   Sadly, John Denver did not make it past his second rite of evolution.  He died in a plane crash two months before his 54^th birthday..

The lessons learned in the evolution of human adults can be very difficult to get through but most people do manage to survive them.  You may wonder why any of this is being told to you on a blog about the mystic arts, but it, like any other experience that you have, be it with learning about your true self with astrology or discovering you latent abilities in clairvoyance or learning about your past lives are all connected in that they are the workings of the universe in your soul. Your personal journey may be a much smoother road than that of some others but if you have taken the time to prepare yourself for these learning opportunities, you will find that their appearance in your life may not throw you off balance as severely as they might if you were completely uninformed about their coming.

Life will usually not allow you to remain stagnant for very long.  You are here to experience and to evolve beyond the lessons learned (or not learned) in your past lives. Check your birth chart to see what you came here with to help you on your journey.  You are living in a time of accelerated change, unprecedented in human history because of the advent of the internet.  You did not show up on the earth to create more problems for yourself and others and then just die, but the ways of nature are not handed to us on a silver platter and it is up to you to change and grow within the boundaries that have been set in place for us to receive “wake up calls” at certain stages along the way.  If you are listening, you can navigate in this life with knowledge and abilities that most people will never comprehend.  Make use of the calls and the side trips back to the past to be all that you were meant to be.  You don’t get a ring for nothing.  It is the universe calling.

Check Your Ego at the Door

There is a small town not far from Orlando, Florida they call a “Spiritualist Camp”. The name of the town is Cassadaga. It is supposedly a place made up of psychics, spiritual counselors, and others who practice the mystic arts.  I just knew that this was the place where I was destined to be.  I was living in central Florida some years ago and I could not wait to go there when I heard of its existence. I was sure that I would find so many kindred spirits there and I would never feel like the odd person out again.   Well, I must have slept with the husband of every human in the place in a past life because I could not have felt more unwelcome in a town.  All that was missing was a huge scarlet letter “A” on my blouse.

It was a very quaint and beautiful little village.  It had old world charm, it was clean and bright and was surrounded by tall trees and paved streets that made me feel so at home - on the face of it, but I didn’t see a single soul outside and it was a beautiful day.  Truly, I expected to see spiritual beings everywhere bustling around and sharing their peace, love, and healing with each other and communicating deep spirituality on every corner.  Nope.  It was almost like an abandoned ghost town, only there were no tumbleweeds rolling down the street.  I began to have a little more hope when I looked around and saw a new age bookstore.   It was a huge white clapboard building set above the street.   Inside, there was one woman behind the counter speaking to someone on the telephone.  She did not even acknowledge my presence, even though the store entrance was directly in front of her and there were no other customers inside.  I decided to look around until she finished her phone call.  She never did.  I really wanted to connect with someone in this place.  It seemed like a perfect place for me.  It had to be. For christ’s sake, I was someone just like them.  I really wanted kinship with others who believed as I did and were living in harmony with their true selves. Too bad.

After about 15 minutes of being deliberately ignored, I thought about buying something to make some sort of contact with the only soul who seemed to be alive in the place.  As I considered what might be something I would like to own, I realized that it would make no difference if I bought her entire inventory.  I was not going to make a friend that day.

It was a good thing that I already had my psychic sense about me because there would have been no way to learn anything as a seeker in that town.  It was a huge disappointment.  If the town was closed that day it would have been helpful if they had posted a sign to that effect.  Truly, just because one promotes oneself to be in touch with the universe does not necessarily make it so, even when the whole town represents itself to be in touch. The spiritual life demands that you connect with others in order to evolve.  Being there felt like “High Noon” with all of the citizens hiding in fear of the showdown in the street.  I was Gary Cooper but my nemesis never showed up. What is interesting about this is that it is becoming the norm for many of us who want to make a difference in this world.  Nobody wants to know the peacemakers.  If it looks like you might be trying to do so (or even if it just “feels” like it) you are not welcome.  It shouldn’t be true with those who claim to be of the mindset of peace, although, just because you claim to be psychic does not mean that you are seeking balance for yourself or those you may read for.  I see a lot of fear of being wrong in people now and even though I understand it to a point, it is something that needs to be eliminated from the populace or we will never solve the social problems that are killing us and keeping us from having any real peace.

Some of the most grandiose (thinking) people who are in possession of some psychic ability are capable of being as unfriendly, unprofessional, and as wildly inaccurate as Criswell.  Select your mentors carefully and take whatever a psychic tells you with a grain of salt and some skepticism until you have some reason to accept what they say.  I would never tell you that there is a psychic anywhere on the planet who is 100% accurate.  As with anyone, you are dealing with a human being.  Any information that you receive in a reading is being interpreted by a person.  Hopefully the person will have dealt with their own ego and have learned to set aside their personality long enough to read for you in an unbiased way. But there are no guarantees.

I have been told some bizarre things in readings that I have had.  One psychic that I went to in Indianapolis, Indiana had been written about in the newspaper with a huge full page spread and several pictures.  He was purported to have given readings to several movie stars and some high powered people in his day.  I was extremely surprised when I was able to get an appointment with him and his fee was very reasonable. 

The reading took place at a very elegant home in the Indianapolis suburbs.  When the man greeted me at the door and bid me to come in I nearly fainted when I saw that the place was virtually empty.  There were two chairs set up in the living room area and two wooden crates turned on their sides that were makeshift tables, and that was the extent of it except for several newspapers strewn about the few  pieces of furniture there and a telephone.  The man asked me if he had ever seen me before, possibly in Las Vegas?  He was sure that I looked familiar.  Of course I had never seen this man before in my life.  When I told him that I had never been to Las Vegas before, he began to tell me that I must have been a showgirl in a past life because he absolutely could see me doing this again.  He even described the outfit that I would be wearing in the act.  Well, I knew that he was off his “bleedin’ nut” then!   I sat and listened to him ramble on about this for quite some time and every time I made the attempt to cordially end the reading he would see something else on a grand scale that was going to happen to me that was truly wonderful.  I did manage to make an escape after about 45 minutes but the guy followed me out to my car and stood there, leaning against it for another 10 minutes or so rambling on about my upcoming career as a showgirl.  I finally told him that the possibility of that happening was extremely unlikely since I had no desire to go to Las Vegas and even attempt such a career.  He paused for a moment and then told me that I was at least going to do very well financially and he saw me getting a new luxury car.  When I finally managed to get the hell out of there, I was laughing so hard that I nearly ran off the road twice driving home.  I will never be sure if this fellow actually believed this baloney or he was just hoping that I would.

On another visit to a psychic, I was told that I was in contact with beings from the planet Saturn.  He said that I just needed to try harder and I would be able to understand them.  Interestingly enough, this particular psychic was correct about some things that he told me.  I truly did not know if there were beings on Saturn or not.  I still don’t, for that matter.  I suppose that it is as likely that there is life on the other planets as there is on this one.  I can’t say for sure that the guy was nuts.  I have never actually tried to do a reading on the possibility of life on Saturn or any other planet so he may have information that I have just never been privy to.  I will say that I told this story to another psychic who was from England, after a UFO seminar in Winter Haven, Florida, and he told me that there is no life on Saturn.  He didn’t say whether or not there was life on the other planets.  Being that he was attending a UFO seminar and he seemed to be tense about the possibility that aliens are among us already, I had to balance my belief in the validity of his opinion and that of the other psychic.  If there are beings from Saturn communicating with me it would appear that they aren’t trying too hard either.

Psychic, John Edward tells in his book, “Infinite Quest” about other psychics approaching him when he had his television show, “Crossing Over with John Edward” and rudely intimating to him that they were much better psychics than he and they deserved to have their own television show instead of him.  This much ego and rudeness tells me that these people may have a bit of their psychic radar turned on but I would never trust the validity of someone with that much snobbery and self-righteousness. Anyone with their self worth in place does not need to insult others.  Their self confidence in what they are and what they do does not need to be confirmed by an adoring public.  If John Edward was fortunate enough to have been given his own television show it was in him to have it all along.  Others who haven’t been given a public forum aren’t given it for a reason, most likely a very good one, too. 

If you are working on developing your intuition and psychic sense it is helpful to communicate with others who have already done so.  They can be a wealth of information and support to you if they have done their homework on themselves and truly know what they are doing.  My advice to you if you are seeking a mentor or just someone to confirm that you are going in the right direction (if you haven’t gotten your confidence yet) is to seek a spiritual counselor or a true mystic first.  Those who just call themselves “psychic” may have some ability but as a learned friend once told me they are most likely just “playing in the astral plane of life” and may have (like many people on the planet) gotten themselves to a point where they feel they have learned enough. They can achieve a few “hits” and call themselves professionals as a result, without ever comprehending that the true nature of being a whole person is something that one never stops learning.  You are ever evolving and you will never know everything.  Check your ego at the door because you are never so good as to be infallible.  Socrates said, “True knowledge exists in knowing that you know nothing”.  I would not say that you know nothing if you are capable of reading the wisdom of the universe, but it is a fact that the more you know, the more you realize you don’t know.  It is in this ability to acknowledge that the universe is vast and comprehending its secrets is a lifelong process that you will make the best use of your particular gifts and be able to share them with others when you have reached a level of competency to teach this to others.  It is much like being a PhD or a college professor in that you have reached a level of excellence that enables you to  impart what you know to others, but you are in no way at the end of your learning process.  It is impossible for mere mortals to know everything so do not assume that you ever will, but there will be a time when you can expand your horizons and help others do the same.  Your journey from the past to the present to the future will make you uniquely qualified to contribute to the hope of the entire planet.   Your endeavoring to do so is the most important thing that you can do in your life.