It isn't easy being psychic in a society filled with people who aren't even conscious of their own psychic/spiritual abilities. This lack of consciousness causes many of these well-meaning people to misunderstand, judge, criticize, fear, stereotype, and persecute practicing psychics as well as laypeople who have a casual interest in metaphysics. Many psychics and healers in the Western world struggle with feelings of loneliness, isolation, and alienation until they learn how to successfully coexist among a majority of people who experience their lives from a denser state of consciousness.
In this chapter, I offer some suggestions that will help you cope with the challenges of being awake in a slumbering world. It's important to understand that there are both people who will accept and understand you, and those who can't. Get out of judgment with those who can't, and seek those who can.
In the same way that there are entities that you cannot see because they vibrate at a different frequency and on a different plane or dimension of existence, there are people out there who cannot respect, then do the same thing for them: let them be where they are. Treat them with the same compassion you would have for a child whose brain doesn't have the synapses and pathways to understand certain things. Don't try to make them see you, understand you, or like you. Don't prove yourself to them. It's like trying to prove yourself to a scared bunny rabbit who leaps away from you when you are offering a fresh carrot. If they are meant to break through the veils of consciousness from their plane of awareness to yours, it will happen in their own time.
Forgive Them, For They Know Not 'X hat They Do
Of course it will hurt if the people whom you have been closest to and dependent on all your life, such as your parents or siblings, don't seem to care about your spiritual interests or appreciate what you are trying to do with your life. It will be frustrating when a neighbor says you are doing the devil's work by reading and healing people, or when a coworker warns you that you may lose your job if you ever again mention seeing a spirit in the bathroom, or when your boss forbids you to do readings during your lunch hour on company premises. Just know that these people are speaking as much out of concern for you as they are out of ignorance and fear.
Some people are very afraid of clairvoyance because practice of their own abilities in other lifetimes resulted in violent persecution and death. When you speak of your clairvoyant abilities, experiences, or training, their MEI death pictures become stimulated (see chapter 4) and they literally
feel like they might die unless they can get you to shut up!
Other people are not meant to understand clairvoyance because their spirits are striving to gain other experiences in this lifetime, and knowledge of this ability could steer them on a whole different path. In these cases, forcing your clairvoyant knowledge or spiritual convictions on these people would be interfering with their spiritual destiny. What is so right for you is not right for everybody.
There are a small number of mentally unstable people who would topple into madness if their psychic centers opened any further. Then there are those individuals who have misused their abilities and authority in past incarnations and are therefore banned by certain guardian spirits and councils from having any awareness of these abilities. I have a theory that most hardcore skeptics fall into this category. The karmic sentence they must live out to the end of their days is having tremendously strong psychic abilities but being completely cut off from their awareness of them. This causes an inexplicable anger and frustration that fuels their passion to debunk other psychics.
Teaching Through Example
I have discovered through my own experiences and those of many of my clairvoyant or spiritually oriented friends that the most effective and least painful way to impact other people's lives is through living your life honestly, with grace. As you follow your heart and your dreams, you will create an exhilarating life filled with peace and joy. Others will want to know your secret and will begin to question why they are living their lives the way mainstream society told them to, but they are not nearly as fulfilled as you are.
Teaching through example means that you don't beat people over the head with your convictions, but also that you don't hide in the proverbial closet. Many psychics, even practicing professionals, hide their abilities from their closest relatives in order to avoid judgments or uncomfortable confrontations. They live a double life and give away their power to people who don't know what to do with it. Most of these psychics are very stuck in their lives and tend to get trapped in a pattern of creating jobs and romantic relationships in which they feel victimized and disrespected, primarily because they continue to put other people's ideas and feelings ahead of their own.
One of my favorite quotations comes from A Course in Miracles and was made famous in a speech given by Nelson Mandela. Marianne Williamson paraphrased it in her enlightening book A Return to Love (pp. 190-191):
Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn't serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us ... and as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.
Seek Your Spiritual Family; Forgive Your Birth Family
Understand that your family of origin may not be your spiritual family. Be grateful to your birth parents for bringing you into the world and nurturing you to the best of their abilities, and for all the lessons they have taught you. But if you don't feel that they understand or accept you, or see you in the way you long to be seen, then you would do well to seek out your true spiritual family.
Your spiritual family is a group of souls that are on the same level of consciousness as you. They usually originate from the same soul grouping as your own. You will recognize members of this family because they will automatically understand, accept, and honor you. Understanding the difference between your birth family and soul family helps you lower your expectations of your birth family and motivates you to seek out individuals who have a greater potential to love you for who you really are.
Seek and Ye Shall Find; Ask and Ye Shall Receive
Growing up in the suburbs of Chicago, I knew no one, except for me and my twin sister, who exhibited psychic abilities or had an interest in psychic phenomena. Decades later, when I began my clairvoyant training in Berkeley, California, for the first time in my life I was surrounded by hundreds of people who were exploring their own spiritual abilities. What was even more mind-boggling than the number of psychics I encountered was the fact that so many of these people existed for so long without my knowledge, despite the hundreds of metaphysically oriented books I had read since I was a child.
After a couple years, I realized it was time for me to leave California, which not only meant leaving my clairvoyant training schools and built-in support systems of classmates, teachers, and staff, it also meant abandoning all of my clairvoyant friends and acquaintances who lived within those particular communities. Since I did not yet know that there are spiritual and metaphysically oriented communities all over the world, I was forced to contemplate the possibility that I would never find another place where I belonged. The idea of once again being a lone psychic in the world was not a comforting one.
Then one of my clairvoyant friends gave me a reading and reminded me that I had the ability to create the kinds of people I wanted to be with, simply through having faith and determination that I would find them, and through visualizing my positive interactions with future friends. This reading helped me decide that my departure from this community would serve as a signal to the universe that I did in fact believe in my own ability to create that which would ultimately serve my soul.
From that point forward, wherever I have lived, I have found myself surrounded by other metaphysically minded folks within a matter of weeks if not days. For about five years, I lived in Sedona, Arizona, which has the largest population of psychics and healers of any city in the United States. During my time there, I knew so many people, including my hairstylist, my son's babysitter, my car repairman, many of my friends, and even my cleaning lady, who were not only believers or practitioners of psychic phenomena, but exhibited a depth of understanding, faith, and wisdom that one would expect only a great sage or yogi to possess.
If you wish to find people who will understand and respect you (this includes romantic partners as well!), then you must make the commitment to yourself to find and associate only with people who are on your level of consciousness (with the exception of a few family members you can't bear to let go of). You must have faith that you are not alone even before you have any hardcore evidence that this is true. As you meet more and more like-minded people and develop friendships that are truly fulfilling and joyful, you will know that you are on the right path.
While you may be in the minority in terms of the entire country, know that there are many, many people like you all over the world and in almost every major city of the United States. Sedona, Arizona and Berkeley, California are only two of the many cities with communities where psychics, healers, massage therapists, acupuncturists, channelers, yogis, etc., are the norm. Other places that are populated by psychics include Cassadaga, Florida; Salem, Massachusetts; Marin and Santa Cruz Counties, California; and Taos, New Mexico.
In just about every metropolitan area across the United States, there are communities of psychics and healers. You will only meet people of a higher consciousness when you are near or at that level yourself, whether these people are located on the other side of the globe or in the house next door.
Within most cities, there are certain locations, businesses, and activities where you are more likely to meet fellow psychics and healers. Obviously, metaphysical bookstores attract people who are metaphysically oriented. Other popular places to meet like-minded people are at yoga and meditation centers/schools and massage and acupuncture schools.
Most of these metaphysically oriented shops and centers offer classes or information about workshops where you will meet other psychics, healers, astrologers, or people who at the very least are interested in and accepting of what you do. Most of these places have public bulletin boards and offer free metaphysically oriented magazines or newspapers that list local practitioners and events.