Anna Sayce

Author: Anna

  • 3 Blocks That Stop Us From Hearing Intuition in Relationships

    3 Blocks That Stop Us From Hearing Intuition in Relationships

    Sometimes it can be difficult to listen to, and trust our intuition in the area of relationships.

    Even professional intuitives have a hard time in this area. The fact is, it’s easy to read for other people because you’re not attached to their situation, so the information comes through clearly. But when it comes to your own situation, it’s not always as easy.

    In this article, I’m going to talk about the three reasons why intuition can be difficult to hear in relationships and in dating situations.  I’ll also give you some tips from my own experience to overcome these blocks to hearing your intuition more clearly in relationships.

    Block #1: Neediness

    In relationships, intuition can help you to:

    • Know what someone is like
    • Know whether you’re compatible with someone
    • Be alerted to times when your needs are not being met or your values violated

    The role of your intuition in relationships is: to help you to get your needs met, while honouring yourself and your values.

    Your intuition gives you feedback about your relationships mainly through gut feelings and impressions. Your feelings and gut impressions are fantastic input because they give you feedback about every single interaction that goes on and everything that is said between you and another person.  You may not consciously register that someone has upset you in an interaction, but afterwards your gut feelings will let you know about it.  Sometimes it takes time for intuition to come through clearly and give you a verdict, but it will, if you let it and if you’re not afraid to see the truth.

    Hearing intuition in relationships is not complicated – you don’t need any fancy techniques, you just need to listen to your gut feelings and impressions, even if they don’t make sense straight away.

    Listening to your intuition produces much happier results in the long-run. After all, the voice of intuition wants you to get your needs met in ways that don’t violate your personal values and don’t have negative consequences.

    Your intuition cares about keeping you safe and happy in the short AND long term. It’s looking for the route that honours you. It’s not looking for the quick fix to patch up your ego. It’s looking to improve your life and make you happy in the long term.

    That’s why it’s worth listening to.

    Now let’s look at the voice of neediness.  This is the complete opposite of intuition.

    Neediness

    I’m going to give you a little scenario to help you to see the contrast between neediness and intuition.

    Let’s say that you’re in a nightclub. Two weeks ago your partner broke up with you.  You’re still feeling rather upset. You’re sitting in a secluded corner with some friends.  One of your friends spots some people she knows, and she brings them over to your table.  One of them is a charming, attractive and smooth-talking stranger who singles you out, plies you with drinks and then asks you back to his/her house. But you also sense that this person is a bit of a ‘player’ – and not what you need right now.

    If you were the person in this scenario, how likely would it be that you stop and listen to your intuition telling you this person is a player?

    Not very likely. At least, not as likely as it normally would be.

    It’s the classic rebound situation.  Do people make good decisions while they’re on the rebound? No. The reason for this is that they’re feeling needy.  And the voice of neediness drowns out intuition.

    The voice of neediness looks for and grabs onto anything that will make you feel better in the short term.  It’s well meaning but not very helpful in the long run.  We can all have a needy voice and it shouts the loudest when we have needs that are not being met. At times where our needs are far from being met, it is almost impossible to hear intuition because the voice of the need is shouting much louder.  The voice of neediness also lives in scarcity, whereas intuition knows that there are a million ways to get our needs for love, community or intimacy met.

    Learning to Listen to Intuition Instead of Neediness

    Here are some tips to do this:

    1. Adopt an abundance mindset in relationships

    The abundance mindset in relationships is one where you know that if you lose one relationship, there are billions of people in the world, so there must be many people you could be happy with.

    Things suddenly become much clearer when you know that whatever you seek from another person exists in abundance anyway, and does not only come from that one person. There are plenty of ways that you could get your needs met.

    2. Know your needs and get them met

    When I say needs, I’m talking about the need for love, intimacy, the need to be listened to – things like that. You don’t have to get needs like that met in a romantic relationship. Having a romantic relationship is one way to get many needs met at once, but there are other ways too.

    I highly recommend a book called The Secret Laws of Attraction: The Effortless Way to Get the Relationship You Want (by Talane Miedaner) for working out what your dominant needs are, and finding ways to get them met outside a relationship. The idea behind this is that when your needs are being met, you make much better choices in relationships. And you don’t make decisions based on unconscious unfulfilled needs.

    Now I want to talk about the next common block to hearing intuition in relationships. It’s a really common one among spiritual people…

    Block #2: A Dedication to Non-Judgment

    One mistake spiritual people often make when meeting people, is that they switch off their creep radar. As spiritual people, we pride ourselves on being open, accepting and non-judgmental.  But just because you accept people as they are doesn’t mean you want to spend time with them or associate with them.

    You need to retain the ability to feel the negative input that your intuition gives you.  Sometimes your Higher self will tell you someone is not that nice (i.e. a bit of a jerk or a creep). That doesn’t mean your Higher self is bigoted or judgmental.  It just means that as wonderful as that soul may be underneath, your Higher self doesn’t think it would be helpful for you to spend time with this person. And you need to acknowledge this if you want to surround yourself with people who are supportive and loving.

    I made this mistake when I was living in London and met a guy that my intuition told me was not what he seemed.  Because I was naive and discarded all negative judgments I was having about people at the time because I thought it made me more ‘spiritual’, I didn’t allow myself to see that he was attempting to steer our relationship in a totally inappropriate direction (he was my teacher and 40 years my senior).  I kept telling myself I wasn’t seeing the situation right, while my intuition was trying to show me the truth.

    Maybe you have had something like that happen to you too. No matter how accepting and non-judgmental you want to be, you still need to be discerning when it comes to who you spend time with.

    Block #3: Overactive Empathy

    Overactive empathy can be a big block to seeing clearly in your relationships.

    In case you’ve not heard the term ‘overactive empathy’ before, here’s how I defined it in my last article:

    You know when you get a glimpse into someone else’s emotional experience or their pain? You can really feel it for a moment and sometimes it might bring you to tears or motivate you to help someone. That’s empathy.

    Overactive empathy, on the other hand, is when you have that experience of opening up to someone else’s emotions and experience, but then instead of coming back to yourself afterwards and being centered in your own needs and feelings, you remain ‘out there’ – absorbed in everyone else’s ’stuff’.

    Why Overactive Empathy is Bad for Listening to Intuition:

    Your intuition gives you input based on what is good for you – what serves you, what honours you, what helps you to meet your needs. On the other hand, overactive empathy takes into account other people more than it takes into account YOUR needs. When you are going around with empathy switched on all the time, you usually make win/lose decisions.

    For example: you take a course of action that depletes your energy massively but helps someone else. This is because you can feel the other person’s pain/need so much, that it detracts from your own needs and feelings. Everything becomes clouded by the other person’s pain and feelings.

    And you may think that the impulse to sacrifice yourself came from spirit or the angels, because God loves a giver, right?

    Not really. Real intuition is actually balanced, sensible and grounded. It is aware of your own limits – in terms of time and energy. It will always recommend courses of action that are win/win, as much as possible.  After all, everyone has their own intuition and spiritual support network (guides, angels, etc) and ability to look out for themselves. Intuition will not encourage you to sacrifice yourself either so you can help others.  It is looking for a mutually beneficial solution for everyone involved.

    If you feel like you are an overactive empath, you might be interested in my book, The Empath’s Toolkit.

  • 3 Quick Ways to Get Control of Overactive Empathy

    3 Quick Ways to Get Control of Overactive Empathy

    You know when you get a glimpse into someone else’s emotional experience or their pain?  You can really feel it for a moment and sometimes it might bring you to tears or motivate you to help someone.  That’s empathy.

    Overactive empathy, on the other hand, is when you have that experience of opening up to someone else’s emotions and experience, but then instead of coming back to yourself afterwards and being centered in your own needs and feelings, you remain ‘out there’ – absorbed in everyone else’s ‘stuff’.  In social situations, you can sense what everyone else is feeling and thinking.  Even walking past people in the street, you can feel and sense what is going on with them.  Physical empaths can even pick up physical pains and aches that aren’t theirs.

    (If you want to find out more about the symptoms of overactive empathy, read this article: Is Overactive Empathy Ruining Your Life?)

    The Downside of Overactive Empathy

    While your energy is ‘doing the rounds’ and picking up on what everyone else is doing and feeling, your life becomes charged with emotions and pain that aren’t even yours and it becomes difficult to maintain a state of focus or centredness.  Meanwhile, what you feel and need can go completely neglected.

    Overactive empathy can lead to people-pleasing, self-sacrifice and self-neglect.  It can also lead to co-dependence because when you can feel other people’s emotions to such a degree, they become yours and you want to help more than is appropriate.

    This is one of the things some psychic and spiritual people struggle with.

    In this article, I’m going to give a few practical tips to help you to overcome overactive empathy.

    1. Pay Attention to How YOU Feel

    In order to get centred, you need to check in with yourself emotionally at least once a day and tune in to how you feel. Make a log before you go to bed of how you feel and why.  When people ask you to do something, before you say yes, check in with how you feel about it.  Don’t just feel their need and then respond to that.  Take time to become centered and for your feelings to come through.  Sometimes your own feelings about things take time to come through when you’re too tuned in to everyone else’s.

    Meditation can also be a good centering tool if you do it regularly and imagine recalling your energy back from other people and feeling complete again. When I feel like my energy is ‘out there’ and ungrounded (especially after I’ve been working on the computer and internet all day) I often do a visualization where I see my energy coming back to me from the internet sites I’ve visited, the people I’ve talked to, the spirits I’ve spoken to and the clients I’ve worked with. A visualization like that just sets the intention to bring your energy back to you and can be very helpful.

    2. Get into the habit of asking Source to take away energies that aren’t yours

    When you feel overwhelmed, or like you lost yourself in interactions with other people, try taking three deep, long breaths, then saying this little prayer:

    “I now call on the power of Source/God and the Archangels to remove from my energy field all energies that do not belong to me.  It is done, it is done, it is done.”

    You can make your own little prayer or memorize the one above.  It doesn’t need to be complicated or long. As you can see, the prayer above is short and simple. Calling on source/the angels is very powerful for clearing out energies and it works.

    3. Give yourself permission to enjoy yourself

    Most empaths are not having fun in their interactions with other people.  They often have the attitude that they are here to help others who are suffering.  They often feel dutiful and feel responsible for other people’s feelings – they feel they are there to help others to feel better.

    To remedy this, focus on having fun in your interactions with others.  In social situations, if you’re not having fun then don’t engage so much with the person you’re talking to. When you’re talking to someone who is draining your energy, intend to pull back.  Put your enjoyment first in social situations and pay less attention to other people than you would normally.  This may sound incredibly selfish but the fact is that many empaths need this change in approach.

    I also wrote another article to help you to diagnose where empathy might be ‘running’ you:

    Is Overactive Empathy Ruining Your Life

    Are you an empath who feels like your empathy gift is more of a curse than a blessing? If so, I invite you to download the free preview of my book The Empath’s Toolkit: A Guide to Recovery for the Overwhelmed Empath below!

    Intuitive Experiment Worksheet

    Download the Free Preview
    of Anna’s Book The Empath’s Toolkit…

    …Packed with Instructions and Tips on How to Come Back
    Into Balance with Your Amazing Empath Gifts.

  • Get an Answer to Your Question on My Blog

    Get an Answer to Your Question on My Blog

    Attention curious people.

    Do you have a question about psychic abilities, spiritual stuff, woo-woo stuff, the spirit world, that you’d like me to write you an answer to?

    As long as I get enough questions, every week, I will be taking a question submitted by a reader and I’ll answer it on the blog.  And I’ll put it in the articles list in a category of its own.

    Guidelines for submitting questions:

    1. Please make sure it’s a question that isn’t relevant only to you.

    For example, don’t send me questions like “Will I be a millionaire by next year?” I get questions like that all the time.  The thing is that those questions usually get sent to me in the ‘comments’ section of an article called Does Anna Predict the Future?

    (In that article, I talk about how I don’t predict the future and then every week I get a few people commenting on it asking me to predict their future so they obviously don’t read the whole thing.)

    Aside from the fact that I don’t predict the future, I reckon no-one wants to read predictions about people they don’t know. So instead, it needs to be a question that might be of interest to more than one person.

    To give you an idea of what I’m talking about, the following questions were submitted by readers:

    2. It’s probably best not to ask me questions about astral projection or lucid dreaming – I know little about these topics.

    If you want to submit a question, you can do it using my contact page.

  • The Best Diet for Developing Psychic Abilities

    The Best Diet for Developing Psychic Abilities

    “What is the best diet for developing psychic abilities?”

    Here’s what people’s Spirit Guides had have to say about diet and psychic abilities, during readings:

    Eliminating meat – especially red meat – will improve psychic abilities.  A predominantly plant-based diet helps you to become more open and sensitive to the spirit world.

    Here’s why: meat dulls your senses and lowers your vibration.  First off, it takes more vital life force to digest meat.  Eating meat helps to ground the ‘mind’ energy (the energy of the upper chakras) and brings it down into the lower chakras (the root chakra, sacral chakra and solar plexus). Your body is so busy processing the meat that it reduces your psychic sensitivity – after all, when you eat meat, it brings a lot of blood down to the digestive system and away from the areas associated with the upper chakras and intuition – like the brain, and some senses like hearing and sight.

    Secondly, some believe that meat contains residues of the animal’s energy that was killed for its meat.  When you take in meat, you are taking in the energy of that animal too, including any fear and pain.

    Eating the flesh of another animal will usually involve you having to desensitize yourself to the energy of the dead animal you’re consuming.  You have to desensitize yourself in order to not feel that negative energy.  But you end up desensitized, in the psychic sense too.

    Why this is good for some people and bad for others

    If you’re trying to develop psychic abilities but it’s not easy for you, it wouldn’t help you to consume meat because it will keep you in a desensitized state and slow down your development.

    When you open up to spirit, you will often feel called to stop consuming red meat anyway.

    When I did my Spirit Guides coaching course (it was a six week coaching course I did last year, which is now discontinued), I noticed that one week, there were several students who all individually decided to give up red meat.  They just felt like it was the right thing to do instinctively.  This makes sense, since eating more plant-based food helps to open up your psychic abilities.

    But on the other hand, if you’re already a very psychic, sensitive and empathic person who needs more grounding, meat will give you that.  It forces you to desensitize yourself to the energy of the dead animal (because otherwise you’ll just feel bad) and it will dull your perception somewhat.  It will bring your energy down into the lower chakras and stop you from ‘spinning your wheels’ in the upper realms.  This can be good if you need more grounding and less escaping into the etheric realms.  Although depending on your views on this issue, eating meat might not be the most ethical way to ground yourself.

    Experimenting with Diet

    I currently eat a predominantly vegetarian diet, but I also eat fish several times a week, and I eat poultry and eggs.

    The only thing I can’t stomach is red meat – beef and lamb. To me it would be like eating a fellow human.  I occasionally have bacon but I feel bad afterwards.

    (Update Jan 2018: I now eat all kinds of animal foods, except dairy products, and have noticed no adverse effects on my intuitive ability.)

    I’ve tried every kind of diet (from raw vegan to the standard junk-food diet) over the last several years and I’ve observed the impact it has on my sensitivity. Here are my personal observations on the impact various diets have on my psychic abilities:

    Standard diet: (when I say a standard diet I mean one that is not particularly healthy.  This includes junk food, plenty of biscuits and cakes; lots of processed carbohydrates like white bread and of course, meat. This is the kind of diet I ate when I was younger.)

    If you’re on this diet and you want to develop psychic abilities, you’ll often find yourself called to clean up your diet.  This is because a cleaner diet makes it easier for spirit to reach you.  A body that is full of processed junk food is not good for connecting with spirit. It will still be possible to connect with spirit, but it’ll use up more energy because you’re desensitized from all the junk.

    When I was developing my psychic abilities about four years ago, I was eating red meat.  I switched over to a vegetarian diet from time to time, because I felt instinctively like I wanted to cut out meat.  However, whenever I relapsed back into eating meat, I’d get the same dream:

    I’d be walking through a city in Spain, sightseeing, and I’d be with the same guy each time (who was my tour guide).  Instead of taking me to see monuments and buildings, he kept showing me various rotting carcasses of animals that were dotted around the streets like grotesque sculptures.

    When I asked why he was showing me such disgusting things, he’d tell me: “this is what your body is like when you eat meat.”

    Eating meat desensitizes our empathy and ability to pick up things, and it desensitizes us to suffering.  That’s why it’s not always helpful to eat meat if you want an ongoing relationship with spirit (Ie. your Spirit Guides and Higher self) and you’re the type of person who needs to actively create and nurture that relationship – as opposed to the sensitivity already being there.

    The other extreme – Vegan and raw vegan diets:

    A vegan diet will help to improve your connection to the spirit world quite quickly.  For me personally, a vegan diet (which means eating only plant-based food – no dairy products or eggs) is too un-grounding because I don’t need to improve my connection to spirit any further.

    A raw vegan diet (Ie. a diet where you only eat raw fruit, nuts, seeds and vegetables) will positively catapult you into the realm of psychic sensitivity.  I was raw vegan for two periods – one which lasted three weeks and one which lasted for a couple of weeks.  It heightened my sensitivity a great deal. The first period went well for one week but then I began to feel spacey and disoriented.  With the work I do (which keeps me even more attuned to the spirit realm than I would normally need to be), a raw diet and a vegan diet are too big a step in the direction of openness to spirit.

    I have enough openness already and if anything, at the time I went raw vegan, I needed to tone down my empathy and sensitivity.  Raw veganism did the opposite of that.  Veganism didn’t help either.  For most people, raw veganism can be very unbalancing.  So, although I believe that veganism is the most ethical diet, I don’t believe it is helpful for very sensitive types.

    For me, the compromise is vegetarianism with some fish (what some might call pescatarianism).  This is a diet that has some animal products, but is mostly plant-based.

    But that’s just me.

    I believe that it’s best to observe all your reactions to your food, when choosing a diet.  And weigh them up.  My heart says yes to a vegan diet, but my mind and my body say a big no.

    In the end, the right diet for you depends on your current level of openness to spirit. If you’re not open to spirit already, then switching to a plant-based or raw diet will help you to get there. If you’re already sensitive, it can unbalance you, depending on your constitution.

    (Incidentally, Ayurveda sheds a lot of light on the role of constitution when it comes to the best diet for maintaining balance, whether you’re developing your psychic abilities or not.)

    If you’re interested in reading more about how to ground yourself, and the role of food, check out these two articles:

    What do you find is the best diet for developing psychic abilities?  Have you tried vegetarianism, veganism or even raw veganism?  What impact did they have on your psychic sensitivity?

  • Mysticism and Mental Illness

    Mysticism and Mental Illness

    I wanted to discuss this topic because in a recent article, I wrote about how to make intuitive development feel less scary or ‘spooky’. I received a comment from a reader who felt that some people might have angry Spirit Guides who influence them into committing violent acts. And as a result of this, connecting with your guides could carry risks.

    If you’ve heard about possessions, negative entities, and spirits telling you to do destructive things, you may have asked yourself questions like:

    Where is the line between mentally ill and psychic?

    Can your Spirit Guides tell you to do crazy things?

    Does opening up psychically make you mentally unstable?

    In this article, I aim to address these questions.

    (Before I begin, I just wanted to say that I am not a medical doctor. I am not professionally qualified to give advice about mental illness. Seek the advice of your doctor. What is written below is my personal opinion and as usual with all of my blog articles, whatever you do with the information is totally up to you.)

    Psychic or Mental Illness?

    So, what is The REAL difference between these two?

    Joseph Campbell said that “the schizophrenic is drowning in the same waters in which the mystic swims with delight.”

    Positive vs. Negative – that’s the first distinction (delight rather than suffocation.)

    Controlled vs. Uncontrolled – that’s the second key distinction (swimming rather than drowning.)

    Psychic input from your spirit and your guides and angels is positive, empowering, and is shown to be helpful in hindsight. You can also control it. Spiritual guidance does not interfere with anyone’s free will or attempt to control a situation.

    The input that comes through mental illness is not controlled and it’s not input from benevolent spiritual sources like Spirit Guides or your own spirit. That kind of input could be abusive, damaging, destructive and if acted upon, might have very negative consequences.

    Therein lies the difference, in my view.

    So in my view, if you have heard voices, had visions, or strong hunches, it does not mean you have a mental illness…as long as it’s not abusive, negative AND uncontrolled.

    If you want to be psychic and remain balanced, I recommend learning how to turn it off, so that you’re not going around switched on all the time.

  • 4 Ways to Make Receiving Spiritual Guidance Feel Safe

    4 Ways to Make Receiving Spiritual Guidance Feel Safe

    Several years ago, I was terrified of Spirit Guides, ghosts, negative beings – any spirit, really.

    I spent many a night frozen with fear unable to summon the courage to get out of bed and simply turn on the light because I sensed something in the room, trying to get my attention or communicate with me. Sometimes my heart would beat so fast and all I would hear was the muffled sound of blood pumping really hard around my body as I lay there terrified!

    Maybe you’ve had similar experiences.  Sometimes those experiences can be real psychic experiences and sometimes our adrenaline and fear kicks in and we begin to imagine things that aren’t there.

    For me, fear was the biggest stumbling block on the path of psychic development. Communicating with the spiritual side seemed scary – and I really didn’t want to see scary things.

    Spirits Aren’t Spooky

    I later learned that communicating with spirit doesn’t have to be frightening. I know because I communicate with spirit all the time.  Now it’s not scary – not even a little bit. And this is NOT because I’ve become less of a wimp, it’s because I’ve learned four perspectives/lessons that make communicating with spirits easier. When you know these four things, you can make your experience less frightening:

    1. Develop Your Claircognizance, not Your Clairvoyance

    Clairvoyance is the ability to see spirits. It’s one of the more well-known psychic gifts. There’s nothing wrong with it, but if you’re easily frightened, it’s probably not the best gift to develop intensively.

    To reduce a fear of the spirit world, sensitize yourself to your claircognizance. Claircognizance is when you have psychic information just popping into your brain – which is not scary at all. It is very subtle and is often that subtle judgement or assumption about an outcome, that comes into your brain just before you have a thought. To develop claircognizance, try automatic writing (I don’t think anyone can be too scared for automatic writing.) Automatic writing is my favourite method for communicating with spirit. I have an article for beginners here which teaches you how to do it.

    Clairsentience is another non-scary way to communicate with spirit. It is all about gut feelings – and no one can be scared of their own gut feelings. Here’s an article I wrote about sensitizing yourself to clairsentience.

    As for clairvoyance, it doesn’t HAVE to be that scary either.

    I don’t see dead people walking around my neighbourhood – I never have (I don’t see spirits with my bare eyes at all.) When I see deceased spirits, I see them in my mind’s eye. Seeing a spirit in your mind’s eye is not as scary as seeing a dead person walking around.

    Now for the second way you can reduce fear when interacting with spirits:

    2. Increase Your Level of Control and Sovereignty

    You can quickly become more in control of HOW and WHEN you receive information.

    Don’t want to see spirits?     – Tell your Spirit Guides and higher self. Let them know you are not comfortable getting messages through clairvoyance.

    Don’t want to be surprised by spirits? – Tell your guides you will tune into them once a week but you don’t want surprise input without you asking for it.

    Even when you do see spirits in your mind’s eye, you are in control – you can make the spirit clearer, or less vivid. You can tune it out. You can tell it to go away. You can turn your mind’s eye off and completely ignore it (there may be times when you do need to do this). You can tell your Spirit Guides not to allow spirits to come through to you when you’re not consciously asking for it. You are essentially in control of your mind’s eye and you can turn off visions. It’s the same with clairaudience (which is the ability to hear spirits.)

    When it’s Time to Turn off Psychic Abilities

    If you have clairaudient experiences or see visions that you cannot control, then you really need to know that it is possible to turn it off, and you have to want to. You might like to read this article to find out how to do that: How to Switch off Psychic Abilities.

    You can make prayers and rituals to make it really clear to the unseen world that you are in control of your energy.

    Here’s one way of doing this:

    1. Light a white candle

    2. Call on your higher self and Spirit Guides

    3. Visualize putting a bubble around yourself

    4. Repeat the affirmation:

    “Nothing can enter my energy without my permission.”

    Say it ten times, as a command.

    If you say this over and over to yourself, it builds up your sense of power. Say it with an attitude and even anger if you feel like an earthbound spirit is intruding on your space. Anger is one step better than feeling helpless.  It helps to raise your vibration if you’re in a space of fear.

    (As a side note, if you sense an earthbound spirit in your space or attached to your energy, to release it I recommend using the Earthbound Spirit Release Prayer that is provided in my book The Empath’s Toolkit.)

    Now let’s talk about the third way to make the spirit world less frightening…

    3. Communicate with Spirit More Often

    One way to make communicating with the spirit world less frightening is to do it more often. There comes a point when talking to spirit is a bit like picking up the phone, and it becomes a bit mundane!

    In the beginning, I used to get really creeped out because when I tuned into my Spirit Guides, I used to feel tingling on the sides of my head.  Now that has become a commonplace occurrence – it happens a lot when I do readings but I barely notice it now.

    You may be creeped out the first time you communicate with spirit, but you definitely won’t be creeped out once you’ve done it 200 times!

    4. Don’t Watch Scary Films about Ghosts

    One final tip: If you don’t want scary spirit experiences, I advise not watching scary films about ghosts and evil spirits! Those are designed to evoke fear to give you a thrill and they have nothing to do with the reality of communicating with the spiritual realm. They’re definitely not helpful for reducing fear of the spirit world if you are the type who is easily frightened in that regard (like I was.)

    Still have a serious fear of spirits? – Check out this article: How to Overcome a Fear of the Spirit World.

  • How to Make Life Changes Feel Less Scary

    How to Make Life Changes Feel Less Scary

    Today I have a guest post from the lovely Darla. Darla is a professional intuitive and has a blog over at The Copper Scarab. Her post talks about those times when your spirit is calling you to make a change and how to change without it freaking you out.

    Without further ado, here’s her post…

    A friend of mine recently e-mailed and asked me this question:

    “…Are you ever afraid of “going all in” spiritually…like, let go and let it take you wherever. And really let go?…i.e. “what will people think?”, “what will happen to my relationships with my family?”, “how will I make ends meet financially?”

    I could totally devote my life to this. I’ve felt it many times during meditation, but I feel myself pull back because I’m afraid of how drastically my life would change. Does this make sense at all?”

    Oh, yes. It makes perfect sense. It screams sense.

    As I told her, and as I’m now telling you, I am constantly afraid of “going all in” spiritually, and I don’t think this is in anyway uncommon.

    Though I have no aspirations to be a monk or a nun or anything else that “all in,” I do feel some changes in my life coming– changes that are likely to propel me further down my spiritual path and make me healthier and happier…but I’m resisting and I’m dragging my feet and I’m stubbornly stamping my feet in ornery protest. Why? Because change is scary. You know this, I know this. We all know this.

    If you had told me three years ago that today I’d be divorced, living a new life in Albuquerque while my ex started his own new life in Spain and that I’d be easing into life as an intuitive counselor I’d have been too shocked and too scared stiff to go another step forward in my life. And it would still be 2007 and I’d still be living in Iowa. Gross.

    Change can be mortifying, especially when you feel like you’re being asked to “go all in.” But there are a few things you can do to not only prepare yourself for change, but to make the whole process a little easier.

    Why you’re being asked to “go all in”

    First of all, I’m not entirely sure that you are being asked to “go all in.” On anything.  Neither life nor Spirit is black and white and living between extremes is dangerous and a surefire way to feel inadequate. However, there are times in our lives when it’s time to change something. It’s time to change a behavior, a thought pattern or a routine in order to spice up our lives, turn us upside down for a different view of the world, open our lives up for something or someone new to enter, or to propel us into the life we truly desire.

    For example, when I travel it’s my taste buds that collect all of the souvenirs. My entertainment budget is my food budget. When it was still 2007 and I still lived in Iowa I kept myself entertained and sane by writing a rather successful food blog. And then I decided to go to grad school and write a thesis about how food can create and sustain cultural identity. Today I’ve quite unexpectedly (yet enthusiastically and wholeheartedly) found myself on a new path as an intuitive counselor. But my passion for food remains. My mind is racing with ideas on how I can take what I’ve learned about food and cultural identity and apply that to spiritual identity. But if this is an area I truly wish to explore (and I do) and if it’s an area in which I expect to teach and empower others, then you’d better believe it is an area in which I am going to be poked, prodded and tested.

    I’ve always been adamant that I would never prohibit myself from eating anything I truly wanted to eat. I don’t like rules when it comes to what I eat. Moderation is key and people who deny themselves pleasures of the palate must be shriveling inside and hate both babies and laughing. Right?

    Maybe.

    As a life long meat-eater and the granddaughter of cattle ranchers (on both sides), I never would have guessed that I would one day give it up. But that is exactly what I did this past January. I was getting some familiar nudges to stop eating it but the idea of not eating red meat frightened me. We form or associate emotional connections with food and I’ve eaten red meat my entire life. How can I give it up completely? So I decided to make a deal: I’d stop eating red meat for the month of January and we’d go from there. Not only have I not eaten red-meat in five months but I also don’t want to eat it. I don’t crave and I don’t miss it.

    Whoa.

    Now I’m feeling that familiar nudge nudging me to give up sugar.

    Crap.

    How have I handled this? I’ve eaten way more sugar than I normally do. Even when I don’t want it because I know it’s just a matter of time before it will be off limits to me. And worse than that, I won’t even want it! I don’t want to not want sugar! Everyone eats sugar to some degree. So I’m resisting. I’m overindulging. Before this nudging I probably ate one or two candy bars a year. In that case, I’ve probably eaten 3 years worth of candy bars this year along…and it’s only May. It’s the binge before the purge.

    The beautiful and frustrating thing about change is that only you can change yourself (yeah yeah we’ve heard it all before). But also, you can only make the changes you truly want to make. I didn’t stop eating meat because of some inner nudging. I stopped eating it because I wanted to. And I know that that will be the same case of anything else I give up or anything I begin doing/eating.

    How to ease out of resistance and into positive change

    Whether it’s a lifestyle change, trying a new experience (restaurant, therapy, travel, etc.,) or even choosing to buy one product over another (you entrepreneurs out there listening?) a large force behind all resistance is uncertainty. There is a communication theory called Uncertainty Reduction Theory. (I have two degrees in Journalism and Mass Communication so bear with me for a second!)

    Uncertain Reduction Theory basically states: reduce your uncertainty, reduce your resistance. This theory was developed to describe how and why we as humans choose to enter into some relationships and not into others. Uncertainty Reduction Theory has three stages: the entry stage, the personal stage, and the exit stage. Just as we use these stages to develop relationships, we can use these stages to reduce our uncertainty about adopting a new behavior:

    #1 Entry Stage: This is the stage where we commonly exchange biographical and demographic information with someone: Where did you grow up? What do you do? Do you have kids?  As more information is gathered and uncertainty begins to be reduced (re: you begin to understand what topics and information are off limits to this new person), the questions begin to deepen, leading to the next stage. In the case of learning about a new behavior you may want to adopt (diet, meditation, yoga, etc.) this stage may be characterized by asking people already engaged in this behavior what their experience has been like: How long have you been doing this? Do you enjoy it? What’s the hardest thing about it? What are the benefits? What advice do you have for me?

    #2 Personal Stage: This is the stage where you would begin to explore the attitudes and beliefs of your new acquaintance. You will begin to probe for information about their values, morals, etc., and emotional involvement tends to increase. In the case of learning about a new behavior, this stage may involve deeper research such as buying or checking out several books on the topic, or doing a trial run and taking note of the results. Are the results what you expected? Are they encouraging?

    #3 Exit Stage: This is the stage where the former strangers decide if it is worth it to continue developing a relationship based on the information gathered in the first two stages. In the case of learning about a new behavior, you may ask yourself if the behavior (or person) is worth giving more time and attention to, based on your initial results. If the answer to this question and the questions posed in the second stage is ‘no’ then you may choose to not adopt the new behavior or you may choose to start over at Stage 1 or 2 and gather even more information.

    Resistance is totally natural. Don’t waste time beating yourself up, being afraid or hesitant. That won’t help anyone and it may cause you to not only resist making new, positive changes but it may actually cause you to regress into some bad habits or thinking patterns that you long ago gave up. Instead, there are a number of ways to ease yourself into adding or subtracting something to your life. Remember that these changes are the goal, they are the finish line, but the journey really is what matters. The journey is probably why you’re being called to make these changes in the first place!

    As anyone who has trained to make some sort of a journey (marathon, the Tour de France, a pilgrimage, a shopping spree . . .) will tell you: the key is to pace yourself, and remembering the three stages of Uncertainty Reduction may help you pace yourself. Remembering that there is a process for easing into everything, and that process has a name, will help you remain calm and less stressed in the face of change.

    In summary, the steps of Uncertainty Reduction can be reduced to these simple steps for pacing yourself in the face of making a change:

    • Learn all you can about the subject or situation
    • Ask questions. Ask yourself, your guides, your friends, your cat. Ask!
    • Do a 3, 7 or even 30-day trial run—try it on for size
    • Agree to incorporate the new change into your life in one small way– eat one raw meal a day, for example. Eliminate a less-than-ideal-vice for one entire day each and every week (Tuesdays, for example). Build up to two days a week (Tuesdays and Thursdays).

    Remember that you don’t have to do anything you don’t like or don’t want to do! If you’re forcing yourself to do something take a step back and repeat the first two steps: learn all you can and ask a lot of questions. Then try again or ask yourself if this is a change you really want to make.

    Change can be scary but it doesn’t have to be hard.

    Darla Antoine is a mixed-race First Nations tribal member (Okanagan), an ancestral activist and healer, practitioner of the sacred domestic arts, mother and accidental homesteader in the high mountains of Costa Rica. Darla helps mixed-race and mixed-culture seekers discover the medicine, blessings and power in their ancestral/spiritual lineages. She does this by combining her spiritual work with her experiences as a mixed-race woman and expat with her master’s degree in Intercultural Communication.

  • Personal Lessons and Insights I’ve Had From Doing 500 Intuitive Readings

    Personal Lessons and Insights I’ve Had From Doing 500 Intuitive Readings

    It’s time to compile a blog post with all the personal and psychic development lessons I’ve learned from doing 500+ readings.

    I’ve not blogged about what I’ve learned personally from doing readings – the blog and the readings have been separate in that regard up until now.

    I hope this article helps to demystify the psychic readings for you in case you’ve never had one. In this article, I will also mention some general insights that I hear often from peoples’ Spirit Guides.

    Blog Articles

    Firstly, I wanted to say that talking to clients’ Spirit Guides, Higher selves and reading the Akashic Records has really helped to inform my opinions and influence the information contained in many articles here on my blog.  For example, this blog post contains a message that I have heard many times over (and continue to hear) from many Spirit Guide teams about power and taking control of your life.

    Law of Attraction Inaction

    The spirit realm has advised some people to get real about the Law of Attraction too.

    I loved the Secret when it came out and I loved Abraham-Hicks too (these are two well-known resources on the Law of Attraction in case you have not heard of them before).

    However, it seems when people take in too much information like ‘visualizing cheques coming to you in the mail means you will see more money coming in’, their Higher self or guides feel it’s time to deliver the antidote. Although visualization is a powerful tool, personal power and taking action (as long as it’s congruent with your goals) are often more important than building the vision, since action is something that helps you to clarify your vision anyway, through trial and error.

    How to Make Life Better

    Doing several hundred psychic readings for people naturally gives you insight on how the spirit realm thinks we could improve our lives as human beings.

    The Spirit Guides are all fairly consistent in the principles by which they give their core advice.  Obviously, not everyone is the same, and different people need different messages at different times. However, I do think 500 Spirit Guide teams aren’t so different from one another.  It’s like there are common values that the spirit realm gives advice based on. One of them is the need for balance in life.

    Let’s say you booked a reading with me, but you don’t give me any specific questions and just want me to tune in.  Most of the time, the message your Spirit Guides will pass on (before they tell me about anything else) will be related to BALANCE.  Everyone is striving towards balance on their spiritual path and human path.  Part of the reason why balance is something to strive for is because obviously, it allows you to enjoy your life more.

    The Spirit Guides will usually show me your chakra system to point out some glaring imbalance in the way you’re living your life (if there happens to be one – some people do have slight imbalances instead.) Some people are very diligent all their lives and neglect fun and play (the sacral chakra.)  Some people look like ‘lollipops’ in their energy field (they have massive upper chakras and small lower chakras) – which means that they like to escape into the etheric realms and their practical, physical, human life suffers as a result.  Some people have lots of intellectual capabilities and big third eye chakras but closed off heart chakras, which means that they bypass their emotions and instead use their intellect when making choices (so they can often lose touch with what their spirit wants and fail to connect with others).

    Balance and the Chakra System

    The chakra system is very helpful for diagnosing imbalances because it’s basically a new-age system for life balance. It’s very commonsense actually and it helps psychics and energy healers find out what area you’re neglecting and what you can do to make your life better.

    Inevitably, the Spirit Guides don’t just diagnose an imbalance and then leave it at that. They often give practical suggestions for opening up chakras and bringing balance back to your life.

    (Note: if you’re looking for something which can help you to diagnose imbalances in your own aura, you might be interested in my Chakra Meditation Kit.)

    Patterns in Imbalances

    The interesting thing about doing these readings is that there are certain archetypes and patterns for imbalances and so you learn to see a client’s imbalances very quickly.  People who have their strengths in a certain area often have a weakness and imbalance in a corresponding area. Although I don’t ever jump to conclusions in a reading, before I have all the information, it does get predictable sometimes when the same patterns come up over and over.

    It seems the blueprint for life here on Earth is to keep a balance between the spiritual and the physical, and this comes out in the information that clients get in a reading.  Your soul usually thinks you’re here to have fun and enjoy the unique delights that Earth offers.  Earth is a somewhat bittersweet place to incarnate judging by the variety of experiences clients have.  It seems it’s both delightful and painful at times.  The guides usually advise delighting in the wonderful things and doing your best to get through the hard times.  And don’t judge what life sends you until it’s over – it is often a blessing in disguise (as hackneyed as that sounds!).

    I believe that some people don’t truly learn to appreciate their life until after the poop has hit the fan. Other people have the special ability to see beauty even in horror and pain.  Although it’s much easier to see the beauty in hindsight – while you’re going through the horror, things can feel like too much to bear, and the last thing you want is some Spirit Guide asking you to see the beauty in the chaos or horror that is your particular crisis that you’re going through.  Luckily they don’t do that 🙂

    Purpose

    The second most common area for review is life purpose and the life plan:

    Are you off-track with where your spirit wants you to be?

    What are your gifts?

    Are you actually using them?

    Your level of fulfillment corresponds directly to how much you are using your variety of gifts.  I look up 35 archetypes for gifts – most people have five or six altogether.  I haven’t read for anyone who has the exact same combination of gifts, so it’s like everyone is a perfectly unique snowflake in that sense.

    Here are some messages that I get time and again for the purpose section of a reading:

    • You came here for a reason with the perfect combination of gifts that all work together nicely – use them.
    • Embrace variety in how you use your gifts.  Not everyone is meant to express all their gifts in one area like their career.
    • Some people sort out the career side of life early on and some people don’t really get going until later on.  It all depends on your personal life lessons and life path.

    Predictions Can Sometimes Be Unhelpful

    Another lesson the Spirit Guides have given me is that predictions can be particularly unhelpful to get.  These days I don’t predict the future.  I truly believe that 9 times out of 10 it is unhelpful to get a prediction because it detracts from your own ability to control outcomes and be in your power.

    Personal Lessons I’ve Learned from Doing Readings

    Here’s where I’ve grown in the last few years…

    Learning to connect more with people

    In the beginning, I so wanted to ‘get it right’.  I felt like I failed if someone didn’t agree with what I picked up.  Although the vast majority of people come away happy after a reading, these days I think my ego protests less if a client happens to deny or refute something I am certain is true (during a reading).  These days I connect more with the client and take things as they come.  I’ve learned that I’m just the messenger and interpreter of the information.  If the information is not exactly what the person wants or not as detailed as they’d like, I don’t beat myself up anymore. There is a degree of control that I’d like to have that I can’t get.

    Not to take things personally

    Being a professional psychic exposes you very much to the foibles and vagaries of human beings.  People occasionally come to psychics when they’re in crisis (although I always recommend you do the practical things first when you’re in a crisis, like seeing a financial advisor, or a doctor, or whatever expert you need to see.)

    I’ve come to the conclusion that humans are generally very colourful and well, I don’t think I’ve ever read for a ‘normal’ person. Do you know anyone normal?!

    Human beings can be fairly inconsistent and can do odd things too. But reading for people has taught me a lot about expecting less of myself and giving me (and everyone else I’ve ever read for) permission to be human – Just because someone’s a spirit as well as a human doesn’t mean they need to be as perfect as an angel.

    The difficult ones

    I’ve had difficult clients too.  There was the charming client who sent me monthly emails calling me a scam-artist because his life wasn’t any different one year after his reading.  That prompted the putting up of my notice on my readings page that I don’t change anyone’s life single-handedly in one hour (that is, unless they take the information and run with it).

    There was also the woman who sent me a Facebook message and when I didn’t reply within 24 hours posted a very long ‘I knew you were a scammer/fraud/an evil bitch for not replying to me’ message on my personal Facebook wall.

    After that, I realized how foolish it was to allow readers onto my personal Facebook as my family and friends were wondering why I was getting such abusive messages from people I didn’t know.

    So apologies to all the people who have added me on Facebook.  I bet that you are a perfectly sane, lovely person but I’d rather not have to weed out the angry strangers so my policy is not to accept people I don’t know.  So instead I created a Facebook page for blog and personal updates – please join on there if you want to receive updates through Facebook.

    Psychic Readings & Energy

    I wouldn’t advise doing more than 3-4 readings per day.

    I remember when I did my languages degree, I considered becoming an interpreter.  The interpreters are the ones sitting in a booth wearing a pair of headphones and speaking into a microphone at a conference such as the EU or UN.  I read that interpreters are paid a lot of money and don’t work that many hours because interpreting is very demanding.

    A simultaneous interpreter has the unenviable task of quickly digesting what one person is saying before immediately translating it to the others. One of the skills interpreters must have is deciding quickly how to phrase things. They must think really quickly and on their feet.  And they must translate accurately.

    To do a good, detailed psychic reading is sort of like working as an interpreter.  It is demanding to go up into the Spirit Realm, take what they are saying (which is like communicating on a whole other wave length) and then put it into words that make sense and accurately reflect what the Spirit Realm said – for a whole hour AND be on the wave length that the client communicates on, so that it’s understood. You’re doing lots of things at once. Sometimes Spirit is talking to you while you’re talking to the client. I still struggle to do both at once so often I tell the client to wait a second while I get the information.

    For this reason, a good psychic reading takes skill and energy. Messages from the Spirit Realm don’t always come easy. For this reason, I strongly disagree with those people who feel that people who do spiritual work, like readings and healing, should do it for free.

    So that concludes this post. I’m sure I have a lot more to learn in this area and I guess I will, over the course of the next 500 odd readings! I hope this has demystified the process of a psychic reading for you, if you’ve not had one before.

  • Are You Using the Law of Attraction as a Big Fat Procrastination Tool?

    Are You Using the Law of Attraction as a Big Fat Procrastination Tool?

    I wrote an article a few months ago saying that the Law of Attraction doesn’t always work.

    Some people who read Abraham-Hicks and believe in the Law of Attraction thought this was an idiotic thing to say and I got a couple of emails from people telling me so. It was like I was saying the law of gravity doesn’t work (for those people who believe that the Law of Attraction underlies everything).

    However…

    I’m still convinced that the Law of Attraction (the art of ‘attracting’ and allowing) is a much more complex phenomenon than it’s been presented as, in The Secret, even by Abraham-Hicks. I believe it is a real law. BUT I think it has “yes buts” and caveats. It’s not black and white.

    • Some goals require stubborn, persistent action, while other things happen effortlessly.
    • Attraction and action are required in varying doses depending on what you want to create (and depending on who you are and where you’re at).

    To illustrate this, I want to tell you about something I’ve noticed on my website.

    Successful Attracting

    It is to do with the timing of when people book sessions for a reading or for mentoring.

    When I have plenty of energy, and I feel like doing sessions, I get lots of people ordering. When my energy is waning and it’s time to take a break from sessions for a week, they begin to dry up even before I’ve noticed I’m tired.

    I get people booking sessions when I’m looking forward to doing them.

    I don’t get them when I’d rather not do them.

    It’s as if I have an invisible sign on my readings page that says ‘open for business’ or ‘closed for business’, even though I may write nothing on there.

    I don’t do any strategic marketing these days to encourage people to book sessions. I have a constant flow of people coming to my website through search engines. Those actions (which might be considered an act of marketing myself) do not occur and are not timed for when I would like to work with more people. In fact, I often do them when I’m not doing readings.

    It’s also not my waiting list. I get as many people booking when I have a wait time of two weeks, as I do when my wait time is a few days.

    So why do I get people ordering sessions only when I want them to?

    In the beginning, about two years ago, I’d maybe work with three clients a week when I wanted six. So I began to ask my Guides/the Universe/my Higher self to help me to work with a specific number of clients. And I’d get told what to do (marketing, etc) in order to work with all those people and attract those clients to my website.

    After a while, I kept requesting, but the flow of clients became steady and I didn’t need to do anything to encourage people to book sessions.

    And it’s been like that ever since – I ask, and I get. I ask to work with six clients and I get six. I ask them to put the brakes on and no-one books a session for a few days. This has been happening for two years. It seems I can directly control how many people I work with, as long as it matches my energy levels, simply by requesting it.

    If I didn’t believe in the Law of Attraction, I’d call it uncanny.

    One of the Abraham Hicks books is called Ask and It Is Given. That pretty much sums up the situation. I don’t have to do anything for it to happen. I just remain in the flow and it comes to me.

    So I believe in the Law of Attraction in this context.

    (And bear in mind that when I say the ‘Law of Attraction’ I’m referring to the act of ‘getting in the vortex’ and ‘attracting’ something; waiting for things to happen).

    Law of Attraction Distraction

    However…Here’s where I think the Law of Attraction teachings are an unhelpful distraction some of the time, and even cause procrastination:

    • Setting up your own business and turning it into a successful venture, or even just getting it off the ground.
    • Creating a successful career in any area.
    • Becoming financially abundant.

    I have seen this scenario a number of times.  Someone says to me:

    “I can’t seem to get moving in my new business.  Nothing is happening for me.  I visualize every day, I feel great, I feel aligned with my being.  I know it’ll happen soon.  Success is coming – my big break is coming – I can feel it.  I just need to get out of the way.”

    Four months later you speak to the person again.  They are working towards the same goals (but only in their head) and they’re in exactly the same place. They feel GREAT but nothing has happened.

    The reason?  It’s so obvious, isn’t it? They didn’t DO anything.  They took zero action.  Instead, they thought about it – lots.  They analyzed all the reasons why conditions weren’t ideal for taking action yet.  They trawled the web for astrology/numerology/anything which backed up their conviction that it wasn’t the optimum time for them to get started. And then they went back to feeling really good about what was in their vortex and procrastinating on some more Law of Attraction material.

    They liked their good emotional state so much, that they didn’t want to take some scary action and a step into unknown terrain, in order to make progress.  They were too scared and justified not taking action by telling themselves ‘it doesn’t feel right’ or ‘it wasn’t aligned’.

    These people are successful in maintaining an ‘alignment’ and feeling good, but it seems that it’s at the cost of anything actually happening. A desire to feel good all the time causes procrastination.

    Why some action is better than none

    Anything big – successful, noteworthy, abundant – requires big actions.  If you refuse to take action chronically after having studied the Law of Attraction because it doesn’t feel good, you’re using the ‘Law of Attraction’ as a big, fat procrastination tool.

    Most of the time I do something new – I feel bad about it and I get nervous. I am a pessimist. I am a perfectionist. I often have bleak expectations, it’s just the way I am made. I was afraid every time I clicked ‘publish’ on my first 30 blog posts. I was afraid when I brought out my course. I used to be afraid when I did readings for the first several months.  Doing things is scary.  Sometimes they feel like the wrong actions.

    In business (and in many areas of life), I believe it is better to take some action (even if it’s from a place of feeling bad) rather than take no action at all.  If you’ve been at a standstill for a while, and you’re not happy about it, throw something against the wall, see if it sticks.  It’ll get you moving again, and you soon realize whether it’s a direction you like – or not.  That sparks some other action and soon enough you’re on your way again.

    Following through with action to create change (even when you don’t necessarily feel great about it) works in business, and it works in other areas.

    Disclaimer

    Don’t get me wrong – there is a time for taking inspired action that feels great.  There’s a time for reading Abraham-Hicks and stuff like that (if you want to). There is a time for getting clear on what you want.  There is a time for asking yourself ‘Am I taking action that is aligned with my values?’.

    The Law of Attraction might send me a client a few hours after I request one.  It might make a compatible partner show up for you at exactly the right time.

    But the Law of Attraction alone will not create you a successful business, or a successful career, or a consistent, healthy income from your career (unless you win the lottery or you accidentally stumble into a reality TV show audition, get on the show, and become famous and adored for doing nothing).

    And so it’s a good idea to honestly ask yourself – am I any closer IN REAL TERMS to my goals than I was three months ago in spite of all my knowledge, reading and studying of the Law of Attraction? If not, then you’re using the Law of Attraction as procrastination.

    What I’m saying is that it’s good to distinguish between WHAT you can create through attraction alone, and what gets created through ACTION.  Perfect clients come to me at the right time through attraction (although it took a lot of work for me to build up a client base and become in demand as a psychic). The other aspects of my life usually require a lot of action.  Supporting myself financially requires a lot of action.

    Let’s Get Real

    I don’t think I have ever heard anyone’s Spirit Guides or Higher self say “Just sit back, relax, let that success, money and fame you want come to you.  It’s all on its way and it’s going to be great!”

    Instead, they tend to say things like:

    Dora has plenty of visions but hasn’t exercised her ‘taking action muscle’ in a while, so thinks it’s harder than it is to create these visions.

    Jim can’t decide and won’t do anything until he decides EXACTLY what he wants, so he is stuck.

    Neill is chronically terrified and needs to know that nothing is as scary as he expects it to be.

    Joe won’t take any action because he thinks it’s got to be all perfect before he does.

    Spirit doesn’t tend to suggest you go and watch The Secret to make it all better and convince yourself it’s all on its way anyway. Usually a solution or a practical suggestion is proposed, such as:

    ‘Just try that course of action and see what happens’

    ‘Accept that nothing is ever perfect in everyone’s eyes and even give yourself permission to screw up’

    ‘Try it and then you’ll get clearer on what you want’.

    What’s the real reason why it isn’t happening for you?

    Did you agree with what I wrote here?  Disagree?  Give me your thoughts by leaving a reply below.

  • Are Curses Real?

    Are Curses Real?

    A small portion of the inquiries I receive are from distressed visitors, who are convinced someone has cursed them because they’ve had a series of unfortunate events happen to them recently. In this article, I want to talk about what curses really are and how they can happen.

    Are curses even real? Or are you just paranoid?

    First of all, yes, curses are real. People do place them on one another (although it is fairly rare and nowhere near as scary as people tend to think).

    In this article, I will talk about some common scenarios of how curses get placed.

    What are curses and how do people place them?

    Have you ever felt so angry or mistreated by someone that you wanted some kind of revenge? In our darkest moments, we can utter words like ‘I hope he suffers like I have’. Any time we wish ill on another person and when we put energy and emotion behind it (even if it’s only in that moment), that is curse energy.

    Creating curses isn’t rare. After all, people get in conflict with one another, hate one another, have moments of anger and get resentful about things that happen. Curse energy goes out to people. That’s no big deal.

    But here’s when it starts to affect people…

    …When the person who has been cursed decides to take on that curse energy into their energy field.

    That doesn’t happen that often, but it can happen in one of two ways:

    1. When the cursed person feels they deserve the curse because they feel guilty about something.

    Here’s an example: let’s say Mary is dating a guy called Rob. They have been in a relationship for six months and Mary is crazy about Rob and Rob seems to be crazy about her. She is convinced that she has found ‘the one’. He seems to feel the same way. Then a few months later by chance she finds out he already has a fiancée and has had one the whole time they were seeing each other. She is gutted, but above all, angry that he deceived her.

    Rob is a bit of a ratbag so although he feels a bit guilty, he doesn’t do much to say sorry. He just disappears off the scene, which makes Mary even angrier. She wants revenge. At her angriest, Mary wishes Rob a very unhappy married life with his fiancée.

    Rob feels guilty that he deceived Mary and that he never really apologized to her, and on an unconscious level, accepts the energy of that curse into his energy field.

    If he’s very sensitive or perceptive, he may actually have some conscious awareness of having taken the angry curse energy from Mary somehow. He may notice it weighing on him.

    His sense of guilt and responsibility for her anger acts as a receptor for the curse energy she sent him.

    So that’s one common scenario for curses. There is one more receptor for real curse energy and that is fear.

    2. When someone is really scared

    Let me give you an example of this:

    Let’s say Mary joins an evangelical church that is very controlling. The people in the church want to dictate how she dresses, who she spends time with, the work she does. It’s all a bit cultish. She decides it is not for her and she is going to leave. The people in the church attempt to keep her in their church, saying that God is angry with her and that she needs to do as they say (this is a true story and actually happened to me.)

    The next bit is not a true story though… 🙂

    Let’s say even though Mary is really scared. She decides not to have anything to do with the church again and ignores their calls and invitations. One of them gets angry and asks God to curse her for her sins. God doesn’t oblige so he goes ahead and curses her himself. Mary is at a real all-time low in her life – she is scared of these people, she is vulnerable and her defences are down. She has a panic attack. That fear acts as a receptor for the curse energy because she doesn’t have much control over her own energy field at that moment. The curse energy attaches to her simply because she believes it has real power over her.

    That is really the key here – curses can only affect you if you believe they can OR if you believe you deserve the curse.

    BUT the thing to remember about curses is that they don’t really affect you in the way the person intended. No-one can ruin your life through a curse or make bad things to happen to you. If you do receive curse energy, it usually just makes you aware that the other person hates you or is angry with you. 

    When You Are Probably Not Cursed

    Sometimes people write to me because a ‘psychic’ has told them that they have been cursed and that they need to pay a fee to remove it. This happens a lot online, especially when free readings are advertised – you hand over your email address and the person gives you a general cold reading that is sent out to everyone. You think it might be real. Then the intuitive starts to harass you day after day, telling you that you’re cursed and for $50 they’ll remove the curse. These ‘psychics’ are scammers. This has happened to me online several years ago (I got hounded every day by a psychic who wanted to convince me I was cursed) and it’s what often happens when you enter your email address into a form for a free reading.

    Helpful Links:

    I’ve written more about curses here:

    And if you would like more advice on choosing a reputable psychic, check out this article: 4 Tips for Choosing an Intuitive.