Anna Sayce

Author: Anna

  • Where Does Intuition Come From?

    Where Does Intuition Come From?

    Some people believe that intuition is data from your subconscious mind, based on past experiences and patterns, which is introduced into your conscious mind spontaneously.

    I actually think that intuition is more than just your subconscious trying to direct you towards pleasure and away from pain. Intuition, to me, is a spontaneous notification or alert from your Higher self or Spirit Guides of something that they want you to know. The one defining trait of intuition is that it includes information that would be challenging (or impossible) to see from your current perspective.

    The Purpose of Your Intuition

    Being in a physical body without any input from the spiritual part of you (your Higher self) can be challenging – it’s like being on the ground, unable to see the wood for the trees, not knowing which direction to go in, with a limited perspective.

    On the other hand, your Higher self has the ability to see your life from a different vantage point – like being on top of a mountain and having a bird’s eye view of the life going on below in the valley. Because your Higher self has a higher vantage point, your HS has access to the bigger picture of what’s going on, in your life, in your past, present and future and in the world around you.

    Your Higher self can alert you to:

    • The truth about the people around you
    • What’s going to happen in your future – short and long term
    • Why something happened in your life – cause and effect and how you can fix it
    • When you can avoid danger or an unpleasant experience
    • Which activities, work, relationships, will contribute towards your happiness and serve you on your path of growth and evolution as a human and spiritual being. He/she also knows which activities/work/relationships will not serve you and take you away from your ‘highest path and purpose.’

    Input from the Higher self is like a guiding system – a GPS – of what will bring you the most joy and what won’t. One of the easiest ways to keep you on track and connected to what your Spirit wants, is through your intuition.

    How the Higher Perspective of My Guides and Higher Self Has Helped Me

    I personally constantly get feedback from my Higher self about which activities will bring me most joy and abundance, through clairsentience. When I’m undertaking something that isn’t really in alignment with my highest path and purpose, I begin to worry more and I get stressed. So then I usually change to a course of action that does bring me joy and which is in alignment with my highest path and purpose. But sometimes I get really harassed by my Higher self before that happens.

    Information about all of the above can come from Spirit Guides too. Just like your Higher self, your Spirit Guides have a higher, more complete perspective than you do as a human being. You could say that they are all on a mountain top of their own, so they each have a unique vantage point from which to see your life. They are not omniscient – they don’t know everything, but collectively they can see a lot about your life. One Spirit Guide often has insights about one life in particular – they all have specialties. So one Spirit Guide may deliver insights about your relationships and another may deliver insights about your health.

    In the several readings I’ve had with other psychics, I have been given many insights from my Spirit Guides and Higher self about all of the above – especially regarding my future. Erin Pavlina picked up that I’d be doing intuitive readings in the future, because my Higher self already had this all mapped out.

    About twelve months ago, a different psychic told me that I’d be moving to New Zealand/Australia within the next 18 months, and at the time I really didn’t want to, as I was enjoying life in London and couldn’t imagine wanting to leave. But then a few months later I met an Australian guy and decided to move to Australia six months later. My plans changed again a few months after that and I ended up in New Zealand which is where I am now.

    So, I actually get most of the information about my future through dreams or from other psychics rather than from my intuition. My intuition is much more likely to direct me away from negative people or situations or move me towards my highest path and purpose, or save me time or energy here and there. And for me personally, it feels like most of my intuition comes from my Higher self rather than from my Spirit Guides. Although if I actively tune in through my psychic connection, I’m more likely to get to speak with my Spirit Guides than my Higher self.

    Some intuition can also happen as a result of ‘vibes’ or energy transmissions that you pick up from other peoples’ energy bodies. For example, you can meet someone and can sense that they are defensive before they even open their mouth. In this case, you are reading the vibes they are transmitting and responding to them, which is also a form of intuition that does not directly involve the Higher self or Spirit Guides.

  • What is Intuition?

    What is Intuition?

    In this post I explore what intuition is, including the differences between intuitive abilities and psychic abilities, because many people do not know what intuition is exactly, and how it differs from psychic abilities.

    What is Intuition?

    You know those moments when you get a feeling in your gut that someone is not trustworthy? Or a little insight about someone else’s life – for example, you know that your friend is going to get the job that she’s about to go to an interview for? That would be your intuition.

    One intuitive insight that sticks out in my memory for some reason was a scenario at work about 18 months ago – it was when I was teaching English and French in a language school in Spain.

    On Thursdays I only taught English, but that day as I was going out the door I knew I had to take my French grammar book with me. I wasn’t going to teach French that day and I rarely used my French grammar book anyway, even on the days I taught French, so it appeared to be pointless. But I heeded my intuitive voice and took it anyway.

    Then in the afternoon one of my French students came in unexpectedly and wanted a photocopy from my French grammar book. Ta-da, I could produce one because I had it with me, because I knew I’d need it that day. Although I didn’t know what for.

    I hesitated to include that story in this article because it’s kind of mundane. I didn’t find my life purpose through this intuitive insight or get guided towards buried treasure. It was a fairly small event and wasn’t too impactful, but it made my day and my student’s go more smoothly and that’s about it. Plus the intuitive insight made me feel provided for, and looked after. It was nice to have!

    So, intuition can be little insights which help you with the little things – such as making your day go more smoothly, saving you time, energy or money here and there. But it doesn’t have to be small – larger insights can also help you with the big things of life, such as prevent you from investing a great deal in something (such as a major project) which will come to a dead end. Intuitive insight usually comes to you in the moment, as you need it, just like the example above of my French grammar book.

    The Difference between Intuitive Gifts and Psychic Gifts

    A key component of intuition is that it comes to you and through you, usually spontaneously. In order for that to happen, you must be open and you must notice intuition. On the other hand, when we talk about developing psychic ability, we’re talking more about you going ‘out there’ energetically to receive information from your Higher self or Spirit Guides.

    For intuition, we often talk about feelings, impressions and a sense of knowing and all of these come through the intuitive ‘vehicles’ of clairsentience and claircognizance. (Claircognizance is an insight that just pops up spontaneously in your brain, perhaps unrelated to anything you were thinking about. Clairsentience can be a gut feeling, or a strong, meaningful emotion which speaks to you.)

    So, as a general rule, an intuitive tends to use mostly clairsentience and claircognizance, whereas if someone calls herself a psychic, it’s more likely that she’ll use three or four intuitive vehicles – clairvoyance, clairaudience, clairsentience and claircognizance. I have also noticed that those psychics who mostly use clairvoyance and clairaudience usually refer to themselves as psychics, not as intuitives.

    I believe that for most people, intuitive ability is easier to develop than psychic ability, because it comes primarily through claircognizance and clairsentience and most people are naturally claircognizant and clairsentient. On the other hand, clairvoyance and clairaudience seem to be additional ‘specialties’ that you can have as an intuitive, as fewer people are naturally clairaudient and very few people are naturally clairvoyant.

  • When Your Loved Ones Don’t Agree With Your Decisions

    When Your Loved Ones Don’t Agree With Your Decisions

    My last article about making decisions sparked an interesting question.

    What if you’ve made a decision, or are on the verge of making a decision that your family/friends/partner don’t like? Such as quitting your job, changing the direction of your career or leaving school. You may be having a discussion or an argument with your loved ones about what you should do and they may ask you to justify your choices. How do you remain in your power and stand firm?

    Here are three tips for dealing with loved ones in this scenario:

    1. Remember that your nature may be very different from theirs

    Some people see life as a damage limitation exercise and think that it’s best to play it safe in all life areas. But what if you’re the type who sees life as an adventure? You need to recognize that sometimes you and your loved one might not be operating from the same world view. If that’s the case, you’re not going to agree on what you should do. In addition, if your loved one worries a lot they may be projecting all their concerns onto you and your situation. But just because your mother or your wife is concerned does not always mean there is cause for concern. Our worries are about us – not about other people. We worry based on our own fears and experiences.

    2. Remember that there are some people who will never give others their approval or blessing

    This is not true of everyone, but there are quite simply some people who will not give others their blessing or approval. In some ways, this means that their loved ones have to try extra hard to please them and prove things to them. So if you’re finding regularly that you can’t do anything that your loved one agrees with, perhaps consider the possibility that they are not very good at accepting others’ choices. It could be about them – not about you.

    3. Acknowledge that your spirituality may make you see things differently

    If you’re a spiritual type and they aren’t, there may be other differences that you need to take into account. For example, you may be very tapped into your purpose and intuition. When asked why you’re taking a certain course of action by a loved one, if you say it’s because it feels like the right path to you, that may not be a valid reason in the eyes of other people. Accept that this is so and don’t expect them to understand your path or your way of doing things. But you can uphold the view that you are the expert of your life – the one who truly knows best for you, even if they don’t think so.

    Remember also that when our loved ones disagree with a course of action, it is usually because they feel it will lead us away from success. But spiritually-minded people often have a different view of success from others. Many spiritual people hold that growth is the ultimate life success. Check what your loved one’s measure of success and failure is. You may find that it’s very different from your own.

    My personal definition of success is happiness and growth. As long as I’m mostly enjoying myself, growing and learning (usually on some adventure or other) then I feel like my life is a success. However, other people in my family think that success is about long-term material security and stability. It’s clear that we have different values and so I don’t expect them to agree with my choices all the time.

    Getting involved in the world of entrepreneurship has taught me a lot about my definition of success and achievement. I noticed that many entrepreneurs fail and ‘screw up’ before they succeed in a significant way at something. For every project or venture that succeeds, there may be two or three or even more that don’t. I have also noticed that life is a bit like this. You can appear to screw up a couple of things and then succeed at the next thing. But you may not have succeeded eventually without those experiences of ‘screwing up’. So even if you appear to fail in something and your loved one is proved right, did you take the wrong path?

    I personally am committed to following my own heart and listening to my inner voice, even if it involves some apparent screw ups along the way. For me, that’s the only path that’s worth anything.

    What is your definition of success? How do you deal with loved ones who tell you that you’re on the wrong track? Please share in the comments.

  • Intuition in Decision Making

    Intuition in Decision Making

    Have you ever wondered how much you should rely on intuition in decision making?

    Intuition is actually an amazing tool to make good decisions and to tap into your true desires.

    This post is a guide – a collection of steps – to help you to make a good life decision based on your intuition. I follow this process in my own decision making and it has yielded some good results. It’s also loosely based on the process I use in intuitive readings with clients to help them get clear on which path they really want to take.

    So – the first step for making a sound intuitive decision actually starts not with your intuition, but with your brain, so to begin with:

    Put all your options down on paper

    You can’t really receive information about your potential options and decisions unless you clarify them. So, what are your options?

    For example, if you are wanting to quit your job but you don’t know which step to take to make it happen, put down on paper all the options that you can think of which are available to you RIGHT NOW. Even if they sound a bit out of your reach. Your list could look like this:

    #1: Continue doing the same job but at a different company.

    #2: Train in another field that appeals to you.

    #3: Do the same work freelance.

    #4: Go on a working holiday abroad.

    I was taught in my intuitive training that there are always five different paths ahead of you. I don’t know if this is 100% true in all circumstances, but I will say that if you’re only seeing one or two options ahead of you, you might need to expand your vision and your horizons a little bit. There is usually more than one path, so do a brainstorming session and see what comes up as possible choices to make in the decision making process.

    As an intuitive, I ALWAYS work out what options are available to me and to my clients. Even if clients don’t know what those options are, I do some research into their possible paths and sometimes bring up options they hadn’t even considered. So think of this part as a brainstorming process that helps you to get clear on what action you can take.

    Once you’ve made a list of options, write down a list of what you like and what you don’t like about each option. Be really honest and don’t kid yourself that there will be only one perfect option without any drawbacks. There is rarely a 100% perfect option. Depending on the size of the decision, it can be a long list or a short one.

    Once you’ve written down the pros and cons of each possible path, the next step is…

    Identify your desired outcome

    Take a moment to consider what overall outcome you want to bring about as a result of your decision? Remember – there is an energy behind everything that you want to bring into your life. Look at the bigger picture – why are you making this decision? What do you really want and what is the ideal outcome? Do you want a more peaceful home life? More work fulfilment? More excitement in your life?

    Make sure you acknowledge and set that intention for your decision making…and aim to make a decision that supports that overall intention for your life. The next step is to measure how aligned each option is with your ideal outcome. One way of doing this is to…

    Listen to your feelings

    Listening to your feelings allows you to do a little research on the options. And I don’t mean research on the internet or using books. You don’t really need to consult with sources outside of you to make a decision. As an emotional being, you already have some the data you need to make a decision. Your feelings will provide some of that data. Feelings really are excellent feedback about how aligned each path is with that outcome or result that you identified in step number two.

    If you feel really bad about an option, but it looks good on paper (and everyone thinks you should do it), trust your emotions over your rationale.

    I’ve seen the following scenario time and again in my readings: a client will request a reading because they have an important decision to make but tell me that they can’t work out how they feel about each option. In the reading, all I’ll do when I tune into the client is notice how they respond, energetically to each option. They ask me about the option and as an empath I can feel how it feels to them, energetically and emotionally and report back to them.

    Then I use my pendulum to measure (in a percentage) how aligned each option is with their desired outcome – meaning, will their plan create the outcome they desire? Their feelings and my pendulum give the same information here. If the client feels lukewarm about their plan, the pendulum will tell me that it’s maybe 30 or 40% aligned with the client’s highest path and purpose. If they feel excited and enthusiastic about a plan, maybe it’s 90 or 100% aligned with their desired outcome.

    But really, such clients don’t need me to tell them how they feel. They already know. But in such circumstances, consulting an intuitive can help because the issue is that the client is not listening to or heeding how they feel about the options. So, having me tell them how they feel about each option, and explain why they feel that way helps the client to see that their feelings are excellent feedback about the choices in front of them.

    Be your own intuitive

    You can actually replicate this process of energetic assessment that I do in an intuitive reading at home.

    The best way to do this is to try each option on for size, energetically. Do this by listening to what your emotions have to say about each potential path, one by one.

    Put aside two minutes of your time and close your eyes. Imagine that you’ve already made that decision to start the relationship, get a different job, say yes to the business venture or whatever it is. Imagine yourself on your first day at work in that new job. How do you feel about the prospect?

    Open your mind for this exercise. Let go of your preconceived ideas about what you “have” to do and just let go of practical considerations of why you can’t do what you want to do.

    • What is the energy or emotion that you feel behind the path?
    • Does it feel flat? Do you feel uninspired? Heavy? Unmotivated?
    • Or do you feel excited? Perhaps a little apprehensive? Enthusiastic? Confused?
    • Do you feel awful? Do you feel a sense of dread?
    • Do you feel any of these feelings in your body?

    Write down any feelings or emotions that come up, even if they’re conflicting, because they are all valid feedback about something.

    You could feel excited and terrified about one option at the same time, and it could be that the possible path is exciting but might take a lot of skill that you don’t have yet. All feelings are important feedback about each option so don’t ignore anything you feel about each option.

    I know that this sounds like a lengthy process, but it’s the most thorough and effective way I have of making good intuitive decisions. You can also make a snap decision based on your intuition too and do so, if your gut tells you to. I occasionally do that if I’m feeling impulsive but the results can be mixed with such a hit and miss approach. If like me, you like to spend longer working it out, take as long as you need with this process. Depending on how big the decision is, you may need to consider each option for half a minute, half an hour or half a day to get some good, steady feedback about how you really feel about it.

    Sometimes there is a perfect decision and sometimes there isn’t – sometimes you just have to take the best path that you can see in front of you so don’t pressurize yourself to find a perfect solution yet. Let your mind take a back seat in this process. That brings me to my next point in this process:

    Don’t talk yourself out of what you want

    Often through observing feelings, people get clear on what they want. They understand that some options make them feel good and others make them feel flat and some make them feel awful and they can link some of those feelings to real considerations in their pros and cons list.

    But once you’ve hit upon the right course of action to take, it’s easy to talk yourself out of it and hide behind what’s practical. A common reaction to the really good-feeling and “perfect” option is that it’s too scary and difficult or has negative consequences, or involves a risk, or is too hard for you to achieve.

    There are many fears and excuses that we can hide behind. If you’re not ready to come out from behind those excuses yet, that’s OK, but at least admit what you want, even if you’re not sure you can have it yet. Make sure that the decision you do make honours your desires to SOME degree, even if it doesn’t honour it 100%. In other words, make sure your decision sends you in the right direction towards what you want, even if it’s not a taking you all the way there in one go.

    And about that fear – often the option that is in our highest path and purpose is one that does bring us a great deal of growth and expansion. It pushes us out of our comfort zone and makes us face our fears. It can be uncomfortable. So if an option makes you feel fear, apprehension or even complete terror, it doesn’t mean that it’s an option that’s not right for you. You need to look at those feelings in context.

    Take the plunge

    If it’s a smaller decision that will have no real fallout for you or for others, then try it on for size – literally. Do it and then see how it feels. If it’s the wrong option for you, you’ll probably be alerted to it as you take action. Taking action that helps you in the elimination process is better than taking no action at all!

    Got any other tips or thoughts on intuitive decision making? Please share in the comments section!

  • The Hall of Akashic Records

    The Hall of Akashic Records

    The Hall of Akashic Records is an energetic ‘place’ or realm which holds all the memories and records of our souls. All the events, words and thoughts that have ever occurred in the history of your life as a soul get recorded in the Akashic Records. But the records don’t just contain information about souls. They also contain information about places, animal souls, and events too.

    As you can imagine, being able to access the Akashic Records allows you to provide some really interesting information about a soul’s past and present. I am an Akashic Record reader and most often, people ask me about their past lives, life lessons, and where their soul came from.

    So, how do you get information from the Akashic Records?

    To go into the Akashic Records, the process is similar to the way intuitives tune into someone’s Spirit Guides or Higher self. The main component of the ‘tuning in’ process is a visualization which takes you to the Hall of Akashic Records. However, once you get there, you need Akashic record Spirit Guides to find the relevant information for you, as the Hall of Akashic Records is a vast place. Once you are in, you give your guides the relevant birth information and they find the right Akashic Record ‘file’ for you. Then, to read the person’s ‘file’ or soul record, you need to understand which information to look for, and you need a system of retrieving it.

    I’m not in a trance while I do readings – the state that I’m in is the same state an intuitive is in when they’re doing a phone reading for you, live. I am always in a quiet place when I’m reading the Akashic Records, with no distractions, and I prefer to prepare all my readings rather than do them live, as it’s much easier.

    Can anyone enter the Akashic Records?

    To read the Akashic Records, you need to have Akashic Records Spirit Guides assigned to you – my teacher did it for me through an attunement. It can also happen spontaneously. A well-known intuitive wrote to me saying that she’d been assigned an Akashic Record Spirit Guide spontaneously, and this can happen if you’re ready to access the Akashic Records on behalf of other people, but you’d need some intuitive ability already to have that happen.

    If you want to be able to look up information in the Akashic Records with some level of reliability and accuracy, I’d recommend you get trained to do it, as you need to know which questions to ask and how to interpret the answers.

    Can you look up any information that you want in the Akashic Records?

    It’s true that the Akashic Records are full of any information that you might want to know about yourself or others. However, you can’t just look up someone’s soul record without permission. If I do a reading for someone, I need permission. You are allowed to look up the Akashic soul record of anyone close to you, such as your family members, significant other and close friends. You are not allowed to look up information about someone in the Akashic Records, just out of curiosity or nosiness.

    What kind of questions can you ask in the Akashic Records?

    It depends on what kind of reading I’m doing. For example, if I’m doing a reading for someone who wants to know about their soul purpose for this lifetime, their career and what kind of work would suit them, I look up information on their soul’s intended gifts and purpose for this lifetime.

    Why do you need someone’s date of birth, name and place of birth to read their Akashic Record?

    You need this information to confirm that you are reading for the right person. For example, if I go into the Akashic Record and tell my guides I want to read for Charles Smith, they may be unclear on who I mean. I may need the other details to make sure there is no confusion about who I’m referring to.

    I hope that satisfies your curiosity, for those who’ve been asking me questions about this.

    Where can you learn to read the Akashic Records as a professional intuitive or just for family and friends?

    I teach students how to access and read the records in my Akashic Record Reading Program. In this program, I teach you how to do a very specific kind of reading that allows you to access the deepest information about who a person is on the soul level. You’ll learn to tell a person’s soul gifts, life lessons, soul background, past lives, soul groups and soul trainings, and how these manifest in our lives.

    You can also order an Akashic Record Reading here. You can also see an example Akashic Record reading here.

    Further reading on the Akashic Records:

  • Which Is Your Strongest Intuitive Gift?

    Which Is Your Strongest Intuitive Gift?

    If you’ve read any of my other articles you’ll probably notice I’ve been banging on about the importance of finding out your intuitive gifts. This is because intuition or psychic ability is not just one gift – it’s actually made up of six gifts – clairvoyance, clairaudience, clairsentience, dreaming, empathy and claircognizance.

    The chances are, you have innate abilities in one or two of these gifts. The chances also are that one or two of the above gifts you do not have yet. Your intuition will be difficult and slow to develop if you try to develop a gift that you don’t have yet and neglect the gifts you do have. So that’s why it helps to start your journey of intuitive development knowing what you’re naturally good at.

    Here is a quiz to help you to find out what gifts you have:

    (Note: you can also now take this quiz here, and it will automatically calculate the result for you.)

    Clairvoyance

    Clairvoyance is the ability to ‘see’ Spirit

    • Do you dream in colour and with vivid images?

    • When you’re doing creative work, like designing something and deciding how you want something to look, do you get a clear image in your head of it?

    • When you close your eyes, can you clearly see any object of your choosing? For example, visualize a bicycle. Can you see it in your mind’s eye? (Natural clairvoyants usually have an easy time than most at visualizing).

    • Do you get visual solutions to problems in your mind’s eye?

    • Are you very visually/artistically creative?

    • Do you ever see lights or auras around people when you’re speaking to them?

    • Do you ever see things moving in the corner of your eye?

    Clairaudience

    Clairaudience is the ability to hear your Higher Self, Spirit Guides and other extra-sensory input

    • Have you ever had a voice clearly direct you to do something and it turned out to be helpful or accurate?

    • Have you ever heard ringing or buzzing sounds in your ears?

    • Do you hear voices upon waking or going to sleep?

    • Do you sometimes hear music playing in your head?

    • Do you wake up in the morning with a song in your head?

    • Have you ever heard anything outside of you, such as whispering, music or voices when there was no-one there?

    • Do you get words popping into your head fully formed which are relevant or solutions to difficulties you’re having?

    Clairsentience

    Clairsentience is intuition in the form of emotional input, physical feelings or gut feelings

    • Do you get tingling sensations on your body for no reason?

    • Do you feel your emotions very deeply?

    • Can you feel the emotions of others?

    • Do you need a lot of time alone to recharge your energetic batteries?

    • Are you sensitive and thin-skinned?

    • Do you have an ‘F’ in your Myers-Briggs type (F for feeling)?

    • Do you know what’s the right path to take according to how it feels to you?

    Claircognizance

    Claircognizance is when intuitive information just pops into your head

    • Are you very analytical and thinking-oriented?

    • Can you be skeptical – does your mind often have the final say in things?

    • Do you get lots of great ideas seemingly out of nowhere?

    • Are you mentally and creatively inspired on a regular basis?

    • Are you good at solving problems and lateral thinking?

    • Are you often making subtle assumptions which turn out to be true?

    • Are you sizing up people and knowing things without being told?

    • Do you know that things are going to happen ahead of time?

    • Do you come across as a know-it-all because you always think of an answer to the difficult questions of life?

    Empathy

    • Do you know how others are feeling without needing to ask?

    • Can you feel tension in the air when there’s been an argument?

    • Do you sometimes feel overwhelmed that there are so many people on Earth who are suffering, and wish you could do something about it?

    • Do you often feel overwhelmed in social interactions because you are so absorbed in observing others’ feelings and experiences?

    • Do you identify deeply with other peoples’ problems and difficulties? (and this sometimes means you over-identify with other people, and sacrifice your own needs in order to help others)

    Dreaming

    • Do you often remember your dreams?

    • Do you wake up from dreams feeling like you learned or ‘realized’ something?

    • Have you ever had a dream where a deceased loved one showed up?

    • Have you ever had a lucid dream or an astral projection experience?

    • Are your dreams rich in interesting symbolism?

    Now add up how many times you said yes to statements in each category. Did you say ‘yes’ to some statements in one or two categories in particular?

    More tips to find out which gifts you have

    1. Experiment. Try exercises to awaken each clair. For starters, I have a few suggestions for what to try in each of my articles about clairvoyance, clairaudience, clairsentience and claircognizance. You may notice that one of the exercises is really easy for you and awakens something in your perception.

    2. Notice where you’re already using your natural gifts. Remember the times when you actually have received some intuitive guidance – how did it come? Was it visual, auditory, emotional or kinesthetic?

    Which are the most common psychic gifts?

    Several years ago, I offered a free mini reading where I’d tell people which intuitive gift they had, out of the four mentioned above. I did between 600 and 700 of these mini readings. I found that claircognizance and clairsentience are really common gifts. The vast majority of people I read for have one of these gifts as either their primary or secondary intuitive gift. These gifts are usually classed as ‘intuition’ and they can be very subtle, which is why they can often go unnoticed. Only a small proportion of people I read for had clairvoyance as their strongest gift.

    If you would like further instruction on developing your intuitive gifts, you may be interested in my Intuitive Awakening Course.

    intuitive awakening

  • How to Connect with Your Higher Self

    How to Connect with Your Higher Self

    Your Higher self is the spirit part of you that is said to ‘reside’ in the Ether (the non-physical realm). It’s your Divine spark. This part of you helps you to keep on track with your life purpose, and in touch with your passion and joy.

    Is my Higher self the same as my Soul?

    Yes. It’s the part of you that has access to all the wisdom amassed over the course of the many lifetimes you’ve lived, past, present and future.

    What does my Higher self do?

    Your Higher self is like a pure background consciousness that offers forth its wisdom and directions about where to go now. Sometimes these directions can take a while to come through into your mind consciousness. However, there are ways to access the wisdom of your Higher self directly by bypassing the mind.

    Your Higher self is not ‘out there’ in the Ether. I want to put forward the idea that your Higher self is you, your consciousness, in your body.

    It’s you who set the course of your life and the things you came here to learn about before you even got here. It’s you who is whispering guidance to yourself about your highest path and purpose. It’s you who set that up as a mechanism by which you could use those as spiritual feedback about where you’re headed in your life.

    Am I ever separate from my Higher self? I don’t feel connected to my Spirit

    You can sometimes be alienated from your Higher self when you have limiting beliefs which block you from the truth of who you are as a spirit.

    Have you ever caught a glimpse of all the possibilities that exist for you? Have you ever had a feeling that you’re here to contribute something unique? Those are background input from your Higher self. We mostly drown out such input with our thoughts and fears, and when we listen to our fear, we feel disconnected from our spirit.

    How can I be more connected to my Higher self?

    Connecting to your Higher self means living your Spirit. It involves three things.

    1. Empowerment – remembering that you are a child of the Universe, with the power to create your world

    You came here to be incarnated in the physical and to keep a connection to your Spirit intact. You want to keep a connection to your Higher self because that’s the part of you which knows where to go, what to take on the journey, and also what to do to get there. Many souls who are incarnated here already do not have that connection anymore. They’ve lost it because they see themselves as separate from God or from the Divine energy that is the Creator of all things. People often treat themselves as if they’re at the mercy of an outside force that controls the course of our lives. This is the ‘normal’ way to be and behave.

    Living your Spirit means remembering that you are God energy or Source energy in a physical body, and you are also the co-creator of your world. The power inside you to create your world is the same power that creates worlds. You can utilize that power to create the world you want.

    2. Intuition – talking to yourself

    You don’t need to contact your Higher self as an entity outside of you – it is you! And you don’t need to get an intuitive reading in order to contact your Higher self (although you can if you’re particularly alienated and don’t know where you’re headed or what you want). The wisdom is inside of you, if you will access it.

    Listen to your desires

    Above all, pay attention to your desires. Your truest, heartfelt desires are feedback from your Higher self about what you want to do now.

    Living from your Higher self means not sacrificing or ignoring those desires. It also means listening to those desires on a daily basis.

    I manage my day by asking myself ‘what do I really want to do now?’

    You might think that asking myself that means that the stuff I don’t want to do never gets done but it’s not the case. I actually regularly become inspired to overcome the challenges and the difficult tasks also, when the time is right, or I bring in someone to help me. I take my desires as feedback about the direction I want to go in. And when I remember to do it, it allows me to live in an inspired way.

    Meditate and quiet your mind

    The quickest way to practise accessing your truest self is meditation. It quietens the mind and the chatter which tells you who you are and what you can and can’t do and be and takes you straight to the quiet and calm which is your Higher self. Start meditating by just focusing on your breath or the tip of your nose. Every time your attention wanders, just bring it back to your breath (or the tip of your nose, depending on what you’re focusing on.)

    Let’s have a look at the third and final step to help you connect with your Higher self:

    3. Healing – letting go of the clutter which stands between you and your truest self

    Most people who need healing don’t necessarily know what they need – they just know that they feel bad. So what can you do if you mostly feel bad? What if you don’t know what to do to heal that? You can just put out the intention to be as aligned as possible with your Higher self. Putting out that intention will put you on a healing journey back towards who you are.

    If you have the energy to be proactive, make it your work to clear away anything which is not aligned with who you really are.

    Here are some articles & resources for healing that you might find helpful:

  • How Can I Accelerate My Psychic Development?

    How Can I Accelerate My Psychic Development?

    There really is no set period of time that your psychic ability should take to develop. How long it takes depends on lots of things, including how motivated you are to work at it, how much time you spend on hit and miss/trial and error approaches and your willingness to stick at it.

    But there are some approaches you can take which make the process more challenging and time-consuming than it needs to be. I’ve listed here the four approaches I’ve found unhelpful – from my own experience and from the experience of others, so that you can avoid them.

    1. Putting Pressure on Yourself

    I’ve noticed that sometimes people can get frustrated because they expect their intuition or psychic abilities to be like a switch that you can ‘switch on’ and life suddenly becomes easier. Actually, intuitive development really is a whole-person growth experience and because of that, it rarely happens overnight.

    It’s a process of tuning back in to your spirit, shedding the conditioning of a society which says you’re crazy and just talking to yourself and getting over your self-doubt. It sometimes requires you to develop courage, self-determination, patience or faith. And If you have unhelpful beliefs about the world and yourself, sometimes you need to shed them as part of the process. Often you’re learning important lessons before you can see the results. Those are the lessons which can make it time-consuming, but they are also the lessons and growth experiences which make it a worthy undertaking, from a spiritual perspective.

    So, intuition develops best in an environment of allowing, exploration and non-detachment. If you’re dying to see results, putting pressure on yourself or full of impatience, frustration or fear, the process will be much more challenging than it needs to be.

    If your approach to psychic development is a little too goal-oriented, remember why you’re doing it. You aren’t developing your intuition so you can psychically find out the lottery numbers, you’re doing it to develop yourself. It’ll happen on time.

    Let’s have a look at the second approach that trips people up and slows them down in psychic development:

    2. Trying to Develop the Wrong Gift

    Did you know your intuition is not just one gift? It’s made up of many gifts.

    The five main psychic gifts are dreaming, clairvoyance, clairaudience, clairsentience and claircognizance.

    (Other sub-gifts will fall under the umbrella of one of these main gifts.)

    Some of these gifts you have naturally and can just awaken, and some will come less naturally to you, so you need to work much harder on those if you choose to develop them first.

    About your intuitive gifts and how they work

    Think of your inherent psychic ability a bit like a television set and aerial. On your television set, you have several different ‘channels’ to get intuitive messages. You might be born hard-wired with really good ‘signal’ on one channel. Let’s say clairvoyance (seeing Spirit) is your primary channel, clairaudience (hearing your inner voice and your Spirit Guides) may be your secondary channel, clairsentience (gut feelings and emotions) is channel three and claircognizance (getting Divinely-inspired thoughts and ideas) is channel four.

    Some of us are specially designed or ‘wired’ to broadcast really clearly on one channel only. Others on two or three channels. A few people can broadcast really well on all channels without any practice. Actually, most people are naturally good at receiving some transmissions through one or two channels, with some practice, so this is what we need to do, as intuitives:

    We need to find out which is our strongest channels (our strongest gifts) and work on developing those first.

    Most people just take one gift at random which they think is kind of cool and try developing that.

    That was also my approach to intuitive development, in the beginning. I wanted to be clairvoyant but it wasn’t my strongest gift. I wasted several months thinking I wasn’t very intuitive simply because my clairvoyance wasn’t developing fast enough.

    But when I hit upon automatic writing (which utilises claircognizance) I couldn’t believe the difference – I was getting much more connection. It was clear and the information just flowed. Whereas clairvoyance felt exactly like some dodgy, untuned channel – little clarity or flow. The same with my clairsentience (gut feelings and feelings in general) – I was already getting information through clairsentience as I needed it. But those two ‘channels’ – clairsentience and claircognizance – I wasn’t really seeing as valid channels through which to tune into Spirit, I wanted to be clairvoyant like most other psychics.

    I’ve seen clients in a similar situation – trying to make their intuition come through a gift or a channel which isn’t one of their strongest and it makes the process more difficult than it needs to be. On the other hand, finding out what you are already gifted in, and developing that makes the process more satisfying and saves a lot of time and energy.

    But this does not mean you have to settle only for the gifts we already have and just forgetting the rest.

    What usually happens then is that as your primary gifts become stronger, you also become more accomplished at tuning in the other ‘channels’, if you want to, because you’ve done it once and you know what to do now – your overall ‘signal’ is good. Your primary gift is a starting point.

    If you want to speed up your intuitive development, I’d recommend you find out what your natural gifts are and develop those first. Because if you don’t know what your personal psychic strengths are, then you will probably waste some time with a hit-and-miss/ trial and error approach.

    If you don’t know what your primary gift is, I have an online quiz here which can help.

    3. Not Having a Plan

    Most of the people who are slow to develop psychic ability are those who don’t have a program or a process they’re following consistently. They’re often not setting aside time in their week or day for intuitive development. They’re just trying a few things here and there to see what happens.

    To develop your intuition, it really helps to have structure. You want processes which teach you to awaken your psychic ability, a process to teach you to develop your gifts and a process so that you can access them at will whenever you want – and you only want processes which suit you and utilize your natural, existing strengths.

    Investing energy, time or money in an intuitive development plan broadcasts an entirely different intention to the Universe than just doing a couple of exercises here and there. The more invested you are in terms of time and energy and the more structure you give your intention to develop psychically, the quicker you’ll get results.

    I also reveal my process for psychic development in this article:

    4. Letting Fear Get the Better of You

    Like attracts like, so if you hold yourself in a place of fear, you’ll create more things which make you fearful. But if you acknowledge the fear and allow yourself to rise above it, you just won’t encounter anything that scares you.

    I personally remember being so scared when I was developing psychically and it took me months to get over that. But once I let go of my fear, psychic phenomena and intuition became an ordinary part of my experience. I found out that my clairaudience was just an inner voice that sounded like mine, my clairvoyance was just like day-dreaming, only directed by Spirit and my claircognizance was a subtle intrusion of inspired thought into my consciousness. I realized that nothing was out to scare me unless I invited it to.

    Here are two more articles on overcoming the fear of the spirit world:

    Further Reading:

  • How to Distinguish Intuition From Imagination

    How to Distinguish Intuition From Imagination

    It’d be great if there was an ‘exact science’ formula for knowing what is your intuition and what is your imagination, but I don’t think there is one. However, there are a few factors to keep in mind when trying to distinguish between intuition and other things.

    #1: Practice and Feedback

    Practising intuitives have it easier when it comes to distinguishing between imagination and intuition and this is because they get more feedback than anyone. They get their intuitive insights validated (or not, as the case may be!)

    So, if you want to develop your confidence and clearly know the difference between your intuition and your imagination, do what practising psychics do to gain confidence in their abilities – (1) practice as much as possible and (2) get feedback on your intuitive insights.

    You don’t need to be doing professional readings for others in order to get feedback on your intuitive insights – you just need to apply them in your own life and see the results. For example, if a voice inside impulses you to take some sort of action, notice how that voice sounds, what it feels like, and then see what the results are.

    But, the catch here is that you must practice detachment in seeing the results of applying your intuition.

    What many people do is apply their intuitive insights, and if it doesn’t immediately get proved correct, they get discouraged – try not to approach your intuitive development like that. If the information is not proved correct immediately, don’t worry. Every time you apply your intuitive input and see the results, you get a little bit closer to knowing what your unique intuitive voice sounds like or what your intuitive nudge feels like, so even when you’re wrong, you learn something. But in order to get very far in your intuitive development, you’ve got to be open to being wrong. All developing intuitives get it wrong sometimes.

    If you would like more practice using your intuition, why not sign up for my Intuitive Experiments booklet – this is a fantastic free resource for new intuitives that involves you having a go at ‘reading’ a stranger and then finding out whether you were right or not.

    If you do this, I recommend keeping an intuitive notebook where you note down your insights and whether they were correct or not, and also HOW you received the insights (i.e. through which clair gift?) This way you can notice patterns over time and see the bigger picture around whether you are making progress or not.

    #2: Notice the feeling that accompanies your intuition

    All intuitive information comes with a special energetic ‘signature’ that you can make out after a while. The more you practice receiving intuition, the more you can identify the feeling that comes with real intuition.

    In a reading, when I am getting accurate intuitive information, I know in my gut that it’s real and correct – I can feel it. When I first started out doing readings, when I picked up on really specific things, I’d try and tone down the specific-ness of it, because I was afraid of being wrong. But I had that gut feeling which was telling me it was right on. The energetic signature of the gut feeling was something between excitement and certainty. And through feedback from clients, I came to realize that the gut feeling of certainty/excitement was a sign of accuracy. But if I never got feedback from clients, I still wouldn’t know what that feeling meant.

    The ‘energetic signature’ you perceive when your intuition is accurate may not be the same as mine (and not everyone gets this ‘feeling’), but if you practise receiving and applying intuition, you’ll probably know what I’m referring to. Next time you get intuitive input, go inside and ask yourself ‘how does this feel to me?’

    In addition to getting feelings in my gut, I also get feedback on the accuracy of my intuition through my emotions. If I get some information, but it ‘feels’ wrong or off to me, (and it’s not a good feeling), then I know it’s not on the right track. When I’m passing on information that I know is accurate, then I feel good and I feel uplifted. If any information is not accurate, it feels discordant in me just before I open my mouth to say it.

    Like me, you may get gut feelings as part of your intuition, or you may not. It all depends on whether clairsentience is one of your intuitive gifts.

    #3: Imagination is active, Intuition is passive

    Another key difference between imagination and intuition is that imagination is an active process and intuition is a passive process.

    When you’re imagining something, the imagination is exerting itself actively. Whereas intuition is what you get when you clear the mind, through meditation, and you make yourself a conduit. You become passive. So if you’re afraid that your imagination is feeding you input when you want your intuition to have more of a say, work on getting your mind under control.

    When you get a flash of something – and you’re not sure whether it’s your intuition or your mind being overly active, just stop and quieten your mind. You can do this by focusing on your breath for a minute or two and by just not paying any attention to the thoughts which arise – focus on your breath above all. This really helps to put your mind out of action for a minute while you hear what your intuition has to say about it. Intuition often arises in the gaps between your conscious thoughts, so if your mind is very busy you may need to create more gaps in order to hear your true intuitive voice.

    When it’s probably not your intuition:

    • The voice that’s talking to you makes you feel bad, discourages or belittles you
    • When the voice tells you something that sounds contradictory or confusing. Intuitive information should be concise, clear and should slot into your mental frame of reference
    • When the voice tells you to obey it. Intuition is without an agenda. Your higher self and guides will offer their perspective but you’re not required to live your life by that perspective or take into account the input, as you have free will. (Note: this may not apply if you are in danger of losing your life.)

    And if in doubt, don’t worry – a true and relevant intuitive message will usually repeat itself if you don’t get it the first time.

  • Risks and Divine Harassment

    Risks and Divine Harassment

    Three times in the past year, my Higher self has asked me to take risks. Two of them were big, scary, life-changing risks. The people around me – friends, family – generally think I make stupid decisions that by lucky chance lead to good stuff happening. What really happens is that my Higher self harasses me to take certain action- I see an opportunity to do something and it seems too big and scary to pursue, but I get this intuitive voice which starts singing ‘do it, do it’. And it doesn’t stop bugging me until I go down the path my spirit wants to take. Some of the paths are scary for me, and lead to short-term discomfort. And sometimes I wish I could ignore the spirit part of me that loves going out exploring.

    Starting an online business

    If you’ve read my blog before, you’ll know that in February of 2008, I quit my job teaching English in Spain and went back to the UK to start this business doing professional Akashic Record readings. At the time, I was pretty scared, because I had no money or savings, no website, a very small client base and no business or internet skills. Most people thought I would fail, and that seemed like a reasonable assessment.

    My old job bored me to tears and I’d rather have been unemployed than doing a job I hated. For a few months prior to quitting, I was walking around with a volcano of dissatisfaction in me. My Higher self sang the same old tune every day for about three months ‘quit your job, go back home’. Staying there made me miserable and I had lots of health problems which got better as soon as I went back home. And luckily for me, the online business thing worked out and I woke up every day grateful that I could do work I loved.

    Long-term benefit out of 10= 10

    Short-term unpleasantness = 5

    Investing in an expensive business workshop

    The next time Spirit decided it was time to harass me again was in July 2008 when I came across a business workshop held by Bernadette Doyle.

    I had been receiving Bernadette’s newsletter for some time and by chance clicked onto the sales page for her business development workshop that she was giving in the Autumn and my Higher self whispered ‘ready to do something scary again?’

    The workshop cost a lot (and perhaps a reckless amount to pay when you’ve only been in business for a few months and when you don’t really have that kind of money, except when you dig into your overdraft and credit cards.)

    I closed the page and thought ‘no way’. But over the next few hours it was all I could think about. My Higher self was singing that song again. I knew I had to do it.

    The workshop turned out to be fantastic and propelled me forward in ways I didn’t expect. I’m still amazed by the secondary benefits of doing it. It gave me greater confidence to create the business I want and gave me much clarity about what kind of business I wanted long-term and how I’m going to get there. But it involved so much sacrifice in the short term, I ended up being quite pissed off about it.

    Long-term benefit= 5-6

    Short-term unpleasantness = 6

    Going to Australia to meet my online boyfriend

    In October 2008, I began an online relationship with a guy who lives in Australia. I was living in London. We met on a forum and got talking. And we never really stopped talking from that day onwards. We talked every day for hours. And I knew that I wanted to meet him.

    So about six weeks ago, I booked a plane ticket to meet him and we spent three lovely weeks together. So lovely that I didn’t want to go back. My spirit started singing that song again. So we discussed me staying; he was all for it and I got a one-year visa to stay in Australia.

    I’m not sure what the benefits of taking this action will be, but I trust that something wonderful will come of it. Already in this relationship, I have learned so much about communication and myself. I’m very excited that I get to spend more time with someone I really like.

    Long-term benefit= I don’t know yet!

    Short-term unpleasantness = 7? (I left my life, friends and flat behind in London.)

    How do you get your intuitive nudges to take action that scares you? Do you follow them?

    What song is your Spirit singing to you right now?

    Does it involve any risk taking?

    Do you dare?