Anna Sayce

Tag: energetic protection

  • Psychic Self-Protection – What You Need to Know

    Psychic Self-Protection – What You Need to Know

    I’ve held off writing about spiritual self-protection for a long time, because I didn’t want to write about dark entities, demons or anything else that may come to mind when you read the words ‘self-protection’.

    The very fact that you might need to protect yourself in psychic development sounds bad, doesn’t it? But, this article isn’t designed to frighten, and there isn’t much to be scared of anyway, in my view. I wish I had known that several years ago, when I was exploring psychic development.

    Instead I used to be so fearful of the spirit world — worried about being startled or attacked by spirits and unsure of how protected I was when I was doing psychic work.

    Negative Spirits?

    Psychic self-protection, for me is mainly about protecting yourself from unwanted energies like random ghosts and earthbound spirits, so that you don’t waste any time on channeling them, and so that you don’t feel drained or affected negatively by them. But earthbound spirits are not necessarily dark or negative. So this article is not so much about protecting yourself from ‘the dark’. It’s more about protecting yourself from channeling disembodied spirits that probably don’t have a higher perspective than you, so that you can focus on channeling the entities that do – your higher self, Guardian Angels and Spirit Guides.

    The Dark Realm

    My experience of the psychic realm is so far removed from the idea of dark entities and demons. Over the course of several years, I read books by well-known authors on the topic of avoiding demons & ‘dark entities’, and I ended up scared stiff and paranoid — it did me no good at all.

    Over time, I have come to believe that certain ‘spiritual’ issues such as dark entities attacking us, are actually psychological gremlins (i.e. our own creations, borne of fear and anxiety, projected outwards and taking shape in our minds as a dark entity.)

    I also believe that what seem to be dark entities might instead be earthbound spirits who are appearing to be much more fearsome than they actually are.

    Earthbound spirits (when they attach to a person’s aura) drain energy slightly and echo our negative emotions, but they don’t put thoughts in our heads or victimize us in any way. They’re stuck and lost — not necessarily evil or twisted.

    The Importance of a High Vibration

    Having a high vibration is important, but it’s MAINLY important at the moment of tuning in to get psychic guidance — not so much when you’re just going about your business and not really having anything to do with spiritual guidance.

    How to Raise Your Vibration Temporarily

    One of the best ways to raise your vibration temporarily for tuning in psychically is to involve the Divine in your tuning in process. Involving the Divine means calling on God or an Archangel (such as Michael, Gabriel or Raphael). You could also call on an Ascended Master (like Jesus, Mother Mary, Krishna, St. Francis, Quan Yin or Buddha.) Preferably you would do this in conjunction with a breathing exercise.

    In my Intuitive Awakening Course, I teach students to involve the Divine in their ‘tuning in’ process.

    Positioning your awareness at the Divine level through an exercise like this, is one of the best ways I know of to ward off unwanted energies.

    The Second Best Protection Tool

    The second best tool for psychic self-protection that I know of: being more selective about whom you channel and releasing earthbound spirits.

    Don’t open yourself up to channel just any old spirit. Ideally, you want to be channeling ONLY your Spirit Guides, higher self, Guardian Angels (and other astral beings who are with you on your journey through life, at the choosing of your soul.)

    If you’re channeling a being and you’re not sure who it is, I’d recommend you stop, and find someone who can teach you how to channel the right sources of guidance — like your higher self and Spirit Guides. Otherwise, you may find that you’re channeling an earthbound spirit who has much less of a perspective on your life than you do.

    In my book The Empath’s Toolkit, I go into an exercise you can do to release and repel earthbound spirits, for good.

    Who Needs Psychic Protection the Most?

    Empaths need psychic protection from earthbound spirits the most because they already have very open and porous energy fields, even before they do psychic development. Psychic development work opens them up even further, so psychic protection is especially important for such people.

    An empath is a person who has the ability to explore what it is like to be another person, energetically speaking. Empaths are effectively putting themselves into other peoples’ shoes, and they can often come back into their own consciousness with unwanted astral ‘clutter’ from another person’s experience. Even if an empath is of a very high vibration, they may still be picking up unwanted energies. My book goes into that topic in a lot of detail and offers some solutions.

    What Doesn’t Work?

    Here are some tools for psychic protection I’ve tried that didn’t work:

    Smudging with Sage

    This clears your space by making earthbound spirits flee, but it doesn’t offer any permanent protection.

    Psychic Shields

    Psychic shields are like band-aids. There’s a place for them, and they can work, but they’re a temporary measure. Ideally, you’d want to have control over your own energy so that you don’t need a psychic shield. The best type of psychic protection in my view involves strengthening your energy field and personal boundaries, rather than using shields. I go into this more in my book the Empath’s Toolkit.

    Sea Salt

    Taking a bath with sea salt or epsom salt in it is good for clearing a hyperactive state, but it does nothing for stopping unwanted energies coming into your space.

    Further Reading

  • 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.