worries and fears and, occasionally, tell us about the future. Nightmares in particular provide important clues about fears and problems and recalling them, however scary, can help release these emotions.
Thoughts, ideas, worries, hopes and fears are all represented by symbols, metaphors and images within our dreams. The subconscious mind draws from our experiences and writes them into a mini play. Most of us are emotionally at the mercy of our worries and troubles, but if we use dreams properly we can, with a little effort, become the master of ourselves and learn how to connect with our psychic powers.
Using Dreams as a Psychic Connection
To become more aware of your dreams, try setting your alarm clock slightly earlier than usual. With luck, you will interrupt a dream that has something to say about you, or your future – even offer a solution to a problem that you may be experiencing.
Dreams can be excellent problem solvers. Write down your problem in the form of a question. Then, just before you go to sleep, put it under your pillow and affirm in your head what you have written down. Try to see the question in a picture form rather than in words. Pray to your inner self to help find a solution – once you have set the programme running, your dreams should do the rest. If you find that you get no answer the first night, affirm your question over seven nights and then check if you have dreamt the answer. Many people find that the dream doesn’t mean anything until something happens in their day to remind them of the dream – only then does the answer come.
Keeping a Dream Diary
Most dreams are forgotten in 10 minutes, so to remember them just run through the dream in your mind before you get up, then write it down straight away. Don’t worry about how you write it: sometimes you may want to draw what you saw – it is not an essay, it is a diary to help you interpret messages from your subconscious. Even if you didn’t dream, write down the first thoughts you had as this may trigger recall.
List everything, no matter how unimportant it may seem. Note the day and time and divide the paper into two – in one column write down or draw your dream, and in the other write your interpretation. The key is how you interpret your dreams and the symbolism within them. For instance, once you have written the dream down, pay attention not just to how you felt about the dream, but to the way you describe it, the references you make, the turns of phrase, and any memories it may trigger – they are all clues to the answer your dream is providing. You will get flashbacks to your dream throughout the day, note these as some will help solve problems or missing links.
If you work at unravelling your own dream symbols, you will eventually find that the images speak for themselves. In the majority of dream interpretation books you will find that there are links to typical emotional reactions. For example, teeth falling out in a dream indicates insecurity and in some books means that a part of your self is dying. Water relates to emotions, fire to anger or passion, and so on. Most dreams don’t fit neatly into categories – they are your own unique experience – but a good dream analysis book and some interesting dream imagery will keep you fascinated for a long time and will help in your personal psychic development.
Spirit Communication
Many psychics believe that they are guided by personalities in spirit who are able to offer valuable information and support through clairaudience, clairvoyance, clairsentience and channelling. Some believe that their guides are people who were once physically alive and who now inhabit a higher spiritual dimension. In some cases, their guides may be known; relatives, friends or former partners who continue to offer guidance to the people they love beyond the limits of their physical mortality. Others, subscribing to a belief in reincarnation, claim that in psychic intervention their spirit guides take the form of personalities they once knew in a former life.
The types of psychics who communicate with spirits are channels or mediums. The word channel appears to come from the US and covers a broad spectrum of psychic abilities and creative talents. Any of us can be said to be channelling when we lose ourselves to a creative process, whether it is painting a picture, writing a book, dancing, singing or chanting.
A medium is someone who acts as a vehicle for family or friends wishing to communicate from the spirit realms. Many psychics and mediums channel guidance or information in the form of mental pictures (clairvoyance), hearing subtle sounds or words (clairaudience) and in the form of sound and smell (clairsentience). A lot of material is also channelled in the form of automatic writing; this tends to be from information given by spirit guides and teachers.
There is no great mystery in communicating with Spirit; we are all capable of learning this skill. It is also possible to learn how to channel positive inspirational guidance to help others. (Refer to the chapter on spirit communication for practical guidance on how to communicate with Spirit and meet your spirit guides.)
Clairsentience
This is frequently defined as the ability to sense psychical manifestations that cannot be perceived by any of our five senses. It is the power to sense the atmosphere of a house or place; to know that there is a psychic manifestation. This ability is akin to psychometry and can show itself as a general uneasiness, a distinct feeling of coldness, negativity, even the prickling of hairs on the back of the neck or down the arm.
The majority of clairsentience experiences are spontaneous as it is often dependent on the way we tune into places and into the essences of people’s personalities. The most common example of tuning into a place is an ability to sense a strange atmosphere in a house as soon as one enters it. It is also common to discover a scent that comes from the spirit world. This is the first entry point into clairsentience and indeed is often the way people sense either the deceased or the history of a place. For example, smelling a deceased grandmother’s favourite perfume or baking or a grandfather’s tobacco is a universal paranormal phenomena. A few years ago I had a spirit guide from India and when he came to visit there was always a strong smell of jasmine in the room.
Clairsentience is the first opening from being intuitive or sensitive to describing yourself as psychic. We have all experienced times when our intuition is acute and we are able to listen to it and respond accordingly. Your intuition tells you that it would be a good time to telephone a friend; you have a ‘gut feeling’ she is in need of support and it turns out she is. Clairsentience is particularly common in women and children, who are still generally more emotionally biased than men. As children we are all quite open intuitively and emotionally; if you watch small children react to people and situations that they feel uncomfortable with or do not like, they are reacting to a feeling that they receive from that situation or person. However, as we grow we may learn to shut out these aspects of our awareness. To be clairsentient is to be as sensitive to situations and people as a small child, and to listen to those feelings and trust them.
Clairsentience is a very important skill because it offers protection, not only against bad vibrations from a haunted place, but also against present dangers or potential hostility.
I have never questioned my sensitivity to atmospheres since an event that happened when I was 19. One Saturday night I had gone to a party with a small group of friends. We were sitting in the living room when I experienced a terrible cold feeling in my stomach and insisted to my friends that we had to leave (this is before I trained in psychic development!). Reluctantly, my friends left with me and as we were walking out we came across a group of rough-looking youths waiting to come in. The next day I discovered that one of the youths had stabbed a guest who had been sitting where we had been. I sensed danger and thank God I listened to my feelings.
Intuitive responses tell us that a stranger is untrustworthy, even though their
