apparent justification for this distrust. This automatic response is in-built in us all, but too often we don’t recognize our natural warning system. Dogs will growl at some apparently friendly strangers but not at others, while a normally confident child will sometimes instinctively back away from a smile and outstretched hand. In both cases, the person usually proves to be unreliable or to have negative intentions behind the smile and soft words. This is the same intuitive ability that makes us instantly like or dislike a place, a person or a situation.
This skill is more open in some people than others, particularly if they have more of an emotional outlook on life. Those who approach life with a more mental and visual outlook will lean more towards clairvoyance.
Clairvoyance
We often dismiss our psychic abilities by telling ourselves that we are imagining things. Many of us regard our imagination as something that is unreal or illusory. A well-developed imagination, however, is very important for our psychic development as it provides us with an effective bridge to valuable psychic information, as well as an abundance of creative energy. To develop psychically you need to give yourself permission to dream, to fantasize and play, before allowing the rational mind to do the necessary job of sorting out and assessing how to act upon the information that you receive.
The most commonly used term for a psychic is clairvoyant. This term is used to describe someone who gives psychic readings on a professional basis. Clairvoyance describes a range of psychic abilities based on the ability to visualize – to have ‘clear sight’ or ‘clear vision’. A true clairvoyant will receive messages or information through a heightened visual awareness.
A person with developed clairvoyant abilities has a strong sense of inner vision and is able to receive information in the form of visual images or symbols. Most clairvoyants receive their information internally; some describe having something akin to a cinema screen inside their head with images moving across it. Others receive individual symbols that they learn to interpret. Some clairvoyants receive their information externally. This usually means they are able to see people or animals in spirit, or can observe the subtle energy that circulates around themselves when they walk into the room.
Similar to people with a profound psychic ability in other areas, many clairvoyants will have a range of other psychic skills such as clairaudience and clairsentience, but their predominant source of information will tend to be visual.
Subjective Clairvoyance
This is by far the most common form of clairvoyance. Most of us have had the experience of conjuring up an image in our mind’s eye when we are remembering a past event or when we are asked to imagine something we have not seen first-hand. Many clairvoyants receive information in a similar fashion, perceiving visual images, symbols and impressions within their mind’s eye and then interpreting them accordingly.
These visions come through the third eye, which is one of the seven main chakras (see the chapter on chakras, pages 50–66). Some of the messages come in the form of lights, colours, cinematic images or abstract symbols, seen or perceived in the area of the forehead between and slightly above the eyebrows. Like all psychics, subjective clairvoyants receive information from their own higher mind, spirit guides, visiting spirits from clients that come for a reading, environmental influences and numerous other sources.
Because many clairvoyants receive psychic information in the form of symbols and abstract images, it takes time and practice to be able to interpret these images accurately and with some kind of practical and obvious relation to the person to whom you are giving the information. The images could relate to past lives, telepathic communication, picking up underlying life goals or life purpose, aspects of healing, and overall spiritual development – as well as numerous other issues such as current relationships and work problems.
Interpretation is something to be learned over time and is not something that is easily taught. There is no clairvoyant symbol that has a set meaning or that can be interpreted using a standard formula. Ultimately we are our own best teachers – by trusting what we feel, risking making mistakes and practising as much as we can.
Objective Clairvoyance
Objective clairvoyants are psychics who have the rare talent of being able to see objects, animals and people in spirit as if they were present. While the subjective clairvoyant may get a clear picture of an object internally, the objective clairvoyant sees things in the environment around them. In some cases these things can be quite three dimensional, like looking at things through our physical eyes rather than through our third eye. However, what is happening is that the psychic activity in the third eye is more heightened and active than in a person with subjective clairvoyance. Objective clairvoyance is a talent that tends to be inherited.
Clairvoyant skills are necessary to be able to divine the future, see auras and communicate with spirits.
Clairaudience
Both psychometry and clairsentience skills can trigger clairaudience – the ability to hear words or sounds that are not part of the material world but come from the ether and spirit realms. When developing spirit communication skills, clairaudience is one of the first major steps in communicating with spirits and hearing their voices.
Many people who have natural clairaudience skills will hear spirits and ghosts. As you become increasingly psychically aware, it becomes easier to pick up different frequencies – much as an experienced radio operator can tune a radio more accurately. A frequently reported clairaudient experience is that of hearing footsteps in an otherwise empty house. As with spirit voices, these sounds can exist independently of the hearer and may be heard by several people who live in the house – although they may not all hear them at the same time.
Many people have a degree of clairaudience but do not recognize it as such because, like so many other psychic abilities, it is has always been there. We may have always received words, thoughts or sounds of inspiration inside our mind without ever assuming that they come from another source. Many clairaudient psychics hear psychically transmitted sounds and spoken language as if they were hearing them physically. Others hear or receive the impressions of sounds, words or thoughts only in their minds. Many of our spirit guides and ancestors speak to us through clairaudience and many of the best solutions to our day-to-day problems are received from clairaudient messages. (In section two you will find a number of exercises that help tune your clairaudient and clairvoyant skills.)
Most people are psychic to some degree. However, everyone has different gifts and different ways of working with their psychic powers. Psychic energy is not a commodity or something you gain as a result of passing an exam – it is something we all possess. Most people use their intuitive gift or sixth sense without being aware of it. Learning about your gift increases your capacity to use it and by trying out various methods of psychic sensitivity – such as psychometry or fortune telling – you will discover your natural gift. Whichever gift comes naturally is the one you should develop.
To be a successful psychic you need to be interested in people, to believe that there is life after death, and that the power and love within the spiritual world influences the living. Before all these things mean anything to you, you must first learn to understand your own spiritual belief system a little
