Chapter 9
Slowly Building Trust
Under John’s capable guidance, I continued to eagerly explore the process of channeling, and soon my ability to receive angelic information seemed to explode. At this point—without conscious intent—I was receiving intuitive sensations about everyone who came close to me, and this became extremely distracting—especially in business meetings.
In spite of the experience with the doorman, and the fact that I was consistently bombarded with psychic information, I remained insecure about the accuracy of what I was picking up. However, I discovered that if I maintained faith in John, and myself, and in the whole intuitive process as it unfolded, that proof would always be there for me.
One of the most telling psychic experiences I’ve ever experienced happened at that time, and it really helped build my confidence that I was, without question, accessing accurate information. This event reminded me that things are rarely what they seem on the surface.
I was visiting a client in the health care industry. It was a big closed-door meeting attended by more than a dozen people. One of the executives of the company sat on my left. As the meeting got underway, I was shocked by the very unpleasant waves of dangerous sexual energy coming from him. I couldn’t help glancing in his direction. But he appeared as professional as ever. He certainly didn’t have a flirtatious manner like my ex-husband. To the contrary, he had such a dignified demeanor that I was quite unprepared for the intuitive information I was receiving.
My newly found psychic ability was telling me that he was taking sexual liberties with female patients—a huge, inappropriate no-no in his position at the company. Of course, I immediately questioned the information because it seemed so far off the mark based on my prior experience with him and what logic was telling me. It seemed absolutely preposterous! I felt guilty and disloyal to a man who had awarded our little agency with his big, prestigious account, paid his bills on time, and who had shown nothing but respect and appreciation for all of our hard work.
Very shortly thereafter, confirming my psychic information, I received a call from a colleague of his. She told me that he had just been fired for sexual misconduct involving several female patients. She began to worriedly ask about how I was going to handle the potential media scandal—but frankly, all I could think about at that moment was how on-target my intuitiveness had been. It was my first experience in receiving information that appeared completely unbelievable and nonsensical on the surface but was, nonetheless, occurring behind the scenes.
At this point, about six months had gone by. John believed I was ready to learn about my life’s work. Up to that time, in spite of the fact that he knew I loathed advertising and was eager to move on, he had consistently discouraged me from job hunting, indicating that it wouldn’t be necessary. I had absolutely no clue as to what my destiny was, and I was bursting with curiosity. This was the moment I had been waiting for!
Initially, when John revealed the news to me, I was crushed with disappointment. My destiny was to be a channel and a medium? A psychic? I suddenly pictured myself wearing a turban and lots of costume jewelry, working out of a small trailer with a big neon palm outside that proclaimed, I solve all problems of life! Magic potions prepared, voodoo hexes guaranteed, packets of animal by-products available for curse removal . . .
John impatiently interrupted my train of thought by providing a job description of exactly what a medium does. He explained that a medium, or channel, is a conduit, much like a pipe that carries the flow of water. My “water” was going to be the messages from “the other side” that I was going to share with others. What’s more, he told me, like a physician who specializes in a certain area of medicine, channels specialize, too. One of my areas of specialty was going to be accessing specific information from guardian angels and deceased human beings to help a living individual find out about his destiny.
Destiny, he explained, pertained to life’s work, issues to be resolved, the nature of our relationships with other people, finding a soul mate, as well as building greater levels of emotional and financial abundance. The psychic information I was supposed to provide was going to help people become more aware of who they were and why they were here, to allow them to create a quality of life filled with purpose, direction, and meaning.
He went on to say that every channel, or medium, is a work in progress; and, as I continued to develop my ability, I would receive more detailed and specific information.
“You mean I’m going to be talking with dead people?”
“We don’t refer to anyone as ‘dead,’ ” John explained. “Every soul continues its existence, regardless of whether it possesses a physical body.”
“That’s absurd!”
“A short time ago you thought talking with angels was absurd.”
“But I don’t want dead people hanging around! I don’t know the first thing about—”
“So you’ll learn. Babe Ruth had to hit his first baseball, didn’t he? Julia Child had to cook her first soufflé. You had to write your first radio commercial, didn’t you?”
“But that’s different.”
“How?”
“Because that’s normal.”
“Since when did you ever aspire to being normal?”
I frowned, suddenly at a loss for words. It was true—I had never aspired to settle . . . to lead a conventional life. He was right, damn him. Double-damn him, I thought. Was he always right?
“Now, now,” he teased. “Remember . . . I can hear what you’re thinking.”
I kept forgetting that.
“Oh, no!” he said loudly, comically slapping his hand against his forehead. “I suppose that means that I’m not normal, either!”
I smiled. “Maybe that’s why we’re such a good team. Did the universe match us up because we’re both misfits?”
“Thank you for that great vote of confidence. I think I’ve just changed my mind about asking you to provide a testimonial for my guardian angel resume.”
“Do you guys really have resumes?”
From the look on his face, I was glad that I hadn’t yet developed the ability to read his mind. With a resigned expression, John went on to explain that it was my spiritual responsibility to spend my life providing intuitive information to others to help them move their lives forward, just as he was helping me with mine. In addition to that, I was supposed to teach others to channel for themselves so they could receive their own messages from the other side whenever they needed them.
I just stared at him. The left side of my brain had abruptly kicked into gear, and I began to tell him that the whole notion of me being an intuitive conduit was too ridiculous for consideration. After all, I was a serious businesswoman. It had taken me years to establish my credibility in the ultraconservative Houston business community. And I was to give all of that up? To start my own channeling practice? I’d be laughed right out of town!
He allowed me to rave on. His unruffled attitude indicated that he rather expected this negative reaction from me. A
