Turn off the mindlessness.
One of the most common questions I get asked is ‘How can I develop my intuition and psychic abilities?’ The easy answer is ‘Pay attention!’ Your subconscious mind and energy field are like antennaes - they are constantly picking up the subtle energies, thoughts, feelings and emotions of others. Even when you are asleep or your conscious mind is engaged elsewhere.
When you consult your ‘gut’ or your intuition, the answer will come to you, you just have to pay attention because it’s often fleeting and as insubstantial as a breath of wind.
There are a few things I suggest you do. Firstly, you need to find some quiet time for yourself each day - I call it taking Santuary. If you don’t have any time to yourself, you need to reconsider your lifestyle. The way you live is a result of the choices you made in the past. You can make different choices any time to change the results you are experiencing.
Even if you have six kids and a husband/wife, you can find some time after the kids go to bed. 15 or 20 minutes is enough. When you take the kids to sport, dance classes or McDonald’s, sit in the car for 15 minutes Sanctuary. There is always a way.
If you’re still resisting giving yourself 20 minutes a day, what is it that you are really resisting? What are you distracting yourself from? What are you hiding from within yourself? What are you scared of?
Look at the way you spend your day. I bet you spend more than 20 minutes watching tv, on Facebook, surfing the net or doing something else that is mindless and adds no real value to your life. If your day is too full, get rid of the mindlessness.
Turn off the tv at dinner time and don’t put it back on. Tv can suck up a lot of time which can make us think we are busier than we really are. ‘But it relaxes me!’, I hear you say. No it doesn’t. Most evening tv shows are drivel at best and portray violence, crime and other negative visuals at worst. Stories about murdes and violence are not entertainment. It’s poisoning you slowly. It’s drugging you, not relaxing you. It’s also desensitising you.
When you see someone being murdered or assaulted on tv or in a movie, your conscious mind knows it’s make believe, but your sub-conscious mind doesn’t. As far as your sub-conscious mind is concerned, it’s witnessing an actual murder and the accompanying low energy. And don’t get me started on the demeaning, superficial and objectified way women are so often portrayed. Expose yourself to these images and sounds often enough and your sensitivity has to shut down. How else would it cope? It’s ok to be a sensitive person who is disturbed by violent and degrading images. Do your soul a favour and stop watching them. Watch mostly comedies, romances, family movies, classic films, non-violent dramas. I love watching classic movies like ‘The Ghost And Mrs Muir’ and ‘The Red Shoes’. Of course we all want to watch a scary movie occasionally or see a movie starring our favourite actor as a serial killer, just don’t make a daily diet of it.
Everything you do, watch, think, say and experience creates your energy ‘blueprint’ and will either raise or lower your vibration, which is your spiritual energy signature. Like attracts like so the higher your vibration, the higher the quality of events, opportunities and people you will attract to you. If you keep experiencing crappy things happening to you, stop allowing yourself to absorb the crap from your environment. At the risk of sounding harsh, why do you think people who have a lot of problems seem to end up with more problems? If they focused on working with their energy, limiting their exposure to negativity and became a little more self-aware, a lot of those problems would either find solutions or disappear altogether. I am well aware that not all problems have solutions, but all problems CAN be managed.
My friend Michelle was recently diagnosed with breast cancer. A few years ago it would have thrown her into chaos. Now that she has become aware of her energy and how to work with it, she focuses on changing the way she looks at having cancer, brings positive, light energy into her life and a series of synchronicities have shown her very clearly that there are Angels of healing working with and through her.
So watch a comedy instead of a murder. Give yourself a break from Facebook for 20 minutes. Don’t call your boyfriend for the fourth time today.
Take 20 minutes for yourself instead. Go to a park, sit in your car, sit on a bench in a shopping centre in your lunch hour. Or go to Borders and sit in a chair with a book and pretend you’re reading!
Then, put your iPod on, or the stereo or just listen to the sounds around you. Pay attention to the sounds. If you are listening to music, listen to something that has a slow to moderate beat and no lyrics, or at least lyrics that are in a language you don’t understand. I like spiritual music from all traditions for this purpose - Gregorian chants, African singers like Youssan N’Dour celebrating Sufism and classical music of all kinds.
Just listen to the music. If your mind wanders and you start thinking about what you have to do that afternoon, how long you have to sit there etc, just turn your attention back to the music. Two seconds later your mind will wander again. Come back to the music. You’ll start to think ‘hey I’m not thinking anything!’ Come back to the music. You’ll start having profound spiritual thoughts about how you can save the world. Come back to the music. Lather, rinse, repeat. Just pay attention to the music and when you notice your mind has gone for a walk, very gently lead it back. For how long? 15-20 minutes.
You don’t have to sit like a stone, in an uncomfortable cross legged position. Just sit comfortably with your feet on the floor and your back straight. Adopt a relaxed but aware posture. Don’t expect to have an empty mind with no thoughts floating through it. If anything, you will have MORE thoughts, more distractions. Or more accurately you will become more aware of the constant yakking, moaning, blah blah blahing that your mind does. Most of the time, your mind is in control of you. It’s pushing your buttons. You have a thought. The thought creates an emotion. The emotion creates an action. See what I mean? It all starts in the mind. Becoming aware of what is going through your mind is the key to having control over it. Becoming aware of the spectacular level of rubbish that waltzes through your head on any given day is the key to filtering all that out so you can recognise your intuition and your Higher Self, spirit guides etc. When people say ‘Clear your mind’, what they mean is don’t engage with your thoughts. When you realise you are thinking about work, sex or your bills or whatever, just bring your attention back to the music. Or the silence. Or the candle flame. Whatever you choose to use as a point of focus. Trust me - you WILL think. You WON’T have a mind as clear as a lotus pool. You WILL have 475,291 thoughts. That’s ok. That’s normal. Just come back to the music. What matters is coming back, not how often you come back.
If you want to know how long you have been sitting there, just look at your watch, or position a clock where you can see it but where it’s not in your direct line of vision. Breathe normally. If you’re itchy, scratch. At the end of your 15 or 20 minutes, just get up and go about your day. Congratulations. You have just meditated.
If you can, 20 minutes twice a day is ideal. Once is sufficient. Once a week for 3 hours won’t make up for not doing 20 minutes a day. The average meditator won’t need to do more than 20 minutes 2x a day. Meditation teachers and those who’s spiritual path is strongly meditational will do more.
If you’d like to do a little more once you have practiced this for a while, find a spiritually inspiring book and either before or after your meditation, read a few pages. Read them slowly. Don’t rush through it to get to the end to see who dunnit. Read each word slowly. Savour them. Meditate on them. Absorb them. You can read the Bible, the Koran, Zen poetry, a book of sayings or motivational quotes. It doesn’t matter. Whatever speaks to you. Changing your energy, raising your vibration so you can tune into a higher spiritual plane is not a long or difficult journey, it just requires persistence and consistency.
It is in the silence of meditation, when you are not talking to anyone or engaging with your thoughts, that your ability to perceive these subtle energies increases. There are so many forms of meditation that no one can say which is best because that is up to the individual.
Practice mindfulness as you go about your day. If you are driving, just drive. Don’t create a shopping list in your head, or call your friend on speaker phone. Give your friend the grace of your time and attention when you aren’t doing anything else but listening and attending to her. One of the most profound spiritual teachings is the phrase ‘Be Here Now’. Be in the present. Be fully aware and engaged in the moment. Keep bringing your mind back to what you are doing when it wanders. If you are walking, just walk. Observe and absorb your surroundings. Feel the blood pump through your muscles and the air pulling into your lungs.
Some people are naturally good at being psychic receivers, like David Beckham is naturally good at football. These natural psychics were born all ready tuned into the spiritual world. The rest of us can learn to raise your vibration and change our energy patterns so we too can tune into the spiritual realms. It’s not a special gift kept for the special few. It’s available to everyone, all the time.
