Psychic Soft Focus

Are you trying to "focus" your clairaudient intuition, your awareness of guiding voices, your psychic perception? Are you trying to concentrate and isolate these channels -- to hear other "voices" -- your higher self, your spirit guides? Your full awareness is more than just your Thinking Mind. Your full awareness -- your total consciousness -- includes your intuition, your subconscious, your emotions, your psychic abilities, your vibes, your gut... It's bigger, broader, softer, looser, fuzzier -- it encompasses more than your Thinking Mind.

Visualizing the Invisible

Picture your psychic abilities -- your intuition -- in particular, your clairaudience -- as the beam of a flashlight. When you concentrate -- when you focus -- you tighten up, you narrow, you limit the beam of your "hearing."

psychic sound wave 01

Fig 1 -- Normal Listening

Let's say the above illustration represents multiple channels of information -- other voices -- on different levels:

• The big White Wave represents the information you hear in your normal, real, everyday perception -- say it's me, talking to you -- or your reading this article...
• The Light-Blue Waves represent "other voices" -- let's say they are your spirit guides or your higher self...
• The White Circle represents the beam of your conscious awareness when you listen -- what you're paying attention to

Or you could picture this as a car radio tuner:

• The big White Wave is the station you're hearing loud and clear...
• The Light-Blue waves are the other voices -- other stations -- that are potentially in your range, if you just tune them in...
• The White Circle is the dial you can adjust to pick up other stations...

You know how when you're looking for something on the radio, you can set your dial between two stations, and actually hear both of them, overlapping? There may be a little noise, or static, one may be clearer and stronger than the other, but you can hear more than one station at the same time. If you tune the dial up or down, to bring in one more clearly, you lose the other. But when you're sitting on one "station" you have no idea what's coming in on another station right next to it -- even though the other stations are there. If you tune in too tight -- if you focus or concentrate the beam of your perception too much -- you end up with a smaller, narrower awareness, like this:

psychic sound wave 02

Fig 2 -- Over-focused Listening

Focusing and concentrating with only your Thinking Mind does the opposite of picking up More -- your goal is to listen bigger -- if you try to isolate or pinpoint or laser-focus your awareness, without knowing exactly where the best "spot" is, you end up narrowing the light beam of your clairaudient intuition. You could point this narrow listening at three different places, and hit silence, noise, or a smaller section of what you're already getting.

Here's what narrow spots of clairaudient listening look like -- these are limited expectations -- what you think you're supposed to be going for:

psychic sound wave 03

Fig 3 -- Little Listening, All Over the Place

This lesson or instruction is channeled information from someone else's spirit guides. I did a Reading for a woman a few months ago who had powerful natural psychic ability. She asked me to ask her guides how she could improve or develop her clairaudience -- what could she do to hear them better.

What I'm trying to describe here is what they explained to me. It's very difficult translating and relaying clairvoyant and clairaudient information -- I'm not sure how well I'm pulling it off.

The sitter for that reading wrote back:

"I know that I am clairaudient -- I know that I hear my guides -- but I'm not always clear what they're saying, unless [certain moods, circumstances, or conditions apply]..."

Your Thinking Mind is the "culprit" in limiting your clairaudience, clairvoyance, and intuition. Look at your word choice: "I am clairaudient... BUT I am not always clear... UNLESS..." You are negating your ability and attaching expectations as well as conditions. You are identifying limitations.

"Okay. I can accept this. Do you know when you are unaware of an aspect about yourself that suddenly comes through to you in your field of perception, it is often very difficult to see and understand. That is where I am at. I don't totally comprehend what you are saying, but I can feel that it is spot on. I think I need to just re-read it several times till it starts to sink in. What you're suggesting is that I completely change the way I have been my whole life. (Not that I don't agree with you, I do!) This is no small task. I am just not sure where to start in this mess of me. Any and all suggestions are greatly appreciated."

Again, let's say your intuitive abilities are a flashlight.

You know how you can twist a flashlight to focus the beam into a tighter brighter smaller spot, or twist it the other way and it expands the circle of illumination with a looser, fuzzier pool of light?

Okay -- don't think "I need to change" as in "I need a new flash light." You don't even need to turn it on -- it's ON, it works. What your guides are telling you about expanding and developing your intuitive abilities is this:

The limitations you experience are because that beam is too tightly focused. Don't change it. There's nothing wrong with it. Just ALLOW it to become bigger, fuzzier, expansive -- allow your definition of what is intuitive information to become looser, more relaxed.

psychic sound wave 04

The Goal for Hearing More: Fig 4 -- Psychic Intuition doesn't begin as anything precise

Yes, listening clairaudiently will be fuzzier -- it's not a laser beam -- it's not about precision -- you will see more and learn how to hear more and discern more in your psychic channel by letting it get bigger, softer.

Note how you're catching more by doing the opposite of focusing or concentrating. With a big, broad, sloppy, relaxed intuition you're more likely to pick up a bunch of "stuff" at the same time.

THEN, you can start isolating within that -- tightening up and tuning in and spotlighting a smaller area within the bigger source -- then you know where to shine that focused beam -- like this:

psychic sound wave 05

Fig 5 -- Begin to focus after you find the right area to focus in

Your guides are suggesting you change, but not as you expect. They're not saying you can't, you don't, or you've got it all wrong. They're just telling you to back away from that tiny spot of expectation and view the intuitive information from "higher up" with a larger focal point. Let the light you're shining grow to illuminate more by twisting it the other way -- looser.

Do you see? Does that clarify? It's not a reprimand, they're just telling you "Here, honey, do it like this -- SEE? There you go... Look at how much more is there now..."

Seek Wisdom -- Practice Love

Familiars — Angels with Fur

Some of your pets are members of your god posse -- the team of guardian spirit entities who attend you on your life's mission — incarnated in animal form.

Borrowing from the Wiccan tradition, I refer to the elevated relationship between human and animal souls as a familiar.

In a very literal and tangible way, there are no relationships on earth that teach you more about the benevolent spirit entities who attend you in this life than your animal familiars. Not all your pets or domesticated animals are familiars -- the designation of familiar is very special and unique label.

The cat familiar is simply the most popular or well-known -- the traditional classic -- but this special spiritual relationship is not limited to members of pagan faiths or to any particular species of animal.

Here's what I personally believe about our familiars:

When you connect to an animal and she becomes your familiar, you elevate her spirit to the human sphere of consciousness. You know the ones you've done this with -- they stand out clearly among your pet/owner connections -- they become more human than animal. You willfully -- by your divine grace and choice -- lift the soul of your animal companion up to our level.

As a kid it always disturbed me that Christianity said animals did not have souls. There can be no doubt that if there are souls to be had, at all, period, by any living entity, then your familiars have souls -- a different kind of soul than a wild animal.

Like a spirit guide, ancestor, or guardian angel does for you, you become the sponsor or patron of this creature's spirit. Unlike a human child who emerges or breaks off from your physical body, but has an independent soul -- and so only requires a temporary dependence -- you bring your animal familiar into your spiritual body -- your aura. You lend a piece of your spiritual bubble to her -- she actually becomes part of your soul.

This is why you can't be technically alone with another human in the room, yet your familiar can be by your side, with you, in your most private physical space. When she leaves her physical body behind, she literally will not "go to heaven" because she is tethered to your aura and will remain with you, for good.

You are here to experience and learn how to love unconditionally. Your animal familiars are the most obvious, visible form of "guardian angels." They may even be the only kind of guardian that manifests a physical form you can easily perceive.

Our animal familiars are pure, unconditional love incarnate. They are the "sure things" in your god posse. Anyone -- no matter your physical appearance, personality, handicaps, abilities, talents, or human qualities -- can have this relationship. It transcends judgement.

The miracle you have manifested with your familiar in this lifetime is one of your A+ love lessons learned. You've already created it. It will never go away; it can't be reversed. She is on your Team for good. What she can continue to do for you one day will change -- but then she will become a small piece of your love -- your power -- that is not bound to the physical world.

There are certain tasks that my different guides and guardians are best equipped to handle for me. When I am asked to send my thoughts and prayers for someone's animal companions, I literally send my departed familiar Cera to deliver those messages. This is a kind of magic she is especially qualified to execute.

In honor of my familiar Cera's passing June 25, 2004, this week I'm exploring the phenomena surrounding the Animal Spirits in your God Posse with a brief series of articles:

• The passing of a pet -- a life loved to completion

• Euthanasia -- the flower of life blooming in reverse

• Shifting your perspective on the Angel of Death

My love for my familiar taught me so much about how the relationships with my guardian angels and spirit guides work... I can't dump the richness of familiars in one post. It has taken me three years to process the experience and control the emotions enough to revisit my fifteen year relationship with Cera and celebrate her as my "angel with fur."

Seek Wisdom -- Practice Love

Do Spirit Guides Ever Leave You?

Yes, actually there are some spirit guides and benevolent guardian entities who come into your life only to assist you for a specific, intense period -- some of these may be significant events, life changes, personal challenges, or tragedies. But these experiences, events, and the spiritual assistance that coincides with them are not always negative; you may just need a boost to help you achieve a specific, positive goal.

Transit Guides

I'll give you an example of a guide who recently came into my life and then "left."

I've been aware of these temporaries before -- I now call them Transit Guides -- I theorize that they coincide with astrological transits. I've learned to notice their entrances, and to question what they may signify.

This Transit guide position seems to be occupied, for me anyway, as one of only a few Roles that have a kind of rotating staff... There is already a "new one" since the last one left -- I have yet to define who or what it is, or what its role may be. It hasn't spoken at all. I've seen it, clairvoyantly... also not the norm for me...

Angela

Last summer, I met a guide named Angela, my "switchboard operator." She came in response to my request for assistance with performing an enormous volume of distance Readings for subscribers to this site. Actually, I asked for help and guidance launching and promoting Shift Your Spirits -- the idea to offer free Readings was a directive. My guardians told me to do it, and I flipped out over the potential challenge of reading for so many people -- I saw the enormous benefit, but was afraid I couldn't handle the workload. They promised me I would receive special assistance -- help came in the form of Angela.

Angela was not the first transit guide I've ever been aware of coming in for a specific time and purpose, but she was different in many respects -- she identified herself quickly, was not mysterious or quiet or vague but easy to engage, interacted with me pretty much daily, and then quite suddenly she said "Okay. My work is done here. Gotta go..."

It's not that I can't still contact her, it's just that she's kind of moved on to a new job. I became really attached to her in the months she was here, and then one day I started feeling like something was up with her -- I noticed her silence, then her absense, and even pulled out the Tarot cards to clarify what might be happening when I realized she was leaving...

(A few years ago, other intuitives kept telling me to put the cards away and allow my direct clairaudience to come through. I finally took the advice, with amazing success. I generally avoid using divination tools to initiate contact or rely on them as a sole means of communication; the tools and the results are inferior to channeling, but they can provide confirmation or specific details.)

Angela's response to my questions about her leaving me were very Lifetime Movie of the Week -- cut and fade, melodramatic (the cards probably enhanced the sense of drama). I was reminded of one of those scenes where the main character comes home, finds the guest room bed made, the closet empty, a note on the dresser...

I'm describing the Hollywood flavor of the scene somewhat flippantly; but I was very emotional. It was bittersweet. It was one of those Right Endings -- not necessarily a Happy one.

The most noteworthy thing about this very special episode of my life guest-starring spirit guide Angela is how clear the communications with her always were -- and particularly when she left. Out of all the Interrogations/Confirmations I've ever pushed, I've never had a Guide that was so impossible to dismiss -- there was very little to question, or wonder about, no vagueness, no subtlety.

Angela's connection was clear as a bell.

We generally speak to spirits and ask them to say "Hello" -- to give us a sign that they are with us.

Isaak Denisen, the author of Out of Africa, wrote of partings

"I'm much better at Hello."

It never occurred to me how literal it would be to experience a spirit saying "See ya, later" -- and how definitely real she seems because she's not there anymore.

Seek Wisdom -- Practice Love

Visualizing the Invisible

Back in February, I promised to detail how I personally experience and perceive psychic energy. I realize that if I continue waiting until I produce some digital masterpieces before sharing them... Well, then it might never happen. I've decided to smother Perfection with a pillow, and humbly proceed.

A Self-Portrait

Below is my homespun graphic depiction of my energy, viewed from above -- a simplification of what I see at the bottom of the circular window I described in an earlier article about how I conduct Distance Readings. The "map" below shows the physical position of a few of my guardians, in relationship/connection with my body.

Check out this simplified detail of the location of my closest guides:

• You're looking down at the top of my head -- my aura, for lack of a better word, is the bubble in the center
• The compass-like, light-blue graphic represents a clock face, for standard navigation purposes -- 12:00, the top of the image, straight in front of me; 6:00, the bottom of the image, right behind me
• The line connecting my energy to the bubble in the 6:00 position is my silver cord -- my direct connection to source -- monitored by an angelic I call DJ
• The bubble at 7:00 is Big Jane, my "primary" guide
• The little orb close to my right-hand side, at approximately 2:30, is my familiar Cera of fifteen years, now deceased, still attending me

These are by no means the only entities that I can map in this fashion -- I've chosen to list a few for illustrative purposes, just to give you a general idea. Your spirit guides and guardian angels do not float about, physically independent of your aura. They can "travel" instantly, much the same as any consciousness or thought, but they occupy general positions in your energy.

I'll discuss the variety of structure, formations, and positions in another post.

Balloons There is an elasticity to their movements -- they can stretch beyond comfortable boundaries from time to time, given the situation -- but I would liken their motion to helium-filled balloons tied to the wrist of a child.

They drift, spin, follow, float above -- but their energy is somewhat anchored to your location. Imagine if you attached mylar balloons to your chakras with rubber strings. That should give you some sense of how your guides behave.

You might also consider the behavior of soap bubbles or beach foam -- the size, number, and configuration of individual bubbles, clustered together.

What's with all the bubbles? I've been fascinated with photographing the behavior of water droplets for years -- the deciding factor in my first digital camera purchase was a killer macro lens, for close-up microphotography. I've snapped THOUSANDS like the background of the first image in this post. While my near obsessive-compulsive voyeurism of dewdrops on glass at sunrise could be seen as an exercise in abstraction, the motivation is actually quite literal:

I seek to contemplate super-common everyday examples of super-natural concepts -- the magic in the mundane. I prefer to embellish my articles with photorealistic imagery -- even when choosing pure abstraction. The premise for the imagery on this site was to avoid ooey-gooey New Age airbrush cartoons, employ the abundance of kick-ass user-contributed imagery available on the web -- much of the work lightyears ahead of my abilities -- and to generally avoid as much of my time-stealing design addiction as possible -- to focus on what I can accomplish with words.

But I am not only a writer, and I will never be totally satisfied with one medium -- here I am twenty years later, and I still can't choose a major! One of the goals of rebuilding my blogs, and moving everything under my name, was to bring back a more controlled expression of all the minutiae that make me who I am -- that make my Vision unique. And this certainly can't be accomplished by suppressing or censoring. I've waited a lifetime for the multimedia potential of the web -- I hope to put even more of myself into these projects -- in as many dimensions as possible.

Expect to see a lot bubbles around here -- like those on my front page. For me, bubbles, spheres, and orbs are the modern equivalent of all those centuries of halos in religious art history. I just can't find anything that more accurately portrays how I see energy -- the dynamic interconnections of souls, spirits -- as constellations of blogs on the web, or foot-traffic through the cafe from where I often write to you, or cars on the roads, ants on the ground...

If you wonder what I see -- yes, clairvoyantly -- contemplate what those bubbles, the crowds of foam, the elemental intersection of Water and Air, represent:

• the bubbles could be the Shift Your Spirits readers -- your attention converging around my screen -- this blog as mirror and filter
• the orbs could be the spiritual bloggers who comment and link here -- the constellation in web space I described in Stars of the Apocalypse
• these spheres could be YOU and the spiritual entities that surround you -- you're that big one at the bottom, with your god posse frothing around you, drifting either to or from light, or gravity...

Spirit Guide and Guardian Angel Portraits If you've engaged me for Readings, then you've given me permission and invitation to look for humanoid features in the bubbles that hover around you. I alter images of statuary to produce portraits of what the various members of my god posse "look" like -- where else can you find more vivid models for angels and gods? This is not an original idea -- I'm going along with some serious tradition regarding idols and icons.

If you've read about my primary guide, who I call Jane Throne, then you've already seen a rendering of what Jane looks like to me. Also featured in an article on this site was a transit guide -- meaning, she worked with me for a few months last summer and then moved on -- Angela. Angela assisted me with the launch and promotion of this web site, which revolved around conducting Spirit Guide Readings for each and every new subscriber.

I don't create these portraits just to amuse myself or to illustrate my stories about them -- both good enough reasons, certainly -- I render visual representations of my guides as a way to more fully develop my relationship with them. If you've delved into manifesting techniques and tools, then you're probably familiar with the concept of Image Boards; I not only use the portraits themselves, but more importantly, the PROCESS of creating the god posse portraits, to connect with their voices and stories.

Illustration often serves me as a meditative entry point to the clairaudient messages I receive -- like those medieval ladies that fall into trances spinning thread... For distance readings on strangers, I cast a graphic natal chart to use as the entry point.

Keep in mind that the Jury is out on whether the facial features and characteristics I describe are plucked from my mind or yours -- borrowed from versus projected by the entities themselves - but I am confident that what WE see -- the collective consciousnes -- is the hope chest full of drag that spirits pull from, when presenting us with physical form.

Do spirits already have preferences for forms? Do they assume their appearance, or do you? Is it your need that dictates -- requires -- them to appear?

I can see now that I have opened up yet another Pandora's box of potential posts -- your response to this discussion will be the best indication of whether or not I should prioritize these types of details and continue struggling through Visualizations of the Invisible. (This is damned difficult to pin down and translate!) My intention, for the next few months remaining in Year One of Shift Your Spirits, leans toward delivering on my promises of gory details and diary-of-a-mystic blow-by-blows.

See, as soon as I started writing publicly about my life-long clairaudience, somebody turned up the volume on my clairvoyance -- or, er... turned on the highbeam lights... or something like that. My writing is always running behind a speeding train of experience...

I realize this is exTREMEly self-indulgent -- but you know what? I love Jeff Lilly's narrative meditations, and many of you have written me excited about Vera Nadine's transparent accounts of her mediumship. Wait for me! The best I have to offer the campfire are my own "One Time..." tales.

Soap Opera fans refer to their favorite shows as their "stories" and their "bubbles" -- the metaphor of this slang is not lost on me. My Rich Inner World is a private drama of which I am the star, with a colorful cast of supporting spiritual characters.

I ususally labor to present my spiritual experience in terms that you can apply to your own life; but I wonder if I might not be missing an opportunity to simply set an example by sharing more magical detail from my own... Would you like for me to introduce the members of my God Posse to you?

Seek Wisdom -- Practice Love