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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781609253073 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Red Wheel/Weiser |
| Publication date: | 10/01/1999 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 132 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
About the Author
Marcia L. Pickands is a remarkably versatile teacher with training in psychology, theology, ceremonial magic, and many other esoteric, metaphysical and magical topics. In addition to her twenty-nine years experience as a psychic and spiritual adviser, and her twenty-two years as a mother, she has worked as an archaeological technician, an historic artifact analyst, a New Age bookstore owner, a Neo-Pagan High Priestess, and a martial arts master and teacher. She is one of the two spiritual successors to the late William G. Gray, renowned author of many fine books on magic and the Western Inner Tradition. In addition, Ms. Pickands is the current Senior Master of the Guardians, a Warrior-Priest Order dedicated to preserving, protecting, and promoting the Way of Light within this world by doing Good and averting Evil.
Read an Excerpt
PSYCHIC ABILITIES
How to Train and Use Them
By Marcia L. Pickands
Samuel Weiser, Inc.
Copyright © 1999 Marcia L. PickandsAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-60925-307-3
CHAPTER 1
HOW TO DEVELOP YOUR PSYCHIC ABILITIES
I spent a wonderful weekend recently with a Cherokee elder and spiritual leader, who is now also my adoptive sister, Marti Mom Feather Kaelbli. Among other things, we discussed the writing of this book. Mom Feather said that she was taught that psychic abilities and spiritual experiences were just part of being human. "When the door moved without any flesh and blood being pushing it, we knew that a spirit was there and we greeted it." Mom Feather said she first met her guardian spirit when she was 4 years old. She immediately told her grandmother about the experience. Her grandmother then told Mom Feather that she had seen the spirit as well. In fact, Mom Feather's grandmother, Sally Brown (a Medicine Woman like her mother before her) had first seen that spirit when Mom Feather was only 18 months old.
Mom Feather and I grew up in very different environments. She was raised in the hills of Kentucky, while I spent my childhood in various upper middle class suburbs in Texas, Washington, DC, Indiana, Pennsylvania, and Connecticut. Regardless of these differences, we share the knowledge that what people call psychic abilities are just an ordinary aspect of our humanity.
In my case, I was fortunate enough to have parents who did not feel compelled to "correct" my perceptions, even though they were both highly educated. My mother was an elementary school teacher and my father is an orthopedic surgeon. They never talked me out of anything that I saw, heard, or felt. I was never told that something I perceived as real was "just my imagination." I seldom spoke to friends about what I now call psychic perceptions because, at the time, I just thought everyone experienced things the same way I did. Therefore neither friends nor acquaintances talked me out of this part of myself either. Later, when I left home for college, I was blessed with a martial arts teacher, Daniel K. Pai, Grandmaster of Pai Lum Kung Fu, who further encouraged my psychic and spiritual development. It was Daniel Pai who taught me how to learn and then how to teach people who were not as lucky as I was. They may have had friends that their parents couldn't see, but they were made to feel that these beings were not real. They may have had dreams that came true, but they were told it was just a coincidence. What a shame!
As you develop your psychic senses and gain spiritual experience you will begin to feel more whole. You will gain or perhaps regain a sense of wonder that you may have lost when you were a very young child. You will also gain access to the meaning of your own existence. This course of training will help you develop and use your psychic abilities so long as you persist in the practice of the exercises I will teach you. Before we begin, however, I would like to share with you the words of James O'Loughlin, a Cherokee/Shawnee Medicine Man.
During one of the first telephone conversations that my husband had with Jim O'Loughlin, Jim asked him: "Are you perfect?" Marty, naturally, answered: "No." At that point Jim said something that I believe is one of the sanest things anyone has ever said. He told Marty that of course he was perfect. Jim continued to explain that no matter what faults Marty thought he had, everything about him was perfect for the time, place, and circumstances he was in, and that he must remember that this is true of everyone. Whatever your current experience, level of ability, or circumstances in life, you are perfect just as you are for this particular time, place, and circumstance. Your decision to read this book and practice the exercises in it is also perfect. The path you have chosen will not be easy, but each step you take on it will be perfect. With this in mind, now we will begin.
The word "psychic" derives from the Greek word psychikos which means "of the soul" and the French word psyche which means "breath, life, soul." It is commonly used in modern English to refer to those things and forces which are outside the realm of known physical processes and to people who are sensitive to these things and forces. For the purposes of this book we will use the words "psychic faculties/senses," "psychic abilities," and "psychic experiences" to refer to those faculties/senses, abilities, and experiences that lie beyond the range of our physical senses and objective consciousness.
As I explained in the Introduction, psychic abilities are linked with the autonomic nervous system, instincts, and the subconscious mind. Developing the autonomic nervous system or your conscious awareness of it is key to accessing the information available to your psychic senses. This may require a bit of unlearning. Our conscious minds have learned to operate on a subset of the information which bombards the physical senses every second of our existence. Our five physical senses are not Nature's only means of conveying knowledge to us. There are sounds beyond the range of human hearing, produced by vibrations of either too high or too low a rate for our ears to pick up. Similarly, there are visual phenomena which our eyes cannot normally see. The same can be said of our three other physical senses. Therefore, our five physical senses do not transmit the existence of all things in the universe to our conscious minds. They are neither completely dependable nor completely reliable as transmitters of information.
Our conscious mind requires that the nerve impulses (sensory input) originating in the receptor cells of the peripheral nervous system be translated by the central nervous system and brain into thought forms recognizable by normal human consciousness. On the other hand, our subconscious mind recognizes and responds to information at a rather low level of organization. The psychic senses are linked to the subconscious mind and the autonomic nervous system. If we are to make input from the psychic senses accessible to the conscious mind, the information must be put in a form that the conscious mind can recognize and understand. Dreams that turn out to be prophetic and other spontaneous psychic experiences such as those mentioned in the Introduction prove that this process is possible.
To make conscious use of our psychic senses we develop our conscious awareness of our autonomic nervous system and work out a "language" understandable to both our subconscious and conscious minds. This is exactly how I will be going about the process of teaching you how to develop your psychic abilities.
Please begin by practicing the following exercises. They will both help you to relax your conscious mind and awaken consciousness within all parts of your body. As you work with these exercises, you may be surprised by how seldom you have paid attention to the life force within your physical body. You will also probably realize that the last time you did pay close attention was when some part of you malfunctioned. Take some time to think about this after you work with these first three exercises.
Exercise 1: Centering
1. Sit down in a comfortable but preferably straight-backed chair. Set your feet flat on the floor. Allow your hands to rest quietly in your lap.
2. Close your eyes and listen to the sound of your own heartbeat.
3. Begin to tune your breathing to the beating of your heart. Breathing in to a 4 beat, hold your breath in for a 4 beat, exhale to a 4 beat, and hold your breath out for a 4 beat. This is known as 4-fold breathing and should be done so that you breathe in and out through your nose while resting the tip of your tongue on the roof of your mouth slightly behind your front teeth.
4. Gradually slow your breathing down. Notice that your heart rate follows your breath now. Notice also that your thinking processes have begun to relax as well. Continue to slow your breathing down until you feel calm, relaxed, and develop a warm pleasant feeling in your belly. Once you achieve this experience, you will know what it feels like to be "centered."
Exercise 2: Grounding
1. Center yourself.
2. Forget about your heartbeat and place your attention on the soles of your feet. Allow a sensation of heat to build up under their arches.
3. Imagine now that a beam of golden light extends from the bottom of each of your feet.
4. Each time you exhale, imagine that these 2 beams of golden light extend further away from your feet and into the earth below you. (This may mean going through several floors and a building foundation first!) When your feet are firmly anchored in the earth, so that it seems it would be hard to move them if you tried, you will have experienced the feeling of being "grounded."
Exercises 1 and 2 should be practiced until you can center and ground yourself within a few seconds whether you are sitting, standing, or lying down (those beams of light can angle or curve down into the earth when necessary). You will be asked to center and ground yourself as a prelude to each of the exercises in this book. The primary reason for this is that these techniques help to alter your state of consciousness from that which your conscious mind uses on a daily basis. This change makes it more likely for you to access information from your subconscious mind. This same altered state is also useful in discouraging the interference of your conscious mind when you choose to keep it out of your way for a while.
Exercise 3: Awakening Awareness Within Your Physical Body
1. Sit in a comfortable chair or lie down on your bed.
2. Center and ground. You will soon be paying attention to individual body parts in turn. Maintain the rhythmic breathing that you started as you centered yourself and with each inhalation of your breath, lightly tense the body part mentioned and then with each exhalation of your breath, relax it.
3. Place your attention on the soles of your feet as if they were the only part of you. Try to feel your heels, the balls of your feet, and your toes.
4. Now move your awareness to your ankles. Pay attention to the bones and skin.
5. Next move your attention to your legs. Notice the feel of skin, bones, muscles, and blood vessels.
6. Now become conscious of the trunk of your body. Notice the pressure of your clothing against your skin. Pay attention to the internal organs in this area, moving from the abdomen up to the chest area. Be sure to listen to and feel the beating of your heart and the expansion and relaxation of your lungs.
7. Now move your awareness to your hands.
8. Next pay attention to your wrists.
9. Now focus on your arms, including elbows and shoulders.
10. Next move your consciousness to your lower face. Feel the teeth in your gums (no biting!).
11. Next pay attention to your ears.
12. Now be aware of your eyes.
13. Finally pay attention to the top of your head. Feel the hair growing on it and the brain working inside it.
14. Take a deep breath and slowly let it out while relaxing. Be aware of the feeling of energy circulating throughout your entire body. (If you have done the breathing and light tension, followed by relaxation as you were instructed in step two, you will feel a tingling sensation moving within the trunk of your body and through your arms and legs.)
NOTE: If you practice this exercise daily, giving about one minute's worth of attention to all body parts from the lowest extremity to the highest, you will not only awaken your conscious awareness of these parts and their functioning, but you will be vitalizing them as well. In addition, you will be forging the beginnings of a link between the autonomic nervous system and the conscious mind. At the very least you will feel physically invigorated, and at the most you will have started the process of tuning into the physical processes connected to your psychic potential.
If you wish to develop your psychic potential to its fullest, you will run into a number of paradoxical situations along the way. For instance, you will be told that you must build a link between your subconscious and conscious minds so that they can communicate clearly with one another, but you will also need to find ways to keep the faculties of your conscious mind (the physical senses and the abilities to reason and analyze) from interfering with the information that the psychic senses are trying to communicate to your conscious mind. Try the following exercise and you will see why this is so:
Exercise 4: Psychically Sensing Time
1. Make sure you have a watch or clock that keeps time accurately, but don't look at it before you begin.
2. Center and ground.
3. Ask yourself this question: "What is the correct time?"
4. Whether you "psychically" see, hear, or just know the answer, write it down in a small notebook that you should keep for this purpose. Be sure to record only your first impression.
5. Check the time on the watch or clock. Write down the correct time in your notebook. Compare the results.
6. Repeat steps 1–5 at irregular intervals until you can consistently intuit the correct time.
Do not become discouraged if it takes you a long time to perfect this skill. It is not unusual for those who try this exercise to intuit the correct time on the first try and then to fail miserably for the next 10–20 trials. Psychic impressions are subtle in nature. It is easy for us to allow our reasoning abilities to interfere with them. After being surprised by an initial success, you are likely to fall back on making "reasonable guesses" instead of waiting for a psychic impression. Only after giving up on these "guesses" will you once again pay attention to your psychic senses and intuit the correct time.
Now it would be wise if we added an exercise which is designed to develop both your physical and psychic senses simultaneously. The following exercise was given to me by Brian Standing Bear Wilkes:
Exercise 5: Learning to See
1. Find a place in the woods where you will be safe and undisturbed for up to one hour.
2. Sit comfortably on the ground with your back to a tree or large rock.
3. Open your eyes and look straight ahead.
4. Maintain this position, trying not to move any body part including your eyes.
5. Observe your environment.
6. When you can no longer remain still, end the exercise and contemplate your experience.
It is important to practice Exercise 5 until you can stay still and observe for roughly an hour at a time. It will generally be necessary to start with between five and fifteen minutes. Build yourself up to the full hour over the course of several sessions. The more immobile you are, the less of a threat you will be to both natural and supernatural creatures. Eventually they will come right up to you. As you practice this exercise, you will also start seeing things that your conscious mind tends to ignore under more ordinary circumstances. For instance, you may notice how particular blades of grass move or the actual progress of the wind as it moves individual leaves. You will learn to notice when you are using mostly your physical senses, mostly your psychic senses, or both types of senses equally. Even if you have a great deal of difficulty with this exercise, you will learn valuable things about yourself by asking such questions as: "Why can't I sit still for more than a few minutes?" or "What is it that keeps me from observing my surroundings in this manner?" This exercise should keep you busy for quite some time!
You now know that your psychic faculties are capable of accessing the information which is available to your subconscious mind. This includes everything that has been, is, and might be. You have been given exercises designed to develop your conscious awareness of your autonomic nervous system and exercises to alter your state of consciousness to one appropriate for consciously accessing information from your subconscious mind. You have also had some basic practice in learning the difference between the feel of a genuine psychic intuition and a logical guess. Now it is time to begin to work on learning a language which is understandable to both your subconscious and conscious minds.
How can we know what our subconscious minds can or cannot understand? Our best information comes from whatever experience we or others have had in the past by way of spontaneous psychic experiences. Prophetic dreams, flashes of foresight, feelings that something good or bad was about to happen, knowing who was going to call before the phone rang, concentrating hard on someone you needed to hear from and having them write, phone, or knock at your door, etc., are experiences most people have once in a while. Regardless of whether we psychically see, hear, feel or just know information which spontaneously crosses the boundary between our conscious and subconscious minds, the information most often comes across in symbolic form. Therefore, we can assume that our subconscious minds can understand symbols.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from PSYCHIC ABILITIES by Marcia L. Pickands. Copyright © 1999 Marcia L. Pickands. Excerpted by permission of Samuel Weiser, Inc..
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Contents
Exercises
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter 1: How to Develop Your Psychic Abilities
Chapter 2: Tarot as a Symbolic Language
Chapter 3: Numerology as a Symbolic Language
Chapter 4: Psychic Abilities versus Spiritual Power
Chapter 5: How Psychic Readings Differ from Divination
Chapter 6: Communicating with the Dead
Chapter 7: Responsible Use of Psychic Abilities
Chapter 8: Advanced Applications of Psychic Abilities
Chapter 9: The World Needs You at Your Best!
Appendix: Additional Resources
Bibliography
Index
About the Author