Have You Read a Good Book Lately?

Many people want to know if I have my students read any textbooks as part of their psychic training. Well, we use something much better than text books; real people are our books. Reading people has much in common with reading books, but it is so much more that the word “reading” just barely begins to describe it.
When you read a book, you look at symbols and pictures that are printed on a page and, hopefully, you understand what the author is trying to express. When you read a person, you look their aura and also interpret the significance of the symbols and pictures that you see there. In the first case, you use your eyes to see the symbols and your intellect to decipher what the author is trying to express. In the second case, you use your clairvoyance to see the symbols, and your intuition to glean their meaning.
There are other ways that reading books and auras are similar. Books and auras both contain a tremendous amount and variety of information and confer much wisdom and knowledge upon the readers. Many books give you a glimpse of how other people live, think and feel. So do auras!
Even though I really enjoy reading books, reading auras is much more exciting to me because it is interactive. You read the aura, you transmit the information to the readee, this information helps the readee to shift or raise their energy, which in turn helps you to raise your energy also. As the energy rises, the spiritual communication becomes deeper, and the participants feel more real and alive.
Reading certain books can help you to improve your knowledge, shift your energy, help you to be a better person, and give you a healing. When you read an aura, you communicate the information you see to your client, and you can watch as he or she receives all of these benefits right in front of you! Using your clairvoyance and clairsentience, you can see and feel the tremendous shift and healing that the readee experiences. What really puts the cherry on top of the ice cream sundae is that you, the reader, also receive the same benefits as the readee, plus the additional benefit of honing your spiritual skills of clairvoyance and spiritual communication. By honing these skills, you become more capable of communicating to the readee in a way that helps them along their spiritual path. The healing comes from the spiritual “Hello” that you give to the readee. This Hello acknowledges them as being a very capable spirit in a body. It helps them to rediscover their authentic self, and to be more aware of what and how they are creating in their lives. In other words, they take another step closer to being able to use their personal power, and come closer to owning their own spiritual freedom and truth. These are the reasons why I read auras, and why I teach other people to read auras. To paraphrase a common saying: “So many auras, so little time!”
So is your life a mystery novel, a work of fiction, a romance novel, a thriller, or a combination thereof? Get an aura reading someday soon and find out.
Exercise: Ask a friend to show you a photograph of another one of his/her friends whom you have never met.  Sit down in your private space (away from your friend), put your feet flat on the floor, take a deep breath and send a grounding cord of your energy deep into the earth.  Put your attention in the center of your head, then look at the photograph again. With certainty and without any effort,  simply write down your perceptions about the person in the picture.  Ask your friend to read what you have written and give you feedback.  You and your friend might both be surprised at what you came up with.  If you want more real practice, you're always welcome to come to one of our Reading Clinics where everyone gets a chance to participate in giving a reading, and to receive a reading.  It's the best way to get some validation for your abilities!
Enjoy Your Holidays,
Madeline
http://www.psychicawakeningsseattle.com/

Can You Relate...to Yourself?

Many people are unaware of their psychic and spiritual abilities because they just don’t know and understand themselves very well. Does the question “Who are you?” provoke a sense of self or a feeling of confusion? There are many obstacles to developing a genuine relationship with and understanding of yourself. Your life is busy with responsibilities and obligations (mostly to other people). You probably had very poor role models consisting of people who constantly berated themselves and made decisions that were not in their own best interest. Many of us are raised without recognition and validation of our true spiritual nature. So you were probably not taught how to see yourself as the invaluable spirit that you are your, much less even how to relate to yourself as an infinite being with unique gifts. In addition to not being able to use their psychic gifts, the lack of this most basic relationship causes many people much confusion, grieve and unhappiness.


Relationships take work. Getting to know someone entails giving and taking equitably, appreciating each other’s strong points, and having compassion for any weaknesses. You make time to spend with your friends doing the things that you enjoy doing together. As the result of sharing quality time with friends and family, you develop a deeper bonder and a stronger sense of the person they really are beneath the various roles that they are playing in their life.

Living with one or more other people has its own special challenges. Everyone has to share the living spaces, and hopefully everyone has some private space that they can retreat to when necessary. Sometimes you just need to get away from everyone and find your own space. The one person you can never get away from is yourself. How is your relationship with yourself? Do you appreciate your strong points and have compassion for your weaknesses? Are you able to spend quality time with yourself, developing a deeper bond with and sense of yourself and your intuitive abilities?

Creating a relationship with yourself is not something you can analyze into happening. It comes through experiencing it. Just like relating to good friends, it can come quite naturally with a little planning. You have to create a consistent, regular time and space to do the things you enjoy doing with yourself. You have to appreciate your strengths and have compassion for the parts of you that you wish were different. On an energy level, you have to move everyone else’s energy (i.e., opinions, expectations and demands) out of the space reserved for communicating with yourself. To this end, here are a few exercises with which you can experiment:


Exercise #1: Look in a mirror. Make eye contact with yourself and say, “You know, I really am a pretty cool person!”


Exercise #2: Do whatever you usually do to move everyone out of your space. Jumping into a pool of cold water is good for this. That clear-headed feeling you get is the result of everyone else jumping ship, so to speak. Everyone is psychic. When you jump into the pool, they unconsciously experience it as a drowning feeling!


Exercise #3: After doing exercise #2, spend a few minutes appreciating your uniqueness. This awareness will probably not last very long, but it is necessary to balance out the energy you put into wishing you were different.

Take Good Care of Yourself,
Madeline

http://www.psychicawakeningsseattle.com/

Learning How to Read Auras

A question I often hear is “How do you teach people to be psychic?"  If you have a body, you already are sensitive. I don’t teach you how to be psychic. I teach you how to interpret and use the information that you already receive. Many people feel that they might be psychic because they “see” images and colors around other people. When they don’t know how to deal with this information, they end up feeling confused and afraid that they might be crazy. Please be reassured: you’re not crazy; you’re psychic!

When you are first learning how to read energy, it can be very useful to create a pre-defined structure to help you organize the information. For example, when looking at colors in the aura, you can decide beforehand that when you see green, it means growth or change. When you see orange, it can mean healing energy to you. As a beginning reader, you can do a simple reading like this and it may be exactly what the person being read needs to hear that day. It may even be of great value to the readee. Very likely he or she may not be able to hear or understand anything more detailed than that.


As you become more confident and sophisticate in your reading abilities, you can go deeper into the information: “I see that you are experiencing much growth in your ability to communication more authentically with your close friends.” “I see orange in the third layer of your aura. Your motivation for much of what you do is to help other people with their issues.” As your reading skills deepen, you will attract more clients who reflect back to you the issues that you yourself are working on. Not only will you be providing valuable information to your client, you will also be healing yourself.


The next step in reading energy moves away from the concrete method of “blue always means this” and “red always means that.” When reading at this level, when you see a particular color or symbol, you ask yourself “What does this color mean for this person at this time?” or “What does this symbol mean for this person today?” Many times the information just comes to you without having to ask first. Just as in the simple reading, your client shows you what he or she needs to hear that day.


Here’s an exercise you can do with a friend who is also interested in psychic development. Sit down across from each other, with your feet flat on the floor. Take a deep breath, ground yourselves deep into the earth, and focus your attention right behind your eyes. First just ask yourself, “What is the most predominant color is his (or her) aura?” If you think you don’t “see” anything, say to yourself “If I could see a color, what color would it be?” After you get a color, ask yourself, “What does this color mean for this person today?” When you are done with the first color, you can look for other colors, then trade and have your friend look for your colors. If you think that you and your friend already know each other too well for this to work, you may surprise yourselves at the information that comes up.


Blessings,

Madeline

http://www.psychicawakeningsseattle.com/

Energy Cords and Trading Energy

It is a natural phenomena to exchange energy all day long with people whom you interact with.  "Hello!  You're looking good today." "Thank You!  And you?"  Then both parties walk away with a little bit of each other in their hearts.  There are also more contentious interactions between people.  Trying to get your kids or spouse to do more around the house.  Having to deal with "customer service" to get bogus charges removed from your credit card statement.  After these kind of interactions too, each person walks away with a bit (or more) of the other person's anger, frustration or apathy in his or her space. 
If trading energy is such a natural, common occurrences, then when does it become a problem?   It becomes a problem when you want to think clearly, or to know your authentic self.  Remember that energy can be very subtle, it's difficult to know that it is there affecting you.  When you are carrying around other people's opinions, demands and expectations of you, that's what you think about; but you might not be aware that those thoughts are not your own.  Those thoughts are not who you are.  You give yourself a tremendous healing when you release that energy and get to a space of clarity.  I'm sure you have probably experienced this space at times.  It's a big relief physically, emotionally and spiritually to see and feel the truth about a situation or about yourself.
There are many other natural ways that people exchange energy during the course of the day.  It is very common for people to communicate using energy cords.  An energy cord is just that; a line of energy between people that they use to communicate across, very much like a telephone line.  I have a wonderful photograph where you can see the energy cords between my young daughter and me.  You can send an energy cord to someones throat for verbal communication, to their pelvis for sexual communication, to their heart for love, or to their seventh chakra for spiritual communication.  Once again, at the end of the day, it's important to disconnect, or hang up, all the communication energy cords so that you can relax with your own thoughts.
It is also very common for people to deliberately invade each other's space, throw painful energy at each other, and manipulate and program each other.  It's all fun and fascinating stuff!  I will talk about these topics, why people do this, and what you can do about it in future blogs.
Here's an energy for releasing the everyday (stuff) of energy exchanges and cords:  Sit in a straight back chair, put your feet on flat on the ground, and take a deep breath. Send down a beam of energy from your hips deep into the center of the earth. See yourself sitting in a bubble of your own energy. Pull your aura in close around you, about eighteen to twenty-four inches out from your body.  To get a better view, you can put your attention up in the corner of the room and look down at your body.  Give yourself permission to see any energy from other people light up as red circles, or just splotches of energy.  Give yourself permission to see any communication cords that you have with other people. Now climb back into your body and put your attention behind your eyes in the center of your head.  Gently vibrate or shake your energy and aura so that all the foreign energy loosens up.  Let your grounding pull it out of your space and take it down to the center of the earth.  Be amused at how much foreign energy may have accumulated in your space!  Now fill up your new space with your favorite color and own your body.  Stand up and stretch and say Hello to yourself!

Take care,
Madeline

http://www.psychicawakeningsseattle.com/

“Are They Friendly Spirits?” (Rocket J. Squirrel)

In my last blog, I brought up the subject of trancemediums – people who allow (either voluntarily or involuntary) other spirits to channel through them. Mostly we hear only the scary stories about trancemediums being crazy people or “possessed” by the devil. But some people have used their trancemediumship abilities to great advantage for themselves or others.


Most of us have images from movies and TV about what possession looks like. The possessed person’s face and body take on grotesque shapes and postures. They vomit unusual substances and speak in strange voices filled with anger. They can levitate themselves and easily throw heavy furniture across the room.


I’m reading a really interesting book: The Rite: The Making of a Modern Exorcist by Matt Baglio. It’s the story of Father Gary Thomas, who received training in Rome as an exorcist in 2005. Even among Catholic priests, exorcism is a controversial subject. In our modern day and age with all of our scientific understanding of the brain and the body, it’s getting more difficult to believe in evil spirits and possession. “Discernment” of possession from “natural” mental health problems is a crucial skill. Most priests who are trained as exorcists work closely with psychiatrists to distinguish possession from mental health problems. The author says that if you perform an exorcism on a person who is not possessed, but does have mental health problems, then the mental health issues could worsen. I myself believe that all of mental illnesses are the result of some kind of foreign energy that is stuck in the patient’s space. As a being you need to be fully attached to and totally inhabit the body into which you were born. Not being fully in your body leaves room for other beings to enter, resulting in poor decision making and strange behaviors.


Some trancemediums have agreements with friendly and beneficial spirits. They do extraordinary readings for people, providing deep, profound information. They also write books to share their knowledge with a wider audience. These authors include Jane Roberts, Ester Hicks, and Edward Cacye. There are many books that give instructions for channeling spirits or your higher self. The Catholic Church prohibits dabbling in the occult, fearing that so things could make one vulnerable to the devil. My advice is to work directly with a teacher who is very well grounded and attracts only “friendly spirits.” I, myself, participated for one year in a program to channel spirits and allow them to talk through me. It wasn’t my forte though. Like I said in my previous post, “I’d rather do it myself.” But I saw some fascinating phenomena while I was in this program, and receive very useful information.


For more information, here are a few more books that might interest you:
Interview With an Exorcist: An Insider’s Look at the Devil, Possession, and the Path to Deliverance by Jose Antonio Fortea
An Exorcist Tells His Story by Gabriele Amorth
The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty (made into a horror movie in 1973)


What do you believe about being possessed by evil or benevolent spirits? What have you experiences? Feel free to share here with a comment.

Blessings,
Madeline
www.PsychicAwakeningsSeattle.com

Do the Reading Yourself

I am often asked if I "channel" when I do a reading.  A "channel"  is a conduit through which some substance can flow.  I prefer to channel myself when I read.  I flow myself  and my energy through my body.  There are some psychics who actually do leave and allow another being to come in and do the reading. These psychics are called "trancemediums."  I personally  believe that it's important for you to learn how to read first before allowing other beings to channel through you. You have to learn how to be in control of your own space and energy before turning your body over to an entity who may not value and care for it as much as you do.  If they leave any of their energy in your space, or if they don't totally disconnect from your body, then that is a way for them to control you.  If you don't know how  to read yourself, you won't see this happening.  Entities are not "higher" or "holier" than you, even those who claim to be so.  They are here to learn and grow, just like us.  "As above, so below" works both ways.  It's a good thing to be in communication with spirits while you read, just don't let them take over control of your body or the reading.

Many people are natural channelers, it "just happens" to them.  They move out, and another spirit moves in.  Some of these psychics move so far out of their bodies, that they don't even remember what was said during the reading.  Sometimes, the other spirit doesn't want to move out.  So it's very important to learn how to be senior in your own space.  People who are famous channellers and have been channelling for years have very strong contracts with the beings with whom they are working.  They may be channelling some very profound information that is helpful for many people, but at some point, the beings' agenda may become more important than their own purpose for being here this lifetime.  Chronic or strange illnesses and ego issues can be indications that someone has given up their seniority to beings whom they are channelling.

In addition to being of service to people, I read for my own personal growth.  I learn something about myself from every person whom I read.  When a channeller loses consciousness during a reading, it doesn't seem to me that they can be learning very much from it.  The beings want to have a body without the responsibility that goes with it.   You don't have to provide the beings the space to do the growing and learning at your expense.  They can get their own  body and experience their own joys and pains that come along with the human experience!

I will be blogging much more about readings and how to read.  Instead of including my usual "Psychic Exercise" for you this time, I invite you to come to one of our Reading Clinics, or take a class.  You'll get lots of exercise your psychic muscles there! The next Psychic Tools 101 class starts Thursday, April 15.  We would love for you to join us.  Bring your beings with you and we'll teach them how to be helpful to you without invading your space!

Enjoy Your Day!
Madeline
http://www.psychicawakeningsseattle.com/

In the Garden of Spiritual Growth

I profess to be a spiritual teacher. My purpose is to help others with their "spiritual growth." What does that mean? Sometimes I ponder that myself. Life seems to be so full of problems. We are always promising ourselves to become "better" people, but real change seems to be very difficult. How can you tell when you are really changing? How is it that you are different than you were before?

Spiritual growth is a process of becoming more aware of yourself as Spirit expressing through a body. As your awareness increases, you learn how to use your spiritual abilities to create your physical reality. You learn how to manifest the things you need to be physically comfortable like a warm house, food and clothing. You learn how to create right livelihood, relationships and abundance. You learn how to use your psychic abilities to read and interpret the energies around you, distinguishing what is your energy, and what is not your energy. You no longer have to be a victim to foreign energies overwhelming you. You learn that working with energy to create change takes much less effort than trying to control situations with force. You learn how to manage and enjoy the emotional levels of your body. You are able to sit still and look within yourself for your answers. These are some of the markers of spiritual growth as I have experienced them. I teach people all of these things because I love watching their eyes light up every time they realize, "Yes! I can do this! I can just be myself and do all of these things too."

As I said above, spiritual growth is a process on this earth. Things don't always go the way we think they should. Manifesting in the physical world is challenging because the energy is much denser. When the energy is heavier, things happen slowly. We often lose our clarity due to the emotional nature of our human bodies. Even with spiritual awareness, some of our lessons are painful. But we know that some pain is part of the process and that we are hopefully just cleaning our deeper levels of our awareness. To sum it up, spiritual growth is the process of remembering that you are Spirit, expressing your divine nature through your body, and manifesting peace and love in your life and in the life of others around you.

Exercise for Spiritual Awareness: Sit in a straight back chair with your feet flat on the ground. Close your eyes and take a deep breath to relax. Visualize a strong grounding cord of energy from your hips deep into the center of the earth. Let go of any expectations and put your attention about two or three inches behind your eyes. Without using thoughts, slowly shift your awareness among the following suggestions: First, be aware of the weight of your body in the chair; then move your awareness to your heart beating, your blood flowing and your breakfast digesting; next be aware of your life force energy that animates your body. Now be aware of your awareness. Expand your awareness to know that you are not your body, you are not your thoughts, your are not your problems, and you are not your emotions. Let these few moments of spiritual awareness and freedom be a healing for you.

Peaceful Blessings,

Madeline

http://www.psychicawakeningsseattle.com/

Alive and Well

OH MY GOODNESS!! PLEASE forgive me! I am indeed alive and well, but like so many other bloggers before me with good intentions, I've let too many weeks (or is that months?!) pass by without a word. It's not as if I was outright neglectful. I did actually sit down on occassion and try to eke something out. Well, I'll skip the excuses and just start fresh today (with this short Hello)! Spring officially starts this Sunday, and I feel my Creative Sap rising.

Blessings!
Madeline
http://www.psychicawakeningsseattle.com/

Seniority and Your Creations

A really interesting person came in for a clairvoyant reading earlier this week. I looked at her aura and I could clearly see her work responsibilities, the books she was reading, her husband and kids, her bathroom remodel, the cookies she made for her son's classroom and the family cat who was overdue for its shots. There was one thing that I couldn't see and that was she, the spirit whose body it was. She was nowhere near her body. She was gone and her creations and responsibilities were running her life.

Actually, most of us have all got it real bad now- too much to do. Too much to keep up with. Too many commitments. Too many interests. Too much responsibility. Of course the one thing we don't have enough of is time. I catch myself thinking, "I've just got to finish this one thing, then I have to start project "X", and if I can at least start with project "Y" today, I'll feel like I'll be at a good stopping point for the day." We all know that feeling of never feeling caught up. The problem isn't that you don't have enough time. The real problem is that you have lost your space. Your aura and psychic space is filled up with your projects and your creations. On a body level, you feel smothered and overwhelmed. On a spiritual level, there's no room for you so you leave and it's like abandoning ship. Where do you go? Some people go into future time to deal with what is to come. Some people go into past time, trying to solve old problems. When you are not in your own space to take charge, then your creations run your life. You become busy with the next required action, or worse: putting out fires. The pressure to get things done causes one to turn down the feelings and go into "let's just get it done" mode. In psychic jargon, this is called "losing your seniority." Everything that you are doing has become more important than You.

When you are senior in your own space, your are the one making conscious decisions for how you want to expend your energy, time and other resources. Even if everything that you are doing are things that you want to be doing, sometimes it gets to the point where the costs exceed the benefits, or where you feel you have no choice in the matter but to carry on. This is stressful and always takes a toll. Of course, there are some long term goals that are worth the effort and stress. But when there is stress with no end or goal in sight, then any character-building benefits of long term hard work become lost under punishment. You, the Spirit, can release the stress, change your energy, and be present.

It isn't easy for the mind to let go of things into which you have put much of your time and energy. So if you aren't ready to take any physical actions to change the situation, here is an exercise to start to shift the energy and get your seniority back:

Sit in a straight-back chair, with your feet flat on the ground. Close your eyes and take a deep breath. Create, or imagine, a strong grounding cord of energy from your hips down into the center of the earth. Visualize, or just be aware of your aura around you. Let the energy all of your projects light up like little stars. Now create, imagine or visualize a cabinet with several drawers of various sized out in front of you. Allow the stars to be pulled out of your aura and be organized in the drawers. You can even put labels on the drawers. Keep your attention in your head, you don't have to follow the energy into a drawer! Now fill in the spaces where the stars were with your own Spiritual energy in the form of your favorite color. Stand up and stretch into your new space.

Enjoy Your Day,

Madeline http://www.psychicawakeningsseattle.com/

Hindrances to Developing Your Psychic Abilites

Many people have a stereotypical image of what being a psychic is like. They think that all psychics can see visions of everything you've ever done, know what you're thinking, communicate clearly with dead people and angels, predict the future and move objects without touching them. Having all of these skills would be a very tall order! Everyone (including you) has their own psychic strengths and weaknesses. Each of these skills involves some way of perceiving the energy around you in your aura. Some people can "see clearly" (clairvoyance), some people can "hear clearly" (clairaudience), and other people can "feel clearly" (clairsentience). Other psychic skills include precognition, healing, telekenesis and trancemediumship. Everyone is born with various psychic abilities and it is possible to more fully develop each of these skills, though some will feel more natural to you than others.

The biggest hindrance to becoming more psychic is the belief that you're not! Who told you you weren't psychic? Actually it was more likely that you just weren't validated for your skills as you were growing up. Maybe you were hushed up when you tried to ask about things that you weren't supposed to know (kids are very perceptive!). Maybe you had an "imaginary" friend and people told you that there was no such thing. We learned how to close it all down, especially those of us who may have been punished for these things.

A second hindrance to developing your psychic abilities is having the stereotypical image of psychics described above. Psychics do not necessarily see in wide-screen, IMax, 3-D vision, nor hear in HD, high-tech stereo. Rather their perceptions of the subtle energy they are looking at is just that - subtle. Good readers are calm and quiet. They have to turn down all the noise and clutter in order to read/perceive/tune into subtle energy. Your first psychic hits might just be a faint image or a single word or a very slight feeling around your heart.

The stereotypical image of a psychic usually doesn't include the most important psychic skill that you can develop. This is the skill of communicating on a spiritual level. When you are receiving important or sensitive information about someone, how do you describe it to them in a caring and respectful way so they can understand and use it? When you can see that someone isn't acting in their own best interest, can you stay out of judgement? How do you communicate in a way that validates them and helps them to move along their path? This is what turns a "psychic reading" into a space of spiritual growth and connection. If you would like to experience this kind of reading, please give us a call!

Exercise Releasing Hindrances to Developing Your Psychic Abilities: Sit in a straight back chair, put your feet on flat on the ground, and take a deep breath. Send down a beam of energy from your hips deep into the center of the earth. See yourself sitting in a bubble of your own energy. Visualize a "time line" out in front of you with one end originating at your birth, and the other end representing where you are right now. Create an image of a rose at the end with your birth. Move the rose along the time-line to the other end. Watch it as it picks up any and all energy that other people put into your space that invalidates your own psychic abilities. Also sop up any energy that defines a psychic as something you are not! You can run the rose along the time-line as many times as you want. When you are done, visualize the rose exploding and releasing all of the invalidation energy out of your space. Now put your attention right behind your eyes, say Hello to yourself using your first name, and also say "Yes, I have the makings for being a very fine psychic!"

Pray for Peace,
Madeline
http://www.psychicawakeningsseattle.com/