Psychic Studies 101
When I was in graduate school, I took a class in psychic studies. I’d just read the book, “Psychic Discoveries Behind the Iron Curtain,” and I fantasized about being able to make better business decisions or being able to detect people’s hidden motivations. In class, we did these creepy exercises where you extended your energy into the other person’s energy field. Then you said whatever you heard in your mind. I felt like I was sticking my hands in raw sewage. When they connected with me, I was even more creeped out. Fortunately, my grade was dependent on how well I wrote about my experiences and not my success rate.
Although, one day we had to guess where our teacher was. He was hiding somewhere in the city. Someone came into class and said to draw whatever we thought. I thought of a giant dick so I drew that. Turns out he was standing by the water tower above. So everyone thought I got it right.
Another time, we had to do a reading about someone based on name only. I decided to go ice skating and write whatever I thought about while skating. I wrote about rats. Turned out my person was kind of a rat, a shrewd business wheeler-dealer. He also had rats in his NYC apartment. But quite honestly, his last name sounded like a mafia name. It was a great metaphor.
Was I psychic, or was I just fucking around and happened to get some things sort of right? I vote for fucking around.
Battered Minds
As part of the class, we had to attend a “Battered Minds” group meeting — professional psychics who were stuck in victimhood because they saw a vision of something bad, like 9/11. I got up and walked out after a few minutes. They were all compulsive whiners. They believed every emotionally wrapped thought that entered their minds; they had absolutely NO discrimination. They thought everything was about them.
Clearly they tapped into the collective illusion and saw 9/11 or some other tragic event. But was that helpful? To me, it only proved that they believed the illusion to be true and unchangeable. I didn’t want to marinate in their world view. The illusion won’t disappear until we stop believing it.
The purpose of a prophet is not to tell us the future so we can sit in fear and wait until the dreaded prophecy passes, declaring said prophet right or wrong. It’s to recognize where we’re headed and to drop the thoughts that are causing that unwanted future from the collective conversation.
Psychic Studies 101 was many years ago, and I’ve done a lot of discriminating and letting go since. The ancient ones were right. Everything is mind. The best place for our mind to be focused is on itself. If everyone let go of their own unwanted thoughts, the world would be amazing in no time at all.
Most people are highly focused on other people’s minds. In fact, I’ve mentored people pleasers who admitted that they often get in other people’s minds so they know what to say to please them. False minds analyze and hold onto other people’s thoughts in order to look good, stay safe, keep them in their life, or say the right thing. Our false minds have gotten erroneously connected and intertwined; and that’s why we’re all so damn confused.
Our job is our OWN mind. If someone else’s experience generates emotion when we hear them talk, then it isn’t true for us. If they want to make it true for them, that’s their prerogative. But freedom is about being a master of our own mind; and that requires minding our own damn business.
The Lesson
We were required to experience a bunch of personal readings during that class. I taped them all. A few years ago, I listened to the tapes one last time before I trashed my tape recorder and tapes. More than a decade had passed, nothing in them came true. Nothing! These were professional psychics, not students.
The future that they saw had been wiped off my mental hard drive. They were reading my false mind, and I’d let much of that go. Most of them tapped into my false desires and told me what I wanted to hear. They picked up on my false fears and told me that they wouldn’t happen. They said what I longed to hear to sooth my crappy beliefs. They also gave me reasons for things that were happening in my life — spirit attachments, angels, karma, or past lives. That was all bullshit too. False minds love reasons. But reasons are worthless. The false mind has got 99 problems, and it’s causing all of them.
Intuition is also a false self skill that allows us to work around our beliefs. It’s very helpful in the illusion, but it’s worthless if our goal is freedom. Inspiration is what we want. Inspiration comes from our True Self. It’s usually silent. We just find ourself doing something without much thinking at all.
Quite frankly, I wanted psychic or intuitive power because I was afraid of my future. I’d become accustomed to being blindsided. I wanted advance warning to avert problems. I no longer trusted my True Self to keep me safe. I’d become afraid of surprises because they were usually bad.
What I really wanted was to purify my false mind and take what I got, knowing that it would be what I wanted, needed, and earned. I didn’t want to have a concrete and perfect plan; I wanted to be constantly pleasantly surprised. I didn’t want to see the crappy illusion and grab only the good stuff. I didn’t want to will the world into submission. I didn’t want to know people’s beliefs and say the right thing to please them. Psychic Studies 101 was very interesting but truly worthless. So I closed that door and got back on the path to freedom.
