About seeing a psychic

    

I’ve heard many things against the tarot and its similar practices involving some kind of “psychic phenomenon”. This is indeed a complex issue that deserves to be considered carefully.               

When I was 16, I went through a pretty terrible time during which I felt overwhelmed by intense panic and sorrow. And without expecting it, I received a letter from an astrologer. Today, I am grateful to this man. He was writing he knew about the deep turmoil I was going through. He gave me dates about recent important events in my life. He even gave me numbers with which I played the lottery for the first time and I won (not too much though). He proposed to help for a very little amount of money and never contacted me again afterwards. This really helped me: his support, his kindness, his professionalism. He sent me an astrological theme for the whole year to come and I decided to follow it carefully. This was a holy document for me, like a life line that was sent to me as I was about to drawn. It was magic. And it helped me tremendously.

Later, I understood that going to see a psychic is not necessarily the best thing to do. Several religions condemn it and I can see a few reasons for that.

Many people tend to underestimate what is really at stake here. They may tell you “it’s fun to know”, “I’m curious to see what it is gonna be like”. Many take this very lightly. Still, the deeper need behind this is a our need to feel reassured, our need to feel safe and our need for control. We want to stop being scared. We want to hear that everything is gonna be all right. We want to be able to dream and know for sure that our dream will come true.


When we decide to go and see a psychic, we want to know that we can walk ahead safely and keep our mind in a positive perspective without thinking we have to prepare for the worse.

  
And even deeper than that, we want to know that we are ok, that we are just adequate the way we are, that we’re doing well the way we do. We do not only want to be reassured about our life. We also want to feel good about ourselves. We want to be able to relax and accept ourselves just as we are.

And digging even further, we are longing to believe in something greater than ourselves, some force that would protect us, some “one” or some “thing” that would love us, some power that would make our dreams come true. This seems to be a profound need that we have and must honor. Some would consider this longing as pathetic. I do see it as a profound sense of life and as a sure sign of our “inner knowing” that we are more to life than the way we usually think; and that we can expect more than what our conditioning tells us to.

I am 34. I’ve been reading cards for about 16 years. Sometimes people tell me they do not believe in this. But I know that most of the time they do. How many times have I heard: “Ok, I do not believe in it, but let’s do for fun!”? Then they add: “Just remove the bad cards!” How many times have I seen fear and blush on the face of my “unbelieving clients”? And still, I can't blame them. Doubt is sound. Experience makes us believe, understand things in our own way. And eventually we can embrace magic - this enchanting sensation that everything is interwoven in some invisible realm that makes more sense and meaning than the mundane set of actions we untertake in our daily routine.

We are – more or less, that’s true – fascinated by that! We do believe – even when we say we don’t. Of course we know that many people out there are ready to make us believe what we want to believe – just to take our money. But all of us have experienced "strange" phenomenon. All of us have intuitions.

   
I do believe each of us has the ability to feel what is unfolding in our lives. And very much like we can all draw, we do not all have the talent to draw well. Many times, I envy my sister who is a real artist and who can draw pictures that are so inspiring. I do envy those singers who can communicate such an emotion through the subtleties of their interpretation. I consider my readings as being the same. We can all learn to read. But we cannot all feel the subtleties and express them in a clear and positive way.

Some people believe that when we go and see a psychic, we call on devilish forces. I do not believe that, but the truth is: I don’t know. If you do believe this, you should probably respect your gut feeling and values. Considering the words of caution of different religions and philosophies, we can wonder: Is this good for us?


I do not believe in a God who would punish me if I try to anticipate the future or understand a given situation by reading cards. Still, I tend to ponder the necessity to do so.

I do not consider christianism as being the only reference, but if we take the Bible, the message we read the most, the message that is expressed 300 times is the following one:
Do not fear!

This is quite groundbreaking for many of us as we were raised in a religion of fear…

This led me to the following insight: We are not supposed to seek for reassurance through a psychic because we are not meant to seek for reassurance from anything else but God. And truly, when we do believe in God, this is this ultimate leap of faith. This is like saying: “I trust you. My life is in your hands. I know you lead me and I know you protect me and you comfort me - everyday. And in you, I do feel safe.”

Still, fear is part of our human condition. And we cannot blame ourselves for feeling scared. Jesus himself was shown to be scared on the Mount of Oliviers. We cannot pretend we don’t. None of us has this level of trust and faith never to be scared.

It appeared to me that accepting the help of this astrologer 19 years ago was an important step on the way of learning to trust. Because this opened the possibility of hope. This opened the possibility of something "out there" that could support me and guide me. Later, I could embrace a deeper level of trust and I hope to access an even deeper one in the future.

  
There is another issue I wanted to talk about here: I do not believe in absolute fate and I do not believe things happen at random. Many people do not understand my point. For many of them, I should at least believe in fate. But I do consider life as being a co-creation. Everyone may not believe in God – or name it this way. Many people talk about God as “the universe”, or “Life” or “source energy”. Whatever we name it, this is what I believe we do co-create with. Everything is not in our hands. Still, we do have great power over our life. We make choices. And those choices have consequences. Certain choices seem obvious: We can choose to study medicine instead of arts. We choose to marry Tim and not Tom. Other choices are more subtle. So much so that we not even regard them as choices. We may choose to think a certain way. We may choose to have a certain reaction, have a certain attitude, behaviour, perception, interpretation. All those choices participate in our co-creation. To view things this way emphasises the fact that the power in our lives belongs both to us and God.

Still, many times, here’s what happens: when we go and see a psychic, we place our power in the hands of the psychic, his words, the outside world. In a way, the risk is to give away our own power and not to give it away in "the nicest and smartest hands". Some people even become addict as they become needy of that information about “what they should do” and “what will happen”.

I do not agree with those so called “professionals” who nurture dependence in their clients. Of course, I do come with my own beliefs which may not be shared by everyone (and I do not intend to persuade anyone), but for me, readings and other psychic sessions should only be one step on the way. It should never take our power of choice away. It should never make us dependent on someone else. It should never put us in a place of fear. 

A reading - in the way I see it - should empower us, give us hope, help us grow, help us trust life at a deeper level, give us joy, give us energy, make us feel understood and accepted the way we are, make us feel supported, underline our qualities and resources, help us see the world in a positive light, help us see our life in a positive light, help us see ourselves in a positive light, give us clues about how we can handle a situation in a positive way, in a way that brings hope, power and faith.

And still, this is only one step on the way; this step can actually be several steps on a long way, but still, it has an end. Because further on the way, we do not feel the need for it anymore. We trust more and are able to surrender, we are able to sense our inner guidance within ourselves, so that we do not need any one else to tell us what. We feel more empowered to co-create our own reality with the help of our inner voice and our faith in Life.

CK.