Your Psychic Self

by Melissa Alvarez

  Orbs often show up in photographs as a white spherical shape. Sometimes they look like they have a darker round circle in the center or slightly off center. The problem with many orbs in a photograph is that most of the time they are not a ghost manifestation on film but are actually some kind of airborne particle that is in front of the camera when the flash goes off, or a dirty lens. Usually this is dust but it can also be pollen, moisture in the air, or even tiny gnats.

  How can you tell the difference between dust orbs and real orbs? First, make sure your camera is 35mm if you’re going orb hunting. If you’re using another type of digital camera, you’re going to get a lot of orbs showing up because the dust is being digitized. This doesn’t occur as much with a 35mm digital camera, so there’s a better chance of capturing real orbs. Real orbs will have a couple of features that dust orbs don’t have. They will be brighter—a more solid, white color instead of the thin, faded appearance of the dust orb. They may have a trail of light behind the actual orb, have multiple edges as if they’re moving, and you might even see a face inside the orb. Don’t confuse this face with the digitized shape in the center of a dust orb. When you see a face in one, you’ll also psychically sense that this orb is unique and real.

  Seeing orbs physically manifest is different. They may appear as slow-moving orbs; as quick-moving, zigzagging lights; or as unmoving, glowing orbs. When you see this phenomenon, you should immediately scan the lights with whatever intuitive ability you possess and then go with your first impression as to what it is. The lights may feel like they have ghost, fairy, or angel energy. You may also sense that it’s your guide trying to get your attention. If you sense something immediately and it’s strong, then don’t second-guess it.

  Try It Now: Pictures of Spirits

  Get out your camera and visit a place that is thought to be haunted. Don’t worry; you don’t have to go in the middle of the night unless you just want to. Visiting the area during the daytime is perfectly fine. If you’re uneasy visiting a haunted place, then take a walk anywhere and start snapping pictures of things that you feel drawn to. If you have a digital 35mm camera, you can take hundreds of pictures and then delete them if nothing shows up. Make sure you look at them in a large size on your computer first, just in case you miss something on the small screen of your camera. If you don’t own a camera, you can pick up a cheap disposable one at a local store. Sometimes you may catch a white streak or other anomaly that indicates spirit activity. Save those pictures.

  Precognition

  Let’s clear up the confusion between precognition and a premonition before we delve deeper into each one. Precognition is a sudden, intense knowing that something is going to happen. In precognition, you often see everything that happens, down to the smallest detail, or you may see enough main parts of the event that, when it happens, there is no doubt that your impression was that specific event. Since no one intuitive can ever know every detail about the future, this ability refers to knowing general outcomes of specific courses of action with occasional flashes of detailed insight. A premonition is a feeling that something might happen without being able to determine the details of the event. We will discuss premonitions in detail in the next entry.

  Both precognition and premonition have been acknowledged for a very long time. The Greeks used to consult oracles in order to learn about future events. Prophets were also important in ancient times, due to their clairvoyant and precognitive ability to see into the future. Almost everyone has experienced precognition at some point in their lives. Think back to a time when you sensed something that was going to happen in the future and were right about that impression.

  As an intuitive, you will gain more confidence in your precognitive impressions by tracking what you saw and the actual results. You can start a log or journal that lists and gives details of each event you saw and the date you received the impression. Then, when the event actually comes to pass, write down the date that it happened. This is important because the event can happen a few minutes after you receive the impression or it may be years later. By tracking the dates of your impressions and the actual occurrences, you can start to see patterns in your impressions. If you notice there are always three days between your impression and the actual event, and it happens that way 99 percent of the time, then you know to expect the event three days after you see it. If the time frames do not have any type of pattern, you’ll just have to keep your eyes and ears open to find out when the event happens.

  Precognitive impressions can come to you when you’re fully conscious or when you’re dreaming. They can appear in vivid detail, as a generalized description, or in symbolic form. You may tend to notice that your precognitive abilities happen when you’re resting or doing mundane tasks that give the mind time to relax. Precognition is not an ability that you can control. In other words, you can’t practice precognition like you can practice clairvoyance. The impressions will come to you when you’re supposed to get them and are quite often negative and traumatic events. That doesn’t mean precognition doesn’t work with positive events. It does. You may see a friend who has had difficulties getting pregnant cradling an infant in her arms and you know it is her child, which is positive. You can also use the information you receive during a precognitive impression to prevent negative things from happening to you. You can, through your free will, change your plans or take a different route to work. At other times, especially when it’s a large world event, there’s unfortunately nothing you can do to change what you saw.

  Premonition

  A premonition is an unexplainable feeling that something is going to happen when you have absolutely no reason to believe that it will. It isn’t as detailed as a precognitive impression and is more empathic in nature. Instead of seeing the actual event happen in detail, as you would in a precognitive impression, you will just know in your gut, on an emotional level, that something is going to happen. You can’t explain it, you just feel it. Premonitions are often associated with negative events involving loved ones, such as accidents, financial problems, or relationship problems. You may also receive premonitions about natural disasters, public figures, or major events that the world is watching.

  When you intuitively receive a premonition, it is usually accompanied by physical sensations such as an overall sense of uneasiness, depression, unexplained worry, or increased anxiety, which can manifest into actual physical distress the closer you get to the event actually happening. These feelings can sometimes increase in strength until you feel physically sick when you’re not ill. A premonition causes you to experience a feeling of constant waiting for the bad thing to happen. When it does, you’ll feel a connection to that event and the physical distress associated with the premonition will go away.

  Why do premonitions happen? I believe that you are given these feelings so that you can look for potential situations before they happen. Premonitions often warn of danger that can be avoided if you take proper action. They can also prepare you emotionally so an event is less of a shock to your system; we’re more emotionally and mentally prepared to handle the situation and offer our support when we’ve been prepared with a premonition.

  You may have premonitions on a regular basis, even if you don’t recognize the premonition when you have it. Think of it as subconscious self-sabotage. Let’s say you’re getting ready for work. You feel a premonition surrounding work but don’t realize that you just had a premonition. Suddenly you’re not comfortable in your clothes so you change several times before heading out the door. Now you’re late. When you get to work, you find the building is shut down due to hazardous fumes being circulated by the air conditioning. Several of your coworkers are headed to the hospital. Had you been on time for work, you may have been headed to the hospital, too. You subconsciously heeded your premonition by making yourself late. At other times, you can consciously use your premonition to avoid a situation. If you sense that you are going to have an argument
with a friend, then just avoid seeing that friend until the feeling has passed. Or if you are driving and suddenly get an anxious feeling about the road you’re traveling, then exit and go a different way. You may avoid being in a car accident.

  Premonitions can also change into precognitive impressions. It may start as a feeling of unease and hours later you’re having a full-blown vision of a disastrous event taking place. In these times, keep your cool and let the vision play out, then determine if there is anything you can do to stop what you saw from happening. Sometimes you can help the situation, while other times you unfortunately can’t.

  Retrocognition

  Retrocognition is when you receive impressions, about past events that occurred in this life or in past lifetimes by using your intuitive abilities rather than any physical senses. Also known as “postcognition,” it is similar to precognition and premonitions in that it can manifest as a mild feeling or a vivid vision. If you have this ability, you can see, feel, and sense things about a person that they have already experienced. This includes seeing and feeling things that happened in past lives. I’ve found that when I do readings I will also use retrocognition, and those impressions help to validate the impressions that I am given that have yet to happen. You may see the information playing as if it’s a movie, you may see it as though you’re viewing through the eyes of a participant, or you may see it as an outsider observing what’s happening. You may receive the impressions through vision, touch, hearing, or simply knowing. Any of the clair abilities can send you into retrocognition impressions. Because retrocognition involves events that have already happened, you can check the accuracy of the impressions that you received through research. Granted, not everything you pick up will be documented, especially daily-life types of things, but if you get impressions about events that were well known and documented, then you may discover that your impressions were right. I always think it’s a good idea to check out your impressions when you can, because it helps you keep track of your accuracy levels.

  I often use retrocognition when I’m doing past life readings. I access the person’s energy and then look back into past lives to obtain specific information that happened long ago that can be helpful in their current lifetime. Using retrocognition, I can normally see very vivid details about the people in the scene, surroundings, time, and place and often I even hear conversations. If you were to experience past life recall, that too is retrocognition. You’re remembering a past life that you lived and information from that memory will often help you in some manner today. I believe that you’re not going to receive information unless there is a reason for it; so always look for that reason, especially when the information comes from the past. Often, retrocognition allows you to find the source of fears so that you can eliminate them.

  Retrocognition doesn’t always go back to ancient history or times long ago. You can pick up information about something that happened last week, last month, or last year. There are many uses for retrocognition, especially when you use the ability with purpose. You can look for specific information about your current life. For example, if you’re terrified of ladders and don’t know why, then by using retrocognition you can go back to the point when you first felt that fear. Maybe you were only two years old and a ladder slipped and fell on you. By knowing the root cause of your feelings, you can let them go.

  I’ve heard it said that if you have the intuitive ability of precognition then you can’t have the ability of retrocognition. I know for a fact that this isn’t true. I have them both and personally know many other intuitives who also do. If you’re told that you can’t be retrocognitive and precognitive at the same time, disregard that comment; many intuitives can do both, and your abilities are unique to you.

  Try It Now:

  Use Retrocognition to Remember a Past Life

  For this exercise, I want you to stretch out on your bed and get comfortable. Concentrate on using retrocognition to remember a past life that you want to know about at this point in time. Ask your guides to show you this current lifetime as you look for it. Now, with your eyes closed, allow your mind to move back in time to the past lifetime you’re supposed to see. Make note of anything that will indicate the time period or the location and pay special attention to the details of the vision. Ask your guides what your lesson was in this past lifetime and how it is related to your current lifetime. Once the vision is over, stretch as you remember the details; then get up and write it all down or type it up so that you don’t forget any of the details.

  Mental Telepathy

  Mental telepathy is when you’re able to hear the thoughts of people around you using your sixth sense. It is the ability to communicate mind-to-mind with another person. Physical examples of this happening are when you finish someone’s sentence or say the same thing at the same time. Or, perhaps you’re out with a friend and find yourself in a situation where you want to leave, and you look at your friend and suddenly know to head to the back door instead of the front. When you meet up with your friend a few minutes later outside the back door, you laugh that it’s a good thing you’re such close friends that you know one another’s thoughts.

  When people hear the words “mental telepathy,” they often think that someone can read their minds instantly, so the first words out of their mouths are “so what am I thinking?” While an intuitive might be able to tell them accurately what they’re thinking, I’ve found that quite often the person who asks that question is just testing you. Mental telepathy is much more natural than the forced “tell me what I’m thinking right now and do it quick” testing approach. By definition, it means that you’re using thought transference to communicate with another person without using any of your physical senses. Mental telepathy is associated with intuition and being able to communicate with people who can’t speak due to physical reasons. It is also works for communication with your pets and at other levels.

  Think of good friends who are able to finish each other’s sentences or who don’t even need to say a word to know what the other is thinking—one person simply sends a thought to another person and that person responds in kind. Let me give you an example. You’ve planned to meet your best friend for lunch but on the way there you get caught up in traffic. So you send your friend a telepathic message that you’re running late and will be there in fifteen minutes. When you get to the restaurant, you and your friend pull in at the same time. When it’s discussed, your friend tells you that she felt that you were running fifteen minutes late so she just arrived when you’d be there. This is more than just coincidence because you’d sent the telepathic message to your friend who adjusted her actions to accommodate what she’d picked up from you before arriving at the restaurant.

  As an intuitive, especially if you’re clairaudient, you may telepathically pick up the thoughts of those around you. If you find that this ability is bothersome, you can use creative visualization to put a block up around your energy so that you’re not continually picking up thoughts from others. Sometimes you will perceive the thoughts as complete sentences; other times, the thoughts are reflected as just general feelings that you’ll get from the other person. You may also pick up a few words that relay the entire thought.

  Out-of-Body Experiences

  One phenomenon that many people have experienced is called the out-of-body experience (OBE). While there are many different religious and philosophical beliefs associated with an OBE, we’re going to focus on the basics of what it is, how your intuitive abilities are associated with it, and how you can recognize and do this activity yourself.

  While astral travel is considered to be an OBE, there are similarities and differences between the two. With astral travel, you’re freely and intentionally choosing to visit and explore the astral plane. With an OBE, most people aren’t intentionally trying to have an OBE, it just happens spontaneously. They may find it frightening and never want to have an experience like that again. Or they may
be intrigued by the experience and want to learn more about developing their abilities in metaphysical topics. In both astral travel and an OBE, there is a silver cord connection from the astral body to the physical body, although in a spontaneous OBE the person may not be aware of the silver cord. In both instances, it is the astral body that leaves the physical body.

  OBEs are usually short periods of time when a person is consciously aware of what is going on but they feel separated from their physical body. They often see their physical body from above and are aware of everything being said or done in the room around them. You usually hear about this type of OBE happening in hospitals when a person is ill, has had surgery, is experiencing some kind of trauma, or when they’ve been taking medications. Other times, the person may experience an OBE during times of normalcy, like when they are sleeping, dreaming, or just relaxing, and they can repeat conversations or describe events that really happened when they weren’t physically there to experience them. Some people have even experienced OBEs when driving a car, or doing other tasks where their mind is relaxed. There isn’t a specific criterion for when an OBE takes place; it can happen under any circumstances and at any time.

  When you are intuitively in tune with your astral body, the chances of having an OBE increase. They may occur spontaneously at first, but with focus on intuitively connecting to your astral body, you can learn to separate from your physical body and have an OBE with your astral body staying in close proximity with your physical body. With practice, you can then learn to astral travel. In order to practice having an OBE, you will first tune into your ability of clairvoyance. Relax and focus on your astral body, then intuitively see it rise above your physical body. Try to look down and see your physical body below you. Then, move your astral body back down to your physical body and feel the two reconnect. Once you’re comfortable doing this, you’ll be ready to try moving into the astral plane.