I love to nerd out about the art of psychic reading. Except what gets me is not about the readings themselves at all nor about the fact that I’m a psychic reader myself. That’s all circumstantial.  What I wish we all got, at a visceral level, has to do with the dream-like nature of reality, and how being in touch with that underlying field of Consciousness and creativity changes us in ways we haven’t quite even begun to map.  That can happen in a reading (as…

I had the honor of being invited into Rachel and Gordon’s virtual creative lab — their brand new podcast, Existential Tetherball — last week as a guest to explore the biiiig topic of Synchronicity.  Synchronicity is a surprise-filled way for us to understand ourselves so intimately tied with the whole Universe, that sometimes we get to clearly witness the contents of our inner world, reflected and amplified "out there". It's an antidote to dispel our culture's underlying sense that the Cosmos is a nihilistic, reductionist, random…

When we know our own spirit, we can never get lost.  These past weeks, multiple encounters have reminded me that many of us, however (highly) sensitive, don’t know well what our own spirit feels like. This can often happen when we take on lots of energies that don’t belong with us, and many of us have been doing that our whole lives.  Our spirit is a powerful, wise and loving part of us with a unique signature.  Being intimately acquainted with this eternal part of us…

As I continue working to dig for the roots of what makes our culture so averse, fearful, violent and suppressive of the paranormal, psychic, and metaphysical, I've been working on a follow up essay from last year’s "Dismantling the Woo-Woo Taboo". This one is centered on psychiatry as the designated gatekeeper of what’s deemed “sane”. From my work in progress:  "The idea of ontological security originates from psychiatrist R.D. Laing’s 1960 book on the existential dimensions of schizophrenia, The Divided Self. He writes:  'If the individual…

Shame, manipulation, force and coercion emphatically do not build character. (However well meaning; however subtle, however meant to "help us see", "help us learn", "help us grow", "help us get over ourselves", "help us deal with adversity better".) Our culture is built on the myth that human beings, left to their own devices, will be lazy, "sinful" in religious contexts, selfish and destructive. That we need external, top-down control in order to earn our right to feel we’re good people.  When we are immersed in this paradigm, we can't…

I have a complicated history with the term (psychic) empath.  On one hand, I undeniably am one. I say undeniably, because even though I tried to explain the issue in other terms to myself for years, people close to me pointed out in real time when I was absorbing their pain, and didn’t realize it. It’s been wild to watch it happen, and I’m lucky to have psychic-literate people around me.  On the other hand, I cringe at the way the term seemed to always come with…

"Unless a person learns of the sacred intentions in their own life it will be difficult for them to understand the sacred presence in all of life." — Michael Meade ("The World Behind The World")

Unless we know, in a robust and reality-grounded way, what psychic experiences really are, and what true interplay with the realms beyond the material can look like, we’re going to have a hard time discerning how to navigate experiences at the edges of consensus reality.  The thing is, those experiences happen whether we want them to or not.  Even though as a culture we've become illiterate in the languages of the subtle realms, they are the basis for many of our experiences. (As an aside, our illiteracy here…

More thoughts on why mystical, psychic, paranormal and High Strangeness experiences are typically dismissed as “crazy” in the mainstream — and why many of us fear and avoid woo-woo: The medical establishment — and specifically the field of psychiatry, as a cultural locus of authority — has been indirectly one of the major gatekeepers of what gets to be considered “valid reality”. By designing diagnostic criteria that aim to flag when an individual’s mind has broken with reality, they’ve needed to come up with a standardized…

You’ve probably heard of the metaphorical “veil” between our earthly world and the world of spirits.  Well, my sense is that our bodies are the veil. Our physical brains and bodies block many of the myriad incoming signals from Infinity to create our singular perspective here and now. With practice, we can learn to open up our capacity to perceive more, if we so choose.  Is it “bad” that our individualized organism “locks us in” to a singular perspective? Some spiritual approaches would make it seem that…