A Still, Small Voice

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DailyOM Library : Echo Bodine : A Still, Small Voice

A Still, Small Voice

From "A Still, Small Voice: A Psychic's guide to Awakening Intuition" by Echo Bodine

Posted by: DailyOM

Over the years, many people have commented that I have an obvious

advantage when it comes to hearing my intuition because of my psychic

abilities. But I always reply � and I feel it�s important to understand

� that intuition and psychic ability are not the same thing at all.

Hearing your intuition has nothing to do with being psychic. They�re

completely separate. I agree that I�ve had an advantage to this whole

business of living by intuition, but it�s not because I have psychic

abilities. It�s because I was raised by a mother who taught me to live

this way. Listening to my inner voice started as far back as I can

remember, and there wasn�t any formal training. My mother simply said,

repeatedly, �Listen to the voice inside,� and there were no other

instructions. It was simple and to the point. My psychic abilities

didn�t start until I was seventeen years old. It took two years of

psychic development classes and a good twelve years of practicing on

friends and family members before I became a professional psychic.

One of the most gifted mediums of our times, Van Praagh, has

the ability to communicate with the deceased and is able to bring

incredibly intimate details through from the other side. I�ve seen

interviewed by many people � Oprah Winfrey, Larry King, Barbara

Walters, to name a few � and everyone asks him how he does his work.

His standard humble answer is, �It�s intuition, and we all have it, and

anyone can do what I do.� With all due respect to this very gifted man,

that�s like Mozart or Bach saying, �It�s just something I wrote, and

anyone could do it.� What we see him doing on TV or in his workshops is

not just a matter of intuition. He obviously uses intuition to sort

through all the profound psychic information he receives or he wouldn�t

be as accurate as he is, but it�s not just intuition at work here. He

has three powerful psychic gifts as well.

The Three Types of Psychic Ability

There are a great many misconceptions about psychics, psychic

abilities, and psychic readings, so I�d like to clarify things as much

as possible. Psychic ability is just one of the many talents, gifts,

and abilities we were all born with. As with all of our gifts and

abilities � creativity, musical ability, healing powers, writing

talent, speaking, acting, and so on � it�s up to us to decide if we

want to develop it or not.

There are actually three distinctly different psychic gifts �

clairvoyance, clairaudience, and clairsentience � and how much you�ve

used these abilities in past lives will determine what your strong

areas will be in this life. For example, if you developed clairvoyance

in a former life, it�s going to come a lot easier this time, whereas if

this is the first of your lifetimes for clairaudience, it�s going to

take some time and effort to develop it. Some of the more gifted

psychics have all three abilities highly developed, and the majority of

them have at least two that have come easily and naturally.

Clairvoyance

Clairvoyance (clear seeing) is the gift of seeing visions, images,

or pictures. For a clairvoyant, �seeing� psychic information is

something like watching a movie. This information comes in through the

�third eye,� which is located in the middle of the forehead, though

invisible to our human eyes. We all have a third eye. As strange as it

sounds, this eye can see in every direction. The information received

can look something like a cartoon strip. If there�s a lot of

information, the psychic may get a number of pictures in a sequence,

one at a time; other times information comes in as one big picture.

Sometimes it comes in slowly, sometimes quickly, depending upon the

psychic�s ability to see and interpret what she�s seeing.

Here�s an example of how it works: A client tells a psychic that

she�s having problems with her marriage but is too close to it to see

what the problems really are or to know what she needs to do about

them. Up on the psychic�s �screen� (another term for the third eye)

comes an image of a racetrack. The next frame shows a turtle and a hare

at the starting line. In the next picture, the hare takes off going

full speed and runs circles around the turtle, who is moving at a very

slow but steady pace. The picture seems to emphasize that the turtle is

very methodical about its movements and careful to observe and take in

everything around her while the hare continues to run in circles, not

paying attention to his surroundings. The next picture emphasizes how

much the hare wants to win at any cost. He loves to compete with

everything. The next picture shows that the turtle is oblivious to the

whole concept of winning, she just wants to be aware of what�s going

on, and to get where she�s going.

The clairvoyant receives the information in the form of pictures,

and the most important part of the job is to interpret the images as

accurately as possible. If a clairvoyant hasn�t developed an

understanding of the pictures he or she receives, she might give false

information. There have been many times in my psychic development (and

even now!) when I have misinterpreted the information I receive. It�s

very important to pay attention to all the details that the pictures

are giving us and to interpret them as accurately as possible.

Let�s go back to the turtle and the hare. The psychic tells her

client what she is seeing, and says that it feels like she�s the

turtle, not being in a hurry to get through life, not feeling

competitive, always wanting to stop along the way and enjoy life, while

her husband is the hare, going through life like a race, never stopping

along the way to enjoy himself but always in a hurry to win. She points

out how different they are in their essential nature, and suggests that

this is where the problem originates. As you can see, this clairvoyant

first received the pictures and then interpreted them according to what

she felt the pictures meant, checking out her interpretation with her

intuition to more fully understand it before she offered it to her

client.

Sometimes the pictures are far more difficult to interpret than at

other times. When I get pictures I�m not sure about, I usually describe

them in detail to my client and we discuss what they might mean.

There�s always the possibility that the pictures are not symbolic

messages but actual scenes from situations that have already occurred,

or are currently occurring, or are going to occur in the future. There

are two ways to tell: One is to look at every possible interpretation

and the other is to check the pictures out intuitively, which we�ll

talk more about later.

A bit of advice for those of you who get psychic readings: If

you�ve received information that doesn�t seem accurate, tell the

psychic so. They may not have checked in with their intuition to see if

their interpretation was accurate, and they could have simply

misinterpreted what they saw. Hopefully they can go back and look at

the pictures and see if there�s a different explanation.

Clairaudience

The second form of psychic ability is clairaudience (clear

hearing), the gift of hearing spirit. This ability is also located in

the head area. I think of it as having psychic ears. There are two ways

to hear spirit. One comes through as a clear audible voice, which many

people claim to have heard at least once in their life. A voice calls

out their name, for instance, but when they look in the direction of

the voice they see nothing. The other form of clairaudience, which is

the most common, is the ability to �hear� thoughts that come into our

head from spirit guides, angels, or our deceased loved ones. If you�ve

ever observed Van Praagh, , Sylvia Browne, or any of

the other well-known mediums or psychics of our time giving a reading,

they�re usually having an ongoing conversation with their guides

throughout the session. They all have clairaudience. Mental telepathy,

which is the ability to pick up thoughts from someone here on earth, is

also a form of clairaudience. (My brother calls telepathy

pmail. Get it? Psychic mail.)

What makes clairaudience so challenging to the beginner is that all

our thoughts and all the different voices seem to sound similar. The

more developed the clairaudient�s skill becomes, the easier it is to

discern among all the thoughts and the different voices coming in.

During a psychic reading, a clairaudient can be receiving information

from many voices at once: her own spirit guides, the guides of the

client, deceased relatives of the client, and perhaps an angel or two.

It takes quite a bit of concentration to listen to all the voices and

discern which voices are relevant and which are talking gibberish. And

although most experienced clairaudients can keep up with the pace,

sometimes the thoughts of the spirits come in so quickly that the

clairaudient can miss part of the message.

A bit of advice for any of you who might go to see a clairaudient

for a reading: You might want to hold your questions and comments until

after they�re done receiving information. It can be pretty tough to

discern everything coming in from the different voices while a client

is talking as well.

Clairsentience

The third psychic ability is called clairsentience (clear sensing).

Over the last thirty years the definition of clairsentience has

changed. In the past, if a person talked about being clairsentient, it

meant they had a �psychic nose,� and they got their information through

smells, such as smelling a fire that was happening at a great distance

or smelling a certain flower associated with a departed loved one. To

get our attention, deceased loved ones can sometimes project a smell

that was strongly associated with them when they were living � their

favorite cologne, for example, or fresh baked cookies. My grandpa�s

favorite food was vanilla ice cream and, after he passed away, he would

project the smell of vanilla ice cream whenever he came to visit me.

Later on, when I had developed my psychic abilities, he would simply

call my name or appear to me and it was no longer necessary to project

the smell.

Today, the definition of clairsentience has changed to mean a

broader gift of sensing. It�s the ability to sense psychic information.

Clairsentients are often referred to as �psychic sponges,� because they

physically and psychically soak up the environment they�re in. They can

feel people�s health challenges in their own bodies, for instance. As

you can imagine, this ability can be a pretty heavy burden.

Clairsentients continually need to do clearing exercises to keep

themselves clear of other people�s stuff (which is covered in more

detail in chapter 4).

Common Misconceptions about Psychics

I was at a baby shower recently and noticed that the woman sitting

next to me was very quiet throughout the afternoon. I didn�t know her

personally and didn�t think much about it until we were just about

finished with our meal and she blurted out, �I�m so nervous sitting

next to you.� I asked her if she thought I could read her mind, and she

hesitated and said yes.

As I looked around the table, there were several other women I�d

never met before, and I realized that many of them were wondering if I

was reading their minds or discovering their deepest secrets. I was so

out of my �psychic mode� that day that it hadn�t even occurred to me

that these women were even thinking of me as being a psychic. I quickly

reassured them all that I couldn�t and didn�t wish to read any of their

minds and that their secrets were safe.

There are so many misconceptions about who psychics are and how we

use our abilities that I�d like to do my best to lay a few of those

misconceptions to rest right here.

Every one of us is unique and different, and psychics are no

exception. We all work differently from each other. Some are on a

spiritual path, others aren�t. Some work with a crystal ball, or read

tea leaves or tarot cards, others communicate with angels or spirit

guides; some go into a trance and channel their messages, some work

with a Ouija Board or do automatic writing. There are mediums who

communicate with the dead and others who use their abilities to get rid

of ghosts. Some focus strictly on past lives, and others only work with

the future. There are aura readers, fortune tellers, and palm readers.

Every psychic I know has his or her own unique way of using his or her

abilities.

Misconception 1: Psychics can see into the minds of everyone we

come into contact with. It just isn�t so. Yes, some psychics are less

ethical than others but most professionals turn off their abilities

when they�re in public. In fact, every hard-working psychic I know will

tell you that at the end of a long day of reading people, the last

thing he or she wants to do is read people�s minds. That�s like

thinking that bus drivers want to drive people around on their days

off!

When I was younger and still developing my abilities, random

information would come into my mind about people and it was all very

unclear who it was for or about, but as the years passed and I became

more psychically developed, I was able to turn my abilities on when I

needed them and shut them off when I wasn�t using them. Most

professional psychics work that way in order to prevent burnout.

It is usually very easy to tell if a person is in the early stages

of their psi development. If they�ve been around awhile, they�re

respectful of people�s boundaries and don�t read them unless asked. But

those in the beginning stages often get excited and want to show people

what they can do, and it can cause problems when they don�t wait for

people to ask. They �tune into� people to impress or scare them, and

that�s certainly not what these abilities are for.

If you�re ever in a situation like the women at the baby shower,

and are uncomfortable in any way because you don�t know if a psychic is

respecting your boundaries, just ask God to put protection around you,

so that no one can read you unless you ask. This is usually not

necessary, however, with professional psychics who have been around

awhile.

Misconception 2: We all read palms. I can�t tell you how many palms

I�ve had extended to me over the years from people who think all

psychics read palms. I don�t read them, and neither do most of the

psychics I know. Reading palms is a skill palmists learn from a book.

You don�t need psychic abilities to do it.

Misconception 3: Psychic abilities are evil (or psychics work for

Satan). Maybe back in Biblical times, when there was apparently little

or no understanding of psychic abilities, the religious leaders felt

that the ability to see into the future could only come from the guy in

the red suit with the horns and pitchfork, but it�s now two thousand

years later and we�ve learned a lot about the Gifts of Prophesy

referred to in 1 Corinthians 12. Jesus and the other prophets in the

Old and New Testaments received their visions and messages through

clairvoyance and clairaudience. And Jesus told us that we have these

abilities as well. �These gifts I give unto you and greater works shall

you do.� These gifts aren�t evil. They are just one of the many gifts

and abilities God gave us when we were created.

Misconception 4: Psychics know their own future. Whenever anything

unexpected happens in my life, people always ask me why I didn�t know

it was going to happen or why my spirit guides didn�t warn me about it.

In order to see future events, a psychic has to be able to be

emotionally detached from their life and to not care what�s coming.

That can be very hard to do in one�s own life.

I know that as I�ve grown spiritually and have come to accept that

there�s a reason for everything that happens, and as I grow away from a

victim mentality and realize that things don�t just happen to us,

sometimes I�m able to see future pictures for myself. And, as I

continue on this path, I can hear more in-depth guidance from my

intuition as well. But the key - and please pay attention to this

because this is the key to hearing your intuition as well - is the

ability to detach. Psychics can only see into personal situations when

they are not attached emotionally to the information they might

receive.

Psychic Readings

Some of you are probably wondering why anyone would go to a psychic

and have no idea what a psychic reading really is. People come to

psychics for help with every conceivable kind of life issue. To give

you an idea of the kinds of questions people ask psychics, here�s a

list of questions I�ve been asked by clients just in the last month.

The codes following each question � for intuition and for psychic

reading � are there to indicate the kinds of questions that can best be

answered by our own intuition and the kinds of questions that should be

brought to a psychic for a reading. A good psychic can bring through

invaluable information to help people on their path but, as I�ve

already stated, I think psychics can keep people stuck and dependent. I

really want to encourage you to turn to your own internal guidance

whenever possible.

� Will I marry the man I�m engaged to?

� Will my father find a part-time job soon? What will he be doing?

� I�m adopted and thinking about searching for my biological

parents. Is this something I should do now? Is the time right? Will I

find them? Will they be receptive?

� My sister committed suicide two years ago. Why did she do it? How

is she? Does she regret it? What has she done since then? Does she know

we miss her?

� Will you please connect with my soul and find out what my purpose for being here is?

� What was my past-life relationship with the woman currently in my

life? It feels like we have some unfinished business from sometime way

back when, and I want to check and see if it�s true.

� Six weeks ago the doctor told me I had a heart problem. Is this accurate? What should I do about it?

� I�m obsessed with a man in my life. We broke up several years ago

and I still can�t get him off my mind. What should I do to resolve

this?

� Should I move to Texas? Should I pay for my young adult children

to move there with me? Will my new job work out? How long will it take

to sell my house?

� What can I do about the low self-esteem I�ve had all my life? What�s the cause of it?

� I feel as if I have psychic abilities, but I have a great fear of

them. Where does this come from and what can I do about it? Should I

pursue developing my psychic abilities?

� I have a disc problem in my lower back that I have worked on for

several years with only minor relief. What should I do to heal it?

� I have had a connection with angels since I was a small child. What is this all about?

� I am six months pregnant and I would like to know about the soul

of my baby. Also, what is the sex of my child and how will my labor and

delivery go?

� What was the reason for my car accident seven years ago? I still suffer a lot of pain from it. What can I do to heal myself?

As you can see, the questions are as varied as the people who ask them.

Using Intuition in Conjunction with Psychic Work

Although being psychic and intuitive are two different things, that

doesn�t mean intuition can�t be enormously helpful in psychic work. It

can be invaluable in discerning which incoming information is accurate

and which isn�t. It can also aid with interpreting pictures and

visions.

For example, a client comes to a psychic asking if her husband is

having an affair. The clairvoyant may get an image of a brunette

sitting behind a receptionist�s desk. A man then comes into the

picture, and the psychic can see the two people flirting with each

other. If the psychic hasn�t learned to check out the picture with her

intuition, she might just assume that the answer is yes, the man is

having an affair with the receptionist in his office. But if the

psychic consults the inner voice and asks if this picture means the man

is having an affair, the intuition may say, �no, just flirting� or

�yes, he�s having an affair.� The psychic could then check her

intuition to see if the affair is actually with the receptionist in his

office or symbolic of something else and, depending upon the answer

(which can possibly even be affected by whether or not the client is

meant to know the truth), the intuition will answer yes or no, or

perhaps nothing will come. So the picture itself comes from the psychic

realm, but the interpretation is aided by intuition.

Here�s another example using clairaudience: A client asks when he

is going to get a raise. The clairaudient hears the word �springtime.�

Without having checked it out intuitively, the psychic might jump in

and say, �You�ll get a raise in the spring.� But if he runs it by his

intuition, this might happen: �Is spring accurate?� �Yes.� �Is it next

spring?� �No.� �Spring in two years?� �Yes.� That�s how psychic skill

and intuition work in partnership.

Remember:

Clairvoyance is seeing pictures, visions, and images.

Clairaudience is hearing thoughts from different sources � the living, the dead, the spirit realm.

Clairsentience is sensing information.

Intuition is inner knowing.

Spirit Guides

Every one of us has at least one spirit guide who communicates to

us through one or more of the psychic abilities we just discussed.

People often ask me why they can�t see their guides and why their

guides don�t prevent bad things from happening in their lives. The

�job� of our spirit guides is to help our soul stay on the path it

chose this lifetime, and they communicate to our souls on a daily and

nightly basis. Their foremost purpose is to guide and communicate with

our soul, and that�s why we aren�t aware of them and why we can�t

readily see them.

Spirit guides are made up of energy and can appear to us in many

ways, usually in a form similar to ours. We are receiving guidance from

them all the time, whether we�re aware of it or not. We get pictures in

our heads, or thoughts come into our minds, and usually we think these

are just our typical thoughts or pictures when they are actually

guidance from the spirit realm. They also communicate to us through

dreams, and through the sensing part of us, our clairsentience.

The movie Always does a great job of depicting spirit guides. The

angel instructs the pilot how to communicate with the man he�s watching

over, telling him to send thoughts to him. That�s exactly how it works

sometimes. As we develop our psychic abilities, we are able to slowly

make conscious contact with our spirit guide or guides, and over time

we can actually see and hear them on a regular basis.

In answer to the question about why they don�t prevent bad things

from happening to us, the fact is they have a higher, more detached

perspective about our life experiences and don�t interfere with the

choices our soul has made. Very often, what seems like a bad experience

at the time proves to be the perfect thing necessary to help us grow

and evolve more quickly and create a life experience that is more

satisfying and fulfilling.

If you�ve been trying to make contact with your guides but aren�t

feeling like you�re having much success, just remember that they are

there and have been there all along. This kind of communication takes

time, so be patient. Let your intuition guide you. Ask to contact your

guides in your own unique way.

Ask for guidance from your guides as you would ask a friend for

guidance. Don�t make it a formal prayer, or a prayer of any kind.

Guides don�t like it when you pray to them �they are friends to your

soul, and they are not God, and not to be confused with God.

If you want or need help with major issues in your life, go

directly to the Source, and pray to God. If you want daily guidance and

companionship, talk to your guides �and you�ll never walk alone.

Excerpted from A Still, Small Voice. Copyright � 2001 by New World Library

See Also: Book Excerpt, Energy Work, Spirituality, Intuition, Psychic Abilities