One piece of questionable wisdom that is often shared in psychic development circles and tarot study groups is this.

When you are seeking psychic truth, your intuition is always the first thought that comes to you. Trust that first thought to be true.

I want to unpack this nugget.

Let me start by saying that, when dealing with psychic and intuitive work, divination, and other spiritual practices, the word ‘always’ runs up my spine like a razor. There are so few ‘always’ and ‘never’ situations in real life, and even fewer in the liminal world of psychic truth. When a practitioner or teacher of psychic arts uses the word ‘always’, it might be good to question the veracity of those teachings.

Any good diviner or psychic truth-seeker knows that each person is different, and each scenario is unique. While there are certainly archetypes, universal experiences, and shared commonalities, psychic work is not about putting people and situations into broad categories.

The same is true as we work to discover and expand our psychic awareness and intuitive gifts.

We do sometimes have common experiences. Yet, we can all have different ways into truth.

In doing professional tarot reading, I often need to decide what a particular card might mean in the context of the spread in which it appears. Very often, my first thought is the farthest from the truth. It might take me a minute to try out different theories in my brain to see which one feels like truth, before I find the statement I want to make to my client.

If I were to trust my first thought as truth, each and every time, I would be known far and wide as a lousy psychic. This is because my process works best when I consider different possibilities and angles. I wait for the feeling that I have come to identify as my intuitive confirmation.

For another person, it may be that their first thought really is usually the one that is correct.

If you are a teacher or student of intuitive arts, remember this most important point.

We all hear and feel truth differently.

The intuitive process is a very important part of meaningful tarot reading, and perhaps the hardest to teach. We teachers must encourage our students to discover what works for them, and what is true for them. We must help them discover and trust their individual processes.

It is also true that we may hear our intuition in a certain way today, and in a different way tomorrow. A good reader knows that Spirit speaks the way Spirit will, and that way can change from day to day.

This means that ‘always’ is not a thing even in the practice of an individual.

How, then, can we know when we have arrived at truth? Sometimes we just feel it. Sometimes we will not know we have spoken truth until someone confirms it for us. Sometimes we use other tools and methods to corroborate or question our findings. Different readings go different ways. We trust our intuition to guide us as to the questions we ask, the techniques we use, and every aspect of the way we conduct each reading. We practice discovering what the truth feels like. We learn, over time, by observing the actual outcomes of the readings we have performed, how we are able to find and deliver truth.

That is why a good reader, whether casual or professional, will nurture a wide skillset, and be open to new experiences in every reading.

We all must learn, as individuals, our unique path to truth.

If the first thought is not intuition, what might be the source of the first thought?

The first thought may be borne of anxiety, fear, or desire. The first thought might be an assumption based on past experiences. The first thought might be borne of denial. The first thought might be the most obvious or logical conclusion. The first thought might be the natural conclusion based on the individual’s personal belief system.

The reader might not have the experience to be able to imagine what the actual truth is without careful consideration and further exploration.

At each moment in the psychic process, all things are possible. It is the job of the reader to sort through the possibilities to find the probabilities and the truths that are available to them.