Psychic Handicap is a Real Thing

Many of us refer to psychic abilities as “gifts”, even though there are those who find their natural psychic ability to be more of a curse than a gift.

Like many people, my own intuitive abilities are inherited. My mother was well aware of her psychic nature, and consciously and admittedly tried to ignore it, because it scared her. I think many natural psychics do the same.

Part of the reason that natural psychic ability can be scary is that, untrained, intuitive people naturally pick up on the biggest energies that loom around them. Often, the energies that are biggest, or “loudest”, if you will, are the ripples of energy created by tragedy.

While many of us work hard to develop our psychic abilities, and are dismayed when we don’t feel we are connecting to the spirit world the way we want to, there are many who find their psychic gifts a burden.

Those who pick up on deaths they can foresee but cannot prevent often wonder why they are given such devastating knowledge. They long to shut down their psychic vision, and to escape from their role as constant witness to tragedy.

My own gifts are very empathic. In my younger years, before I discovered tarot, I was burdened by my ability to clearly see the inner turmoil of strangers around me. I wasn’t always able to discern that the discomfort I was feeling didn’t come from me, and didn’t belong to me. This is a very typical problem, and, again, can make psychic abilities feel burdensome and undesirable.

Psychic ability is something that can be developed. What surprises people is this fact. Those who are most in need of psychic development are those whose natural psychic talents are strongest.

Why would people with strong natural abilities need to work to develop those abilities? Because without study, discipline and direction, our natural psychic abilities truly are difficult to understand and manage.

Often, I meet people who are in distress because of disturbing dreams that predict unpleasant things. They simply want the dreams to stop, and aren’t very happy when I tell them that the way to make things better is not to avoid their psychic nature, but to dive into it.

If you are plagued by disturbing dreams, precognition of disaster or feeling the pain of others, you may be in the unfortunate position of dealing with a handicap that makes it hard for you to function normally, but does not appear in any medical journal.

Psychic handicap is a real thing, I assure you.

Some psychic people feel the need to sequester themselves from other people. Others have a hard time driving a car, because they can foresee ever potential possibility every minute. Often, psychic people deal with anxiety and depression at a clinical level.

These problems are worsened by the fact that, when, we have these experiences, we often question our own sanity, or find our sanity in question by others.

Often people wonder why they are seeing what they are seeing.

Sometimes there is a specific purpose. However, most of the time, the answer is simple.

A naturally psychic person is like a radio antenna, and will pick up on whatever energy waves are present. Often, the most painful things are what make the biggest waves.

Training and development can help a naturally psychic person control and utilize their tendencies. That same training and development can assist anyone with an interest to develop their own intuition and psychic abilities.

One of the best ways to begin psychic development is with a tool of divination, such as tarot. As you learn to work with the energy and the symbols, you also learn to direct your own energy, and to ask specific questions of the Universe. This will allow you to receive more information that is actually helpful. It will also help you make sense of the information that isn’t specifically helpful or pleasant.

Other great techniques include meditation, chakra work, and lucid dreaming.

Once you find ways to control  and develop your abilities, you will begin to appreciate them as the gifts they are.

Common Threads

 I love that I get to interact with so many different people in the course of my work. Everyone has a different perspective, different experiences and different cultural norms.

When we talk about spirituality, magick and psychic development it becomes clear that no matter what a person's background is, everyone has similar experiences.

Those who see auras but don't know what they are will describe colors that match our understanding of the chakra system.

Those who have never heard of scrying will describe prophetic images in fire and in clouds.

The joy and relief they feel when I am able to give names and explanations to their experiences is immense.

From my perspective, it is interesting that the phenomenal stories I hear have commonality, even if the people telling the stories do not.

Those who have psychic abilities but no understanding of those abilities often feel afraid and alone. To be able to welcome them to a community and help them understand the essence of who they really are is a privilege.

The same sort of thing happens on a more universal level as we find similarities between all the religious myths and symbols in the world. Are these simply expressions of archetypes, or do they describe actual events through the eyes of many cultures?

To me, the details don't matter. What does matter is the accumulation of truth and synchronicity. When we see or hear the same symbols and themes over and over from different sources we are able to distill from them a certain truth.

No matter who were are, where we are or what we have experienced, there are common threads in our personal and cultural spiritual experiences.

Finding these common threads is a way to create healing, communication and community.

The Middle Way of Tarot

There is a lot of misunderstanding of tarot in the world.  Some of it comes from well-intentioned tarotists.

For once, I am not talking about the Gypsies who use tarot to swindle their clients.  We already know they are propagators of misunderstanding.  I am referring to smart, spiritual tarot students and practitioners who haven’t yet found the sweetest spot of tarot interpretation and understanding – the Middle Way.

The concept of the Middle Way (or the Middle Path) is Buddhist, although its tenets show up in many philosophical teachings.  A secular way to describe it is the happy medium, which is also a great play on words when talking about tarot.

The idea of the Middle Way, as I understand it, is that we find enlightenment in the right balance, rather than when we delve into any particular extreme.

Many tarot cards speak directly to this spiritual concept of right balance.  Those cards include the High Priestess, the Two of Pentacles, Justice and Temperance.

But what does this have to do with understanding the concept of tarot reading?

I have noticed that there exists amongst tarot students and practitioners those who believe intuition is all that is needed to read tarot.  Study is an unnecessary burden and memorization is a waste of time.

There are also those tarotists who espouse the diametric opposite of that concept by insisting a particular card means exactly one thing – the same thing – each and every time it appears.  For those readers, a singular clearly memorized definition for each card is the whole of tarot interpretation from which none should stray.

I think the truth is somewhere in the middle, between these two limited philosophies.

To those who feel that tarot is about intuition, and only intuition, I say this.  Yes, a brand new reader can find truth simply by looking at the cards.  Yes, there are skilled intuitive professional readers who use tarot to inspire their readings even though they haven’t a clue about the traditional interpretations associated with each card. 

But to say that intuition is the whole of tarot reading is like saying use of a scalpel is the whole of performing surgery.  Some surgeries require only a scalpel.  Every surgeon must know how to wield a scalpel.  But surgeons need to use other tools in addition to scalpels or else they are dangerously limited in their skills.

The didactic memorizers are just as limited.  It is crucial to understand some traditional interpretations for each card.  However, we must leave room for the great number of possible interpretations, and for the play of intuition.  Circumstances matter a lot.  For example, we know that the Page of Cups could indicate a young child.  But if a happily childless adult person were to ask the cards “What is my greatest challenge?” and receive the Page of Cups, “a young child” is not a great answer.  But perhaps “learning to express your heart,” another interpretation for this card, would make perfect sense.

In this case, study provides the possible answers, while intuition picks the right answer.

Intuition works with tarot in other ways, too.  It may draw our eyes to a particular image within a card, or inspire us to pay attention to the way two cards blend.  It may give us psychic information beyond what we see in the cards.

Study offers us the opportunity to learn a wide variety of possible interpretations and depictions for each card.  Rather than being confused and frustrated by the number of possibilities (and the fact that some of those possibilities are in conflict) we need to embrace all of the possibilities.  Then we can allow intuition, circumstance and neighboring cards to sharpen our interpretations.

Study also allows us to understand the synchronicities of the cards.  We learn a great deal when we explore the symbolic, elemental, astrological, numeric, archetypal and Kabalistic associations of tarot.  We find deeper meaning in the cards, and learn to use tarot as a book of spiritual wisdom, as well as a tool of divination.

Tarot cards are designed to help us open the third eye and become more psychic.  The more we study tarot, the more psychic we will be.  To try to choose either study or intuition makes no sense because tarot study and intuitive reading work together to enhance each other.

To get the most out of tarot reading, whether as a student, a hobbyist or a professional, we need the Middle Path.  If we are all intuition and no study, we lose the spiritual message of the cards and the benefit of their tradition.  If we rely only on simple memorized key words we are missing the depth of meaning and wealth of information that a tarot reading can offer.