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While there are people who are naturally fascinated by the occult arts and spiritual disciplines, the vast majority of people seek out a consultation with an astrologer, Reiki master, psychic medium or energy worker after they have undergone a long and painful period of hardship. Suffering is by far the most common entranceway through which people venture into the worlds beyond. What is it that so many people are seeking in the intuitive arts? Why do we instinctively reach for these modalities when we are trying to enhance our well-being? Let’s look at some of the therapeutic benefits that have kept people returning to the wellspring of these ancient disciplines for so many centuries.
Above all what we seek in the starry skies or the magnetic fields of energy is an answer to the question: why?!
We seek a sense, in the midst of chaos, that there is indeed an ordering principle to the Universe that we have not yet grasped.
When medicines have failed to cure a disease, or when we have a long series of failed relationships, or we cannot make headway in our career, we want to know there is a codifiable reason— that there is some boundary line which we have been transgressing or ignoring— the comprehension of which will restore balance to our lives.
Fortunately, the intuitive arts do indeed unveil the harmonious order hidden beneath the tumultuous tides of life, by opening our eyes to the layers of reality that lie beyond the physical.
The body/mind interface experiences a very tiny range of frequency called visible light, and there is very, very much in this Universe which falls outside of this range. The five human senses of sight, sound, taste, touch and smell provide only a very limited window into what is really there. If the range of your senses were augmented just a little, much more of the Universe would come into view!
Check out our article: Unifying Physical and Non Physical Bodies
This may sound the like New Age “woo-woo” until you consider the animal kingdom. Cats can see in infrared frequencies that humans cannot. Dogs can hear sound waves that are far too high for the human ear to register. The reality that our animal friends live in includes things that are not “real” to us at all— yet can we really deny their existence?
All that you see only appears in the shape and form that it does because your sensory apparatus is “built” with certain limits and filters. Psychics, mediums and energy healers are often born without these filters, or else they have learned how to lift them at will. They are thus able to directly witness the Universal energy field and the aura, and receive communications from the deceased, angels, spirit guides and Ascended Masters.
A reading with such a person can be tremendously therapeutic for someone in grief, for once you realize that the invisible worlds are just as real as the physical one, you internalize the fact that your loved ones are never really gone. Similarly, you need not feel anguish at the limitations of science or medicine when you discover that there is an entirely different way of “operating” upon and healing the body.
One of the basic tenets of energy healing is that all disease originates in the psyche. A disease is only the physical manifestation of an unhealthy attitude or an emotional trauma that has been left untended. If you work directly upon the energetic issue that has caused the disease, the disease clears up of its own accord.
Energy workers, Reiki Masters and medical intuitives are able to read the energetic blueprint of your physical vessel and see how energy is moving through the etheric double, affecting the health of the physical body. A doctor can perform tests or x-rays to spot which organ is malfunctioning, but an energy worker can see beyond the physical ailment into its roots in the mind.
The seven chakras that fall along the central column of the spine correspond to different levels or modes of consciousness and their respective planes of manifestation. If a given center is open and healthy, this tells us that the physical organs associated with the chakra are functioning well, but also that the individual is manifesting healthy behavior and attitudes in the corresponding area of life.
If a given center is contracted, this indicates that the individual is practicing unhealthy attitudes, beliefs or emotional patterns in a certain area of life, and thus constricting the flow of life force or chi to the associated parts of the body.
The implications of the state of balance within the energy body are innumerable and extend far beyond physical health. When chakras are open and balanced, we are energetic, productive, loving, perceptive, awake, confident and self-respecting. We instinctively choose what is healthy and effortlessly turn away from what is not. We have an easy time identifying and going after what we want, and we are successful in getting it. We feel a sense of “belonging”— something absolutely essential for mental health— because we connect spontaneously and authentically with people who support and nurture us.
When the chakras are blocked, we are not allowing life force to move through the body freely. We may be inhibited in our ability to give or receive love, or our streams of wealth, security and resources may stagnate. We might feel sickly, uninspired, depressed, lethargic, disorganized, disoriented, or lacking in self-confidence. We stray from the path of our best interests, and frequently our lives are filled with logistical problems, sickness, hardships and shortages.
The body is a temple, and this temple can become a magnificent conductor of energy if we tend to it with the proper care. Meditation, yoga, diet, aromatherapy, sound healing, shamanic therapy and crystal working all cleanse and purify the aura, helping us to allow in etheric nourishment and release what we do not need. Intuitive healers can also teach you how to create an uplifting, “high vibrational” environment that nurtures you etherically on the subtle level.
Every person has some chronic difficulty or habit of self-undoing— a pattern of operating that circles back again and again just when one thinks oneself free of it. Often it seems that, try as we might, we cannot seem to make any permanent headway on this problem; it is as though we are doomed to repeat the same mistakes over and over again.
With intuitive arts, people can see through the messy chaos of our circumstances to the root cause of our addiction, unhealthy relationship patterns, toxic lifestyle habits or financial troubles. Beneath any compulsive behavior is an unmet need, and intuitives help us put a name to the deeply buried hunger that is upsetting the balance of the psyche from below the threshold of the conscious mind. We can stop driving ourselves into ditches only after we identify who has been driving the car.
The core issue will seem obvious once it has been spoken, even though it has proven elusive for so long. A poignant phrase from a guide or Master brings a feeling of relief washing over the body— a moment of “aha!” or “of course!” , as the clouds part and everything becomes clear. Indeed, spiritual sessions often have a feeling of familiarity or “coming home”, as though you are remembering something you have always known.
This is because you do already know all the information that comes through any reading. Information that shows up in a Tarot spread or that comes through a psychic medium reorients you to a higher order that you’ve lost sight of, or brings your attention directly to something that you have been glossing over.
Often the most helpful kind of information that comes from a reading is a re-ordering of priorities, or a new, crystal clear definition of an important concept, value or goal. Such re-definitions can be extremely helpful in lifting us out of downward spiral or breaking the vicious cycle of a negative feedback loop.
Read more about Shadow:
Manifestation practitioners help you step into the fullness of your power by teaching you about the creative power of your inner focus. They can help you transform your mental processes so that your thoughts serve your goals, rather than inhibit them.
The way that you see the world, according to the Law of Attraction, determines the shape of world you are creating. Subtle adjustments in how you interpret the events of your life have tremendous ramifications in what happens next, for, according to the Law of Attraction, “as you see it, so shall it be.”
A shadow work practitioner can help you untangle the knots of beliefs that color your perception, helping you take control of the way you see the world. This is the delicate process of honoring oneself with compassion, identifying emotional needs, and dealing with the past honestly, with a mind to healing patterns of defensiveness, fear or dysfunction.
The power of mindset is well-documented in psychological research. Studies in PTSD have revealed the critical importance of perspective when it comes to emotional processing. Someone who believes he was subjected to abuse or trauma in childhood displays the long-term neurological and psychological effects of trauma, whereas someone who does not believe she was abused does not suffer these effects— regardless of the objective circumstances of either child.
Similarly, two soldiers may live through the very same battle, and while one comes through relatively unscarred, the other develops insomnia, paranoia, dissociation and rage disorders. This has nothing to do with one person being weaker and another stronger; it has instead to do with how each viewed or defined the experience.
It is our perceptions about our experience make the decisive impact upon our psychological and emotional health— not anything intrinsic to the experience.
Practitioners can help point out the perspectives you are holding, and rehabilitate this perspective into one that serves your well-being more. Careful curation of your focus radically improves your emotional health, which enhances your ability to manifest the life that you desire.
Human beings willingly endure hardship for a purpose. Medical students immerse for years in intensive arduous studies, forgoing sleep, food, socializing and recreation to achieve their aim. Parents sacrifice their own cherished dreams so that their children may thrive. We lift big, heavy weights, gasping and sweating under terrific strain, because we understand the payoff.
A period of apparently meaningless suffering, on the other hand, can completely destroy you. As the great philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche wrote: “He who has a ‘why’ to live for can bear almost any ‘how’.”
The psychological necessity of a sense of meaning is the fundamental premise of logotherapy, a form of therapy invented by Dr. Viktor Frankl, a psychologist who survived years of imprisonment at Auschwitz during WWII. Dr. Frankl observed that those who survived the death camps were most frequently those who cared about something larger than themselves, such as a loved one waiting at home or a goal they wished to fulfill. Those who perished had often explicitly stated that life had ceased to hold any meaning, purpose or order for them.
The aim of logotherapy is thus the transformation in perspective about the meaning of the events in one’s life, for in so doing, one may transform one’s very experience of even the most horrendous events.
Frankl records a simple but poignant example of the power of intuitive arts and transformation in perspective:
“Once an elderly general practitioner consulted me because of his severe depression. He could not overcome the loss of his wife who had died two years before and whom he had loved above all else. Now, how could I help him? What should I tell him? Well I refrained from telling him anything, but instead confronted him with the question, “What would have happened if you had died first, and your wife would have had to survive you?” “Oh, he said, “for her, this would have been terrible; how she would have suffered!” Whereupon I replied, “You see, such a suffering has been spared her, and it was you who have spared her this suffering— to be sure, at the price that now you have to survive and mourn for her.” He said no word but shook my hand and calmly left my office.
In some way, suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice.
Of course, this was no therapy in the proper sense since, first, his despair was no disease; and second, I could not change his fate; I could not revive his wife. But in that moment I did succeed in changing his attitude toward his unalterable fate inasmuch as from that time on he could at least see a meaning in his suffering. It is one of the basic tenets of logotherapy that man’s main concern is not to gain pleasure or to avoid pain but rather to see a meaning in his life. That is why man is even ready to suffer, on the condition, to be sure, that his suffering has a meaning.”
This shift in perspective is paradigmatic of the shifts in perspective gleaned from psychic channeling, card readings or astrological consultation.
Periods of hardship take on a very different meaning to us when, for instance, we see in the natal chart that these experiences were deliberately “set up” and designed by our own Soul before incarnating into this lifetime so that we would develop certain skills or meet certain people.
Similarly, a guide or deceased love one may impart information about the purpose of a difficult period, perhaps pointing out the awarenesses that we have cultivated as a result of the struggle, which will propel us onto a new and far more rewarding path.
Revelations like these, coming from such a loving source, help us feel like powerful heroes on journeys that we have chosen for ourselves, rather than powerless victims of circumstances out of our control.
This subtle reorientation in perspective about the purpose of what we are going through can make the difference between someone who greets the day with fiery determination to slay the dragon and win the gold— and someone who cannot bear to stick one toe out of bed.
Most conflicts stem not from fundamental incompatibility, but from due to two parties being unable or unwilling to appreciate each other’s perspective or understand each other’s needs. An intuitive is an extremely beneficial intermediary in this case. Clairvoyants are able to see “both sides of the story” and provide us with insights that can dissolve conflicts and bridge divides.
Because psychics and mediums are picking up on the contents of your own unconscious, delving into your unique energy field, the information that comes through is tailored specifically for your ears. Masters and Teachers, angels, guides and even the spirits of those passed on communicate truths to us “in our own language”. They phrase things in just such a way that we may grasp what we are not hearing from the mouth of our opponent.
It is much easier to get along with others— even those with whom we disagree— when we are able to relate to, or at least recognize, where they are coming from. Indeed, often the only way to move beyond trauma, resentment or grief is to appreciate the humanity in the one who has hurt us. Intuitives help us understand the underlying motivations of people in our lives— even those who have been unkind, deceitful or downright malevolent.
An intuitive reveals not merely who did what, but, much more importantly— why. When we see that the one who has hurt us did so because of a troubled childhood, or when we see that what appeared to be outright aggression was actually fear of abandonment, this moves us a step closer to bridging the divide between ourselves and others.
This does not excuse or condone mistreatment from others, and the question of forgiveness must be left entirely up to the individual. But when we are able to appreciate that people who hurt others have only done so because they themselves have been hurt, this helps us find healthy detachment from the situation so that we can leave it in the past. Insight about what feels like in another’s shoes goes a long way to dissolve rage and pain, if for no other reason than because it helps us make sense of what had appeared to be senseless malice.
