Light and Dark: Astrologer Patricia St. James

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Patricia St. James is late to our interview.  She was caught in Los Angeles traffic after seeing a physical therapist.  She has been having back problems from a car accident a few months back.  It was a hit and run.  Probably because of her age (she’s an elder), the guy assumed she was frail and sped off after slamming into her.

“Thank goodness I’m a psychic person,” she says in a whispery, childlike voice, one slow and determined, each word carefully chosen (it kind of reminds me of the psychic lady in Poltergeist, if that gives you a better idea).  “Because I found his car a week later.”

Busted.

We get to talking.  I want to know all about her past.  In her seventies, she is the oldest person I’ve spoken to, and she trained herself prior to the New Age Movement that made this subject matter more palatable to the masses.  Being raised in an extremely closed-minded and abusive family environment sent her on a path of seeking.  She had been so severely punished for her “knowing” that by the time she was fifteen, she had investigated every known religion looking to understand her own abilities and find a home for herself.  The “blind faith” of mainstream religions just didn’t work for her, so she abandoned them and went to the fringe instead.  She says her God has answers; answers she found in metaphysics.

She’s known primarily as an astrologer,a successful one who has done plenty of TV and radio. She tells me astrology, tarot and numerology just confirm things she already knows intuitively.  They’re just back-up.

She tells me with total certainty that we all have destiny paths, ones she can sense and also see in astrological charts, and that things are mostly fated.  We have some latitude insofar as the choices we make. We can choose to be kind.  We can choose to be conscientious.  We can choose to have a good attitude, to have a nice day when we wake up in a bad mood. Day to day, we make plenty of decisions, but things like breast cancer, for instance, are points of fate. She says it has been written; most things have.

Wait, I say, the guy ODing somewhere is following his life path?

Yes, she says, he is.  She quotes the Stones: “Just as every cop is a criminal/Every sinner a saint.”  Each person has within them the unlimited potential for both the wonderful and the base, the light and the dark, she says, and don’t ever forget that.

Later when I’m watching Boardwalk Empire, someone will question the conflicted and sociopathic Jimmy as to why he is the way he is, and he will reply, “I am what time and circumstance have made of me.”  I will think to myself that the theme is repeating itself.

I ask her about young souls vs. old souls.  Does she think people who walk criminal paths are younger souls? Her “no” is so intense and immediate that I feel terrible for asking the question.  The life path a person is on has nothing to do with the maturity of their soul.  An old soul is just as capable of being a drug addict or a criminal as a young one.  On the other hand, she says many people walking around are like 3 year olds throwing constant tantrums.  These younger souls cannot discern good from bad, and aren’t interested in seeking knowledge with regard to their destiny paths.  Their lack of curiosity and willingness to accept things at face value is the true mark of  young soul, not the outside issues that are beyond our scope.

Our life path is decided by a combination of factors, such as lessons we need to learn and karma.  This is why we should have the utmost compassion for people walking very difficult roads. This is perhaps the most profound thing I take from Patricia, this sense that we are all capable of many things, that we are cogs in a machine, all with a purpose.  Her take is that understanding what’s in store for us can help ease the pain of what we cannot control, and can lead us to make better decisions about the things we can.

This perspective makes it impossible to dismiss someone as a loser or a douche bag, to minimize their experiences, and instead forces us to examine the nuances and circumstances that have led to certain behaviors.  We come into the world with a soul that has been informed by all of its lifetimes, and is further molded by experience in this life, but we can all be reduced and diminished by pain and struggle.

The rest of what she says falls in with what most of the psychics have told me: the other side is an amazing place.  She has experienced tremendous love and kindness there.  We have guides and angels.  She, like Fahrusha, believes these are likely inter-dimensional beings.  She also believes in soul mates, but says not everybody has one, and that if you meet them, you will know it.  Again, she speaks of Earth as school; kindergarten, actually.  When we die, we go to grade school, high school and so on.  We experience love, peace, harmony.  People who have been abused or abusive are loved until they again have the potential to be loving and generous. This is the resting period between lives.  She believes in past lives because she does past life regressions and has come up with verifiable names and dates.  She doesn’t hesitate.  That, she knows is true.

Patricia St. James has filled me up with sadness and compassion about the human condition we are all managing.  In her ethereal yet somehow edgy way, she has schooled me about judgment, and humbled me, too.  Patricia has reminded me of the simple and apparent truth that we are all connected.

Patricia St. James can be contacted at patriciastjames.com.

Healer Ocea Demer: Into the Depths

At the end of my interview with Ocea Demer, which is over the phone, she succinctly and correctly scans my body and tells me every physical issue I have, including a kidney problem nobody knows about.  The only thing she’s missing is my chronic headaches, but the day I speak with her I don’t have one.

Ocea strikes me as a multi-faceted person.  Though her primary function is that of a healer, she is also a lover of children, animals, nature, and has a special place for people with Down Syndrome.  She is an activist, was a master plumber, and spent years on the road with musicians.  She is also a mystic, a seeker and a passionate proponent of true consciousness, facing our fears, learning, listening.

She began healing when she was three.  When I ask her how she learned, she tells me that although her Grandmother used to heal her as a baby, she never really learned, per se; she remembered.  In fact she says she remembers every healing modality that has ever been.  She was toning into someone (the way I understand it, she makes sounds that correspond to different chakras or organs), and they told her she was practicing a sufi healing method.  She has been doing it for years and years and had no idea what it was called; she just knew it. As a child she was just following her instincts, was able to heal other children and animals who were suffering.

At fifteen she came out as a lesbian with a powerful and supportive group of women. With their help she was able to really expand into her own abilities which became so intense that she would walk down the streets and see every ailment, both emotional and physical that were affecting people.  It became too much, and she ended up in Seattle where she met a shaman who showed her how to close, to protect herself.  She tells me that being an open vessel was very difficult and that once she had the skills to control that aspect of herself she had a much easier time.

There was a time in her life where she was in airports with frequency, and began healing people who were waiting at the terminals.  She has never been turned away by anyone.  Eventually she did it so much that she was known as the airport healer.  She says she didn’t seek it out.  She would get an impression that a person had a certain ailment and try to ignore it. If the impulse to help them persisted, she would approach them, tell them what was wrong with them and ask if she could help.  I imagine all the times I’ve had shoulder or back pain, or some awful headache while waiting in an airport.  I wouldn’t turn her down either.

She’s straightforward about her ability, but humble too.  She knows she’s special and she’s grateful, but it doesn’t belong to her which is why she doesn’t charge for it.  She charges for body work which is a separate skill, and something almost everyone needs. She has taken care of many musicians, and has been backstage for the CMAs and Grammies multiple times, healing anyone who needs it.  Whether it’s a tech or the guys from Linkin Park, she enjoys the environment and feels she’s contributing.  She likens herself to musicians, relates to them.  They aren’t being paid for the music, she says, they would do it anyway. They’re actually being paid for everything they had to do to rise, to get where they are.  Same with her. Besides, she loves healing the healers.

Country musician Chely Wright credits Ocea with telling her to go to her gynecologist immediately during a healing session. As a result her cancer of the cervix was caught and treated.  For her part Ocea says she just got the message while working on Chely, didn’t quite know what it was about, only knew it was urgent.  She has been profiled in Allure magazine as one of the best kept secrets of the stars, and on a more personal note, Ocea correctly predicted not only my friend Shandra’s exact due date, but her friend’s as well.  Shandra says when her friend Anna went into labor on Ocea’s day she thought, uh-oh better get ready, and sure enough….

All that said, Ocea is not branded like a Byron Katie, or a Caroline Myss, thought she possesses the same talents.  She’s not sure how she would do it, and says she would need a handler because the exchange of money makes her uncomfortable.

 

She’s not a fan of the New Age Movement because of the distance it has put between people and their potential teachers.  She can’t afford to pay 5000 dollars to attend a seminar, a thing she would love to do.  Also, the training sessions and then subsequent titles given out to people don’t sit well with her.  You can’t take a two day class on Reiki and be pronounced a master.  You aren’t a master until you’ve lived many years studying.  Mother Teresa was a master, Aunty Margaret was a master.  Throwing that word around doesn’t do anyone any good, and is misleading.

In closing, she tells me that I need to spend more time outside.  We all do.  We’re too disconnected from the Earth.  Our planet is vibrant and alive and magical.  When we put our feet into the dirt, we tickle the Earth’s belly.  Spend more time looking at flowers and let them share their beauty with us.  We need to project and reflect all the majesty around us and our planet will grow even more powerful and incredible.  If we continue to project negativity, the Earth will be sad.  And talk to our kids; tell them about everything that available.  Listen to them, begin a new dialogue and stop with all of the drugs that separate us from our emotions and dull our human experience.  Wake up, she says.  We need to wake up.

You can contact Ocea Demer at oceademer@gmail.com

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Fahrusha: Anomalous

Fahrusha taken by Chris Geier When I see that Fahrusha reads crystal balls while perusing her website, I have the impression that I am finally going to meet the gypsy backroom fortune-teller of cultural lore.  I’m shocked to find that contrary to the implications of her name and profile, Fahrusha is an earth mother type, one you could plunk down in the middle of my nature-worshipping home town of Taos, New Mexico, with ease.  I can see her drinking a green smoothie and watching the sun set over the mountains; except for the fact that she’s totally East coast, that is. She’s from Jersey, not  the middle east, doesn’t sport a  gypsy accent, and is in fact without any gimmicks at all. She took the name Fahrusha when she began belly dancing many years ago, and kept it for professional purposes.  She has a solid reputation, has been on The View, in the New York Times, was featured as a New York Magazine psychic star, and even does handwriting analysis for Tiger Beat. She grew up in a fairly average working class family, although she says her mother was intuitive, and her father was downright psychic and could see and speak to the dead.  She wants none of that, and although she has seen spirits, it’s not her thing.  She leans on the tarot and pictures for her readings, sees, gets impressions, and also hears voices on occasion. She’s careful about speaking in absolutes,  not wanting to collapse the  possibilities and choices available in the Multiverse (as in Quantum Physics not making a wave into a particle, thereby leaving open the stage for free will), and is the most scientifically knowledgeable psychic I have spoken to thus far.  She’s expansive, and interested in the possibilities of things like the existence of aliens or inter-dimensional beings, the future we are facing on earth as humans, the overall themes facing society.  She makes mood stabilizing crystal jewelry, which speaks to her love of and respect for the Earth.  She’s not in the business of peddling her wares, but does make things for clients upon request.  Crystals have a very gentle energy, and are soothing.  She says people who go around making grand claims about the immediate effects of crystals don’t really understand that they simply emanate a sweet natural vibration that can help to ease some discomfort and stress. To enhance her knowledge and experience, she has affiliated herself with The Monroe Institute, which was founded by the late Robert Monroe and is now led by Paul Rademacher, a former minister, and “Skip” Atwater, who once led the Defense Intelligence Agency‘s Remote Viewing Program.   She enjoys what they have to offer as well as their philosophy, which asks only that each person consider that they might be more than a body and a brain.  Everything else is up in the air. I’m pretty sure it’s the blank look I get on my face-when she tells me that everything is happening at the same time because time is but a construct of our human brains and perceptions-that prompts her to suggest several books to read (listed in the book recommendation section of this blog) so that I can better understand concepts of physics and theories about time and space. She is, when all is said and done, a highly intellectual and scientifically propelled individual.  Because of this she is loathe to draw conclusions about anything, careful to speak to her own experiences rather than making sweeping statements about the nature of the universe. Still, there are things, mysterious things that must have an explanation somehow; she just doesn’t know what it is. Does she believe in past lives? Not sure. What she does know is that when she was three years old, she found a piece of Egyptian cloth in her Grandmother’s things, put it on and began belly dancing even though she was never taught. Still, she rattles off a few alternate possibilities to account for that phenomenon. How does she do a reading?  Some of it is common sense.  She reads people’s body language, sure.  She remarks on my light shade of lipstick, and says she could deduce a few things from that, or handwriting or any other number of pseudo-scientific methods.  And when someone is asking about the boyfriend they drunk-texted last night, she can pretty easily tell them without any assistance from the ethers that such a behavior is generally not recommended.  But there are other things that she cannot explain, like the dog she helped find through remote viewing (where she sees through the dog’s eyes to find out where it is), or the time she felt herself pushed into an Italian specialty store and missed being crushed by a taxi that killed two people, and most especially the seven-foot tall Nordic angel/alien type creature she saw with her actual two eyes and had a conversation with. Still, she shrugs and says, “Who knows?” As to free will vs. fate, she has an interesting take:  if we love chocolate, and we have the very best piece of chocolate in front of us but she tells us that it’s going to be terrible for us, we are so conditioned to eat the chocolate that we will probably do it.  She can see the most likely trajectory and most of the time we are behaviorally predictable.  Does that mean we can’t change it?  No.  Just, it’s not so likely.  Our personalities and behaviors are so developed that stepping out of them takes great effort and consciousness. All things should be possible though, she says…in theory. She does think there’s something to the manifesting thing.  When her daughter was little, she made a square on a piece of paper, drew Fahrusha inside the square, and titled it “Mommy on TV”.  Within the week she was on David Letterman.  And me, I qualify as a case in point.  She had a thought that she might like to do a couple of blogs, and again, within the week I was one of two people asking for a blog interview.  On my end, she is the first person I contacted that wasn’t referred to me. I was just poking around on the internet, and found her in a few articles, so I wrote her on the off-chance she might be interested.  Was it related?  Who knows?  Maybe, maybe not. That night I dream about Fahrusha.  She’s standing in the corner of my room with a piece of paper, telling me things she forgot in the interview.  “You can do this?” I ask her.  “You can get into my dreams?”  She doesn’t answer, just hands me the paper and disappears. The next day when I wake up I want to call her, to ask her if it was real.  I don’t though, because I get the feeling that she would just say, “Anything is possible.  Who knows?” Fahrusha can be reached at fahrusha@fahrusha.com. Her blog address is http://fahrusha.wordpress.com and her website is http://www.fahrusha.com

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Tarot: No Absolutes by Leah Acosta

This is my first guest blog from longtime friend,  Leah Acosta.  Hope you enjoy.

“Why can’t you just tell me the name of the man I should marry?”  she asks, for the fourth time in as many days.  I adjust the phone to my ear (it’s been there for 40 minutes now) and prepare myself to re-arrange my words once more.  I have to keep trying to explain this. I can’t tell you the name of the man you should marry, because that is up to you and he as individual souls on karmic paths I can only help you to understand.

I’ve been told I take this too seriously. I’m not on the clock, and time is money, but it’s important; this is a karmic issue we’re talking about.  I shouldn’t let this pass lightly.

Isn’t tarot card reading just for entertainment? Where do the answers come from?  How do I find a reader I can trust?  What if it tells me something bad?  Yeah, it’s interesting and all, but how does it  really apply to me?

I have fielded these questions an more so many times in the thirty years I’ve been offering up whatever skill and talent I have on the topic, in hundreds of psychic fairs and in my own private practice.  I consider these questions not only welcome, but crucial to making this arcane art accessible, not only  to the bright, forward thinking clients of today and the future, but also to those stuck in the ruts of their own thinking, who haven’t had the benefits of being enlightened as to their self-direction and self-worth.

First, I have to explain that the cards are not “fortune telling”.  Our futures are not cast in stone.  We absolutely have free will.  Anything I can tell you about, you have within you to change, if you want it, will it, and do the work to make change manifest.  A client seeking absolutes hasn’t been properly informed of what it is that I do.  I’m probably the least ethereal reader you’ll ever meet, if for no other reason that I will not tell you things just because I know you want to hear them.  If the cards don’t say so, I don’t either.  I trust my tools.

A reader, like anyone else, has no hope of pleasing all the people all the time. I recognize that is truly not my job.  My job is to educate, and offer guidance.  In my world, a good reading is one that assesses your situation, identifies strengths and weaknesses, identifies areas in need of change, then offers advice to manifest those changes for your best possible outcomes.  Leave the simple stuff for the magic 8 ball.  If you’re really with your back up against it, call on the cards.

I was fortunate to be brought into the world  in a town and family where topics like divination, healing, ghosts/spirits, and magic were not hidden or scorned.  Introduced to the Divinatory arts by a family member at eight, I was only allowed to read for others after I’d proven myself.  I did my first professional readings in a fair, at the ripe old age of twelve.  I went on to study psychology, became a licensed hypnotherapist, and had a successful private practice which I gave up to return to my first love:  The Tarot.

It was through this evolution that I realized that the Jungian Psychology that I studied and applied had direct correlation to the cards I’d grown up reading.  I also realized that the cards gave answers and results, far more quickly than traditional therapy.  My answer to this epiphany was to create my own trademarked method of card reading, which I consider a symbiotic relationship between the arcane art and modern psychotherapy; an approach I’ve termed Transpersonal Tarot.

Using Transpersonal Tarot, I can confidently answer the questions above.  Tarot can be entertaining, but there are far more important applications, should you choose them.  The answers (according to my theories) come not from spirits, or guides, or ghosts, but from a repository of information Jung termed “the collective unconscious”, in which all experiences and memories of mankind can be accessed. The cards form a conduit between this repository and the client, and are interpreted by the reader.  If the facts are unpleasant (they are not truly bad) then it’s the responsibility of the reader to present these facts in the light of how you can either change them, or respond to them in the way best for your higher good.

Finding a good reader can be considerably more subjective.  You need to find someone that can explain things in ways you relate to, but more importantly, you have to find one that isn’t in the habit of selling you thousand dollar candles to rid you of your “hexes” (don’t scoff, it happens).  The information you receive applies to you, but to be proactive in your own life you have to realize that you can (and should) apply yourself  to the information you receive.  It’s reciprocal.

I will reiterate: what I do is not fortune telling.  A reading with me is far more like a professional accelerated course in guided self-help.  This extends not only to this life but to lives that have come before.  Cards can  read about past lives, and with amazing regularity I find that a persons’ phobias, life obstacles, or difficult relationships, have roots in a past life, and examining them can be very helpful.

Transpersonal Tarot can help you to conquer fears, surmount obstacles, or even do something a simple as find some insight that helps you  to make a difficult decision, not with the help of ghosts and gadgets, but rather by accessing a conduit to your own subconscious, and the collective unconscious. It is possible to empower and transform yourself if you are willing to do the work.  I welcome your contact and honor your seeking.

Offering more than 30 years of guidance, enlightenment & hope, Leah is available online, by phone or in person.  Contact information:  enigma1923@comcast.net.  Yahoo MSGR:  Enigma_of_Taos.  Facebook:  Leah Acosta.  Phone (please leave message with impersonal irritating machine:  (802) 725-8108.

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Earth School, with Astrologer Karen Thorne

I love Karen Thorne.  I don’t know whether it’s her intellectual savvy, or the fact that her daughter is an amazing actress (Callie Thorne of Rescue Me and Burn Notice), or the way she conceptualizes, drawing references from a hundred fascinating sources.  Whatever it is, something about her makes me want to scramble onto her lap, and have her explain the universe to me.

She obliges in short order, although without the scrambling.  That would just be inappropriate.

Karen got her start as an astrologer in Boston in the sixties.  Being accosted by spirits in the dead of night, she had been waking her terrified roommate (granddaughter of Estee Lauder)  with her screams for weeks.  After hearing about a psychic of high repute, she decided to go and see her, so that the woman could tell her how to stop seeing these disturbing things.  When she got there, the woman informed her that not only would she not be getting rid of any spirits, but that Karen was to become her pupil, and join her every Friday night to learn astrology and self-protection, among other things.

The woman turned out to be famed astrologer, Isabel Hickey, the American answer to Madame Blavatsky.  With the beatnik movement in full swing, Karen spent her time with beat poets, writers, and explorers of all kinds, as she developed her craft.  Eventually she joined a group of astrologers from MIT, who took a more scientific approach, and with whom Hickey followers had some hostility.  By blending the two vastly different techniques, Karen was able to create her own hybrid version of astrology, which is what she practices today.

She will never give a reading without a chart in front of her.  Every psychic has the modality that works for them, and for her, the chart is the gateway that makes sense.  The chart tells a story, and as the reading progresses she will see images in it, hear voices, and feel things that relate to the client.

Karen reading for novelist Gigi Lavangier

Karen tells me that there are seven astral planes, and that the lowest of these is the one that we generally have access to. It is filled with useless spirits and information that can make a lot of noise.  The major difference between a psychic and crazy person is the ability to sift through that information to find what is relevant to a particular person or situation.  Other than that, she believes it is much the same experience.  For her part, she calls on Jesus to protect her, to eject all spirits and information that are not of the highest quality so that she can impart only truth.  At first, being non-denominational, this made her uncomfortable.  Despite any reservations, Isabel Hickey told her to go straight to the highest level, and Jesus is it.  She says she might be surrounded by ten spirits, and when she invokes him, eight disappear, and she is left with the two who have purpose in the matter at hand.  Now she’s used to it, of course, and calls on him with ease.

Since she sees spirits, I want to know whether she differentiates  between a spirit, a guide, or an angel. A spirit, Karen explains, is a being that is not occupying a physical body.  Guides, ghosts, and even people who are astrally projecting (sometimes without even knowing it) are included in the mix.  Those in distress or who are having strong thoughts about her will often appear, or she will hear them calling to her, and the manifestation is really no different in either case.  She cautions psychics against going into the world without proper training.  You can be inundated with information that ultimately means nothing, and it can be taxing and confusing.

According to Karen, we actually live in heaven.  There, we have our favorite dog, our favorite blankie, our room and our family.  When we prepare to take on an earthly form, we do so in the same way as when we leave home and go to college.  We are excited and a little afraid, too, since we’ll have to forget everything we know when we get there. We meet with a guidance counselor, decide on a major, and areas of emphasis.  We also have certain things from past lives that have to be corrected and balanced out.  The opportunity to do all of these things, to learn all of these lessons is built into our charts.   Jung says that when we enter our body, we are fulfilling a contract we have made with space and time, that we cross the river of forgetfulness when we are born, and step into our chart.

Sometimes we are bad students, of course, and lose focus.  Karen says we all come in ready to work, but just as in school some kids don’t come back after Christmas break, so it is in life; people quit, drop out.  She says there is no worse punishment than the disappointment we experience when our life is over, and we realize the opportunities we squandered, the lessons we failed to learn.  Lessons can be learned in two ways: one is the “pedestrian way”, where we learn through experience.  The other is through realization and understanding.  A shift in consciousness can clear a lot of karma, and make way for rapid growth.

Every person on earth begins with a divine mission.  Karen loves to steer people toward it, and help them to better understand themselves.  In some cases, people can complete one mission and begin a whole new one part way through their lives while still occupying the same body.  There is usually a pluto aspect that presents in these cases, indicating a completion followed by a new beginning.

We begin the first day of this life at the same point of progression  we had achieved on the last day of our last life.  This accounts for a scenario where three children are born into the same dysfunctional family, and yet only one comes out on top.  It’s evolution, development of the soul.  Some of us are PhDs, and some of us are kindergarteners, I guess.

On love and soul mates, she says we’re here to work, all of us, and that we have soul mates, and are occasionally permitted a life of joy with them, but really it’s not about that.  Sometimes they’re just around to teach us. She says if you work at a factory to make parts for airplanes, but you come in high heels and obsess over sex, you’re sort of missing the point. So it is with relationships.  In unhealthy relationships, she says there is balancing at play.  Maybe in your last life, you died under someone’s thumb, and now you’re here to right that wrong. In such a case, the situation can be damaging and stressful.  Once you extricate yourself from it, her philosophy is not to be too hard on yourself.  If you wish you had been stronger, and you didn’t do exactly as you hoped, remember this: if you survived it, you won.

You can’t worry about those things too much.  It’s just school, after all.

Karen Thorne has been a highly respected practicing astrologer and psychic for many years.  She writes horoscopes for Gotham City and Hamptons Magazines.  Being a gemini, the dual sign, she has 2 houses, 2 cars, 2 dogs, 2 daughters, writes 2 horoscopes, went to 2 colleges, and had 2 husbands.  Her daughter Lily is a writer, videographer, and documentary film maker, and Callie is an actor. She has a global clientele, including actors, musicians, writers, therapists and politicians, most notably Bill Clinton, and John Kerry.  She currently lives in the west village and can be reached at http://www.karenthorne.com.

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Mighty Aphrodite: Interview with Caren Shery

She is known as the rock ‘n roll psychic because she has so many musicians for clients, but to me, she’s an Aphrodite type; beautiful and intensely female.  Her love of good food and pleasing things is evident, as is her need for calm and serenity.  She tells me a little way into our conversation that she loves to work with women, particularly in order to help them to open their hearts, and navigate difficulties in relationships.  That makes so much sense.

She is an empath, which means that she actually feels everything that others feel.  She says if she is at a table with three people, and she tells them what she does for a living, two of them will present her with their issues, and the third will hate her.  It can be difficult, especially since she actually feels what they are feeling.  Consequently, she spends a lot of time alone or with animals, in order to balance the intensity of her experiences.

As a child she thought everyone was like that, absorbing and experiencing the pain and emotions of others, and it was only later that she realized she was different.  She can see spirits, could do the “medium thing” but chooses not to.  Now, she can hear with her inner ear, and spirits talk to her, but she doesn’t see.  She tells me about the previous week, sitting in the living room with her aunt.  Her deceased grandmother came into the room as they were sitting there.  Caren could hear her, and sense her presence, while her aunt suddenly shifted the conversation to a memory of her mother.  That’s the distinction between her and everyone else.  It makes me wonder how often we do that?  How many times does someone pop into our heads, and it is because they’ve come for a visit?  Caren says we all have access to that frequency, we’re just all at different levels.

Either way, Caren is not interested in bloody dead girls visiting her in the night.  She had a talk with the powers that be and told them that if she was going to see the creepy stuff, she wanted nothing to do with it. The things that interest her have to do with deepening, and helping.  People are locked up, and she is sometimes the key that helps them open, and that is what brings her joy and satisfaction.

At 21, she worked in one of the best department stores in Canada, dressing mannequins.  Before long, she was advising coworkers about their love lives.  They came back to her time and again, because she knew what their boyfriend or girlfriend was thinking even though she had never met them before.  A line would form, and she found herself doing double duty as love doctor and dresser.

Love is a big one for me, and since it’s her specialty I figure I’ll ask her about soul mates.  Yes, she definitely believes in them, but sees many women trying desperately to make someone into a soul mate when they just aren’t.  The thing about soul mates, she says, is that they don’t necessarily make us happy.  Sometimes they create more misery than anyone else.  The way we think of them is wrong.  They are our greatest teachers, because we are the most vulnerable with them, are seen in raw form, totally understood, but often it doesn’t work out.  It isn’t meant to.  We are learning something instead.  She says the unbelievable thing about soul mates is that they will keep trying and trying to make the relationship work, in whatever form they can, because they just can’t let it go.  Often people will settle down with a secondary soul mate, someone who causes less agitation.  And sometimes again, there is a happy ending and a person does get to live out a life with their soul mate; it will just be extra intense living at that level all the time.

I ask about obsession.  I feel a distinction needs to be made between a true soul connection, and a situation where people are playing out their pathologies all over each other.  She says that there is a rule that states that you cannot have energy with someone without their participation.  Sometimes it can transfer into dreams and you can live out a whole relationship in that world, but if you are experiencing a sense of connection with someone, it cannot be happening to you alone.  That, she says, is impossible.

But I have experienced that myself, both ways; I have had huge crushes on people and had it one-sided, and the other way around too.  There is a difference between having daddy issues and repeating traumas in an obsessive mentally unbalanced way, and feeling a strong connection in a healthy state.  I maintain that sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference, and sometimes people get confused about the nature of their connection, but I think I understand what she is saying,  and energetic exchange can take many forms.

Finally we get to the Law of Attraction.  She asks me why I have a problem with it.  When I explain that I take issue with the idea that people are always responsible for terrible illnesses, or accidents or even global catastrophes for that matter, she says she agrees with me totally.  Sometimes those things are the result of our own negligence, and yet sometimes they are just contracted, and it’s karmic.  I’m happy to say that so far in my investigations, this has been a common thread.

According to Caren, the law of attraction works in two ways. One, you have to know what you want.  That is when a vision board can come in handy, but it’s unnecessary.  Rather, you need a clear intention.  The other, more complicated part, is getting rid of what she calls “resistance”.  These are the stories we tell ourselves that keep us from getting what we want.  I balk.  Everyone has blockages and negative thoughts.  Making a person responsible for every passing judgment and thought seems crazy to me.

She listens, then asks me what makes me so uncomfortable about the idea of getting what I want.  It’s not that, I say, it’s the idea that you can just visualize it and it will come.  You have to work to earn it.  People who just get things easily don’t value them, and then it doesn’t mean anything, and those who decide they want something and then are unwilling to sweat for it are entitled and lazy (all things I was taught, by the way).

Uh huh, she says, and asks me if I can see how I’m setting myself up to have to work really hard because I tell myself that’s how it has to be?  I pause.  I think.  Wait…I…make…my…own…life…hard?

Doh.

I have to laugh, because she has nailed me.  This, more than anything else, sticks with me after we are done talking, and actually forces me into a somewhat uncomfortable self observation.  But that is another post entirely.  I get the sense that it is these types of breakthroughs that she is looking for, and that she really enjoys changing a perspective if it will benefit the person.

She even teaches, and in fact helped Christiana (see post: Interview with a Psychic) back when she was overwhelmed by her gift and needed some training.  She says it’s rare to find someone who is actually serious about learning the available tools, but if a person does need help, she is happy to share the information she has taken so long to gather and distill into truth.  The tarot has needed some reinterpreting, being that the booklets and definitions are sometimes hundreds of years old. She has put a lot of effort into making them relevant to our world. Also, being a clairvoyant takes discipline.  You can’t go around filling your body with drugs and alcohol and expect to get anywhere.  She has a regimen of healthy eating, warm baths, meditation and plenty of sleep that helps her to have the energy she needs and actually heightens her gift.

She once had a woman throw crystals at her, she was so enraged by the messages Caren was passing along.  When I ask her how she reacted, she says she understood that what she had told the woman had hit too close to home; she understood her pain, and just dodged the rock.

Caren is a highly successful Clairvoyant.Her passion for the human heart has led to a lifelong focus on healing other’s hearts. By combining compassion, Intuition,Astrological profiling & years of metaphysical study; Caren counsels her clients on future opportunities, as well as, how to move peacefully through current concerns.She is known for her positive approach to her sessions, while providing honest and accurate guidance.She has been featured on various television and radio programs including a feature on HBO. She has spoken with thousands of spiritual people on their paths. She is known as the Rock n Roll Psychic because she has read for many famous musicians.Clientele include San Diego Zoo/ NY Yankees/ La Jolla Country Club/ 92.5Fm radio/ Hollywood Actors/Writers/Directors Grammy Musicians/ Washington Politicians/ San Diego Chargers/ Doctors/Lawyers Famous Clothing Designers/ Healers /Psychologists HBO television.. Caren is currently accepting phone sessions by appointment basis only at carenshery@hotmail.com

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Down the Rabbit Hole with Sabrina Meglio

When Sabrina was a girl of just five years old, she spent time in an LA house that was dense with spirits.  As she describes its wrought iron gates, its black and white art deco floor, its spiral staircase, I see her in it, tiny with bushy black hair, running from room to room.  When she tells me about standing at the top of the banister, looking the several stories down as all of the spirits danced and floated beneath her, the picture in my head turns black and white, overexposed, gritty.  I am lost in the wonder of it.

Sabrina’s face opens up as she recounts the story, like it is a pleasant thing she thinks of from time to time.  She is a study in contradictions; salty and street smart, yet with a  smile of rare purity and innocence.  She is at once down to earth and ethereal, cynical and fantastical.  I like her immediately, and when she gets comfortable enough to start cursing up a storm, I feel a rush of affection that stays with me throughout the interview.

She explains to me that the psychic realm is her first language, that it is strange to be here on earth, in her skin.  She’s always known she was different. As a child she was constantly in trouble for knowing things she wasn’t supposed to, and for saying people were in the room when no one else could see them.  When she accurately predicted her mother’s car accident, she was severely reprimanded, and pushed her sight away, always knowing that she was “off”, and an outsider.

At fourteen, after years of repression, she was forced to visit her estranged father in Jamaica.  Once there, her vision was reawakened. She had dreams nightly that came true the following day over and over.  Finally a spirit visited her, and told her that she was gifted and had the power of sight.  I ask about her sanity, and she tells me she has thought she was crazy her whole life until recently.  Now that she is in her mid-life she has finally accepted that she is sane, just different.

She kept up a regular life for years, doing readings for free while working in Larry Flynt’s publishing house. It was years before she realized that the spirit walking her to and from the elevator every day was Althea Flynt, Larry Flynt’s deceased wife.  When she left that job, and was about to take another, her clientele grew, and she decided to start charging for readings.  She’s self taught, which accounts for her rawness, and the unpolished bedside manner that I find so intriguing.

She tells me that my home town sits on a huge vortex.  She has never heard of Taos and can’t pronounce it, but if you’ve ever been there, you might agree with her, regardless of your beliefs.  When she mentions that her building also sits on a vortex, I jump on the chance to ask her what that means.  She cocks her head to the side, and asks what I assume to be a person sitting off camera how they would describe it.  When I realize it’s a spirit, I lose my breath.  It turns out the person she’s talking to is named Brandon, a friend she lost way back; though I guess she didn’t lose him at all, because she talks to him throughout our conversation.

Brandon tells her to tell me that a vortex is like a bus station for spirits, and that the wormholes, which are the actual doorways, look like see through jell-o. This description makes her laugh.  It’s as though we are all sitting together,and she is his translator.  There are others around her as well, who seem to be taking up actual physical space. She addresses them with ease and directness as needed or to clarify a point, and then waits while they speak to her.

When I ask her what it’s like for her to give a reading, she says she holds the client’s hand if they come to see her in person, otherwise writes their name on a piece of paper, and puts her hand on top of it. Again it makes no difference whether they call her or see her in person. Images flood when her hand touches the client’s name, and she gets impressions of emotions and energy.

To show me what she sees, she draws me a map with a long street on it.  Instead of businesses, she writes “marriage”, “kids”, “career”.  It’s as though she’s walking down the street, and the more pressing issues are up front; as she approaches she gets more details.  She doesn’t instantly know everything about you, but as she moves around the map, it starts to make sense, to come together as a whole picture.  She can go into other people’s heads as well, to find out what they are thinking.  She feels the person’s feelings, and sometimes gets symbols to convey specific bits of information.  For instance, if a person were going to work on a Mac commercial, she might see an apple; it would be something recognizable to her.

She can do about five readings a day, and gets quite depleted.  When she’s tired she uses the tarot cards, which she says act like a generator.  She admits she likes sugar, and that she could probably do more if she took better care of herself. Her guides and spirits are her “knights at the round table”, helping her to sort through what she is seeing and feeling. She says that she has to trust that she is only being given the information she is supposed to pass along, so if she sees imminent divorce, you’re going to hear about it.  She makes no distinction between ghosts and guides and spirits; it’s all sort of the same thing.

When I ask her about death, she says we’re all only partially here. We are made of so much light that there’s no way we can fit in our bodies. The other side is like a giant mirror image of earth, except everything is brighter, more colorful, and there’s more of it.  Like Alice in Wonderland, I ask?  Pretty much. She spends a lot of time on the other side, and says we all do, we just don’t know it.  Her people have told her that the book Destiny of Souls is about 75% accurate, and that if I want to know more about it, I should read it (and I will).

As to life, and the question of destiny vs. free will, she tells me there are lots of ways to get to Vegas.

Vegas being death?  No, she says, Vegas being fate, and lessons learned.  You can crawl to Vegas, or you can fly first class.  That part is up to you.  She explains that fate and success are thematic as opposed to monetary, which is the way we tend to quantify it.  If it is your fate to come to earth and learn how to release fear, for instance, how fast and good a learner you are will dictate the harshness of the lesson.  If you pay really close attention, and are a good student, you may not have to experience cataclysmic events in order to learn.  Other times we are going to have to withstand terrible things, and that is karmic and unavoidable. You could spend 50 lifetimes just working on one thing, so you can’t be too hard on yourself.

We all have more than one death date, so we can get out if we want to.  She sees the grim reaper (she calls him G-man) if she’s going to lose someone she loves, and says he was everywhere for three weeks before 9/11.  We shouldn’t fear him; he’s a good and kind angel.

She lives among ghosts, and vortexes, dancing spirits, and even fairies, yet has so normalized her own experiences that while talking about all of these remarkable and intangible things, I have almost forgotten that we are supposing a realm unseen by most, and concepts that the majority don’t believe in at all.

As I am contemplating all that she has told me, she turns to the side, hearing something I cannot, giggles, and says to the apparently empty air next to her, “Yeah, you’re right.  That’s funny.”

to contact Sabrina, go to http://www.sabrinapureofheart.com

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Interview with Psychic Christiana McMahon

Interview with Christiana McMahon October 18, 2010

She’s not what you picture when you hear the word psychic.  She’s not creepy looking, no warts on the nose, no gypsy shawl.  She’s a bubbly blue eyed blonde, with a cute body and a big smile.  She looks a little corporate, like you might run into her at a high power business meeting somewhere.  But when she starts talking, she is a reminder never to judge a book by its cover, because she is saying things, controversial things, with such tenacity and confidence that you are a little taken aback.  There’s no quavering voice, no hesitation.  She just knows things, and this is her experience.

I have so many questions that I spend my first five minutes jumping on everything she says, before I finally calm down long enough to give her a chance to answer.

When she was young, a little girl in Texas, and a people pleasing outgoing one at that, she warned her teacher that her fiancé was about to leave her, and told her not to be sad when he did.  Her teacher, for whom she had a starstruck  worship, scolded her and sent her to the principal’s office.  She was devastated.  When her fiancé left her a few weeks later, she had Christiana removed from her class.  Christiana learned early on that there are consequences for knowing things you aren’t supposed to know.

She has always been able to read minds, especially when people are in a heightened emotional state. People ask her if it’s like Sookie Stackhouse (from HBO’s Trueblood).  They must have done their research because that’s exactly what it’s like.

She’s happy to be working from home.  Besides the whole hearing people’s thoughts thing, it’s too hard to work in an office when you’re trying to ignore the fact that the boss’ dead grandfather is standing next to him. She’s making a joke, but my stomach turns at the thought.

She went years repressing her gift. Like any kind of repression, you can convince yourself of almost anything with enough practice.  She sees how a person could end up in an institution if they lacked a strong constitution.  You don’t have to be a high soul to be a psychic, to possess this talent.  Whether you are a charlatan, or weak, it can be a bad situation all around.

She does readings either in person or over the phone, but says she almost prefers the phone because she is not distracted by body language and visible expectations.  Either way, after a blessing, she asks that whatever comes through be only for the client’s greater good.  Because she is both clairaudient and clairvoyant, she gets messages in various ways.  She has a council of guides and angels, as well as people who have passed, who help to clear a path so that the guides specific to her client can come through.  She feels that they protect her, and funnel information in a way that she can understand. She is “contracted” to tell you what she sees, so the filter happens before it gets to her.

People get angry when she fails to give the answers they want, and she hates to disappoint, but she is the messenger, and as such simply tells herself that it is none of her business.  All my questions about ethical dilemmas go out the window.  She might try to present the information she’s given in a sensitive way, but that’s as far as it goes.  The true line of information is between the client and their guides.

She tells me that of course she is interpreting, and a symbol can mean something to you that is different from the way she sees it, so she just does her best. Also, there’s the question of free will which complicates reading the future even further.  She sees a lot of potential, but people sabotage themselves through fear. She says to be careful of focusing on fear.  You can manifest it very easily if you’re not careful.  This makes me bristle (to see why, read my blog post “F@#$k the Laws of Attraction“), but I’ve heard it so many times that I let it go immediately.  The point is that people often have great potential which remains out of their reach, so she sees what is available, but you can always get in your own way.

Certain meetings and relationships are destined, but how we play it out is all us.  And when we die, we are choosing to.  With all of the tragedy I’ve witnessed, all the pain of lives lost, I have trouble with this, but she stands by it.

I want to know about ghosts.  She refers to them offhand, telling me about a dead girl who appeared at the foot of her bed the other night, like she’s describing the delicious pancakes she ate for breakfast. When ghosts appear to her, they come in one of three ways:  one, they look like you or me.  She knows they aren’t human because it feels like someone put their hands over her ears and there’s a whoosh! sound.   Sometimes she sees them in her head, and then sometimes they pixellate.  This, she calls an impression.

I tell her I would run screaming down the street if I were seeing that, and just the thought raises goosebumps up and down my arms.

I have always believed in reincarnation, and she does, too.  So how to explain the wandering spirits?  She says when we die, especially suddenly, there’s a seamless shift in consciousness, and sometimes we don’t know we’re dead.  Especially if a person is lacking in spiritual connection, they can have a hard time letting go, and can turn negative, wandering the earth in confusion.  This is one of the reasons that it is so important for people to cultivate their spirituality.

What about true evil, I ask.  What about demons?  Rare, she says.  She almost never encounters it.  Though I want to press on this point, she dismisses it, and moves on.

When we have crossed over, she says, we go to a place pleasant and familiar to us.  Then we sit down and have a life review (do you remember that movie with Albert Brooks and Meryl Streep, Defending Your Life?  That’s sort of what I’m picturing here).  She says that her closest experience of it came when she was reading for a client who was about to cross over.  When looking at his future, she saw him actually sitting at a table of people.They were in the midst of discussing his life and progress, and he was deciding whether or not to reincarnate.

She explains that incarnation on earth is a choice.  It’s boot camp, she says, and she laughs.  She tells me to look around.  Everyone on earth is brave, she says.  It’s the rapid soul progress program.  We don’t have to come here.  We can hang out on the other side as long as we want.  Maybe we’re waiting for loved ones, or maybe we’re just recuperating.  She says she actually believes those who have suffered greatly are cocooned in love before they even have their life review, and that this can go on a while.  Also there is no time, so there’s that (I have to bite my lip not to ask all about that, but for us, there is time, and the clock is ticking).

So why would we choose to come here, with all of the suffering?

She says we have feelings, tactile abilities on earth that don’t exist on the “ethereal plane”.  She says their sensations on the other side amount to a sort of goosebumpy sensation, and that we get to do so much more here.  Also, like she said before, we learn the most the fastest on earth.

Again, this challenges what I was raised to believe, that we have 49 days to get through the bardo (for an idea of what that looks like, think Flatliners), and then we are flung back into an earthly form until we stop being petty humans and attain enlightenment.

This sitting at a table and discussing potential areas of improvement sounds infinitely more enjoyable.

What if you’re a murderer?  What if you have committed atrocities? Is there retribution? No, she says.  It’s all evolution.  We’re just all at different stages of it, and when we cross over, we have to look at our behaviors but the guilt and judgment we experience as humans are nonexistent.

This makes me so uncomfortable.  I want there to be payment for injustice, but she sticks to her statement.  She says it like she knows for sure that it’s true.  No judgment.  Period.  Only love.

And as for the angels, when they come to her they are at such a high vibration that they can almost hurt her with their intensity.  She says they are moved by our humanity, by the strength of our emotions, and by all of our earthly obstacles.  They only want to help.

So how does she navigate her own path?  She says she walks it pretty blind.  She’s a human woman having all of her own human experiences.  She just doesn’t have a lot of the same questions we do.  She doesn’t wonder about the afterlife, or our purpose here on earth.  She tells me we’re here for ascension.  I’d like to ask her more about what that means, but we are out of time, so I let it go as a lofty concept that some will understand, and that seems hazy to me.  She knows that she is here to serve and that she does her best; 2010 has been a hard year, and that she hopes 2011 will be better. As always, she shoots for the best and ends on a high note.

Christiana is a practicing Intuitive Medium, available for individual readings by phone or in person.Please feel free to set up an appointment today by email atchristianamcmahon8@gmail.com @ 713-412-6254 Christiana is a spiritual clairvoyant medium whose gift allows her to tap into a cosmic intelligence that transcends and melds the boundary between physical and spiritual existence. She, in turn, translates this intelligence into the specific, accurate and down-to-earth guidance that helps her clients to deal positively with their past, present and future problems and aspirations. Her governing conviction is that the heart is the only true compass to follow towards living an authentic, dynamic life. And her straightforward, compassionate method lends credibility and integrity to a profession that she passionately believes can create peace, harmony and healing in all human hearts.

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