The types of psychics who communicate with spirits are channels or mediums. The word channel appears to come from the US and covers a broad spectrum of psychic abilities and creative talents. Any of us can be said to be channelling when we lose ourselves to a creative process, whether it is painting a picture, writing a book, dancing, singing or chanting.
A medium is someone who acts as a vehicle for family or friends wishing to communicate from the spirit realms. Many psychics and mediums channel guidance or information in the form of mental pictures (clairvoyance), hearing subtle sounds or words (clairaudience) and in the form of sound and smell (clairsentience). A lot of material is also channelled in the form of automatic writing; this tends to be from information given by spirit guides and teachers.
There is no great mystery in communicating with Spirit; we are all capable of learning this skill. It is also possible to learn how to channel positive inspirational guidance to help others. (Refer to the chapter on spirit communication for practical guidance on how to communicate with Spirit and meet your spirit guides.)
Clairsentience
This is frequently defined as the ability to sense psychical manifestations that cannot be perceived by any of our five senses. It is the power to sense the atmosphere of a house or place; to know that there is a psychic manifestation. This ability is akin to psychometry and can show itself as a general uneasiness, a distinct feeling of coldness, negativity, even the prickling of hairs on the back of the neck or down the arm.
The majority of clairsentience experiences are spontaneous as it is often dependent on the way we tune into places and into the essences of people’s personalities. The most common example of tuning into a place is an ability to sense a strange atmosphere in a house as soon as one enters it. It is also common to discover a scent that comes from the spirit world. This is the first entry point into clairsentience and indeed is often the way people sense either the deceased or the history of a place. For example, smelling a deceased grandmother’s favourite perfume or baking or a grandfather’s tobacco is a universal paranormal phenomena. A few years ago I had a spirit guide from India and when he came to visit there was always a strong smell of jasmine in the room.
Clairsentience is the first opening from being intuitive or sensitive to describing yourself as psychic. We have all experienced times when our intuition is acute and we are able to listen to it and respond accordingly. Your intuition tells you that it would be a good time to telephone a friend; you have a ‘gut feeling’ she is in need of support and it turns out she is. Clairsentience is particularly common in women and children, who are still generally more emotionally biased than men. As children we are all quite open intuitively and emotionally; if you watch small children react to people and situations that they feel uncomfortable with or do not like, they are reacting to a feeling that they receive from that situation or person. However, as we grow we may learn to shut out these aspects of our awareness. To be clairsentient is to be as sensitive to situations and people as a small child, and to listen to those feelings and trust them.
Clairsentience is a very important skill because it offers protection, not only against bad vibrations from a haunted place, but also against present dangers or potential hostility.
I have never questioned my sensitivity to atmospheres since an event that happened when I was 19. One Saturday night I had gone to a party with a small group of friends. We were sitting in the living room when I experienced a terrible cold feeling in my stomach and insisted to my friends that we had to leave (this is before I trained in psychic development!). Reluctantly, my friends left with me and as we were walking out we came across a group of rough-looking youths waiting to come in. The next day I discovered that one of the youths had stabbed a guest who had been sitting where we had been. I sensed danger and thank God I listened to my feelings.
Intuitive responses tell us that a stranger is untrustworthy, even though their outer appearance or actions offer no apparent justification for this distrust. This automatic response is in-built in us all, but too often we don’t recognize our natural warning system. Dogs will growl at some apparently friendly strangers but not at others, while a normally confident child will sometimes instinctively back away from a smile and outstretched hand. In both cases, the person usually proves to be unreliable or to have negative intentions behind the smile and soft words. This is the same intuitive ability that makes us instantly like or dislike a place, a person or a situation.
This skill is more open in some people than others, particularly if they have more of an emotional outlook on life. Those who approach life with a more mental and visual outlook will lean more towards clairvoyance.
Clairvoyance
We often dismiss our psychic abilities by telling ourselves that we are imagining things. Many of us regard our imagination as something that is unreal or illusory. A well-developed imagination, however, is very important for our psychic development as it provides us with an effective bridge to valuable psychic information, as well as an abundance of creative energy. To develop psychically you need to give yourself permission to dream, to fantasize and play, before allowing the rational mind to do the necessary job of sorting out and assessing how to act upon the information that you receive.
The most commonly used term for a psychic is clairvoyant. This term is used to describe someone who gives psychic readings on a professional basis. Clairvoyance describes a range of psychic abilities based on the ability to visualize – to have ‘clear sight’ or ‘clear vision’. A true clairvoyant will receive messages or information through a heightened visual awareness.
A person with developed clairvoyant abilities has a strong sense of inner vision and is able to receive information in the form of visual images or symbols. Most clairvoyants receive their information internally; some describe having something akin to a cinema screen inside their head with images moving across it. Others receive individual symbols that they learn to interpret. Some clairvoyants receive their information externally. This usually means they are able to see people or animals in spirit, or can observe the subtle energy that circulates around themselves when they walk into the room.
Similar to people with a profound psychic ability in other areas, many clairvoyants will have a range of other psychic skills such as clairaudience and clairsentience, but their predominant source of information will tend to be visual.
Subjective Clairvoyance
This is by far the most common form of clairvoyance. Most of us have had the experience of conjuring up an image in our mind’s eye when we are remembering a past event or when we are asked to imagine something we have not seen first-hand. Many clairvoyants receive information in a similar fashion, perceiving visual images, symbols and impressions within their mind’s eye and then interpreting them accordingly.
These visions come through the third eye, which is one of the seven main chakras (see the chapter on chakras, pages 50–66). Some of the messages come in the form of lights, colours, cinematic images or abstract symbols, seen or perceived in the area of the forehead between and slightly above the eyebrows. Like all psychics, subjective clairvoyants receive information from their own higher mind, spirit guides, visiting spirits from clients that come for a reading, environmental influences and numerous other sources.
Because many clairvoyants receive psychic information in the form of symbols and abstract images, it takes time and practice to be able to interpret these images accurately and with some kind of practical and obvious relation to the person to whom you are giving the information. The images could relate to past lives, telepathic communication, picking up underlying life goals or life purpose, aspects of healing, and overall spiritual development – as well as numerous other issues such as current relationships and work problems.
Interpretation is something to be learned over time and is not something that is easily taught. There is no clairvoyant symbol that has a set meaning or that can be interpreted using a standard formula. Ultimately we are our own best teachers – by trusting what we feel, risking making mistakes and practising as much as we