Mia
‘I am going to close my eyes for a couple of minutes – nothing weird is happening, I am just relaxing. Then I’ll open my eyes and we’ll begin.’
‘I’ll start with a health scan. This will make you sound like you’re ready for the knacker’s yard but hopefully will only be light-hearted. I am going to start with your head. Your eyes are weeping and irritated … you have whiplash or muscular problems …’
Roz
There was no trance, no meditation, no holding on to objects that carried my ‘vibrations’; Mia just looked into my eyes. But by the time she had finished scanning my health, my journalistic hat was firmly back on my head. Anyone who works at a computer will have tired, sore eyes, so no points for that one. And no whiplash or muscular problems I knew of, just the usual desk-bound, bad-posture backache.
Was it all going to be vague from now on? I felt the glimmerings of disappointment. Maybe my belief in a higher power was a childish desire to believe in magic. I settled back into my cynical comfort zone.
Mia
‘I am going into the floater now. This will give me random images of things that have just happened or are just about to happen. The first things I see are wind chimes inside a door.’
Roz
I had brought a set of chimes back from Thailand – and for years now, they have been positioned inside my front door so that every time the door swings open, I can hear their sound.
Mia
‘You are organized but chaotic. You’re fiercely independent but, at the same time, you would give everything that you have away, given half a chance.’
Roz
It seemed that Mia was keying in, reading me. I began to see how people could give power to psychics. People often go for a reading when they have reached rock-bottom – they are distressed and their distress makes them vulnerable. Suddenly it can seem that a psychic has all the answers …
I made my face impassive.
Mia
‘I see a fridge-freezer with a wonky door. I see you in Wellington boots looking at chickens. I see you putting on walking boots and you will be buying a new computer. And in the next two and a half to three years, you are going to be a well-known novelist.’
Roz
Mia was not looking at me. She had moved her head to the right as if someone else was talking to her. After a few moments, she laughed.
Mia
‘Eric wants me to tell you that your characters have dreams and wishes as well as adversity. He says, “Let them win sometimes.”’
Roz
Every once in a while, something comes along that, perhaps, you can’t explain away. As a journalist, it was not a huge leap for Mia to assume that I had also written a novel, but how did she guess that my characters needed lightening up? My first two books had been called beautiful – but bleak. Only someone who knew my writing could have given me that advice. Had Mia read my book or did the information come from another source? The words were so pertinent, so right for me. I felt energized.
I looked around the hotel bedroom. The curtains – the table – looked sharper, clearer. If spirit guides really existed and could pass their wisdom to one human being to give to another, then perhaps there truly was a bigger picture.
Deep down, I knew I was not only testing Mia, but testing my own beliefs. I still wanted to know if the world I saw was the only one that existed or if there really was something more – something greater than us all. Suddenly there were a lot of possibilities.
Not everyone would be comfortable with the idea of sitting in a room with a woman who talked to a spirit from another dimension. But Mia made it seem so down to earth, so normal. The idea of Eric did not scare me. On the contrary, I was intrigued. I consulted my list of questions.
‘Could you teach anyone to be psychic?’
Mia
‘I could teach anyone to open up and be able to see. But I couldn’t guarantee how far they could develop. Everyone has the ability to awaken their sixth sense, but there are varying degrees of ability. A child can paint a picture of a tree with a brown stick and a green blob. But a trained artist would paint with depths and hues that would make the tree come alive. You would get more clarity and information from the artist’s picture. Similarly, some people would only be able to achieve a basic ability, while others could go on to full clairvoyance.’
Roz
As a journalist you have to follow your natural curiosity. And something about being with Mia was stirring me.
‘Could you teach me to be psychic?’
Mia
‘I just told you I could.’
Roz
‘Well – will you teach me?’
It seemed to come out of the blue, but I was serious. I wanted to see how far we could take it – how far Mia was prepared to put herself on the line. I’d never witnessed any unusual psychic phenomena and didn’t know if I believed in ghosts, but perhaps Mia could convince me.
I liked the idea of having a way to see into the future. Could I do it? But more than that, I wanted to know first hand – absolutely, no question – if there was more to life than what I could touch and see.
Mia
Would I teach her?
It is my belief – absolutely – that anyone can develop psychically, if you give them the tools. And if I could teach people to do it for themselves, then I could open them to receiving the understanding and comfort that clairvoyance gives me. It had always felt important that people could access that wisdom directly – with no middleman.
The truth was that for years I’d been nursing a dream of opening a psychic school. When I first became clairvoyant it was so scary and such a shock, that I feared I was losing my mind. So I wanted to create a place where people could go – a structured institution where they could learn that psychic ability was natural and they were not going mad.
Here I could teach people what it was all about and how to use the gift well; and then they could take classes to hone their new skills. I had spent hours imagining the curriculum: classes on how to receive information, others on how to interpret it. The most important thing would be that it was a non-denominational school