Developing Psychic and Intuitive Powers

I’m often asked if I can teach or help others to develop their psychic and intuitive abilities, or if I can recommend any good books, teachers, or workshops on this subject.

I respond by explaining that I think intuition should be developed gradually, and should arise naturally from our spiritual practices for achieving greater love, peace, joy, and attunement with the Divine. As we purify our hearts and minds, psychic perception and greater intuition may open up in parallel with our greater spiritual insight.

However, many extremely elevated spiritual individuals never develop psychic powers, and many people with psychic powers lack much spiritual understanding.

If too much subtle vision comes before we are ready, the world and people’s energies may become too overwhelming to deal with, digest, and process. With expanded vision and perceptions, our own darkness is mirrored back to us on difficult to comprehend subtle levels, in addition to the gross levels, and this creates serious problems. Relationships which are complicated to navigate with typical and normal perception, become virtually impossible to deal with if we see subtler leveles of peoples’ thoughts, fears, emotions, projections, and mixed intentions. A spiritually developed individual who has clearer insight and a compassionate heart, however, can clearly see through and embrace a wider range of thoughts, emotions, and the burdens of all people. So, instead, with time their relationships grow to become more loving and filled with joy.

Over time, as I went to see various Spiritual Masters, including my Spiritual Teacher Ammachi, as greater burdens were lifted from my mind, and greater insight dawned, they gradually opened my third eye and depth of seeing more and more. I believe they did so only if they perceived such opening could serve my greater healing and the healing work I did with others. Incrementally greater gifts of intuition may be bestowed upon us if we use such abilities to reduce our karma and the karma of others.

Psychic and intuitive abilities are “powers”. Just like a sharp intellect, athletic prowess, musical talent, or artistic abilities are also gifts and “powers” which people have to varying degrees. If we seek to achieve any of these in greater measure, it’s best if we have pure intentions of using these gifts for the upliftment of ourselves and the world. The saying “Power Tends To Corrupt And Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely,” (Lord Acton, 19th Century) comes from experience throughout history with how people who were given various powers tended to abuse them.

So I suggest we seek spiritual growth with the goals of achieving greater love, forgiveness, understanding, and compassion, and our intuition will deepen naturally, as our divine innocence is uncovered.

Perhaps we should heed the words of Jesus, repeated many times by great Masters such as Paramahansa Yogananda (author of Autobiography Of A Yogi), in their advice to spiritual students…

“Seek Ye First The Kingdom Of Heaven… And All Else Shall Be Bestowed Upon You” – Matthew 6:33

LESSONS FROM MY OWN EXPERIENCE — INTUITIVE PERCEPTION ARISING
TOO QUICKLY

When I first began spiritual practices in my teens, I was initiated into a very powerful internal cleansing practice, which was intended to speed up my evolution. This practice had wonderful benefits for making me feel pure within, but it's side effects included opening up my sensitivity way too much -- I began perceiving 'negative' and 'dark' energy all around me from the outside world. I felt the only truly safe place was in my bedroom, especially while doing my meditation practices. Otherwise, when I was around people, I felt like I was being exposed to, and overpowered by, their negative energy all the time. I couldn't shake hands with another person, or else their 'negativity' came in to me. I couldn't go out to eat, for fear of absorbing the 'negative' energy where someone else had been sitting. My life was miserable, and I could see no way out for years, even throughout chiropractic medical school, it was often hellish being around other people. I always made sure I was the last one to find a seat in a lecture hall, in attempt to try to avoid people who had headaches, stomach aches, upsets, tension, stress, etc.

Throughout this period of my life, I didn't ever believe that our psychology mattered much. I knew the real "truth" was only found in the ecstatic states of meditation I could achieve by TRANSCENDING the mind... going above all of its hurts, wounds, and busyness . Who needed to deal with the mind, anyway? It was just comprised of a lot of thoughts, and it was all untrue…

Then one day I went for a counseling session, I was about 30 years old.. In the past, this counselor had kept coaching me to examine my mind, and look at my 'stuff,' and I kept replying back to him that I felt my 'stuff' didn't matter. I was convinced that what mattered was only my true spiritual perception, which didn't have anything to do with my mind.

He looked like this…

But on this particular day, at the psychologist’s office, when I went into the room to wait for him, I noticed a terribly negative and creepy feeling chair which I surmised had been where his last client had been sitting. I took great care to avoid this chair, and go to the opposite side of the room, priding myself in my advanced inner perception. But then the psychologist walked in, and he actually sat directly right in the negative spot I had avoided. To my extreme surprise, as he sat there, I saw all the negative energy clearly dissipate by what must have been his compassionate and loving presence -- it all was quickly digested and turned into light! This was quite a wake-up call. This incident gave me so much more respect for working with the "mind" and how greater love, inner clarity, and compassion could truly be an important spiritual accomplishment – qualities which came from dealing with and resolving our mental issues -- not by just TRANSCENDING the mind in meditation.

It wasn't until meeting my Teacher Ammachi, however, that I began to get deeper insight into what all the darkness and negative energy was, which I was perceiving all around me. Three years after meeting Amma, I was sitting in a meditation room at Her San Francisco Bay area ashram. While staring at a portrait on the wall of a purported Saint, I was surprised to feel what unexplainably seemed like “dark” energy coming from the picture. For some reason, I looked away, and began doing some inner purification techniques I had learned. After a few moments of inner purification, I looked back up at the picture and noticed the energy which the portrait emitted seemed lighter… So I did a little more inner purification, and upon glancing again at the picture, it seemed to be emitting even more light. Following a few more minutes of self-purification practice, I saw the saint’s picture appeared full of pure light. The realization occurred to me that “I’VE BEEN LOOKING IN A MIRROR!” I so clearly remember this moment and the shock that came over me, “Is this the case for all the darkness I’ve been seeing in people? Would working on MY OWN purification eventually show me that everyone is also just filled with light?”

Well, since this milestone of a realization dawned, greater and greater understanding has arisen over the years, and I learned that all the darkness in the world around me could be resolved into light -- whenever I put effort into clearing myself.

Perhaps some would say that my intuition and sensitivity opened up too early from the intense inner cleansing exercise I began in my late teens. It took me years thereafter for the necessary spiritual understanding to arise to help me deal with the pain of life. I lived in severe depression, on the verge of total breakdown over a period of 16 years (ages 15-31). I couldn’t believe each week that I hadn’t yet taken my own life. But ultimately the pain of confronting darkness and negativity all around me was the ‘fire’ which drove me to work so hard to find a spiritual cure and relief in my life. Even my search for a Spiritual Master was fueled by the hardships I went through from being overly sensitive to the subtle world around me.

So many of my clients have sought healing work as a result of their heightened sensitivity to energies and the serious problems it created. Some of them have even felt under psychic ‘attack’. If this was the path that was naturally laid out for each of us by the Divine to get us to seek Freedom, so be it. But attempting to acquire greater psychic opening and sensitivity too soon can result in very undesirable consequences.

As I said earlier, we should realize that seeking greater psychic and intuitive ability is a form of “power” seeking… I recommend instead “truth” seeking, and in so doing, the various “powers” and “intuition” we need can open up in perfect accord with Divine timing. In my experience, with every opening comes more challenges, even at a slow pace, such openings are oftentimes a huge test for me.

We shouldn’t try to measure a person’s spiritual attainment by looking to the psychic or intuitive abilities they possess, instead we should recognize their ability to live joyfully, have loving relationships, and serve others selflessly as true indications of their spiritual growth!