I’m on a quest to crack open my monkey brain and slip in the spoon of spirituality (a hypnotherapist told me the unconscious mind responds well to metaphors… how’s yours doing?), but one area guaranteed to get me wriggling like a fish on a hook is clairvoyancy.
Here’s why.
“Many of the chronic health conditions and diseases that we experience in adulthood are rooted in childhood or the womb. I use many different techniques to remove these traumas and problems quickly and easily.”
“A Soul Inspired reading is an opportunity to connect with your Soul/Higher self, to gain, feel and see your life from a higher perspective through the energy of love and without the distractions of your personality.”
“Anything from minor complaints to life-threatening injuries can be treated or even cured through the use of psychic powers. Whether these powers come from God, the healer, or the Universe as a whole is a matter of debate, but that they work is certain to those who believe in them.”
“Psychic healing can help you obtain relief from physical or mental pain. The gifted psychic can see your aura and determine the source of pain. They use subtle energy to remove your pain.”
“Transcendence Healing is an individual process assessing powerful Universal energies in order to facilitate your healing at a soul level.”
Deep down I would rather believe than not believe, though. How awesome to think that someone could completely understand and anticipate you without all that awkward business of getting to know you. So I’m fully prepared to alter my perception at the slightest shred of evidence and raising of hairs. I’ve already been proved wrong with energy healing, as I’m convinced the chap in Byron Bay on Day One quelled my vagus nerve by the time I’d wobbled out his door. So maybe, as with teachers, hairdressers and cats, you’ve just got to meet the right psychic.
The problem is, I’ve failed to be rendered wide-eyed by the triumvirate of revelations psychics always wheel out to women in their thirties:
1) You’re having doubts about a man
2) You’re thinking about buying a house
3) You’re unhappy in your job and thinking about going for another
You may also be worrying about a friend, be musing on vague plans to travel or move to the sea, and be thinking about starting a family… although no one’s leveled that last one at me.
That’s because of cold reading; the art (they’d call it science) of making high probability guesses about someone’s life by their appearance and reactions.
Psychics beadily eye my slovenly dress code and inky arms and deduce I’m a raging pisshead. “You need to start taking it easy on your body,” they’ll say with concern, shuffling cards and prescribing early nights. One of the perks of being a toothsome teetotaller is smugness, so imagine how sensational I feel when a psychic wheels out that old chestnut. For this reason I reckon I’m a fantastic litmus test for psychics – you should take me along before you agree to hand over your money.
Here’s an interview I did with a mentalist – a man who happily admits to leading a person’s train of thought with imperceptible cues (and a good grasp of neuro-linguistic programming), reading the nuances of their face and body in turn, to see if he’s on the right track. The accomplished accompanying patter allows him to slither and weasel his way out of any wrong turn, barely detected.
No such luck today here in Glebe. I can’t believe this $30-for-20-mins psychic is talking solely about me, yet I’m still bored.
We get onto the subject of some japester persistently vandalising my property, and she proposes I call on “his royal hotness” the Archangel Michael. I’m to visualise a deep blue cloak draped around my possessions, which will render them invisible. Sorted.
The Archangel Michael.
“Take a big lump of rose quartz,” she says, doing the very same. “And hold it in your right hand.”
Awesome. Are we going to make a fist around it and learn how to throw a loaded right hook?
“See all the lines in it? They directly link up to your brain stems.” She gauges my reaction for a beat. “You can tell this crystal your intention and it will project it out to the universe.”
I feel like I’m on the phone to a telecaller, or a boring band I’m interviewing. “Okay, thanks then. Okay thanks. Thanks. Yep, yep, no, that’s all,” I say, lowering the metaphysical telephone receiver. Keep talking and I’m going to have to blow a whistle down it in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1…
Nonintuitively, she bids me ask another question.
New Age Guinea Pig 