Were you confused ​by the array of details and images in your last card reading? Don’t worry – you’re not alone! Nowadays, we can all Google “tarot reading” and find ourselves clicking on automated spreads. Or, some of us try flipping cards from a deck we picked up at the last psychic fair. But even for those of us who know the meanings of every card, getting a good reading depends upon technique – NOT from memorizing card definitions.

All tarot readings are a form of divination, defined as “to discover hidden knowledge by occult or supernatural means.” (Dictionary.com) Occult knowledge is often encased in symbolic form, so to get the most from a tarot reading, we must be wide open to the possibilities of the symbolism by which important information is frequently conveyed. 

In my last blog post I told you how I learned to communicate with a spirit guide named Owen via automatic writing. I “spoke” with him daily, but had never felt so confused.

I spent half my day fearing it wasn’t real, and the other half squirming in disbelief. Could this be happening? Was I crazy? I had been raised by highly-educated atheists. Mainstream society absolutely did not accept the existence of such phenomena. The act of automatic writing itself was very amorphous – who was to say whether I was making up these messages or not? Was it all over-interpretation and wishful thinking, or was it a valid supernatural experience?

One day in 1986, my mentor Peg called me up in great excitement. A long-time sensitive with a strong background in metaphysics, her psychic antennae were always on alert. 

“I was sitting at work, and I felt someone tapping me on the shoulder, so I got out a pen and started to write what I heard!” she exclaimed. “Listen!” She proceeded to read me simple but profound-sounding insights about her life, our friendship – all sorts of interesting observations that somehow rang true without any possibility of immediate validation.

I was asked this recently, and I kind of wished I'd passed on answering.

Instead I paused and spluttered, “Umm – maybe middle-aged?” Now I haven’t heard from her in a while.

Oops!

And anyway, who am I to judge?

Some spiritual teachers say that all souls are exactly the same age – that there cannot be older and younger souls. That the Creator, perhaps at the literal moment of the so-called Big Bang, spontaneously created a vast number of souls who learn and grow via a cycle of death and rebirth on Earth.  

If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my years as a psychic reader, it’s that receiving guidance from the Universe is often not the direct path to immediate bliss. For one thing, we’re here to learn certain lessons. Getting the answers in advance is uncool, so it shouldn’t be surprising when we are sent straight into a dark swamp on our path to enlightenment. Many of us have managed to wedge ourselves into some very dark corners through years of less-than-optimal decision making, so while the guidance we receive will always be the best available, that doesn’t mean we won’t have to do a lot of work digging ourselves out. 

I don’t know about you, but I have been trying to understand my dreams for 40 years, with only some success.

I follow all the usual advice, and read all the usual books, but the one absolutely definitive thing I have learned is this: if the memory of a dream suddenly pops into your head as you are doing something mundane, stop and notice it. Pay attention. Try to see how the dream is connected to that tiny action. 

You may even save a life.

“On a long and lonesome highway, east of Omaha…” – Bob Seger, Turn the Page

Interstate 80 stretches across the northern half of the United States, from New York City’s George Washington Bridge to downtown San Francisco. Long-haul truckers like my late husband and I know the road well, and well we know how perilous it becomes in farm states like Nebraska and Iowa, where salt is rarely used to tame ice and snow, and hundreds of overturned cars litter the medians after every snowstorm.

Have you ever wondered what goes on during all the time we spend on the other side of the veil, between our various lives? 

A fascinating book called Journey of Souls, by Dr. Michael Newton, is incredibly revealing on this point. I am a metaphysician at heart. The information in this book shifted my entire perspective on life – why I am here, what constitutes right action, what my life purpose might be, and so much else. I then went on to have a similar regression done by one of his early students, on the advice of my spirit guides, and I learned so much I don’t know where to begin….