In my previous blog posts, here and here, I describe how I learned to do automatic writing in order to communicate with my spirit guides, and the dramatic evidence with which I was presented when I doubted their very existence.

If you have read these previous posts, you will know that Peg was my spiritual mentor and close friend, and her spirit guide, with whom she spoke daily, was named Ursula. Not long after the events described in my previous post, I got another excited call from Peg:

“Ursula just told me about a past life you and I shared together! This is so cool!” she exclaimed.
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Peg has always been a little excitable and back then (the mid-1980s), I was still very doubtful of her so-called communications from Ursula. You just have to know her, I guess; she is a tiny blonde with waist-length hair, and so flighty you have the feeling she has invisible fairy wings attached to each shoulder. It always seems as if she might flutter off into the ethers at any moment, and it was hard for me to take the things she said seriously.

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.