Coming Out – Psychically Speaking

When who you are, your most authentic self, carries a stigma...

“Who the heck AM I?” I wondered. I had just, quite unexpectedly, told my good friend what her dead sibling had to say to her.

That was over 2 years ago. I was – and still am – on a deliberate journey to figure out who I am. I had left the corporate world more than 6 months beforehand and had started publishing a blog. Writing helped me focus on what I wanted to say, or find out.

As I wrote I came to realise that we are each a bit like onions, with layer upon layer of self-limiting beliefs we have picked up in our lifetime. I also recognised the joy and release in focusing my attention in the present, and that joy is our natural state. The year before I had awakened fully to my spirituality, a series of dots suddenly joining, but this phenomenon was something new.

Growing up I had heard about psychics and mediums, if I’m honest they probably scared and intrigued me a little, but I really had nothing to do with anyone like that – mainly because I didn’t know anyone like that. It was the stuff of fairgrounds and gypsies so far as I knew.

My upbringing was conservative, as was society. I wasn’t aware of anyone I knew who was ‘different’ in any way. It was really only through media hype, reading fiction, self-development and watching movies and sci-fi that my world expanded. 

When I watched the first version of The Secret DVD in 2006, I listened again and again to Esther Hicks, her words were so poignant and wise, and I was eventually intrigued by the subtitle “Voice of Abraham”, wondering what that meant. When I later watched The Secret Behind the Secret DVD, which is Esther’s story, I began to understand that she was channeling a more universal intelligence than that which resided in her own mind.

At the same time I was starting out in a new country and looking for someone I could bounce ideas off of as I built my life, someone who could give me a broader perspective. A friend recommended a lady who was a ‘psychic remedial psychologist’. The word psychic didn’t sit comfortably with me, but I decided to meet her anyway.

I talked, she listened, and she’d reflect back to me what she had heard. Except sometimes she’d reflect back to me what she’d heard without me ever talking. While there was a frustration in not being able to mentally offload at times, what I was hearing resonated so I kept listening and by the end of the session felt lighter without saying much of anything.

It was a strange experience really because she never explained what psychic meant, or tried to teach me the art, she simply amplified back to me what she was sensing or conveyed what she was hearing. Only now do I understand it enough for it to seem quite normal to me.

Now I can quite easily articulate that, given that we are just energy at our essence, with that energy preceding all thought, and thought (and, more importantly, feelings in relation to those thoughts) creating the experiences we are having, interpreting the energy doesn’t seem so weird.

In fact, we all do it every day, it’s called our intuition. Psychic ability is simply the ability to turn up the volume on your intuition. We all have (and generally acknowledge) intuition, we do not all – however – acknowledge the existence of anything more than we can process with our physical senses, nor do we all agree on what that non-physical realm might be.

This creates a conundrum. If the fullest expression of who you are is something the world at large recognises and agrees on, great. If not, it can be a bit tricky.

Listening to JP Sears talk recently on the topic of self acceptance, I was reminded of a concept that I have heard Eckhart Tolle, Esther Hicks and many others talk about, and it this idea that you are not your beliefs. Your beliefs are, after all, just a repeated thought pattern and can be changed. He was also talking about the importance – for him – of being playful about his spiritual beliefs because this helps to remind him he is not his beliefs.

Acknowledging that we each have our own truth, there is no ‘one’ truth, kind of got me stuck in that conundrum for a while. If I ‘came out’, psychically speaking, would I be rejected? And who is the ‘I’ that could be rejected?

I am not my beliefs, this I can see. I think it was Esther Hicks that pointed out the need to get others to agree with us is the single cause of conflict in our world and it’s so unnecessary. What you or I believe might shape what we think, do and feel, but it’s not ‘you’ or ‘me’. I then began to wonder whether this ability to turn up the dial on my intuition was ‘me’. Well, it’s a gift, but does a gift define ‘me’? It still didn’t feel like the whole answer.

If I take a broader perspective, acknowledging it’s within the confines of my own beliefs, if we are all one energy coming into and out of form, then ‘me’, the one writing this now, is simply a point of focus until this body stops breathing. Like a wave on the ocean.

Therefore the “I’ or the ‘me’ who was realizing my psychic ability, can’t really be rejected, only the idea of it can be rejected.

As I shared some stories with my parents on how this was unfolding, ‘coming out’ as you might call it, they rejected the whole idea, yet - strangely - I didn’t feel rejected. After some initial feelings of defensiveness and frustration, I asked “do I feel rejected?” and can honestly say that, no, I don’t, I still feel loved.

I think this idea of who “I’ am, is just an intention. It’s like the wave on the ocean, perhaps a bit like a wave that finds itself on a river inlet when it had intended to break on the shore of a sandy beach, I just have a sense of what I intended for my life and whether the experience was a match to it.

In my corporate guise it was not, just writing and producing articles it was not entirely either. However, when I receive and pass on messages, whether to myself or others, well, that feels more of a fit.

Where the messages come from, whether they are a translation of an answer to a desire or a question a person has, or whether they are delusional, is really of no consequence. What is of consequence is whether the messages help.

This is how I felt in the years preceding my own spiritual awakening when I’d connect in with my psychic remedial psychologist. I used to call her ‘my voodoo woman’ to my friends, in order to disassociate from the term psychic.  Putting aside the term and any construct in her belief system, the messages resonated, so I kept listening.

And so it is that I tell readers and individuals to simply take what resonates. It doesn’t really matter how you hear something, in this context or any other, if it helps, keep it; if it doesn’t, ditch it.

I can’t say where any of this is going in my own life, there is so much learning and growing to be done to ever be as good at it as my psychic remedial psychologist or the likes of Esther Hicks. I don’t think I’ll be updating my title on LinkedIn to Medium anytime soon, but who knows? It’s interesting that neither of the two teachers I have named (Esther and Eckhart) have ever labeled themselves with their ability, not wanting it to stand in the way of people hearing the messages.

While a crystal ball would certainly fit with the image some might conjure, translating energy can only ever apply to what is in the now – and since we each create our own energy and have free choice – we each determine our own future in the choices we make in each moment.

I can only tell myself what I’d tell anyone, that when you are in touch with who you really are, and you are expressing that to the world, it can only help you to live your best life, therein making this world a better place. Have the courage to be who you are, the world needs you.

Knowing I’ve helped in some way through my writing means a lot - I’d love for you to like, comment on, or  share these thoughts with others, or contact me directly at shona@shonakeachie.com, I’m always happy to help if I can. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also subscribe to my newsletter and, as a special thank you, you will receive the link to my video 3 Steps to Becoming You.