Second Sight (50 page)

Even Prince Charles and other members of the Royal Family are well known for the support they give to alternative medicine. So widespread is their endorsement that when a friend of mine went to buy a homeopathic flu remedy in London, the bottle was stamped B
Y
A
PPOINTMENT TO
H
ER
M
AJESTY
, Q
UEEN
E
LIZABETH
II, indicating that the Queen had been a patron. There's an aura of sponsorship for nontraditional health care in England that makes me optimistic.

How wonderful it would be if healing and the psychic were approached in that same spirit in the United States. Not that we've been without progress. The newly established Office of Alternative Medicine at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), in its embryonic stages, is looking at everything from diet and nutrition to mind-body control to energetic therapies. Already a Mind-Body Intervention Panel is examining the effectiveness of spiritual healing and the medical uses of prayer. The fact that a government agency could be behind this is nothing less than a miracle to me.

Of all the projects funded at the NIH, those centering on therapeutic touch, an offshoot of laying on of hands, have especially caught my eye. Developed by a nurse, Dolores Krieger, therapeutic touch is the most widely practiced form of energetic healing in the United States, employed by over 30,000 nurses and other health-care givers. Picture the healer as a conduit—hands held a few inches from your body, directing energy like a radiant sun into every pore—the love, the warmth rushing into you, reviving your energy, making you come alive.

The similarities between this type of healing and what I have learned from my own teachers are undeniable to me. Yet I've always found it interesting that whenever the topic of therapeutic touch comes up, mention of psychic healing is noticeably absent. It's perfectly understandable, I suppose, since the word
psychic
is so controversial that mainstream medicine would surely blackball any techniques associated with it—after all, perception is critical. “Therapeutic touch” is an expression the entire medical community can better hear. In writing this book, I myself struggled to find a vocabulary free of stigma but could not. With reservations I've chosen to use “psychic” and “intuition” interchangeably, although I believe that “intuition” is much less specific. Some people would even insist on larger distinctions between the two. As far as therapeutic touch is concerned, most practitioners are careful to steer clear of any reference to the psychic, a choice I've not made.

In your own life, you can take actions that allow you to become psychically in harmony with your own body, keeping tabs on how you're feeling physically as well as energetically. Get to know your body, the subtle changes it goes through. Familiarize yourself with when it feels “on” or “off.” Listen to information about your health when it comes through in dreams or intuitions; even specifically request it. Then when you need medical advice, you can speak with authority about your inner workings, be in partnership with your physician, and assume an active role in your care. Whenever possible seek out primary M.D.s who are sensitive to many approaches. They don't need to be full-fledged believers in the psychic—it would be ideal if they were—but at the least they need to respect your input and take it seriously.

You may be fortunate enough to have in your area one of the handful of physicians who are breaking ground, dragging the psychic out of the closet, putting it to work. I know of a highly regarded gynecologist whose office staff includes a psychic healer. Her job is to make intuitive diagnoses as part of the initial exam to get an earlier read on a patient's condition. Just as I have done in my practice, she empathically merges with a patient's body, finely focusing on each organ, zeroing in on the source of illness—sometimes pinning down a diagnosis before any actual physical signs turn up. If needed, and often by request, she also does healing with her hands.

Psychic diagnosis is not an unfathomable mystery. It's an approach that medical schools could teach as part of the standard curriculum. In addition to listening to a patient's heart and lungs, or palpating the outline of a liver, students can be shown how to sense these organs intuitively as well. My own training as a physician primed me to be a psychic. One of the great miracles of medical school was being able to see and feel the anatomy of the human body. As a student “scrubbing in” on major surgeries, I had the wondrous experience of watching a heart connected to a labyrinth of blood vessels beating in a patient's chest; of touching a uterus, ovaries, kidneys, and lungs—a privilege each of us should have, if we desire it, simply as an initiation into what it means to be human. It's so odd to me that most people walk around without the foggiest notion of what we look like inside. Emblazoned in my memory is the energy of each organ, its smooth, moist texture, its even, overall warmth and glistening color. When I psychically tune in, these varied frequencies, with ongoing practice, have now become easier for me to sense.

My dream is that physicians can explore psychic diagnosis together—it's not infallible and still very new—so that combined with healing we can broaden our clinical expertise. When our education in the workings of the body and mind, a sacred teaching of its own, is wedded to a root intuition we all possess, our work is bound to benefit. People always say to me, “I can't believe that you're a psychiatrist and a psychic! What an unusual mix.” It doesn't have to be this unusual, however. Just think of it: What could be more natural than a doctor with psychic insight who can heal not only with medicine but with energy? We could be rallying all our forces, making the most out of what we have to give.

Just a few weeks ago I was presented with the challenge of a lifetime, to apply the psychic directly to finding a cure for a disease, in this case multiple sclerosis. A progressive neurological disorder, MS strikes individuals primarily in their thirties and can be terribly debilitating. When a major medical school approached us at the Mobius Group to see if remote viewing could speed their research along, we jumped at the opportunity. A team of eighteen psychics with diverse backgrounds—two physicians, a laser physicist, a parapsychologist, and some with no scientific training at all—will individually take part in a series of viewings, to pin down the hitherto elusive cause of MS. This is exactly the sort of project I've been waiting for, a way to combine medicine and the psychic that could have a positive impact on an enormous number of people.

Beyond technology, beyond the grandest achievements of the intellectual mind, our bodies and spirits are aching to be healed, physically as well as spiritually. This demands that medicine evolve, breathe with our spirits as they continually grow more vast. It's time to honor the knowledge of our bodies that we glean from being psychic, and to seek an inner stillness that can sustain us. Medicine must be able to keep pace with the needs of the human heart. However, it will always fall short until it embraces the fundamental essence of healing: that we long to love and be loved, to feel and know the nature of our divine source. When science and spirituality finally join forces, medicine will achieve its full power. And doctors, by reviving their own spirits, will become true healers once again.

As a civilization we can no longer afford to silence the psychic. Our success is indelibly linked to staying in close touch with our inner instincts, with what we psychically know to be true, not diminishing the value of our intellect, but enriching it. Otherwise, we run the risk of reenacting over and over again the tragic legend of Cassandra, the prophetess cursed by Apollo so that her visions would never be believed. Even when she foretold the destruction of Troy, her words fell on deaf ears. In our world, we must not allow this to happen. To be a seer is to be deserving of the highest esteem.

For me there's a strength that has come from being psychic. It's not fragile or tenuous, wilting when I need it most. The more my faith in my psychic instincts matured, the more they assumed a natural authority that far overshadows even the circles of fear I've been known to run around myself. Just recently I appreciated anew how this clarity is a saving grace, restoring my sense of perspective. For the past few years I had been putting together a psychic research project with a woman who was perfect for the job. In fact, Catherine and I had grown quite close. I couldn't have asked for anyone more skilled or devoted, and I had no reason to doubt that she would see the project through to the end. Even so, six months ago I dreamed that Catherine and I were intently discussing the project in a beautiful Manhattan hotel room overlooking Central Park. All of a sudden, another woman's voice enthusiastically called out from a back bedroom, “I really love the work you're doing.” I never once saw her face, and I was sure we hadn't met, but I knew that she was going to play a critical role in the project, perhaps even be Catherine's replacement—a notion way too overwhelming to deal with at the time. I put it on the back burner.

Months later, Catherine announced that she'd been offered a job she'd be crazy to turn down and was moving out of L.A. My heart sank. I was happy for her, but terrified that the project would fall apart, devastated by the loss of her support. In the past I would have been consumed with fear, feeling utterly defeated. But now I didn't fall into that trap; I remembered the dream and didn't panic. For weeks I was left on my own, but the peace of mind my dream offered kept me afloat until one day I received a call: A friend of Catherine's, newly relocated from New York, was on the line. She was bright, energetic, just as excited about the project as Catherine had been. Instantly we connected; our work together to finish the project has begun. Once again I seem to have been blessed with the right person at the right time.

Why this experience is valuable to me and what I hope to impart to you is that being psychic doesn't mean that we're free from doubts and fears. It's just that with faith our intuitive convictions take on more power. The balance changes; our knowings become so potent that they counter the negativity: that threatens to knock us off base. On the one hand I might be thinking, Oh my God, I'm going to be abandoned. Yet a stronger feeling, an exhilaration, ripples through me, signaling that something good, perhaps even better, is ahead. When this happens, I go with my intuition. There's no contest. No matter what messages we receive, they're guideposts intended for our growth, a thread between us.

The ties that bind. If there's one thing that never ceases to amaze me in my work and in talking to people nearly everywhere I go—from the woman at the dry cleaners to parking attendants to clinical psychologists—it's that practically everyone with the tiniest hint of permission, has a psychic story to tell. There's a longing I've witnessed in so many people to reconnect with their visionary side. This burst of psychic electricity, surging through us as a collective, is only one sign of openings upon openings yet to come. We all possess extraordinary capacities: The reality is that we can see forward into the future, back into the past, and can accurately intuit the present. Wondrous, yes—but only the tip of the iceberg. Being psychic allows us to move through time fluently, provides an ever-widening portal through which we can view the divine.

The highest purpose of our lives, as I see it, is to give and receive love. We're reminded of this regularly in churches and synagogues, and we try to do our best to be good people. But many of us have not yet had a direct, convincing experience of the divine. The psychic can make it real. It can remove the intangible barrier that keeps love from us, unveiling the mystery.

The divine is right before our eyes, but so often we can't recognize it—the great riddle of the universe. Ordinarily we walk around in the world unawakened, painfully divided from the holiness in our lives. To feel the divine firsthand, it helps for us to learn how to become sensitive to the subtle energies in our body—psychic and heart energies especially—and do everything we can to enliven them so they can grow. Then the range of what we're able to sense intuitively gets bumped up a few notches and the divine is magnified. Stilling yourself daily in meditation, for instance, with the specific intention of contacting the divine is like depositing pennies in a bank. Each time you meditate, your energy builds. At the start you may feel nothing, but gradually you pass over an invisible threshold; before you know it, you have the experience.

Any way you fine-tune your sensitivities—focusing on the beauty around you, getting your energy balanced by a healer or teacher, giving and receiving love at every possible turn—moves you closer to the divine. It could happen one night when you're gazing up at the stars as you have a thousand times before. Suddenly you'll really see: You become entranced by their pale, shimmering light; a shift occurs and now the night sky appears more beautiful than you ever could have imagined—perfect, inescapably holy. You're in awe, appreciating the divine perhaps for the very first time.

The point of our journey, the harvest of the psychic, is this direct knowing of the divine. With a tender hand, it carries us over the abyss that separates us from an enlightened future. Even in our troubled world today, there's hope, which is nurtured by our love, our acts of kindness, our longing to reach out to the light. By doing this, we're preparing the foundation for the transition yet to come. With the psychic at our side, sensing the reality of the divine that is always with us, we have a faithful reminder that a loving world is not just an elusive fantasy: it's within our power to achieve.

Love creates a circuit between people. Once we're able to offer ourselves love, it begins to overflow and we treat others with more care. Giving love inherently feels good—there's no food on earth so sustaining. By helping others we also help ourselves. This is our healing. Love flows through us as we reach out and become its messenger. We don't need to make any grand gestures. Often, in the simplest of actions, we find something to give. A word of encouragement, a smile, or a pointed question at exactly the right time is all that's required.