A lot of psychic abilities fall into the category of perception. Remote viewing, clairvoyance, talking to your subconscious, telepathy, empathy, etc. Here’s one analogy that might help you in all your ESP endeavors.
Think of your mind and emotions as a pool of water. Every thought you have creates a ripple in this pool of water. Every emotion you conjure also makes ripples. Any mental or emotional “movement” will create ripples, which can turn into giant waves if it’s strong enough.
Now, to perceive something psychically, you need to keep your pool of water absolutely still. No splashing, no ripples, no swirling, no marco-polo :-P. When you do this, your goal is to stop all thoughts, and keep your emotions still and passive. You’re just holding still.
Hold that for a while, and see how long you can do that for. If you can make it past a minute, with ZERO ripples, then you’re doing great.
Once you gain the skill to stop all ripples on command (and it does take some practice), then you’ll be ready to receive information psychically. All you do is go stop all ripples, wait a second for everything to settle, and then announce one big wave of whatever your question is.
“How does my mother feel today?”
Once you make that announcement, then just sit back and calm your pool down. Keep your mind and emotions still. You’ll notice that new ripples will form on their own. You’ll know it’s not YOU creating the ripples, because you are already confident you can keep a still pool from all your practicing earlier.
Decode these new ripples into thoughts and emotions. Interpret them. Figure out what these foreign ripples are saying to you.
If all goes well, this will be a reply to whatever question you asked. If not - try again. If you continue to fail after a long period of time, then you either need a new technique, or you need to work on keeping your pool still. If you’re confused over whether the ripples are coming from your own thoughts, or somewhere else, then you need to practice keeping your pool still until you are confident that the ripples can’t be coming from you.
Try it out. 
May 11th, 2007 at 2:16 pm
I do that. I’ll try to not think of stuff until I get an answer. And if I think I made it up it usually seems like a thought rather than that, so I know its not it.
May 11th, 2007 at 3:21 pm
This is the kind of article I’ve been waiting for
I already use a variation of this technique (by listening for anything that doesn’t sound like my own mental voice) but I’ve been looking for something new to try. Thanks!
May 11th, 2007 at 3:37 pm
This is what is sometimes called the Gnostic State. Pretty useful actually.
May 11th, 2007 at 3:48 pm
Interesting way of think about it. I already do this, but you did put into some interesting words. Good one.
May 11th, 2007 at 6:06 pm
I’ll try and keep the ripples down for a minuet or two. I think quiting my mind has always been pretty easy.
May 13th, 2007 at 3:03 am
If anyone’s ever heard of accessing the Akashic Library, this is what it’s talking about. The Zen Buddhists call it Satori, and apparently scientists have named the state “flow” for the natural, flawless flow athletes have when in this state of consciousness. In a previous post Sean mentioned this question: “If you’re observing your thoughts, then you are not them. So what are you then?” You are just consciousness, that which we all have in common. You could call it God, or your soul, but it’s the observer of the mind’s busy thoughts and it has great power because of it’s universiality. Thus the “God” label coming up, because this state puts you in touch with everything because on a basic level you ARE everything.
I like the visualization of thinking of more and more discrete levels of existence. The least discrete element of your being is obviously your physical body. The next is the bioelectric field you give off due to the reactions going on in your body which expands slightly outside your physical body. The next is your aura which is even larger. And so on and so on, until you’ve expanded to include everything on the most discrete level. Your “pond” at this level is EVERYTHING, so when you look for certain “drops”, nothing is outside your reach and you can figure out things that your grosser levels are not expansive enough to give an accurate answer about.
I tend to get too “new-agey” for some people, I know
But hey that’s me. Hope this sparks something for you guys.
May 15th, 2007 at 12:17 am
*yawns*
May 22nd, 2007 at 10:59 am
That’s similar to the technique I use.. except I use kind of a computer thing instead. This would probably work better, though, so I will try this later.
I imagine that my brain is just one huge computer, and that any thoughts or emotions will bring up the CPU usage. When I want to receive something, I make myself clear all the thoughts except the monitoring device that shows my usage. When I get as low as I can, I shut off the monitor, and start.