How do I use my own psychic skills in my daily life? Hmm…
The first thing to realize is that everyone is psychic. We use our psychic abilities all the time.
The second thing to realize is that when we use our psychic abilities, we don’t go out of our way to do it. It’s part of our thinking process, and happens in harmony with our other normal functions - like memory, emotion, associations, etc.
We have to sort of step outside of societies limiting ideas, and look at reality. Reality doesn’t distinguish between a psychic skill, and some other mental skill. It’s all where you want to be, doing what you want to do. Reality doesn’t monitor your mind, saying, “Oh, now Sean is using a psychic skill… cool”. It’s just me being me. And you being you. It’s natural.
Even saying that some function is a “psychic ability” is a little incorrect. I mean - what if I ask you, “When did you use your memory today?” How do you answer that question? Well, first you have to use your memory to think back on today… so there’s one :-P. Then you might think of conversations you had with people, and think back to a point in that conversation when you used your memory… which is pretty much every 3 seconds :-P. It’s just as hard to answer, “When did you use your psychic abilities today?” Every 3 seconds I use them, in whatever way my mind needs at the moment.
For example, when writing the beginning of this post, I instinctively asked my subconscious how to phrase certain parts, and asked for clarification on ideas. Before I started writing, I asked my subconscious if I should write a post today, and also checked the date of my last post. Then I remembered reading a comment asking about how I use my subconscious on a daily basis. I debated whether writing this post, then decided to start, partly because I felt confident that my subconscious would help me if I ran into trouble explaining something.
Maybe I’m at work, and reading a book. There is a psychic function for reading a book, it almost feels like… it’s more than just reading over letters on a page - it’s a transfer of ideas and beliefs. It’s a two-way conversation with the author. If I want, I can see the author in front of me, explaining his or her ideas to me. I can see them animated and excited during - what they feel - are the important parts. I can ask questions, and get answers. I can ask for clarification, or examples.
I can see the thoughts that led up to the authors point of view. I can see how they think. I can see the environment the author lives in. I can see the difficulties they’ve experienced. I can see the realizations they’ve attained, and the obstacles they’ve overcome. Is this “psychic”? Reality is one big blur - how do you draw a line in liquid?
Now - we can practice psychic abilities, and make them stronger and more accurate. The same way we can exercise our memory, or muscles, or learn a song on guitar, or play chess. Whatever you focus on gets stronger. But you do need to realize that the distinction between one skill or another is just in your head. Whatever your goals are, there is a cost in an amount of focus you need to spend to acquire them. If you want to be a rock star, then you better spend a lot of your focus on playing guitar. If you want to receive psychic information, then you better spend a lot of your focus on meditation and receptiveness. If you want to acquire truth, then you better spend a lot of your focus on self-realization, and inward digging.
When people ask me how I use psychic abilities on a daily basis, these are where my thoughts go.
June 7th, 2007 at 4:30 pm
Nice. I think we use the same words with different meanings. Fr my dad, random is seemingly affected by nothing. For me it means affected by nothing at all, therefore impossible. When we say psychic abilities, we mean (or at least some people think) of using psionics and moving stuff with our minds. Anyway, nice post. BTW, do you still do psionics?
June 7th, 2007 at 7:16 pm
Hey Sean
So you’re saying that we are all psychic and use them all the time, it’s just not as developed and noticeable… And to develop it, we don’t need to focus on “out there” because we already have it. Rather, we just have to pay attention to what’s going on in our heads?
June 7th, 2007 at 10:48 pm
Yes bobelly, you get a cookie. For perception based skills, at least. For manipulation based skills, that is a different story.
fruo - No, I don’t really go out of my way to practice psionics. But I still use the skills, as outlined in this post. Read my “How to Practice” article on PsiPog (http://psipog.net/art-how-to-practice.html), the last section on how to get better without practicing. That’s what I do.
June 8th, 2007 at 1:35 am
Interesting post.
I think that, in order to meaningfully answer the original question - “How do I use my own psychic skills in my daily life?” - some sort of dividing line between “psychic” and “non-psychic” has to be established. You state that “reality doesn’t distinguish between a psychic skill and some other mental skill”. However, terming a certain phenomenon “psychic” or “non-psychic” isn’t (typically speaking) a question of its bearing on, effect on, or relation to “reality” (which is, again, difficult to define, but I’ll go ahead and assume that you mean that which is defined by the physical sciences - physics, chemistry, etc). It’s a social question.
What I’m trying to say here is that I could say that, in typing this response, I’m using a “psychic skill” because I’m communicating with you at a distance, but most people would not deem a blog reply to be a “psychic” event. By the same token, I wouldn’t consider your example of reading a book to be a psychic event. Similarly, I wouldn’t consider communicating with what you call your subconscious to be psychic, either.(I’d disagree with the use of the word “subconscious”, and propose, at profound peril of sounding excessively New Age-y, something along the lines of “inner voice” as Robert Peterson terms it, as “subconscious” has a more or less precise psychological definition that is not the same as what you’re talking about. That’s pure semantics, though.)
Perhaps something that you could consider in a future post, if you would find it of interest, would be exactly what constitutes “psychic”. As it stands, it’s rather something of a subjective term - you find that communicating with your subconscious/inner voice is a psychic activity, while I would categorize it as a mundane one, and so on. Someone could term this response psychic, as I am generating ideas, images, and concepts in my mind, converting them to words, and sending them to you, and then you read the words and (if I wrote well!) convert them back to ideas substantially the same as the ones I originally conceived. Electronic communication - or asynchronous telepathy? Who is to say?
June 8th, 2007 at 9:11 am
If someone where to ask me “how I use psychic abilities on a daily basis..” I also would have a hard time answering it. I just use them so much that it’s like trying to remember the exact time I took a crap. (Yeah bad example). I guess, if anyone can answer the question the same way I did then the will be psychic for life. Which would be interesting, because most psions nowadays are young with the oldest ones being about 30-35. (Didn’t include Sean’s dad, who’s probably older.)
June 8th, 2007 at 9:56 am
However, terming a certain phenomenon “psychic” or “non-psychic” isn’t a question of its bearing on, effect on, or relation to “reality”. It’s a social question.
On the surface it’s a social question. But how many people internally think of it as a reality question? Just stating something like, “Psychic abilities don’t exist”, or “Psychic abilities do exist”, now turn it into a question about reality.
Similarly, I wouldn’t consider communicating with what you call your subconscious to be psychic, either.
And if I get psychic information from my subconscious? Like the location of winning lottery tickets? Or if I get help leaving my body from what I label my subconscious?
Perhaps something that you could consider in a future post, if you would find it of interest, would be exactly what constitutes “psychic”.
I’m trying to do the opposite with this post. I think it’s better if we release the label, and just accept reality as reality. Our label has acquired too much crap, so I recommend individuals just let it go.
June 8th, 2007 at 4:33 pm
Sorry for double post, but I had to say something in this discussion. I think Felix the Cat is going through the stage where he is trying to understand the world. The whole thing about being ‘magical’ or mechanical, as Sean posted in his last blog on psipog. He is skeptic and the idea of psychic abilities is conflicting with mechanical reality. The thing is, as Felix said, we have to draw lines between psychic and non-psychic, but not to put too much stress on them, like Sean said. First, we have to define psychic. Sorry to be the guy who takes words out of the dictionary, but as I said in my previous post, people use the same words to define different things. Here is the definition of psychic from the Cambridge dictionary: “having to do with the mind and the emotions rather than with the body”. Technically, what Sean mentions in his post would be correct. Gotta cut this short because I have to go. Sorry for what I just did (dictionary definition), because I always hate it when people do it to me. I agree mostly with Sean but also with Felix.
June 9th, 2007 at 2:04 am
Everyone is constantly trying to understand the world, with the possible exceptions of enlightened religious figures such as the Lord Buddha, the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH), Jesus Christ (PBUH), etc.
I’m not skeptical in the sense that I don’t believe in psychic abilities - I am a natural empath, work with energy on a regular basis, do OBE-related practice nearly nightly, and have in the past had some success with RV and micro-PK. I’m quite the opposite of a skeptic when it comes to psi!
I think I can express what I was trying to say more coherently and succinctly tonight.
Sean says that we shouldn’t differentiate between “psychic” and “non-psychic”. That’s fine; it’s a perfectly valid point of view, and one that works when interacting with fellow psions. One natural effect of rejecting that difference is that “psychic” loses its meaning.
Then he goes on to describe how he uses his psychic abilities on a daily basis. This contradicts his other statement, since if there is no functional difference between “psychic” and “non-psychic” actions, then there is no basis on which to discriminate between (to borrow NeoPsychic’s turn of phrase) OBE and taking a crap.
Sean is indeed (probably) correct that there is no theoretical, physical, unversal distinction between “psychic” and “non-psychic” stuff. However, there’s certainly a socially defined one, and one that he uses in the second half of his post.
Personally, I’m not bothered by the distinction between “psychic” and “non-psychic”. I feel the same way about “psionics” that a certain Supreme Court justice felt about “pornography” - “I can’t define it, but I know it when I see it.” As long as my “know it when I see it” mostly overlaps with yours and everyone else’s, then we’re fine.
While I’m clarifying, I might as well give an example of what I feel the difference between your “subconscious” and your “inner voice” is.
Your subconscious is what makes you want to chuckle when someone introduces himself as “Dick Cox”. Your inner voice is what tells you that you shouldn’t, and that you’re a sophomoric fool for even subconsciously considering it.
…that’s enough about my thoughts - I try not to use others’ blog comments sections as places to share my own thoughts on things, but rather as places to react to the blog. Then again, this is sort of filling a void left by the demise of the PsiPog forums. (Simply put: there’s nowhere else to discuss psionics, dangit!)
June 9th, 2007 at 3:30 am
As far as terms go, I don’t think it matters too much so long as everyone’s consistant. Or at least know what someone’s talking about.
Felix the Cat: Slightly off topic, but Psi-Links has a good forum…
June 9th, 2007 at 11:12 am
Great post.
Wow, we do use our memory a lot. I never realized that.
- hotfoot982
June 9th, 2007 at 8:56 pm
Argh! I’ll cut myself! Sorry about triple post. Won’t happen again.
To Felix the Cat:
Knowing you’re a psion, that changes everything! Me too, lol. I agree with you that the term psychic is misused and with Sean that it’s been loaded full of crap by people pretending and ruining the real thing. I don’t think there is a real definition for subconscious. For some people it’s inner voice plus subconscious. For others its separated. Like the SP justice said, we don’t know how to define it, but we know it when we feel it.
June 9th, 2007 at 10:29 pm
I sometimes use TPS to get my stepsister to come out of her room. Dont ask why. I also use my subconcious to find lost things.. P.S: When will there be forums?
June 13th, 2007 at 10:58 pm
I am new here so please excuse the late post. I have to tell you that in addition to loving this site, I love words. Sean, I hope you don’t mind but I took what you said “Reality is a blur, how do you draw a line in fluid?” and actually printed it out so I could post above my computer. Wow, I love that!
June 16th, 2007 at 6:43 pm
hi Sean.well u said something about memory.its odd but i have a bad normal memory but i remember dreams magnificently well.Im very talented at lucid dreaming.