When I started this whole psychic thing, the first few times I tried reading I’d get really tired, or a nasty headache after my initial attempts and minor successes at reading.

Now, with a bit of tweaking on the techniques, I find readings not just enjoyable, but energizing.  Invigorating.  In general.

I find that if I haven’t done readings for anyone in a day or two, I start to get cravings, almost.  I start thinking about who I can visit who might want a reading.  Fortunately, this weekend I had a few readings for friends lined up.

One reading was for Shelly’s mother, Shirley.  Shirley has been seeing psychics all her life, and even had a reading from Sylvia Browne’s son, Chris.  I just checked their website, and it looks like readings with Sylvia cost $850 per half hour, and $500 for Chris.  It’s actually less than I’d thought. 

http://readings.sylviabrowne.com/

Another thing that jumps out at me from this website is this sentence:

 

Unlike some pseudo-psychics who tell people that their problems are caused by curses, evil entities, demons, or karmic retribution neither Sylvia nor Chris will blame the negative occurrences on your life on these things, and each of them feel it is important to advise their clients to not believe in such things. They do not exist.

I love these little synchronicities.  I was just sitting down to write about Courtney’s reading, when I came upon that.

Courtney, who I’ve mentioned before, is a traditional, old-school witch.  She uses physical objects to assist with energy changes in a household, a life pattern, etc.  Where I will cast my nightly protection over my house by simply visualizing it and declaring it there, Courtney may use objects like pennies dipped in holy water to emphasize a barrier that will remain until the pennies are removed.  I believe these are simply different methods of accomplishing the same thing.

Courtney believes in demons and evil entities.  In fact, she describes regularly going “into hell” to battle such demons and entities.  I asked her to elaborate, to tell me about “hell” – what it was (to her), who she met there.

She told me a  lot about what hell was not (fire and brimstone) but not much about what it actually is, what she experiences.  Maybe another visit sometime will reveal more.
It’s interesting and actually disconcerting to me to encounter someone so focused on hell, demons, and negative entities.

While Courtney is a great person, she does not consider herself to be specifically aligned with a “side”, commonly described in the psychic world as light or darkness.  Christopher Reburn likes to refer to psychics and sensitives working for good in this world as “lightworkers”.  I’ve heard a very good and kindhearted psychic who practiced voo-doo to be accused of working with “the dark arts” by a psychic who considered herself a lightworker.

It’s so funny to me how even psychics, those of us who KNOW and experience so much more about the other side than the average incarnated bear, can still find so many reasons to become divided.  In a way, it’s human nature, isn’t it?  And this would be one phenomenon I’ll keep my eyes peeled for when I get to my first new-agey convention.

Anyway, back to Courtney. 

Courtney has been a sensitive herself, all her life.  She doesn’t talk directly with people on the other side, but she sees auras and works energy as a witch to great effect.

I have a lot of respect for her, and yet, this business about her demons has me perplexed.

I had Courtney over to my house for her last reading.  When she came in, Sunshine, my white cat, approached her with great deliberation and said, “I want you to know that I control the energy in this house.”

Courtney, I’m sure, would not have deliberately affected the energy in the house, but obviously, her mere presence had Sunshine asserting herself.

Courtney declared she’d parked her “Hell Hound” outside our house.  I don’t even know what a hell hound is.  I hadn’t been aware of any entities other than the incarnated ones (but that doesn’t mean they’re not there.) 

What I did notice was a scratching at the door.  I figured my other cat was outside and wanted in, and so I went to the front door and opened it up.

And in walks this black ghost cat, very similar to the one I saw at John & Melinda’s place.

I asked Courtney about it, she didn’t know who he was.  I mentally shrugged and got on with the reading.

Courtney’s demons are a very real, day-to-day experience for her.  She described her protective spells and her experiences with doppelgangers and other negativities in great detail.  My intuition tells me her experiences are real.

When I was young, I asked my parents if there was such a thing as God.  I was going through the integration of the idea that Santa Clause, the Tooth Fairy etc., did not exist, and I was wondering if this God fellow was a similar creation. 

I was surprised when my parents looked at each other, and then had to leave the room to get their story straight before deciding what to tell me.  See, both of my parents have observed and personally experienced the painful limitations of set-in-stone religious ideals, and so their spiritual guidance for their kids was like a hippocatic oath:  First, Do No Harm.

And so what they told me, what I believed and still carry with me to this day is this:

“We believe in Heaven.  We believe that someone got things going in the universe, but that it’s our own choices that drive our lives.”

This was enough of an answer for me.  As far as I was concerned, I had gotten a “Yes, God is Real,” and I’ve moved forward in my life with that knowledge ever since.

As the years progressed and my mother expanded her own research into spirituality, she’d talk to me about the things that made sense or didn’t make sense to her, and in this way we’ve created our own ideas of God, Azna, Heaven and the afterlife.

My thoughts about negative entities have been few, and when we’ve necessarily had to deal with malevolent ghosts or energy imprints, it’s generally been in a house-clearing and protection stance.  Never have I thought about going to battle with negatives.

Which is why Courtney’s reality is so interesting and disconcerting to me.  At some point in her life, Courtney decided that she had two choices:  she could become a victim, or a fighter.  She has become a self-declared fence-sitter in terms of positive and negative energies, because in her words, “The Universe doesn’t care.”

The Universe doesn’t care.

That statement is at the heart of what I’m getting at.  Courtney’s experience in this life has led her to this conclusion – good, evil, doesn’t exist.  It’s all the same to the Universe.  The Universe doesn’t care.

I hear this and I want to shout:  “The Universe DOES CARE!  MY GOD!  Just ask for help!  Just ask and you will be surrounded by so many angels, so many loving ancestors!  You do not need to fight all by yourself, you really can be loved and protected.  You just have to want it and accept it!”

But of course, I do not say this.  Instead, I pass on the advice of her grandfather, and my cat:

“There is just as much to be learned from the light as from the darkness.  Expand the light in your heart to surround your body, the room, the house, the city, the world.”

 

Gently, her Grandfather and my cat, asked her to think about turning her face towards the lightness, the happiness, the joy, the love in the Universe.  That’s all they’re asking right now, just for her to think about it.

Courtney went home looking thoughtful and I believe she was feeling happier.  I’m looking forward to our next visit.

Now about that black cat…

After Courtney left, I felt a return in myself to the worried person I had been six months ago.  This centered feeling of peace and protection was illusive.  I couldn’t settle down, I couldn’t stop worrying, panicking, about things that really aren’t problems.  This was a familiar feeling in a way, but not a welcome one – I am not going to return to that.

So I started asking why I was feeling that way, and I understood that I needed to cleanse the house after Courtney’s visit.  I got out my trusty bell to assist me in raising the vibration of the household, while I sweep out any sticky energy.  This is something that Sweetie and I have been doing for years.

But this time I encountered something so strange in the Spirit room (the second bedroom.)  Up there in the corner, was some sort of creature.  It clung to the corner like a spider, but it felt like a mammal, a monkey.  Or a cat.

I didn’t think too much about what it was, why it was there, or how it got in until the next day.  At the time, I focused on sending the creature out of the house.  In doing so, I sensed that it was a sort of energy parasite, that it had followed Courtney into our house and had decided to try and stay.  Not gonna happen.

I removed it easily enough, but it’s mere presence in my HOME was so disturbing, that I’d been worrying about it all the next day.  What is it?  Was it attacking Courtney?  Would *I* start to experience similar attacks? 

I even questioned the thing’s existence, except that I *know* now not to doubt the things I sense.  I sensed this creature just as I sensed the black ghost cat in John & Melinda’s house.  I got the confirmation from them, (the kids had a black cat years ago, named Tom).  Something was definitely there, but maybe my interpretation of it was inaccurate. 

After all, it’s easy to be afraid.  It’s more challenging to try to understand.