How To Develop Your Own Psychic Abilities
(This is an excerpt from a University Of Metaphysical Sciences course at www.umsonline.org, please feel free to visit the school website)
As you perform exercises for your intuition, it is much like going to the gym and exercising your body. Intuition is like a muscle that becomes strengthened once it is used often. Also, you'll believe in your own abilities more when you have more proof through your experience that your intuition can be accurate.
The first thing to know about learning to use your intuition is to stick with your first response to each inquiry, even if it makes no sense at all. Usually it makes sense to the person you're doing a reading for. If it doesn't make sense right away, later the person reports that what you said was accurate. For instance, it is not unusual to give a reading to someone who doesn't agree with the answers that were given during an intuitive reading, but a year later this same person will come to you and tell you everything said was actually quite accurate. This scenario sometimes causes readers distrust in their abilities. However, the first message is always the most accurate, even if it doesn't seem so at first. Stick with your most immediate response to every inquiry. Do not think about your answer, or try to be clever, or impress anyone. It is important to let it flow.
Realize that you may get a lot wrong in the beginning, do not feel that you are not intuitive if you are more often wrong than right in your “guesses.” As time goes on you will develop the skill and get more of them right. Just as a baby takes time to learn how to walk, so it goes with developing psychic abilities. Eventually you will be able to run with your abilities.
Shakti Gawain has a few pointers for developing intuition. She says in her book Developing Intuition: Practical Guidance For Daily Life (2000), “Developing your intuitive ability begins with paying attention to what’s going on inside of you so that you can become aware of these inner dialogues and catch them when they are happening, or shortly afterwards… The vast majority of our intuitive feelings, however, are so ordinary and mundane that we might not even think of them as intuition.” She goes on to say that another key for getting in touch with intuition is “learning to relax your mind and relax your body sufficiently so that you can allow your attention to move out of your head and literally drop down into a deeper place in your body, closer to where your gut feelings reside. Simply letting your awareness move into a deeper place in your body in this way is tremendously helpful in opening the door to intuition.”
Acting on your intuition is very important for developing it. As you get intuitive flashes or hits, act on them so that you can verify your intuitive abilities. Your psyche responds to trusting your psychic abilities. The more you trust them, seemingly, the more accurate they become. Usually, you will only receive a piece of information, the only piece that you need in the moment. This is why it is sometimes difficult to act on intuition, for all the information does not always come all at once. However, if you take the step that is presenting itself to you in the moment, the rest of the steps come later. Using your intuition, and acting on it, sometimes results in surprising turns of events for the better. However, it may not be appropriate to make major life decisions based on your budding intuitive skills. It is best to test your intuitive hits on smaller matters in the beginning.
There will be a trial and error period until you decipher how to distinguish your intuition from all the other thoughts and feelings going on inside you. You have many voices inside you, and they’re often in conflict with one another. It can be difficult to sort out which one is actually intuition speaking. The first step is to become familiar with all of these inner selves. It is important to do some subpersonality work on the self, and once you know the primary personality selves, you will know what the intuition voice is not. Intuition is beyond the personalities of the self.
It is important to listen to the body in accordance with intuitive direction. Often the body is an excellent barometer as to what is happening in your life, or the life of someone you love. Shakti Gawain says in her book Developing Intuition: Practical Guidance For Daily Life (2000), “It is important to recognize and become aware of the intuitive impulses we receive in our bodies, and to trust these impulses. If we are not aware, however, our bodies will find ways to get our attention. This often happens through ‘accidents’ or illness.” Don’t forget to use all your senses in your psychic abilities. Your physical body will have certain reactions to questions; your emotional body will also react. You will receive images, smell smells, hear sounds, taste flavors, feel cool or hot, these are all ways that your intuition communicates with you.