Befriending Intuitive Mind
- Rational or Crazy
- Reading Hands
- Encouraged by My Peers
- Opening to My Colleagues
- Spiritual Initiation
- Seeing Ancestors
- Confirmation
- A Whole New Meaning To Family Therapy
- Ancient Knowing and New Science
- A Deeper Connection With Life
- What are the Subtle Senses
By Laurie A. Roth
We all have a myth about ourselves that we develop with the help of our family and society. Usually there are both positive and negative experiences and forms of conditioning put in the mix as we create this myth. Sometimes where we meet our greatest challenges is also where we discover our biggest gifts. Often we have to dismantle old concepts and fears to find these gifts, develop them and fully live our greatest potential. Here are a few stories from my life that show how I went through some of this process. I found it was often as thrilling as any carnival ride. This article is drawn from various parts of my upcoming book. Here I relate of some of my experiences as my intuition began unfolding in my desire to help others and understand the nature and possibilities of being human.
My parents were Jewish Atheists. They were certain there was just this three-dimensional world and then nothingness. If it wasn't rational or explainable it was crazy and crazy was bad. They did not act or think rationally however. They said one thing, did another and were unaware of what they were really communicating to their children. "If you don't stop crying I'll give you something to cry about." As if I wasn't crying about something in the first place. Or the famous line many children heard when they were being forced to eat something distasteful, "Think of the starving children in China." As if our eating some disgusting food like over-cooked Brussels sprouts, gefilte fish or chopped liver would do any good for those starving Chinese children. Everyone likes Chinese food. All it did was make me lonely and hate Brussels sprouts forever. I learned how to hide my feelings, doubt their validity, and think religious, spiritual, or mystical experiences were a crazy fantasy and a crutch.
Then one day in my early twenties I went to the Dirty Rainbow Art Supply store, in Berkeley, to buy drawing paper. I was waiting in the checkout line when a handsome man with jet black hair got in line behind me. He seemed to have a confidence I lacked.
“I’m in a rush. If you let me get in front of you, I’ll read your hand,” he sad
I grew up in New York City. I didn’t believe in hand-reading or astrology or any of that stuff everyone in California seemed to, but I wasn’t in a rush, and he was good-looking and assured, and I was interested in him, so I agreed. We changed places, and he took my hand and started telling me things.
“Your mother was extremely overbearing and critical, and your childhood was confusing, emotionally difficult. Oh, and I see some health problems. You have a wonderful imagination and should be good at music and other artistic endeavors. You like to travel and may have had a difficult time in love: people don’t understand you...”
I don’t remember much more, but I was struck by how accurate everything he said was, even though he was a complete stranger. No one, not even my friends, seemed to know as much about me. After he left I scrutinized my hands very closely, trying to understand how he had been able to know all those things.
I was in a bit of a daze by the time the clerk handed me my art papers. I drifted down the block to look in the bookstores for everything I could find about palmistry. I found two books. They disagreed on many points, but I bought both of them.
I read the books, searching my hands for all the markings and lines. You also have to determine and understand the meanings of the various shapes, nails, finger markings, lines, skin texture, etc. It is very complex. And, of course, my hands didn't completely match any of the pictures. But I was intrigued by how the handsome stranger had pulled it all together. I immersed myself in studying my hands every day for the next few weeks, I understood the general layout but was confused and overwhelmed by all the details. I didn't know how to proceed, and I wasn’t sure if I really believed in it anyway, so I let it go.
A few months later while traveling in Mexico, I was seated alone in a cafe in Puerto Vallarta. A man sitting with some other young people kept staring at me. He seemed intrigued with me, and that made me nervous. Eventually, he came over.
“Where are you from?” I knew many Mexicans weren't too fond of northerners in those days, so I hid my nationality. “My father is Hungarian,” I replied, which is true.
“I thought you looked European. You don't look like most of the Americans we see around here. Do you read palms?”
“Well, um, a little bit maybe. Not really.”
He held his hand in front of me and my eye caught a few things I could talk about, then some more words just tumbled out. I felt a bit nervous and told him not to take it seriously. Then his friends showed me their hands. I warned them I was just a beginner, but they seemed to believe it was in my blood because I was Hungarian. Surprisingly they also felt my hand readings were in the ballpark of helpful, and they befriended me.
Maybe they were right about it being in my blood. My Hungarian father used to tell a story about divination, trying to prove how ridiculous people were who believed in that stuff. But once I understood how it feels when someone begins to use their subtle sense perceptions, I realized his story showed just the opposite: it showed how much talent he had in that area, he just didn't believe in it, discounted his ability by thinking it was his imagination..
When I returned to the States, I searched for more books about hand analysis, and later I began to read them as a hobby. Gradually, I discovered it was a fun way to meet people at parties and develop my intuition. When people showed me their hands, information would often flow to me about the growth challenges in their lives as well as their talents, gifts, and life purpose. By focusing on people's hands, intending to be of assistance, I would often receive information that was beyond what the lines showed. That offered me a way to practice using my awareness that went beyond my intellect, beyond my ego mentality, beyond the way I had been conditioned to use my mind.
In the Eighties, when I became a therapist, many people in my academic field didn’t understand the difference between psychic and psychotic. I was afraid my colleagues would think I was crazy if I shared my intuitive perceptions, so I kept my hobby hidden from everyone but a few women who were open to it. But in the early Nineties, I was encouraged to value my abilities and use them to assist people in ways I would not have believed possible earlier in my life.
Ann Jauregui, my roommate at a Family Therapy Conference, was a therapist whose hands I had read a few years earlier. During a Sunday break I heard Ann extend a surprising invitation to some of her friends and colleagues who were milling around in the hallway.
“Come to our room later. Laurie can read your hands, and she's really good.”
“Well, uh, I can’t do that,” I protested, taken aback. “I’m only really intuitive right before my period and when the moon is full. Now I’m in it and the moon is less than half, and besides, I’m thinking of leaving my husband, and I’m not in great shape,” I hedged. I was afraid of making a fool of myself in front of respected colleagues. I never know what I'll get when I look at hands, and I was scared of failing or being perceived as ridiculous. But they listened to Ann’s enthusiasm instead of my fears.
Six seasoned women therapists came to our room. We set up two chairs facing one another. I sat across from a therapist in her late 60s whom I had not met before. The other women sat on the bed and other chairs looking at us. I began to open my heart center and my awareness. The woman observed me with a poker face, and I suspected she was as ambivalent about this experiment as I was. The lines and the colors on her hands showed a very difficult and harsh childhood, one that had not been fully healed yet. I discussed how hard and lonely it looked and wondered out loud how she had survived it. Then I saw a hutch with rabbits.
“Oh rabbits, bunnies,” I said, “that's how you got through.”
She burst out crying. I sensed that seeing her lost child-self hiding out with the rabbits allowed her to release the loneliness and grief she had locked away. The wounds of the past were transmuted by the presence of love. I continued working with her until she felt complete. This impressed Ann, who knew this woman fairly well and had not known about her harsh past, nor had she ever seen her open up emotionally and soften like that before.
Then, I heard the word “death” as Jane rose from the bed and approached the chair opposite me. Jane was a master therapist, she had established The Women’s Therapy Center and was a past president of the Family Therapy Association of Northern California, the association that was hosting the conference we were attending. I liked her very much and was apprehensive about what I had heard when she stood up. She sat opposite me and held up her hands.
“There is something about death,” I said, and I wanted to stop
“Go on,” she replied.
I felt a flood of love, and words began to flow through me.
“You have an ability to sit at the doorway of death when someone is dying and hold open that space—a space of ecstasy—to help people through the transition. It's a wonderful gift, and you can help many people with this.”
I stopped, hoping she wouldn't think I was nuts. She looked me with her kind, brown eyes and said that two friends of hers had recently been on their deathbeds, and that was exactly what had happened. Jane recounted that it was a gift to have been with them, and she had felt herself move into states of bliss and ecstasy. I was happy that it wasn't her death I had been about to see, but rather, her ability. As I read the other therapists' hands, I continued to gain confidence that what I was doing was helpful, acceptable, and appreciated by my colleagues.
Eighteen months later, in April of 1994, I separated from my husband. In May, my father died, and in July, I entered a spontaneous spiritual initiation process, more intense than anything I had ever experienced. My inner awareness began to open on multiple levels. New healing and psychic abilities were surfacing in my work, and strange phenomena were occurring. It was like an intense inner course on suffering, and an opening to a much greater awareness through inner dimensions. In some mystical traditions, this is known as the “dark night of the soul.” My emotional, physical, mental, and spiritual bodies were all transforming. Ann was supportive as I went through this process and helped me honor my developing healing abilities.
In a dream I heard the words “Laurie means light,” and soon afterwards I began integrating more light. It was as if a greater part of me, my soul energy, was coming into me. I would see golden light move through me, and I would feel my body vibrate faster. A feeling of love, ecstasy, and connection would fill me. This often lasted for days. This spiritual force would also move through me when I was conducting therapy and healing sessions. I began to sense the vibrational resonance of people and their emotional, mental, and physical energies when I was in certain states of consciousness.
One day, Ann sent me a very creative woman she thought I could help through an impasse. I’ll call her Jamie.
I told her a bit about what I had to offer and asked her to hold up her hands. Then I asked if it was okay for me to talk to her spirit.
"Yes," she answered.
I looked at her hands and said, "You are about to take a trip."
"No, I'm not," she replied.
I figured I was mistaken and began to do a regular hand reading. Many issues came up for her around men, relationships, and her family. When we were about ten minutes into the session, she suddenly said,
"Oh yeah, I am about to take a trip. I'm going back to Kansas, which is where my mother grew up. I forgot about that."
Then I began to see images in a kind of gray twilight. The first was an old gray wood farmhouse on a raised foundation. I described what I was seeing as best I could. First I saw the house from the outside. Then I saw a family living in the house, mostly women, lots of them. There was one man with a mustache who wandered in and out a bit. As I described what I saw, Jamie would tell me who they were, but she didn't know all of them. Sometimes I even heard their names, and I would say them out loud. I described the people I saw as they moved through the scenes. Her ancestors were Swedish farmers; most were very strong-looking women, whose lives had been spent performing hard physical work.
Jamie thought the man I described was her grandfather. She had several issues around having a male partner that she wanted to resolve. We had started identifying old feelings of being controlled and suppressed by her father during the first ten minutes of the hand reading. It appeared that her grandmother, mother, and aunts had not had many positive experiences with men either.
Nothing like that had ever happened to me in a session. I had seen glimpses in my mind's eye before, but this was like watching a speeded up home movie. When the images subsided, I continued doing the hand reading. Information was pouring through me, and I had a feeling of guidance, connection and love.
Seven months later, Jamie called on a Friday morning. I had just had a cancellation and fortunately had a space for her to come and meet with me. During our session, she told me about her trip back to Kansas. She had gone to see the house where her mother had grown up, and while she was looking around, an old man came by. He knew her relatives and also the location of the original family house. Jamie had not known about this first house.
"Would you like to see it?" he had asked. He escorted her to a gray wooden farmhouse in a field that fit the description I had given her in the first session. He had also known her grandparents, mother, and aunts and gave her more information that corroborated what I had said. She looked up the relatives I had mentioned in the town records and at the local cemetery. She was able to trace quite a few, and we were both amazed by the coincidence and accuracy of the information in the first reading.
Then I asked her why she had come back, and what she wanted to work on at this session.
"I don't really even know why I'm here. I just woke up and knew I should come in. I can't explain it. "
As she spoke, my consciousness immediately began to shift, and all at once I saw her ancestors come into the room. They filed in to the upper reaches of the room, and I could visually perceive them as a group of mostly women in a grayish twilight. Some were older and stocky, but several looked younger and slimmer, in dresses of the early 1900s.
A Whole New Meaning to “Family Therapy”
I have been trained in family therapy…but family therapy with 'dead people’!? I had to negotiate the information between dimensions. They began giving me information for her, and I would relay what I heard and felt.
They wanted her to know the depth of connection she had with them and the earth. That is why they had previously showed me the vision of the house and their lives in the session before she went back to Kansas. This was also the reason I had perceived her trip before she had mentioned it. They had come to demonstrate how love is a connection that transcends time and space, and also to let her know that she could have the connection to the earth and her place on it just by remembering the farmland and the gray house with the raised foundation. They described how her mother had suffered a "loss of place" when the family moved to that new home. This was similar to how Jamie often felt—displaced and alienated.
I continued, "But you can heal it, for yourself and your mother, if you know how to keep the feeling of connection with the earth and the people who were there. You know the way you went back there, and the way things just sort of happened? It happened that way because you had the intention of finding out more about them, of reconnecting with your past. If you can own that that loving connection is always there, as truth within you, you can feel close to the earth everywhere. You will be able to regain your sense of place." Then I asked her if she wanted help with anything while they were still around me. They wanted to assist her, but she had to ask for it. Jamie thought for a few moments and then asked, "Am I on the right track? Is there anything special for me to do?"
They wanted to help her heal the pain in her heart. Feeling the pain in her heart, I was very aware of my clairsentience at that moment. "Your ancestors want to show you how to plant your feet on the soil and to bring in the life of the soil. They knew the soil and the earth." I continued, "You know they had struggles and hardships, but it seems they need you and you need them. They can help you by teaching you how to connect to the land so you know you really belong here on earth. You can help them by using and valuing your talents and celebrating your life. That will balance the energies of both their lives and yours."
Jamie had told me in our first session that when she was a child no one came to see her schoolwork, or to any performances or art shows she was in. "So… it's also very important that you learn to celebrate. You have artistic gifts to bring forth beauty, and they had lives of hard work and toil…so it's a balance. You need to recognize your part. I hear them say that you don't know how important your part is and that you think it's frivolous. If you only have hard work, then your life isn't balanced. That is what they want you to help them correct. They are telling me they had several big misunderstandings about life. In fact, they were coming from a place where celebration wasn’t valued. They didn't allow themselves the little they could have had, but now they're ready. She (one of the ancestors) says if you have a couple of good celebrations they'll all come.”
"Do you like to celebrate? I asked her. "Do you know it's important?" Jamie nodded yes. "So invite them and then do something for yourself and with the earth too, so you feel connected to the earth."
“They want you to begin to listen to them directly. Can you hear them?”
I knew she must have been sensing them, because it seemed that they had prompted her to call me that morning. She shook her head no.
I began to question her about the men in her family. There were a few men in the cemetery, but she didn't study them when she was back there; she focused on the women.
I suddenly began to see and feel a male presence. He had dark hair and a mustache. She remembered I had seen him in the visions during our first session. He was talking so loudly I asked her if she could hear him.
"You are not alone. Do you feel alone? Go inside and see if you can feel the love," I heard him say, and then repeated to her.
Then I said, " When I first saw you, I didn't know you were going to go on the trip. I just suddenly asked you, and you said 'no'. They were near us then. It wasn't like you told me you were going, and then they came. They want you to know that the separation that you believe is there is not there. They (the ancestors no longer embodied) are not "dead" the way we believe they are dead. They want you to know this. They want you to have the experience of knowing that you are loved and that you are connected to the earth and to your family. They want to help you heal the big ache in your heart."
Then her mother appeared. We both felt her love for Jamie. Her mother helped her heal from a time in her life when she was twelve years old and felt unloved and abandoned at home and like an outcast at school. The ancestors helped me take her though some healing exercises for the rest of the session, and then they gave her a lot of information about how to change her attitudes and experiences with men.
When her mother was alive, she had conveyed the idea that men can't love women correctly, because that was the experience she had, and that was what she saw when she was growing up. Most of the ancestors had problems and misunderstandings with the opposite sex while they were alive, but from their current vantage point they saw things differently and wanted her to know that she could heal the past misunderstandings. They also helped her to heal her wounds from controlling and abusive men and to learn her true value. As she healed this perception in herself, they also got the benefit of her learning and her new experiences.
A few days later, Ann called and told me that the session was extremely valuable for her client. Jamie also wrote and told me that the two sessions were transformative and that soon after the second one she met a man who was gentle and loving. She is now happily married. She had transcribed the tapes I had made of the sessions, sent me a copy, and gave me permission to share our experience.
Ancient Knowing and New Science
Native Americans, Polynesians, and other native peoples understand other dimensions, how love heals, and how ancestors can help the living. Candace Lienheart, a Kahuna-trained healer, once told me that when you heal something in yourself, you can also send your learning back, and it will help all the generations before you. I never really believed her or took those words so literally until I had conducted these sessions and saw for myself how it works. When we are feeling our connection, which is love, we can gain awareness far beyond the knowing and perception of our intellectual-ego minds.
I recently heard a short talk by Jesse Austin Ph.D., who authored Quantum Physics as Salvation. He discussed how quantum physics shows that time is really simultaneous—that there are many dimensions, but most people are only focused in the third. And yet, other dimensions exist in the same space around us. He said that through the present you can change both the past and the future—they are all simultaneously connected, and a change in one changes them all. This is exactly what I saw happening. He also said as humans begin to use the parts of the brain that scientists have said we normally don't use, many new abilities and ways of experiencing life can reshape our world. I was elated to see how my mystical experiences correlate with the newest scientific discoveries. This was a clear example of how we can affect he past and the future through the power of the present.
I have found that much of what I have learned and experienced can be taught to others who are ready to grow into a greater experience of themselves. All of us have the ability to transform our emotional-mental energy from the slower vibration of fear and separation back into the faster vibration of love. What people call “psychic” is really the ability to become aware of subtle sense perceptions or put another way, to open our sense fully. Each of our senses has a subtle aspect that can tune into vibrational rates of energy; as with any practice, the more we use our subtle senses, the more adept we become. Meditation and spiritual practices, as well as trauma can activate these and many other “paranormal” abilities. As we awaken more fully to our abilities, we can all discover a deeper connection to life, to our planet, and to each other.
If you are interested in increasing your intuitive/psychic awareness, the first thing to do is to notice when you are getting subtle feelings, perceptions, and information. Since these impressions are more fleeting than regular physical sense perceptions, it generally requires a more focused attention and an increased sensitivity to them. Having the intention and desire to use these abilities helps them unfold. Once you've received subtle impressions, it is important to validate them by noticing if the information is accurate.
Each sense has a corresponding subtle sense that can be developed. Most people are inherently stronger in some areas, however, it can be useful to develop all of them.
Clairaudience is psychic hearing. It is like hearing a voice in your head, but it is different than psychosis, which is what people are often afraid of when they have the experience for the first time. It can sound similar to your own thinking voice, or it can sound very different, so it requires the ability to distinguish it from your thoughts. Sometimes it is so clearly outside the range of what you know that it is obviously a clairaudient experience. Clairaudience often comes in dreams and can be a voice-over type of experience. When that happens to me, it is often information from my Higher Self or my guides, giving me a bigger picture.
Clairvoyance is the subtle sense of seeing. It can vary from vague images to very clear ones. Clairvoyance can give you messages in dreams by showing you future situations clearly, but it can also work with you through symbols.
Clairsentience is kinesthetic; it is related to empathy and empathic healing. The physical area it is related to is the lower belly. With this sense you actually use you body as a sensor that registers information. People with this ability can often feel what is happening in another person’s body. They can know what other people are feeling even when those people are not aware of their own feelings.
Clairknosis (clairknowing) is related to the top of the head and the crown chakra. The information is just there. You don't even know how you know it, you just do. It is the fastest of all the intuitive ways of knowing.
There is even a subtle sense for smell, which might alert you to something that is problematic, like a fire in another location that you would need to know about. Sometimes you can smell your own or another's essence, or mystical types of scents such as the scent of roses, often associated with living saints.
And, of course, the last and most important of the subtle senses is a sense of humor, which is located in the funny bone and helps make all kinds of experiences more fun.