The Gift of Psychic Abilities
Reflections on "The Gift" of Psychic Abilities
By Karen Hollis Published in Om Times Magazine, December 2014
Many people get enamored with the apparent glamour of psychic abilities. It’s easy to think it would be wonderful to see some aspect of the future, to help people sort out their problems, or to bring forth messages from deceased loved ones. It’s also quite common for people say to a psychic, “you are so lucky to have ‘the gift.'” And to remark that they too would like to have ‘the gift.’ These comments always make me wonder about why people think of psychic or intuitive abilities as being a “gift” and, more importantly what a gift really is supposed to be, or mean to a person.
A gift-as in a present given someone, is often selected with great care and given with the intention to bring joy to another person. What if your gift also requires you to share unfortunate news-not at all what your recipient wants to hear? Would you be able to give of your gift with compassion?
‘Gift’ also can refer to having been born with a natural aptitude for being able to do something, such as play piano or calculate algorithms using only brain-power. Likewise, to be bestowed special favor by God/Higher Power is to receive a gift (a.k.a., “blessing”). Being in full possession of one’s ‘gifts of knowing’ requires understanding that there are both higher and lower aspects to using psychic gifts in service to other people. Though it is a little cliché, you might think of these aspects as blessings and burdens. Let’s look at a few situations that illustrate the higher and lower aspects of sharing ‘the gift.’
Knowing When Not to Share All that Your Psychic Abilities Reveal
If you had an intuition about bad news before it happens, would you understand the moral and spiritual responsibility of choosing to act or not act on that knowledge?
When I was in third grade my mother was called into a meeting with my teacher. The teacher wanted to know how it was possible that I could draw things before they happened. She was particularly upset that I had drawn a picture of her car being rear-ended by another vehicle days before the accident happened. (The teacher realized this after looking at dated artwork.) Psychic children often do not have the ability to filter information they receive nor do they (usually) understand the implications of how sharing what they know can affect other people.
Neither my mother, nor my grandmother, encouraged me to develop my psychic abilities into a career. As I grew older, my grandmother advised me, “Just because you know things doesn’t mean you have to say things.” I watched both women downplay their own abilities as sheer coincidence when outsiders to our family noticed that they were accurate a little too often about events in the future.
It wasn’t often that one of them slipped up and made a prediction by accident, but when they did you just knew for good or bad it would come to pass. Having the ability to know the future requires that you stay out of your ego, and that you show compassion and respect for each person’s freedom to make their own choices, even if you know it may not work out in their best interest. Being able to discern when, and how much to share as revealed by your psychic gifts are vital to supporting someone’s personal and spiritual growth.
Psychic Abilities: Diving into the Depths of Other People’s Joy… and Pain
How would you deal with experiencing the depth of other people’s emotions, physically, emotionally and spiritually?
I have often questioned what kind of a gift is it to not only hear about the inhumanity that people experience and inflict upon one another, but to feel it down to the bone. Psychics, especially those who are clairsentient, don’t just hear what clients tell them about their trials and tribulations, they feel their physical, psychic, and emotional pain.
This is a sort of “virtual trauma” for the psychic. But, as Saint Paul writes about Spirit distributing gifts, including the gift of prophecy, “To each one as [Spirit] determines,” I accept the responsibility of using my gift as a professional psychic is a life in service to others to help them clarify their path in life. And, anytime one works genuinely in service to other people, you will be both privileged to share in their joy and challenged in experiencing their overwhelming sadness.
Psychic Abilities: It’s Not a Charmed Life
What if you could only use your psychic abilities to help other people, but not yourself? Would you still consider it a gift?
Psychically gifted people do not live charmed lives, in which we know all there is to know about own life paths and are able to make wise, health and wealth producing decisions every step of the way. The truth is, no matter how accurate a psychic may be with others, it is nearly impossible to “see” for yourself what is going to happen in your future or the future of those you love. It is a misperception that bad luck never falls upon those with psychic abilities or that we can speak with our own dead relatives whenever we want.
There are times when I wish this wasn’t the case, but I also recognize this, at least for me, is self-protective. Reading into the future for one’s self is difficult because there is both ego and emotion to contend with, and discern from, actual “intuitive hits.” (Not to mention the fact that all of us are susceptible to wishful thinking!)
Personally, I am just too close to my own stuff to see/sense objectively. So I, too, must seek out others who are ‘gifted’ to see and hear for me as I find my way along my own (sometimes-charmed) life path.
Like anyone else in any other job, I have often wondered what it would be like to have chosen a different path… one that would allow me to not know the future for others. Nor to have to decide how to ‘gift’ messages from the Other-Side to those who are hurting physically, emotionally and spiritually. I imagine a great big present that you only get to open on your birthday and not before. How wonderfully exciting, I think-but only for a moment.
For at the end of every day, I treasure both the higher and lower aspects of the work I do. It is a blessing that I can be there for people, to share foreknowledge that they will somehow use to make more enlightened choices for their lives. The lower aspects of my work can become burdensome if I am not careful to hold boundaries on what is my responsibility and what is my client’s responsibility for the choices that are theirs to make.
Blessings and burdens aside, one thing is certain, the opportunity to be of service to others through sharing my intuitive abilities and psychic abilities is priceless.
About Karen Hollis, Psychic Medium
A clairaudient Medium and advanced Tarot reader for more than 30 years, Karen Hollis uses her intuitive and mediumship abilities to help you acquire wisdom from the soul lessons you are here to learn. With guidance from Spirit, Karen can help you understand the patterns and choices that have brought you where you are in life, and see what can set you, and your loved ones, on a path toward healing and a more fulfilling life. Her readings are highly regarded for their accuracy, integrity and compassion.
Karen has been featured on Discovery Channel's, "A Haunting" and "Paranormal Survivor." She is the Lead Psychic-Medium Investigator with Ghosts of New England Research Society (G.O.N.E.R.S.).
