Discover Your Psychic Type: Developing and Using Your Natural Intuition - Softcover

Dillard, Sherrie

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0738712787 ISBN 13: 9780738712789

Publisher: Llewellyn Publications, 2008

Synopsis

Intuition and spiritual growth are inherently linked, according to professional psychic and therapist Sherrie Dillard. This groundbreaking guide offers a personalized approach to spiritual development, introducing four different psychic types and revealing how to develop the unique talents of each. Designed for both beginning intuitives and advanced psychics, this book presents a simple, step-by-step plan:

• Take the insightful quiz to learn whether you are a physical, mental, emotional, or spiritual intuitive
• Discover more about each type's nature, personality, strengths, and potential challenges
• Develop your psychic abilities with the meditations and exercises designed for your specific intuitive style

Throughout the book, Dillard shares remarkable stories from her professional practice to illustrate the incredible power of intuition and its connection to the spirit world, inner wisdom, and your higher self.

About this title

About the Author

Sherrie Dillard (Durham, North Carolina) has been a professional psychic, medium, and therapist for over thirty years and she has given over 50,000 readings worldwide. She has taught intuition development at Duke University Continuing Studies, and has led workshops and classes on spiritual development and spiritual healing nationally and internationally. Sherrie has been featured on radio and television for her innovative books and her work as a psychic detective, medical intuitive, and medium. Additionally, she holds a Master of Divinity degree in New Thought pastoral counseling.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Our natural curiosity pushes us to lift the curtain of consciousness. The unknown inspires us. We are compelled to discover what lies beyond our everyday experiences, thoughts, and emotions. Over the years, people from all walks of life have come to my office to visit with the unseen. People from all income levels, occupations, races, and religious beliefs have come, seeking wisdom and contact with the spiritual world.

Working with such people, I have learned that we have an innate understanding of the unseen realms. Even though we generally deny this aspect of our intelligence, we are still able to connect and interact with what is of spirit.

Within us lies the core truth of all that is. It is through knowing ourselves that we come to know all of life. In this knowing we are led to the experience of unconditional love, beauty, and wisdom. We are led into the experience of divinity, which we may call God, Universal Life Force, Divine Intelligence, or the Supreme Being. Many of us have had encounters with spiritual guides, angels, or other holy beings that break through our normal sense of what is possible and bring us closer to the universal all-knowing. They are our friends, our loved ones, and they know us better than anyone else. As we uncover our ability to communicate with Spirit, we reveal the depth of our own divine nature.

Intuitive versus Psychic
Intuition is our guide into this vast sea of unconditional love and intelligence. Intuition is defined as the ability to understand or know something immediately and without conscious reasoning. Intuition is an instinctive knowing, an impression.1 We have all had moments, many of them, when we knew the truth.

It seems to be not so much a matter of whether or not we are intuitive, but where and how our intuition comes forth in our lives. Intuition usually surfaces in the areas of our personalities with which we are most comfortable. It may emerge, for example, through our feelings and emotions. For some it surfaces in the physical body as an ache, a pain, a lightness, or other bodily awareness. Others among us may use our intuition most often through our thoughts, our processing of concepts and ideas. Or we might feel most in touch with our intuition through our spiritual and religious pursuits, in prayer and in meditation.

We tend to think of intuition as coming through for us in breakthrough aha! moments, but most of the time, intuition is quiet and still. It does not rattle us. It is more like a gentle nudge or a persistent feeling or thought. In fact, our intuition is often so much a part of our lives that it feels natural and normal, and many people do not feel that they are intuitive because to them intuition does not feel unusual. We can become so accustomed to using our intuition that we call it common sense or the obvious.

Al is a successful businessman. He was formerly the CEO of a thriving vitamin company, and he now works as a business consultant. Al was asked by a company to investigate the possibility of acquiring some smaller, similar companies. He visited the companies in question. He also sought out a few other small businesses he thought were interesting, and along the way he met a young man who had started a small but innovative company. Although this young man, just twenty-four years old, did not have much experience, Al told me that when they met he felt an immediate connection with him. This young man, Al said, did not have the kind of qualifications that the company required, but Al was still excited and felt determined to work with this young man and his new ideas. Eventually, Al convinced the company for which he was consulting to buy the young man's concept, and a lucrative affiliation was established. Despite the fact that the young man did not have all the requirements that the company was looking for, Al somehow "knew" that their connection would be successful. Al told me he feels that he has "good instincts." I would argue that this is an example of intuition.

For some people, intuition is a curiosity, an afterthought, or an interesting concept. It can seem irrational and illogical. We have an antiquated belief system surrounding this common and frequently used function. Perhaps this is to some extent because being intuitive and being psychic are so closely related. To be intuitive is to be able to know without knowing how you know. To be psychic seems to be a step up from that, to have the ability to access at will extrasensory information and knowledge. Being psychic is simply a more refined and developed form of intuition. Most people have preconceived ideas of what being psychic means. When people hear the word psychic, all kinds of images usually surface in their minds: a television infomercial, a neon sign promising to change our luck from bad to good, strange and outlandish phenomena, and perhaps someone who claims to have special powers and requires large sums of money to help us out of impending doom.

There are some people who wonder why those who claim to be psychic don't know what will happen in their own day-to-day lives. I have heard such people remark that psychics should know when they will get sick, get laid off, have an accident, or should know the answers to game show questions. Psychics, many reason, should know everything that will occur in the future.

Yet we don't expect that much accuracy from most of science and medicine. Doctors know a lot about many illnesses. They know what tumors look like and how cancer grows in our bodies and cells. They know roughly how long someone may live once diagnosed with cancer. They even know what other organs certain cancers may spread to. Still, many, many people die every year from cancer. Doctors can't cure many types of cancer. Many chronic illnesses such as diabetes and AIDS are incurable. However, all that doesn't stop us from going to doctors when we're ill. We listen to them and believe what they tell us. In most cases, we trust our lives to modern medicine.

We were once absolutely positive that there were no other planets in our solar system. Later, our telescopes revealed to us a certain number of planets, and we believed that this finite number of planets in our solar system must forever be a scientific fact. But a short time ago, a professor who had just lectured on this topic unexpectedly discovered another small planet within our solar system that we had no idea existed.

Advanced intelligence gathering is in place as part of the American defense system. The government and military gather intelligence through highly sophisticated equipment each and every day, yet the tragedy of 9/11 still happened. We didn't know about all the plots against us, and we were not aware that our lives were in such danger.

Billions of dollars are spent every year on medicine, science, technology, and defense. We teach, we train, we educate ourselves. Still, we are made aware each day of just how little we as an advanced society really know.

Just think of how much we honor and support these fields of study. Then think about how little money, time, energy, and respect we give to the study of psychic energy. Most of our society pays very little attention to the journey of spiritual awareness.

Psychics do not know everything for the same reason that scientists, doctors, and spies do not know everything. We are on a journey of discovery. What we know today leads us to greater understanding for tomorrow. Getting an education in developing psychic awareness is a learning process. Not only does it entail learning about psychic energy, but it also includes learning about the nature of reality. To become psychic, you must transform your definition of what life is. You may begin to see yourself in a new way.

The Psychic Call
Jeff is a computer network engineer, happily married with two children. His sister had a psychic reading with me a few weeks earlier and Jeff was curious to see what a psychic would tell him, so he called me for an appointment. When he came to me for the reading, he seemed nervous and a bit skeptical. When we were nearly finished with the session, I asked him if he had any questions. He anxiously began to tell me that when he was driving his car, just daydreaming or listening to music, he would often have strong feelings or thoughts about family or friends. These feelings, he said, had recently begun to evolve into clear visual images, and he told me that certain scenes would emerge in his mind's eye as if he were observing a dream.

Jeff confessed that he'd been rattled a few months earlier. In an image, he'd seen a friend of his being unexpectedly laid off from his job. Jeff soon learned, a week or so later, that his friend had in fact been laid off. What seemed to unnerve Jeff the most about this incident was that life, he told me, was not what he thought it was. If he could "see" this incident before it happened, he asked me, what then was linear time and free will? Jeff told me that as an engineer he had been trained to think logically and rationally. What was happening to him was not part of the world with which he was familiar.

I have worked with many people who have told me similar stories―people who, without seeking it, have had psychic episodes and breakthroughs. It is not unusual for people to at first ignore these episodes of psychism and then, when they can no longer deny them, to attempt to rationalize a paranormal experience so that it fits into their definition of what is possible. But psychic energy is compelling and persuasive. Those who have experienced what we call the supernatural are rarely satisfied afterward to live their lives solely from the physical perspective. They become increasingly aware of the depth of spiritual resources that lie within them.

When we allow ourselves to investigate the nonphysical world, this investigation eventually leads us into the experience of a broader definition of both life and self. If we continue the search beyond the accepted boundaries, we eventually encounter our spirit, our soul, our being without form. This awareness can guide us into an inner world beyond our imaginings. We exist without restrictions and limitations. This is life teeming with energy, connection, and creative possibility. This is spirit. This is soul

Intuitive energy and psychic energy have intelligence and beauty. As we evolve and grow, we draw deeper into this graceful energy. Our intuition emerges in our lives, not only to allow to us to access information and give us guidance but also to give us a glimpse into the divine. Our soul is on a journey. As we increase our awareness of the potentiality of intuition, we uncover wisdom and create from Source. Psychic energy rightly used is the gift we have been given that will enable us to connect with vast intelligence and unlimited possibility.

Along the journey of inner knowing, we will be led into the mystery of life. Our search to understand truth will begin to reshape us like a flower that twists and turns itself as it seeks the sun. While working with many people who are developing and exploring intuition, I have discovered that each of us is as unique as a snowflake. Our intuition emerges as individualized as we ourselves are.

We can best appreciate our own intuitive and psychic abilities by becoming aware of how the energy first emerges in our lives. It may be in subtle ways, such as knowing when a loved one is feeling pain. Some people will have unexpected premonitions of worldly events―often tragic events like a plane crash. Others will have dreams of friends and loved ones, dreams that later unfold in life the way they saw they would in the dream. When meeting someone new, most people at some time or another will have "gut feelings" about the new person that are difficult to ignore. It is when we pay draw attention to the small ways that we are guided or given information that we can begin to understand how intuition is uniquely surfacing in our lives.

For some people, intuition and psychic encounters are unmistakable and momentous; it may be difficult to ignore them even though it might be also be hard to understand what is happening. Such experiences may affect not only ourselves, but also our families and friends in surprising ways.

My Psychic Beginnings
From an early age, I remember seeing what I now recognize as angels, animal spirits, and other ethereal visitors. I saw colors and light surrounding people, plants, and animals. In some of the first drawings I did as a child, I outlined people and plants in purple, the color I continuously saw encircling others. I first remember encountering someone in spirit when I was about eight years old. I was riding my bike near an open field, and in the distance I saw a woman walking toward me and waving to me. I quickly rode my bike onto the grass, jumped off, and ran toward her. I was so happy to see her. The next moment she was gone. I looked all over but I couldn't see her. I realized then that I had no idea who she was; she didn't look familiar. Yet I could still feel my joy in seeing her and my disappointment when she vanished. Something in me recognized her and even loved her.

I grew up in Massachusetts, and each year in elementary school beginning in the third grade we would go on a field trip to Salem Village, a restored Puritan town and the location of the infamous witch hysteria of the late 1600s. In between watching women dressed in heavy cotton skirts and white bonnets make candles and apple butter, we would pass the still-standing iron-gated stockade where heavy wooden gallows once were used to keep the witches from "causing evil." We visited the "witch house," where we heard fantastic and frightening stories of women and children who were accused of causing sickness and evil to farm animals and people. I could feel it all, see it all. It left quite an impression on me.

My mother was a missionary and a United Methodist minister. Each night before dinner we read from the Daily Word, a book of Methodist religious reflection. We never talked about psychic things. That wasn't part of our religion, never a subject for discussion of any kind. So I never revealed to my family that I could see and communicate with deceased relatives, nor did I tell them about the many dreams I had about events that would later come to pass. I kept to myself the silent, secretive world that seemed to follow me despite my best efforts to deny it.

Most members of my family went on to study religion in school, eventually earning advanced degrees in divinity and religion. But my life never seemed to fit into this mold. Instead, I was focused on trying to understand what was happening to me. Had there been acceptance of psychic energy in the churches and schools that I attended, then perhaps I, like many others, would not have had to endure so many years of shame and confusion.

Yet despite my reluctance to accept and reveal my psychic encounters, and despite my desire to suppress my talent for communicating with those who have passed over, my psychic ability would not be denied. By the time I was a teenager, the dreams, the visions, and the precognitive knowledge of events began to overwhelm me. The more I tried to repress it, the stronger it worked to emerge. I did not see any value in knowing and seeing what others did not see and know. To me it just made me feel different and odd.

My perspective did not began to change until one day when I was nineteen years old. I was riding the city bus and a tired-looking young man took the seat next to me. By his side I "saw" the spirit of an older dark-haired woman. She stoo...

About this edition

• Publisher: Llewellyn Publications
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 0738712787
• ISBN 13: 9780738712789
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288