How to Do a Psychic Reading
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Psychics are mostly frauds.
I'm sorry, but it's true. Most professional psychics just want your money. Fraudulent psychics are masters are what con artists call 'cold reading'.
Usually a cold reading starts with a vague statement that could have meaning for almost anyone like, "I'm sensing an older man... he's close to you and I'm getting an impression of ....a special gift...was it jewelry?" Or some such nonsense.
(Almost every woman owns at least one piece of jewelry that was given to her as a gift by a father, uncle, or grand-dad.)
So maybe you say, "Why, my grandfather died two years ago and gave me a pearl necklace that very same year!" And now you and the 'psychic' are off to the races.
The psychic keeps subtly probing and filling in the blanks with generalizations, then when the moment seems right, dispenses some bland piece of advice from your long dead grandpa (Study hard, don't take any wooden nickels) and that's that. That'll be 100 bucks please.
Now I'm going to totally confuse you.
It is also possible to do real psychic readings.
Yes Virginia, there are real psychics.
How can this be possible?
It can be possible in the same way it's possible to buy a real leather purse or a fake 'pleather' purse. Most of the time you're going to see pleather when you shop, because leather costs a lot more and is therefore harder to sell. But that doesn't mean real leather doesn't exist.
The trouble with psychic ability in general is that most people mystify and dramatize it way too much. They make a big deal out of it, and it is not a big deal. What we call a 'psychic reading' is really just information gathering that takes place just below the threshold of consciousness.
Our brains are gathering information constantly, every second, all the time, but most of it never filters into awareness because not all of it is necessary. If you actually became aware of every single stimulus in your environment at any given moment, you would be so overloaded with sensation you'd shut right down. So we very quickly develop a perceptual filter that only lets through what we really need to know. That's a good thing.
Genuine psychics are very good at tuning in to information they don't really need to know but is right there all the time.
If you interview psychics about their personal lives, you will discover that most of them had very difficult, very traumatic childhoods. In other cases, they may have had a near-death experience or other sort of horrendous and life-threatening occurrence that marked the beginning of their psychic ability. Both of these backgrounds are very common.
The rational explanation is that in both circumstances there is a survival advantage (for the psychic) in shutting down the perceptual filter (or at least making it more permeable).
A person who grows up in an erratic, dangerous environment quickly learns to 'read' the slightest change in the people and conditions around him or her--cues so subtle others don't see them, and in fact, so subtle the psychic might not even be able to identify the cues herself. All of a sudden she 'just knows' something. Or she hears a warning whispered, or sees a vision or image. The information comes and experience has taught her to trust it instead of question it.
Similarly, when someone nearly dies or is clinically dead for a brief period, it is not uncommon for that person's perceptual apparatus to go into a hyper-alert state after the danger has passed. People who have had near-death experiences often report that afterward they are able to perceive entities other people cannot, or are able to recognize and even heal disease and distress in others.
These claims may seem outlandish, but there is both a theoretical underpinning that supports that possibility and a growing body of evidence that their claims might well be valid.
The truth is that anyone can develop the ability to 'read' places or people this way.
Here is a quick, step by step method. Try it and see what happens:
- Believe you can. You must start by approaching the place or person you want to 'read' with a rock solid but matter of fact belief that information will indeed come to you. If you are overconfident you are probably not confident at all, you are just faking confidence, so it probably won't come. Likewise if you are afraid. You have to assume you can get this info as easily as you can pick up a fork, and that it isn't dangerous to do so. No big deal.
- Empty your mind. This
is easier for some people than others. (No sarcasm intended! LOL!)
Meditation helps. But even if you don't meditate, simply developing the
ability to 'go blank' and be receptive can work.
- Take what comes, no matter what it is. Often,
what you get won't make any sense initially. This is why, when you
watch psychics wandering around a haunted house or something, they
often will talk out loud, "I'm getting a brown dog. I smell bacon..."
Whatever. They are capturing their first impressions and staying open.
Voicing them allows the impressions to be released so more can come,
and someone else can also write them down as they speak. Some psychics
see images (clairvoyance), some hear things (clairaudience), and some
suddenly 'just know' things (clairsentience). Whatever you get, accept
it, even if it doesn't make immediate sense.
- Write it down. You can have someone else do this. Or you can do it yourself when you get an impression. Be as detailed as possible.
- Validate. If
you are reading a person you can just ask if you hit anything, Usually
if you have they won't be able to be quiet long enough for you to ask.
If it's a place, then you are faced with historical research and so
forth.
That's all there is to it, really.
At first, it may seem like nothing happens, ever. But if you practice, over time you will find that you do begin to develop some ability. What you are actually developing here is not some mystical skill or magical power, but rather an openness to ever more subtle perceptual cues in your actual environment.
What's more, this kind of info can be more than just a party game. Often you will find you pick up warning signs about people and places that, had you not been training yourself to trust your instincts, you would have almost certainly ignored.
So that's it. The truth is out there. Go find it.
Just don't charge for it.
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Comments
Very often they'll just say "no, no, no," I never had a grandparent, (you did, everyone has 4 whether they meet them or not,) I never had a brown dog, I've never cooked bacon and don't know anyone who ever has, no, I never met an older man and I've never owned any jewelry.
Thanks Steve--I'm pretty willing to believe a lot of things, but it isn't my style to write that way. I agree with you that some people are born with more ability in this area, just like some people are born with musical ability and so forth. i appreciate your comments. Thanks for stopping by. :)
I'm seeing a good HUb fairly published with a high hubscore. hehe
Michelle--LOL! I hope you get some more receptive folks. People without grandparents--now there's a hard case!
RV--I think you're psychic! Lol!
Good teachers have to be psychic, sometimes, to get across to all kinds of different learning styles. And I'm not joking, either. Profilers for the FBI, etc, make it scientific -- like reading microexpressions, for example -- but there's more to it than noticing someone's expression. I don't know how far it goes, and in many cases I wouldn't exactly call it psychic when it's simply observation plus instinct, but I guess there is more to it than a lot of folk are willing to admit because it frightens them -- it hasn't been scientifically quantified yet, or become accepted.
Teresa--I agree. I walk a thin line when I write about this stuff. Too skeptical and I people off. Too accepting and I turn people off. I think as you say (and Steve too), the bottom line is that it scares people so it's hard to write (and talk) about. If you ever have an interaction with a real psychic, someone with a real gift, you know it's a hell of a lot more than picking up on this or that subtle cue. But I think most people really can develop their intuition with effort and that doing so is highly beneficial to all concerned. So this hub was more from that direction. Thanks for your insights. :)
Great article, Pam. I've got that practical view of psychic perception too, having always had it. A lot of children do and then lose it as they grow older and learn their cultural perceptual filters. It gets scary to me sometimes how thick that perceptual filter is, how often even witohut it being psychic a lot of people can simply not perceive something real right in front of them until it bites.
It's not uncommon to hear "This can't be happening" from someone who's too culturally normative facing any risk to life or limb. They honestly believed it could never happen to them whether it was 911 or a car accident.
One of the most effective way to validate hits is just to log them. Try to guess who's calling when the phone rings. Then answer, see who it is, and if you were right, make a hatch mark on a phone pad. This is eventually how I proved it to myself -- I was scoring about 90-95% of the time with who was logging into my BBS before I could see the username. Not just by time of day or anything, I could tell if it was a friend or someone I was avoiding even when they were off schedule... and I counted that as a hit, it wasn't always precise.
It was also emotionally linked and built up to that by my paying attention to it -- and counting the loose hits like "I feel like I want to chat this person" from "Ugh, I don't want to chat them, let's go do something else." I used to chat most of the visitors on my BBS. But eventually it got clearer and some individuals would always come through clearly because they were very close friends with distinct personalitiies. I'd know it if it was say, my gaming buddy James whom I'd always spend hours chatting with -- at any time of day or night.
So finding something that's not loaded in terms of fear or anger but does have some emotional element and playing that kind of guessing game, then logging the hits, can increase perception.
Also, artistic perception may be linked with it since it's right brained too. Learning to draw realistically can help make people more perceptive and sensitive to their environment on all levels. I know that the difference between how I looked at faces before I did portraits and how I did after I learned was the difference between the word "face" and looking at one, that drastic -- it used to be that symbolic. I would remember hair color and what they were wearing and so on, not their features.
This accounts for why people look at me by personality and think I must be a tall skinny bloke when I'm short and crooked. They overguess my height and way underguess my weight, but I have a long face and a geekish-bohemian personality, I fit an archetype of guys that think too much.
It is a scary gift.
Hi Robert--I do think it's emotional loaded, and that tapping into one's own emotions and the emotions of others is a big part of it. I also agree about the artistic element. Dreams are a good example of a really visual, symbolic medium that can contain lots of psychic content and information, but often people can't access it because they are afraid or upset and can't decode the dreams. Thanks for your thoughts.
Gypsy Willow--That it is, that it is. :)
I too have had bogus ones, whom I have told are bogus (amazingly they did not try to argue the point) and some downright scary ones (scary in that they were powerful women that could read you like a childs picture book.)
Interesting hub topics!
Interesting hub and so true concerning the frauds out there. When a psychic, who is a total stranger to you, can tell you names and happenings that only you know then you've found a gifted person...
Wonderful Hub Pam, and so refreshing to read something about psychics that doesn't simply state they are ALL fakes. Like you have explained, there are many fakes out there, but also some excellent and genuine psychics who don't try to pump you for information, and quickly tell you to stop talking if you inadvertently start to give them any personal information.
Hi Paper Moon--I've had both kinds of readings too, and you are so dead on--when they're good, they're scary good. Thanks for your thoughts.
Nancy's Niche--Hi! I have on occasion picked up names myself. I don't say this to brag, but as evidence that there is something to this. It's not all hokum and show. As Steve and Paper Moon point out, sometimes there isn't really any easy rational explanation.
Hi Misty--Yes, I think there's definitely a real gift that some people do have. The challenge is separating the wheat from the chaff! Thanks for stopping by. :)
Thumbs up Pam. When I saw the title I was concerned for a minute expecting rubbish. Not so.
Thanks Jewels! I am flattered that you liked it. I know you know a lot about this stuff. In my family, psychic ability has a herditary component. Everyone just calls it "it", as in she has "it", he doesn't, and so on. But I realized in talking with someone about it that there is a step by step process involved that really anyone could practice. So that's what I was going for here. Thanks for reading it. :)
I am always open to persuasion but I agree with you that these are usually fakes.
In my own experience I have been to some fantastic Psychics, plus one or two terrible ones. The good ones told me some very specific details such as my late Husband having a limp on his right leg (accurate, even though she didn't even know I was Widowed, never mind what his personal appearance or afflictions were), a bad one simply tried to pump me for information, as well as doing the same to my friend who also had a reading. We complained and got our money back, but had to relinquish the tapes of the sessions to do so.
Pam, have you tried doing it via skype? I would love to chat with you.
Hi Misty---Me too! The good ones are really good, the bad ones, eh! Thanks for your comment.
Hi Jewels--I don't have Skype. I'd have to figure that out first, but I'm not really professional quality psychic material, LOL! I'd love to chat with you too though. :)
Pam, like you, I come from a psychic family, and I've had some interesting experiences in my time. I've always been very impressed by these ladies who have the brass neck to charge £10 or £20 for a reading at psychic fairs and so on. I've never had a reading done, although both my sisters have, but I have done 'mini' readings myself, for friends, just using, as you suggest, the first thoughts that drift in. Generally I'm fairly accurate, but it's never anything useful, like the lottery numbers, or the winner of the 12.15 at Brighton races!
Hi Amanda! Yet another thing we have in common! Doesn't surprise me though. :)
Right about now I wish I COULD conjure up a lottery number. LOL! Dry week with the freelancing. But, that gives me more time to goof off. Thanks for your thoughts.
Steve Rensch says:
4 months ago
All of us have a psychic sense. But we train ourselves to dismiss it because it is sometimes scary and because it does not speak in the complete sentences that our mind is accustomed to. This sense can be developed.
However, there are also those with psychic ability beyond what the rest of us possess. Though that ability can be developed, it comes at birth. Unfortunately, there are a lot of fakes, and what makes them successful is our constant curiosity about ourselves, on which they feed. But there are psychics with a deeper ability than you are currently ready to acknowledge, Pam. And there are those with abilities beyond the psychic. Why some people and not others? The same reason that some men are born with the ability to eventually run a 10 flat 100-yard dash, and I could never do that even if I trained my whole life.
Like your "shadow people", it all comes down to our fear of death.
Fun hub.