When my grandmother Sylvie was twelve, she pulled a coat and boots from the foyer and lugged them upstairs to her oldest brother Loy's room. There, she demanded that he get dressed and take the parlor quilt to their father. He argued with her and told her Pa wasn't due home until much later and that she needed to take her foolish notions back to her own bed. Unable to do that, she drug two of her sisters up with her to try and support her demand. Still, it took one of the boys in this family of twelve siblings to respond to the commotion and convince Loy that not following Sylvie's "notion" might be a bad idea. Loy conceded to go, but refused to take the good parlor quilt by insisting that Sylvie would send her own quilt instead.

Three miles down the road he found his father soaking wet in the freezing weather. One of the small creeks that he crossed on the way to town became a roiling flood while Pa was in the middle of crossing it on his way back. He had barely managed to unhitch the horse and had almost drown while trying to salvage his shotgun and some tools. Loy wrapped him in Sylvie's quilt and put him on the front of his horse to take him home.

Although Pa wanted this embarrassing incident to quietly and rapidly disappear, he had to know how his eldest son managed to come riding up in the dark prepared to save him. Everybody pointed to Sylvie but she refused to say anything until she and her Pa were alone. Quietly, she explained that she had a frightening dream that the beavers had attacked Pa and torn his clothes to shreds. Later, they learned that a huge beaver's dam upstream from the crossing had broken and caused the flood.

Even though Sylvie's "notions" probably saved her fathers life, she lived most of her life believing that she "mostly predicted bad things" and she tried to follow her fathers advice to keep her notions to herself. In 1913, there wasn't much concern of being burned at the stake, or anything similar, but social circles didn't readily open to welcome those with professed psychic abilities.

Curious to see if a half a century, more or less, brought  a discernible difference in the definition of psychic ability, I made a comparison between the descriptions offered in my lightweight, readily handy, 1995 Oxford Desk Dictionary and my fragile hulk of "The broad foundations of Noah Webster's Unabridged" 1951 edition. When you follow the word trail through the two dictionaries starting with "psychic" to "esoteric" to "occult" you find that our 1951 views were attached to the idea that psychic powers stemmed from being mesmerized, and that mesmerism is a doctrine that one person can exercise influence over the will of another. By 1995 we weren't being led to believe that we were hypnotised into perceptions, but that those perceptions were now "supposed".  Not much progress there.

I do believe that we have seen progress since 1995, though.  ESP requires no acronym free translation, and new television shows about telepathy and clairvoyance are on the rise. Technology, certainly, has gone a long way toward eliminating disbelief of unseen power. Our air transmits signals, sounds and images that we accept without question. I believe that acceptance is essential to developing individual psychic abilities. As with any ability, genetics and training affect the results. Gifts exist, and like, for example, musical ability, some people will have an unclosable head start on others. Some of those willing to work toward improving their psychic abilities will be surprised at their expanded horizons. Others may only gain a better appreciation of the possibilities. Either way, here are some things anyone can do to allow their own abilities to be found.

1. Delete Denial : In the beginning, even if you still need to label the stories and accounting's of others as "Hollywood" , you need to open your mind to listening to and connecting with your own animal instincts. Most of us have overridden our natural mechanisms with our daily life habits. There are innumerable challenges that you can create to test and enhance your ability to perceive your surroundings, but all of them are based on getting you to believe that you can feel when something is different in your environment. You can't "tune in" until you "tune out" and shut-off interference from denial or disbelief. " I am an animal. I have "gut instincts".

2. Unlock : Typically, part of growing up is abandoning our childish imaginations. Grant yourself permission to imagine. Practice letting your imagination off it's leash, or out of the box it's in. Go on a pretend flight, look through the wall in front of you, see into the mountain, hear music in the wind, sense emotions on your skin, smell the mood of a room, taste a missing object. Try the analogy, "if I can "taste fear" what else can I taste?" Treat all of the senses in a similar manner.

3. Relate : Our strength's are as much in how we discern as they are in what we discern. If you hear, practice listening. If you see, practice looking. Work to find the direction that comes most readily to you. When you allow yourself to connect with this instinct, provide a good environment to practice connecting again. For example, you may hear best where it's quiet, see when it's dark, or feel when you lay down. Or it could be just the opposite, Like wash, rinse, repeat, it's connect, relate, repeat.

4. Reaffirm : Once you have learned to perceive things differently, you will be different. You will need to make some choices that could affect how you relate to others and how you are seen by them. It's seldom bad advice to follow a "gut instinct", even when you have to go against the flow to do it. Most messages don't call for us to ride out into the freezing night, but the strength and persistence of those that do seldom allow themselves to be ignored. Big or minute, the important thing is to realize that there is validity to your perception.

My grandmother's message wasn't about the beavers but for a need to save her father. Mine have allowed me to predict some events and to offer advice that may have prevented tragedy. My son has seen events he was not present to. Why not take time to learn how to use more of the tools in the toolbox you came with?