One of the most difficult things to teach someone who is developing their intuition or psychic abilities is how to tell the difference between information that is coming through them and information that is simply coming from them.
The problem is that our minds are incredibly creative. We imagine things. We remember things. We make associations. We anticipate what might happen next. We fill in missing information without even realizing we're doing it. We can convince ourselves of things, frighten ourselves with things, and sometimes create an entire explanation for something before we've even realized we've done it.
None of that is bad. In fact, I believe imagination is one of the most important components of psychic perception. I don't think of imagination merely as a make-believe machine. I think of it as a kind of reality navigator—one of the ways consciousness takes information that may be difficult to perceive directly and turns it into something we can understand.
That's why the question isn't, Did I imagine this? The better question is: Did my imagination receive and translate something, or did it originate and construct something? Your imagination participates in the experience, but participation is not necessarily authorship.
What “Coming Through” Feels Like to Me
When information is coming through me psychically, it tends to have a particular quality. It is fast. Sometimes extraordinarily fast. Words can come out of my mouth faster than I feel capable of consciously constructing them. Images, sensations, sounds, memories, symbols or pieces of information may seem to arrive already assembled. I don't feel as though I'm building them one piece at a time.
The simplest analogy I can give is water. Information coming through me feels like water being poured through a sieve. I'm involved in what happens to the water as it passes through me, but I'm not squeezing it out.
Information that I'm constructing feels more like squeezing juice out of a piece of fruit. There is effort involved. My mind starts searching: What would make sense here? What could this mean? What might this person want to hear? I can actually feel myself shift into a different gear. I've learned to recognize that gear.
When I'm working psychically, I'm often in something resembling what people describe as a flow state: deeply absorbed, less aware of time, and not consciously monitoring every word as it arrives. I'm not claiming that psychic perception has scientifically been demonstrated to be a flow state. I'm describing what the experience feels like to me. When I move out of that state and begin constructing, I become much more aware of myself thinking. One of the ways I describe it is: Effort takes time. The moment I start efforting, I pay attention.
Imagination Isn't the Enemy
This is where beginning psychics can get themselves tangled up. They see an image in their mind and immediately think, Well, I imagined that, so I must have made it up. But what else would you expect psychic information to look like inside a human mind?
In my own understanding of this process, whatever the ultimate source of the information may be, my consciousness still has to turn it into something I can comprehend and communicate. It has my memories, vocabulary, experiences, senses, associations and imagination available to do that.
I sometimes experience what I call a “language of thought” or “language of energy.” Something can arrive with a complexity that I understand almost instantaneously, even though translating that understanding into ordinary language takes longer. At other times, I may see something quite literal: a person, an object, a place, an article of clothing. Sometimes information arrives as words or music. My body can even participate through changes in posture, breathing, gestures or physical sensations. I don't believe everyone has to experience psychic information the way I do. In fact, part of developing your abilities is discovering the particular language your own mind uses.
First Learn What Making Things Up Feels Like
When I teach people discernment, I don't begin by telling them what psychic information is supposed to feel like. I have them study something they already have access to: their own mind. Deliberately make something up. Imagine pink polar bears playing baseball. Don't wait for the image to appear—construct it intentionally, and notice what that feels like.
Then vividly recall a positive memory from childhood. Notice what retrieving that memory feels like. Next, remember what you had for breakfast this morning. Surprisingly, even recent and distant memories can have different qualities in our awareness. Then fabricate something. Tell a deliberate lie about something inconsequential and notice the mental effort involved in creating and maintaining information you know isn't true. These experiences give you reference points. This is what deliberate imagination feels like to me. This is what remembering feels like. This is what constructing feels like. This is what fabrication feels like. Now you have something against which to compare other experiences.
If information begins arriving in a way that doesn't feel like any of those familiar mental activities, I think it's fair to become curious about it. That doesn't prove that the information came from a supernatural source. It simply means you've encountered something that deserves further investigation. That distinction matters enormously to me. “This doesn't feel like I made it” is an invitation to investigate, not proof that I didn't.
The Personal Geography of Psychic Perception
With enough practice, people can begin to recognize patterns in where and how information appears in their awareness. I sometimes describe this by asking students to imagine a sphere surrounding them. If you could point anywhere within that three-dimensional sphere, where does a particular kind of information seem to originate?
Over time, you may discover that certain impressions reliably seem to arrive from a particular place in your awareness. I have my own internal environment that I call “the place” or “the white room,” where I allow myself to interact with what I perceive as spirits. Other people may develop an entirely different internal geography. This familiarity comes from practice, not from somebody handing you a universal map.
Context matters too. If you're standing at the post office and suddenly have a disturbing, inexplicable image involving the stranger ahead of you, that doesn't automatically mean you've received a psychic message that you're supposed to deliver. It could simply be a random thought. During an intentional psychic session, however, unusual information arising in relation to the person sitting with you exists within a very different context. An impression doesn't always carry its own explanation. Sometimes context helps give it meaning.
Receiving, Interpreting and Validating Are Different Things
This is one of the distinctions I've become much more comfortable with as I've gotten older and more experienced. I think there are at least three different processes involved: Reception. Interpretation. Validation. I can experience something as having been received very clearly and still misunderstand what it means. A client may recognize something immediately, recognize it later, or never recognize it at all.
Earlier in my career, a lack of validation could throw me completely out of my psychic state. If somebody looked at me blankly or said, “No, that means absolutely nothing to me,” the human part of me could panic. I wanted to be right. I wanted the session to work. And ironically, that desire to make it work could become the very thing that stopped it from working. My ordinary mind would jump in to help. That's when construction begins.
Now, if something doesn't make sense, I may internally check the information again. If it continues to present itself in the same way, I can give it to the person without demanding that they validate it. I don't need to convince them. Sometimes information that initially makes no sense is understood later. Sometimes it remains an open question forever. And sometimes I'm simply wrong. Being able to say that is part of the work.
Release Your Need to Be Right
One of the principles I emphasize most strongly in psychic development is deceptively simple: Release your need to be right. Allow yourself to be wrong. I love being right. Of course I do. It feels wonderful when something unusual and specific is immediately recognized. But needing to be right is something else entirely.
When I need to be right, part of my attention is no longer available for perception. It's monitoring my performance. It's looking for approval. It's trying to avoid embarrassment. It's figuring out how to make an impression fit. It's protecting my identity as someone who is supposed to know things. That is where ego can interfere.
I don't believe ego itself is bad. I think of ego almost like a vase holding water. We need the vessel. It gives us structure and allows us to function as individuals in the world. The problem isn't having an ego; the problem is having wounds within ourselves that cause us to use psychic work to satisfy our need for authority, admiration, certainty, importance or approval. Psychic development without self-development can therefore become dangerous. The more sensitive you become to unusual impressions, the more important it is to recognize your own needs, fears and motivations.
The Person Sitting Across From You Matters
A psychic reading also doesn't occur in a vacuum. There is another human being participating in it. Their emotions affect the interaction. Their questions affect it. Their reactions affect it. If my eyes are open and someone suddenly tears up, smiles, freezes or looks confused, of course I perceive that. Pretending I don't would be ridiculous. The question is what I do with that information. There is a difference between receiving an impression first and noticing afterward that the person's reaction seems to validate it, versus watching someone's reactions and unconsciously constructing information designed to produce the response I want. That distinction can be subtle. Again, it takes practice and self-awareness.
Maturity has also taught me how to tolerate not knowing yet whether I'm right. I don't have to retract an impression simply because someone doesn't immediately recognize it. But I also don't have to defend it, force it upon them or construct an elaborate explanation for why they're wrong and I'm secretly right. Reality gets a vote too.
I Don't Actually Know What Psychic Ability Is
After doing this professionally for nearly twenty years, I've arrived at a conclusion that might sound strange coming from someone who calls himself a psychic: I don't know what psychic ability ultimately is. I have beliefs about it. I have experiences that have shaped those beliefs. I can tell you what the process feels like inside me, and I can teach people methods that have helped them become more discerning about their own experiences. But I cannot tell you with absolute certainty what the underlying mechanism is.
Maybe some of what we call psychic perception involves aspects of consciousness we don't yet understand. Maybe some of it involves unconscious cognition and extraordinarily sophisticated pattern recognition. Maybe reality, time and consciousness work in ways we haven't adequately described yet. I can imagine all sorts of metaphysical explanations too. But imagining an explanation isn't the same thing as knowing it's true. I've become remarkably comfortable saying: “I don't know how this works.”
I also don't think psychic ability makes somebody special. I suspect that what we call psychic perception may be connected to natural capacities human beings have largely stopped cultivating. That's my belief, not an established scientific conclusion. What interests me much more than proving the mechanism is learning how to work responsibly with the experience.
Boundaries Are Part of Mastery
When I was younger, unusual perceptions could happen unexpectedly and frighten me. Over time, I learned that being maximally open all the time wasn't something I wanted. Today I have boundaries around when and how I'm willing to engage with psychic information. I don't consider being “always on” a sign of advanced ability. In fact, I think it can be a stage of beginner development. A beginner may need to turn the faucet on and let information pour for a while simply to learn what that flow feels like. Eventually, however, you want to find the valve. Mastery isn't receiving everything all the time. Mastery includes choice.
Psychic Information Doesn't Relieve You of Human Responsibility
This may be the most important part. I have my own spiritual beliefs about what information I'm allowed to receive and why. But receiving something doesn't absolve me of responsibility for what I do with it.
If information seems particularly painful, provocative, private or potentially disruptive, I can ask a client whether they want to hear it. They retain their agency. If they don't want it, I don't have to deliver it simply because I perceived it. And no psychic should use an invisible authority to make their own opinions more powerful.
“Spirit says you need to do this” is an extraordinarily potent statement when spoken to someone who believes you have access to information they don't. That power demands humility. A psychic who hasn't learned to distinguish personal desires, judgments and needs from what appears to be coming through can easily put their own words into the mouth of something they call Spirit. Never borrow authority from the unknown to make your own opinion more powerful.
For me, psychic ethics means not deliberately using this work to harm, manipulate, control or make someone dependent upon me. The purpose isn't to become the authority over somebody else's life. Ideally, the work helps return people to their own authority.
There's a line commonly attributed to Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung that I've always appreciated: “I'd rather be whole than good.” That's how I think about this work too. I'm not interested in performing the role of the “good psychic”—the psychic who always knows, always comforts, always impresses and is always right. I would rather be whole. And I want the person sitting across from me to become more whole too. Because perhaps the strangest lesson I've learned from spending so much of my life working with what I call extraordinary knowing is this:
The better you become at extraordinary knowing, the more important ordinary humility becomes.