Through the Looking Glass: The Paranormal, Angels and Afterlife explored
I am a young adult author researching material for a new book about psychics. I am making my findings public here. My goal is to speak to people with good reputations, and to read the best books and articles available, which I will review and post.
I am a believer in all types of paranormal activity and am not approaching my research as a skeptic would. In terms of interviews, I am interested in point of view, not in scientific explanations or proof. I do not share all of the views expressed here, nor do I vouch for those interviewed.
I provide contact information in exchange for interviews, but do not take responsibility for outcomes, should you choose to contact them.
Happy Reading!
I am a believer in all types of paranormal activity and am not approaching my research as a skeptic would. In terms of interviews, I am interested in point of view, not in scientific explanations or proof. I do not share all of the views expressed here, nor do I vouch for those interviewed.
I provide contact information in exchange for interviews, but do not take responsibility for outcomes, should you choose to contact them.
Happy Reading!
Friday, November 5, 2010
Friday, October 29, 2010
Down the Rabbit Hole: Interview with Psychic Sabrina Meglio
When Sabrina was a girl of just five years old, she spent time in an LA house that was dense with spirits. As she describes its wrought iron gates, its black and white art deco floor, its spiral staircase, I see her in it, tiny with bushy black hair, running from room to room. When she tells me about standing at the top of the banister, looking the several stories down as all of the spirits danced and floated beneath her, the picture in my head turns black and white, overexposed, gritty. I am lost in the wonder of it.
Sabrina’s face opens up as she recounts the story, like it is a pleasant thing she thinks of from time to time. She is a study in contradictions; salty and street smart, yet with a smile of rare purity and innocence. She is at once down to earth and ethereal, cynical and fantastical. I like her immediately, and when she gets comfortable enough to start cursing up a storm, I feel a rush of affection that stays with me throughout the interview.
She explains to me that the psychic realm is her first language, that it is strange to be here on earth, in her skin. She's always known she was different. As a child she was constantly in trouble for knowing things she wasn't supposed to, and for saying people were in the room when no one else could see them. When she accurately predicted her mother’s car accident, she was severely reprimanded, and pushed her sight away, always knowing that she was “off”, and an outsider.
At fourteen, after years of repression, she was forced to visit her estranged father in Jamaica. Once there, her vision was reawakened. She had dreams nightly that came true the following day over and over. Finally a spirit visited her, and told her that she was gifted and had the power of sight. I ask about her sanity, and she tells me she has thought she was crazy her whole life until recently. Now that she is in her mid-life she has finally accepted that she is sane, just different.
She kept up a regular life for years, doing readings for free while working in Larry Flynt’s publishing house. It was years before she realized that the spirit walking her to and from the elevator every day was Althea Flynt, Larry Flynt’s deceased wife. When she left that job, and was about to take another, her clientele grew, and she decided to start charging for readings. She's self taught, which accounts for her rawness, and the unpolished bedside manner that I find so intriguing.
She tells me that my home town sits on a huge vortex. She has never heard of Taos and can't pronounce it, but if you’ve ever been there, you might agree with her, regardless of your beliefs. When she mentions that her building also sits on a vortex, I jump on the chance to ask her what that means. She cocks her head to the side, and asks what I assume to be a person sitting off camera how they would describe it. When I realize it’s a spirit, I lose my breath. It turns out the person she's talking to is named Brandon, a friend she lost way back; though I guess she didn’t lose him at all, because she talks to him throughout our conversation.
Brandon tells her to tell me that a vortex is like a bus station for spirits, and that the wormholes, which are the actual doorways, look like see through jell-o. This description makes her laugh. It’s as though we are all sitting together,and she is his translator. There are others around her as well, who seem to be taking up actual physical space. She addresses them with ease and directness as needed or to clarify a point, and then waits while they speak to her.
When I ask her what it’s like for her to give a reading, she says she holds the client’s hand if they come to see her in person, otherwise writes their name on a piece of paper, and puts her hand on top of it. Again it makes no difference whether they call her or see her in person. Images flood when her hand touches the client’s name, and she gets impressions of emotions and energy.
To show me what she sees, she draws me a map with a long street on it. Instead of businesses, she writes “marriage”, “kids”, “career”. It’s as though she’s walking down the street, and the more pressing issues are up front; as she approaches she gets more details. She doesn’t instantly know everything about you, but as she moves around the map, it starts to make sense, to come together as a whole picture. She can go into other people’s heads as well, to find out what they are thinking. She feels the person's feelings, and sometimes gets symbols to convey specific bits of information. For instance, if a person were going to work on a Mac commercial, she might see an apple; it would be something recognizable to her.
She can do about five readings a day, and gets quite depleted. When she’s tired she uses the tarot cards, which she says act like a generator. She admits she likes sugar, and that she could probably do more if she took better care of herself. Her guides and spirits are her “knights at the round table”, helping her to sort through what she is seeing and feeling. She says that she has to trust that she is only being given the information she is supposed to pass along, so if she sees imminent divorce, you’re going to hear about it. She makes no distinction between ghosts and guides and spirits; it's all sort of the same thing.
When I ask her about death, she says we’re all only partially here. We are made of so much light that there’s no way we can fit in our bodies. The other side is like a giant mirror image of earth, except everything is brighter, more colorful, and there’s more of it. Like Alice in Wonderland, I ask? Pretty much. She spends a lot of time on the other side, and says we all do, we just don’t know it. Her people have told her that the book Destiny of Souls is about 75% accurate, and that if I want to know more about it, I should read it (and I will).
As to life, and the question of destiny vs. free will, she tells me there are lots of ways to get to Vegas.
Vegas being death? No, she says, Vegas being fate, and lessons learned. You can crawl to Vegas, or you can fly first class. That part is up to you. She explains that fate and success are thematic as opposed to monetary, which is the way we tend to quantify it. If it is your fate to come to earth and learn how to release fear, for instance, how fast and good a learner you are will dictate the harshness of the lesson. If you pay really close attention, and are a good student, you may not have to experience cataclysmic events in order to learn. Other times we are going to have to withstand terrible things, and that is karmic and unavoidable. You could spend 50 lifetimes just working on one thing, so you can’t be too hard on yourself.
We all have more than one death date, so we can get out if we want to. She sees the grim reaper (she calls him G-man) if she’s going to lose someone she loves, and says he was everywhere for three weeks before 9/11. We shouldn’t fear him; he’s a good and kind angel.
She lives among ghosts, and vortexes, dancing spirits, and even fairies, yet has so normalized her own experiences that while talking about all of these remarkable and intangible things, I have almost forgotten that we are supposing a realm unseen by most, and concepts that the majority don’t believe in at all.
As I am contemplating all that she has told me, she turns to the side, hearing something I cannot, giggles, and says to the apparently empty air next to her, “Yeah, you’re right. That’s funny.”
You can contact Sabrina at www.sabrinaandherspirits.com .
Labels:
clairvoyant,
esoteric,
ghosts,
paranormal,
psychics,
spirits
Friday, October 22, 2010
Interview with a Psychic
Interview with Christiana McMahon October 18, 2010
She’s not what you picture when you hear the word psychic. She’s not creepy looking, no warts on the nose, no gypsy shawl. She’s a bubbly blue eyed blonde, with a cute body and a big smile. She looks a little corporate, like you might run into her at a high power business meeting somewhere. But when she starts talking, she is a reminder never to judge a book by its cover, because she is saying things, controversial things, with such tenacity and confidence that you are a little taken aback. There’s no quavering voice, no hesitation. She just knows things, and this is her experience.
I have so many questions that I spend my first five minutes jumping on everything she says, before I finally calm down long enough to give her a chance to answer.
When she was young, a little girl in Texas, and a people pleasing outgoing one at that, she warned her teacher that her fiancĂ© was about to leave her, and told her not to be sad when he did. Her teacher, for whom she had a starstruck worship, scolded her and sent her to the principal’s office. She was devastated. When her fiancĂ© left her a few weeks later, she had Christiana removed from her class. Christiana learned early on that there are consequences for knowing things you aren’t supposed to know.
She has always been able to read minds, especially when people are in a heightened emotional state. People ask her if it's like Sookie Stackhouse (from HBO's Trueblood). They must have done their research because that's exactly what it's like.
She’s happy to be working from home. Besides the whole hearing people’s thoughts thing, it’s too hard to work in an office when you’re trying to ignore the fact that the boss’ dead grandfather is standing next to him. She’s making a joke, but my stomach turns at the thought.
She went years repressing her gift. Like any kind of repression, you can convince yourself of almost anything with enough practice. She sees how a person could end up in an institution if they lacked a strong constitution. You don’t have to be a high soul to be a psychic, to possess this talent. Whether you are a charlatan, or weak, it can be a bad situation all around.
She does readings either in person or over the phone, but says she almost prefers the phone because she is not distracted by body language and visible expectations. Either way, after a blessing, she asks that whatever comes through be only for the client’s greater good. Because she is both clairaudient and clairvoyant, she gets messages in various ways. She has a council of guides and angels, as well as people who have passed, who help to clear a path so that the guides specific to her client can come through. She feels that they protect her, and funnel information in a way that she can understand. She is “contracted” to tell you what she sees, so the filter happens before it gets to her.
People get angry when she fails to give the answers they want, and she hates to disappoint, but she is the messenger, and as such simply tells herself that it is none of her business. All my questions about ethical dilemmas go out the window. She might try to present the information she’s given in a sensitive way, but that’s as far as it goes. The true line of information is between the client and their guides.
People get angry when she fails to give the answers they want, and she hates to disappoint, but she is the messenger, and as such simply tells herself that it is none of her business. All my questions about ethical dilemmas go out the window. She might try to present the information she’s given in a sensitive way, but that’s as far as it goes. The true line of information is between the client and their guides.
She tells me that of course she is interpreting, and a symbol can mean something to you that is different from the way she sees it, so she just does her best. Also, there’s the question of free will which complicates reading the future even further. She sees a lot of potential, but people sabotage themselves through fear. She says to be careful of focusing on fear. You can manifest it very easily if you’re not careful. This makes me bristle (to see why, read my blog post “F@#$k the Laws of Attraction"), but I’ve heard it so many times that I let it go immediately. The point is that people often have great potential which remains out of their reach, so she sees what is available, but you can always get in your own way.
Certain meetings and relationships are destined, but how we play it out is all us. And when we die, we are choosing to. With all of the tragedy I've witnessed, all the pain of lives lost, I have trouble with this, but she stands by it.
I want to know about ghosts. She refers to them offhand, telling me about a dead girl who appeared at the foot of her bed the other night, like she’s describing the delicious pancakes she ate for breakfast.
I tell her I would run screaming down the street if I were seeing that, and just the thought raises goosebumps up and down my arms.
I have always believed in reincarnation, and she does, too. So how to explain the wandering spirits? She says when we die, especially suddenly, there’s a seamless shift in consciousness, and sometimes we don’t know we’re dead. Especially if a person is lacking in spiritual connection, they can have a hard time letting go, and can turn negative, wandering the earth in confusion. This is one of the reasons that it is so important for people to cultivate their spirituality.
What about true evil, I ask. What about demons? Rare, she says. She almost never encounters it. Though I want to press on this point, she dismisses it, and moves on.
When we have crossed over, she says, we go to a place pleasant and familiar to us. Then we sit down and have a life review (do you remember that movie with Albert Brooks and Meryl Streep, Defending Your Life? That’s sort of what I’m picturing here). She says that her closest experience of it came when she was reading for a client who was about to cross over. When looking at his future, she saw him actually sitting at a table of people.They were in the midst of discussing his life and progress, and he was deciding whether or not to reincarnate.
She explains that incarnation on earth is a choice. It’s boot camp, she says, and she laughs. She tells me to look around. Everyone on earth is brave, she says. It’s the rapid soul progress program. We don’t have to come here. We can hang out on the other side as long as we want. Maybe we’re waiting for loved ones, or maybe we’re just recuperating. She says she actually believes those who have suffered greatly are cocooned in love before they even have their life review, and that this can go on a while. Also there is no time, so there’s that (I have to bite my lip not to ask all about that, but for us, there is time, and the clock is ticking).
So why would we choose to come here, with all of the suffering?
She says we have feelings, tactile abilities on earth that don’t exist on the “ethereal plane”. She says their sensations on the other side amount to a sort of goosebumpy sensation, and that we get to do so much more here. Also, like she said before, we learn the most the fastest on earth.
Again, this challenges what I was raised to believe, that we have 49 days to get through the bardo (for an idea of what that looks like, think Flatliners), and then we are flung back into an earthly form until we stop being petty humans and attain enlightenment.
This sitting at a table and discussing potential areas of improvement sounds infinitely more enjoyable.
What if you’re a murderer? What if you have committed atrocities? Is there retribution? No, she says. It’s all evolution. We’re just all at different stages of it, and when we cross over, we have to look at our behaviors but the guilt and judgment we experience as humans are nonexistent.
This makes me so uncomfortable. I want there to be payment for injustice, but she sticks to her statement. She says it like she knows for sure that it’s true. No judgment. Period. Only love.
And as for the angels, when they come to her they are at such a high vibration that they can almost hurt her with their intensity. She says they are moved by our humanity, by the strength of our emotions, and by all of our earthly obstacles. They only want to help.
So how does she navigate her own path? She says she walks it pretty blind. She’s a human woman having all of her own human experiences. She just doesn’t have a lot of the same questions we do. She doesn’t wonder about the afterlife, or our purpose here on earth. She tells me we’re here for ascension. I’d like to ask her more about what that means, but we are out of time, so I let it go as a lofty concept that some will understand, and that seems hazy to me. She knows that she is here to serve and that she does her best; 2010 has been a hard year, and that she hopes 2011 will be better. As always, she shoots for the best and ends on a high note.
Labels:
cairvoyance,
clairaudience,
ghosts,
halloween,
medium,
paranormal,
psychics
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