Paranormal and Psychic Experiences
by Josephine Laing
Psychic ability and paranormal experiences fascinate many of us, but since they can't be explained in terms of our culturally accepted scientific method, we tend to dismiss them in polite company and mostly only referred to, somewhat discretely, among trusted friends. After all, there is a fine line between psychic ability and psychological imbalance. In the mental health arena, both categories are still lumped together and really, if you are going to be seen walking down the street by yourself while chattering away, you better have a cord and a cell phone bud in your ear. Otherwise, the rest of us will probably tend to keep our distance.
As a working psychic for the past twenty five years, most of the time, with the people that I've met, I've been pretty quiet about what I do. But times change and I feel now that societally we need to begin leaving this bias behind. So, in recent years, I've started to speak up about what I do. I write about it from time to time and now I'm teaching classes at Cuesta College through their community programs department. All of my classes are designed to help us to open up to these less developed aspects of our human experience which we can learn how to open ourselves up to. I feel that psychic ability and paranormal events are both very natural and accessible aspects of our true selves. Fortunately, here in California, we're a bit more amenable to such things. If I find myself back in the mid-west, I most likely won't breathe a word about what I do for my day job as a working medical intuitive. Psychic ability is just simply not accepted in many areas of the world and is even viewed in some circles with fear.
It's interesting to note, however, that in the very uppermost echelons of global society, psychic ability is used quite extensively. Startlingly enough, wars have been planned using astrology, along with other esoteric means of divination. The first Gulf War began as soon as Jupiter went retrograde and ended the very day it went direct. I sincerely doubt that this was a coincidence. It's fairly well known now, that both President Reagan and Adolph Hitler used astrological planning for all of their significant actions and timed major events in our collective history accordingly. Our CIA has a fairly well concealed enormous budget in excess of many millions of dollars that they spend annually on psychics.
Meanwhile, groups promoting skepticism for the general public are also well funded because those who know how effective and how readily available to all of us these tools are, don't really want to let the big secret out to the masses. When people don't know how to trust and readily access their own inner guidance, they are easier to manipulate. So, skepticism is culturally promoted. The result is that people who do express psychic ability or who consult with psychics or who have had paranormal experiences have not been taken very seriously by most of the population. As a result, you can imagine how relieved people are, who have had some sort of profound and completely unexplainable experience, when they find someone like me to share their stories with. This is because they really can't share them with many people for fear of being adversely judged. I think that we are now at a time where we can begin to let go of all of that and embrace our birthright of psychic ability and cultivate this underestimated and misconstrued aspect of ourselves. When we do so, we open ourselves to all forms of trustworthy guidance and helpful experiences. We also reawaken in ourselves a deep natural spirituality through the awe and wonder of life.
The first two stories of paranormal occurrences that I'd like to share with you are so wonderful and so totally out of the ordinary, that I asked the friends who told them to me if I could have their permission to share their stories anonymously. They both said yes because they also feel that it's time for us to acknowledge how powerful we are when we unite with spirit and how truly miraculous the world really is.
In the first one, and this just happened last year, my friend was on the freeway North bound going home. The traffic was fast and was in only two lanes since some work was being done on the right shoulder of the road. She was in the right lane with a big semi directly behind her. Everyone was going between 65 mph and 80 mph. The sun had just started to go down but it was still very light out. She came up over a little rise and was stunned to see that the car in front of her was stopped in her lane. She slammed on her breaks and then realized that the semi behind her was baring down on top of her and would be unable to stop in time. The traffic to her left was whizzing by without a break and with the shoulder on her right was barricaded off. There was literally no place that she could go. So she closed her eyes and screamed, "God, Help Me!" An instant later, she opened them and was shocked to see that she had a clear road before her. Then she looked back in her rear view and saw the whole near mess dropping back swiftly behind her. Without her vehicle there, it looked as if the semi had just barely enough room to stop, and as far as she could tell, no one had been hurt.
Pretty good, eh? So often we forget to ask for help when we need it the most. Asking, without attachment to details or outcome allows energy to move freely. It opens doors allowing trust and faith to move into place.
This next story happened several years ago, while another friend of mine was at a massage camp high up in the Sierras. It was a beautiful spring day and she and another student decided to head out for a little hike during a break from some of their classes. A little distance from the school, but many miles away from any other human habitation, they came upon a beautiful overlook with a view of the distant hills with a valley below. They were standing there just gazing, at the edge of the small meadow that they had just crossed with a few short shrubs before them at the edge of a steep slope down the hill, when suddenly and very quickly from behind them came a host of fast moving balls of colored light. They varied only slightly in size, most being about four or five inches in diameter. At least thirty of them whizzed past them and zoomed off down the hill within just a few seconds of time. They were mostly brilliant blue and green in color but carried hints of all of the colors within their clear translucent orbs. The two women were very startled and stunned for a moment, even unable to move. Then my friend turned her head toward her companion, doubting herself, and asked, "Did you just see that?" Her companion, drop jawed, responded, "Yes!" Still stunned, they compared mental notes and decided that what they had just seen absolutely must have happened, but it so didn't fit into ordinary reality that they could hardly believe it. If they hadn't been standing right there when it happened, they wouldn't. But they were, so they had to.
I also would like to share two stories which involve windows in time and they both happened to me. The first one happened while I was in the Walmart in Paso Robles. When they were building that Walmart, a friend of ours who was at the time the spokesperson for the Northern Chumash Council here in San Luis Obispo was staying at our house and going up every day to watch for and recover the bones of his ancestors as the bulldozers were preparing the ground for the new store which had been built on a formerly sacred Chumash burial and village site. I've never liked Walmart and I didn't much appreciate the insensitivity that this building project was displaying. I think I've only been in a Walmart two or three times, because they are nationally responsible for the loss of so many of our small town mom and pop stores, replacing that friendly neighborhood shopping experience with corporate coldness and employee abuse all for a few pennies less on the dollar. So, I just don't go there.
However, Frank's well meaning mother had gotten him some stereo equipment for Christmas and though it was a lovely thought, the item was something that he didn't need and he decided to return it. Unfortunately it had come from a Walmart and without a receipt couldn't be returned and had to be exchanged. So, as Frank was standing in the techno-isles lifting and studying various boxes of products, my mind and attention and eventually my body began to wander.
I found myself looking out over rounds and rounds of dress racks with the light of day coming in from the bay of entry windows behind me. I have zero interest in clothes shopping so none of my attention was on the garments at hand. I was just in a neutral nowhere doing nothing mode gazing toward the back wall of the store, when all of a sudden in the gray light, I saw, almost imagined, but much more real than that, with my eyes fully opened, a Chumash village scene from probably several hundred years ago, only it was taking place in current time, in some alternative reality. The one thing that both scenes shared was the place we were at, right there where the Walmart is. However, in that other scene there was a man, a Chumash man, waring a leather flap and anklets for dancing. He had stopped moving with the others who were still circling and puffing up the soft grey dust with their feet. As he stood there, he was looking directly at me, just as incredulously as I was looking at him. We stared at each other , totally lost in the moment, looking directly into each other's eyes. It lasted for only a few seconds until I got totally freaked out and fled the store. Once outside, in the light of day, I found the little bits of bare earth still remaining amongst the many parked cars and impulsively took off my shoes and socks and stood on the dirt to help myself recover and regain my composure. Frank found me after having made his choice and wondering where I had disappeared too. I had to explain that I barely knew myself. It was all just too unreal. Prior to this I had heard of parallel realities, but after this, I think that I had a brief glimpse into one.
Another time window occurred to me just a year or so ago, in much the same way. I was parked on Caudil street, sitting in my car on a beautiful late summers day. I had all of the windows down and was answering a long questionnaire about something or another. Letting my mind wander from the task for a moment or two, I found myself blankly gazing down the street and without my barely noticing it, a similar window in reality opened before me. I could sort of see the street and the cars, but just like in the k-mart, the other reality was the more dominant scene in my open eyed view. Again, it was as if it was from a time several hundred years ago, but it was actually in real time happening in the here and now. And again, it involved another being looking right at me. But this time it was a prong horned antelope who was deeply contemplating my presence and looking right into my eyes. There was a tall native grass moving gently in the wind, it's large full tops ripe with seed. I've since found that same grass growing in San Simeon in places where cattle can't get to it to graze. The antelope was with a small herd whose members were browsing on foliage and moving on at a relaxed pace. The creature noted me and my peculiar surroundings in a car on Caudil and then casually moved on to join it's fellows and the scene faded from view. At the time, I didn't even know that pronghorns had once been prevalent in this area. I only remembered later what kind of animal it was them from having seen them in nature programs on television. Then a few months later an article appeared in our New Times featuring some reintroduced pronghorn herds out on the Carriso Plain. I was so surprised to learn that they were once native here.
The skeptics in all of us are going to say, "Oh Josephine, you've got a very vivid imagination." But it wasn't really like that. It was more like I could have stepped into those scenes if I had moved toward them. But I didn't.
Okay, one more, and this one just happened while Frank and I were in Yosemite last February. It snowed while we were there, a deep and lingering soft, cold and white snow. Everything was covered and the stillness of the forest was profound, broken only by the sound of the falls and the rush of the river as we approached them in the early morning overcast light. I went to the spot below the falls on the rivers edge where John Muir had his cabin for several years, before the park was formed and read his plaque while Frank was off on an errand of his own. The plaque commemorated the small cabin site with one of my favorite John Muir quotes, "Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you and the storms their energy, while cares drop off like autumn leaves."
After reading it, I stood there musing for a while, admiring the thundering view of the lower falls through the mist and the streaks of starkly contrasting white snow caught on the cracks of the sheer dark wet cliffs. With the deep soft snow under my warm dry boots, I decided to reach across the division between this life and the afterlife to see if John Muir would connect with me. I began by realizing how different Yosemite must look now compared to when he was here. Back then, he was there practically alone with only his sheep for company, and now that has changed so drastically, there are millions of tourists who come through the park each year. I found myself feeling a little apologetic for our species unbridled over population. After a moment or two with John in my mind, I asked, "Do you have a message for me?" And this is what I received.
"Don't fret, it's all fine, in fact we actually need a few more people on the planet in order to make our human transformation. We almost have enough, we are very close to the needed number. When we achieve that, the souls inter-connected and encircling the earth will launch the golden age of peace." I was caught off guard by this information and even more so when a glimpse of light superimposed itself on the dark rocks and cloud shrouded scene to the left of the lower falls. The intensely golden lattice work of light was so stunning that I fell to my knees and found myself weeping with awe and joy. Then I felt John urge me to go forth and speak and be heard. In my perception he said, "Like awakening from a deep sleep, almost like a nightmare, humanity is just now coming to our true spiritual consciousness." A moment later I received an analogy in the form of an image in my mind's eye, I saw an addict arising from the depths of despair into awareness and rebirth, and knew instantly that humanity is right on the edge of the realization of how precious all of everything is. How cherished each life is. We are teetering on the edge of knowing how amazing all of nature is, each rock, each passing cloud, the rain. We are opening to the sacredness of all of the varying species in the web of life. I then realized that as was the case in Japan after Hiroshima, when the people believed that all of nature there had been forever killed, they were exultant at the first green buds and blades of grass that came with spring and then eagerly overwhelmed with joy as nature's biodiversity gradually returned. And within that glimpse, I was reminded that we all will participate in this enlightenment. Each of us has a candle of light within us that we can hold up to illuminate the whole. Then John Muir said to me, "Take heart, we are almost there. Be assured it is very soon and you have your part to play." With that he took his leave and my heart overflowing with gratitude let me stumble back up to my feet and bid the place my adieu.
Many blessings to each of you.
© 2012 Josephine Laing
Psychic ability and paranormal experiences fascinate many of us, but since they can't be explained in terms of our culturally accepted scientific method, we tend to dismiss them in polite company and mostly only referred to, somewhat discretely, among trusted friends. After all, there is a fine line between psychic ability and psychological imbalance. In the mental health arena, both categories are still lumped together and really, if you are going to be seen walking down the street by yourself while chattering away, you better have a cord and a cell phone bud in your ear. Otherwise, the rest of us will probably tend to keep our distance.
As a working psychic for the past twenty five years, most of the time, with the people that I've met, I've been pretty quiet about what I do. But times change and I feel now that societally we need to begin leaving this bias behind. So, in recent years, I've started to speak up about what I do. I write about it from time to time and now I'm teaching classes at Cuesta College through their community programs department. All of my classes are designed to help us to open up to these less developed aspects of our human experience which we can learn how to open ourselves up to. I feel that psychic ability and paranormal events are both very natural and accessible aspects of our true selves. Fortunately, here in California, we're a bit more amenable to such things. If I find myself back in the mid-west, I most likely won't breathe a word about what I do for my day job as a working medical intuitive. Psychic ability is just simply not accepted in many areas of the world and is even viewed in some circles with fear.
It's interesting to note, however, that in the very uppermost echelons of global society, psychic ability is used quite extensively. Startlingly enough, wars have been planned using astrology, along with other esoteric means of divination. The first Gulf War began as soon as Jupiter went retrograde and ended the very day it went direct. I sincerely doubt that this was a coincidence. It's fairly well known now, that both President Reagan and Adolph Hitler used astrological planning for all of their significant actions and timed major events in our collective history accordingly. Our CIA has a fairly well concealed enormous budget in excess of many millions of dollars that they spend annually on psychics.
Meanwhile, groups promoting skepticism for the general public are also well funded because those who know how effective and how readily available to all of us these tools are, don't really want to let the big secret out to the masses. When people don't know how to trust and readily access their own inner guidance, they are easier to manipulate. So, skepticism is culturally promoted. The result is that people who do express psychic ability or who consult with psychics or who have had paranormal experiences have not been taken very seriously by most of the population. As a result, you can imagine how relieved people are, who have had some sort of profound and completely unexplainable experience, when they find someone like me to share their stories with. This is because they really can't share them with many people for fear of being adversely judged. I think that we are now at a time where we can begin to let go of all of that and embrace our birthright of psychic ability and cultivate this underestimated and misconstrued aspect of ourselves. When we do so, we open ourselves to all forms of trustworthy guidance and helpful experiences. We also reawaken in ourselves a deep natural spirituality through the awe and wonder of life.
The first two stories of paranormal occurrences that I'd like to share with you are so wonderful and so totally out of the ordinary, that I asked the friends who told them to me if I could have their permission to share their stories anonymously. They both said yes because they also feel that it's time for us to acknowledge how powerful we are when we unite with spirit and how truly miraculous the world really is.
In the first one, and this just happened last year, my friend was on the freeway North bound going home. The traffic was fast and was in only two lanes since some work was being done on the right shoulder of the road. She was in the right lane with a big semi directly behind her. Everyone was going between 65 mph and 80 mph. The sun had just started to go down but it was still very light out. She came up over a little rise and was stunned to see that the car in front of her was stopped in her lane. She slammed on her breaks and then realized that the semi behind her was baring down on top of her and would be unable to stop in time. The traffic to her left was whizzing by without a break and with the shoulder on her right was barricaded off. There was literally no place that she could go. So she closed her eyes and screamed, "God, Help Me!" An instant later, she opened them and was shocked to see that she had a clear road before her. Then she looked back in her rear view and saw the whole near mess dropping back swiftly behind her. Without her vehicle there, it looked as if the semi had just barely enough room to stop, and as far as she could tell, no one had been hurt.
Pretty good, eh? So often we forget to ask for help when we need it the most. Asking, without attachment to details or outcome allows energy to move freely. It opens doors allowing trust and faith to move into place.
This next story happened several years ago, while another friend of mine was at a massage camp high up in the Sierras. It was a beautiful spring day and she and another student decided to head out for a little hike during a break from some of their classes. A little distance from the school, but many miles away from any other human habitation, they came upon a beautiful overlook with a view of the distant hills with a valley below. They were standing there just gazing, at the edge of the small meadow that they had just crossed with a few short shrubs before them at the edge of a steep slope down the hill, when suddenly and very quickly from behind them came a host of fast moving balls of colored light. They varied only slightly in size, most being about four or five inches in diameter. At least thirty of them whizzed past them and zoomed off down the hill within just a few seconds of time. They were mostly brilliant blue and green in color but carried hints of all of the colors within their clear translucent orbs. The two women were very startled and stunned for a moment, even unable to move. Then my friend turned her head toward her companion, doubting herself, and asked, "Did you just see that?" Her companion, drop jawed, responded, "Yes!" Still stunned, they compared mental notes and decided that what they had just seen absolutely must have happened, but it so didn't fit into ordinary reality that they could hardly believe it. If they hadn't been standing right there when it happened, they wouldn't. But they were, so they had to.
I also would like to share two stories which involve windows in time and they both happened to me. The first one happened while I was in the Walmart in Paso Robles. When they were building that Walmart, a friend of ours who was at the time the spokesperson for the Northern Chumash Council here in San Luis Obispo was staying at our house and going up every day to watch for and recover the bones of his ancestors as the bulldozers were preparing the ground for the new store which had been built on a formerly sacred Chumash burial and village site. I've never liked Walmart and I didn't much appreciate the insensitivity that this building project was displaying. I think I've only been in a Walmart two or three times, because they are nationally responsible for the loss of so many of our small town mom and pop stores, replacing that friendly neighborhood shopping experience with corporate coldness and employee abuse all for a few pennies less on the dollar. So, I just don't go there.
However, Frank's well meaning mother had gotten him some stereo equipment for Christmas and though it was a lovely thought, the item was something that he didn't need and he decided to return it. Unfortunately it had come from a Walmart and without a receipt couldn't be returned and had to be exchanged. So, as Frank was standing in the techno-isles lifting and studying various boxes of products, my mind and attention and eventually my body began to wander.
I found myself looking out over rounds and rounds of dress racks with the light of day coming in from the bay of entry windows behind me. I have zero interest in clothes shopping so none of my attention was on the garments at hand. I was just in a neutral nowhere doing nothing mode gazing toward the back wall of the store, when all of a sudden in the gray light, I saw, almost imagined, but much more real than that, with my eyes fully opened, a Chumash village scene from probably several hundred years ago, only it was taking place in current time, in some alternative reality. The one thing that both scenes shared was the place we were at, right there where the Walmart is. However, in that other scene there was a man, a Chumash man, waring a leather flap and anklets for dancing. He had stopped moving with the others who were still circling and puffing up the soft grey dust with their feet. As he stood there, he was looking directly at me, just as incredulously as I was looking at him. We stared at each other , totally lost in the moment, looking directly into each other's eyes. It lasted for only a few seconds until I got totally freaked out and fled the store. Once outside, in the light of day, I found the little bits of bare earth still remaining amongst the many parked cars and impulsively took off my shoes and socks and stood on the dirt to help myself recover and regain my composure. Frank found me after having made his choice and wondering where I had disappeared too. I had to explain that I barely knew myself. It was all just too unreal. Prior to this I had heard of parallel realities, but after this, I think that I had a brief glimpse into one.
Another time window occurred to me just a year or so ago, in much the same way. I was parked on Caudil street, sitting in my car on a beautiful late summers day. I had all of the windows down and was answering a long questionnaire about something or another. Letting my mind wander from the task for a moment or two, I found myself blankly gazing down the street and without my barely noticing it, a similar window in reality opened before me. I could sort of see the street and the cars, but just like in the k-mart, the other reality was the more dominant scene in my open eyed view. Again, it was as if it was from a time several hundred years ago, but it was actually in real time happening in the here and now. And again, it involved another being looking right at me. But this time it was a prong horned antelope who was deeply contemplating my presence and looking right into my eyes. There was a tall native grass moving gently in the wind, it's large full tops ripe with seed. I've since found that same grass growing in San Simeon in places where cattle can't get to it to graze. The antelope was with a small herd whose members were browsing on foliage and moving on at a relaxed pace. The creature noted me and my peculiar surroundings in a car on Caudil and then casually moved on to join it's fellows and the scene faded from view. At the time, I didn't even know that pronghorns had once been prevalent in this area. I only remembered later what kind of animal it was them from having seen them in nature programs on television. Then a few months later an article appeared in our New Times featuring some reintroduced pronghorn herds out on the Carriso Plain. I was so surprised to learn that they were once native here.
The skeptics in all of us are going to say, "Oh Josephine, you've got a very vivid imagination." But it wasn't really like that. It was more like I could have stepped into those scenes if I had moved toward them. But I didn't.
Okay, one more, and this one just happened while Frank and I were in Yosemite last February. It snowed while we were there, a deep and lingering soft, cold and white snow. Everything was covered and the stillness of the forest was profound, broken only by the sound of the falls and the rush of the river as we approached them in the early morning overcast light. I went to the spot below the falls on the rivers edge where John Muir had his cabin for several years, before the park was formed and read his plaque while Frank was off on an errand of his own. The plaque commemorated the small cabin site with one of my favorite John Muir quotes, "Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you and the storms their energy, while cares drop off like autumn leaves."
After reading it, I stood there musing for a while, admiring the thundering view of the lower falls through the mist and the streaks of starkly contrasting white snow caught on the cracks of the sheer dark wet cliffs. With the deep soft snow under my warm dry boots, I decided to reach across the division between this life and the afterlife to see if John Muir would connect with me. I began by realizing how different Yosemite must look now compared to when he was here. Back then, he was there practically alone with only his sheep for company, and now that has changed so drastically, there are millions of tourists who come through the park each year. I found myself feeling a little apologetic for our species unbridled over population. After a moment or two with John in my mind, I asked, "Do you have a message for me?" And this is what I received.
"Don't fret, it's all fine, in fact we actually need a few more people on the planet in order to make our human transformation. We almost have enough, we are very close to the needed number. When we achieve that, the souls inter-connected and encircling the earth will launch the golden age of peace." I was caught off guard by this information and even more so when a glimpse of light superimposed itself on the dark rocks and cloud shrouded scene to the left of the lower falls. The intensely golden lattice work of light was so stunning that I fell to my knees and found myself weeping with awe and joy. Then I felt John urge me to go forth and speak and be heard. In my perception he said, "Like awakening from a deep sleep, almost like a nightmare, humanity is just now coming to our true spiritual consciousness." A moment later I received an analogy in the form of an image in my mind's eye, I saw an addict arising from the depths of despair into awareness and rebirth, and knew instantly that humanity is right on the edge of the realization of how precious all of everything is. How cherished each life is. We are teetering on the edge of knowing how amazing all of nature is, each rock, each passing cloud, the rain. We are opening to the sacredness of all of the varying species in the web of life. I then realized that as was the case in Japan after Hiroshima, when the people believed that all of nature there had been forever killed, they were exultant at the first green buds and blades of grass that came with spring and then eagerly overwhelmed with joy as nature's biodiversity gradually returned. And within that glimpse, I was reminded that we all will participate in this enlightenment. Each of us has a candle of light within us that we can hold up to illuminate the whole. Then John Muir said to me, "Take heart, we are almost there. Be assured it is very soon and you have your part to play." With that he took his leave and my heart overflowing with gratitude let me stumble back up to my feet and bid the place my adieu.
Many blessings to each of you.
© 2012 Josephine Laing