Clearing Yourself

The single most important discipline in psychic development is how to keep yourself grounded during the process. Without clear boundaries and the knowledge that you are always in control, you may feel as if you are driving a fast car down a hill with no brakes!

Also, after any type of psychic work, my students learn how to close their chakras down - to imagine each of the seven major chakra as flowers, and visualize the petals, one by one, closing down for a period of time. I begin at the crown chakra and continue down the body to the base chakra, and this final one I leave partially open, to help me reconnect to the earth.

While there are many great books out there on chakras, here's a brief introduction to them in simple terms: When you think of a chakra - an energy center within the body - picture a spin dryer - front-loading, with its little round window at the front, like a ship's porthole into a view of your laundry.

The seven major ones, like seven small spin dryers, live in a semi-straight line from the crown of the head and along the spine in seven fixed points. Their job is to spin the energy of the body, like little furnaces that keep us going. They draw up the energy from the earth, and draw down the universal energy from above our heads, and feed us with it in the form of vitality, passion, joy and healing.

When they are all spinning and are on the 'rinse cycle', so to speak - it means that we have shed a whole heap of baggage that we have brought with us to this point in our lives. It shows that we have done some personal growth and have realized that much of what we learnt on the outside of ourselves, especially when we were little, was pure hogwash.

Having clean, healthy chakras indicate that, yes, we passed many metaphysical exams and are moving cheerfully towards total enlightenment. And -I personally cannot think of anyone in my life who has cleaned out her cupboards to that extent!

The truth is, the vast majority of us have some deep cleansing to do, and like old, dirty diapers - there's a lot there and it's hard to scrape off in just one afternoon!

Our chakras are often chockfull of old stuff - from negative family affirmations we grew up with (like "life is a struggle') to decisions we made about ourselves that formed a conclusion that we were either 'not enough' or 'unlovable' or 'undeserving'.

And, just like dirty laundry - your chakras need a cleanse regularly, in addition to doing the really hard elbow grease work.

So commitment and courage are helpful companions for the task. Commitment and a certain level of patience as you realize that this growth is journey, not a destination. We are like onions - just when we think we are done, we find another, deeper layer of pain, grief, anger.

Get to know your chakras. Follow your intuition down your body, and the one you might be drawn to first could be the chakra in need of your healing first.

Generally after any intuitive work, we close our chakras down to seal in the protection that we need in order to go back into the outside world. A light snack is also grounding, as is a tepid shower. I also love to play some nature music at this time, reconnecting me to the earth, and all of its calm, grounding, centered energy.

In times of stress, I have another simple, yet effective technique. I imagine that within the center of my belly is a calm, clear lake - deep, and powerful, centering me with its tranquil energy. Imagine you can hear the water lapping at the banks, and see occasional ripples on the surface as the wind gently blows across it.

To enhance your connection to spirit, one powerful meditation I use often is that of widening the spirit. I imagine a beam of golden light passing through my chakras, from crown to base. I then extend the beam of light upwards, connecting it with the universal energy above, and downwards connecting me to the earth.

It feels as if my body becomes suspended around this beam of power. I then breathe into the light, and begin to stretch it, expand it, until my body is contained within what is now a wide column of light. Do this regularly, and you will strengthen your ability to become a channel of light, and hasten your progress.

The other crucial part of intuitive work is protection, spiritual or psychic. There are many ways to seal in energy, such as surrounding yourself with golden balls, pink bubbles, cocoons of white light and so on. Find what fits you.

On a personal growth note, neutrality and non-resistance are other forms of psychic protection. There is a saying that if your enemy hits you on one cheek, turn and show your other one. Come from a state of love, not defensiveness. If you do not fight, there will be no war. Overpower with love. A daily example of this is when your partner gets angry at you. You can choose to resist or accept his or her anger.

If you resist it by not hearing it, your partner get angrier and you both become enmeshed in a web of fury. If you decide to hear your partner's anger, you are providing a space for him or her to vent angry words, and the anger, given this space, will deplete. Peace will be restored, provided you have looked after yourself and kept yourself centered throughout this process. It gets easier with practice!

One wise facilitator at the California-based Human awareness Institute made a profound statement when he suggested that we begin to imagine the emotion of anger as a warm wind that can blows from us or towards us at times. Our usual way to deal with it, is to grab, personalize it, put a name to it and make the wind into a wall between our hearts and others. It's so much more enjoyable to blame someone else, let's face it!

So what if we chose to try out a new thought about it - and see it as pure, impersonalized energy instead, that all we have to do with it is recognize it for what it is - energy - and acknowledge it and let it go past us. Perhaps if we were to trust that we could do this, change our definition of it, it could help us listen to someone else's energy rather than take it on and make it bad.

Go on, give it a go.

And keep remembering that we are all with our partners to heal original wounds. What triggers us now is all about old triggers, old events and old ways our emotions were handled when we were in childhood. So know that it's not you, your partner may be angry at, it's probably his mother or father.