Jen Sonstein Maidenberg

I finally acknowledged I might be a little bit psychic when I began dreaming of images I would see on social media the next day or a few days later. I had already read years before about individuals who sometimes dreamed in advance of newspaper images or headlines (in Russell Targ’s book Limitless Mind), but it had not happened for me in a way that seemed remarkable. Any psychic dream I had ’til then was not so tangibly verifiable with something sensed (like a photograph I could see), but rather felt psychic — through an interaction with another person or an emotion. Once Facebook became popular, and then even more so with Instagram (so circa 2012), however, I started having psychic dreams that were confirmed by images A LOT.

I believe that all of us are capable of psychic perception, but that we are capable in different ways. While we are each open to perceiving psychically, we are so in varying settings, unique to each individual. For instance, I seem to be more open to psychic perception in the dream state, in the hypnogogic state (between waking and sleep), and while engaged in making art. Others may be more receptive during prayer or while listening to classical music. Some seem to receive hits as they are intently working on a creative project or engaged in acts of concentration.

You probably have heard of clairvoyance (“clear seeing”), but there are other clairs connected to other senses, too: There is clairaudience (“clear hearing”) and even clairgustance (“clear tasting”). I tend toward clairsentience (“clear feeling”) and claircognizance (“clear knowing”) with a still-developing clairaudience and clairalience (“clear smelling”). My theory is that those of us with claircognizance or clairsentience take a little longer to realize our capabilities, because there is not a sense image attached to the receiving of information. So the feelings and the knowledge we receive can get mixed in with all the other information and data floating around out there. Especially, in this age of technology, it’s hard to distinguish — unless we work at it — what information is coming from where, who, when, etc.

The fact that I dream of images before I see them would make it seem like I am also clairvoyant, but I’m not so sure. It’s possible. I think the images I see “in advance” may also be connected to my clairsentience. The images “from the future” I receive in dreams often have some connection to feeling.

The category of “clair” doesn’t matter so much once you’re doing it and know it’s happening. It can be educational or fun, however, to start paying attention to the ways in which you receive or perceive “data” or feelings or sensory input outside of linear time or near-to-you space.

Acknowledging little ways in which you might be psychic can provide useful feedback if you are someone interested in developing your psychic abilities further — or even if you aren’t!

I have found that paying attention to ways in which we seem psychic can be useful for strengthening our intuition, understanding own emotional sensitivities and emotional overwhelm, making decisions that align with who we truly are and what we truly desire, or as a means for becoming more embodied and more healthfully attuned to people and the world around us.

Here are a few ways you might be a little psychic and not know it:

• Thinking of a friend a few minutes before the friend calls
• Opening up an old email that contains wisdom for a current problem
• Humming an old song that comes up on the car radio soon after or on the loudspeaker in the Starbucks the next day
• Dreaming of a mundane event that plays out in waking life days later, even if the details are a little different
• Feeling a deep sadness without knowing why, only to learn hours later of a national tragedy
• Choosing a random book off the shelf for no reason and finding in the pages a bookmark you thought you lost
• Doodling a shape or a scene on a notebook during a boring meeting that ends up looking remarkably like the book cover your roommate brings home the next day
• Hearing an unfamiliar phrase in your head during a nap, Googling it, and finding its a foreign language term that strangely relates to a project you’re working on
• Being really good at certain card games in which you need to draw, toss away, or keep cards
• Smelling a scent in a room no one else smells
• Knowing a close friend is pregnant before they tell you
• Driving a different way to work and learning later the road was closed further on down
• And a BONUS way: Hearing from your adult son (one hour after writing an article on psychic abilities) that he experienced one such psychic event. 

Most people will label the above incidents as startling, yet ultimately meaningless coincidences. I don’t believe in coincidences. I do believe that there is a hidden realm of perception that science can’t yet measure in a lab, but that we humans are tapped into depending on our own states of awareness and the environment around us. 

If you have experienced any of the above type of psychic events, how did it feel? How do you identify with these moments? What do you make of them?

Perhaps you would like to start tracking them as they occur, by writing yourself a note when they do. Consider including some details. Try to notice with whom they occur more frequently or at what time of day or season. Notice if you’re more prone to knowing something without knowing it or feeling something without knowing it. Pay attention to how your body and mind feel when you received the information or made the choice or sensed something no one else did.

Were you relaxed? Were you sleepy? Were you daydreaming? Were you in the car driving? Were you nursing your baby? Were you zoning out in your cubicle?

Did your body feel any sensations before the extrasensory perception? Did you get a chill in your spine? Did you a hear a high-pitched noise? Did you get a migraine? What about after the perception?

Notice the judgments you make about yourself when such events occur. Notice what keeps you in a state of awe or wonder about the event, and what brings you out of awe or wonder.

You could even start keeping a journal that’s dedicated to tracking these events, marking down the ones that seem likely to be psychic and dating them, and then adding the date when you receive confirmation or validation. You might start seeing patterns if you do. Perhaps you will see that you are someone who gets psychic images in dreams almost exactly one year before the event happens. (I fall into this category and only noticed so because I began diligently tracking my dreams.)

American parapsychologist Dean Radin has noted that research shows people who believe they are psychic tend to have more psychic experiences. Journaling about your psychic development may very well lead to more psychic events. 

My strong suggestion, however, is to hold your psychic abilities and development of them lightly. Do not obsess over them. Do not pursue them or chase them. Allow them to happen, to flow, or to unfold. In my experience, this is anyway the optimal state for receiving extrasensory information. 

Another word of caution: Something I hear a lot from people these days is “I am such an empath.” Being deeply sensitive to what others feel isn’t necessarily clairsentience. Certainly, healthy empathy can make an individual more prone to clairsentience, but they are not one and the same. Thinking you are feeling what others feel — or being emotionally impacted by what others are feeling — can actually get in the way of true clairsentience (not to mention blocking you from knowing deeply how you feel in any given moment.) 

Working on establishing clear distinctions between ourselves and another, as well as becoming more aware of our own emotional reactivity to others’ emotions, goes a long way toward developing true intuition that’s “clear.” (“clair-“) Many professional psychics do not do a very good job at separating out what they’re getting from a client psychically and their own biased reaction, interpretation, or opinions of that information. 

Soon I’ll be posting about ways in which you can develop these abilities and reasons why doing so may be beneficial to your spiritual growth. I’ll also be writing more about some of the pitfalls to be aware of along the way, the most significant one being that people think they have some kind of obligation or responsibility to “share” what they have intuited with others, or have some kind of anxiety that they’re being “shown” this information for a reason, but don’t know what the reason is.

For now, I’d like to reassure that most people are able to perceive the near future and doing so is not prophetic for most people, nor does it require any action on your part other than to just start noticing it, and perhaps tracking it or simply delighting in it. This is for you — not someone else — as part of your developing relationship with yourself and the world around you.

If you’re interested in learning more about upcoming intuitive development workshops I’ll be offering, please make sure to subscribe to my mailing list (in the menu bar).