Seeking Outside Help

No matter how skilled we are at connecting with Higher Self, we all arrive at places where we need or want to seek help from another.

In fact, whether we purposely seek help or not, much of the guidance we receive will come to us from others. We just have to be listening. And sometimes connecting with Higher Self is best done through a consultant who is particularly skilled at seeing and interpreting the messages our Higher Self wants us to have.

But it's also important not to get "addicted" to going to psychics or counselors, and to learn how to receive our own information and guidance. So I will begin by explaining a little bit about how you, yourself, can best approach using the kind of information you may receive from your Higher Self — just the way a good psychic would use it.

Then, for those times when you are blocked and your guidance is telling you to seek assistance, I'll give you some ideas about seeking and making the most intelligent use of outside help.

Reading the Information We Receive

Higher Self and the Ego

One of my goals in working with others is to help them distinguish between the desires of the ego and those of the Higher Self.

When we align with our Higher Self, there is a huge amount of energy available to us. Doors open, dreams come true, and wonderful events take place. When we are aligned with our ego, then we encounter whatever blocks there are in our thinking, emotions, and body.

Ironically, the ego tends to block most diligently what the heart most desires. A good psychic can look at these patterns and blocks and help you see through them — or devise a method to help you move through them. And this also should be a goal of your own inner work, discriminating between your old patterns and your Higher Path — the path of Light that leads to an increase of health, joy, abundance, and ease.

You make your choice between the ego and the Higher Self right away with the questions you ask. Instead of asking, "How can I have (this or that)?" or "How can I get (whoever) to do what I want?" we might want to ask of ourselves the kinds of questions that a good psychic would ask in order to help us: "What does my Higher Self want to tell me about this?" Or, "How can I bring this situation into the Light."

In fact, one test of real answers is that they give us a feeling of lightness. Egoic answers tend to make us feel justified or determined or satisfied. They do not "flow." They do not give us feelings of release. Real answers have a joyous feeling.

And whether you receive Inner Guidance from a professional counselor or from dreams, meditations, divinitory tools, body signals, or whatever tools you decide to master and use, it's important for your ego consciousness to know that any seeming obstacles would not be there if you could not move through them to create more power and freedom.

Precognitive Information

Many people ask if I can see the future. Sometimes I can, other times not. What matters is to realize that the information we receive is there to give us a different perspective.

"Seeing" the future is a little bit like standing on a hill and looking down at a river. You are canoeing down that river, and your Higher Self (or a psychic) can look down to see if your journey will take you to a waterfall around the next bend — or perhaps a peaceful place, or a fork in the stream. Perhaps if you keep going you will encounter a welcoming village — or a tribe of cannibals!

And the people you meet on the way, the time you stop for lunch, how quickly you row — all of these may or may not be factors in the equation of what finally happens.

If people, events, and/or timing are factors, then this is the kind of information that your Higher Self or a psychic can provide.

Sometimes, continuing with our river analogy, you will receive information about the actual outcome of your day on this river — and sometimes not. For example, you might be shown a stretch of white water ahead — but only you can decide whether to keep going. And if you decide to brave the rapids in your little canoe, there are skills you will need to put into play if you want to come out on the other side. Our guidance or outside help can tell us about the rapids, in other words, but it's up to us how we deal with them.

Sometimes we are facing a malleable future, one in which we have many choices. Sometimes we are viewing a fixed future for which our choices may be limited to being well prepared. To give a very simple example, even though it's not raining and the weather report predicts sunshine, we might get an intuitive hunch to bring a raincoat with us when we go out. We probably can't stop the rain if it comes, but by knowing about it, we can be prepared.

So there are always choices. Sometimes, these choices lie in our emotions, reactions, and thoughts. Through the way we are looking at things, we can change a negative or fearful experience into something positive, or at least a valuable learning.

Guidance also can tell us which future events are affected by our behavior, and the possible changes we might make. We might receive the information, "Food is less important than getting there early. Don't stop for lunch!"

What About Gloomy Predictions

Our Higher Self will give us only information that is helpful. If something we learn creates fear — whether the information comes from our own mind or from a psychic counselor — we can pretty much assume that it's not our Higher Self that's involved. The whole point of connecting with Higher Self is to release fear.

Example: If the white water in our previous analogy leads to a really wonderful place, but knowing about the obstacles would create fear, our guidance, or a good psychic, will simply say something like this: "There are difficulties ahead, but they will be worth it, and when you come out on the other side you will be really glad for what you experienced."

Our Higher Self knows that, by focusing on the "really wonderful place" at the end of our difficulties, we automatically release the fearful patterns of mind and emotion that have previously created negative outcomes.

Stuff We Don't Want to Hear

This is a little different from negative future predictions. Here, we are learning about our own blocks, the things we need to release if we want to be free. But it's often difficult to accept our own limitations and creative processes.

Here's an example from my own experience. Once, before I began doing counseling full-time, my friend and fellow psychic Carolyn Cohen told me that I was blocking my abilities and psychic power through anger at my ex-husband. This insight, of course, made me furious! But I could not have progressed, could not have begun the work I do now, if I had not been willing to hear the truth. (This is a fine line that every good psychic walks... How much of the truth to tell, and when.)

This story illustrates an interesting point. If information we receive, from whatever source, makes us angry (rather than fearful), it's probably true, and it's probably really important! Think about this. The places that make us angry represent "new territory" — they are the places in which we have so far refused to look.

Another example: One of my clients wanted an intimate relationship with a certain man. However, when we began to discuss the details, I received vivid pictures of her lonely childhood, and — psychically — I heard her say, "If I like being alone, I'll be safe. I can do whatever I want to do."

She didn't want to hear this, but I advised that she wait, while we worked on other aspects of her life. I asked her to emphasize and enact her positive qualities of intelligence, healing, compassion, and enthusiasm — and finally, she agreed.

In the following weeks, she began creating classes for young mothers, and these filled up readily. Soon after, she was ready to begin working on intimacy and to seek the new relationship.

We do not need to know the future all of the time, nor do we need to be guided by a psychic on a regular basis. And, again, it is important not to rely on a psychic for all of our life decisions. A psychic can give us guidance and help us find the proper direction for our life, but in the final analysis, we need to learn to seek our own guidance.

Working with Outside Help

Rely On Your Own Intuition

A psychic "reads" the impressions received from the client, and then works with the client from that point.

Often, however,even though the information or the direction is correct, the psychic may not know how to read the information in relation to your particular consciousness. And no psychic is a hundred percent accurate. So you must always rely on your own intuition for implementation of the information you receive. You should look objectively at the material to see what the psychic has picked up from you, and why. If something feels really wrong, then don't accept it. If a suggested course of action doesn't feel right, don't do it.

In this connection, it would help to understand how a psychic receives impressions. I'll give you a couple of examples.

In the first example, a client said a person's name — let's say it was "Sandra" — and I received an impression of a blue room with a girl sitting on a white bedspread staring at the wall. I was able to see only what she saw, although I could also feel her thoughts. Additionally, I picked up some information that my client herself had about Sandra, who was her sister.

I "saw" the same scene and received the same impressions several times during the reading, so I knew that it would be correct for me to describe what I was getting, and the information was helpful to my client in answering her questions.

So psychics do not always know why they are getting certain impressions, but the impressions we do get usually turn out to be meaningful once the client has received them.

Also, our clients do not always know why they are asking for help. Realizing this, I trust that whatever I am shown is for their greatest good.

For example, Jackie thought she wanted to know why her dog constantly ran away. I received a picture of the sofa in her living room. She couldn't understand why I would see the sofa, but she believed me once I had described it in in detail, since I'd never seen it before.

It turned out that it was her husband who usually used the sofa, and Jackie was having serious problems with her husband — problems that made her want to run away. The dog was picking up on this feeling and acting it out. And she had come for help with this situation, and not because of the dog.

It's been said that if we ask the same question over and over and do not receive answers, we are probably asking the wrong question. This is one reason it often makes sense to get help.

Make Sure You Feel Empowered

When you go to a psychic, he or she should relay information in such a way that you can find pieces of the puzzle for yourself. When you are able to provide parts of the answer, then you are actively participating in the process of clearing your block.

In Jackie's case, I could have asked for more details, and then I probably would have seen her husband on the sofa — but I knew intuitively that Jackie already had the answer, and it was important for her to realize that she already knew what the real problem was.

It's also important that a psychic work from the positive aspect instead of the negative. When I saw that Jackie had been responding to her husband for many months with negativity and criticism, instead of saying that, I asked her to send a wave of love toward her husband. She then realized the negative patterns herself.

If you work with a psychic who tries to make important decisions for you, or figure everything out, you may be working with the wrong person. A good psychic will not inundate you with her own ideas and solutions. Instead, she will empower you to find your own way.

Don't Cling to Being Right

It's important to know, when you begin serious inner work, that your life may become less comfortable than it was before. We all want to cling to the illusions that separate us from reality. Our illusions are familiar — even comforting. But honesty is necessary if we seek change. Many people say that their lives seemed easier before they started to do spiritual work, but the truth is that the problems were there before, like the dirt in the corners and under the rug of an apparently clean house.

The ego, or lower self, creates patterns of negative thought and emotion that block self-realization, and it always wants to be proven right. But when the blocks start to move, the patterns move, and for a short time, all the anxiety that existed before begins to escalate. Just realize that this will not last. Be courageous about releasing the ego's need to be right. Repeat your positive visualizations when the anxiety is greatest, and results will invariably follow.

For example, Mary wanted her life partner to take an active part in her holistic business. She was upset because her business wasn't thriving, and her relationship had become disruptive, and she was blaming all of this on her partner. She very much wanted to be "right" that the problem was with her partner. But what really needed changing was her habit of blaming everything on someone else, and trying to control them instead of her own attitudes!

When I looked at the energy, it was clear that Mary's partner wasn't interested in working with her — that he found her both pushy and overly competitive. When I relayed his feelings to her, she said, "Oh. I guess I knew that..."

By changing her habitual way of thinking, Mary was able to allow her business to become both spiritual and successful without her partner's help, and at the same time to have a more harmonious relationship at home. Neither her relationship nor her business could have grown as long as her focus was on control.

The point here is that although good psychics do know what you want to hear (after all, they are psychic), they will tell you the truth. They realize that people often do not really want to know the real reason for their crises in life, but they cannot serve you by agreeing with what you already believe, even if what they are seeing is quite different.

You can always find someone who will tell you what you want to hear, but a good psychic will not tell you something is going to happen or that a life choice is positive unless they really see it that way.

So discernment in identifying someone who will tell you the truth is really crucial. How can we tell? Actually, we all really do know when someone is "blowing smoke" in our direction. No matter how righteous it makes our ego feel, we know. The next step is simply to realize that it's a waste of our time and money to seek outside help unless we are willing to push through the ego.

Create Your Own Reality

No good psychic is interested in working with clients who think that they are magical beings who can solve all our problems. Outside help is there to give you insight — to explain the reason for your problems and the energy behind them, and to suggest techniques to aid you in solving problems and changing your energy to "match" the reality you seek to create.

But only you can change the creations in your life.

Ultimately, we are all creating our own reality. A good psychic helps us understand this, and gives us guidance in how to start creating what we want. But we ourselves have to do the work.

On the highest level, you can create simply by linking to Divinity — whether you think of this as angels, Ascended Masters, Higher Self, Inner Guidance, God, or just energy. It is when you detach from the ego and move toward co-creating with God that beauty and miracles can occur in your life. Whether from Higher Self or outside help, this is the goal of all guidance.

Julia Griffin, a valued staff writer for the Spirit of Ma'at, is a psychic spiritual counselor who does most of her readings by phone. She can be reached by email at Julia_30527@yahoo.com.

If you enjoyed this article, you may be interested in reading another written from Julia's perspective, Dreaming With Wolves, in the September 2002 issue of the Spirit of Ma'at.