Once upon a time my psychic skills could be summed up by Bruce Dern's immortal words to Barbara Harris in Alfred Hitchcock's Family Plot (1976):  "You're about as psychic as a dry salami." 

That was me, all right:  a plain, common-sensible, down-home Midwestern sausage, who couldn't pick up on hidden energies or catch a glimpse of the future to save her soul.  I wasn't lucky enough to have a Scottish grandmother who had bestowed her Second Sight upon me, nor had I ever felt any kind of clairvoyant insight about anything.  I had heard the famous canard that "everyone is psychic," but everyone didn't seem to include me.  This was very frustrating.  As I grew older and more interested in intuitive ways of knowing, I began to realize that psychic ability was a worthwhile talent and might actually help me live a better life.  But there didn't seem to be any way I could just force it to happen.   

However, once I started to work with Tarot cards, I realized that I actually did have a measure of psychic ability.  The skills that I needed had been lurking within me all my life--I had simply never realized that they were there.  All I needed was some practice and some discipline, and I could learn how to utilize them.  In the years since then I have realized that there are some very simple and practical things you can do to increase your psychic ability.  What follows is a brief synopsis of things I have learned.  Take my word for it:  if someone like me can become more psychic, you can too. 

The Right Goals

The first thing you need to understand if you want to develop your psychic ability is that you must have the right goals.  In other words, forget the money.  If you are suffering under the delusion that you can start making a living as a psychic, you setting yourself up for disaster.  Divination and money simply do not mix.  Yes, I am aware that there have been zillions of fortune-tellers throughout human history who have charged for their services--I was one myself, until I finally realized how wrong it was.  Let us leave the scams to the crooks.  Giving a psychic consultation for money is a horrendously bad idea, a subject which I discuss further in my book Tarot Unbound.

The other thing you need to forget about is a lust for power.  If you are suffering under the delusion that increased psychic ability will give you an extra measure of control or authority, then you had still better forget it.  Power corrupts.  Absolute power corrupts absolutely.  Don't think for one minute about using your psychic skills to acquire new and better forms of clout, or you are heading straight for disaster.   

Indeed, you should forget about any kind of materialistic goals.  Increasing your psychic skills won't help you make a killing in the stock market, or fill your house with creature comforts, or pick the winning lottery numbers (have you noticed that you never see a Psychic Wins Lottery headline?).  Fortunately, one of the greatest benefits of increasing your psychic ability is that you will no longer have the slightest desire for any of the above.  Mainly because the first thing you discover when you start to develop your psychic skills is...

A Deeper Appreciation of the Spiritual Nature of Existence

Whenever you start working with your intuitive abilities, you immediately find yourself in a world of energy and flow, where nothing is stable and everything is interconnected.  You start to realize that the core reality of our universe is energy--and nothing else but.  Contemporary physics, after all, tells us that our universe is not some kind of orderly machine which obeys predictable laws, but an kind of amorphous something which resembles a conscious mind.  No part of our universe's constantly flowing energy can ever be separate or apart from any other kind of energy, not even if it is on the other side of the galaxy.

This kind of worldview takes some time to get used to.  It seems to be the exact opposite of the reality we experience in our day-to-day lives, where things seem to solid, structured, and machinelike.  The living entities and the physical objects in our world bear no perceptible connection to each other in any way, shape, or form.  How can it be possible to say that they are all energy, and interconnected energy at that?  Aren't we separate and individual human beings?  Isn't each person an autonomous physical body who has little or no connection to all the other billions of bodies currently inhabiting the planet?

People who still think like that are desperately attempting to hold on to antiquated Newtonian physics.  Energy and energy alone is the reality of our universe.  Interconnected energy, that is.  When you start to rely upon your intuitive abilities, you actually do begin to perceive the invisible links and interconnections which bind together all forms of life.  And when the world of the spirit starts to become as real to you as the physical world which surrounds you, you no longer have the slightest desire for a McMansion, an SUV, or anything else which passes for the good life in our narcissistic culture.

Simplify, Simplify, Simplify

Which brings me to the next point, namely that if you want to start picking up on hidden energies you have got to simplify.  Nothing gets in the way of psychic perception like too-muchness:  too much entertainment, too much work, too much emotional involvement in other people or events, and--most especially--too much stuff in an overly cluttered house.  If you want to become more psychic, you've go to throw out all the stuff which isn't essential, stop hanging out at the mall, stay clear of eBay, and forget the sales.

And you need to shift your attention to the wonders and the glory of the natural world:  clouds, birds, rain, sunlight and shadows.  Study the stars instead of ordering pizza.  In the mornings energize your soul on brisk fresh air instead of wrecking your body with doughnuts and caffeine.  Listen to the sound of rain or crickets instead of the next podcast.  Feel only gratitude and humility when you are given the gift of another day and make the best use of it that you can.

And clean out your head.  Start protecting yourself from the avalanche of information which cascades down upon us every moment of our waking lives.  Stop trying to read everything.  Stay clear of mindlessly surfing the web.  Pay no attention to Hollywood melodramas or the current best sellers.  Instead find time to read visionary poetry or mystical literature, hundreds of volumes of which are now free for the asking.

It also helps to create a special area in your house, where you can deliberately go into silence and peace.  The Chinese call a special room in their homes an abode of tranquility, and this is the kind of space that you need, where you can withdraw into stillness and more easily pick up on what your intuition is trying to tell you.  Your space doesn't necessarily have to be a separate room--it need only be a corner or a single strategically placed chair.  But you definitely need a tranquil space like this, and it always has to be a space which is free of any kind of activity, even reading.

Silence

You also need to have a certain amount silence in your life, and not just in those moments when you enter your abode of tranquility.  Tuning into the cosmic energies of universe means, quite simply, turning the other stuff off.  All that electronic noise, in other words.  If you're one of those people who are constantly being bombarded by TV or radio racket twenty-four hours a day, you can forget about developing your psychic skills.  Nothing will block your intuitive ability like continual and usually meaningless noise.  If you want to pick up on hidden energies, you need quietness and peace--and the more the better.

Daily Spiritual Discipline

You also need to devote some time each day to a spiritual discipline.  Once thing I've learned in recent years is the tremendous importance of a daily spiritual discipline.  You need to set aside some time each day for prayer or meditation.  Don't even begin to think that weekly attendance at some kind of religious ceremony is enough for your spiritual development.  You need a special period every single day of your life when you can go into silence, meditation, or prayer.  Divination, remember, contains the word divine, and if you want to increase your psychic ability, you need to increase your connection to the divine.

Daily Physical Discipline

You also need a daily physical discipline, preferably one of the centering kind.  Find a centering exercise system that that works and stick with it.  And as I mention in Centering Breath, there is nothing like practicing Nadi Sodhana to balance out your energies and stimulate your right brain, where your intuitive powers reside.

Utilize The Mystic Will

If you haven't already done so, take a look at Charles Leland's The Mystic Will.  His autosuggestion technique can be used for many things, including developing your psychic ability.  When you start falling asleep at night, simply start telling yourself, for example, that "every day my psychic abilities are increasing", or "every day I can more easily pick up on hidden energies", and so on.  Your subconscious will get the message loud and clear.

Pay Attention to Your Dreams

What happens in your dreams can frequently provide you will valuable intuitive information.  Indeed, I have learned that on those occasions when I cannot seem to get a clear answer from the Tarot cards, what I need to know will appear to me in a dream.  If you think you have never gotten any kind of valuable information from your dreams, it simply means that that you are not paying careful enough attention to them.  We need to remember that our subconscious mind frequently picks up on all kinds of valuable information that our conscious mind blocks out, and this information is frequently released to us in our dreams.  If you are in the habit of dismissing your dreams as irrelevant nonsense, you need to think again.

Increase Your Awareness

Psychic awareness happens to be ... awareness.  If you're the sort of person who never pays much attention to the world around you thanks to the constant mental noise resounding in your head, none of the above instructions will do you the slightest bit of good.  People who lead successful lives are people who are alert to the world around them.  Indeed, I've always thought that the one and only thing which can bring good luck into your life is alertness--to all the signs and the messages in the world around you.  Once you start paying close attention to everything you encounter in your environment, you will be able to make better choices and see where you're going with much greater clarity.

Keep an Open Mind

If you are one of those bubbleheads whose political agenda constitutes your religion, you can forget about being a psychic.  Nothing gets in the way of perceiving hidden energies like a politicized belief system.  It never ceases to amaze me how many people there are in this world who are absolutely desperate to believe in something, anything, not matter how preposterous.  The Holy Grail that these people worship, of course, is not any kind of traditional religion but some kind of inflexible, humorless, and brain-dead political agenda.  Psychics are no exception--I've encountered way too many of them who spew forth only their politicized desires whenever they try to predict the future.  These people tend to be much more bothersome than most True Agenda Believers, since they are convinced that they possess a highly superior spirituality, the kind that the rest of us slobs can only dream about.  Of course, a more accurate way to describe what they're stuffed full of is spiritual materialism...

What we need to remember is that psychic ability is an ability to see the truth.  Yes, I am aware that trendy academics are always trying to persuade us that truth is only a social construct, but this is only schoolteacher doubletalk.  Along with George Orwell I will maintain forever that the truth does indeed exist in this universe, and as do facts.  With a clear mind and a concentrated intelligence, reasonable men and women can learn from these facts and live better lives because of them.

The truth, in short, matters.  The truth is the only thing that your psychic abilities will ever show you.  Which means that if you want to increase your psychic abilities, you cannot go through life as a politicized zombie.  You must always keep your mind open to all perspectives and remain skeptical of any kind of paradigm, whether political, economic, social, or spiritual.  Only then will you receive a clear picture of what actually does exist in reality, or what you can reasonably expect to happen in the near future.

Become Familiar with a Divination Tool

Some psychics can pick up on what they need to know by just sitting and doing nothing, but that doesn't work for most of us, including myself.  We need some kind of tool which will help us access our intuitive information.  My tool of choice is Tarot, specifically the Tarot desk designed by Pamela Colman Smith in 1909.  Someone else might be interested in crystal gazing or the I Ching or reading tea leaves.  The trick here is learning how to trust your tool, since you will inevitably discover that it's going to tell you things you don't want to hear.  And make sure you learn how to find your own meanings in your tool of choice, instead of paying attention to what the book or the "expert" says.

Herbal Aids

There are allegedly some herbal teas which you can drink to increase your psychic ability, most especially rue or mugwort.  Well, at various times in my life, I've drunk mugwort tea by the bucketful but I can't remember it ever helping.  A drop of sandalwood oil on your forehead is also supposed to be helpful, but I cannot vouch for that one, either.  But I do know that if you want to increase your psychic skills, you need a clear head and an alert brain.  So you've got to remain substance free (tea always excepted).  There is nothing that will scramble your intuitive abilities like any kind of substance:  nicotine, alcohol, cannabis, Prozac... you try consuming it, and the only psychic skill that you will develop is exactly nothing.

One Final Word...

After having carefully written all of the above, I must now I inform my reader that none of it matters.  Having some psychic ability is nice, of course, but it is also a kind of trap.  The one and only thing which matters in our lives is our ability to live richly and contentedly in the present moment.  Psychic ability will help you make better choices and get you where you want to go, but as an end in itself, it cannot deliver any kind of happiness.

Indeed, it can block you from experiencing your life with maximum intensity and joy.  When you start focusing on the future instead of the present moment with all its richness and splendor, you are switching your attention from the only reality you will ever know to some kind of an insubstantial dream.  We need to remember the future can be the worst enemy we have.  If you go through your life constantly focusing on some kind of tomorrowland where you will finally lose the weight, or get a better paying job, or find the right partner, you aren't really living--you are existing in a fantasy world filled with insubstantial ghosts and decadent energies.

The only thing we ever really have is the present moment, and the only thing we ever really need to know is how to live as fully as possible within it.  Successful divination never matters as much as knowing how to use our energies to make the most of our eternal Now.  Whenever we do this, we are at our best and at our happiest.  And we don't need psychic skills for that.