StevePavlina.com Podcast #021 - Being Psychic (Blog)

[munish]

Originally Posted by Dan.Linehan

How does language work on the other side?

If I improve my vocabulary here, or learn other languages, would those improved communication skills carry over?

Recently, a sanskrit scholar told me,that sanskrit is a language that works on the other side too.

But, he didn't explain how.

[Hunter Nuttall]

I've been banging my head against a barstool all day and it's not working! This is a scam!

OK, seriously, this was a good podcast...it was nice having both of you on it together, and you definitely covered a lot of ground on a topic that's new to me.

I can understand the part about why someone should only get readings when they're really stuck, and not on a regular basis. But how about serving as Psychic Adviser to the President of the United States, and giving daily readings? Since his decisions affect hundreds of millions of people, would it be worth him losing some free will in order to have the best guidance?

[impaul99]

Steve / Erin, this was by far the best Podcast to date. I've only gotten through half of it so far, but so far I love it.

It was really great to hear the stories of how you developed you abilities Erin and even how Steve's been dabbling in psychic stuff, astral projection etc.

I'm kind of at the point where I've done lucid dreaming before and can do it if I set an intention and focus on it, and I've had some "precognition" events like "knowing" someone is going to break into my house the day before they break in and avoiding accidents and stuff like that, but I haven't gone as far as Astral Projection.

The part about burned out lightbulbs and wireless Internet not working freaked me out because for the last few years all I've been doing is cursing about all the fricken lightbulbs burning out in my house and just yesterday I had a conversation with someone about Wireless Internet being so sparratic for me. I've tried different routers, different cards, different positioning of the modem, different settings and such and I always seem to hit "interference". My friend will come over and use my Wireless Internet and it will work for him no problem, and sometimes it works for me perfectly while other times it's totally wacked even though I change no settings at all. Maybe there's something more to all these damned burned out bulbs and wireless problems than just bad electronics.

I'd love to hear more about this part of the podcast.

[Akashic_Librarian]

Nice anecdotal references Steve/Erin.

What I really like is your no-nonsense approach. You just do it. I have a couple of questions for both of you really, hope you could answer them:

For Erin: You mentioned that Sceptics are harder to read for, so what would happen if you tried for Richard Dawkins say, or Christopher Hitchens...Would they just get mental static, as it where, and also wouldn't this be counterproductive because it simply reinforces their beliefs that its all fake?

For Steve: You mention a few other psychic abilities - astral projection etc... - would you say these abilities all arose from building your intuition? In other words...would you say that inution was the base for all psychic abilities?

I hope you can help me guys

[Erin Pavlina]

Reading for skeptics: It's like handing me a book, putting me in the dark and saying, "Here read this if you can." I can still see, but not in the dark, so I won't be able to read the book. Does that mean I can't see or that I can't read? Or are the conditions non-conducive to demonstrating my reading and seeing ability?

[Savage]

I learned astral projection before I really did any serious intuitive work. Learning AP taught me that there's definitely more to life than the physical universe, so I realized that if AP were real, then I could probably access a lot of other creative/intuitive parts of my mind that had links to the non-physical.

From there I got into doing intuitive work as well as channeling, i.e. trying to "download" messages from non-physical beings. I actually got pretty good at channeling and have many pages of channeled material. Some of it was pretty mind-blowing for me because I could tell the ideas weren't coming from me.

For example, the articles I've written on polarity are based on channeling sessions I did around 2002, long before I started working in the PD field. It took me years to really make sense of those concepts and to decide how I wanted to polarize (I kept going back and forth), but I eventually saw that it made sense. According to some of the beings I spoke with, earth is the place where we decide how we want to polarize because our own energy is constantly reflected back to us here. Earthly life is actually designed to push us out of energetic neutrality, meaning that it pushes us to eventually polarize. That's one reason we have things like war and disease here -- they provoke strong reactions in us.

Outside the earth plane, there are much more extreme levels of polarity. It appears we can eventually progress towards becoming something like a demon (darkworker path) or angel (lightworker path). But the interesting thing is that neither path is considered right or wrong. The demons and angels even seem to have a certain respect for each other, even though they choose different paths.

Being able to "download" ideas from the other side has some incredible practical applications. For example, an understanding of polarity has helped me tremendously in business. Whenever I have a tough decision, the right answer usually becomes clear when I ask myself, "What would a lightworker do?" This helps me see past any financial concerns to the big picture behind it: how can this business serve the goal of raising consciousness? I'm human so my implementation is far from perfect, but it works pretty smoothly. Whenever I consider a change to my business, I run it through the polarity lens to see if it fits with the lightworker path.

[Fullcrum]

That puts a different take on polarity, Steve. Thanks for that.

[iverevi]

Ok, so I finally listened to (most) of the podcast. As an open-minded skeptic, I was blown away by someone describing something that I've had happen at various times through my life. You called it astral projection. I've had it happen numerous times. The fear is incredible. It feels like suffocating. Usually I'm aware of my surroundings (if the tv is on, I can hear it. If people are around, I know they are there) and I try and shake myself awake for fear that I will die if I do not. Usually I scream, but I don't actually make a sound. It happened once and I asked my wife if I screamed and she said I did not. But I felt like I really screamed. I often considered it just a bad dream. But I also lucid dream quite frequently. Its an interesting avenue that I will be exploring with a more open mind.

Thanks for sharing...

[Fullcrum]

That's it: I'm gonna have to master lucid dreaming and astral projection. It sounds like a lot of growth can be had from them, and they're also a lot of fun.

Any suggestions on beginning not covered elsewhere, anybody?

[impaul99]

Originally Posted by Fullcrum

That's it: I'm gonna have to master lucid dreaming and astral projection. It sounds like a lot of growth can be had from them, and they're also a lot of fun.

Any suggestions on beginning not covered elsewhere, anybody?

LOL. I already started trying AP. I tried last night on the couch, but I fell asleep. Tried this morning, fell asleep again. I think I need to read up a bit more on it.

For Lucid dreaming, I've already done that a few times. I actually have a NovaDreamer device that you wear over your eyes while sleeping that blinks little blue LED lights when it detects REM sleep to let you know what you're inside a dream. The way it works is that inside your dream you will all of a sudden start seeing blue lights places.

For example, you might be walking down the street in your dream and all of a sudden you'll see the sky blinking blue...that gives you a hint that you're in dream land. Or you might be crossing the street in your dream and instead of the crosswalk light, there will be a blue light blinking instead. That makes you question "Is this a dream?".

The only reason I stopped using it was that during the training phase, you mostly end up waking up every time you ask yourself "Is this a dream?" so basically everytime you reach REM sleep you end up being awakened due to lack of training to "stay in the dream". The side-effect of this is that I found myself super tired the next day when trying to go to work because we need our REM sleep to properly rest our brains. I remember a Star Trek episode where the crew stopped getting REM sleep due to some kind of interference energy being put on them, and they didn't know about it so they all started going crazy. Apparently without REM sleep we go nuts.

The other "trick" to lucid dreaming I learned was to wear a digital watch, and look at it every day multiple times a day and everytime you look at your watch (when awake) ask yourself "Is this a dream?" and look at the watch. Obviously you know you're awake, when you look at the watch but you develop a habit of looking at the watch which follows you into the dream world.

When you're in the dreamworld, and you look at your watch and ask yourself "Is this a dream?" the watch will look all gimped because apparently we can't read in dreams and letters and numbers and stuff look all screwed up. So really the secret to Lucid Dreaming is developing habits in the waking world which follow you into the dream world.

Then, there are other things you learn for preventing yourself from waking up.

Steve / Erin, could you share how a person would go about starting out doing Astral Projection? or Channeling?

[Erin Pavlina]

Originally Posted by impaul99

When you're in the dreamworld, and you look at your watch and ask yourself "Is this a dream?" the watch will look all gimped because apparently we can't read in dreams and letters and numbers and stuff look all screwed up.
Steve / Erin, could you share how a person would go about starting out doing Astral Projection? or Channeling?

Some of us can read letters and numbers and books in a dream. Just takes years of practice

For astral projection the key is to learn to separate your consciousness from your body. And lucid dreaming is a good way to locate your consciousness while your body is still in an unconscious state. So I say go that route. Get very in tune with your consciousness. Locate your consciousness, that way when you wake up from a dream you are in a prime position to separate out.

it took me 3 years of lucid dreaming before I had my first astral experience and it wasn't something I was trying to do at the time. So it's hard for me to say exactly what you should do. I know that having the intention is very important, but it's not enough. Asking your guides for help is also helpful, but also not quite enough.

[Fullcrum]

Currently, it seems like learning Lucid Dreaming, then Astral Projection is the way to go!

Did any brain entrainment CDs help you out? Can they help you out?

[Savage]

I actually had an astral experience this morning. It was around 4:30am. I was lying in bed alone. Erin was sleeping in our guest room because she's getting over an illness (my health is normal).

I thought I was lying there awake when I heard some strange noises, as if there was someone else in the room with me. I could feel its presence. I sat up and looked around but saw nothing unusual. The room looked perfectly normal. Since sunrise happens pretty early in Vegas, it was already partially light in the room, so I could see everything clearly.

I lied down again and heard more noises, like strange insect sounds... clicking and crawling noises. I opened my eyes and was startled by what I saw at the side of the bed about 4 feet away. There were two humanoid-sized insect-like creatures. Each one looked like an upright praying mantis. I immediately thought, "Crap! I'm astral!" I mistakenly assumed I was in physical reality, but the sight of those creatures immediately told me I was on one of the astral planes. (Sometimes when I'm astral, the astral plane looks identical to the physical universe, so it's easy to mistake them for the physical plane unless you see something out of the ordinary.) It would be highly unusual to see insect-like creatures at the side of my bed in physical reality.

I scanned the creatures to read their intent and immediately picked up that they wanted to drain my energy. I didn't want that to happen, so I willed myself back to the physical plane. As I stared at the creatures, they gradually phased out. The room looked the same, but the creatures disappeared from my view, and I could tell I was back in phase with my physical body.

I knew the creatures were physically out of phase, but I could still feel their presence in the room. I did a quick visualization to shield myself from them, calmed myself down, and went back to bed for a bit, but I don't think I fell back asleep.

When I got up, I felt unusually tired and drained. I had to drag myself out of bed, so they probably did manage to vamp me a bit while I was transitioning. I feel fine now.

For me it seems the best way to invite an astral experience is to think about it a lot. Whenever I'm thinking about AP or reading about it, there's a good chance I'll experience it. Since AP was on my mind last night, it doesn't surprise me that I had an astral experience this morning.

Astral projection is like tuning your consciousness to a different frequency than physical reality, so you can "see" and "hear" non-physical beings. Physical reality is just one of many stations we can perceive.

There are lots of creatures on the astral plane that try to vamp off my energy when I go there. It's almost like my astral energy becomes a food source for them. Erin learned how to defend herself from these kinds of attacks, but I really haven't. I ought to put some effort into learning how to prevent myself from being vamped on the astral plane.

Maybe Erin and I will do a podcast about AP. There's so much richness to this topic. We could seriously talk about it for hours and barely scratch the surface.

[impaul99]

Originally Posted by Steve Pavlina

I actually had an astral experience this morning. It was around 4:30am. I was lying in bed alone. Erin was sleeping in our guest room because she's getting over an illness (my health is normal).

I thought I was lying there awake when I heard some strange noises, as if there was someone else in the room with me. I could feel its presence. I sat up and looked around but saw nothing unusual. The room looked perfectly normal. Since sunrise happens pretty early in Vegas, it was already partially light in the room, so I could see everything clearly.

I lied down again and heard more noises, like strange insect sounds... clicking and crawling noises. I opened my eyes and was startled by what I saw at the side of the bed about 4 feet away. There were two humanoid-sized insect-like creatures. Each one looked like an upright praying mantis. I immediately thought, "Crap! I'm astral!" I mistakenly assumed I was in physical reality, but the sight of those creatures immediately told me I was on one of the astral planes. (Sometimes when I'm astral, the astral plane looks identical to the physical universe, so it's easy to mistake them for the physical plane unless you see something out of the ordinary.) It would be highly unusual to see insect-like creatures at the side of my bed in physical reality.

I scanned the creatures to read their intent and immediately picked up that they wanted to drain my energy. I didn't want that to happen, so I willed myself back to the physical plane. As I stared at the creatures, they gradually phased out. The room looked the same, but the creatures disappeared from my view, and I could tell I was back in phase with my physical body.

I knew the creatures were physically out of phase, but I could still feel their presence in the room. I did a quick visualization to shield myself from them, calmed myself down, and went back to bed for a bit, but I don't think I fell back asleep.

When I got up, I felt unusually tired and drained. I had to drag myself out of bed, so they probably did manage to vamp me a bit while I was transitioning. I feel fine now.

For me it seems the best way to invite an astral experience is to think about it a lot. Whenever I'm thinking about AP or reading about it, there's a good chance I'll experience it. Since AP was on my mind last night, it doesn't surprise me that I had an astral experience this morning.

Astral projection is like tuning your consciousness to a different frequency than physical reality, so you can "see" and "hear" non-physical beings. Physical reality is just one of many stations we can perceive.

There are lots of creatures on the astral plane that try to vamp off my energy when I go there. It's almost like my astral energy becomes a food source for them. Erin learned how to defend herself from these kinds of attacks, but I really haven't. I ought to put some effort into learning how to prevent myself from being vamped on the astral plane.

Maybe Erin and I will do a podcast about AP. There's so much richness to this topic. We could seriously talk about it for hours and barely scratch the surface.

How do you discern the difference between an AP and a Lucid Dream where you're dreaming about your "normal" surroundings? For example, back in October I had an experience I called "Holographic Visualization". I wrote about it on my Blog ( Holographic Visualization | How to Make Money Doing What You Love ).

Basically what happened is I was lying on the couch with my eyes closed but wasn't sleeping. My wife was reading a book on her chair in the same room. While lying there with my eyes closed and my arm covering my eyes, it's almost like all of a sudden I could see through my closed eyelids and see the room around me. I then turned my head (in my vision, not in real life) and I could see my wife sitting there reading. I then eventually got up off the couch (while physically still lying there) and walked out the room, looking at my wife as I walked by to see why she's not seeing me get up.

I won't go into detail of the whole experience as it's on my Blog, but I basically was lying there, not asleep, but it's like I left my body and was walking around my house. However, certain things were different when I went downstairs, like my desk downstairs was clean, whereas in real life it was messy etc.

It kind of sounds like an "Astral Projection", except that it was more like a Lucid Dream because I could "create" things in the world to some degree.

The best way I could describe it is almost like I was in between the dream world and the waking world. Not "deep enough" to be asleep as I could actually still hear my wife flipping the pages of her book siting beside me, but I could also see and hear and feel being in a totally different room in the house etc.

Is this what Astral Projection is? I'm kind of confused at the difference between Astral Projection and Lucid Dreaming.

Would Astral Projection be that when you go into different rooms or places and you hear other people talking, that you can actually "wake up" and call them up and confirm that they were actually talking about it? Almost like you're still on earth, but you're just not tied into your body?

[Fullcrum]

Sounds like a lucid dream or vivid visualization - as you said, certain things in the vision did not match up with reality.

[GreenTea]

Thank you for the podcast. My boyfriend and I listened up to the 45 minute mark last night and finished just now. I particularly enjoyed what we heard today. My boyfriend is pretty skeptical, but I noticed today he didn't have as many negative comments about it...

I have to say I find the astral projection stuff quite freaky... If you do end up doing a podcast on it, I'd love to hear about getting over your fear there and how that relates to getting over your fear in everyday life.

You guys did an excellent job of explaining how readings work and it really helped me to better understand some things I've been confused about in relation to psychic abilities--free will, etc.

Also, you really motivated me to practice developing my own intuitive skills. However, I've still got this lingering question in my mind about the relationship of all this to being present. Being truly present is supposed to activate a deeper intelligence so that you know what to do in each moment--how does this relate to communication with spirit guides?

Also, how does all this fit in with the concepts of non-duality? If we're all connected and the sense of a separate "I" is ultimately an illusion, then isn't the sense of separate spirit guides also an illusion? Isn't it ultimately all one consciousness experiencing itself through different forms?

Thanks Again

[Dan.Linehan]

Have you had more psychic experiences since adopting the raw food diet?

Does a diet or lifestyle that gives you more energy draw in different astral entities?

The moth to a flame idea seems to be the opposite of the like attracts like concept.

[Savage]

The difference between lucid dreaming and astral projection is pretty easy to discern with practice. I doubt I'd ever confuse the two. But I often confuse being astral with being in the physical world.

How do you tell the difference between dreams and astral experiences? I don't know how to describe it. They just have different energy signatures. It's like knowing when you're soaking in water vs. on dry land. They feel different. It's similar to how I know whether my skin is wet or dry.

Physical reality is very dense and solid. Astral realities are less dense. If I touch a wall in physical reality, it feels solid to me, and it doesn't radiate much energy. It feels pretty much dead. But an astral wall is more energetic. It feels radiant and alive. It's less dense, so I can usually walk right through it. I usually avoid walking through astral walls because it feels too freaky, as if jello is oozing through the spaces between the molecules of my body. Even sticking my hand through an astral wall feels creepy.

There are lots of different astral realms, and some appear to be spectrally closer to the physical plane than others.

I suppose that if you could astral project and move around on the physical plane itself, you might be able to read something in another room and report it accurately, but I think it's more likely you'll see something different. Just because it looks like you're on the physical plane doesn't mean you are. If you're dialed in to a slightly different dimension, you'll probably pick up a message that doesn't match the one in physical reality.

[Savage]

I don't notice much difference in astral experiences based on diet, but I was already vegetarian for about a year before I had my first experiences. When I was eating meat, I had no paranormal experiences to speak of. But I can't really conclude that there's a dietary connection.

[Fullcrum]

Steve, you seem to have some fear over astral projecting.

Could this be a possible area of growth for you? A neglected area that can now be given focus so that the rest of us can learn?

How about now? I mean, go towards the things you fear, right? As long as your raising consciousness.

I won't bog you guys down with "paradoxical" questions, like "Do physical actions change the astral plane in any way?" (I would assume so because a book on your desk is visible in the astral realm, and so the physical placing of the book there must have changed the astral realm to have a "book" in the same "location").

I'll try to explore it myself. But a blog post by either you or Erin would be just awesome

[Erin Pavlina]

Actually hang on a minute.... there are different states of leaving the body. Not all are astral projection. I think we really need to do an in depth podcast on this because it's very deep and there is a lot of information.

For example, you can have your consciousness awaken inside your body, sort of like a separation, but you are not astral projecting when that happens. You are primed and ready to go... yes, but you are not projecting, you're only in a state of separation or consciousness awarness.

Likewise, you can have an out of body experience, which is different than astral projection. So before we throw around the words and the ideas I think it's best to get a proper overview so we're all on the same page. I'll talk to Steve about doing an in-depth podcast on astral projection, out of body experiences, mental projections, hypnogogic hallucinations, phasing in and out of reality, lucid dreams, and dreaming that you are projecting (which makes people very confused.)

Stand by ya'll!

[Dan.Linehan]

Originally Posted by Steve Pavlina

For example, the articles I've written on polarity are based on channeling sessions I did around 2002, long before I started working in the PD field. It took me years to really make sense of those concepts and to decide how I wanted to polarize (I kept going back and forth), but I eventually saw that it made sense. According to some of the beings I spoke with, earth is the place where we decide how we want to polarize because our own energy is constantly reflected back to us here. Earthly life is actually designed to push us out of energetic neutrality, meaning that it pushes us to eventually polarize. That's one reason we have things like war and disease here -- they provoke strong reactions in us.

That makes a lot of sense. Reminds me of a lyric from one of the favorite Modest Mouse songs, "I know where you're from, but where do you belong?"


What you've said here really fits in with statements from other channelers:

- As above, so below. (Actions here show how we are polarized there.)
- Life is a mirror. (Reality reflects our own energy back to us.)
- Like attracts like. (Reality mirrors circumstances based on our core beliefs.)
- We're here to expand our consciousness. (Expansion is achieved through polarity.)

Originally Posted by Steve Pavlina

I lied down again and heard more noises, like strange insect sounds... clicking and crawling noises. I opened my eyes and was startled by what I saw at the side of the bed about 4 feet away. There were two humanoid-sized insect-like creatures. Each one looked like an upright praying mantis.

No more reading Ender's Game before bed!

[Spartan]

Originally Posted by Erin Pavlina

Reading for skeptics: It's like handing me a book, putting me in the dark and saying, "Here read this if you can." I can still see, but not in the dark, so I won't be able to read the book. Does that mean I can't see or that I can't read? Or are the conditions non-conducive to demonstrating my reading and seeing ability?

I would say that you couldn't see. To see something light needs to be focused by the lens onto the retina, which turns the light patterns into neural signals. Thus sight is impossible without light. In darkensss there is no light, hence sight is impossible. And since the ability to read depends on the ability to see, I would say that you couldn't read either.

So basically you are saying that your ability to perform a 'reading' for someone is contingent on their complete faith in psychic abilities, since skepticism for 'reading' is akin to darkness for sight?

This seems like a very convenient escape clause. If someone is skeptical then it won't work becuase their very doubt prevents it from working. Since some degree of doubt is needed for impartiality, readings don't work on the unbiased and objective. Thus you are limiting your 'reading' power to those who are biased in its favour, i.e. those who ignore contradicting evidence.

I'm not trying to stir controversy, I just want to be clear that that is what you're saying? If so readings are basically unfalsifiable, since if they are incorrect then it was because of the clients doubt, if they are correct then that is evidence for there authenticity.

I find this frustrating, since belief is not something one can fake. I can't pretend to believe something if I haven't seen any evidence for it, yet you say I will only get evidence for it once I believe it. This is a Catch-22.

[Dan.Linehan]

Originally Posted by Spartan

I find this frustrating, since belief is not something one can fake. I can't pretend to believe something if I haven't seen any evidence for it, yet you say I will only get evidence for it once I believe it. This is a Catch-22.

You don't have to believe it, you just have to be open to believing.

Anything else is confirmation bias.

[Spartan]

Originally Posted by Dan.Linehan

You don't have to believe it, you just have to be open to believing.

Anything else is confirmation bias.

I am open to believing it if the evidence supports it, it's the people with blind faith who have confirmation bias.

[Dan.Linehan]

Originally Posted by Spartan

I am open to believing it if the evidence supports it, it's the people with blind faith who have confirmation bias.

If you are open to believing it, that's all it should take!

Do you meditate, or have you tried automatic writing at all?

[Spartan]

Originally Posted by Dan.Linehan

If you are open to believing it, that's all it should take!

Do you meditate, or have you tried automatic writing at all?

Not really. I have tried yoga classes where we did deep relaxation techniques. Never done automatic writing though.

[Bene]

It was fun listening to the podcast (and also inspiring and informative). You both sounded like you had a good time doing it.

I found the lightheartedness with which you talked about death- funny and eye opening in a way. I think its because you both really get it that you're not your physical bodies. So there is no fear there and that translates into how you talk about it. And that to me drove home the idea of working on my consciousness, the only thing that I can take across.

[Savage]

Belief just gets in the way. I think it's better to decide whether you want to experience this kind of stuff or not.

[munish]

Originally Posted by Spartan

If someone is skeptical then it won't work becuase their very doubt prevents it from working. Since some degree of doubt is needed for impartiality, readings don't work on the unbiased and objective.

If so readings are basically unfalsifiable, since if they are incorrect then it was because of the clients doubt, if they are correct then that is evidence for there authenticity.

I can't pretend to believe something if I haven't seen any evidence for it, This is a Catch-22.

At its core, proof-seeking is rooted in fear, self-doubt, and low self-esteem.

I’m sorry to disappoint those who ask me to prove the existence of lucid dreaming… or astral projection… .... Those people will be waiting a very long time because I don’t care to prove anything.

Proof