Okay, I am going to take time here to address a different subject. One of my friends was considering going to a psychic and wanted my opinion of that action. What follows is an exerpt from a letter I wrote him:

I have some of my own psychic abilities but I  believe that mine are learned ones, resulting from my training. I believe most psychics are natural ones. They were born with their abilities, or their abilities came about in an unintended way suddenly.

We all see time as being linear which it is not. It is actually more circular and, as a result, someone with a broader vision can see a very malleable past, present and future. As an example take two men standing on a river bank. One man is standing on a small hill just above the river, while the other man is standing lower next to the water. A fishing boat is coming up the river, but there is a bend in the river so the man next to the water cannot see the boat. That fishing boat, therefore, is in the future for the man standing on the riverbank. As it passes in front of him it is in his present. After it passes him it is in his past. However, the man who is on the hill can see the boat as it is in all three of those places. He can see the past, present and future place of that boat, in relationship to the man on the river bank,  as it changes its progression on the river. And should the man, driving the fishing boat, change his mind and turn around then all of their futures are changed.

This is, of course, an overly simplistic but gives us the basic idea of why some of us can see things when others can’t. There is no real trick involved. It is mainly determined by our vantage point or our perception.

So, for a good psychic, it is relatively easy to seen an individual’s present and sometimes their past, but not always their future. In psychology you probably learned about “locus of control”. Strong willed, dynamic, intelligent people usually have an “internal locus of control”. That means they are their own man, so to speak. They are not easily swayed by the opinion of others; they are strong decision makers. A less individualistic person can be said to have an “external locus of control”. They tend to go more in the direction of where life pushes them. They may react to things rather than create their own possibilities. They can be heavily influenced by the thinking of others. It is far easier to predict the future of this latter group of people. Their path is far more predictable. It is more of a “what you see is what you get” sort of things.

Because we all have the gift of free will a psychic’s predictions are far less accurate for the first goup of independent thinking people. A good psychic will see what their future is only at that moment. Any individual is apt to change their future at any moment by changing the choices they are making. So, for me, the true value of a psychic is the road map they may give us of the direction we are going. If we don’t like that destination it is, perhaps, in our best interst to change our direction by changing our choices. If we wanted to go to San Francisco and we find ourselves, instead, headed for Los Angeles it may be a good idea to get onto another highway. It is the psychic equivalent of a physician telling a heart patient that unless he changes his lifestyle he is headed for a heart attack in his future’

There are psychics who are just not very good and some who are just plain fakes. Many people have so many problems in their own lives that, for them, looking at someone else’s life is like looking through a pair of dirty glasses. They may have good intentions but they just can’t see very clearly. And no good psychic will ever mention a truly bad situation. It would be like a teacher telling a student he is stupid. As humans we all have an unconcious tendency to create an expectation.  that is given to us. There are also many different types of psychics with different kinds of abilities but I will not go into that at this time.

Frequently I would need to replace a broken shear pin, but mostly I had to learn enjoy the beauty of the place and the value of my own thoughts. A Golden Eagle kept me company in one pasture. He sat at the top of his favorite evergreen and would watch me for hours. A Bald Eagle hunted the river and I could watch him do that from another of the pastures. I learned to value the eagles as my companions.

Years later, I learned that the eagle is a symbol of the Spirit. “Fly like an eagle” can mean to soar above one’s material self into the spiritual world. I do not know very much about astrology but the symbol of my sign is the Scorpion. I read someplace that the evolved sign of the Scorpio is that of the Eagle. I am not there yet, as I do still “sting” once in a while, but I do like that symbolism.

Before I began to learn about the symbolism of eagles, however, I began to write. I had something I wanted to say and I wanted to name it to give substance to my thinking. No matter how often I thought about it, no titles came to me until finally, I realized that I could use some outside help. I set aside time and shifted my consciousness as I had been trained to do. This is the story of the “Vision” I received:

I was walking on a trail, or a hiking path. A voice told me to return to a village I had visited before in the Dreamtime. I was told to go to the home of the village Shaman. A young boy was waiting for me at the edge of the village and he took me to the shaman’s tent. It was made entirely of white buffalo hides, decorated with eagle feathers and lit from within by a sacred fire.

I stood uncertainly before the closed tent flap, not knowing what to do. Certainly you can’t knock without a door. Do you say hello? My culture had not taught me the proper protocol for this situation; I felt confused and uncomfortable.

The prolonged silence was ended by a sharp command that instructed, “You may enter”. I bent my head and pushed through the flap.

The light of the fire riveted my attention as it glowed with a surreal brightness. The light of the fire obscured the periphery of the interior space. Somewhere from the darkness, beyond the light of that supernatural fire, came a deep voice:

The title of your book will be, “Not Only Eagles Fly“.

This questioning period is the province of youth and mine was not serious, nor was it atypical, in any way. Then a series of personal experiences suddenly challenged my understanding of physical, spiritual and religious thought. Everything that my Judeo-Christian, Middle West culture had taught me was now in doubt.

I wanted to reconcile this dissonance, so I began reading. I read everything I could find on spiritual wisdom and the nature of physical reality and I became even more confused. This was an era of Newtonian Physics, not, quite yet, Quantum Physics which might have helped me in my understanding in some small way.

In the meantime, life went on. I married; I had children. Then one day (through a trusted source — I emphasize this for a reason) I was introduced to a man with kind eyes. It was a classic story of “when the student is ready, the teacher will appear.”  This meeting began my serious training, more than forty years ago now, in one of the ancient mystery schools of spiritual wisdom that have existed for more than two thousand years.

I no longer work within that mystery school but my serious training continues. I am still bound by the oath I took then, but times have changed. More formerly esoteric information is openly available all the time for the spiritual seeker. It is my belief that once we begin this mystic’s journey, and when we do so with clear intent, it is a permanent path we trod. There can be times of respite, a “time out”, but it is my belief that there is no turning back.

I believe that the Hero’s Journey, Journey of the Mystic, or the following of the spiritual pathway is an evolutionary journey we all must take sooner or later in our evolutionary process. Contrary to popular belief, this journey should not contradict, nor deny, any religion or philosophical thought. Instead, it should encourage a student to look deeper in order to broaden their understanding.

I believe the Zen saying that a Master is just somebody who started before you. It is, therefore, my intent to help you understand this journey and to discover what you will need to know, and to do, to facilitate your process. I am writing this in order to, hopefully, help you make sense of your own story.

Say not, “I have found the truth”, but rather, “I have found a truth”.
— Kahlil Gibran