Almost all of us have a sixth sense, but few realize it. We have been taught that it doesn’t exit, or it is evil, or some other negative thing, so we don’t use it and it deteriorates and becomes unusable.
However, there are a few who use it, and have not lost the use of it. Most of those who use it remain hidden from sight: they keep it to themselves, and do not openly mention or discuss it. On the other hand, some hang up shingles, and garner an income as fortune tellers, while some use it only among friends and never ask for compensation.
Many of those who sell their services, and some of those who don’t, are frauds, or greatly exaggerate their abilities. However, there are genuine ones among them, who know or relay things they ought not by conventional reasoning to be able to know.
Although most are hidden from the rest of us, they can sometimes but not most of the time recognize one another. They refer to themselves as intuitive, or psychic, or sensitive, or gifted, or by some other term.
The ability to see beyond what most people consider reality takes many forms. As with other senses, it has limitations. Most importantly, being a sense, it is not completely controllable or always usable. For example, someone with optical sight might be able to see a buffalo when it is there, but he or she will not be able to see a buffalo which is not there. Buffaloes are not everywhere and always, so we do not always see them. In the same way, the things which can be seen with the sixth sense are not always visible: sometimes the future is hidden, and sometimes the thoughts of another are not accessible.
Just as we can err when we use the other senses, use of the sixth sense is also subject to mistake. What we see as a bird in a distant tree might be, instead, a branch or leaf seen wrongly as a bird. In the same way, the words of a spirit can be misunderstood, and a vision taken as something other than what it is. When the seen object is unfamiliar or beyond our comprehension, it is also possible to misunderstand.
Not everyone has the same perspective, either: a person in one room can see what’s in that room, but not necessarily what’s in another room. The psychic landscape and topology are different from the physical landscape, but each person has a different vantage point and a different perspective, so the things visible to one are not always visible to another.
Just as other sensory abilities vary, so does sixth sense ability. In the physical world, perhaps some can see a bird in a distant tree, but for others it might be too far away to discern. The same is true of psychic sense: some have sharper psychic vision than others.
While it is often referred to as vision or sight, it takes many forms. In fact, it takes almost every form imaginable. Psychics report receiving information in many ways: Some hear voices. Some see writing. Some simply “know”. Some talk to spirits, or maybe see spirits. Some communicate with the dead, or with the not yet born. Some travel, and move to different places to see or to hear what is physically or temporally distant. Some see auras. Some throw a handful of sticks or a jar of rocks and read the information from the way the sticks or rocks fall; others shuffle and draw cards. Some receive messages from animals, others from the way the bark grows on trees. Some go into trances and allow other beings to speak through them. Some are informed in dreams and waking visions.
It is common for these people, after conveying messages or information to others, to have no subsequent memory of what happened or of what was said: they immediately forget the signs, the messages, and the information. Some, however, can remember to varying extents.
For some with these abilities, access to extra-sensory information is totally unpredictable. A vision can come, or a voice can be heard, at any time, in quiet or in a crowd, without warning. For others, it helps to be in a specific state such as quietness, and the information will flow more readilly. For most, it depends on discovering the mode of transmission, without being able to control it. It is as if the mechanism were to have a mind of its own, and were to make itself available when it chooses, not when the gifted person decides to use it. A customer at a legitimate paid psychic reading, done by a palm reader or other practitioner, is sometimes treated to prayers or incense or ceremony: sometimes these things are done for show, sometimes they are to put the audience or customer into a certain state of mind, and sometimes they actually help the reader to get into the condition needed to access the information. Sometimes they are done for the benefit of the spirits or entities with which some readers communicate.
It is also common that a person with sixth sense cannot receive information about himself or herself. Therefore, many psychic people will visit other psychics to learn things important to them personally.
Each such gifted person may have information about only specific kinds of things. One might be good at seeing large events, such as natural disasters or airplane crashes, while having little ability to read for individuals. Another might be able to read for an individual, but not to foresee the airplane crash which will shortly take that person’s life. Some can see the future, or the past, but not the present. For others, the present is knowable, but not the future.
The future is, of course, not completely fore-ordained. While the signs might point toward one future, it is possible for another to take its place. People change their minds, and don’t always do what is predicted. Nevertheless, there are some futures which are far more likely than others. A more subtle point is that the past can change, as well. All changes in the past and the future are made in the present. This is a mystery to most, but to those who move in those realms, it often is recognized as a solid law.
Some of the things seen using the sixth sense are not intelligible, nor do they make sense to most people. A psychic can see to places and hear from places which are vastly different from the common shared reality, and it might seem as if these visions and thoughts are complete fantasy. However, they are sometimes true and factual. It can be difficult to distinguish this information from common hallucinations or events in the minds of the mentally ill. On the other hand, those considered mentally ill are sometimes truly gifted, but misunderstood by those without understanding or vision.
Many of those with one or more of these abilities were born with them. It is common for those who have them from birth to say that, when they were young, they did not realize that the sixth sense was not common, and were surprised to learn that they were, in that way, unusual. In other respects, however, such people are not unusual: you will find that they might have almost any appearance, occupation, temperament, or level of other talents.
As was pointed out, failure to use these abilities often results in their loss. A natural athlete who doesn’t work out will usually become soft and weak; those gifted with a sixth sense are in the same position. On the other hand, it is possible to train and to develop the ability, even in those who don’t believe that they have it. (Most of the books on “developing your psychic ability” and such, however, are trash and likely to do more harm than good.) Using these abilities, strengthens them.
If you use only part of the sense, then you may lose the other parts. If you can read thoughts, but only use that talent for one purpose, then you likely will lose it for other purposes.
Sometimes, a traumatic event such as an accident or great stress or a deep personal loss will cause the loss of the ability. Conversely, a traumatic event might bring the ability to someone who did not previously have it.
Almost all drugs effect the sixth sense, sometimes only in minor ways and sometimes in significant ones. Even the substances such as sugar, which are drugs even though they are not normally thought of as such, have effects. Chemical substances can destroy the sixth sense, but they can enhance it, as well. Their use is dangerous, however, to those without proper instruction. Dynamite will help dig holes, but if you are not trained, then it will also remove arms and legs. Sixth sense accidents can happen with drugs: you might lose part of your senses or your mind, and, when you do, you might not realize it, and those around you are unlikely to be able to administer first aid. Just as the psychically gifted are opaque to the not gifted, the damage to the psychically injured is invisible or incomprehensible to most people. The injured might appear to be mentally ill, or they might appear to be normal; they might, in fact, be mentally ill. Psychic illnesses can be fatal.
The ethics of using the sixth sense are similar to those of the other senses. If you use it to take advantage of, or to abuse, others, then you will pay a price. Misuse can lead to true madness and derangement. Also as with other abilities, using the sixth sense in the service of others can bring great rewards.
There is a deep relationship between the dream world and the world seen by those gifted with the sixth sense. As with the dream world, the voices they hear do not come through the physical ear, and the sights they see do not come through the physical eye. The dream world is the best connection which most people have to the psychic world. The dream and psychic worlds are much larger than the ordinary, physical world: what most people call reality is only a very tiny fraction of true reality.
Ethics must be understood in this context. Suppose, for example, a person does not want to tell a secret to another person. However, a psychic can sometimes ask, get the answer, and relay it to the other person. Is this ethical? In that case, the conversation will be known to the would-be secret keeper in his or her dreams. In other words, if you tell a secret in your dreams, then you have told the secret, and no one stole it from you. You are responsible for your dream life, just as you are responsible for your waking life. If you do not become aware of your dreams, then you will not be in control of your life.
(On the other hand, the person who thus obtains the formerly secret datum has a responsibility, as with everything else, not to abuse his or her knowledge or ability. It is wrong to take advantage of those with fewer abilities, no less than it is to outsmart the less intelligent or less knowledgeable, or to beat up the physically weak.)
The beings and entities which can be seen, and with which we can communicate, using the sixth sense, are natural and ordinary. Some are good, some are bad. They are the same as physical beings, just without physical bodies. Sometimes psychics see or hear a non-physical part of physical beings, usually a part between the physical body and the soul. There is nothing evil or sinister about them, or about communication with them, any more than there is with physical beings. We are all non-physical and disembodied at times.
We see animals, but few of us know much about them. We see falling things, but few of us ever study physics. We hear and enjoy music, but not many are composers or performers. We walk and eat and perform the other activities of life, but few of us are specialists in medicine or physiology or other relevant sciences. In the same way, although those with developed sixth senses can see things which others cannot, they rarely understand their own skills and talents. They do not have any more insight into metaphysics than does the average automobile driver have an understanding of metallurgy and mechanical engineering. They are, simply, endowed with senses which are somewhat better than those of the rest of us. This does not make them wise, nor does it give them moral or other authority. Mostly, they are ordinary people.
We all have a moral obligation to use that which we have been given, and to use our abilities, talents, skills, and other assets for good, rather than for bad. If a child tells you that he sees things which you do not see, telling him or her that he is wrong or mistaken may be like breaking his legs so that he will not grow up to be an athlete. If an adult hears voices or sees disembodied spirits, telling him that he is mentally ill or engaging in an evil practice, may be the moral equivalent of telling him or her to pluck out his own eyes. Let us not do evil ourselves, in a misguided attempt to impose our own limited sense of reality upon others.
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