Discovering Your Sixth Sense

Posted on December 6, 2013 by jonimayhan

Having a six sense doesn’t necessarily mean you can predict tomorrow’s lottery numbers; nor does it mean you will necessarily foresee a future catastrophe. Sometimes it’s as simple as trusting your intuition.

Do you often know who is on the other end of the line when the phone rings? Do you meet someone and know instantly whether you like them or not? Do you sometimes have the feeling that you’re not alone, but nobody is there?

Learning to develop this additional sense isn’t for the impatient. It involves slowing down and paying attention to every detail of your life, listening to the strong impulses, and understanding that most of the things that happen to us aren’t usually coincidence.

Tips for unlocking your six sense:

Understanding your sixth sense – Abilities come in all shapes in sizes. Some people have the ability to sense or communicate with ghosts. Others get visions of future events before they transpire. Some people have an uncanny ability to read other people, knowing what they’re thinking or feeling without having been told first. Some are more subtle. One of my friends is a very dedicated pet sitter. She will often know that something is wrong with a dog before the owner does. This could be a very useful tool in her field, providing the pet parents buy into what she is telling her.
Believing your abilities – My mother didn’t think she had a sixth sense until I pointed it out to her. More times than I could count, I would pick up the phone to call her, only to find her on the other end as she attempted to call me at the same exact time. She also has an uncanny ability to always find a front row parking spot. Sometimes having a six sense isn’t as prevalent as being able to predict the sex of someone’s unborn baby. It might be as simple as trusting your intuition and not trying to push it away. It’s a special gift that was given to you at birth. Embrace it and use it.
Meditation – spend a few minutes a day going deep into your mind, allowing the rest of the world to fade away. You can do this all by yourself with little instruction, or you can utilize one of the many self-guided meditation videos on the Internet. It allows you to hone your thoughts down to the bare essentials, discovering a place in your mind where the clatter and bustle of everyday life can’t touch.
Pay attention to your surroundings – watch other people’s reactions to the things you do and say. Understand how body language and eye contact plays a key role in how we interpret how other people are feeling. Really try to tune into what they’re telling you. Crossed arms might mean they are closing themselves off from the conversation, an inability to maintain eye contact might mean they aren’t comfortable with what is being said. Watch for the non-verbal cues and see if they match what your mind is interpreting. People with empathic abilities often feel what other people are feeling, sometimes even physically, and have an uncanny ability to understand other’s moods and thought processes. Learning how to live with the ability could be a blessing, if you are able to handle both the good and the bad. If someone is angry with you, it gives you a chance to unravel the anger before it becomes an issue.
Believing in yourself – do you sometimes get a strong feeling about something for no apparent reason? Have you ever woken up with a strange premonition? Pay attention to the outcome. If you find some truth behind the impression, you will learn to trust it more. Many people believe that we are all born with the sense of insight but leave it undeveloped, having been told as children that we “have an active imagination.” It doesn’t mean that the abilities disappeared. It just means we’ll need to dig a little deeper to find them and nurture them back to a useable level. Others feel that abilities are usually passed down through families. Sometimes the gift is hard to distinguish, like the case with my mother. More than likely, she was born with similar abilities as mine, but didn’t pursue them and allow them to develop.
Find validation – if you have a strong sense that something has happened to someone, ask them. Follow the clues to see where they lead. This involves being curious enough to find the answer. I would often get impressions about people, but never had the courage to follow it through by asking. One day, I simply took a deep breath and asked, only to find out that my intuition was right. It gave me the faith to keep trying.
Develop a relationship with your spirit guides or guardians– everybody has them, but not everyone is aware of them. They could be there, whispering in your mind, guiding you through the day. I didn’t believe in them until I experienced it firsthand. I was driving along a highway, when the image of my late grandmother popped into my head, telling me to slow down. Seconds later, my front tire blew out. Had I not slowed down, I probably would have been badly injured, if not killed. Find yours through meditation or just ask for a sign that they are there, then follow your instincts.
Document everything – keep a journal and write down the things that come to you. Did you have a strange dream that a friend was going to have a difficult pregnancy? Or did you get an odd feeling when you met a co-worker for the first time? Being able to go back and track this is very helpful. Make sure to record the date it happened, the time of day, and even things that seem trivial at the time, like the mood you were in, the cycle of the moon, or the type of weather outside.
Research – my sixth sense involves communicating with ghosts and spirits. It took me a very long time to trust that what I was feeling was more than my imagination. I read every book I could get my hands on and took several psychic awareness classes. Every piece of information brought me closer to understanding my abilities.
Share your experiences – most people are afraid to talk about these things. They’re scared that other people are going to make fun of them or think they are crazy, when in truth, many other people have these feelings as well. Find someone you can trust to talk about it. If possible, find someone who is going through a similar situation, or someone who has mastered the skill you are seeking. Finding a good tutor might make the difference between wondering and knowing.
Understand that everyone is different – several of my friends are also sensitives. They know when a ghost or spirit enters a room. My cue is audient. I hear a tone as they swoop in, which is also accompanied by a sense I can’t explain. I just know someone is there. One of my friends feels a tingling on the side of her head. Another friend’s finger’s tingle. Just because you don’t feel the same cues, doesn’t mean you aren’t experiencing something. This also means that no one can tell you exactly what you need to do to develop it. This is a case where practice makes perfect. Talk with other people about what they’re feeling, but don’t expect someone to hand you a magic wand and enable you to become a psychic medium overnight. You will have to figure some things out on your own.

Unlocking this six sense could change your life in many ways. It’s a matter of taking a natural gift and exercising it until you’ve built it into a powerful asset, but you’ll never know until you’ve tried.

Joni Mayhan

Joni Mayhan is a paranormal investigator, as well as a free-lance writer. Please check out her paranormal thrillers on Amazon.com and BarnesandNobles.com. For more information about the author, please see her website: Jonimayhan.com

The Soul Collector – The true story of one paranormal investigator’s worst nightmare

http://www.amazon.com/The-Soul-Collector-ebook/dp/B00EIHG90Q/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1381464557&sr=1-1&keywords=joni+mayhan

Angels of Ember trilogy – After a devastating virus nearly wipes the world clean of people, 16 year-old Ember Pain grows tired of running and hiding from the bad men who hunt her and her younger sister, Elizabeth. Fighting back becomes a necessity, even if it threatens her very life.

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&field-keywords=angels+of+ember+trilogy&rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Aangels+of+ember+trilogy

Lightning Strikes

Ember Rain

Angel Storm

Surviving as an Empathic Sponge

Posted on November 25, 2013 by jonimayhan

I was in my mid-forties before I realized I was an empath.

I was at the doctor’s office for a routine check-up. The nurse came into the room to take my blood pressure. As she was taking my vitals, I kept getting very clear images of her basking in the sun on a resort island with friends and family. I narrowed my eyes, wondering where that was coming from, and then the vision expanded. I saw her with a group of people who were family members, but not immediate family. I somehow knew she was single and didn’t have any children. The people she went with might have been siblings. I’d been getting impressions like this all my life, but never had the courage to confirm them, so I took a deep breath and asked her about a necklace she had on. It was a gold sea shell on a chain.

“Oh, yes. I got this when I was on vacation last week. I went to the Bahamas with my sister and her family. It was so nice there,” she told me, then frowned as my blood pressure sky-rocketed.

I walked out alternating between smiling and shaking my head. How had I known that? Had I been a psychic all my life and hadn’t known it? It happened to me all the time, but I had always attributed it to my excellent imagination. What if it was more? When I got home, I started doing some research and learned about empaths.

An empath is someone who basically feels what others are feeling. Most true empaths will feel both emotion and pain. If someone shows them a bad cut on their arm, the empath will feel a searing pain as well. Being around negative people nearly drives them to the ledge. And they sometimes know things they shouldn’t know about other people.

As I read through the check-list of empathic traits, I felt like they were describing me word for word. I’d never enjoyed being in large groups of people. Places like shopping malls and airports were nightmares to me for reasons I couldn’t put my finger on. I’d feel the bristling, bustling energy and it would give me a feeling similar to claustrophobia. All I wanted to do was escape. I’d find myself avoiding excursions like Black Friday shopping, and tried my best to find a quiet place in airports to retreat to when I was forced to fly. I just assumed everybody felt this way, but I was wrong.

After the experience with the nurse, I began truly testing this concept. When I got an impression, I tried to validate what I was feeling. While this sounds simple on the surface, it’s sometimes easier said than done. My next opportunity was a difficult one. A friend told me a lie.

I don’t know how I could tell she wasn’t telling the truth, but I knew it with every cell in my body. Someone was passing a story around about something she denied doing. I knew in an instant that she was guilty of this misdeed, and was lying to cover her tracks. There wasn’t an instant way of proving or disproving my impression, but I tucked it away in the back of my mind. Years later, more stories circulated that she’d done something similar once again. It wasn’t confirmation, but it was enough for me. She instantly went on my “do not trust” list.

At first, I thought this build-in “truth meter” was just a physical cue I was picking up on, that I was simply reading the other person’s body language. When people lie, they often will provide “tells”. Their voice might change, going a pitch or two higher, or they might touch their face often. Some people fidget, or look to the left frequently. Honestly, I can never remember which direction they look at, and wouldn’t know a lie-inspired fidget from normal behavior, so I realized there must be more to it.

For a long while, I just avoided the places that made me uncomfortable and narrowed my friends down to a handful of positive-minded people, but that wasn’t always possible. There are many times when an empath is forced to be in crowded places, or fly on airplanes, or find themselves in tears when someone shares a sad story. I can’t look at pictures of abused animals and children that people often post on Facebook without feeling it on a deeper level. And headaches? If you have one, then so do I. It got to a point where I had to do something about it.

The first thing I learned was how to ground myself. Grounding is a method of releasing all that excess emotion and energy into the ground. The visualization that helped me was to imagine myself as a tree with roots sinking deep into the soil. With every breath I’d take, I’d imagine a white loving light shining on my head, pushing the black, negative energy through my body, and eventually deep into the ground where it could be absorbed. Being in the shower as I did this was very helpful in the beginning because I had the physical sensation of water raining down on me. Now, I can do it anywhere with no more than a cleansing breath.

The next thing I learned was how to shield myself from the energy. Similar to the way I visualized a white light shining down on me, I imagined this white light surrounding me, radiating from my core. I saw it repel negative energy, pushing it back towards the sender. As I would part through a crowd of frantic people trying to get to their gate, I imagined myself safe inside my white light bubble, parting through the sea of energy, untouched and unscathed.

Others feel that meditation helps them. I haven’t had much luck with this technique. My mind wanders away from the serenity at hand and pretty soon I’m plotting out my next book, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t work for other people. Look for guided mediation on the Internet. There are plenty of them to be found.

Something else that helps me is to give myself little pep talks while I’m going through it. I was recently shopping at a very busy Wal-Mart. The place was packed to the gills with people who’d just gotten out of work and wanted to get home. Unfortunately, there were at least three screaming toddlers, and four cashiers on duty to handle the herd of impatient, angry people. I didn’t have to eavesdrop to hear the grumbling. It was coming at me from all directions. I felt myself getting tense and my heart began racing. It almost felt like a panic attack or what I image claustrophobia to feel like. I took a deep breath, grounded myself, shielded myself, and then began to reassure myself that it would be over soon. There are only eight people ahead of me. I should be through the line in less than twenty minutes. I pulled out my phone and began browsing through Facebook to see what everyone else was doing. Pretty soon, I was next in line and the ordeal was over. I wasn’t overloaded with other people’s energy and didn’t allow it to put me in the same sort of mood. Mission accomplished.

There is a flip side to this. Being an empath can actually be wonderful, if you know how to use it correctly. I am able to tune into other people’s emotions and help them with situations. I’ve been told I’m a very good listener, which is also an empathic trait. Animals love me and I love them as well. I can tell when one of them isn’t feeling well or is out of sorts about something going on in the house, and then solve the problem before it becomes an issue.

And…it makes me a writer. I tune into other people and then mirror their emotions on paper.

If you feel the same way, do some research. There are plenty of “are you an empath” quizzes on the Internet. While many of them are very generalized, allowing you to conform yourself into the category fairly easily, use your best judgment. If you feel it, you feel it. You can call it what you want, or not call it anything at all. By all means, I am not an expert on this. I can only tell you how I feel and how I deal with it.

So, the next time you find yourself in a situation like I described earlier, take the time to ask the question or make a comment. “That’s a pretty necklace,” was all it took for me to get the confirmation I needed.

And remember to take a deep breath.

In with the positive energy, out with the negative.

It helps. It really does.