Do you ever get so excited/moved/transformed by something you’re reading that you exclaim “Oh my God!” and have to stop to reflect? Usually it happens when I’m on the subway. I look up, full of awe, and make eye contact with whoever is there. And I get really disappointed that people have no idea what I read to make me so excited. I find myself looking at people and yearning for them to understand, or to be confused enough to ask me what happened. People tend to be too engrossed with their iPod playlist or the Sports section, though.
Tonight the moment came after I read a passage in the book I just started, Your Sixth Sense: Activating Your Psychic Potential. It’s by this woman Belleruth Naparstek who’s a psychotherapist. She talks about how intuition and psychic “pops” have helped her be a more effective therapist. She says that everyone has psychic potential, it’s just that it’s an undervalued ability in our culture and given a bad rep by 900 numbers and that coin-operated thing Tom Hanks uses in Big.
Belleruth thinks that some people are “more wired than others.” She interviewed 40 intuitives/psychics for the book. I haven’t gotten to that part, yet, but she writes, “If I had to create a composite profile from my sample, I would find a woman in her midforties with an advanced degree in one of the mental health professions who would say she was born with her psychic ability and could likely point to a parent or grandparent who displayed a lot of it, too.”
That part didn’t excite me, it was the part that came right after. Mostly because a lot of it sounded eerily familiar, and because some parts were just ridiculous:
Other typical features would be a tendency toward bilateral dominace (some degree of two-handedness or two-sidedness as opposed to leading strictly with the right or left side); a stronger-than-average likelihood of being an only child; the presence of some talent and experience in the arts, often in more than one modality (music, dance, art, theater, poetry, design, and so on); a tendency to be either a little dyslexic or else an exceptional student and sometimes both (with a greater-than-usual chance of having a photographic memory, too); lots of experience as a meditator; a powerful need to spend time alone and time in nature on a regular basis; a higher-than-average likelihood of finding broken watches, light bulbs, and small appliances in her proximity, at least at certain periods in her life; a tendency to experience phases of temporary endocrine system dysfunction, popping up and then subsiding, especially an over- or underfunctioning thyroid gland or set of adrenals; the tendency to be a night owl and sleep very little, with frequent interruptions in sleep; and a greater-than-average chance of having reported sighting a UFO or even encountering an extraterrestrial.
Yeah, these things can be attributed to lots of people, but it’s still exciting. I’m ambidextrous, I’ve got the arts things, I have dyslexic moments, I stay up all night, I’m an annoyingly light sleeper, and I choose/like to spend the majority of my time alone. I don’t recall ever seeing a UFO or encountering an extraterrestrial, but that doesn’t mean it hasn’t happened or won’t happen. I don’t know about the small appliance thing, but my coffee maker did break a couple months ago and I’ve been known to blow a fuse or two. What else… Oh! You probably can’t call it “lots of experience” with meditating, but I did go to that cult’s meditation workshop. And my endocrine system didn’t really kick in until, like, two years ago.
Anyway. That’s all. But since I’m sort of on the topic…I wish Patricia Arquette didn’t whine so much as Allison DuBois on NBC’s “Medium.” I’ve only seen it twice, but she’s CONSTANTLY moaning to her husband. It’s nice they have that whole support system going. It just that…she could be such a strong female character and instead she looks and sounds like she’s always on the verge of bursting into tears. Woman up, ya know?
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