“I experienced a state of consciousness of not being awake and not being asleep….I thought my eyes were open and I was looking out my window and that I saw lightning flashes outside. Then I felt tremendous pressure on my chest and thought, “God is trying to push my soul out of my body”...I wasn't too afraid and it wasn't painful but the pressure was great indeed…I felt my heart pounding in my chest…I decided I wanted to wake up and thought I could do it if I just moved my head to the left. I did this and awoke.

7 of cups - many possibilities - some are illusions, some are not....

This image is one I colored from "The Tarot Coloring Book" by Theresa Reed.

Cognitive empathy is an act of will rather than feeling. It is an act of love at times when you cannot fully understand another’s experience, but know their experience is a valid one.

Can the future be predicted via psychic and/or Tarot readings? In my experience, no. I have had hundreds of readings by well over one hundred intuitives and their ability to accurately predict specific future events - mostly in the area of career and romance - have been resounding failures. I have had far far more misses than hits. and timelines have never panned out.

I believe a psychic reader tapes into the center of many possible futures. Picture the reader as being at the black center of the drawing to the right, many possible futures radiate from that center. Different readers will tap into different pathways, but not all of them. That is why you may get different outcomes presented to you as a querent when you read with different psychics. I made the mistake of setting my hopes on outcomes that I wanted while downplaying the predictions that were less favorable. That is what hope is, right? I knew the future was not set in stone, and I waited and waited for scenarios to come to pass; several years later I am still waiting. It can be a painful pill to swallow. And, it is not out of the ordinary fot a anxious client o get repeated readings from various readers seeking confirmation of the outcomes they are hoping for, spending lots of money in the process. Time will tell, of course, but if you go repeatedly to a reader and they make the same prediction but the timeline keeps changing, (always 2-3 months.weeks, days in the future), try to take a step back. and call in your wise mind to step in.

Predictive readers may have a gift at picking up the energy of a situation or relationship, but if they keep changing the timeframe, you may be on a wild goose chase . You can easily be strung aiong for years; I was. I finally forced myself to accept the reality that I could not put my life on hold, hoping a prediction would come to pass. The waiting ended up being a maturing process for me in which I gradually accepted that the relationship I had been in was not a healthy one, that the magical reunion was not going to happen, and that I had been misled, perhaps not maliciously so. In the vast majority of my readings, I never felt I was being intentionally manipulated. I felt the readers believed in their predictions as much as I did. That did not change the outcome.

I believe the intuitive’s training is critical. A psychic reader who has been guided and nurtured by ethical mentors and teachers, will come to see themselves as a empathic spiritual counselors, not fortune tellers. They will see the reading as a form of nurturing their client, who may be struggling, and will want to support them, not do them harm. When I have had readings by psychics associated with the College of Psychic Studies, the Berkeley Psychic Institute or Psychic Awakenings in Seattle, which all offer in depth, multiyear training programs to their students, I have never been misled or fed false hopes. I was never once given a prediction my ex would return. I cannot say the same for the psychic hotlines. Please see the entry on psychic hotlines for a more in depth discussion of the pros and cons of hotlines versus more traditional hour long readings scheduled in advance.