| Book
Review: Get Psychic! | |
|
Are you psychic? Would you like to be? Do you instinctively know who is calling when the phone rings? Can you "feel" when members of your family or close friends are in danger or in need of help, even though they are far from you? Do you think about a particular song just moments before you hear it played on the radio. Some would say these experiences can be chalked up to mere coincidence, while others say they are relatively common examples of psychic powers or ESP - extra-sensory perception - working in our lives.
Psychic
powers, generally referred to as psi by parapsychologists, is not a proven human
ability by scientific standards, although there are interesting experiments
being conducted at prestigious labs around the world with intriguing results.
The "proof" for psi, however, can be found in the mountain of
anecdotal evidence - the real-life experiences of people of every nation and
every culture who testify that telepathy, clairvoyance and premonitions are
quite real.
We all have psychic ability, says Stacy Wolf in her new book, Get Psychic! Discover Your Hidden Powers. Some people seem to be able to tap these powers more readily than others, however, and hence the reason for her book. Wolf's aim is to help readers learn to turn on their intuitive light switches and flex their inner "psychic muscles."
Books like Get Psychic! must be approached with an open mind and a positive attitude about the subject. If you're looking for a scientific explanation or verification for how and why psi might work, this book doesn't attempt to provide it. If, however, you suspect that ESP is possible and that you might be able to improve your innate abilities, Wolf can offer guidance. And approaching the subject of ESP and other psychic powers with an open mind and positive attitude might not be as much of a cop-out as it might sound. Because we do not know how these powers of the mind work, it may very well be that they require an open mind and positive approach in order to work. This may be the reason psi abilities are so difficult to test and prove by conventional scientific methods.
Wolf doesn't promise supernatural results either. She does not claim that after reading her book you'll be able to predict the future, read your neighbor's mind or predict next week's lottery numbers. What she does suggest is that the ideas, games and exercises in her book will help you tune in more keenly to your intuition - and this could open up for you entirely new insights about yourself and the people around you.
After giving the reader a "Psychic Ability 101" primer and a "Psy-Q Test," Get Psychic! provides several chapters of exercises, most of them in game form, to help get the psychic juices flowing. Why games? Wolf's idea is to keep the sessions fun and interesting while providing a way to keep score of your progress, which she encourages the reader to do with a notebook or journal.
The first section of games are those that readers can play on their own. These include "Intuition Television," "Introducing Angels and Spirit Guides," and "The Love Psychic." For each, Wolf provides step-by-step instructions, rules, how to score yourself, and tips for what to expect and how to achieve success.
Subsequent chapters offer psychic games for two people and for groups of people - psychic party games.
A basic question that most readers will have when clearing their minds and conjuring psychic visions is: "How do I know I didn't just make up the information?" Wolf answers it this way:
When we receive messages, we all feel that we are making it up, and there is a good reason for this. When you receive information from your sixth sense, it does not feel the same way it does when you receive information from your five outer senses. You are not going to have some concrete physical thing to point to as the source of your information. Your psychic powers work by using what is already in your brain to help you understand the message... This questioning goes away when you build up some trust in your abilities.
So how do you interpret the words and images you might receive in a psychic session? In the book appendix, Wolf provides a dictionary of psychic signs and symbols and the meaning that they could have. Seeing coins in a vision or dream, for example, could mean they are "tokens from a higher source to show you that you are on the right track, that you are loved, and that everything will be okay."
Get Psychic! is a
well-thought-out (and attractively bound) book that is not likely to disappoint
the reader who is eager to explore the deeper possibilities and meanings of
human intuition. If nothing else, the exercises detailed in the book will
further the reader's ability to meditate and concentrate on one's inner thoughts
and feelings in a positive atmosphere. And it's best to keep in mind Wolf's own recommendation
for this psychic quest: "Have fun, and don't take anything too
seriously." 
Get Psychic! is published by Warner Books, Inc.
> Poll: Do you think everyone has inborn psychic abilities?
Have You Had a |
Previous Features
