Psychic Soft Focus
Are you trying to “focus” your clairaudient intuition, your awareness of guiding voices, your psychic perception? Are you trying to concentrate and isolate these channels — to hear other “voices” — your higher self, your spirit guides?
Your full awareness is more than just your Thinking Mind. Your full awareness — your total consciousness — includes your intuition, your subconscious, your emotions, your psychic abilities, your vibes, your gut… It’s bigger, broader, softer, looser, fuzzier — it encompasses more than your Thinking Mind.
Visualizing the Invisible
Picture your psychic abilities — your intuition — in particular, your clairaudience — as the beam of a flashlight. When you concentrate — when you focus — you tighten up, you narrow, you limit the beam of your “hearing”.
Fig 1 — Normal Listening
Let’s say the above illustration represents multiple channels of information — other voices — on different levels:
- The big White Wave represents the information you hear in your normal, real, everyday perception — say it’s me, talking to you — or your reading this article…
- The Light-Blue Waves represent “other voices” — let’s say they are your spirit guides or your higher self…
- The White Circle represents the beam of your conscious awareness when you listen — what you’re paying attention to
Or you could picture this as a car radio tuner:
- The big White Wave is the station you’re hearing loud and clear…
- The Light-Blue waves are the other voices — other stations — that are potentially in your range, if you just tune them in…
- The White Circle is the dial you can adjust to pick up other stations…
You know how when you’re looking for something on the radio, you can set your dial between two stations, and actually hear both of them, overlapping? There may be a little noise, or static, one may be clearer and stronger than the other, but you can hear more than one station at the same time.
If you tune the dial up or down, to bring in one more clearly, you lose the other. But when you’re sitting on one “station” you have no idea what’s coming in on another station right next to it — even though the other stations are there.
If you tune in too tight — if you focus or concentrate the beam of your perception too much — you end up with a smaller, narrower awareness, like this:
Fig 2 — Over-focused Listening
Focusing and concentrating with only your Thinking Mind does the opposite of picking up More — your goal is to listen bigger — if you try to isolate or pinpoint or laser-focus your awareness, without knowing exactly where the best “spot” is, you end up narrowing the light beam of your clairaudient intuition. You could point this narrow listening at three different places, and hit silence, noise, or a smaller section of what you’re already getting.
Here’s what narrow spots of clairaudient listening look like — these are limited expectations — what you think you’re supposed to be going for:
Fig 3 — Little Listening, All Over the Place
This lesson or instruction is channeled information from someone else’s spirit guides. I did a Reading for a woman a few months ago who had powerful natural psychic ability. She asked me to ask her guides how she could improve or develop her clairaudience — what could she do to hear them better.
What I’m trying to describe here is what they explained to me. It’s very difficult translating and relaying clairvoyant and clairaudient information — I’m not sure how well I’m pulling it off.
The sitter for that reading wrote back:
“I know that I am clairaudient — I know that I hear my guides — but I’m not always clear what they’re saying, unless [certain moods, circumstances, or conditions apply]…”
Your Thinking Mind is the “culprit” in limiting your clairaudience, clairvoyance, and intuition. Look at your word choice: “I am clairaudient… BUT I am not always clear… UNLESS…” You are negating your ability and attaching expectations as well as conditions. You are identifying limitations.
“Okay. I can accept this. Do you know when you are unaware of an aspect about yourself that suddenly comes through to you in your field of perception, it is often very difficult to see and understand. That is where I am at. I don’t totally comprehend what you are saying, but I can feel that it is spot on. I think I need to just re-read it several times till it starts to sink in. What you’re suggesting is that I completely change the way I have been my whole life. (Not that I don’t agree with you, I do!) This is no small task. I am just not sure where to start in this mess of me. Any and all suggestions are greatly appreciated.”
Again, let’s say your intuitive abilities are a flashlight.
You know how you can twist a flashlight to focus the beam into a tighter brighter smaller spot, or twist it the other way and it expands the circle of illumination with a looser, fuzzier pool of light?
Okay — don’t think “I need to change” as in “I need a new flash light.” You don’t even need to turn it on — it’s ON, it works. What your guides are telling you about expanding and developing your intuitive abilities is this:
The limitations you experience are because that beam is too tightly focused. Don’t change it. There’s nothing wrong with it. Just ALLOW it to become bigger, fuzzier, expansive — allow your definition of what is intuitive information to become looser, more relaxed.
The Goal for Hearing More:
Fig 4 — Psychic Intuition doesn’t begin as anything precise
Yes, listening clairaudiently will be fuzzier — it’s not a laser beam — it’s not about precision — you will see more and learn how to hear more and discern more in your psychic channel by letting it get bigger, softer.
Note how you’re catching more by doing the opposite of focusing or concentrating. With a big, broad, sloppy, relaxed intuition you’re more likely to pick up a bunch of “stuff” at the same time.
THEN, you can start isolating within that — tightening up and tuning in and spotlighting a smaller area within the bigger source — then you know where to shine that focused beam — like this:
Fig 5 — Begin to focus after you find the right area to focus in
Your guides are suggesting you change, but not as you expect. They’re not saying you can’t, you don’t, or you’ve got it all wrong. They’re just telling you to back away from that tiny spot of expectation and view the intuitive information from “higher up” with a larger focal point. Let the light you’re shining grow to illuminate more by twisting it the other way — looser.
Do you see? Does that clarify? It’s not a reprimand, they’re just telling you “Here, honey, do it like this — SEE? There you go… Look at how much more is there now…”
Seek Wisdom — Practice Love
Contacting Your Spirit Guide 101
Free resources for Shift Your Spirits readers:
- Read the eBook by Slade Roberson especially for beginners who want to know who/what spirit guides are and how to communicate with them
- Listen to the mp3 preview of the Spirit Guide Attunement portion of the Talking to Your Spirit Guides class by Slade Roberson
- Try the meditation to Meet a Guide contributed by Jeff Lilly of Druid Journal
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What are you? Psychic?
I utilized this very technique the past two weeks in conjunction with something else you said (somewhere, sometime - I can’t find it now) along the lines of going with the first word we hear. That the voice of spirit would be immediate and would only be diluted by further analysis and overthinking.
As a result of softening my focus, going with the flow, and heeding the very first words I heard, I’m about to embark on a new adventure. Change of career. Change of life. Change of me.
Once I made the decision to do what I heard, I’ve been in a constant state of amazement to see how dozens of associated details have clicked effortlessly into place. EF-FORT-LESS-LY! It’s amazing. And thrilling.
That sound you hear is me giggling!
Oh, and the Surrender thing. I’ve been using that tool, too.
Slade,
Great explanation. I myself am usually switching between two extremes of getting nothing at all or a lot of stuff all over the place. In the latter case, I usually can’t make sense of anything and end up not trusting myself. This makes everything much clearer!
With my claircognizance, I sense rather than listen. I sense, either before, during, or after I perform an action, what it is I feel called to do in response to an observation or a question. It is as if I become someone else, if only for a moment, when I perform an action. And the same analogy applies. As I loosen up on what I think or believe or expect I can do for myself, and allow the Invisible Hand that Guides, I find a more seamless integration of thought and action guiding the performance of my actions. Sometimes the mood, the conditions, or the circumstances are ripe for reception; sometimes not. But always the capacity to ask and receive is there, waiting to be tapped and applied.
Lola,
This should sound REALLY familiar to you (wink!)
And yes, I believe I did pass on the tip about the immediacy of response:
Did I say that, or did your Guides? Oh well, the spirit guide readings are my opportunity to source new information, and I adapt it liberally.
: )
Congratulations on your career/life changes — moving toward the changes that are right for you should feel incredibly comfortable, familiar, and… right on!
Vitor,
Awesome, thank you!
This was one of those pieces I worked on, put away, tried again to explain, put away… Then I was inspired to make the graphic images. That went pretty smoothly, and I was pleased with them.
But once I started working these metaphors of light and sound — and then mixing them… I had to put this away yesterday and come back to it today, because I really felt it was a confusing mess.
I’m so glad it offered some clarity!
Christos,
Well said — thanks for taking this and applying it to claircognizance, the idea holds up well in your context.
I wonder, is it easier for people to see how feelings can be powerful, and yet even less likely to be pinned down or identified?
I’m glad this hasn’t just given everybody a WTF headache — this stuff is challenging to communicate — thanks for getting it and helping me flesh it out.
Dear Slade,
A great one again. Unfocused attention…My cat does it very well and Chi Gong teaches the same thing. We are so afraid to relax in our beings so we believe we have to hold hard to stay clear…
Slade, is it better to work with just one of our psychic abilities or to use them all as they come to us? Is it more in balance to use them all? I seem to go back and forth between suddenly knowing something and hearing voices that tell me things, with an occasional vision, more like a still shot from a camera rather than a movie. And then at other times, I get a strong feeling about something. Am I making any sense? I tend to just go with the flow in this area. Thanks for the stretch.
That is kind of like how I used to listen to the symphony. I would concentrate on one section of the orchestra..usually my old friend the cello and I would only hear the cello’s piece, then I would switch to another section and focus in that that section. By focusing on the individuals, as fun as that was, I sometimes lost the nuances of the piece as a whole. Now I close my eyes, sit back and enjoy all the notes, all the instruments’ sounds wash over me.
I am re-learning (allowing myself) to open up to my gifts as a whole, as I shut down almost completely after a horrifying experience. It’s time again to sit back and enjoy again.
Patrice,
I am not aware of Chi Gong — thanks for making that connection.
As for feline consciousness, my cats have taught me more about non-verbal communication than anyone!
: )
Patricia,
I would certainly use all the different forms of Knowing you have access to — much like you use all five senses simultaneously, without the need to separate, say, a smell from a flavor.
They are actually so overlapping, and intertwined, that it’s sometimes impossible to define one without the context of the others. I focus on “listening” because my “ear” is strongest, but a large component to hearing my guides is simply “knowing.”
Cathy,
Your symphony metaphor is fantastic — yes!
That IS a good metaphor.
This morning, having my coffee out on the patio surrounded by woods and the huge pulsing energy fields of the trees, it occurred to me that it’s like seeing auras. When I was learning this skill, I worked so hard at it. Strained to see and never did. Couldn’t really figure out what people who COULD see were talking about. Until I learned to see without really looking. To relax and loosen the focus - then BAM! Wow. Look at that! How is it I never saw such things before?!!
Lola,
Yes, I often think of this “shift” of focus as being similar to those “magic 3-D pictures” that were everywhere a decade or so ago. You know the ones — where it looks like a big fragmented mess of visual noise, and the trick is to sort of cross your eyes or look “through” the image, focusing on a point just in front of or behind the image — and suddenly it’s there.
Another similar visual is looking at stars in the night sky — you can’t see them as well looking directly at them as you can looking to the side of them.
Energy fields and auras are like this to me — they don’t exist on the literal surface of the object generating them…
Or those heat waves that come off of asphalt in the summer — visible from a distance, above the road, yet you can’t see them by standing in them and looking straight down at the pavement…
I wonder, is it easier for people to see how feelings can be powerful, and yet even less likely to be pinned down or identified?
A wonderful question, Slade. For me, in my experience with claircognizance, feelings are not so much powerful as they are subtle (sometimes unusually so). The more calm and clear I am, the easier it is for me to pick them up and let them guide my actions and behavior. Certainly, I can identify them as I “go with the flow”; pinning them down, however, sounds too much like effort in a process that is (ideally) calm and effortless. The effect of many such subtle feelings of guidance can be powerful, but that power seems to come from a place not my own. Perhaps I would do well to take ownership of it.
Christos,
Brilliant point about the relationship between power and subtlety… You don’t really “pin down” intuition any more than you “pin down” a breeze — you stand in it, feel it, know it… I guess this is where the “catching a whiff of” figure of speech comes from…
Slade,
This is going to help SO MUCH now that I’ve made the decition to get this ability back. Thank you — again!
Jewels
It would be nice to have this info 10 years ago.My dyslexic life. Better late than never. I just figured out this wave thing the last month or so. I know mine has more to do with my personal growth. I love reading your site! Blessings,Deb
This article about the soft focus is just what I tried to explain to a friend of mine some time ago. She is so intent on having quote psychic abilities that her expectations are negating what she should be experiencing. I explained to her that all channels are open and she should relax and let it happen. She looks at me frustrated and says I guess so, if you say so. What she wants is to be able to experience what I am experiencing and I tried to explain to her it isn’t always the same for everyone and that she is trying too hard. I did recommend this site to her and this article hoping it would help her. Sad thing tho is that she has moved on to another friend that is a astrologer to rely on for readings. I think she has tired of my trying to teach and explain, because she’s not getting instant gratification. sigh Anyway I like this site, Slade you have helped me understand some things, your good at bringing the point across. I’m now getting aquainted with my collective guides, it’s coming easier.