When I was about 4 or 5 years old, some of my earlier memories involved talking to people I could not see. It was like I knew someone was there. I could hear them. I just couldn’t see them with my naked eye. Were these souls that had crossed over? Were they people from another dimension that I had auditory access to?
They weren’t there all the time, but they would show up during quiet times especially when no one else is around. As I got older, I couldn’t hear the voices much but I still could feel another presence in the room. Once, after getting home from school, I was alone in the living room. “If you’re there,” I said, “show me a sign. Prove it!” And I watched one of the vinyl miniblind strings get pulled and the miniblinds went up! NOT DOWN. UP! I quickly left the room and shut the door behind me. I didn’t want to venture anymore.
Perhaps a year or two later, I might have been about 6 or 7. I recall hearing a woman’s voice. It was soothing and calm. She called me by my first name, repeatedly. I could hear her as clear as day, but couldn’t see her. I asked her where she was. I started looking for her throughout the apartment. It sounded like she was standing right beside me, but I was determined to find her. She didn’t stay for long. She told me she was there to tell me that I would do something important when I grew older… as if I had a special task to fulfill. “Remember this,” she said, “You will do something very important.” As she said good-bye, her voice faded away to sound like distant echoes. I think she told me she would be back in touch with me at a later time, but I don’t recall for sure. All I remember is that I will do something very important.
When I was about 12 or 13, I started to notice that my dreams told the future or told stories of what was happening somewhere else. I had gotten into a fight with my friend Russell in middle school. He called me a slut and I never wanted to speak to him again. This was in the U.S. That summer, I was sent to live with my father in Thailand. I had a dream that the phone was ringing. I picked up the phone and it was Russell. “Hi, I just wanted to call and tell you that I’m sorry,” he said. The conversation was short and we hung up the phone, but the dream continued on. It may have taken me back to middle school or to a park… A few weeks later, my sister called me from America and said, “Some dude named Russell called for you. He said he was sorry. That’s all he really called to say.” “I had a feeling he had called,” I told her, but I didn’t tell her about my dream.
The following years, I started to notice I could pick up on people’s emotions. I absorbed them like a sponge. If someone was having a crappy day and they were sitting next to me, I could feel what they were feeling. I experimented with this. Every day in Art class, I would try to gauge how my classmate Nat was feeling and I’d ask her about it. Most of the time, she would validate it. Sometimes, she didn’t want to talk about her feelings. I was fine with that. I was just amazed I had this ability.
I had other abilities too. I found out. I could sense when someone would call me before they actually did. I could feel when someone was thinking of me. And when it was a guy going through puberty thinking of a girl he had a crush on, let me just tell you, I could feel that too. It was weird!
Towards the end of ninth grade, I met a friend who introduced me to tarot cards, to candle spells, communicating with spirits, and praying to God. Her family was Muslim, but her mom had an interest in the occult. By the time it was nearing summer, rumors had spread that we were witches or wanna be teens from the movie, the Craft. I had never even seen the movie, but I was interested in this other realm… of spirits, of seeing, of God. Who was God? Did God exist? How did He/She fit into all of this? I had no idea. I was raised Buddhist.
That summer after 9th grade, I prayed to God for the first time. I was going through a really rough time and I prayed to God, “If you exist, show me a sign. Prove it!” The next thing I know, I was knocked down, on the floor! Something miraculous happened and I’ll have to save it for another time, but oh boy! Did God exist! He/She surely showed me.
I don’t remember if it was that same summer or the summer after, but a family friend of ours, someone I called Uncle, suffered a stroke was paralyzed on his left side. The family saw traditional doctors, but they also had a medicine man come over to the house to do energy work. He didn’t look like a tribal village medicine man I had pictured when I heard the words. He had short hair and wore normal clothes like a tan polo shirt with Khaki pants, but something about him was different. I was fascinated. I would watch as the man prayed over my uncle and lay hands over my uncle’s left side. I could feel the energy in the room shift. I could sense that this man was trying to get the energy to flow back into my uncle’s left side. At one point, as he lifted his hand up over my uncle’s arm, my uncle’s left hand followed his. But they weren’t touching. And my uncle was paralyzed on that side? How did that happen?!
After the session was over, I asked the medicine man to explain what he was doing. He gave me some nonchalant answer like, “Healing his chi.” And I didn’t know what that meant, but before I could get another question out, the man looked at me and said, “You… have certain gifts don’t you?” He took me by surprise. But I nodded. “You have the ability to see beyond the five senses.” I nodded again. “You can do more than just see. You can feel… and hear… and maybe smell beyond the five senses… Can’t you?” He asked me.
Tears started to fill my eyes. That was the first time I had felt understood in a long time. “Yes,” I stammered. “I can… and I don’t know what to do with it.” “I’ll teach you!” He said, waving his forefinger with excitement.
We brought my mother into the conversation and she agreed that for the next few weeks when the medicine man came to work on my uncle, he would carve some time afterward to help me work on my psychic abilities. That was the first time I fully admitted to myself and anyone else that there was something different about me. I didn’t know how to explain it before. But the next few weeks and the next few years, I would come to a greater understanding of the spiritual world and how I could tap into it.
To be continued…