Black Birds

Sometimes, as a psychic teacher, I think, "My students hate me." 

As I reflect on a recent class, I lash myself with psychic wet noodles.  I resist giving myself any kudos for the class I just taught and focus on the one really wrong thing I said to a student.  

I weep on my healing guide's shoulder.

I was wrong because that student couldn't handle what I said. I poked a picture in her space. A picture is an energized event, belief, value. It may or may not have originated from the spirit who owns the body. But it lives within our aura, energy body, chakra and can determine our reactions. 


We can believe our pictures. We can recognize they are not our spirit. We can discern which ones are us. Or we can have no separation from our pictures, no consciousness that breathes in between our spirit and the picture. So when a teacher pokes one, and communicates the difference between the spirit and the picture, there is always a reaction: laughter, confusion, anger, disbelief, a sudden discontent within, "Who am I, if not this picture?"

This particular student's angst, has oozed into my space. It has effectively doused my enthusiasm; I am pouting, sighing and rolling my eyes at myself. "Why am I even doing this anyway?”, I ask. I’m feeling guilt for having touched a subject that made my student close down, shame for speaking up, and I’m questioning my ability as a teacher.

This is what happens when I lose my space to energy that is not mine: serious self doubt.  After 18 years of this work, I am walloped by the rawness of certain moments. The length of time I’ve practiced my psychic tools has shortened the time in between the rawness and my ability to find my answers. Usually.

I make a decision. I allow the discomfort of the moment to lead me to an answer.  I put on my psychic-Nancy-Drew-hat.  I step out of the mass of feeling information that has taken me over.  I'm doing this in a split second; the self-flagellation hasn't stopped. I've shifted my perspective of it.  I find a moment of stillness inside and ask, "Where is this coming from?"

Then I recognize the energy traveling down my female line. It is an energetic place which has a physical structure within our female body, two lines of energy between our 6th chakra and our ovaries. 

I am facing the firing squad. Generations of grandmothers and great grandmothers hurl their opinion at me. Aghast with my word choice, my blatant disregard for their rules, they say, "Women do not speak like that," and stamp their feet.  There I am, right there, alone underneath a telephone line hung low with ravens cawing their discontent, stomping a beat into the phone wires.

Their disapproval has registered at an instinctual level. It bypassed all my psychic tools and went right for the womb, which I thought was mine, but they are currently claiming as their own. 

Ah... the energy of the female line. When I least expect it, I can be pummeled by a century old mentality which leaves me little room for breath. My Puritan grandmothers and Scottish Catholic great-grandmothers. These days I experience this momentary loss of self (ie: pressure to be perfect) mostly as a Psychic teacher and Minister. I have eradicated the effect of our differences out of my personal communication; I can say the wrong thing. But I can't quite move them out of my teaching space.  

This is my student's challenge as well - allowing herself the freedom to say what needs to be said in the moment - otherwise I wouldn't be contemplating self-loathing so acutely.  We are beautiful mirrors. 

If I am not responsible for everything that happens around me, my grandmothers become uncomfortable. This is what prompts their pestering for my perfect communication skills. This is their trick to keeping me in line. "Tow the (female) line, Michelle," they squawk. This translates to, “Don’t push people’s buttons. Don’t say anything wrong.” 
 
In a psychic reading, I tell my clients what I see. If they are off their path, I tell them. I have a gentle way to do this. I name the energy that is getting in the way and speak directly to the recipient. But when I teach or talk at a Church, the recipients I speak to can be neatly bundled energetically with their ancestors, who may not give them room to hear.  This is where it gets messy. There may be no separation between the spirit in the body and their family's truth for them.

I bumble my way into truth. I sidestep my grandmothers' tether in order to share an opportunity a student can bring into her life. I try to set it up in a way that can be heard. But sometimes a student isn't ready to make a break from her inner black birds. And everybody flies away.