I have been a psychic medium for 25 years since my first year in college. At least that number reflects the first time that I suspected that my perception was different, in the mystical sense, than most of the people around me. But early on, I had no real way of knowing what was actually happening in terms of the phenomena that I was experiencing. No mentor was available to define it for me – to give it a name, some discipline and direction, or even basic guidance.

The only “mentorship” accessible to me at that time were celebrity psychics on T.V. who had authored books and were on speaking tours around the world. Of course, their legitimacy remained in question. But I knew of nowhere else to look, besides the local metaphysical bookstore, to inquire into the apparent rapid expansion that my mind/consciousness was undergoing at age nineteen.

The local metaphysical store, though somewhat helpful, was an ambiguous portal that pointed to countless books leading to unfamiliar possibilities. There was a sort of white-light-kindness and openness that I encountered in the shop staff and a meditation circle that met frequently on site to help people access spaciousness and deeper states of awareness. But I was learning a new language and it was very much a stop & start process, kind of herky-jerky in my ability to translate and integrate the transition I was undergoing.

I now know this is how the journey starts for most of us. We don’t know enough when we begin, so too, we don’t know what to ask. It’s a journey into the dark even though we’re heading towards the light. But starting on that trailhead of unknowing feels a little shadowy, clumsy, anxious, and uncertain. We don’t yet know that what we are doing is remembering. We are remembering a core part of our consciousness that society at large has grown to undervalue, dismiss, criticize, suspect, and parse out from what is essential for living. It has also certainly been excluded from our formal education. We have, in countless ways, had the memory of our intuitive senses and our psychic minds stripped from our awareness, and even our acceptance, over the course of lifetime. Plus, how can we trust something that we don’t even remember and that we are discouraged to explore?

We soon learn that the issue isn’t even just what to ask, but who to ask. We find out, through talking about it with the wrong kind of people (ones still unwittingly trapped in forgetting and conditioning) that there are very few people who have preserved this memory, or resurrected and reclaimed it, who are also living with it at the front and center of their lives. Those who are living with it at the helm look more like curious characters to us, at first. They often wear the remembering on the outside, in juxtaposition to mainstream society or our parents/families of origin. They’re often grown hippies, after all. Hair still long, clothes flowy, cats in the shop window, crystals on the dash, marijuana cigarette in the tray, botanicals drying by the door…that kind of thing. At least that’s our summation, with our limited, superficial understanding at the time. Meanwhile, everyone is trying to make us “successful” in one way or another and we wonder, are these characters successful? Are they legit? What do they know that I forgot? Is it possible to stay on this mountain and see this all the way through? We can tell that they’re the ones who didn’t quite conform. We suspect that we’re being called to the same general task and similar themes of living, but we’re too green to know yet. The deep conditioning of society still has us in its clutches and our mind is torn.

So, we find out, to our dismay, through trial and error, that we will have to walk much of this journey alone. There’s a lot to sort out. And to protect the reintegration and healing of our consciousness, and the gifts that reintegration brings to ourselves and others through intuitive awakening, we learn to be careful about seeking acceptance and support. Hence, we go it alone and remain in the closet with it for many years until we encounter safe spaces to explore it, develop it, talk about it, and use it to serve others.

So, in the early days, the only people who knew about this part of me were roommates, boyfriends, and a few generous, inquisitive friends and coworkers. No doubt, the cat had been quietly let out of the bag on multiple occasions while drinking after work with coworkers at the bar of the restaurant where I was employed or maybe as a segue from a conversation about astrology or some other trending, easier to digest topic on the spiritual arts. But one detail was common, I was usually the only one who really knew what I was talking about and even I didn’t know much.

By that time, I had taken plenty of jaunts into the psychedelic realm, as psychedelics had been one of my party drugs of choice. Since high school I had been fascinated by the invitations they extended into aspects of reality that are normally less accessible and was intrigued by the qualities of myself, relationships, and group energy that these plant medicines brought forth. I was also living my nuevo-hippie dream of the late 1990’s, attending a Western North Carolina mountain college that was listed in High Times magazine for its weed culture and enveloped in a commune-like circle of friendships with interesting, intelligent, divergent young people whom I camped and hiked with, went to music shows/festivals with, and played in the sun on the college green with when I was supposed to be in class. It all spoke to what I wanted at the time, which was freedom; freedom to experience and explore life and myself on my own terms. What I didn’t know then was that these plant medicines (though we didn’t call them that at the time) were keys unlocking chambers of my mind where intuitive knowing was stowed away. They were keys to remembering.

My struggle with chronic depression, which began at age thirteen and which I was often able to conceal in social circles by using my humor, charisma, tenacity, and magnanimous spirit, was also a key. After all, I had frequently peered into the abyss of my own mind and inner experience, looking for the roots of my pain (which felt cryptic and relentless) and solutions for it.  In essence, my dark night of the soul (pain & incongruency rising up as new wisdom) had occurred before it does for many people, in childhood, and I had already spent a lot of time sorting through that. Through that sorting I had already discovered that there was much underneath the surface of life yet to be understood.  And even though I somehow knew that most people were not interested in going there, I knew that I had no choice. It was part of my makeup and deeper life impulse to open those doors.

The last key was a product of my complicated relationship with my overbearing, verbally and emotionally abusive, controlling, dominating, but loving father and the fallout of his narcissistic personality on my parent’s divorce in elementary school, my family life throughout the years, and the hits I took to my self-esteem, sense of self-empowerment, sense of genuine support and acceptance, inner safety, inner peace, and clear access to my inner knowing. It felt quite literally like my father took this last key from me at an early age. Being out in the world “on my own” for the first time felt like a glimpse into the possibility of getting that key back. Maybe, just maybe, I could get free from his fixed perspectives on how I ought to live and who I ought to be. Maybe I could remember more of my true self beyond all the stress, pressure, punitive unpredictability, and harsh dictates involved with being his daughter. Healing the toxic masculine wounding in my life that began with him was part of unlocking the doors of perception.

Even so, it would take me nearly two more decades to fully step into myself as an Intuitive Medium and to uncover the central layers of the intuitive awakening journey. We’re talking over 7,000 days of remembering and forgetting and remembering again! And even as I wrap this path into the terms “Intuitive Medium” and “intuitive awakening journey”, please know that that doesn’t even begin to encompass what the awakening really is. (I’ll explain more further down.)

So, how do you teach such a thing? It feels at once both highly personal and impersonal/universal. It seems layered beyond what is measurable. It’s both abstract work and concrete work. It’s both Grace and effort and sometimes the end of efforting altogether. It’s hundreds of pages read, and spiritual talks listened to, that amount to very little until you make them experiential. It’s one identity shift after another. It’s hundreds, if not thousands, of little deaths of the ego. It’s a mountain range of interpersonal healing work that never ends. It’s being brave and humble all in one fell swoop. It’s a lot of jumping even though you can’t see where you’re going to land. It’s dealing with your faith journey and your understandings and misunderstandings of the spirit realms head on. It’s a constantly flipping rolodex of spiritual/religious traditions and their teachings, especially the mystical ones. It’s a string of encounters with alternate realities and the unexplainable and transcendent. It’s living a messy human life while simultaneously polishing the soul. And alas, sometimes it appears to be spontaneous and without cause at all! For a long time, that’s how I thought it arrived within me – suddenly and without reason. But looking back, I can see the build-up and I also what increased and decreased my intutive connection at various times over the course of my life.

How in the world do you teach this? Where do you begin? Keep in mind, not everyone enters through the same doors. How do you meet people at their door? What are the keys that unlock the doors of perception for all of us? Are they generally the same? How do you help people who aren’t even sure they are worth it or that it’s real? How do you help people who aren’t 100% confident that their intuition is their primary sense in the world, one that is as natural as breathing? These questions have haunted me for a long time, as I have a compulsion to help people who are on the same path, a few steps or miles behind me. I want to help because I could have used the help, myself. I want to help because it’s part of my Divine assignment here; my purpose.

But here is why it’s the most daunting: people generally do not really want to do the spiritual work that actually unlocks this remembering; this gift of Spirit. The ego, itself, is not that interested, although it comes to think it is and wants others to think it is, too. The spiritualized life is very appealing: you mean there is place where I can be myself and belong and focus on love, harmony, manifesting, high vibes, and all the freedom and fun of “woo-woo” and journeying and sitting in sacred circles with others? Sign me up! It’s a magnificent landing place for the immature, green, spiritualized superego. And to be fair, who wouldn’t want all that positivity, connection, and the promise of breaking down illusions that limit us and keep us small and miserable?

Nevertheless, the shadow side of the spiritualized life is that it’s a place where the idealized self-image, that has been freed of some of the conditioning of society/family, can be reborn. Here, I can experience myself as significant, free of the need for their approval and rules, and “woke”.  We, as people with complex ego structures, will seek for communities and “spiritual teachers” and “gurus” where the spiritualized ego is reinforced and rewarded, all the while accusing others, not ourselves, of doing the same. The very impulse towards being significant is one of the many clues that we are, in fact, not yet in conscious possession of the keys we have lost inside ourselves.

The trap here is a false sense of healing, a false sense of knowing, an underdeveloped intuition, an analytical stronghold on the spiritual path of awakening, a process that is more about memorization of the ways than it is about understanding and practice and integration of the ways. The trap here is wanting to be and exude all the spiritual things without being disciplined and in integrity in our private walk through the doors of perception. The trap is looking for the 12-step process, the certification, the spiritual framework or tool that will allow us to quit our job and do spirituality full time. The trap is the underexamined mind and soul that is still under the thumb of our inner, moralistic, virtue-signaling “sage” who is kept alive and in charge by our deepest wounds.

In fact, those who can live this intuitive knowing and deep mystical connection out, who know they are it, are often not that popular at all or are just easy to miss. They have taken off the glittery costume of the spiritualized self in exchange for the real thing. That’s not really that interesting to the masses, and in fact, it requires one who is deeply observant and fully in their intuition and spiritual body to catch it in another person or even in themselves. It is our nature to go to the shiny object even when something/someone else is radiating a more pure, clear, lived-in light. And sometimes, we will even meet the one who remembers and embodies that remembering and not even realize it because we want something/someone more blatant in its self-importance to show us the way. We want someone to affirm our superego. Why? Very plainly, like attracts like. We draw a match to where we are on the path. And we do that repeatedly as we do or do not grow.

Well then, how does one teach intuitive awakening? It can only be done if the teacher does not sell her soul to these constant temptations of dumbing it down and/or using it to serve the requests of her/his superego. The teacher has to live within his/her/their authority, which comes from active dedication to experiencing first hand and walking the often seemingly lonely walk towards union with something so large it can never be fully wrapped up into a program, a book, a course, a lecture, etc.. The teacher must be clear enough to say and mean, “Don’t for one minute put me on a pedestal because you think that I somehow have answers that you don’t also have within you somewhere. In fact, not one thing you are looking for is outside of you, and therefore, I am here to help you go deeper within yourself.” The teacher can make no other requests of the student except for that.

The student must accept that the journey is not linear; it’s more like stopping your boat spontaneously in the middle of the sea and jumping in, without the goal of searching for the shore or anything at all. It’s learning to be with what is there in the sea of consciousness without needing to make it smaller or larger than it is. The student must understand that the journey is an end to looking outside of themselves and stopping there, and a beginning to including everything inside of the self and never stopping. It’s not about saying, “I can no longer learn from him or her or that book or that religion or that group or whatever. It’s about saying, “It’s all part of me and once I receive whatever life has to offer through others or the group or the book or whatever, I go inside of myself to work it all the way through.” This is a subtle difference in orientation that takes a while for the student to figure out.

It’s absolutely true that a class, a book, a meditation circle, a set of practices can be nourishing breadcrumbs on the trail. There’s nothing wrong with going bitesize, and in fact, a lot of us like to learn and grow at that pace. But your expectations for how far you’re going to get into the landscape of intuitive awakening have to be proportional to the investment you’re making in your awakening at large. The only sustainable, effective way to this kind of intimate knowing/intuitive remembering is through: inquiry, examining the nature of life/creation, mind, and meditation; increasing our vitality and practicing the yoga of our lives, serving others, deep listening, practicing surrender beyond what we think we’re capable of, learning to rest in awareness and presence, changing our relationship with suffering, ungluing ourselves from incessant planning, theorizing, and judging; being in relationships as fuel for awakening itself, and allowing consciousness/awareness to do its work within us without so much of our intervention and self-protection. The whole process is one of getting free of entrapment which we, ourselves, loop ourselves into over and over again, but having compassion for our humanness the whole way. Unspiritualizing is a huge part of the work of becoming truly spiritual and intuitively awake. At some point, we must settle into who we are, with all our seemingly contrasting truths and complexities, and savor that the journey is not at all what we thought; it is way more!

So, teaching intuitive awakening is not really a thing. And that’s why it’s difficult to find teachers who can take you right to it with any kind of substantial success. However, it’s a natural outcome of the thing, which is a commitment to deeply living and examining the whole terrain of (spiritual) experience while cultivating a remembering path to our most connected, authentic self, which always leads to oneness. It’s basically braving the question, how many ways can I get free, even just for a blip of time? And then unattaching from our neuroticism around that same question and allowing life to reveal everything in its own time.

So, if you find an intuitively awakened friend/teacher, who can help you with that, keep them. It sometimes takes a mystic to unearth the mystic within you. One really has to awaken that aspect of themselves in order to awaken intuitively. So even when/if you’re not ready for them, even when you see a part of their humanness that makes you weary of your own, even when you want them to give you the 12 steps and they’re telling you there are 12,000,000 more to go, keep them. If they point you back to yourself every time you run away, keep them. If they remind you that the two of you are the same, both teacher and student simultaneously, keep them. If they won’t stop asking you essential questions, even though you’ve got a strong armor against them, keep them. If they are helping you remember that you are it and it is all within you, keep them. A true teacher is willing to admit: I haven’t figured much of this out either, but I’m working on it and I see that the work never ends and we’ll go together, even it if takes lifetimes, and we won’t dumb it down because to do so is not life-affirming in any sense of the word.

That’s the only way to teach intuitive awakening that is sustainable and the only way to learn it, unless of course, you go it “alone”, like I mostly did. And even then, the Universe/Spirit will follow your intention, as long as it’s sincere, and send helpers to meet you along the way. So there’s no such thing as truly doing it alone. The helpers will come in many forms: trees and plants, children who know too much, the death of parents, memorable encounters with “strangers”, “accidents”, soulmates, unexplained karmic connections, a class that changes you, a healing session, an unforgettable road trip, a chronic illness, a way of breathing, a pet who comes as an earth angel, a job loss, an impossible tragedy, waves lapping the shore at a beach, a moment where you know you will never be the same…where there’s a will, there’s always a way. But if you want it, go all the way, and don’t stop at a lesser substitute for awakening to who you really are. Remember until forgetting is no longer a possibility.