Plight of Being Psychic in an Overly Rational World

This world can feel like a lonely, alienating (and sometimes even hostile) place for those who experience perceptions, sensations and insights that don’t fit in neatly with the consensus reality. Possessing psychic gifts – second sight – a means ‘seeing’ what most others do not. Until a person has a psychic experience it is difficult to appreciate or understand what having clairvoyance, clairaudience or having ‘flashes’ of the past or future does to one’s perception of reality. Many who have never had such psychic experience seem to often feel threatened by any mention of a ‘psychic reality’.

In the last 40 or so years, the New Age movement has gone a long way towards making concepts like reincarnation, out of body experiences, psychic visions and alternative methods of healing more acceptable to greater numbers of people. Though there can be distorted and misleading information within New Age literature regarding these alternative ideas, the open-mindedness of many ‘New Agers’ should be applauded. Nearly any professional psychic you ask will tell you that having psychic gifts is all about spirituality. It is because psychic experiences are so closely tied to spirituality that a world overly devoted to it’s materialistic and rational ways has such a problem accepting psychics in general. To the purely rational anything spiritual is typically ‘irrational’ and at best should be confined to a church or traditional religion. And, often that is a problem for those with psychic gifts: Few religions or churches are ready to accept psychic phenomena.

Historically there has been a stigma attached to all kinds of psychic gifts (and to the people who possess them). It is fortunate we live in a time where people with psychic gifts are not burned at the stake as witches or stoned to death in the market place for being a false prophet. The once all-powerful Catholic Church, which in past centuries consigned all forms of paganism and nature religion to the realm of devil worship, has been restrained by more civilized people from continuing the inquisition … and, yes, the Catholic Church does still maintain ‘The General Congregation of the Universal Inquisition’. It has just be renamed ‘Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’. The point is that religious and spiritual intolerance certainly persists in our world. To be fair, today’s inquisitors more often are those who believe only science can define reality … and usually these are well meaning folks who subscribe to pure empiricism (only that which is material and can be sensed with the five senses can be real).

So, it is not surprising that psychics can often feel a sense of alienation because they are sensitive to dimensions of reality normally hidden from others. It can be difficult for psychics, especially professional psychics, to attend normal social gatherings. It is one thing to discuss the state of today’s economy or politics in a social setting. It is another thing to ask someone if they know their dead grandmother is nearby, and, oh, did she love helping you with growing watermelons when you were a child? Where a group may indulge in a heated, friendly debate about basketball or what the President should or should not do, many psychics often cannot do this. For one, most experienced psychics have taken a peak beyond this world, and so the world’s current events take on a whole different meaning … and angle most at a party are not interested in discussing with the crazy person who sees dead people. For another, psychics tend to be sensitive and heated debates can seem intimating. This can be especially true for psychics or potential psychics who feel they have been attacked verbally for daring to think that they have had a psychic experience(s).

Clinical psychology offers us certain definitions of mental illness and/or instability, but oftentimes these definitions are built upon our cultural definitions of sanity. Some great thinkers such as R.D. Laing, Joseph Campbell, Carl Jung and Friedrich Nietzsche have posed a challenging question: What if mental illness is built right in to the fabric of our society? Someone who stands outside the cultural norm – for example, someone psychically gifted – is not “normal”. However, it’s possible that he or she could in some ways be healthier and more emotionally intelligent than the social average.

It is difficult to say if people will, in time, accept psychics (who have been around since the beginning of human history). The only way that can happen is if the majority of people are willing to look further than their overly rational conditioning that tells them that the material world (and materialist society) is not the ONLY reality. Just as important is if people are willing to expand their understanding of spirituality. Spirituality is not something owned by a church or any particular religion.

That is very difficult for many good, spiritually minded, church going folks to accept. What stumps most traditionally religious people is that if psychics are having a spiritual experience, who’s spirituality is it? There seems no room for the concept that spirituality belongs to everyone regardless of religion, culture, gender or history.

Yes, having a psychic experience or being full blown psychic can make things a bit difficult in a world built on pure, material rationality. It is tough if one feels that particular religions (and skeptics) would rather roast you physically and/or verbally than explore your personal, paranormal experiences. It explains why most parents don’t want their child to express psychic experiences … who wants their child to be perceived as irrational, possibly ‘unstable’ and a likely to experience being a social outcast? But, if you ask any experienced psychic if they would give up their gifts to be socially accepted, then 99.99% of the time they will say, "No!". Kinda’ makes you wonder why? But, there it is.

Should you be looking to talk with or get a personal readings from professional, experienced psychics, visit Authentic Psychics, or give them a call at 1-800-888-5523.