Having been on the Druid’s path for many, many years, I can say that the one thing that makes a difference in our psychic gifts - regardless of your personal spiritual path – is the actual practice and use of them! As the old saying goes: practice makes perfect. I know from personal experience when I use my talents daily as a part of my day to day life - it gets easier and requires “less” work to get a better effect or outcome of the work. The more you do it, the more you will discover a whole world out there but not usually noticed because our society is so wrapped up in technology, materialism and having instant gratification. People are always intrigued and amazed by how I seem to just "know" things, but it is in truth because I have learned to listen to and work with the universal energies.

Another thing you will notice is a change in your own personal perspectives of the world around you when you aren't using your skills regularly. You lose touch with yourself. We humans in modern society are very apt to do this and not always realize we have lost it. Radios, TVs, computers, cell phones, I-pods and more - all tend to distract us and take us away from the Otherworld that is out there. Our psychic gifts are tied into our own awareness, our connections to the self within and the self “without” or outside of us, our environment. When we give our awareness over to the modern "signal blockers" as I like to call them - we miss so much and lose a sense of ourselves. We lose our connections to the world around us, even with us being so engrossed with technology.

So how do you keep in touch with it all? That depends on you. Personally, I don't listen to the car radio coming and going daily, it is too much of a stressor listening to the sensationalism of the world at that moment, raised to a level of almost pure adrenaline and always seemingly with a negative twist to it. Instead I will have books on CD’s, CD’s of music and MP3 recordings like pod-cast I have downloaded on my own interest. These are all uplifting to me and help to foster my creative interest and personal pursuits such as my belly dance, herbal practices and yes, even knitting and beading and they do so without pulling or dragging me into the subjects that pull us away from ourselves. These alternative recreational diversions serve to focus and calm my mind. This along with my 'new age' interests and music provide me with many resources to stay entertained yet not driven to crave constant sensationalism. It really makes a difference for me. You have to find out how it affects you so that you can find how it affects your daily life and your spiritual or psychic work.

How does it affect a person, you ask? I noticed that time revolves differently when I stay away from the media of the everyday radio. It seems to me I have more time to myself, more time to listen to my own thoughts and also a better perspective for balancing the events I do hear and see. I find I stay more relaxed and better able to handle the day to day stressors of being on the road to and from work. I find my home life is better for it as well and I also enjoy my personal studies and spiritual endeavors more. I also make a point of trying to have days of “absolute” silence - no electronics of noise making type at all - for a whole weekend. This is a challenge that many don’t realize how hard it can be but how rewarding as well. So many people are not used to being by themselves. By being totally isolated from the sounds of regular life it becomes a challenge to listen to and live with your self. After you get through that first day or whole weekend, you begin to hear, see and realize a whole world of things that get tuned out by societal chatter! I find I crave these periods of my own time alone, listening to my own inner monologue and connecting more with the world around me on the physical to spiritual as well as emotional level.

Once we learn to come to ourselves and really listen and feel - then the rest gets easier and while it may seem like a challenge to learn how to do this or how to get through it the first few times – the Otherworld is always there, waiting and listening for our voices that we hear it and are open to the Otherworld. We just have to learn how to listen!

“Ok” you say,” so I learn how to listen, how is that going to help me learn to connect with the Otherworld or myself?” The answer is really simple. When we stop overloading our senses with everything in the outer world, the inner world comes through clearer and more noticeably. Some of you may say you can’t imagine giving up certain things like your news or your morning radio show. That is a personal choice and one you have to decide how much you are willing to give up or try and see what happens. It isn’t an overnight process. It takes time to notice a difference. You didn’t get hooked on the networks sensationalism overnight, so you won’t get unhooked and free over night either. Just like you learn the skills to work in or see in the Otherworld, using practice and perseverance, so too do you have to give this same attention to working on these very skills during and after you stop using modern media equipment in the manner we do daily as part of not being alone or having to hear our own thoughts. Modern media has become the drug of avoiding ourselves. This is not to say you cannot use these devices for your betterment. As in the example I gave above you can use them quite well and for your enrichment easily. The difference is in you controlling what you listen to when you do listen, what you watch when you do watch television. You don’t have to give up your favorites – just make a choice when and what you will watch. I still DVR all my favorite shows and on my weekends and a few hours during the week I will review and see what I want to watch and either pitch the rest or save it for later to watch. Plus the DVR gives me the advantage of skipping all those needless commercials.

I hope you will give a try at being alone, with only yourself and your thoughts for company. I hope you will also give it a try and see how your routine exercises you do to develop your psyche and skills will evolve and change and usually deepen as a result of this work. And work it is! Ask any monk, hermit, mystic or even a nun about learning to be alone and how hard it can be. Then ask them about their views on certain things and their insights can be absolutely amazing! As a practitioner of these ways you gain a clarity that cannot be compared. You begin to connect on levels you never thought possible in both this world and its creatures, human, plant and animal all. But you also begin to see the overlap of this world and the Otherworld as well and sense the relationship between them both and your/our place within it. It is a special and deep connection few truly know. A person may be “well connected” in both realms, but give them a month or more in this practice and they will even be amazed and surprised at how much further they can go. Our very beings are so influenced by modern technology and society and its less than personal views. How we develop our relationship within that society is our own choice. How we develop our gifts to that end, is also our choice.

So give it a try and see how it affects you and your personal practice. See how the choices and adjustments you make, affect your practices. I would love to hear of your trials and experiences as a result of this method to help to develop your practices of psychism. We are each gifted in these special gifts, but we must each find our own ways to tap them and get deep into them and ourselves. It is a personal journey that is well worth taking, diving to see how far down the rabbit hole you want to go, or how high you want to soar. It is up to you!

About the Author: Aauriane Veleda is Priestess Hierophant and founder of Garden of Sacred Wells Lyceum and Seekers of Sacred Wisdom Iseum. She is Grand Dame Commander of the Green Ways of the World Tree Priory and ArchDruidess of the Hearth of the Sacred Ways Grove. She currently lives in Central Florida with her husband and one fur child, a kitty called Kerridwen. In addition to the FOI, she is an active member of the Henge of Keltria, a Druid Companion of the OBOD, trained Celtic Shaman, Gythia and Seidhmather. Her personal work is focused on Irish and Scottish Druidry with its Avalonian connections through Kildare and the connections to Northern Ways (Norse). She is a full time Nursing Instructor, Master Herbalist, Naturopath and Reiki Master/Teacher.

Photo of Olivia Robertson and Pamela Scott © Johnny Merron, AU. Used by permission.