Working as a professional psychic for over 24 years has sure brought some of the most beautiful people and blessings into my life. It has also brought some bizarre and quirky characters through it too.
One day I had a man come for a reading. I had already read for his wife, adult daughter and son. He was dressed in business casual clothing. A bulky tall man standing about 6’4”. He was clean cut and made great eye contact when he entered my office.
When the reading commenced, I found that there did not seem to be a lot of messages for him or topics to touch into. He had a good life, good health, happy family, good marriage, career success, plenty of money and more. Because I had been reading for so many years, I know that when I start to get results like this usually the person with me is there because they were pushed by friends or family to come or received a gift certificate and are just using it up.
Ethically, if I cannot help someone I will not charge them for the reading. I was gearing up to say this very thing to him. I started off by saying, “I have been reading a long time and only every now and then do I get a client with me who has a very good life with no real ups or downs. I am curious as to why you have come to talk to me and …”
He aggressively interrupted me at that moment and slammed his fists onto my antique reading table. He hit it with such power that the entire table jumped. I jumped in my seat and immediately felt threatened. Then he slammed those fists into it again lurching forward in his seat and yelled, “I’m not happy! Can’t you see that I’m not happy!”
I changed my tone very quickly, stood up, moved within inches away from him and looked this irate, large, yelling upper middle class man in the eye pointing my finger in his face and said, “I don’t know who you think you are taking a tone like that with, sir, but you picked the wrong woman! At this point I am not a psychic anymore, I am the woman whose house you are in yelling and punching her table!”
Then I proceeded to rant for an hour and a half… I ranted until I exhausted this man. It was he who said the session was over because he could no longer think. My rant started off demanding that he settle down… and inquired if he knew how the human brain works. I went into great description about how the synapse jump with electric currents. I explained that our tendency towards moods, perceptions and feelings are like water on a hill… over time if you keep pouring water its tendency is to follow the familiar path where water has run before. Water will follow the path of least resistance and the path that becomes familiar. Feelings are like water on the hill.
I encouraged him to work to train his thoughts to go a new direction. Nudged him to be patient and that change takes time. I asked him to recall the last time he felt happy. He at first said he did not know… but as I continued to rant, he interrupted bellowing,” It was when the Beatles played on the Ed Sullivan show!” That was the last time this man recalls feeling happy. That sure was a long time ago. It took me back a bit, but then I settled in to his Truth.
I congratulated him on being able to recall that memory. I encouraged him to spend time meditating with that memory, to become increasingly aware of how happiness feels inside again. I suggested he work to teach his mind to recognize happy feelings again. I encouraged him to do it daily. Practice to notice fleeting feelings of happiness, even if it was for a tiny moment. A great golf swing, eating a delicious olive, the comfortable feel of drifting off to sleep and more. I told him to work with his emotions like training water to go down the hill a different way. Awakening his brains synapses to begin to conduct and electrically vibrate with feelings of happiness whether they are through memories or fleeting daily moments of awareness.
What I stressed to him over and over again until he tired was that happiness is a choice. Happiness is not a thing we can hold or buy. It is not something we earn. Happiness is something we choose to experience no matter what our circumstance.
Some of the most joyous people I have ever met live some of the most humble existences I have ever seen. Some of the wealthiest people I have met are some of the most unhappy. Running away from his current existence, divorcing his wife, having an affair, buying more things was not going to make him happy. He had to learn to cultivate happiness from deep inside of his own mind and heart. He was the reason he was not happy and only he could transform and create change from within.
When it was all said and done, I realized that the cassette recorder had recorded our entire meeting. I plucked the tape from the machine, handed it to him, walked him to the door and said good bye, charging him nothing. Honestly, I wanted him to leave my sacred space and never return. My adrenaline had been in high gear for an hour and a half. I was exhausted.
I nibbled away at that man’s excuses for his misery, with science, logic and common sense. I pleaded to his subconscious that he was in charge and no one else. He was one of my 3 most challenging clients all these years. When he yelled and became violent my initial instinct was to get him out of my office as quickly as possible. When I began to defend my harmony and my personal space I suppose I also seized the moment to hopefully teach or enlighten him. What started off frightening turned into a very purposeful exchange. I believe that session, as uncomfortable and as weird as it was, happened for a reason.