Second Sight (49 page)
The peace and goodness within people are of inestimable value. Nowhere is this more dramatically shown than in the tale of Sodom and Gomorrah, told in the book of Genesis. The story goes that God agreed to Abraham's request that these crime-riddled cities be saved if just ten good men could be found residing there. Although not even ten could be found and Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed, what is striking to me is the precept that the goodness of a few people could have saved the cities; the positive consciousness of ten would have been sufficient not only to overcome the corruption of many but, in some cases, to change the world.
We must begin with the love in our own hearts. In ever-expanding circles, we may then extend it to our family and friends, out into the workplace, and finally the world. Once we realize how interconnected we all are, we see that the integrity of our actions in every aspect of life makes a difference to the whole. Consider this: Beyond the personal sphere, an area where each one of us can exert a positive influence on a broader number of people is in our careers, no matter if we wait tables in a diner or head a multinational corporation. Well-motivated, pure intentions combined with the increased sensitivity to others that the psychic brings can infuse any kind of work with a higher level of meaning.
I am delighted to see a growing number of businesses recognizing the value of the psychic and regularly putting it into practice. Not surprisingly, however, reputable businesspeople tend to shy away from the term
psychic
(the loaded stereotype of the Gypsy fortune teller still hovers so near), sticking instead to the safely neutral
intuition,
whose connotations are more down to earth. I know of attorneys who admit to using intuition in their negotiations; scores of high-level executives turn to it for help in management and decision-making, financial forecasting, and detecting problematic situations before they occur. There are over 1,000 consultants in the United States alone who are hired by top-notch companies to conduct intuitive training programs for their employees. Even the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University offers a course in which intuition is taught as a strategic skill. Trammel Crow, one of the country's most influential real estate developers, gets right to the heart of the matter: “I believe that business leaders take some positions and make some decisions transcendentally. Not magically. Intuitively.”
A few months ago, I came into contact with the Intuition Network, based in Sausalito, California, an organization comprised of thousands of people in business, government, science, and health, who are committed to integrating intuition into their work, their personal lives, and the world. Relying on inner resources is their main priority. What excites me most about this group is that they are not just theorizing anymore: They are emissaries, putting their convictions into action, carrying intuitive wisdom out onto the front lines, teaching conferences and seminars, conducting training programs for businesses both large and small. They would have been laughed out of existence a mere thirty years ago, or at least ignored. Today, individuals in the group apply intuition to every kind of work imaginable.
I was especially intrigued by the work of one woman who was employed by the National Forest Service in the Northwest. Traveling into the lush national forest areas of Washington, Oregon, and Idaho, her job, as an intuitive consultant, was to promote better understanding between government managers and Native American tribal members regarding land-use policies. Before her work began, both sides were diametrically opposed; there was a huge communication breakdown. At a four-day retreat aimed at resolving this deadlock—which included sweat lodges, powwows, and many hours of charged group interchanges—she helped park managers penetrate their rigidity and not only hear the words of the tribal presenters, but also sense their deeper thoughts and feelings to find better solutions. When the retreat was over, Native Americans and Forest Service officials alike felt as if they had truly been heard and reached a mutual compromise. To me, this is the epitome of how the psychic and the rational mind can complement each other, creating harmony in a previously irreconcilable situation.
The intuitive techniques available to you in your work are exactly the same as those you may use in your personal life. The arena is different, that's all, underlining just how adaptable and multifaceted these tools are: psychic readings, dreams, looking for synchronicities, meditation, listening closely to your body, visualizations, and sensing energy. Each one is powerful, mysterious, but within your reach. When you bring them to bear in your work they can provide a bridge between the practical and the sacred, reinforcing your inner resolve about what is appropriate and right.
Peter, a talent agent in his midthirties, had been a patient of mine for over a year. Early on, he had expressed an interest in using the psychic in his work and now he'd become pretty good at it: Seeking out answers in dreams was his specialty. At one session, he told me about a roadblock he'd just run up against in a heated film negotiation he was immersed in, one of the biggest in his career. Nothing about the contract had been simple, but up until this point he felt on top of it. Right before our session, though, the studio had taken an outlandish stand on terms. Peter, enraged, was tempted to walk away from the whole deal. Knowing how much was at stake, I urged him not to respond rashly, but instead to ask a dream for guidance. Still fuming, he hesitantly agreed.
That night, after requesting to be shown what to do, Peter dreamed that he saw the studio executive floating blithely by in a hot air balloon. Without a care in the world, this man launched a puny papier-mâché helicopter into the sky. On the ground, dressed in military regalia and flanked by an armed regiment, Peter retaliated with heavy artillery; not realizing that the chopper was merely paper, he attempted to blow it to bits. He missed each time. Worse, the shots boomeranged back at him, inflicting near-fatal damage to his troops.
Peter awoke, certain that he had received a message: The dream was telling him that the executive's ploy had no substance, inventively getting this across with a humorous pictorial pun that made us both smile. No doubt about it, as far as the dream was concerned, the man was full of hot air. Not only that, his helicopter was totally harmless. To top it off, Peter was issued a warning: If he was bent on playing hardball by striking back with an equally preposterous proposal or out of spite, even letting the deal go, he would just end up hurting himself and his client. Moderation, not overkill, was called for here. Peter got the point. With this guidance, he continued on, tactfully not overreacting to the studio's antics, and made an enormously successful deal for his client. I was pleased that Peter didn't act on impulse but had learned enough to set aside his outrage and seek a truer solution in his dreams.
Psychic insights can be instrumental not just in negotiations but also in sparking technical breakthroughs or inspiring the birth of new products. I recently read an elegant account of a semiconductor research engineer's discovery, a classic example of how a waking image can spur creative thought. Newly arrived from Taiwan, he was entranced by seeing his first snowfall. The way the snow landed on the tops of cars but failed to cling to their sides immediately gave him an idea for improving the silicon microchips he was developing. Using the snowfall as a model, he ingeniously reconfigured the inner structure of the silicon wafers, thus radically increasing the chip's performance speed. Though I know practically nothing about engineering, I was dazzled that nature could provide such a potent intuitive catalyst for an important technical advance, not to mention how utterly receptive this man was to it.
When you're intuitively attuned to your environment, ready at any moment to attend to cues, your work can be transformed into an amazingly rich tapestry of input and output, action and response. It's dynamic. At an inner level, so much movement is constantly going on, a panoply of discovery. Dr. Jonas Salk captures the essence of this magic: “It is always with excitement that I wake up in the morning wondering what my intuition will toss me like gifts from the sea.”
These gifts, these messages, can shed light on all work matters, including choosing the right career. Or sensing on a gut level when one is a poor fit—even though it may look perfect on paper. Or helping you to decide when the time is right to move on. You don't have to waste years in unfulfilling jobs that take you nowhere. You deserve to go full throttle into a career that brings you the most joy. But how do you find it? Let's say you just know you're in the wrong position, but you don't have a clue what to do. You wait and wait, lightning doesn't strike, nothing changes. Then what?
The simplest move is to start keeping a journal of dreams, inspiring images, thoughts, and brainstorms. Just continue posing the question, What direction should I follow? and wait for a response to guide you. I guarantee you that, with patience, the answer will come. But don't stop here. Take advantage of the entire array of psychic approaches I've discussed. Just making the decision to listen to the psychic shifts things. This is terrain that hotel magnate Conrad Hilton was wisely familiar with: “When I have a problem and have done all I can to figure it out, I keep listening in a sort of inside silence till something clicks and I feel a right answer.” Trust such a response in yourself, not as an oddity or fluke but as an essential facet of your working life.
The same psychic principles that operate so beautifully in your own career can translate into an overall global business atmosphere as well. Currently, of necessity, there's a mounting awareness that the systems of the earth are interconnected. If you hurt one, you hurt the other. The psychic never fails to remind us at the most primal level that our interrelatedness is undeniable. For that reason, the segment of the business community that values intuition is a hopeful sign of things to come. They've got a head start on a fundamental truth: Simply on the basis of survival, businesses must begin to work in partnership and choose projects that are life-affirming, taking into account our dealings in global terms.
We have come full circle. Our earliest ancestors passed on a rich psychic heritage: prophets, oracles, shamans, healers make up a vital portion of our history. Yet as the Age of Exploration took off and science became revered, what had been considered natural for so many thousands of years was then labeled superstitious nonsense or condemned as the work of the devil. Seers were deemed to be witches and burned at the stake for their so-called crimes. Later, industry and technology—focused always on rational explanation—drove more nails in the coffin of the psychic. But now, at the edge of the twenty-first century, there is an increasing movement of people who realize how much of our soul we've sacrificed. That split just isn't necessary. Envision a future where all of our analytical accomplishments and the psychic work hand in hand—realizing the best of both worlds. That's where I believe we're headed.
To me, nowhere does this fit seem more well suited than in medicine. When I received my medical degree I took the Hippocratic Oath, swearing by “Apollo the physician, and Aesculapius, and Hygeia, and Panacea, and all the gods and goddesses, that, according to my ability and judgment, I will keep this Oath…and with purity and holiness I will pass my life and practice my art.” Despite the staggering, life-saving technological advances of modern medicine, we must remember that it was born of a spiritual tradition from which the psychic organically stems. Many of us don't think of medicine as having spiritual roots. But the time-honored words of this oath remind us of how luminous a presence its sacred underpinnings really are. Over the centuries, however, we've lost our bearings.
For many of my years as a psychiatrist, hospitals were practically my second home. I have great respect for all that's good about them, yet I know, too, that many changes need to be made before we reach the enlightened, all-embracing future I hope for. We can learn so much from other cultures. In China, for instance, since ancient times traditional physicians have been trained that everyone contains spiritual energy; they acknowledge and work with it when treating the whole person. Today, throughout much of China, patients have choices—there's a blending of disciplines. In numerous well-known teaching hospitals, Western and Chinese medicine productively coexist—waiting rooms are typically packed, on one side dispensing modern pharmaceuticals, on the other herbs. It is a truly heartening sight.
The acupuncturist I go to, Dao, a doctor and teacher of traditional Chinese medicine in Los Angeles, encourages his students to develop spiritually, psychically, and physically to become well-balanced practitioners. Remarkably, Dao comes from thirty-eight generations of Chinese medical doctors. I listened, fascinated, as he told me the story of his father, so technically skilled and psychically astute that he was referred to as Shen Zeng, the Divine Needle. A sight Dao will never forget is the first time he watched his father diagnose a patient's condition before he even laid eyes on her by simply listening to the sound of the woman's walk: the signature of a true master.
China hasn't cornered the market, though, on intuitive diagnosis or psychic healing. In my travels in England, I was pleasantly surprised to see that healers are beginning to be given their proper due. Their work is spreading, slowly but surely commanding the respect it deserves. Some healers are right at the hub of the action: They staff coronary care units and cancer wards, using energetic healing with their hands to help treat disease and ease pain. Others are employed by physicians in their offices. Also impressive to me is that the National Health Service has even been known to pay for their services, a sign that finally healers are emerging as a force to be reckoned with. In fact, they've actually formed their own professional organizations, accrediting members only after they've served approved apprenticeships and demonstrate a level of intuitive excellence.