Interview about Clairvoyance

Cindy Michaels is a Hypnotherapist, Tarot reader and Counsellor who runs 'Room at the Top', which is a leading centre for personal development in Norwich. She has been interviewed on radio many times, has consulted with multi-national companies on their product development for the future, and has worked with innovative businesses who seek a workforce full of creativity and imagination. Contact information is available at the end of the interview.

Cindy, can you explain what clairvoyance is?

Clairvoyance simply means clear seeing. It is the ability to see and use visual images, either inside your head, or outside as visions. You are able to use the strength of your visuals, your eyes, to see pictorial images and then you are able to interpret those pictorial images. It is just a part of your intuitive nature where you see images or energy, or you are seeing visions. You can also have clairaudience, where the strength is in your hearing, so you are hearing things that are going on inside yourself. Clairsentience is when the strength is in your sense of smell, touch and emotions. It simply means that that particular sense is very sensitive.

There are a lot of people who are very sensitive, and they could be having visions, but their visions could be overriding them. So when you have the skill of clairvoyance you need to learn to balance it, and learn to interpret your own symbolic language.

A person who is clairvoyant will see either images inside themselves or they'll see them outside. But also they can see the subtle energies in life like the astral body or the aura.

Is this a gift someone receives, or is it something anyone can develop?

I think, personally, that we have certain strengths, and we have certain chords that strike the truest in us, but I think all of us could play those chords. Some of us can play them really well and some of us can play then really natural and other people need to be trained to be able to work with them at all. And some people won't ever acknowledge this, but it is just like any other ability such as piano playing. Some people are just totally natural on the piano and some people need to study and learn the music, and some people couldn't care less if there is a piano.

I don't know if gift is the right word. I would just say that it is a chord that strikes true in us. Once you find the chords in you, whichever they are, then that becomes how people know you.

So, if a student comes to you and says, Cindy, I want to be clairvoyant, what would you say to them? Is that the right approach to take?

You don't become clairvoyant; you evolve into it, unless you are born with it. So if somebody comes to me and says, "I want to be clairvoyant," it is like saying, "I want to be a concert pianist." Well, you spend hours and hours and hours practising. But with this working with subtle energies, there is a responsibility that goes with it, and it doesn't do you any good to be able to see images and get ideas, see visions and get lost in that world if you don't have the psychological balance that is necessary to support it and enhance it

So if someone came to me and said, "I want to be clairvoyant." I would say that we need to start with personal development, because first you have to balance what you have. By balancing and refining what we have, these natural abilities that we all have to varying degrees are able to emerge. It's not something you can go and take off a bookshelf, but then there are loads of books that say 'How to be clairvoyant'. And they'll give you exercises too, to train your sensitivity, but to me that's like going from the outside trying to get to the inside. But I think it's always much better to come from the inside and let it work its way through. It is like 'Knowledge is revealed to you when you are ready'. A lot of people who want to be clairvoyant might not really want it.

I had a friend who was very very sensitive and she lived in London. And many times I was with her. Quite often when she was going to get the 'tube' she would really get upset and she would get this feeling at the back of her neck, and this feeling at the back of the neck meant something to her. I didn't understand why she was so upset. She would turn white and be sick because of this feeling. And every time this happened and I was with her, we'd go down to the 'tube' station, and sure enough, someone had just thrown themselves onto the track, which I guess they must do quite often. Or at least it seemed that way with her.

They would announce there were 'problems with the line'.

This is a woman who was born with very natural sensitivity. But because she hadn't started looking at her own self, she was attracting the negative side of her sensitivity. So, it pays to develop yourself.

So if she developed herself personally would she start to pick up more on the positive things?

Yes she would pick up on more positive things. There is no need to pick up on something like that. She felt that she was to blame, and we are not to blame for other people's choices. And that was feeding her own kind of negativity.

I don't know if she ever did, but if she does she would be very sensitive.

There is a certain power with someone saying they can see your future, they can see your aura or they can see your spirit guide. People can be held in awe of that ability. People see that power and they want that power. Why would someone want to be clairvoyant? What are the benefits?

They want to be part of 'seeing'. What they feel is that they can't see, so they want to be somebody who can. Which means they can just have a bit of a peek around the corner. But in reality it's not like that at all. I honestly don't know why people are attracted to it. I think people may be attracted to it because they want to be an individual, just like you are attracted to anything. You want to emulate something, you want something to be a part of you.

One of the benefits of being clairvoyant is that you are certainly much more sensitive to what is going on around you. And if you choose to work with it professionally, and you use it to connect with people, it helps you to connect with them quite quickly because you are able to interpret their energy in pictorial form and then you are able to put words to the picture. Then that person immediately feels you have empathy with them, because you are reading their energy in pictures.

Probably what they really want is to be connected to a deeper part of themselves, but they see it in terms of a profession.

People often ask me how they can see the aura. In my classes I'll show people how to see the aura. The skill is in learning to 'unfocus'. We've been trained to focus and pinpoint things and look at the edges of things. To see this subtle energy you have to 'unfocus' and take in the whole picture. Once you show this to people, and you support them in that process, then there is really very little mystery to it. We all see auras. We all see red with anger, green with envy, yellow with jealousy. We know when people are having a bad day, we know when people are in grief. The aura is the colours that are moving and shifting around them, and they are colours. They colour the face, and therefore we are all picking up clairvoyantly. We just haven't defined it that way.

So you are saying everybody is clairvoyant?

Yes, everybody.

Is it just that we don't say the word or acknowledge it?

We don't need to say it. I don't need to say it. It's in my profession, it's what I do, but I don't need to say, "Hi, I'm Cindy and I'm clairvoyant.." It's not important.

As children what do you do? You are talking to imaginary playmates, you're looking in the dark and the dark is full of lights. I assume this anyway, that was my childhood. The energy is there, but your left-brain has been educated and trained so you move away from what is very natural. So I suppose if anything clairvoyance is getting back to a natural state and knowing how to refine it and fine-tune it, and ultimately taking responsibility for it. It's like anything; it takes a lot of training. I mean people do fall on their head and suddenly have these images, but pretty much it is something that is within us all to different degrees, and we use it without needing to be aware of it.

So on some level, is intuition clairvoyance?

Yes, I think they are all kind of connected - clairvoyance, psychic energy, intuition. They are like ribbons that intertwine, so one touches the other and touches back. You could separate them out but I think that pretty much they are all kind of combined. As I see it.

At the present time, in the media, films like the X-files and Sixth Sense are popular, and there is generally a big interest in this subtle world. Do you think there is more interest now than in the past? If so is there a reason for that? How do you see it?

I think people are more inward seeking. And thereby being more inward seeking there is going to be an interest for knowing what is not there, so hence, you get those kinds of themes if you like. And it is all about seeing something that we can't see. And in this period people are being a bit more soul searching, hence the kind of explosion of personal development.

Another time period we would be more concerned with practical things. Now we are getting a bit more concerned with subtle energies and what is going on inside ourselves. We are getting more aware of our feelings, and naturally because we get more aware of our feelings, then we are going
to become more aware of our fears. And a lot of those movies, in a positive sense, allay fears, because you can see someone using it to the good. But also it is still the kind of the thing that is in the dark. People are attracted to what they don't know but somebody else knows - I guess.

So I think life is getting deeper. What used to be called 'occult', in hidden little groups, is now surfacing. It is surfacing so that people can think for themselves, but also so they can actually start to help balance themselves out. We are all shifting and changing and so there is an explosion of the 'New Age' type thing. And I wouldn't be surprised if there was a pack of Tarot cards in two out of three homes. Whereas before Tarot cards were very much down the seaside, or in the hand of a gypsy knocking on your door. But now people are wanting to know, they are wanting to find these things inside themselves. And also wanting, I suppose, the power to know the answers.

So how about you personally? How has it helped you? How do you use clairvoyance and visions in your life?

I think it's my main language. I think my images are more my language than words. So I use my clairvoyance in understanding problems. I see it as an image. I use it with my intuition to help sort something out

To me it is what is. I am in the middle of it. I certainly use it in my profession. I use it in hypnotherapy because it allows me to empathise with the person. And when they go into trance I am right there where they are because I can see where they are. So no matter where they are, without telling me, I am connected to where they are. And that is a very valuable tool because then I can know what is going on.

I use it again with the Tarot because again it helps me to know where someone is.

It helps me spiritually. I get my own kind of insights that are visions. I trust them. They are truer than anything. So in a way it is a valuable commodity. But until you find that state of balance, or as much as you can at this point, they can be very destructive as well. So it's like any talent, you still have to offset it with understanding of yourself, otherwise it will just take you over. And I have no doubt that happens to a lot of people.

Do you see things around you a lot? Things that other people cannot see.

It's hard to answer that because I don't know what other people can see.

Do you see spirits standing there, or get a vision of something to do? Do you get a flash of insight in your head? Do you see these things externally or internally?

Sometimes it is external. Sometimes it is very solidly external. And sometimes it is very solidly internal. And I don't know how to define that, as it is very much a part of me. I'm not looking at this room right now and seeing ten people walking around, but there are times I am looking in this room and I can see what is here. I don't need to see ten people walking around this room, what I need to do is focus on what I am doing. So in that case I will be sensitive to my own kind of focus. You know, you can be wide open and see everything, but what is the point?

It's like walking into the city but not being able to shut down the background noise. It'll just take you over. So you learn to filter. And then you learn to turn it on full blast when you are in the right place.

So, if you want to, can you give me examples of times in your life where a vision has helped guide you or helped you?

I'm not sure I want to share that.

I mean I've had lots of visions, and the visions are outside me.

No, no, I can give you one. I can give you a really good one.

Walking down the street one day, minding my own business. All of a sudden I was in the future ten years time, and I saw all these clinics. And all these clinics were specifically for weaning people off the TV. They had recognised that TV is a hypnotic drug, and people are losing something by being totally hypnotised.

And so people would go to these places to withdraw from a very powerful hypnotic box that you keep in the corner of your living room.

When I saw that (I don't know if it was ten or twenty years time) I wasn't thinking about TVs but it flashed and I thought, "God, that's so true." When you see a vision that is what you think - "That is so true."

The power of the TV is a very destructive influence. It can be positive, but for the most part it just sits there so that they don't have to think about their life. And people don't care what they are looking at, and all of those images are going right inside them as they are in this hypnotic trance. So they lose out on their own creativity. They become very passive. And they become depressed.

Now, all that information came like a flash. And I thought, "Why didn't I think of that?"

(Laughter)

I did some work for Sony, to predict the technology of the future. What would be on the shelves in 2010?

I just sat down and saw myself going into a Sony shop. What would I look at, what would I buy? And I came up with all of these things that were on the shelves and wrote a report for them.

What was really interesting about that was that there were three clairvoyants that had this task, and although we had no contact with each other, eight of the ten things were exactly the same. And what is even more interesting is that all the newspaper clippings that are coming out now are supporting what I said then.

That is because in order for these products to come out in 2010 it would have to be a prototype of some sort. And a few years on now they are making the first thing - it's like, "Oh my God that's what I saw in my mind."

Ideas come down, they shower down, and lots of people get them all at the same time. Some people act, some people don't. Some people realise they should have acted when they thought of it. They shower down to make sure that it hits enough people so somebody will do it.

And if you are clairvoyant, all you are doing is you are reaching up a bit higher in that shower. So you are grabbing that idea, that potential, first. And then you are telling what you see.

If I owned a company, I would hire people that can reach up a bit higher. Just because then you know you've got your inventions don't you? Inventors have to be clairvoyant, don't they? They get the idea and then they see how it works.

Could you finish with some advice for people who are reading this interview now and thinking that this all sounds interesting and appealing, and they'd like to take a step for themselves? What could people do for themselves?

A very good exercise to help you 'untrain' your eyes so you are more sensitive to these types of energies is to get a candle, and in the dark light the candle. And then just look at the candle flame. Decide in your head what colour you want to see around that flame.

So, say you pick green. You want to kind of unfocus your eyes and look at the candle flame. And think about the colour green or see the colour green. The eyes will tire easily because they are not used to being out of focus.

But the more you look at it, the more what you think on the inside will match what you see on the outside. So you will start to see this really vibrant green bow around maybe one side of the candle flame and then the more you look at it the more you will see it take much more of a shape around the candle.

Doing this and having the patience to do this means you are being able to project what is on the inside outside. And part of that is clairvoyance. Because what you are feeling on the inside you are able to register on the outside. All that does is introduce you to subtle energy, and it also helps you to get used to unfocussing your eyes - allowing something to happen. It is allowing subtle energy to come to you.

Then as you work at it you can see if you can get the little flame off of the top and imagine it coming towards you. And you'll see it come floating right over to you in the air and walking up your hand. And then you hold in your hand the flame, the image of the flame that is.

If you are interested in clairvoyance, and you want to become more sensitive, the best way to do that is to know what you are feeling inside, because without addressing your emotional body, you are not going to become more sensitive. This isn't like a science lab where you have to study your numbers and they all balance. This is about accessing your feelings.

You can do it, but you need to be prepared to invest some energy and not feel it is something you can push. It is something that has to come to you or through you.

Thank you very much for talking to us

It was a pleasure.


INTERVIEW ENDS