The Clair Senses 1 - The Light of The Body Is The Eye

This post is part of a series that will include 4+ more posts and there are two previous posts that you might want to read first. Spiritual Gifts 1, and Spiritual Gifts 2- Supernatural and Power Gifts

Thresholds of the Soul
 John O’Donahue describes the senses as “thresholds of the soul.” A threshold is defined as a point of entry or beginning. Thus, it is through the senses that we gain access to the subtle realms and the soul. However, another definition for threshold is: “the magnitude or intensity that must be exceeded for a certain reaction, phenomenon, result, or condition to occur or be manifested.” (Oxford languages). This definition is relevant too, since all have senses, but not all can reach beyond them to the subtle realm. So there is a need for clarification, hence the prefix commonly ascribed to the sensory gifts is clair-, which means clear. Thus the term clairvoyant means clear seeing. Clairaudient means clear hearing. Clairolfactance is clear smelling and so forth. Some people use sensational words to describe these gifts, such as psychic, medium, or seeing or hearing beyond the veil, etc., but I like the word clear because it is simple and yet allows for gradations and progression. Clear can become clearer and more clear, etc.

All spiritual paths teach us we are spiritual beings in a physical form. The physical body give us the sense organs, including the eyes, ears, moth, nose, and skin. But the senses are not in the organs. The senses are the stuff of the subtle realm. That is why having ears does not guarantee hearing, neither does a lack of ears predestine a person to live without hearing or speech. There are many miraculous stories about people who can still hear without ears, or see while blind or blindfolded.[1]

The clear gifts are more common than people realize. I’d venture that every spiritual seeker who reads this has at least one of them, though it may be underdeveloped or misunderstood. Even those who are sure they were born without a clair sense can develop these gifts through the regular practice of scientific meditation and other shamanic tools, such as fasting.

I’ll explain later why I believe these gifts are misunderstood. For now, let’s explore them. Though we will consider each of the senses individually, it is important to acknowledge that the senses always overlap and work together.
 
 
The Light of the Body Is The Eye
Each spiritual gift is a love letter from the creator to creation. Poet John O’Donahue said “The eye is like the dawn.”[2]  Dawn is an end to darkness as well as a thing of beauty that awakens us and calls us forth to remember our own brightness.

Our lives are full of concealed beauty. Science has proven that humans see only 1% of the light spectrum. Imagine that! It would be like all the light you can see is all that there is, and then imagine dimming it by 99 percent and watching people try to get around.

Essentially, that’s what we are all doing—stumbling around in the dark. Remember that what the word Shaman means is, “one who sees in the dark, and helps others to see in the dark.”  Therefore, to be a shaman means to see a bit more, and then teach or show others. That’s why I write. I am a shaman. In Jesus, The Ultimate Shaman, the authors assert that there are seven traditional roles that shamans play in their communities. The first says:

Every Shaman is trained in the arts. They all practice some kind of artistic creative expression. Some of their art is used in their ceremonies.[3]

The authors don’t explain this further, but it makes sense because an artist is a person who works to make the unseen seen. A painter takes an image that is seen only in their mind and puts it into oils, or watercolor or mixed media. A good poet uses words to take an experience that is beyond description and creates a poem that can reopen that experience for others. In a very real sense, artists are shamans and all legit shamans are artists, even if they have not be formally trained in either. Making art (and storytelling) is a way we help others connect with the subtle realms and thus “see in the dark.”
 
Jesus said, “The light of the body is the eye.”[4] He goes on to say that if one’s eye is single (to the glory of God) the whole body is full of light. The single eye of which Jesus spoke relates to the spiritual eye, sometimes called the Third Eye, a spiritual center in the forehead between the eyes. Without getting deep into a discussion about the chakras and spiritual anatomy, suffice it to say that this spot in the body corresponds with glands that regulate your feelings of happiness, your physical health, spiritual connection, and ability to experience joy. Clairvoyance is sometimes described as having one’s Third Eye open. The physical eyes can be closed, but still there is “sight” into both material and spiritual things.

People with highly developed clairvoyant gifts can “see” auras, angels, disembodied spirits, fairies, and dark energies. Others can “see” pain or illness in the body. Still others can “see” lights or energies in the air. Some people “see” visions or flashes of the future or the past. You may notice that I put the word see in quotes. This is because seeing with one’s physical eyes is not like seeing with one’s spiritual senses. In fact most clairvoyants don’t actually see with their physical eyes. Many have to close or partially close their physical eyes to eliminate distractions to see/sense with the spiritual eye.
 
Seeing is Not Believing
            One of the reasons the sense gifts are so misunderstood is because the subtle world is not like our ours. Expecting it to be similar is part of the problem many people run into and it’s the reason they don’t realize that they are perceiving subtle input.

The subtle senses receive information that does not always easily covert to human experience. So we translate it into images (or words, sounds, smells, etc.), of material world things or ideas that have the same "style."

When clairvoyant people talk about seeing, what we are doing is sensing something from the subtle realm that has as certain “style,” then assigning an image or moving picture that is in the “style” of what we perceived. For example, I may sense a person’s aura and then describe it as blue because it had the style of blue, but I didn’t actually see the color around them with my physical eyes. I imagined the color once I sensed the style of blue.

We all learn to do this kind of mental imaging naturally as children. When we read novels or poems we make images in our minds to go with the story. If we didn't they would be boring. It’s important to note that each of us has a different mental picture of the novel's heroine and the sound of her voice.

When I first started clear-seeing I thought that I couldn’t possibly be clairvoyant because I wasn’t seeing with my eyes. I thought I wasn’t "doing it right" because I knew I was assigning images from my own mental storehouse. I finally learned from a fellow clairvoyant, alchemist and author Catherin McCoun, that this is normal. But what about all the people who swear they see blue around your head and its real? Here is what McCoun says:
 
What if I can't make the blue go away? By the standards we apply to our physical senses, that would mean the blue is "really there." We know that we're not just imagining a physical perception because it stays put. With the subtle world, though, it's exactly the opposite. Unthinking a mental picture should make it go away. If the object of a subtle perception appears solid, permanent, and fact-like as a physical object, the seer is hallucinating.
 
Some people hallucinate because they are physically or mentally unwell. But hallucinations can also be a function of what hermeticists call "atavistic clairvoyance." Atavistic clairvoyants are overtaken by visions that seem very solid and real because they don't consciously experience the mental translation of the abstract into the pictorial. It happens too fast. Since they don't notice that their brains are interpreting subtle input, they can't correct a mistaken interpretation. Their subtle perceptions are too convincing.[5]
 
McCoun says it's not unusual for things to get off to this kind of start with beginning clairvoyants, but if there is no underlying pathology, it is easy to fix. The fix involves slowing down (or suppressing altogether for a time) the conversion of subtle impressions to mental images. Like closing your eyes for a minute. When you slow it down and consciously choose to imagine on purpose, you are less likely to be misled by your mental pictures—because you know they have come from your own subconscious.

This might be a shock to some people who assume that the more psychic you are, the more solid your "seeing" should be. Welcome to the spiritual realm! There is a lot to unlearn.

Remembering that each person has their own picture of the heroine in the book is helpful when sharing your subtle perceptions with others or hearing theirs. If the subtle perception has a “style” unlike anything the receiver has experienced, it can come out garbled. Remember that the images aren’t 100% literal—it’s the underlying themes or messages that matter.

For example, if Joan tells me see saw an angel wearing purple in my back yard, does that mean there is such an angel there? No. Of course, that is one possibility. There are numerous other possibilities. For example, just to name a few: 1) Joan could be hallucinating because she hasn’t eaten or is mentally unwell,  2) Joan could be seeing a hologram projected by a neighbor into my back yard. 3) Joan could have sensed a benevolent presence near the property but the details were filled in/projected by her own love of a male ancestor and an affinity for purple. 4) Joan is lying to create some drama. There are many additional possibilities. This is why it is good that I can tune in to my own subtle senses and see what, if anything, is going on in my back yard.

Anyone who insists their seeing or visions are 100% factual is not necessarily wrong. They may be close enough many many times. But without a deeper understanding of where the images come from, they are likely to be misguided at some point or to misguide others. 

I have friends who are obsessed with Near Death Experience (NDE) books and read every one that comes out. In the postscripts at the end of the book or in subsequent books by NDE authors I have noticed that many authors eventually come to realize that much of what they saw during their vision was symbolic.

Assuming the literal interpretation of everything you “see” may not have dangerous consequences, but there are consequences to everything. I have watched new clairvoyants go down weird roads and misguide others. I myself made some huge blunders in the beginning for which I’ve had to make amends. We all make mistakes. This is why we need mentors who understand the pitfalls.

If you have been misled by a psychic or clairvoyant, you're in good company. It's easy to get side-tracked by the sparkly or interesting things in the astral garbage dump. Determining the source of subtle perceptions is the great work of a spiritual life and I will address it many more times in my posts and the forthcoming book.

That being said however, shutting down or ignoring a spiritual gift in the hope that this will keep you from being misled is a terrible idea. Jesus Christ has strong things to say about people who “seeing do not see” and “hearing do not hear.” Fear of doing something wrong keeps a lot of people from doing anything, and they remain in the dark and therefore, full of darkness. Fear spreads us out like spilled quinoa. It directly opposes the singleness of focus to that glorious light. “If thine eye be single –your whole body will be filled with light.”

As I said previously, all gifts were given by the creator as a message of love and to benefit and serve others. In my book and in later posts, we will talk about how to practically apply our gifts.
 
All Gifts Awaken Through the Spiritual Eye
The spiritual eye is connected with all the other clair gifts. Basically, you can’t have clear hearing and a closed Spiritual Eye. They all work through the spiritual eye. If your spiritual eye is open (even in part) your other senses can engage. Many people may have an open spiritual eye but their gifts lie mainly in the auditory realm or in another sense. I tend to be auditory dominant but I work with all the senses when needed. My Creator knows me well and uses whichever sense is the best one for me to understand in the moment.
 
Do You Have Clear Seeing?
Have you ever walked into a room or walked by a space and thought you saw someone there but looked again and there was nothing? Maybe you sense a brightness or color around people or plants when you look at them and then close your eyes. The irony of clear seeing for me is that it feels a little like dyslexia. I will often read words that aren’t on the page or on the billboard, but they are the hidden message just for me. If I am inattentive to them, they will find ways to repeat in many forms till I pay attention.

Here's a cool story: I once interviewed a man who told me what happened when he took an important exam. He had little time to prepare for the exam because he was working full time and had a young family, so he used the shamanic tool of fasting, which is known to advance spiritual gifts and open gateways to the supernatural. He fasted many times in anticipation of the exam. When it came time to take the essay part of the exam, he said that a screen magically opened in the air before his eyes and the words appeared about as fast as he could type them and then scrolled up and disappeared. He typed them till they ended and then the screen closed. He had no idea what he wrote, but he passed the test. That never happened to him again, but many times in difficult situations, words were put into his mind (clairaudience).

Clairvoyance can be simple, such as visual answers to prayers or questions. For example, I asked my Higher Power what was the cause of my client’s problem. I got a subtle impression that it had the “style” of a blow to the head. My first thought could have been that her husband hit her, but I slowed it down and asked a simple question instead: “Did you ever have a blow to the head?” Yes! She was struck in the back of the head with a hockey puck when she was a spectator in the front row at a game.

Another time I asked, What part of my body is causing this illness? A picture of a liver appeared. Luckily I know what the liver organ looks like. The doctors didn’t believe my liver was involved, but I insisted and got an ultrasound of my liver—it turned out I had two golf-ball sized cysts there. The medical world tells me they are benign and “normal.” Lots of people have them. Some people are born with them. From a shamanic perspective cysts are not normal. They are communication that something is out of balance. How I worked with my Higher Power to heal my liver is for another post on healing. 
 
Looking For Your Face
 There are many other gifts that I list separately later in these pages on gifts that crossover with clairvoyance, such as: dreams, journeying upon the way, prophecy, pre-cognition, post-cognition, and more. All use the gift of an awakened spiritual eye as the power behind them. If you are new to seeing, the spiritual world can be overwhelming and also enlivening. Every day that you allow it, there are vistas that expand, and marvels in your private closet. There are also (depending on your own subconscious mix) three-headed dogs, grumpy ancestors, dancing gazelles, lesser angels and talking rabbits. Of all the things in the subtle realms, it is easy to be distracted. Spiritual teachers call this “the glitter at the bottom of the ladder,” reminding us that there are more important reasons for accessing the spiritual realms.

So what should you look for in all the worlds and realms? That is up to you, but if you have not yet seen (experienced) the face of God/Christ/Love, then I encourage you to keep your eye single like a searchlight for that. 

The deeper I go into my own spiritual journey the more I understand the mystic poets who describe the Lord as a lover or beloved  and the separation has been too long. With reunion, there is ecstasy, bliss. These are the reasons for gifts, to help us all reunite with that source of Love. In this, I cannot understate the importance of meditation. A solid, daily practice of meditation will increase and open your gifts and help you connect with the Infinite, which I sometimes call God.

What I don’t like about the simple word God is that it doesn’t do enough. It takes a gifted poet to create an experience of that which is beyond words. The 13th century mystic poet Rumi is a great example.  Rumi’s love poems are famous, but they weren't written for any woman, they are all about his relationship with God.  I'll end for now with his poem called “Looking for your Face.” 

Looking for Your Face

From the beginning of my life
I have been looking for your face
but today I have seen it

Today I have seen
the charm, the beauty,
the unfathomable grace
of the face
that I was looking for

Today I have found you
and those who laughed
and scorned me yesterday
are sorry that they were not looking
as I did

I am bewildered by the magnificence
of your beauty
and wish to see you
with a hundred eyes

My heart has burned with passion
and has searched forever
for this wondrous beauty
that I now behold

I am ashamed
to call this love human
and afraid of God
to call it divine

Your fragrant breath
like the morning breeze
has come to the stillness of the garden
You have breathed new life into me
I have become your sunshine
and also your shadow

My soul is screaming in ecstasy
Every fiber of my being
is in love with you

Your effulgence
has lit a fire in my heart
and you have made radiant
for me
the earth and sky

My arrow of love
has arrived at the target
I am in the house of mercy
and my heart
is a place of prayer”― Rumi, The Love Poems of Rumi

Endnotes:
[1] Think and Grow Rich story about the boy with no ears. Listen to "Telepathy Tapes" podcast for seeing even when blind.
[2] Anam Cara page 60
[3] P 17
[4] –Mat 6:22, Luke 11:34
[5] On Becoming an Alchemist, A Guide For The Modern Magician.