CHAPTER 1

The Other Side of Reality

You do not have a single existence. The world that you are familiar with, thephysical, material world, is not the only one in which you move and interact.Every day when you get up, shower, and go to work, each and every stepreverberates through two sides of reality at once. Your physical body walks inthe world of matter, but a subtler aspect of you, woven within and throughoutyour physical body, moves and interacts on a level of pure energy. In order tolive up to your greatest potential as a whole and complete being, you mustbecome aware of this subtle aspect of yourself that is so often ignored in favorof the physical part of your being.

People who are naturally sensitive to this subtle side of existence are whatmany label "psychic." All too often, we hear the word "psychic" and assume thatit is a quality possessed by only a privileged few. We accept that Madam Circe,the Tarot card reader down the street, is psychic, but most of us would not seeBob the businessman or Carrie the cashier as people who are also psychic. Butdon't let cultural assumptions about terminology fool you. Each and every one ofus is psychic. As beings of both body and spirit, our ability to perceive more-than-physicalreality is nothing magickal or supernatural. It is completelyinborn, and every one of us already experiences psychic perceptions on aninstinctive and unconscious level. The trick to harnessing your psychicabilities simply relies on learning how to bring these subtle perceptions into aconscious and controllable portion of your mind.

Most people in our Western society are completely unaware of their existencebeyond the material world. They are so thoroughly grounded in physical realitythat they are blind to everything else that surrounds them. And yet that doesnot stop the subtle aspects of reality from affecting them. There are spiritsand invisible energies moving all around us. We generate some of those energiesourselves, affecting and being affected by them. We can be touched subtly byspirits, sensing the thoughts and feelings they project, and unconsciouslyreacting to those impressions. Our physical and emotional well-being can bedrastically influenced by energies and entities that we cannot physically see,and even the healthy atmosphere of our living spaces can be influenced by theseinvisible aspects of the subtle world.

Ever walk into a house and feel immediately uncomfortable? Perhaps it made youfeel cold or the air just seemed too close. Perhaps you got a distinctimpression of a certain emotion—anger, or maybe sorrow. If there were otherswith you, did you notice how they reacted? I'll bet they did not necessarilycomment on a specific impression, but if you asked them later, they would admitto being uncomfortable in the house without really knowing why.

Even when we do not consciously use them, all of us have psychic sensitivitiesthat allow us to respond to the energy of places and people. Most people willinstinctively react to their impressions of these energies, but are soaccustomed to ignoring that side of their existence that they never evenquestion why they are reacting in a particular way. An unawakened person,someone who has chosen to remain blind to anything but his or her materialexistence, would feel uncomfortable in a house like the one described above, andhe or she might suddenly want to leave. If you asked, this person wouldn't beable to tell you why he or she felt uncomfortable, only that the place felt"bad" or "weird." Another reaction might be to get very agitated while in thehouse. Similarly, if you asked the person, he or she wouldn't be able to explainthe unusual behavior. At best, the person might say he or she "just felt out ofsorts."

This is an example of our latent psychic sensitivities at work. The house mighthave been haunted or the feeling may have just been a strong, lingeringemotional impression. There are many more things moving in the realm of spiritthan the spirits themselves. The subtle energies that move in currents throughthis level of reality that intersects our familiar physical space can have apowerful affect on how we perceive the world around us. Even if we are totallyunaware of sensing energy, we might find a particular place frightening andrepellent while another will strike us as fascinatingly attractive. The physicalappearance of both places may be identical, but on the level that we cannot seewith our eyes alone, there is a difference, and that difference is somethingthat we sense on an almost instinctual level. Even when we don't understand whatit is we are doing, our natural psychic sensitivities give us information wereact to.

This is one of the most important things to know about the subtle reality. Evenif we are unconscious of this aspect of our existence, we still sense and reactto it. The same is true when it comes to affecting the subtle reality ourselves.Our physical bodies are mirrored by a body of subtle energy, and this bodyinteracts with the subtle world we move through, whether we will it or not. Ouremotions, our dreams, the very energy of our life force reverberate around us,rippling through the subtle reality and leaving impressions of us behind.Wherever we walk, wherever we live, we leave these echoes, like fingerprints onthe subtle world. Some of us have more impact on the subtle world that others,and so the echoes that we leave behind are much stronger and more palpable. Someimpressions are so strong, they may linger in a place for years after we havepassed through. This is just one of the most basic ways that we interact—almostcompletely unconsciously—with the invisible world that surrounds us.

How do we control this interaction that happens on such a basic and unconsciouslevel? How do we learn to cultivate, harness, and control those psychicsensitivities that all of us are born with? The first step is to become aware ofthe subtle reality, thereby becoming aware of how we affect it and how itaffects us. But how do we learn to perceive something that is largelyimperceptible to the five senses we're most accustomed to using?

Well, first of all, you are probably more attuned to your psychic sensitivitiesthan most people, otherwise you probably wouldn't be reading this book.Secondly,...