OLD HABITS DIE HARD

An excerpt from my new book, The Psychic Development Project, by Vicky M. Short.


The other day I had a spontaneous thought come into my mind that my ex-husband and his new wife were getting a puppy. Now, you'd think by now that I would have learned what a psychic thought feels like. After all, at the time I got this information I knew it wasn't a logical, rational thought; I knew it was based on intuition. And I knew I wasn't interested in what they do, nor was I thinking, feeling, or doing anything associated with them. You'd think this thought would have stood out, and it did. But old habits die hard.

The moment I received the psychic knowing feeling and thought about the puppy, the first thing I did was go down the road of making associated thoughts based on my reaction to what I was receiving. Yes, I shifted gears from Receiving Mode to Reacting Mode in the blink of an eye, and I hadn't even noticed! Literally, one moment I was cognizant of the fact that I was receiving psychic information, and the next moment I was letting my thoughts run away with my reactions.

They had Daisy, our dog from our marriage, and the other dog was his wife's. So I worried that by now having three dogs, they would consider getting rid of Daisy since she's older. She's an 11-year-old border collie/blue heeler and isn't a pack dog. I began worrying what would happen to her if they did give her away. I was so consumed with my associated reactions that I completely forgot that I had just received actual psychic information about something else which started this chain reaction. My reactions over-rode what was real and made my thinking go off course from receiving more real information about the puppy. Had I remained in the area of consciousness of receiving, rather than shift over to reacting, I may have received more information. I could have asked myself, "What else about that?", keeping my focus of awareness interested in that place.

I left for work that morning not worrying more about it and figured when the kids came home from my ex-husband's that evening they'd surely tell me about the puppy. At 6:25 p.m. I received a text message from my son David, "We got a new dog!" I was instantly reminded of my psychic feeling from that morning. I had to know, and texted back asking if they were going to keep Daisy as well, as I worried about her getting the boot to make way for the puppy. David replied that that didn't happen and that he didn't think it would. I was relieved.

Differentiating Receiving thoughts from Reaction ones is going to be a toughy, but this experience is yet again another great reminder of that. The most glaring key point here is the fact that I know for certain that when the psychic thought entered my mind, I wasn't thinking, feeling, or doing anything associated to my ex-husband and his wife. I wasn't thinking about Daisy or dogs in general. So for this thought to have come into my mind then, it truly was a random experience, save for the fact that I've recently been doing deep meditative work at bringing more psychic experiences into my awareness for the sake of my psychic development project. This experience was, no doubt, another opportunity for me to learn my skills better. Just like the school shooting incident where my thoughts quickly ran away with my reactions, this experience was a good demonstration of how the mind operates. I'm going to make it a point to pay attention to my thoughts throughout the day, taking notice of what I'm thinking, feeling, or doing in accordance with how my thoughts shift from one thing to another. If I find any trace of incongruity, it'll be interesting to try and backtrack my thinking to notice where I shifted over into a trail of associated thoughts that weren't based on what I know to be real information. I think it will be simple enough to ask myself, "Is this thought based on something I worry about or fear, or does it have any reality basis in my life at the moment?"