Outside of meditation and stilling the mind, one of the quickest ways to develop psychic abilities is to simply notice them. Even the smallest coincidences can be counted as psychic victories, opening the door to bigger experiences. In that same vein, if you want to diminish what abilities you have, ignore or worse, dismiss them.
During a recent stay at a hotel, I noticed a strange man pacing in the lobby. It was a Sunday and lots of guests were checking in, but this one guy really got my attention. There was something about him …
Don’t stereotype. The guy belonged to an ethnic group often associated with trouble. I didn’t want to stereotype so I initially dismissed my concerns as potentially being unfair. After all, what was he really doing that was so bad? Aside from pacing the lobby like a nervous cat…
He isn’t a guest. Startled by the whispering of this idea in my “ear,” I considered, then dismissed this, too. I had no way of knowing whether or not he was a guest. Still, something told me…
He isn’t doing anything. I pushed the incident and the man out of my mind and went about my business.
He’s doing what?! Later that evening I stepped off the elevator and turned toward my room. Something made me look in the other direction. The man I’d seen earlier in the lobby was at the far end of the hall, kneeling at a window that overlooked the parking lot. It was a shocking sight. Especially at 11pm.
For several moments I studied his pose. The guy wasn’t praying. He reminded me of the end scene in the Blair Witch Project. Something was really wrong.
My feelings, his reaction. The man suddenly noticed that he wasn’t alone. His body jerked as if he’d been stuck with a hot poker. Strange reaction … unless he was up to no good and realized he’d been caught.
What to do? I considered his pose in detail. I knew in my heart the guy wasn’t simply praying. I couldn’t imagine what the hell he was doing kneeling in the hallway of a hotel like that and I continued to wrestle with my feelings. I was raised to be polite and treat people with respect. I was raised not to judge a book by its cover and not to stereotype. Those deeply embedded values were duking it out with my psychic senses that were screaming something was wrong with this picture.
What did I do? I went in our room and updated my husband before going down to the front desk to inform the woman working that there was some guy kneeling at the window in an otherwise empty hallway upstairs.
I wasn’t the only one with a bad feeling. The bar tender was leaving for the night and overheard my report. She said to the woman working registration “It must be that guy we saw…”
The front desk lady replied, ‘Yeah, the one we think is on drugs…”
I rode with the other two back up to our floor and, no surprise, the guy was gone. My husband did a floor by floor search but never saw him. The front desk agent promised to be vigilent and I wondered if she would notify the police.
One sleepless night. I didn’t get much sleep that night. Yes, I was uneasy about the man’s presence in the hotel but I was more concerned with my own response to the entire situation. In my effort to be politically correct, I had ignored potentially life saving information because it was only a gut feeling, something that had served me well for decades.
As I stared into a darkness interrupted by various LEDs and digital lights from the microwave, media player, and a bedside clock, I mentally reviewed each and every moment, beginning with my first sighting of the guy.
Even as I had fought to dismiss my concerns because I had nothing other than a creepy feeling to point to, my psychic senses turned up the volume. My entire body tightened. I got a horrendous pressure in my chest. While my husband was seeing if the creepy guy was anywhere close, I stayed in the room and fought escalating physical symptoms. I started to hyperventilate. I began seeing violent images and the sound of an explosion, either a gun going off or a door being kicked in, began echoing over and over in my head. It was awful.
I had never experienced anything like it. I remember holding onto a wall and taking several deep breaths, determined to calm myself. I calmed down once I openly acknowledged that, in spite of not having anything concrete to point to, the guy was dangerous and yes, very much a threat. I knew it. I felt it.
We checked out the next morning.
Lesson learned. The incident stayed with me for days. It was more than unsettling that I’d let the fear of being seen as a racist override common sense and strong gut instincts. I reminded myself of Gavin de Becker’s The Gift of Fear, where he talks about this exact problem. And I knew I would post, not just to burn this lesson into my brain, but to warn others not to let this happen to them.
Follow your gut…
