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STEVE

Well, I'm here today in my living room with my wife, Erin. Say Hi, Erin...

ERIN

Hello, everyone

STEVE

...and we decided to record a podcast together for the first time, because we've had a lot of requests for that. So, today's topic is going to be psychic skills and psychic development. I'm going to be asking Erin questions about her experiences as a psychic medium, and we'll kind of get into more of the details of psychic skills and what our opinion is on this: Is it total bunk or is there a lot of substance to it? Obviously, we fall into the substance side, so that's what we're going to be covering. So, first, Erin, I want you talk a little bit about how you came to develop your psychic skills. What was your experience of that like, like starting from early childhood?

ERIN

It did seem to start very early for me, there was a catalysing incident, I think, which was when I was four years old. I was sitting on a bar stool eating as my parents were getting ready to go out for the night, and I fell backwards off of the stool and then stool came down and hit me on the head right on the third eye, which is right between the eyebrows. I was four, so I was crying. They took me to the hospital for stitches. After that, I started being a little bit peculiar and I started telling people I could read their minds, that I had ESP. I don't know if this bar stool incident actually caused my psychic abilities to develop on their own, but it is sort of coincidental that it happened around this time, and if you subscribe to certain beliefs, you know the third eye is where intuition and clairvoyance happens, and even in olden times, the Native Americans used to chisel out a hole in your third eye to release your psychic abilities or what they thought were evil spirits. So, I don't know.

STEVE

Still, that's pretty amazing doing that when you were only four years old, because our son, Kyle—he is four and a half now—and to imagine him walking around saying, "I'm psychic," seems kind of silly.

ERIN

Yeah. Now, just saying I was psychic didn't make me psychic, but what would happen is I would start to know things before they were going to happen. I would tell my mom that so-and-so was going to call and a few seconds later the phone would ring and it would be her. And I do recall a time when I was driving to the store with my mom and I said, "Mom, we've got to buy flash lights." And she's like, "No, no, we're okay, we don't need flashlights." "No, Mom, we've got to buy three flashlights, we've got to buy them now." Well, she humoured me. She didn't understand why I was so adamant about this. So we bought the flashlights and later that night when they were out for the evening there was a blackout, and when they came home, my brother and my sister and I were huddled in the bed with our brand new flashlights so we weren't scared. But it was incidences like that where I would just know things that were going to happen before they were going to happen, like a car accident, or stuff like that. It got pretty prolific along the way.

STEVE

How did people like your family and friends react to that?

ERIN

You know, sometimes they would say, "Oh, that's weird, oh Erin, how did you know that?" Often times I didn't know how I knew. I just knew. It wasn't like I heard something, It wasn't like I saw something. It was just I knew either, "Hey! We need flashlights, I don't know why, I just know we need them." Or I would say to my brother, "y'know, make sure you buckle your seatbelt today." And then he would get into an accident on the way out the door.

STEVE

So would you say it was kind of just like another form of sensory perception, like your eyesight or your hearing? And it's like you didn't really distinguish it separately from them because you had this from such a young age it just seemed normal to you?

ERIN

Yeah, I didn't really know how to access it consciously, that thing. These things would just sort of happen and I would respond to them, and I couldn't really control it. I wasn't directing it. I felt it was just information that was coming to me and I was picking up on it.

STEVE

How did that continue on, say, into your teenage years? I know you had some weird—weird doesn't begin to describe it, weird just gets you in the door—teenage experiences and your psychic experiences during your teenage years.

ERIN

When I was in junior high school, I decided to do a science project on lucid dreaming, which is having the ability to be aware that you're dreaming while you're dreaming. It was just a subject that fascinated me, I didn't really give it too much thought, but it was very, very interesting. After I read a lot of books about lucid dreaming, I decided to work on that and I became a very accomplished and advanced lucid dreamer, able to even program the dream I wanted to have before going to bed.

STEVE

Let's just pause a little bit. You had done a previous podcast on lucid dreaming. So, if you go to StevePavlina.com/audio, you can listen to Erin's...I think she has an 8-minute podcast on lucid dreaming itself. But just for the benefit of the listeners who don't know what lucid dreaming is, could you tell them what it is?

ERIN

Lucid dreaming is when you become aware during your dream that you're dreaming. You'll be having a regular dream and suddenly you'll say, 'Wait! This is a dream, or, I must be dreaming.' Once you have that awareness, most people wake up. But if you're accomplished at this you can stay inside of your dream and direct the course and scene of your dreams. So you can decide you want to be a superhero, and suddenly you're flying around shooting lasers out of your eyes. You can decide you want to go on a date with Brad Pitt and suddenly he is there and very willing.

STEVE

In fact, some people already know this story, but the day Erin and I first met—which was May 29, 1994—I spent two hours just grilling Erin with questions about lucid dreaming because that's something I knew she was capable of doing and I was fascinated by it, and shortly thereafter, I learned how to lucid dream. She taught me how, and I read a couple of books on it. The first time I had a lucid dream it only lasted five seconds, I woke up too quicky. I got all excited, 'Oh my Gosh! I'm conscious in my dream world!' And I immediately woke up. But then I learned to have longer and longer lucid dreams lasting several minutes or ten minutes, or longer, and that's really fun. Now I've been doing it for, I guess, almost 15 years know. And it's been really interesting.

ERIN

And you've gotten better at it

STEVE

I've gotten better. Flying is alot of fun, I can go faster and faster. I still have trouble changing directions when I'm flying sometimes. I crash into a few things, kind of like the greatest American Hero trying to fly. It is definitely alot of fun and it's really amazing to do that, so definitely listen to our podcast on lucid dreaming if you get a chance. But what else happened after that?

ERIN

While I was learning about lucid dreaming for my project, I had read about something called Astral Projection, which was actually—Astral Projection is when you actually have your spirit, or your soul, or your consciousness leave your body and separate. It's not a dream, it's very different from a dream. Basically, your consciousness leaves your body. Now, I didn't really know how to make that happen, I had only read about it. But I started, I had an experience. Actually on—I remember the date was January 7th, and I was fifteen—I had an experience where I was being...I felt like I was being pulled out of my body as though there were beings present helping this happen. Well, I was terrified. I was totally terrified because the feeling of having your spirit or your consciousness leave your body is very unnatural, so, I was desperate to get back into my body. But after I had this experience, it started happening more and more and more until I got to a point where I could induce an astral projection when I wanted to. Usually, I would wake up from a dream for a few moments and then initiate the astral separation. I started doing it maybe two, three, four, five times a week, depending on the week. And it was such an interesting experience, I stopped being afraid of it, and once you lose the fear of leaving your body it's alot of fun. It's much easier, it's a great great interesting experience. Growing up, I told my family about this, they were all aware of what I was doing. I recall my brother saying often, "Mom, Erin's weird." But that's how I was. Now, as I got through high school, I started to have some negative experiences with the other side. I started to become frightened of some of the experiences I was having, of some of the negative energies I was drawing to me.

So after high school, I decided it has to stop, for my own mental health, and for my own sanity I need to stop doing it and just totally focus my life, on life stuff. So I shut down all of my psychic abilities— well, most them—and stopped astral projecting, at least at will.

STEVE

So, wait, it was really the astral stuff that kind of convinced you that you had gone a little too far with this and you needed to back off?

ERIN

Yes

STEVE

I can really understand that because...it's interesting you mention how lucid dreaming happened first and then you kind of got into astral projection experiences, which really feels very different from lucid dreaming. But, for me, I can very rarely do it voluntarily, almost always it happened involuntarily, or while lucid dream and I went almost too deep and started astral projecting. For me, it's always been a terrifying experience, so I don't really want to do it. I wouldn't really want to explore it, so, it's like that's kind of what also made me back off from that, not having enough control, like leaving your body and feeling, 'Oh my Gosh, I'm separate from my body, how am I going to get back?' You feel like you're lost out somewhere, you know, way beyond the physical universe. And, you know, there's stuff out there that you don't know what its intention is, or how you even interact with it. You feel totally helpless, like a fish out of water.

ERIN

You don't know how to handle it. Yeah. I took me a while to master it and get control over it until the point where I was not at the mercy of the beings that were out there. But I was starting to get into some heavy stuff with some friends of mine too, we all just kind of decided it probably was not a healthy thing to be doing day in and day out, so I really pulled back on that. So, during my college years...

STEVE

Wait, wait, wait...tell everyone about that experience you had—you had an astral experience in your family's house and somebody else in the house saw something you did while you were projecting.

ERIN

One night, I had a fever and often times I would have spiritual experiences or paranormal experiences when I had a fever. But while I was going to sleep, I was doing a meditation, to help me get to sleep, of going down an elevator. I was imagining myself going down an elevator. And I remember when I was on my way back up, I heard a weird sound, and I felt, 'Uh oh, there's something in this elevator with me.' I felt like I brought something back up with me from wherever it was I had gone. Well, I fell into a sleep and I had the experience of leaving my body and I flew to my door.

STEVE

Your bedroom door?

ERIN

Yes, my bedroom door. This is when I living with my parents and siblings.

STEVE

This is when you were a teenager?

ERIN

Yes. And I saw a being walk out of our bathroom which was adjacent to my room, and he turned towards me and the way he looked to me, he looked like a kid, like a 17-year-old boy wearing a baseball jersey, but I could only see half of him, only half of him was visible, the other half was mysteriously missing. So, he looked like a kid I knew, so, I said, "John, is that you?" And he said, "No, I'm the devil." I said, "Stop it, you're scaring me." And he walked towards me and he turned right and went into my brothers room instead. At that moment I saw a guide or a being at the end of the hallway and he beckoned to me and I flew towards him and connected with him, and he said, "You brought it here, you got to take it back." I don't know exactly what happened after that, I have no memory what happened at that point. But as soon as we were done doing whatever it is we were doing, he dropped me back off in my room and I got back into my body. No big deal, right? So, the next morning...

STEVE

Your version of no big deal! Told you weird just gets you in the door.

ERIN

So the next morning, my mom was calling up, "Erin, Erin... didn't you hear about what happened to your brother last night?" And I'm like, "No, what?" Well, apparently my brother had been falling asleep with his TV on, like he usually does, and my dad had come into his room to turn off the television, and he said, "Dad, Dad, no, no, I'm still watching that." And my dad knew he was falling asleep so he turned it off anyway. As my dad was leaving the room and closing the door, my brother saw a ghost slip into his door, or slip through the door and into his room. Now, he described the ghost the exact same way I did. He said it looked like a guy from my art class. He was wearing a football jersey but I could only see half of him. Well, that really freaked us all out. So, he was screaming, "Dad, dad, dad, there's a ghost!" And my dad came in a turned on the light, and it woke up everybody in the house except me, even though I was in the adjacent room. Everybody else heard my brother screaming and the tussle...but I was off, I guess, putting it back.

STEVE

And you have so many stories like that that occur over the past fourteen years we've been together, it's just been pretty amazing. Now, let's talk about how you got started as a professional psychic. Like, y'know, you had these weird experiences but then you decided to turn them off for a while.

ERIN

I turned them off all during college and graduate school. And then I—when I met Steve, and he started asking me of all these experiences—it started bringing up the abilities again. Now, I was kind of afraid. I didn't really want to open up to all of the paranormal stuff again because of a lot of it really did scare me, and I was terrified that I would someday wake up in my bed and see dead people standing over me. So, I really really blocked and shielded myself from having that happen.

STEVE

So what got you to turn it back on again? How did you get from that point to becoming a professional psychic? What was the impetus of the change?

ERIN

Yeah. So I started redeveloping some of the psychic abilities. I was starting to have alot of precognitive dreams again, and I was beginning to have more conscious contact with my spirit guides and my higher self, and I began studying the aspects of paranormal things again. What happened was, I was watching a reality show one day and a relative of mine was on the show, and I noticed when I was watching him on the show I was starting to receive...it sounded like someone was talking in my ear telling me things about this relative. And I thought it was just my imagination, but every week, as I continued to watch, I was getting more and more information. Finally, I decided I have to follow this up. 'I have to get in contact with this guy,' and I really hardly knew him. We hadn't seen each other since we were kids. So it took me a while to get in contact with him but when I did I said, "I don't know if you're into this stuff or not, but I feel like I'm talking to somebody, because it's a female presence, she was telling me things about her death and about him." Now, the situation was she had committed suicide a few months earlier—and I didn't even know, I didn't know who this woman was and I didn't know he was dating her or anything—but when I told him what she told me, there was silence on the phone. And I'm like, "Hello, hello?”

STEVE

Because he was stunned

ERIN

He was stunned. I said, "Is any of this making sense to you?" And he said, "I'm shaking now. You couldn't possibly know these things that you're telling me, these are things that only she or I know, or knew." And I said, "Really? Wow!" Because I didn't know exactly what I was doing. I didn't realize I was channelling a deceased person so clearly. I had never done that before. She was a very strong spirit.

STEVE

Yes, I remember, this was a very powerful spirit. This is the one that was constantly, like, knocking our lightbulbs out, having to change multiple lightbulbs each week, and then, massively affecting our internet connection whenever she wanted to get our attention. Our wireless network was always going down with her around, and suddenly working pristinely after that.

ERIN

...Very strong spirit. That's probably why she was able to come to me when I wasn't even tuned in. But, she came to me two more times, and I relayed messages to my relative two more times. And I started thinking, 'For heaven's sake! What is this!? Am I actually having conversations with dead people!?' So that's kind of my first experience, and I kind of opened myself up to the possibility, and I told my spirit guides, "No—don't let any of these people stand above my bed in the middle of the night or I'm done." You know, so, there was some kind of an agreement that they would only come to me when I was fully awake, and you know, where I could not be too scared.

STEVE

Now, you mentioned guides, and guides are like, you know...How do you define guides? What exactly are they?

ERIN

The spirit guides, yeah. The spirit guides...I like to think of them as sort of a collective group of spirits who are assigned to you before you are born—sometimes they'll come in and out—who are there to guide and sort of nudge you through life. See, your higher self—this is my view of it your higher self—is who you are when you're back in the ether as I call it, you know, when you're deceased.

STEVE

So, these guides they're conscious beings, conscious entities, much like human beings...Except, they're not in the physical world.

ERIN

They're not corporeal. These are non-physical beings with intelligence and consciousness.

STEVE

You can't really see [or hear] them with your eyes and ears directly unless maybe they're really strong and can come through and make some kind of projection into the physical universe.

ERIN

So, they work with your higher self to make sure you are doing what you intended to do in this lifetime. That you're mainly keeping on track.

STEVE

So, your higher self is basically the non-physical component of your consciousness?

ERIN

That's right. That's a good way to put it.

STEVE

That's basically what you have left when your body dies?

ERIN

Yeah. So, the spirit guides help guide you, and that's who I was in contact with. You have many spirit guides. There are more dominant spirit guides in your group, but you have many. And then there'll be some that come in and out depending on what's happening in your life, or maybe you need help with a specific problem and they bring in a guide who has experience or knowledge and can help you. But you do have guides who will communicate with you if you continue with them.

STEVE

Now, speaking of guides...This kind of a quick story of how you really got going on the professional route, was that I was actually learning to start tuning into guides, and I had this strange thing where I kept picking up on this one guide who was for Erin but for some reason he kept contacting me. And he came through as this teenage guy-presence, and I kind of asked him what his name was, and the name came through as Keith. So that's what I always called him. Now, one time I was just kind of lying in bed with Erin one morning and I was like, "Oh, I'm getting a knock." Because when a guide shows up, it's almost like I feel a presence like there is somebody else in the room with me, but it's almost like I feel it in a non-physical sense.

ERIN

It's almost like the phone is ringing

STEVE

Yeah, like someone is showing up, 'Oh, somebody wants to talk to me.' So I kind of just do a quickie, like a one-minute meditation type of thing where I just quiet my mind and sort of tune in to see what's going to show up on the screen in my mind. And he comes through and he shows me, uh, he says, "Oh, I've got a message you have to give to Erin." I'm like, "Okay, what is it?" So he shows me this message, and the message is, he shows me this haunted house and Erin's in the middle of it, sitting in this haunted house, and she's surrounded by all these ghosts and spirits who are communicating with her. And the message is, 'Go to the haunted house.' So I tell her this, and I'm like, "OK, I have no idea what this means. Go to the haunted house? What haunted house?"

ERIN

We thought maybe it was a metaphor or something

STEVE

It's like, 'What does this mean!?' The most haunted house is usually the one you're in, so, why don't you talk about what happened after that? By the way, this was in 2006.

ERIN

Well, actually, and Keith had told you, "Tell Erin she'll see many spirits there, some will be good, some will be negative, but don't be afraid and have a reaction not a preaction."

STEVE

I remember that. React to the spirits, not preact, meaning...

ERIN

Because I had a tendency to close myself off from being around anything negative because I was scared.

STEVE

Meaning respond, stay in the present moment and respond, don't assume something bad's going to happen.

ERIN

So a few days later, I got a call from a woman who was a producer at the Cris Angel Mindfreak show, I had never seen an episode at all, I had no idea what the show was about. But she found me through an obscure website I had created because Steve and I were trying to create a discussion group for people in town who wanted to discuss the paranormal and supernatural and quantum physics type things. And she stumbled upon my website and she said, "We're looking for a medium who can go to a haunted house and communicate with the spirits there, and be filmed on camera". And I said, "Wow, is that me?"

STEVE

That was the message I gave her.

ERIN

Yeah, and I realized, 'Oh my Gosh, this Keith spirit had just told Steve to tell me go to the haunted house.' So I really felt, 'Oh my Gosh, I think I'm supposed to do this.'

STEVE

Because you would have normally turned them down

ERIN

I definitely would have turned them down. I hadn't done anything professionally, just, you know, a few things here and there. But I did feel this was supposed to happen, this was set up by my guides, to push me along. So I reluctantly agreed, and I even tried to wiggle out of it many times, and I said, "You know, I'm just starting out here, I might not get anything, I might walk out, be at this and not get anything."

STEVE

I remember you didn't sell yourself to them, or try to push yourself or anything, they just wanted you. It's very unusual, you know, they call you out of the blue and say they want a medium for the show.

ERIN

Yeah. I said, "What happens if I get there and I get nothing?" She said, "Well, not big deal. We'll just write you out of the show." I said, "Alright, I guess I can't really lose." But I was terrified of going.There was a lot pressre involved. I thought I would really need to perform. But I went and did the shoot. It went very well. I experienced a lot of things that were very unusual and interesting, and I wrote about the story on my website, which you can find on my blog—just do a search on Criss Angel.

STEVE

I can link to that from the podcast so people can see it.

ERIN

Okay. But the thing is, even after I left that experience, even with the confidence I had because of a lot of things that happened there, a lot of validation I received from the owner of the hotel where we were filming (at the Amor Gossa), I still wasn't sure, you know, I still wasn't sure that I exactly had this ability. And then my guides came to me and said, 'Doreen Virtue will confirm your abilities for you.' It was that clear, that simple.

STEVE

Just so people know, who is Doreen Virtue?

ERIN

Doreen Virtue is an author and speaker with Hay House. She's done many, many products. Her specialty is related to angels. But she's intuitive and clairvoyant and all that.

STEVE

She has a number of books in the metaphysical section.

ERIN

...Lots of books. So, as it happened we were going to attend the 'I Can Do It' conference a few days after the Criss Angel shoot. And she was one of the people who were going to be presenting there. So I immediately signed up for her pre-conference workshop with Steve. And we were there for eight hours and nothing happened. It was a great workshop, but there was nothing specific where she was confirming my abilities or anything. So, I kind of put it out of my mind, and on that Sunday of the conference, she was giving a key-note address to several thousand people in the big auditorium.

STEVE

Yeah, there were about 4,000 people there

ERIN

And she decided to do maybe three or four readings, and when she asked who wanted a reading, I kind of haphazardly or half-heartedly raised my hand.

STEVE

I remember that, timidly.

ERIN

Well, there were so many people clamouring for a reading.

STEVE

And we were sitting a good ways back, many rows back. We definitely weren't in the first ten rows.

ERIN

...Many rows back. Pretty much she looked right at me and pointed at me and said, "You, I need to read for you." And I was shaking so bad because I thought, 'Wow! This is it. I think this is it.' So I stood up. They handed me the microphone and I could hardly get any words out of my mouth because I was trembling. And she told me—she confirmed in front of thousands of people—that I was indeed clairvoyant, that I had this ability, that I was not imagining it, and that she needed to tell me this, she needed to confirm for me that everything that had been happening to me was real. And I was blown away! And what's interesting is that session was recorded because Hay House was recording all of their keynote sessions.

STEVE

Yeah, we have a copy of it

ERIN

So, I was able to hear a copy of it later, whereas, if she had said or done something like that during the pre-conference workshop, it would not have been recorded at all. So, I think they waited. I think the guides waited and had her do Sunday.

STEVE

Because you couldn't remember anything you said.

ERIN

I couldn't remember my name.

STEVE

Okay, well that's pretty amazing because from there you started doing some free readings for people.

ERIN

I started doing free readings for anybody who would let me—family, friends, and then friends of friends, so, people I didn't know at all. And I even did a group reading at my brother's bridal shower. And people were stunned by how accurate I was. I was stunned by how accurate I was. I mean, this was still very new to me. And I offered to do some private readings for people, you know, more in-depth readings for people at the party. And when I did that, I started to realize that it was really coming through fairly easily. But I still did tens, dozens, dozens of free readings for family, friends, and acquaintances before I finally decided—with alot of encouragement from Steve, and alot of encouragement from people who read my blog—to go ahead and start offering to do the readings professionally.

STEVE

So, you were already blogging at that time and then you started offering. But your website didn't really have any income sources, I think you had ad-sense ads on the side, but that was about it.

ERIN

That was nothing.

STEVE

...Really not making much from your site. But because my website was getting so much traffic, I was able to refer her a lot of potential clients and so she was able to start booking readings right away, as soon as she started doing it. And I remember you charged, you know, a pretty small amount to begin with.

ERIN

Yeah I really wasn't sure what to charge. We didn't know what the demand would be like, and so initially we charged $30.00 for an e-mail reading, $55.00 for a phone reading, and then, if you wanted to meet with me in person it was $90.00.

STEVE

And we had to raise your price pretty quick. I remember because you just started getting too much, too many people signing up, more than you could handle.

ERIN

The demand was way too high.

STEVE

Now, you've done since then, in the past two years basically—in fact, two years almost to the day, interesting—you've done over a thousand readings, like paid professional readings. So what's that been like? What have you learned from that?

ERIN

Well, I've learned alot, that would probably fill a book. You definitely get better with practice like any skill, you know, whether it's music talent or body building. I picked it up considerably. I started to be able to communicate faster and get deeper with the readings, and my medium skills improved as well. So being able to contact, or hear from, or pick up on deceased entities got a lot better.

STEVE

So, even though you've only been doing this professionally for a few years now, really you've been doing this your entire life. Since you were four years old, you started developing these abilities. So this is a talent you've been developing for more than thirty years.

ERIN

Yeah, I just didn't know I could apply my talent to other people. So, that's what the last two years have been—the application of that I have learned in the last 35 years, to applying this ability to other people.

STEVE

Alright, so let's talk briefly about skepticism and dealing with skeptics, because that's something that always comes up, like, "Oh, I don't believe you're a psychic, I think it's all bunk, I'm skeptical about that." I'll just mention the way I see skepticism: you see, skepticism is a belief system basically of doubt. It's kind of a way of relating to reality where you doubt something until it's proven to you. However, there's also a creative component to skepticism in that when you doubt something you create the system of doubt. That's kind of the problem I have with skepticism. Skeptics aren't really skeptical enough because you have to kind of turn doubt on itself to be a complete skeptic, which means you have to have some doubt about doubt itself. Otherwise, you become too comfortable with doubt and you end up creating the very problem which skepticism tries to solve, which means you fall into a belief system that may be inaccurate. If you fall into the belief system of doubt, really, where you start doubting everything, that's inaccurate too because there is a creative component to your beliefs. Whether you think it's your reticular activating system or you think it's some intension manifestation process, it doesn't really matter in this case. The challenge with skepticism is, the way I see it, it's kind of like if you have this psychic equipment in your brain and it's coming through. What skepticism does is it adds static to the channel, it makes it fuzzy, it's hard to perceive. It's like if you become skeptical of your own vision—your eyesight—and you start doubting what you see, well you're going to start crashing into things, you're going to bump into objects. If you start doubting your own hearing, you're not going to be able to hold a conversation. You lose your ability, you lose your talent when you start doubting it, because doubt has that creative component to it. You're creating that problem you're trying to solve.

In terms of skeptcism, I'm skeptical of skepticism itself, so I kind of like to go the other way and say, 'Well, what happens if you really do believe this stuff?' And as soon as I started doing that, going in that direction, I noticed my own psychic abilities started opening up. Now I decided not to develop this as any kind of professional skill, but for me I noticed I was able to tune in much more clearly, pick up much more impressions, pick up more intuitive sensations. I've actually done readings for people before, around the time Erin was getting started, and had some pretty amazing experiences too. I read for a couple I met in a hallway once, just totally blind. I was channelling their deceased uncle for them. I was telling them all kinds of stuff, and I was like, 'Wow, how am I picking all this up?' It's because... This was actually at the Hay House conference too where I put myself in a state of belief where I was not skeptical. And you know, this couple was in tears after I was done talking to them for like 10 minutes. It's pretty powerful when you do this for yourself. So, it's like, once you open your belief system up enough that you can start having these experiences and you start getting a little bit of stuff coming through, even though it may be kind of foggy and fuzzy at first, if you get a little bit of validation, it encourages you to open up a little bit more, then with more validation you open up a little bit more, and pretty soon you're getting so much validation there's no way you can doubt it. You know, again, it's kind of like a baby learning to use it's senses, it's eyesight and it's hearing. You stop doubting when it's coming through so clearly, but you just have to start developing that skill. Now, on the other hand, if you're a complete non-believer—this is different than being a skeptic—you absolutely convince yourself that all the psychic stuff is completely bunk, so you're not doubting it, you know it's wrong in your mind. Now, what that does is that it basically turns off your psychic equipment. It's kind of like, you know you're deaf, or you know you're blind, you can't see or you can't hear, that's the case.

ERIN

Actually, that's a good way of putting it. A lot of times, when skeptics e-mail me or ask me, you know, they basically tell me I can't possibly be what I say I am because they don't believe that psychic abilities exist.

STEVE

So, they're saying, "You can't possibly be a psychic medium."

ERIN

Yeah, and it's kind of like, let's say they were deaf and I were talking to them, and them saying, "Since I can't hear you, you must not be talking?" Whereas, I'm saying, "Oh, I'm talking, you just can't hear me."

STEVE

It's like the psychic impressions, the signals are there. It's like the light waves are there whether your eyes are perceiving them or not, you're just not picking them up.

ERIN

I do always find it kind of ironic that people will e-mail me and say, you know, all psychics are frauds. "You're saying you're a psychic, why are you doing this?" And I'll be like, 'Wow, you know they don't know me, they've never met me, they've never had a reading with me, they've already assumed, based on their beliefs, that I must be a criminal or a scam artists, a fraud, a charlatan.'

STEVE

That's kind of funny. The way I like to deal skeptics is to basically point it out, turn doubt on itself and see what happens. Are you skeptical enough to question, to doubt your own beliefs, to consider that you may be wrong, that you're own doubt might be causing the problem you're trying to prevent? ...Which is to, I mean, skeptics want to have an accurate view of reality. They don't want to have a situation where they buy into beliefs that turn out to be false. But in order to really pursue that appropriately, you have to consider beliefs to see if they may in fact be accurate. So, if you tune out all beliefs and you just say, 'Okay, anything that seems remotely weird I'm not even going to look into or consider it.' You've gone too far and you're causing yourself to have an inaccurate view of reality by throwing out what may lead to a whole new understanding. Now, clearly, there are degrees of skepticism. Some people have more doubt than others, some people have more certainty than others. So, Erin, what is it like to read for people with different degrees of skepticism? Some people who are, like, really devout believers in psychic phenomena, versus people who are, say, a little more closed minded, maybe more left brained or logical in their thinking and have more doubts about the skepticism but they're willing to at least get a reading. Or maybe they had a reading bought for them by someone else.

ERIN

Yeah. Definitely the level of belief versus skepticism affects the information and the quality and the amount of information that comes through to me. It's almost like I have an antenna, they have an antenna, and then we're connecting with beings out in the ether, and if their antenna is blocking the signal then it's hard for me to pick images and information from them. Part of what I do is, there's alot of free will involved, and I cannot read someone without their permission, or atleast I don't read anyone without their permission, and when a skeptic is sitting with me they are sending out the signal that says you're not going to get anything, I don't want you to see who I am, I don't want you to read me, and it becomes very difficult for me to tune into that kind of energy.

STEVE

So, it's kind of like it creates an interference pattern, just like with light waves where you have patterns with different frequencies and they can actually interfere with each other.

ERIN

It's like Superman trying to use his x-ray vision and someone puts up some lead covering. He still has his x-ray vision but he cannot see through the shield.

STEVE

So, the beliefs of the people you're reading for impact the reading, they can actually enhance it or block it.

ERIN

Now, when I'm reading for someone who is psychic themselves, or has very developed psychic abilities, then the information is flowing so clearly it's like just reading through a book. I could just read for them for hours. The information is flowing very clearly and strongly.

STEVE

Let's talk now about—this is a question people ask me alot too—how do you know that information is coming through psychically, versus your feelings and emotions, versus just imagining it. So how do you distinguish between your psychic channel, your feelings and emotions, and your imagination?

ERIN

That is definitely a hard question to answer because in a lot of cases they will feel similar. I think it's really only through practice and experimentation and testing the information you're receiving that you'll learn to recognize and discern what is coming through, whether its imagination or your own ego, maybe some fear, maybe some doubt, or if you're really receiving information from a discarnate entity from the ether.

STEVE

Yeah, one way I tend to look at it—it's true—you need to practice because what the practice does is that you learn to distinguish the signals. It's kind of like...Imagine a new born baby that's just learning to make sense of what's coming through it's sensory perceptions. So it may not even initially distinguish between sight and sound, it's just kind of impulse affecting the infant, but over time, it learns to distinguish between, 'Oh, this is my visual sense. Oh, this is my auditory sense. This is my kinesthetic sense.'

ERIN

And then specifically, 'Oh that's my mom, that's my dad.'

STEVE

And distinguishing smells from sounds and so on. But it's actually a learned behaviour, you actually have to learn to distinguish between those senses. So, when I try to tune in and get a psychic impression on something, for me, it's kind of like I'm accessing a different part of my mind or a different part of my brain than I am with my feelings or emotions or my imagination. For example, when I imagine something, it's like, let's say I just want to visualize an apple. I picture it in a certain field of view in my mind's eye and I can see an image of an apple, and I can imagine it. And that's different than say, my waking vision. And that's also different from, say, when I'm seeing and perceiving when I'm having a dream. But it's just practice that lets you tell the difference. When I'm having a feeling or an emotion, that somethings I perceive throughout my whole body, it's much more physical—less mental feeling to me. And when I'm having a psychic impression, that's closer to imagination but it feels like it's coming from a different part of my brain, or a different part of my mind. It's coming through on a different frequency almost—almost like one is looking through my left eye, and one is looking through my right eye. And it's even like having a conversation with someone about doing a reading. It's like what's coming through your visual field, or your regular eyes, is combining with your psychic impression. It's almost like you're getting this more expanded stereo image of the conversation, of what's happening.

ERIN

In fact, when I'm doing a reading, I very specifically have to push all of my own thoughts out of the way, my own thoughts, emotions, and my ego so I can be sure that I'm tuning into my guides and my sitters guides. So I do a meditation to clear everything that's going on with me so I can be totally present. I raise my vibration. I open up all my chakras, all my energy centres, and I have a guide that helps me tune into other people's guides. So, when I tune in in that fashion, I always know when I'm getting that psychic impression.

STEVE

So, you actually have a guide that's helping you boost the signal, to amplify the effect of the reading?

ERIN

Exactly, to boost the signal. That's a good way of putting it. In most ways, I really just feel like a conduit. What I'm doing is I'm seeing and hearing what the guides want me to know, and all I do is relay to the person I'm reading for.

STEVE

I think that's very common with some other well known psychics. Didn't John Edwards mention something about his father delivering messages for him or something like that? Or he sees his father during readings? I thought you mentioned that when you went to see him in person.

ERIN

Yeah, I'm not sure. He sees things visually as well. He's clairvoyant. I didn't know this at first, but a lot of psychic images, they're almost like daydreams. It's almost like having a waking dream. When I'm tuned in to somebody's guides, the first thing they usually do is send me some kind of an image, like a movie playing out in my mind's eye. At first, I didn't understand what they were, but they were pretty much metaphors, and I would interpret the metaphor in such a way as you would interpret a dream. Along with what I see, the guide will sometimes just talk to me, and they'll just tell me, 'Alright, what can we say about Clare? Well, Clare just lost her job. She's feeling really bad about that so we need to talk about that. And Clare's having a relationship issue with her ex-husband.' And so, I'll just listen for a few moments and get the information and maybe take a few notes and wait until I've got the whole story, and then I'll begin the reading by talking to my sitter about what the guides have brought up. So, they'll either bring it up visually or auditorily for me, and then on rare occasions I will feel something physical in my body that I know is not, that it's something I'm reading for in the sitter.

STEVE

Now, you say it comes to you visually or auditorily, but what you're really saying is it's accessing that part of your mind or your brain. But it's not really coming through your eyes and your ears. But it's like you're hearing the sound in your mind or seeing the vision in your eye, but it's not like you're seeing it in the regular field of your eyes.

ERIN

It's just like when you're dreaming. Your eyes are closed but you can still see your dream, and you can still hear in your dream, and you can still sometimes feel in your dream. So, it's the same kind of sensation. I don't know exactly what that is, but that's the channel it's coming in on.

STEVE

You see, the way I see it is that your brain is like a physical projection of your non-physical consciousness, or your non-physical being. So, it wouldn't surprise me at all if there was found an analog in the brain, our physical brain, for psychic ability, just like we have centres in the brain that process our various senses. Because we don't need the actual physical apparatus since we're not perceiving the physical reality through some kind of sense located on the outside of our body, like our skin, or our eyeballs, or our ears, or our nose—just some purely internal mechanism of the brain where we're picking up psychic impressions....Almost like tuning into a frequency, picking up the energy, who knows?

ERIN

Yeah, I mean, if you can visualize, I mean, can you visualize yourself sitting on a beach right now? You can see that in your head, but you're not using your eye balls.

STEVE

Right. So I think it makes sense that there could be some internal circuitry in the brain that can actually pick up on this, not necessarily something that can't be explained scientifically, more just something that is just under studied, I would say.

ERIN

Yeah. Now, I do believe there are psychics out there who can see with their eyes and hear with their ears as though it was a disembodied voice. That's not one of my modalities.

STEVE

Let me ask you this question because this one I know you get asked every once in a while: Why do you charge for readings? Why not do them for free? If this is supposedly some kind of gift from God, or some kind of divine ability, then wouldn't you be honouring it more by giving it away for free to everybody you possibly could?

ERIN

Yeah, that's an interesting idea, giving away my services for free. Well, I don't know too many people who don't want to be paid for the work that they do. Initially, when I was first running my blog and I wasn't even a professional psychic, I had other businesses that I was running full-time, and I was spending most of my time running those other businesses. But when I opened myself up to doing readings professionally, I got dozens of reading requests over night, so, I tried to keep up with the demand but as time went by I started to see wait times of about three months. I thought, 'Wow, ok.' You were the one that told me I was going to have to raise my prices because you'll never catch up, you can't possibly do this many readings and run all three of your other businesses. I was driving myself crazy. The demand was just really high. I eventually realized this is what I wanted to be doing for a living. It felt way more congruent to me to be doing this kind of work than the work I was doing before. I was ready for this kind of switch, and seeing that the demand was high enough to support myself doing this full-time, I began cutting out the other businesses I was running. Now I just do this full-time.

STEVE

Kind of the way I see it is, really your psychic abilities are a skill you took a long time to develop. You've been developing for thirty plus years, and why not be compensated for that? To say that you shouldn't be compensated for that is to say nobody should be compensated for anything they do with their minds and bodies. Everybody has different talents. It's like saying, 'I shouldn't be paid as a writer because it's a gift, it's divine,' and saying you should just give away your abilities for free. Now, I like the idea of giving away a lot of content for free for people who can't afford it, especially, I think that's a wonderful thing. But I also think you deserve to be compensated for your talents if you're giving something of value to other people. Tt makes sense that they would want to return the value to you.

ERIN

And the alternative is, if I wasn't making money from the readings, I would probably have to do a quarter of as many readings and have some other job, which wouldn't honouring who I am, what I can do, and the talent that I have.

STEVE

So, I know because we've had to raise your prices like five or six times since you started and they're probably like ten times what they were when you first started, so another question you get asked is, why do you charge so much? One of the unfortunate things, I guess, is that your prices have gone high to the point where you've priced certain people out of the ability to get a reading with you because they just can't afford you. Now, it's like for certain people, a week's pay.

ERIN

I definitely feel bad that not everyone who wants a reading with me is not really going to be able to get one, but there are a lot psychics out there, a lot of good psychics who don't charge as much as I do, and if you can find them or get a good referral from a family or friends, they're definitely out there. Charging as much as I do also allows me to spend some time working on products or maybe books that will help more people than just one at a time, which is what I'm doing now with the readings. So, it does give me a little extra time. If I was swamped, if my prices were too low, I'd be doing too many readings, I wouldn't have time to do anything else.

STEVE

Another thing is, it's just a matter of simple economics, it's a matter of supply and demand. There's not as many people doing these kinds of readings compared to the demand there is for people who want to know this kind of information that comes through. On the other side, you could say, if you priced yourself too cheap maybe it's because you're not very good, you're a bad psychic. I know one of the things that happened was our income increased. I became a lot less sensitive to price and a lot more sensitive to value and quality. If I'm hiring, say, a lawyer or something, and I see the lawyer is charging only $100.00 per hour, I probably won't go with that person because I'll be like, 'Oh my Gosh, if the lawyer is only charging $100.00 per hour, it's probably a bad lawyer.' I want to see someone who is $300.00 and up because I want to know they're worth that much, I want someone who has got atleast that kind of skill. And so, it's kind of like, I remember you and I were early in our relationship, we would go around and get these psychic reading for like $15.00 or $30.00 dollars, and you'd get a lot of bad psychics. But every once in a while we would find somebody good, but then we were kind of wondering, 'What are you doing charging so little and giving like 40 percent of their money away to the store owner where they worked?' and then, you know, 'Why aren't you good enough to go on your own? If you're really that good you should be charging at least $100.00 per reading.' If they're too cheap, it probably means they're not very good.

ERIN

I started having readings myself with other psychics who were in my price range or were actually above my price range, and I did begin to realize I'm at the same level of quality and service they're at, and in some cases, I was even better with my skill and ability than they were. So, I know that my prices are competitive with the quality I'm providing.

STEVE

It's kind of like when people say, "I would never pay $300.00 for a reading," or whatever. Then fine. Don't pay that much for a reading. The same people say I would never pay that much for a lawyer, I would never pay that much for a doctor, I would never pay that much for anybody. So it's kind of just a matter of economics and supply and demand. I agree with those people though who, you know, kind of imply that it's unfortunate that they can't afford you because it is kind of nice to give everybody a reading who wants one. It's just not possible when you're doing a one too many situation. That's why we also blog, because the blogging we can do for free, we can give away alot of information for free, including this podcast. We can give away this information for free and not charge anybody because it takes us a fixed amount of time to record this, but the value can be delivered over and over again thanks to magic of technology. Unfortunately, when you're doing one-on-one work, you don't really have that option. It's not that simple because your time runs out, you have limited time. So let's talk about what actually happens in a reading, and I know you mentioned in your articles and on your website you talk about metaphors, and how you often get a metaphor for people. But what is the process of a reading actually like?

ERIN

The process for me has evolved over time, as my own guides have helped me refine my process and get more clear and do better. Initially, what I do when I get my sitter, I call my sitter, I'm the person who makes the call, I also do meetings in person. The first thing I do is tune into a person's guides, angels, and higher self, and they will usually start me off with a metaphor like I mentioned, or sometimes they just start talking to me, so I just wait and see what they're going to do. And the first thing that they bring up is usually of most concern to my sitter, you know, the main reason they're calling. I don't ask them why they're calling. In fact, I tell them not to tell me anything except, "Hi, how are you doing?"

STEVE

The less information you have about them the better.

ERIN

Yeah, don't tell me anything. Or the first information that comes through is what the guides want my sitter to know in short time they have to speak to them. This is the best of the reading in my opinion because you get to hear from your guides what they most want you to know, what they may have been trying to get you to see or hear or notice for years even. So this is the part of the reading you really got to pay attention to because it's not just what you want to hear, but what you need to hear. After that, I ask my sitters to ask as many questions as time allows. Now, some psychics I know don't want their sitters to ask any questions at all, they just kind of want to do the whole reading and just channel what comes through. I do that first, I channel everything that comes through first before we go to questions, but I want to give my sitters the opportunity to ask the questions they want answers to. So, I always save time. Sometimes it's twenty minutes, sometimes it's fifteen, sometimes it's longer or shorter to ask whatever questions they want to ask. Now, sometimes the guides answers are very clear and specific and sometimes they're not, and that's just not something I can control.

STEVE

Erin, tell me about what your experiences of reading for different types of people, because one thing I remember you telling me over and over again is just how every reading is completely different. No two people get the same metaphor. Every reading kind of follows a different process, and a lot of times, the nature of the information that comes through, the kind of information that comes through, is very different. Especially, when people ask about their career, or their relationships. Some people get, you know...You channel really specific information like names and, you know, time frames and stuff like that, and other times the information comes through my generally. Why is that?

ERIN

Yeah, that's interesting. I've definitely noticed that in the thousands of readings that I've done. Sometimes people ask me questions about their career and their guides will give them. It's like downloading an entire business plan, and as we go my sitter's writing as furiously as they can to keep up with all the details coming through. Some of these are really great ideas. Other times people ask about career and the guides will give them a little bit of information but it's not nearly as specific as some of the other people that I read for. And what I've come to understand from the guides is in a lot of cases people have to have the trust, faith, and confidence to move forward on their own and make that decision for themselves. That seems to be a recurring theme that I see.

STEVE

So, if somebody's not very confident and not very trusting, not very self-assured, then the information coming may be a little more general because what they need to do is develop their confidence first.

ERIN

Yes. Otherwise, it's like cheating. The guides are not there to tie your shoes and chew your gum for you. They're not going to tell you, in most cases, what you should do. However, they will guide you and tell you either what will happen if you choose different courses, or they will try to get you to understand that maybe it's not your career that's so important, maybe there is something else in your life that you really need to be paying attention to, and focusing on your career is not where your needs will best be served.

STEVE

So, free will is always part of the equation. So, if somebody says, well if somebody asks about their career, you might get information saying, 'Okay, well if you stay in your current job, this is what's going to happen. If you quit and start your own business, this is what you're going to experience. If you switch to a whole other line of work, this is what you're going to experience,' and then you kind of let the person decide. But do you find that when that happens there is often a clearer or correct choice?

ERIN

Sometimes there is, and sometimes it's definitely up to the person to choose. In some cases, the guides like to come through and tell people about their purpose, about their message, why they are here. But often times, the choice of how you want to express that message is entirely up to you. There is no spiritual imperative for you to be living in San Francisco and open up a yoga studio. You know, it's not always that specific. So, in a lot of cases, people will get information about, you know, what their message is, what their purpose is, and then they're given choices and options for how they can best serve that message. And it's really up for the sitter to decide based on other criterion, like where you want to live, how much money you want to make, what your wife thinks, where your kids are going to go to school. There are other factors. So, if we're talking destiny and free will, you have free will the entire time you're here. You can choose any path that you want. You just have to accept the consequences of your choices. And the guides are there to help you see what the consequences are going to be ahead of time so you can shave years off your learning curve.

STEVE

So it's kind of like, they can't violate the principle of free will—your guides, at least. So, to a degree, if you're very in charge of your life and you're really directing your own path, and you want to know—get a clearer sense of your options, they can give you very specific information because they know it's not going to corrupt your free will. They know you're strong enough to make your own choice even in the face of psychic prediction. However, if you tend to be kind of a more weak-minded and not very sure of yourself, and you're more likely to give your power away to the psychic that's reading for you, and hand it over, and so the psychic tells you, "You know, if you do this, such-and-such is going to happen," and then because the psychic told you that, you're going to bend your own free will and do whatever the psychic says. I know you get some people reading from you that say, "Just tell me what to do, just tell me what to do with my life," and you can't do that. You won't get information that's clear because that person would be overwhelmed by the specific information. It would take over their free will.

ERIN

It would take unfair advantage of their submissiveness

STEVE

It's almost like that Star Wars analogy of how they can use the Jedi mind control power on the weak willed. So, it's kind of like, if you're reading for somebody whose personal power is very weak, you'll have a harder time getting more specific information because that person will be inclined to give their power to that information.

ERIN

Right. And that's not the lesson they need to learn. They don't need to learn, 'Oh, I need to be a psychologist,' They need to learn, 'I need to figure out what I want to do and be comfortable and confident that my decision is correct for me.' That's the lesson the guides are trying to teach them.

STEVE

One pattern I've noticed is you often get really specific information for people who are very successful in life, like CEOs, or investors, you know, multi-millionaires, business owners, celebrities even to a certain degree. It's like, reading for those kinds of people, you just download a monstrous amount of information in a very short amount of time. And then when you're reading on the other side for people who are depressed and suicidal, it's almost like pulling information through a really thick fog.

ERIN

Yes. Often times, I will read for somebody who is on a very low vibrational state, some people are even on the verge of suicide, or they're very depressed. It's a little hard for me to connect with their guides because the energy around the person I'm reading for definitely affects my connection. But, almost always in those cases, when I see somebody going through a terrible emotional crisis, or they're just really, really depressed, I'll see angels around them. I don't see angels a whole lot, that's Doreen's. But I do periodically pick on angelic energy and I always know that means they've suffered a great loss recently or they're going through a major emotional crisis. And then often times, the reading will really focus on what they're feeling and how to help them raise their vibration, and it isn't so much about health, career, finances, and relationship, it's really about them and getting them well again so they can get moving on their path.

STEVE

So, it's kind of like, when you're seeing angels around a person, their level of consciousness is down around the level of shame or guilt or fear.

ERIN

Fear, anxiety, depression...and the angels have to use their energy to boost the person up just to keep them going, to keep them from committing suicide, basically. It's at that level you're almost suicidal.

STEVE

Alright, okay. So, would you say psychics predict the future? That's a question I know people ask you a lot.

ERIN

That's a good question. I don't think that's a good way to phrase the question. Here's the way I see it: psychics have the ability to sort of achieve a higher perspective on your life than you can currently see from where you're at. So, I like to liken it kind of like a maze. Now, when I'm doing a reading, it's like I can fly above your maze and I can look down and I can see if you're headed down a dead end, or if you're headed in the right direction, or if you're going around in circles. It's kind of like a rat in a maze.

STEVE

And so, you can see where their cheese is.

ERIN

Yeah, I can see where the cheese is, what you're really, really wanting. So, "This guy you've been seeing, he's all wrong for you. And now I can see that in the maze in the sense that I can see you're going down a corridor that's going to lead to a dead end. And you may not be able to see it from the perspective you're at because you're down in the maze. It might look like you've got plenty of room with this guy, to go down this corridor with this guy, but in reality, I can see that two turns from now, two years or whatever, you're going to have problems with this guy." Now, what I'll do is, the guides will tell me exactly what the problem is and usually when I tell my sitter, they know. They're just avoiding seeing, which also brings up the situation of often times I have to tell somebody something they are not ready to hear, and those are the hardest readings for me.

STEVE

And sometimes the guides even tell you that too, the guides say, 'Unfortunately, this person is not ready to hear this, but here's the information anyway, good luck.'

ERIN

It's true. So, sometimes, you know, I have to take a deep and breath and say, "Look, I'm not emotionally attached to the outcome, I'm not emotionally attached to you, this information is coming from a very objective place, but you have to hear it. This is what they're saying and I have to be the one to tell you." Now, often times people will deny that what I'm telling them is true. But I know it's true. And what ends up happening is, invariably, they'll e-mail me, sometimes an hour later, sometimes a week later, sometimes six months later and tell me, "You were right and I didn't want to admit it." But, I asked my guides, 'Why do you do this to me? Why are you giving me information to tell people when they didn't ask for it, they didn't want to hear it, and they're not ready to hear it?' And they told me specifically, 'Sometimes people need to hear things three times before they get it, maybe from three different sources, and you were just number one. It has to be done.'

STEVE

So, it's kind of like you take on the role of the oracle in The Matrix movie where she says, "I just hate giving bad news to good people"?

ERIN

Exactly. That's how I feel sometimes. But, you know what? The guides always give you hope, they always give you a way out, they always hand you that flash light. If you turn it on, you will be able to see what they're talking about, and you will be able to walk yourself back out of the dark corridor you've been walking down and get yourself back into the light and a better corridor in your maze.

STEVE

Alright, now what role does validation play in a reading? What is validation and how does it fit into a reading?

ERIN

Validation is important. That's the first thing I try to provide people when I'm doing a reading. One of the reasons I tell people, "Do not tell me anything, don't ask any questions, let me do all the work," because the validation portion is what sets the stage for the rest of the reading. Now, validation comes through in a lot of different ways. Sometimes when I'm doing a reading and a deceased person comes through, usually what they'll do is they'll show me something about themselves like their physical characteristics. I can usually pick up on whether they are a man or a woman, and then they almost invariably tell me how they died. That's the first information that comes through.

STEVE

They don't really tell you, they show you, right?

ERIN

They'll either tell, or show me, or sometimes I'll even feel it.

STEVE

Like if you see a spirit that has no head...

ERIN

I do remember one time my mental camera was panning up on a fellow and I got to his hands and I got to his chest, and I got to his neck and then there was nothing. And I'm like, 'Oh my goodness, hello, where's the face?' And I waited and I waited and I waited and no face was forthcoming, and finally I told my sitter, "Ok, I have this guy here, and he's shown the ring on his hand, you know, I had his build but I don't see the head." And she's like, "Oh, that's probably because he was decapitated in a car accident." So, I didn't realize that was the cause of death. It took me a while to figure out. It's almost as if they are playing charades with me. One time I recall, when I tuned into a deceased person, I immediately got this terrible, terrible pain in my head and I just knew it was related to the deceased person and found out in that case that somebody had shot themselves in the head. It took me a while to figure out what the feelings were. Sometimes they give it to me auditorily, sometimes they give it to me as an image, sometimes it's hard for me to figure out. I also remember one time I was picking up the guy had a heart attack and also cancer and I'm thinking, Well, which one is it? And they just kept saying, 'Heart attack, cancer, heart attack, cancer.' So I finally just said to my sitter, "I see heart attack and cancer." And she said, "Well, he had a heart attack while undergoing cancer treatment." But it was hard for me in the beginning because I would second guess what I was seeing, and I finally just had to realize just to tell people what I'm seeing, feeling or hearing and usually it makes sense to them. That's another thing, it doesn't always make sense to me but trusting the guides and the information that comes through is very helpful because I just tell people what I'm seeing and hearing and often they tell me what it means.

STEVE

So, the validation really kind of serves the role to set the stage for the rest of the reading, to kind of get the person in that state where they can see, 'Yes, this is a clear channel, she couldn't have possibly known this information.' On the other hand, I notice there are some times when you can't get the kind of validation that the sitters want. Like, you get a sitter that says, "Give me validation so I know what ever information you're telling me is correct." Just as we mentioned earlier, those are the kinds of people who are trying to give their power away to the psychic, because they want to remove free will from the equation, what they are really looking for is validation that is so powerful it bulls them over and they have no choice but to do what you say and that's when the guides hold back on the validation because if they were to give that it would override the person's free will. But the people who are strong enough in their own minds and their thinking, that even if they got validation and even if they saw that your reading was totally legitimate and that all the information coming through was true and correct, that they are still strong enough in their own minds to decide for themselves and go against what you say. Like, even if you say, "If you go down this path, there's going to be a lot of heartache, and tears, and negative consequences," but that person is so strong in their free will that they just decide, 'You know what? I want to do that anyway. It's an experience I want to have and even though I agree there might be alot of hardships it something I want to do.' Then that person gets all kinds of validation coming back, almost to convince them.

ERIN

Sometimes the validation doesn't come until after they've gone down the road the guides told them not to, but then I get validation, because then they e-mail me or call me and say, "You know, my husband was cheating with his secretary, you were right, I didn't want to see it but it was true," Or, they write, "Yeah, I took the job in China and it turned out not to be so good, and I am back in America now."

STEVE

So, kind of, the best reading candidates are the ones who are fairly strong in their free will, who are willing to use psychic readings as a supplemental resource, rather than giving their power away to it?

ERIN

Yes. Those are the psychic junkies, the ones who just want you to tell them what to do with their life. And I do not cater to psychic junkies. Sometimes, I have people who, after readings, say, "Well, should I get a reading next week? Should we just do this once a week?" I say, "No! no. You got enough information, you should be able to run your own life for quite a while. Only come back to me if you run into a problem that you cannot solve on your own, or if you really need clarity on a decision you need to make." And it varies for people. A lot of people come back to me after a month, some come back after a year, some come back, you know, in three, or four, or five months. It just depends on the situation and what they've been able to manage after the reading.

STEVE

When is the best time for someone to get a reading? At what point in their life? You mentioned generally if you want more clarity about somethings...

ERIN

If you need clarity on a circumstance in your life—maybe with relationships, health, career, finances, purpose, you want to find out what your purpose is in life—and you cannot figure it out on your own, or the information you're getting you're just not sure if it's right. A lot of times when I'm doing a reading for somebody, the metaphor that I get, after I tell the people what I'm seeing, they say, "Wow, that's exactly what I wrote in my journal last night." Now, that is huge confirmation for them because they know I couldn't possibly have known what they wrote in their journal last night, and so to hear someone else tell them what their dream is, you know, their dream career or whatever, knowing that couldn't possibly have known in advance (what it was) is huge validation and confirmation for them, and they're probably on the right track. And what's often happening is that they are picking that up from their own guides but they're just not sure. And when you go to meet, and I tell you the same thing, you can be sure.

STEVE

So, it kind of gives them that extra nudge that they need to trust their own judgement

ERIN

And that's actually the goal with me. I want to teach people how to trust their own intuition, how to tap into it and discern it from ego, and that's just really want I want to teach people. I would to get everyone to the point where they didn't need to consult a psychic because they could tune in on their own.

STEVE

You're going to make yourself obsolete.

ERIN

That's right

STEVE

But the way the world is right now, I don't see that happening any time soon. So, what is the difference between a psychic and a medium? Because you mentioned both, so what is...

ERIN

A psychic is someone who is using a tool—like clairaudience, maybe tarot cards, maybe a pendulum, or clairvoyance, clairaudience, clairsentience—to tune in to your guides, your angels, your higher self, and get information for you that you may not be able to obtain on your own. And it usually takes the form of something going on with your life, like, relationships, finances, career, etc...

STEVE

But you don't use tools?

ERIN

Right, I don't use tools.

STEVE

So, are you still a psychic then?

ERIN

Yes. Different psychics will use different tools to connect with the guides. I personally am just connecting with my own mind—my clairvoyance, my clairaudience.

STEVE

You're a tool-less psychic?

ERIN

Yes. Now, a medium, specifically is tuning into deceased loved ones, so these are people who have passed one who you knew. So, when I'm doing a psychic reading, I'm talking to your spirit guides, but when I'm doing a medium reading, I'm talking to your deceased aunt Fanny, or uncle Frank, or whoever wants to come through. Now, when your deceased relatives come through, or your deceased friends, they mostly just want to give you validation that they are there, that they made it, that they are okay, that they can see you, that they still love you, that they're still very connected with you. But they don't necessarily know your future—they cannot necessarily guide you on matters of love, finance, career, etc...

STEVE

So, when you die you don't just become omniscient?

ERIN

Right. You do get a higher perspective, but you don't suddenly become omniscient, like you said. The guides I feel have a much more highly evolved vibration and are able, or maybe they just have access to that sort of information that your deceased relative would not have. Now, most people will consult a medium because they are grieving or they just want to make sure, you know, their dearly departed made it to the other side. You want to consult a psychic when you want information about your life, your path, and where you want to be going in life.

STEVE

Now, you're both?

ERIN

Yes. I'm both

STEVE

Are all psychics mediums? Can all psychics have mediumlistic abilities?

ERIN

No. I don't think so. There are a lot of people out there who are psychics but not mediums. Now, the majority of the readings I do are psychic in nature because most of the people we attract through your blog and through mine.

STEVE

...They're interested in personal development. So they want to know things like career changes, life purpose, relationship issues, things like that.

ERIN

And I'm pretty comfortable with that. Now, occasionally, maybe 20 or 30 percent of the time I'm doing a reading, a deceased person will come through very strongly and just need to be heard. But I don't bring it up unless my sitter wants to because it's a short amount of time and I know they want to ask a lot of questions about their own life, and maybe they don't want to spend fifteen minutes talking to somebody who they already feel is okay on the other side. So, I kind of let them ask me what they want to do. Now, if someone asks me to tune in and look for a deceased relative, I will try, but there's no guarantee that a specific relative will come through just because you want them to, and there are many reasons for that. It's kind of like bringing a phone up to the ether, they're not always there to answer it. For whatever reason, they may not want to talk to you, they may not hear you paging them, and I'm sure there are other reasons I'm not privy to. Sometimes, the energies just aren't strong enough to come through on their own, and that also brings up the issue—sometimes when you're expecting to hear from your deceased mother, your deceased father will come through, and maybe you didn't have such a great relationship with him, but he is coming through and often times he will...a stronger spirit will bring through a weaker spirit, weaker in the sense that they are just not use to communicating at this level, you know. It takes skill and practice on their end too. So, you don't want to be tied to the idea of hearing from a specific relative, you really want to be open to whoever is going to come through. I have even had a situation where a woman came through and told my sitter she was just a friend of a friend.

STEVE

A deceased woman?

ERIN

Yes, the deceased woman had died in a car accident and she was from England, and the woman I was talking to didn't know this person, but her daughter did or her sister did, I can't remember which one, but she was able to get a message to the family in England, because of all the details I gave them, she was able to recognize who I was talking about. So, sometimes a deceased person will sort of high-jack a reading when they know the person I'm reading for can get a message to their loved ones. That's happened many times.

STEVE

But I think as a percentage of the readings as a whole, that doesn't happen that often though.

ERIN

Not for me, no. There are definitely people out there who focus more on being a medium. I tend to focus more on the psychic stuff, that's just the kind of people I'm attracting, but the medium skills have been improving, and I'm sure they'll continue to improve over the years.

STEVE

Well, one thing I'm really fascinated by is how we've seen, through your readings, that personal development continues on the other side. It's like, when you die and you lose your body, you don't automatically ascend to some much higher level of consciousness. Really, the consciousness level you have at earth continues when you die, on the other side. So, if you were really depressed and suicidal and you kill yourself, you're going to be just as depressed and suicidal on the other side in non-physical form, and now it's going to be even worse because you've lost your body and you've thrown yourself into an unfamiliar environment. So, it's kind of like, when you channel a spirit that's just committed suicide, they are still depressed, and they are just as messed up on the other side.

ERIN

Often times, yeah. It takes a very strong conscious spirit to snap out of a state of depression, shame, or guilt if they've committed suicide, and get past that.

STEVE

But also, what we've seen is that if you develop your psychic skills, your ability to kind of communicate through non-physical channels here while you're in the physical reality on earth, then when you die, you may even retain those abilities because you've seen, while you were channelling and picking up spirits who have had a life where they were into psychic development, they retain those skills on the other side and they will come through as strongly as guides do.

ERIN

Yes, they communicate very easily through that veil.

STEVE

Where as if there was, say, a very religious person who thought psychic skills were the work of the devil, and that kind of thing, their beliefs when they die, you know, when they go to the other side, they are very weak over there because they retain a lot of those beliefs with them and they kind of create a reality over there that sort of reflects that.

ERIN

Exactly. They inadvertently put themselves in, like, a bubble, like a fog, where they can't even see reality, and it can be very detrimental, yeah.

STEVE

So, it's kind of neat because while you're here on earth, if you develop your psychic skills, you get to keep them when you die.

ERIN

And not just the psychic skills

STEVE

That's why I kind of like developing those myself, because it's kind of like one of the things you can take with you.

ERIN

That's true. Yeah, I expect I'll have no trouble crossing over.

STEVE

Now, all the physical stuff—money, whatever, your house, your car—that all stays here. But it's what you do with your consciousness that you get to carry across.

ERIN

Developing you consciousness, that's what I would say. To me, that's a huge thing we should all be doing, is developing our consciousness and awareness. And I have told my family, when you get to the other side, if you're confused, just call for help because there are beings out there I think they are angels, and I think there are also some other beings, that will help people cross over. There are times when people expect they are going to hell and imagine their surprise when there is no hell, but they don't know where they are, and it's a little foggy for them, and sometimes they stay earth bound because they are not clear on where they are supposed to go and what they are supposed to do. If you ever find yourself dead and confused, just call out for help, call out to an angel, or a God, you know, whoever you feel you want to call out to, and you will get help, you know. Look out for the white light.

STEVE

You know, it's kind of scary with the thousands of listeners who are going to hear this podcast. Somebody is going to be dying soon, probably, within the next year or so, so somebody, so maybe it's you.

ERIN

That's not an official prediction

STEVE

So, it's kind of like, if you cheat yourself here in the physical world, you cheat yourself through life, you're just going to screw yourself up on the other side too. So, there's no escape. There's percent responsibility for your life, or nothing. You can't cheat the game. So, that's kind of neat because I like to tell people that when I die and go to the other side I'll just continue doing the www.StevePavlina.rip. So, look for my website over there, assuming I die before you.

ERIN

Now, I want to mention that sometimes people cross over and they have a total revelation, they release a lot of the baggage they were carrying with them from earth, and they are able to totally soar on the other side and be very philosophical, very aware and conscious, and just keep going, keep learning.

STEVE

So, one of the reasons I think that when you do a mediumistic reading, or even when you're tuning into a person's guides, they come through with different strengths. Also, there is different skill levels. It's like because these guides, these angels, these other entities, they all have their own consciousness is one way of looking at it, that there is a different skill level. So, you know, if you're reading for one person, they might have really awesome guides, whereas another person has guides who are maybe newer or weaker and not as good.

ERIN

Yeah. Sometimes when I'm first tuning in, it takes just seconds for me to get the communication, it's like an instant download. But other times it will take a full minute, and it just all has to do with—partly I'm sure it has to do with—my connection and partly with theirs. You know, the guides, where they are coming from.

STEVE

Now, who gets the best guides? Is there any rhyme or reason to that? Because I've seen some patterns where you've read for very high energy people. I remember you did one a while ago and you said this person had just, like, dozens of guides all organized into this hierarchical structure, organizing different parts of the person's life...and this was a celebrity.

ERIN

Yeah, that was an interesting thing because what I've noticed in all of these readings is for most people, your guides are trying to get your attention and nudging you in the direction that will best serve you. Then there's a group of people who are sort of evolved and conscious enough with their awareness and their own abilities who are able to work in concert with their guides. Their guides will actually get their input before actually making a recommendation on where you should go and what you should do, and those are people who can tune into their own guides and conversations with them and say, "Look, I know you want me to go be a psychologist but I'm not comfortable with that, so can we swing me over to becoming a coach?" And they will negotiate with you. Then there is this third level of people I have seen who are so in command of their purpose and their higher self, their essence, that they begin directing their guides and saying, "Look, I'm doing this, make it happen." And that's what happened when I was reading for that woman. She had three different sets of guides because she was so busy and so directed that she had three groups of guides that were—she couldn't get it all done with one set. But she was directing them. She had decided very clearly what she wanted to do in life and she was very much a vibrational match for it, and her consciousness level had exceeded what most people achieve here. And because of that, in some ways, she had exceeded the level of her guides and she was able to begin directing them.

STEVE

I actually do that with my own guides too. I boss them around all the time and say, "Okay, guys, here's what we're going to do: get me this resource, get me this kind of thing, I need someone to help me with this, bring it in my life, help me out." And it happens too! It's kind of like your guides almost reflect the kinds of people you'll attract into your life because, really, the human beings here are just conscious being like your guides are. There's really not that much of a dividing line between them, it's just that one is dead and one is alive.

ERIN

One's corporeal. We're all energy.

STEVE

Yes, one's corporeal. It's kind of interesting because if you're a very high energy person, you will attract very high energy people into your life here, and you'll also attract very high energy guides who are smart, they're on the ball, they will help you out a lot, they will bring you the resources you want when you need them. You can ask them to do things for you, you know, go send them off to run psychic errands, like, if you want to learn something new, you can say bring me some book, bring it into my life in synchronicity. It's like, you'll have all these weird strange coincidences that will happen, you kind of follow the rabbit trail and you get exactly what you want. I know we've seen that a lot, like putting out intentions to increase our income or, like, when we got this house, we bought a new house about a year ago and it was just before the credit crunch started to happen, and these things just sort of happened, and we got the perfect house, just exactly what we wanted, and, you know, a friend did the loan for us. It's like the resources we had just all fell into our lap. It was like an easy and smooth transition, hardly any effort at all. Now, we got to get our guides to sell our old house. They seem to be having a little trouble with it. But on the other hand, though, if you're kind of a weak willed person and you hang out with a bunch of depressed people or people who are just kind of going nowhere in life, people who are very down on themselves, or people who are very stagnant, they're not really growing or changing much, then you may kind of attract similar guides who are not really offering you that super-duper helpful guidance. However, the guides still have a higher perspective, they can still see things that you're not seeing, they can see your life from a different perspective than you do, and that perspective—seeing from your guide's perspective—can be very valuable to you. So, there can be great value in getting a reading or developing your own intuitive skills so you can read from them directly, that you can gain a lot from even if you don't have the super-duper guides that some other people might.

ERIN:

Yeah. Now, sometimes it's not the guides who are the problem, it's just your connection, and the guides are, you know, bashing their heads together, or bashing their heads against the wall because they're trying to get you to see. They're trying to get you to put down the drug or the alcohol and you're not. So, it's frustrating for them too. It's frustrating for them to try and communicate with you and have it fall on deaf ears.

STEVE

I think it would be fun though to be a guide when you die. You go and pick somebody and say, you know, "I'll be your guide." It's almost like, as human beings, there is a non-physical part of ourselves and that part interfaces with our guides most of the time. And that when we're developing our psychic skills what we're really doing is becoming consciously aware of the non-physical part of ourselves, and able to communicate more through that way rather than just using our voice and our ears.

ERIN

Another way to look at it is imagine your guides and your higher self are sitting around a conference table every night having a meeting about you. Wouldn't you like to sit in on that meeting? Wouldn't you like to know what they're talking about since it's all about you? 'Oh, look what Bozo did this week.' But, yeah, tuning in and developing your psychic skills is like having the ability to sit in on those meetings and then even become an active participant. It's powerful stuff.

STEVE

Alright. Well let's talk about one final topic we want to discuss: How do you do this? How do you develop your own psychic skills? Like you said, Erin, you don't necessarily want to replace people's intuitive abilities, you kind of want to give them some guidance when they want it but you don't want people turning on you psychic junkies and giving their power away to you. You want, ultimately, to help people learn how to do this themselves. I want the same thing. I think it's pretty cool.

ERIN

I think that everybody is capable of tuning into their guides, some people will probably be more predisposed, I don't know if that's because of their level of consciousness, their previous experiences. I liken it to body building. If you never go to the gym and you never work out, you're going to have really flabby muscles. And then you've got the people who go once or twice a week, and then you've got the people who spend two or three hours a day there. These are people who have been working on this a long time, have put alot of effort into it. And then you have the people who become personal trainers who actually help you increase your muscles.

STEVE

So, this first piece of advice is to recognize that this is a skill and it will take time to develop because you may absolutely suck at it right now. And don't think it's just a switch you can turn on over night, you know, like, 'Oh cool, I'll just flip this switch and I'll have the build of Mr. Olympia or something.' Forget it. You're going to have to put in the time, and it will take some effort, and so, accept that.

ERIN

And if you don't even believe it's possible, it's going to take a lot longer.

STEVE

Yeah, and so, I guess, the second thing is part of the work you have to do is to work on your beliefs to be able to accept that this is possible. And one of the things I found most helpful, Erin, is to hang around people who already believe it's possible, who are already doing this because they'll rub off on you.

ERIN

Exactly

STEVE

That's one of the reasons we did this podcast, is that we experienced this for ourselves and we're not crazy or anything like that, despite what some other bloggers say about us. But anyway, the fact that we both experienced this—and were hoping some of this energy can rub off on you and you'll get to see it's not bunk—there is definitely some truth here we're trying to understand. And I always explain things in a very left brain way, which, I don't really think gets in the way, as long as you can...as long your logical mind is flexible enough where you can kind of find a way to integrate what you're experiencing into your belief system without your beliefs blocking you—adopting empowering beliefs, kind of, being open minded. For me, what really helped was to see that there is a non-physical aspect to reality. You know, you can start with physics concepts with electricity and magnetism, okay, you admit those things are non-visible, great. So there's these forces that act on us that we can't see with our eyes but with the right instruments we can perceive them. Well, psychic development isn't really much different than that. With the right instrument, you have a brain which can do this already, if you tune in and have these perceptions working for you.

ERIN

One thing you can do, initially, is to start reading. Start reading about who has had these experiences. There are a lot of people who have written books or audio programs that involve psychic development.

STEVE

Speaking of which, we've got to get you to do some of that

ERIN

When I have time

STEVE

You have the odd 200 plus free articles on your website, so that's a good start.

ERIN

Yes. And then when you're ready, you want to start practicing, and when you first start practicing this stuff, you're probably going to fail but you have to learn from those mistakes and keep going. You must keep going. You're going to want to open up all of your energy centres—like your chakras—and if you don't know what that is, just go to my blog.

STEVE

You have an article on chakras. We can link that from the show.

ERIN

Yes, and you just want to practice with people. A lot of people put together a development circle to work on this sort of thing, or you can practice on your own. So, read books, listen to audio programs, read the articles on the website. And then just start practicing. One thing I like to tell people to do is go on a 30-day intuition binge where all you do is listen to your intuition, and act on it, and see what happens, see what kind of results you get. Don't decide in advance whether intuition is right or wrong, test it, actually do what your intuition is suggesting and see what the results are. Now, if it's telling you to jump off a bridge, don't. That's not your intuition.

STEVE

That's just stupid

ERIN:

But really, just working at it, and studying it, and practicing—you have to practice, you can't just read about it—and you'll be well on your way.

STEVE

Yeah, I mean, I think that's good advice. One thing I like to do is when I'm developing my skills, you just take a few chances on things where the risk is minimal. At worst, you're going to make a fool of yourself, or just waste some time. Follow your intuition there. Maybe you're out somewhere in public and you just have this strange sense to talk to somebody that you've never met before. Have you ever looked at somebody across the room and felt you had this strange sense of connection. I remember I had that with some guy I saw in college and he and I became really good friends for a long time because I walked up to him after this meeting we were in and just introduced myself and said hi. He and I just had similar mind sets and we became pretty good friends for years after that. So, that's one thing: if you have the courage to, just walk up to somebody and say hi. Introduce yourself if you feel a certain impression from somebody, because I think there is a sense that you are supposed to get to know that person and you might miss some opportunities if you don't act on your psychic skills.

ERIN

Initially, if you've never done this kind of thing before, it's going to be difficult, it's not going to come easily to you but it will come. If you put in the time and the effort, and you study, and practice, and learn, you probably will start to see results. You may not be Mr. Olympia, not everyone wants to be, not everyone wants to develop it to the level a professional develops it to.

STEVE

That's true. I decided not to do this professionally, but I use it for myself. It's just a sense. It's kind of like, maybe I can draw but I decided not to be an artist. Or, Erin can play music on a piano but she's decided not be a professional musician.

ERIN

Exactly. And just like people who go to the gym to work out, just to have a nice healthy body, but they don't want to become personal trainers.

STEVE

Or body builders. They maybe just want to be healthier, more fit, or look better.

ERIN

Exactly. So this sort of skill can help anybody, not just people who want to be professional psychics.

STEVE

Now, what happens if you don't develop the skill?

ERIN:

Good Luck. Good luck crossing the street.

STEVE

Okay, let's take it down a notch. But what happens if you decide not to develop your psychic skills or intuitive abilities?

ERIN

You don't have to. If we're going back to the analogy of the maze, you'll be running around corridors which will be taking a lot of extra time than they needed to. You know, you'll be hitting dead ends and you have to back track your way. I mean, everyone has that in life, where you realize you might not be going down the right path, sometimes taking a step back to take two steps forward. But having the intuitive skills can just—I mean, imagine if you could start in a maze and get right to the cheese in the middle without ever having to go down a dead end at all.

STEVE

Yes, getting to the cheese faster has been much much better for me. You know, I remember I was not having very well developed intuitive skills when we first met, I was totally not intuitive, I didn't believe the psychic stuff. It's not that I didn't believe in it, I was open-minded towards it, but I just never really had any experiences in it. I had nothing to go on. I had really no validation of it whatsoever. But then when I met you —and another woman I met just before you who was also really into this kind of stuff—it's like you two started opening my mind to this and I started having more experiences, and at first I was just going nuts, I was like, this can't be true, this can't be right. So, I wanted to deny it, all this weird stuff that was starting to happen to me. But then I kind of learned over the years it was a huge advantage to me, especially in businesses and as an entrepreneur. Do you remember the first five years when I was running dexterity software? It's like, we were just getting screwed left and right by bad business deals, just working with the wrong people. It's like having a bad intuitive sense. You would even say, "I didn't really have a good feeling about this person.

ERIN

We had no choice!

STEVE

And I would be like, "Sorry, we're doing this deal, I've already signed the contract." And it's like, you know, a year of our life wasted here, another two years wasted there from deals that fell apart, from people who were just, you know, unscrupulous. You know, these are people who ran game publishing companies, we found out later they were getting in trouble for running massive accounting frauds, you know, totally dishonest people, or totally incompetent people. Then when I really started tuning in intuitively and getting a read on people before I did business with them, it's like I could just meet them for five minutes and go, 'Oh, there's no way I'm ever working with this person.' Even though everything on the surface might appear great—they're very friendly, they seem on the ball— I could just feel, 'I do not trust this person.'

ERIN

And then you'd call me into the office and show me their photo and I'd tell you all about their past.

STEVE

Yeah, I'd have her do a reading on them. But even just doing this for myself—I'm not as skilled at doing this as Erin is—but just being able to develop my intuitive abilities and find out whether a person I deal with in business is trustworthy has been incredibly valuable. I have saved myself so much heartache. There have been so many business deals I've passed up. I remember when I was running Dexterity software in the beginning, it was like, anybody who wanted to work with me, 90 percent of people who wanted to work with me, I would find a way to work with them. And almost all those were a waste of my time and a waste of my money and just sank us deeper into debt, just totally picking absolute mismatches to work with us. Because we were very honest people and we used to work with people who were not, and that was really not a good thing for us. And then later on, the second five years of running that business, everything just went much more smoothly because I started saying NO' 90 percent of the time when people wanted to do business with me, because for one reason or another, this person is a mismatch for me. It was a bad intuitive feeling. And then later on, I would find out that other people I knew did go to work with this person, and ended up ranting and raving about how badly they got screwed. And I was like, "Whew, I'm glad I missed out on that experience." So, in business it's really saved me alot of time. Also you know, pure number, like financially, we're doing better now than we've ever done in our life before and a lot of it has to do with trusting your intuition and just aligning yourself with truth.

ERIN

One thing I do, is that sometimes people will have me do a reading for their business, ask me what's coming up, you know it's like I'm reading the businesses energy. They'll send me a list of people or photos of people who they want to work with and ask me to get a read on them. And that has helped a lot of people , a lot of business owners, avoid costly mistakes.

STEVE

Yeah, in fact, whenever I want to work with somebody, when, you know, doing a deal where a lot of money might be changing hands, I'll run the person past Erin and say, "What do you feel about this?" One thing I've noticed now is that our intuition is in sync. It's like you'll pick up different information than I will but the answer of 'yes or no', we're in agreement. I would just do a test with you and say,"Okay, give me a read on this person." And I've already decided not to do business with this person, and I just want to see what you pick up, and you pick up the same thing I do but you often get different information than I do. But it's like the same thing, "Don't do it." So, you just say 'no'. And then we find out like two or three years later, "Oh, other people worked with this person, totally a bad situation, got screwed, they are all yelling at each, you know, shouting at each other over the internet and stuff. Nobody's getting paid, and everyone is losing money, and, people are getting sued, and it's just nasty." You want to stay away from all of that. And then the people we end up working with, it's like, "Wow, we're working with fewer people than we used to," It's just like, finding one good business partner—it's golden, like, wow. It's like, an honest person—there's actually an honest person out there who kind of shares our mindset, and everything goes smoothly. The contract takes a couple of days, done. And suddenly there's tons of money changing hands and everybody's happy, you know, our customers are happy, it works really well. Anyway, so, I think we've gone long enough. We should probably wrap this up so we don't chew up any more bandwidth, because this is going to take gigs and gigs of downloads with how long we've made this. But let's just give people a final mention that if they want to learn more about this, they can go to your website, which is ErinPavlina.com. Is there anything you want to say?

ERIN

Just keep working on your intuition and if you need help I'm here.

STEVE

Alright, well great. Thanks so much for joining us, and we hope you've learned some things that will help you develop your own psychic skills.

So until next time, live consciously!