Sensitivity, Service, and Some Psychic Stuff

When I meet someone, their soul is all I see.

More specifically, their soul is all I feel.

This used to be a problem. I would sense a random person’s truth, their nature, their essence, whether I wanted to or not. It was palpable, although indescribable; I would only know that I knew them because I would start to feel like them. I’d absorb their truth like a sponge until I started feeling like it was my own.

This was my gift, although it felt like anything but. It felt more like hypersensitivity, poor boundaries, or straight-up, cray-cray, get-outta-my-mind/body/spirit-complex-why-do-I-want-to-die insanity.

This dynamic ran through my childhood and adolescence, through my university studies, my therapeutic process, and my post collegiate maturation, and it is still with me today, albeit in a very different form.

I didn’t understand my sensitivity, though, until I started studying healing and the psychic arts. I learned that I was a feeler. A hugger. A sensor. By nature. It was challenging to deal with this vulnerable part of myself; so much so that it felt like a weakness.

It was only a weakness because I was not looking at it. It was only a weakness so that I would be compelled to look at it.

There’s a damn good Rumi quote: The wound is the place where the light enters you.

Your weakness is there to become your strength. It is the place that requires the most attention because it is the place where there is the most potential for growth. I don’t even really like the word weakness. A weakness is only a weakness when you refuse to look at it. If you use your perceived weakness as a kind of homing signal, a beacon, a lighthouse, guiding your awareness boat to shore, it is no longer a weakness. It’s a lighthouse.

I think the way I would add to the Rumi quote, (Lawd, I can’t believe I just said that) is to say: When you bring the light of awareness to your weakness it becomes your strength. When your strength is activated by sustained attention and adoration it becomes empowered. When your empowered strength is harnessed and refined, it is able to be used in service.

Then you have a choice… how to use your strength? You can use it to make your life better, and that’s a great start. Use your empowered strength to make your life better, of course. But there’s a funny thing that happens when you use your power for yourself over and over. You become very powerful, but you can also become kind of a dick.

The trick is to use it for yourself, then others, then yourself again, then others. It's a natural cycle, to discover your gift, use it for yourself, just don't forget to use it for others. Otherwise you create an imbalance and minimize the potential of your power.

It’s like obsessively building one muscle group. Let’s say it’s your arms. Fine. Focus on your arms and you will eventually have really amazing arms. Who can blame you for wanting to look at them all the time? They’re so amazing! So you check them out in the mirror and you keep building them. And dude, they’re even more amazing. You want to show them to other people because they’re so amazing! Then one day a little old lady falls and you have to help her up. You bend over to help her up. She weighs, like, 90 pounds. As you lift her up, POP! You throw your back out cuz bro, your legs are like toothpicks.

I did this with my clairsentience, my empowered sense of psychic feeling. I worked diligently to bring awareness to my perceived weakness, my sensitivity, until it became my greatest strength. Then I kept working, studying, developing, practicing, and loving my sensitivity until it became a powerful tool. I then knew that I had to do readings and healings for others. Problem was, after a little while, I got kind of braggy and annoying about it. I wanted to do readings even if people didn't necessarily want one. I thought everyone needed a healing. I was flexing my sensitivity in the mirror. I worked and worked, and eventually, total psychic slipped disc. I had to take a year off and recover.

That was really hard for me. I was embarassed that I had burnt out. My strength had become a weakness... or so I thought. My perceived weakness was really just another homing signal, guiding me towards a greater refinement of strength and empowerment.

Once I took the time to re-attend to my supposed weakness, I adored it anew until it became a strength again. The meta-moment was when I realized I was using my sensitivity to attend to my sensitivity. The missing ingredient? I had to share the benefits of my service to self by turning again to service to others. I went back to work.

You really don’t have to be a professional psychic, or a healer. That just happens to shore to which my weakness/strength lighthouse guided me. You can use your gift, your exquisitely calibrated weakness that is there to guide you to your equally unique and magnificent strength, in any way that serves you. Just don’t forget to serve others with it also.

Said another way, use your weaknesses to empower yourself, but know that that power is like an Inspector Gadget style self destructing message. Attend to your weakness until you understand it, and it will become a strength. Adore your strength until it becomes a tool. But know that that tool is ultimately made to explode beyond its initial function and into the world around you as empowered service to others.

That act of moving beyond yourself (with sooooo much love) expands your sphere of potential and actually makes it possible to discover and develop new powers you didn’t even know you couldbegin to have. You might feel like they’re weaknesses at first. But give them some light, some attention, some love, and they have the power to change the world.

And all of a sudden your overdeveloped arms don’t look so weird because you are standing strongly on your thoroughly impressive, eminently grounded legs.

With love, and light.
Mikey D.
EdibleSpirit