Psychic Telephone · 39
Adrienne
(Not sure what Psychic Telephone is all about? Check out our first and second posts for an introduction to the project.)
From the time she was a teenager, Adrienne read a lot of New Age books, wanting to validate the sensations she felt, wanting to construct a worldview that incorporated her experiences of things outside of her understanding. She had always had a very active dream life, so she was interested in the world of the unconscious, in the mystery that doesn’t necessarily make sense in our waking reality. She started reading—she called them the Spirituality 101 books. Like The Celestine Prophecy, Illusions, Way of the Peaceful Warrior—all these kind of Intro to New Age books.
And through that she adopted a lot of the New Age mentality, particularly the idea that the world is not just a space filled with objects, but an interconnected energetic system that we are all a part of. She began to embrace an idea that she was part of what you might call a collective oneness, and that, within that, she is in relationship to everything—to every thing. And maybe energy is the connector. We don’t always see it, but she thinks that doesn’t dismiss the fact that something’s happening and something’s there. And some people can see it maybe.
She’s never had a psychic hit that felt like a pure read on the future, though. No real premonitions. But she’s not sure that’s so important, really, because it seems to her that a lot of what people call reading the future is just reading what’s present. And taking that to its logical conclusion, projecting where it will go. Because people have such a hard time seeing their own present, what’s present for them right now, so if you can show that to them, and then point to where it’s leading, it comes off as so profound and insightful. But there’s not much of an art to that, other than just: Look at where you’re standing and you’ll see where you’re facing.
She says that in the New Age community there’s a huge amount of explaining that takes place. Pointing to all kinds of evidence, trying to prove that these things are possible. Like how they say quantum physics explains these energetic phenomena that we can’t see. That became really commonplace in New Age thinking when she was a little older. And probably, had she come into it a little later, maybe she would have adopted that? But at some point it just occurred to her—she felt she cared less about philosophies and explanations. That isn’t where the juice is for her, really. The juice is in the relating, the relationships. And she doesn’t think she’s ever fully left that. She’s maybe left the constructs of how to explain it, but she’s never left the belief and the feeling and the truth of, there are things to be in relationship to. And she thinks that’s always defined her spirituality.
Now it’s more about nature. And she conceptualizes it in almost an animist kind of way. She believes we are—that she is sort of realized through the connections she has with herself and with the world, and maybe with Spirit or whatever constitutes a bigger-than-her feeling that gets put into the category of “spiritual.” She doesn’t know if that’s technically an animist way to think, but it feels like it. Her spirituality is really grounded in being on the planet, on Earth, a part of this ecology. And that this is something she’s in relationship to. The collective oneness, perhaps, of the world that we’re in. The body of humanity, the body of the Earth. And thinking about humans as animals on the planet, along with every other animal, and recognizing that every animal grows in deep relationship to its environment. We’re wired to do that, as much as any animal is. And she thinks our psyches kind of need that, to feel placed, and stable, in the world.
And there’s a reverence in there. She gives a little bit of reverence, or love, or acknowledgment to this life that is outside of her understanding but deeply important. And that feels like being in relationship. And so she applies that to rivers, and to oceans, and you know, stones, and spaces of land. Because she feels like she’s part of a system that is—that there is life all around us, and that life is imbued with sentience or consciousness even if she doesn’t understand its sentience or consciousness. It’s enough that it’s life, or that it’s Earth.