chartingthesoul.com

WHAT IS HIGHER SENSE PERCEPTION?

When my son Mikey was a very tiny baby, I remember watching him, lying on his little blanket with his arms stretched out. He was so new that he couldn't yet lift up his head but his face was turned to the side and that he was looking at his tiny pink hand, concentrating, or so it seemed to me, on watching his tiny pink fingers moving. Well, who knows, but I speculated that he was watching the blur of his fingers moving and thinking - "Is that me? Am I doing that?"

When we come to this earth we are born into this utterly incredible biological form. Believe me, I am just like everyone else, I bop around taking my body for granted and making it drink Coca-Cola, eat chips and sit in front of one screen or another for much longer than it wants to. But every now and then, especially when something in me escapes from the computer and gets out under the trees, then I have moments when I am struck down with gratitude for my senses - for the moments when I see something so beautiful it takes my breath away, or when I am listening to music and my whole being shifts; the exhilaration of diving into the sea, the utter pleasure of food, the ecstasy of touch.

We have these amazing senses, biological organs - eyes, ears, skin and a vast nervous system that brings all this incredible information into our brains to be analysed and experienced and felt and understood. Some scientists believe that all our thoughts and feelings are the result of chemical activity in the nervous system and that the brain is the source of consciousness. But for many other scientists, the more they understand about the immense complexity of the systems of the body, the less they can accept the limitations of the materialist view. For neuroscientist Candace Pert, author of 'Molecules of Emotion', her research led her to this conclusion:
"Emotions exist in the body as informational chemicals, the neurones and receptors, and they also exist in another realm, the one we experience as feeling, inspiration, love - beyond the physical. The emotions move back and forth, flowing freely between both places, and, in that sense, they connect the physical and the non-physical."
She talks about a vast, infinite field of information that is - "beyond, time and place, matter and energy".
This means that all of our reactions and responses and interpretations of sensory information happen in a realm of consciousness that is beyond the limited structures of the physical realm.

In my years of training as an energy healer I was taught how to use what we refer to as 'Higher Sense Perception' - the ability to perceive and receive data from this 'field of information' in the non-physical world. In the past this ability was traditionally known as clairvoyance, clairaudience and as 'sixth sense' but was more associated with spiritual mediumship. As a Brennan healer, I learned to develop my ability to receive all kinds of information from the non-physical realm - in particular to see, hear, touch and directly understand what is happening in a person's aura, which I usually refer to as their Human Energy Field. Everyone has Higher Sense Perception - nobody is born without it - and we use it all the time, for example when you walk into a room and immediately know that something is wrong even though nothing is said or when you can sense a person's emotional state, even when they try to hide it. In western culture, as we are growing up, we are taught to rely on information from our physical senses and not to trust the information we get from our HSP. And it is may be that information from our physical senses is more consistently reliable than information from our HSP - it is quite tricky using HSP because your own emotional state can colour the information that you are receiving. However, I also think that there are situations when HSP is life-savingly important. I imagine that indigenous peoples rely heavily on their HSP living their lives in wild natural environments. And I have met healers who 'see' patterns of energy everywhere, in the same way that you or I see the physical world. I am not one of those, most of the time I am seeing with my physical senses and I have to make a conscious effort to switch my focus to my HSP.

Well, I thought it might be useful for people who read my book 'Charting the Soul: Astrology, Characterology and the Human Energy Field', for me to expand on what I mean when I say that during a healing I "saw" my client's horoscope as a vibrational pattern running through their energy field. And the minute I say that, it feels rather daunting because we do not actually have words in the English language to adequately convey the experience of Higher Sense Perception. Let's have a go.... when I see the energy of the horoscope it goes like this.... My client is lying relaxing on the massage table while I take myself into a state of mind where I can focus on my HSP. With my inner eye I 'see' different areas of colour and light surrounding my client, extending far out from the body, actually filling the whole room and beyond. I focus on the area nearer to the body - some places are radiant and brightly illuminated, some areas more shadowy. These areas of light and shadow also transmit a sense of emotion and sometimes they contain whole stories about the person. I put my hand out into the field and I can 'feel' areas where the energy is expanding - pushing my hand upwards and others where the energy is contracting, so my hand sinks down. Sometimes the movement of energy feels tangled and overheated, sometimes it feels completely blocked or frozen.

The day came when I felt that I was perceiving the energy of the horoscope in a person's field. I became aware of a powerful hot, red, current surging through my client's field pushing energy upwards towards the head. And somehow, (and this is a form of HSP which we call 'direct knowing'), I recognised this as the energy of Mars in the same way that you might recognise a piece of music as one composed by Beethoven because it has a characteristic quality that is so distinct from the work of other composers. Another time I had a client, with everything in her horoscope in Gemini and Virgo. She was someone who was inclined to talk non-stop, a kind of wall of words coming at you. I could 'see' how the energy of Mercury (ruler of Gemini and Virgo) kept her mind relentlessly active so that there was a constant whirling of energy around her head not unlike a swarm of bees and not at all comfortable for her. But Mercury is the only one of the Gods who can make the descent down into the underworld - the dream world, the vastness of the unconscious. As the healing session progressed, my client's whole energy field became increasingly calm, the buzzing stopped, the focus of her energy sank right down into the base of her field. Then she was able to access stillness and silence and when she spoke she had fantastic insights brought back from that deep 'otherworld' of Pluto's realm.

So, that is a little bit of information about my personal experience of Higher Sense Perception. The one big key to HSP is trust. You have to put all your sceptical thoughts to one side - "Yes, I hear you Voice of Scepticism, yes, I could be making all of this up...but let's just stay curious and see what happens?" I have to put the sceptical part away from me, make it go and stand, muttering, behind me. That leaves the rest of me clear to dance around with the energies I am perceiving, trust in what my 'sixth sense' is telling me, and follow my impulse and my curiosity like an explorer.

One last thing, for anyone who is working with their HSP. At the Brennan school we were taught always to access at least two, preferably three different forms of HSP senses. That means not just relying on clairvoyant 'sight' or 'direct knowing' but backing up your perception by checking if this information is something you can also feel with your hand and/or hear etc. The more you deepen into connection with HSP the less likely you are to get distracted by ego-based distortions.
Food for thought, I hope. We humans are much bigger than we realise, there is so much more to explore in our infinite inner worlds.

© Rebekah Hirsch 28/10/17

"I can say "Golden Gate Bridge" and you can picture that. No one really knows exactly how that happens. They know how the sodium-potassium balance changes in the auditory nerve and goes to the auditory centres of the brain. But beyond that...."
Jack Kornfield