My Psychic Eyebrows

From time to time, I get what could best be called "woo-woo flashes from the Beyond." I don't claim to have any extraordinary sensitivity, although I heard once that people who have expressive eyebrows are prone to having intuitive gifts. My eyebrows display, I think, a rare and independent athleticism. They don't pay much attention to me when I command, "Left brow... do NOT arch derisively! I command that you lower yourself and look compliant, earnest and attentive!" Sometimes I have to reach up and just push my left brow down manually when it won't descend of it own volition - much like the automatic windows in an ancient Cadillac I once drove. By the time the left one is brought back under control and is being restrained, the right brow uses my inattention as an opportunity to exert itself. It's like having willful, back-talking children running amok on your forehead.

But while my eyebrows have plenty of talent, I don't think I'll be getting a television studio or a publisher anytime soon to showcase my psychic abilities. Since I haven't lost many people, and don't have a large posse on the other side, I don't get much practice at mediumship. Still, every now and again, someone comes in out of the clear blue or drifts through my dreams for a visit.

My father has been gone for almost eleven years. Ours was a conflicted relationship, and on the occasions when he's shown up in my theta wave state, I've been less than conciliatory. We tend to have memorable fights in my dreamtime, and it's not much different than it was in life. One night we had a huge blow-out about the setting on the dream thermostat. He cranked it up and I like it cold. He yelled that he'd been using thermostats and heating systems long before I was born, and I retorted that he was about to get physically intimate with THIS thermostat if he didn't step aside. I won that one hands down, and woke with the feeling of righteous satisfaction that comes from finally winning arguments with your father, even if he's disembodied.

I also had a much older brother, Joe, who passed back when I was in high school. He was a generation older than I, so it cannot be said that we had a lot in common, but there was a bond between us and he had a profound influence on my life. Joe's moved on, energetically speaking, I think, and doesn't hover around in dreams or sudden flashes very often. But I have the sense that he takes an interest in me still and will make time if I put in a request.

Joe was profoundly disabled in life, and had no personal power as a physical being. But when he comes through from wherever he is, he is a mighty warrior.

Alex passed a year ago and a few days after his physical death, I came home at noon on an errand. Somehow, I passed out for one of those naps where you become briefly comatose, and in deep sleep, I found myself at a party...a luau in fact. I was in the kitchen off to one side (even in dreams everyone ends up in the kitchen) and there was a conga line threading itself in between the work island and the table. A man waved in greeting and I called back, "Listen, I can't stay. I have to get back to work." "Don't go just yet," he yelled back over the marimba music, "There's a surprise for you. Hang on for a bit."

So I waited a few dream moments as the line conga-ed its way out the patio doors and into the garden. And, suddenly, there was Alex, dancing along, wearing an Aloha shirt and shorts and flip-flops, even a lei. He was grinning and I could see that he was very happy - the hit of the after-party.

Some nights later, Alex visited again...or more accurately, Alex's book visited. Alex much admired the author Robert Pirsig. He revered Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values above any written work ever published and Zen only lost its favored status when Lila: An Inquiry into Morals came out.

Now, I love books and I'll read almost anything, but I haven't yet managed to read Pirsig. I just don't get him. I have tried many times to wade into Zen with only a success rate of fifteen to twenty pages before it goes into the stack of books destined for the next library fundraiser. A few years pass and I try again, usually re-buying at the same library fundraiser. I've been doing this literary dance with Pirsig since I was a teenager because it's said to be a transformative book. Alas, I remain untransformed.

But, because Alex insisted, I made a run at Lila when it came out in 1991 anyway. And I fared no better with it than Zen. I didn't get past the notes on the inside of the dust jacket. It's a weird book. And while most reviewers seemed to agree that it was an intellectually demanding book, few seemed to actually enjoy reading it.

Except Alex and Pirsig himself, I imagine.

There was a table at the celebration of Alex's life that held a few of his prized possessions - his baseball mitt, his sailing gloves, his pool cue, and a copy of Lila. Several of us reminisced about how much Alex loved that book. And we confessed to one another that we had never been able to read it despite his insistence that we should, no matter how many times we received it as a Christmas present.

So, when I had the dream I had mixed feelings. Sure, I was happy to hear from Alex again, but, for the love of Dog, not Pirsig again. In the dream I was standing in front of a tall bookcase. There was only one book on a high shelf, and as I stood, the single volume tumbled down and landed on the floor in front of me face down. I picked it up and turned it over.

Lila. Damn.

You know it's just rude to ignore a powerful message from the Other Side. When a departed friend makes such an effort to cross back and get you to read his favorite book, you can hardly make a polite excuse. What you do is you get on Amazon and you buy a used copy of Lila - hardbound, no less. Because, surely, you will come to LOVE Lila and its cryptic wisdom will lead you to a new spiritual plane. With Alex's guidance from the ether, I had expectations that Lila would reveal an essential truth that, until now, I did not have the eyes to see or the ears to hear.

That's what I thought would happen. It didn't. Lila was still dreadful and I found myself disgruntled that Pirsig didn't try to entertain me even a little. I wrote an outline of Pirsig's arguments (available upon request) to see if I could follow his thought processes through the maze. Then, just in case I missed something in English Rhetoric and didn't have enough education behind me to comprehend writing that dense, I downloaded philosophical criticism aimed at deconstructing Lila for me. The august philosopher who wrote the paper said it was demanding, interesting, opaque and in some places, just kind of wrong.

When I finally gave up on Lila, I realized that Alex, maybe, didn't need for me to tease out the obscure message in each of Pirsig's incoherent paragraphs to better understand his life. Maybe the book was just a postcard - like a message from anyone who goes off on a long voyage and sends word to those left behind that says, "Made it here safely...having a great time! Miss you."

William is a different story. Although he was burning with chaotic energy in life, Will has taken on a very tranquil aspect in the after life. He surrounds himself in white - the rooms are white, his clothing is loose and white. When he visits from time to time, he doesn't speak, although he exudes a sort of peaceful regret - as if things didn't work out the way he planned, but he's adjusting to the new order with grace.

He and I often tour white houses (astral real estate being very affordable) - like a couple who are contemplating buying a place and moving in together. A few times, I've watched him pack his white linen shirts and white drawstring pants into a suitcase, as if he were going on a tropical vacation. For a guy who wore a lot of business suits and ties in life, he sure has had a style makeover since he died.

William likes to bring gifts and I am often at a loss as to how to accept them. When he dropped in the last time, he brought along a 7' garden gnome. He seemed very serious about presenting it to me, and I wanted to be gracious, but really...that's a lot of gnome. Even though I should have plenty or room in my dream space, I was perplexed by what to do with it.

Otherwise, William likes to sit wordlessly in a white room holding hands, and that's fine. Just being quiet together is a new wrinkle in our relationship. Perhaps there isn't anything left to say.

Since that's the extent of my limited psychic traffic, I think it's pretty certain that I won't be leading the life of a professional medium anytime soon. Although my last name is perfect for the undertaking, I don't think I can convince people to just refer to me as "Gabriel". No newsletters called something like "The Trumpet" or a website announcing my appearances and success stories are forthcoming. No book signings; no church set up in my name to spread my message.

Pity, that. It's nice work if you can get it.

And some people do. Sylvia Browne, James Van Praagh and John Edward, in particular, are all high profile mediums who claim to have an ether-net connection to souls that are eager to tweet from the other side of the veil. Their subsequent television appearances, book deals, cruises, interviews, private sessions and international celebrity status have evolved into lucrative careers for what amounts to, essentially, telling people facts and details about the deceased that they usually already know. Whether this is accomplished through genuine connection with a personality in spirit form or is a demonstration of a confidence game called "cold reading" depends on your level of skepticism.

Cold reading* is a learned skill that fakes psychic knowledge by using questions and probability. A good reader is much quicker than the sitter/client, and uses cues and rephrasing to obscure that the knowledge is actually being extracted from the client rather than coming from some other-worldly source. If you watch Edward's shows "Crossing Country" or "Crossing Over" on cable, you can see why he has been accused of being a cold reader by debunkers.

His show is mostly filmed in a studio. Presumably, microphones are everywhere and the entire audience is present with the same expectation - they have either lost a loved one or are there to support someone who has. Producers of the show can assess the audience, possibly record their conversations and cue Edward before he ever takes the stage.

Edward is an affable, energetic guy in jeans and there isn't a taint of any weird mysticism around him. He just describes himself as a man who discovered he could talk to dead people. He doesn't claim any sort of higher understanding of the process or make it even sound special. Edward states it as a fact in the way someone else might say, "I've always been good with cars" or "I have a green thumb."

He opens the show with a description of what the audience should expect and how the information comes through to him. He confesses that he makes errors in interpretation, but that he only channels what he receives - he does not edit. Then he begins by being "pulled" to various sections of the audience. Edward doesn't slump forward or anything - nor does he specifically give a person's name for an intended message. In his normal speaking voice he begins with, "I have an older male energy coming through with a J or a D name who passed recently from an extended illness. Does that makes sense to anyone?" In a large audience, the odds are that someone knows a John or a David that died. No one ever seems to be named Ulysses or Xanthe.

Having identified the recipient, Edward narrows down the cause of death by distinguishing between a health crises and accident trauma. The vast majority of people who don't die from old age in this country die from cancer or heart disease or from an impact of some kind - vehicle accident, explosion, gunshot, blunt trauma to the head. It's rarer for people to die of something that could not be tweaked into either one of those categories. Hardly any of us die from eating a poisonous mushroom or being constricted to death by our pet boa or being sucked dry by liver flukes. So, a cold reader only needs to ask two or three leading questions to coax out a cause of death from most clients. If he hits a wall, he can just redirect with another leading question, "Your father is showing me an ambulance. Does that mean anything to you? Did he or another family member require emergency medical attention of any kind?" Odds are extremely good that if someone has died, emergency medical care was involved at some point.

Once the cause of death is established, Edward goes on to relay what the departed person wants his/her friends and family to know. And this is where it gets remarkably banal. Given the complexity of the human experience and the diversity of personalities, you'd think that at least some of the information would be explosive and controversial. If my dad wanted to get a message through to me, I wouldn't recognize a kindly sensitive man who only offered gentle words of care and support. I'd expect him to be swearing a blue streak and using every expletive in the English language to complain about the idiocy and worthlessness of everyone, everywhere, living and dead (my father was not a "people-person"). Almost everyone has relatives like that.

The audiences at the "Crossing Over" studio seem to have lost only the most pleasant and emotionally mild of friends and relations. Every mother, dad, cousin and sibling was a rare and beloved treasure while they were still in their person-suit, which, in my experience, doesn't square with reality.

You would expect that Edward would provide a conduit for all sorts of revelations like, "I'm not your REAL father...your mother had an affair with a Red Cross water safety instructor while I was in Korea" or "You can stop looking for grandma's diamond necklace now. It's not lost and I didn't hide it. I pawned it in the 80s to buy cocaine. Sorry about that." But Edward' audiences seem to be big on family devotion and low on drama. There's a lot of love and acknowledgement, but not a lot of conflict. Maybe you mellow out after you go to heaven. I don't know.

Also, nothing really interesting is shared. Uncle Waldo does not come through and say "Hey, you know who I ran into over by the Gates? The Emperor Justinian! Can you imagine? He was all tricked out in this bejeweled Byzantine robe. Very cool." Likewise, no one ever mentions God or any other spiritual figure. Just once, I'd be gratified to have Edward (or any other medium) say, "Your cousin Clara twice removed on your mother's side says she had tea with Lao Tzu. He says to remind you that the further one goes, the less one knows."

While "Crossing Over" is often sweet and touching, it's not substantive. If you've watched six or so tapings, you've seen just about everything the show has to offer.

But, just because Edward has a style that could be likened to the same process used by cold readers doesn't mean he's a deliberate reader himself. In an era where I can find out if Lindsey and Sam are fighting again, or what sort of handbag JLo is carrying any second of the day, the internet should be awash with disgruntled former employees or envious former confidants eager to expose someone like John Edward as a cynical charlatan who preys on the grief of the bereaved. That is not the case. Likewise, people don't seem to blog much about how Edward, either on camera or off, is totally wrong about the private details of their lives. Clients seem to be amazed by how much he DOES know rather than what he doesn't or what he misses.

And, of course, he could be contriving messages out of what he intuitively knows that the audience wants to hear and be deceiving himself as well in the process. I mean, if you tell me something and I affirm to you that what you're saying is the truth, it is not necessarily accurate just because we agree - we could easily be sharing a delusion. There's a whole world out there of shared delusions that gain strength only on the basis that enough people agree that they are objectively true.

And, really, my loved ones are bringing me huge gnomes and books I don't like. They aren't revealing anything startling to me either, so who am I to doubt what could be by its nature, an imperfect process.

That we are alive and self-reflective at all astonishes me every single day. That we go on in energetic form doesn't strike me as any weirder than being on this side with a physical form and my psychic eyebrows. I'll leave it to Robert Pirsig to have the last word: "Metaphysics is the high country of the mind...it takes a lot of effort to get there, and more effort when you arrive, but unless you can make the journey, you are confined to one valley of thought all of your life." (Lila)

*Cold reading usually means that the client is a stranger and the reader does not have any prior details about the client beyond what's obviously available like the client's approximate age. The counterpart is "warm reading" where the reader uses facts already gleaned from either conversation or other sources to construct the reading. John Edward claims that, whenever possible, he gives private readings in which he cannot see the client, does not know the client and has no prior information about the client.

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Ingrid lives on San Juan Island.

While Ingrid is spiritually promiscuous, she credits her guru, Jimmy Buffet, for her mantra..."If we couldn't laugh, we would all go insane." Besides a passion for Tiki Studies, Ingrid is borderline biblio-obsessive. She is an old-school Libran - i.e., she won't be leading the Revolution, but she'll work to make it an attractive affair and hire the musicians and caterers."

Her column appears every other Thursday in San Juan Islander. To contact Ingrid, send emails to ingrid@sanjuanislander.com

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