Last night I watched an episode of Medium. In the popular show, Allison DuBois, played by Patricia Arquette, is a strong-willed mother of three, a devoted wife who can talk to dead people and see the future in her dreams. The tv guide described the night’s episode as, “While investigating a rash of murders, Allison sees floating symbols above people’s heads, signs that she thinks could match them with their perfect mate. “ I’d seen the show a few times before and thought, “Neat, this is how it really happens,” and was anxious to see how they portrayed it in the show. It turns out they used a cartoon heart symbol floating at the actors’ foreheads. The idea was that the man with the heart symbol would notice the woman’s heart symbol and they would know they were meant to be together. Now wouldn’t that make it easy, when you’re trying to find your soul mate?
SHE SEES THE HEARTS AND THINKS IT’S HER JOB TO BRING THEM TOGETHER
Alison dreams of two particular people and sees the floating heart symbols at their foreheads. The two don’t see the hearts though, so they walk right by each other and do not meet. The next day, Alison encounters the woman and invites her to lunch at a restaurant owned by the man in the dream. By the time lunch ends, the two have met and have obvious chemistry together. They make a date for later that evening and Alison feels she’s done her job connecting the two. After all, since she’s psychic and saw the heart symbols, she knew they belonged together.
OOPS, IF THE HEARTS MEANT SOUL MATES, WHY DID HE STRANGLE HER?
That night she has another dream. In this dream, the man and woman are on a date, they are having fun, getting along, she has stars in her eyes and then oops, he strangles her. Alison wakes up, shaken, then receives a call that the woman has been strangled. She tells her police friends who the murderer was and where to find him, they pick him up and 8 hours later, release him as they have no evidence of his involvement.
WAS HE THE STRANGLER… OR WAS SHE? WTF?
Alison is confused. How can she be wrong? She saw in her dream that he was the serial killer strangler the police were looking for. Since they had no reason to charge him, the man wasn’t fingerprinted. His fingerprints were not in the system. The next night Alison dreams of the woman and sees her strangle the second victim. How can she be the strangler? It doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t jive with the symbols she saw. She tells her dream to the police, who take the dead woman’s fingerprints and identify her as the one who strangled the second victim.
THE HEARTS MEANT THEY WERE A VIBRATIONAL MATCH. THAT’S NOT ALWAYS GOOD
The man, it turns out, was the real serial killer, and the woman merely copy-catted his crime for a personal revenge. That’s how the two were meant for each other. They were a vibrational match, both killers. And while Alison saw the symbols, she didn’t understand what they meant. Her mind gave her the wrong interpretation of the symbols she saw. She assumed they meant one thing when they actually meant another.
THE INFO WE RECEIVE IS FILTERED THRU OUR OWN BELIEFS AND EXPECTATIONS
We’ve all done that: seen or heard something and interpreted it incorrectly. Thought it meant one thing when it actually meant something else entirely. It’s helpful to remember the information we receive is filtered through our beliefs, our expectations and our personal viewpoint. Thirty people seeing the same scene can have 30 different interpretations of what they saw. That happens all the time in psychic readings, too, since everything gets filtered through the reader’s personality overlay.
THE HARD WORK OF BEING A PSYCHIC IS STAYING CLEAR ENOUGH TO ACCURATELY INTERPRET WHAT YOU INTUIT
A psychic may have a vision or see a symbol, yet not know what it means. The good ones will simply tell you what they see and leave the interpretation up to you, because it is in the interpretation that they may err. They may give you incorrect information because they don’t really know what they’re seeing. It doesn’t take a lot of hard work to become psychic and receive psychic impressions. It takes some work, though, to keep yourself clear enough to interpret symbols accurately and without bias.
PAY ATTENTION TO THE SYMBOLISM BUT DON’T ACCEPT THE READER’S INTERPRETATION
So when you get a reading, pay attention to the symbolism but don’t accept the reader’s interpretation as the only interpretation. You may ask about your boyfriend. She may see a couple being married. That may really mean he’ll marry someone right after he stops dating you.
Symbolism is not always easy to interpret. We don’t always see what we think we see. We don’t always know what we think we know. Maybe we’re not meant to know what everything means anyway. But we can have a more expansive experience by coming more fully into each Now moment. We can consider and contemplate things more closely, and let each holy instant reveal its magic and joy to us. The more time spent doing that, the clearer our perception, and the easier it is to interpret whatever symbolism the Universe sends our way.
Is that a heart I see floating over your forehead?