Five Star Readings and Other Nightmares

Part 8 of My Conversion Story

“The devil does not bring sinners to hell with their eyes open: he first blinds them with the malice of their own sins. Before we fall into sin, the enemy labours to blind us, that we may not see the evil we do and the ruin we bring upon ourselves by offending God. After we commit sin, he seeks to make us dumb, that, through shame, we may conceal our guilt in confession.” -St. Alphonsus Liguori

I had just woken up from what had been the worst dream. I reached for my smartphone to see what time it was and was not surprised to see my phone screen read, three a.m. on the dot. Not two fifty seven, not three oh eight, but exactly three a.m. Nightmares and three in the morning 'wake up calls' were not uncommon for me. It was simply a part of life and to some extent I just assumed these things happened to everyone. When I'd decided to become Catholic and began purging all of my witchy objects and books, there had been a pause in these occurrences. This is something I wasn't really thinking about in those early weeks and only began to think about again when they started back up a little. I didn't yet correlate these things with the evil one but did begin to recall the many times I'd had these experiences. Especially when they could be at their worst and that was when I was a psychic reader.

Back then, my days would look a little like the following:
—
I sat in my living room, watching television and waiting for one of two types of notification sounds to ring out from my computer. These alerts would let me know that someone was requesting a live chat reading from one of two psychic reading websites I worked on.

Generally, a person would go to these sites, look through hundreds of profiles for different types of psychic readers until they found someone they liked. They would click a little button to begin a chat with the psychic in question. Somewhere in another part of the world another person who offered any one of a variety of psychic readings or specialized in one specific type of divination only, would be alerted by a notification sound as to the request of this other human somewhere else on the planet.

I was this other human. As much as I considered psychic work and energy healing a vocation and a very sacred duty at that, there were times when I really rather dreaded being summoned to do a reading.

Sometimes, I would do a reading and it would be just using my intuition and knowledge of the different card meanings to discern the guidance sought out by the querant. Other times, however, things would go very differently. Tonight was to be one of those nights.

A ringing sound came from my computer at last. I went over to my desk, sat down and clicked on a button to open the chat screen. I greeted the person, welcoming them to the chat and introduced myself. The querant would type their name and begin telling me their situation. While I waited for their response to pop into my screen, I began shuffling my cards, focusing on the person, psychically tuning into their energy. At a certain point, I would sense I had shuffled them enough and cut them into three stacks from left to right and put the bottom and middle portion of cards on what had been the top portion.

At that moment I would look up at my screen to see what question the poor soul at the other end of my computer had sent me. Tonight it was to be what so many before her had come to me about: romance. She was involved with another woman's husband and wanted to know when he would actually leave his family and marry her, like he'd promised a million times before.

Knowing she was distraught and heart broken by her situation, I typed back words of comfort. I sincerely wanted to help her. My heart truly ached at the suffering she must have been experiencing. Not to mention the suffering of the others involved too. I asked her to give me a moment to lay out the cards and see what information I could divine for her.

As I started to place the cards out in front of me, I examined them closely and started to interpret them by what card was laid out, in what position it was in and in relation to the other cards around it. Details in the form of images and feelings began to come to me. Accompanying that, I started to hear a high pitched sound and my body began to tremble. At this point whatever the traditional meanings of the cards had been was no longer a focus for me. Information was flooding into my head quickly and I began typing.

I typed fast, giving details about the love interests wife and the fact that they had two kids, a boy and a girl. All of them had blonde hair. Not dirty blonde but very light blonde hair.

I sent that part of the message and continued typing the next one.

“…He works in a supervisory position within a computer software company and she stays at home with the kids…”

I was vaguely aware of the querant having also sent a message in response to the first one I sent, “OMG THEY DO ALL HAVE BLONDE HAIR LIKE THAT!”

I was, ‘in the zone' as they say and was practically on autopilot as I typed. I continued sending her information as quickly as it came. I wasn't really thinking about it. She would ask questions and I'd reply. This went on for about twenty minutes. Eventually the reading came to an end with us saying our goodbyes. I waited to see that she left the chat and then I closed the chat window.

My whole body felt odd. You know when you hit a tuning fork and you can actually feel it reverberate? That's something like how I felt. I’d get something to drink and eat to 'ground' my energy and start to feel somewhat normal again. As I always did, I lit a tea lite candle and prayed for the lady I had 'read for.’ I hoped I had helped her but couldn't really recall exactly what I'd just written to her a few minutes ago. I sat back down at my computer and opened up the chat log to see what I'd written. I began to feel a bit embarrassed at what I'd told this poor woman. ‘Where did I come up with that!?’ I'd admonish myself.

As I read the exacting details and specific scenes I described of this woman's life I became very anxious. I was somewhat relieved as I also read her comments of amazement and confirmation at what I was telling her. Then I’d also start doubting myself. I'm being ‘punked' I'd say to myself. Someone was having a great laugh at my expense, making me think I was super psychic by telling me how accurate I was. Reason would pop in and make me realize that if that was indeed the case, that person just paid close to a hundred dollars to mess with my head for the fun of it. I was reminded of the amount just then as my PayPal app notified me of such. Finally I would log out of all my computer chats and simply, go to bed.

The next day I awoke to find I'd received a 5 star review. “She is really good! She knew things she couldn't possibly have known. Highly recommend! Will definitely be back!” I felt a mix of relief, and skepticism and a whole lot of exhaustion. I didn't do anything productive the next few days. I didn't have the energy or the motivation. I felt tired and numb. Finally a fellow psychic messaged me, "Hi sweetie! I haven't seen you online, are you ok?" I responded telling her all about how I'd had another one of 'those' readings. How I loved that I was so tuned in and seemingly accurate and about the high pitched sound and my body trembling. Also how I just felt drained now and like I never wanted to do another reading as long as I lived. She responded, "Oh that's so beautiful! You're coming into your gifts! There are some growing pains but don't give up!"

She recommended I keep certain crystals near me, black tourmaline to absorb any negative energy and rose quartz to draw in loving energy to help me heal. I knew about these stones. I had prescribed them for the same types of reasons to others. I did have them. They weren't working. Had they ever?

Eventually I would start doing readings again and just go on about my life. My life included heavy doses of depression, anxiety, nightmares, miscommunications with loved ones and bizarre mishaps. But that's just life right? Or was it?
—
As I reflected on how different my current life was compared to what it had been, I was amazed. How did I live all those years like that? All those years feeling unsettled and lonely. Feeling desperate but denying every attempt at true fulfillment from our Lord and at the same time feeling an indignant superiority in doing so. Now the only desperation I felt was in my yearning to be as close to God as I could.

Even in the midst of that yearning there was a sort of battle ensuing around me. I had full belief in God and confidence in His love, yet, I fought against the torrents of a lifelong 'panic' that was always on me. While I was starting to feel it break away from me, it seemed it was usually always there...even if just a little bit. Always reminding me that I was too much of anything and everything that would forever push loved ones away and keep me far too awkward to acquire new ones. It kept me feeling perpetually sixteen and not in a good way. I felt out of step in the world and unwelcome in my own skin. I was emotionally immature and desperate to belong to a community of people who longed for Christ as much as I now did. The new tactic of the enemy was to try and filter all of Gods loving truth through different lenses to try and taint the purity of His message. I felt Gods arms around me fully and completely yet the evil one would also make sure I knew that I would be alone in this journey. I would be rejected by my family and friends and never make any new ones. Times like that would have me feeling like a lost little child. Some days my biggest prayer to God was, "God in heaven, please help me to be a grown up today!"

I would feel safe and welcome while at the Cathedral but then upon leaving the onslaught would begin again. Thoughts would enter into my head making me second guess everything I said or did. It was 'awkwardness' clinging on for dear life knowing that its days were numbered. It was losing it's power on me though and with each day that passed my ability to focus on Gods love of me was becoming stronger. I just had to keep moving toward Him through His church. At this point that meant to keep reading and bingeing Formed and YouTube for any and all Catholic information I could find. This meant going to RCIA every single week. I did so very happily! This next weekend coming up would have a prayer retreat on Saturday. While I was looking forward to this, I also naively thought I knew all about prayer! I would find out, however, that there are more ways of talking to God than I had ever even dreamed. I would find out our loving Father had many ways we could communicate with Him including one I had never heard of before, which was something called Adoration.