Paranormal Abilities
Excerpted from "Awakening the Below" by Oholomo, available now from Aeon Press!
People talk a lot about paranormal abilities emerging spontaneously during an awakening process. Some people consciously try to acquire or develop such abilities. Some traditions hold that the emergence of these powers is an important marker of spiritual attainment, and some even say that not having them means you are not awakened. Conversely, the Buddha is famous for saying that all such powers are a distraction, or even a perversion of spirituality. Here, I’ll offer you my thoughts, which is a different take than any of those positions.
I agree that it seems to be the case that all sorts of paranormal effects can occur when you are navigating the Below. I think of these effects as falling onto a spectrum. On one end of the spectrum, uncanny or weird events can be associated with certain states of consciousness. These may be paranormal, but they don’t have profound spiritual meanings. For example, in my own experience, I developed for a period of a few months extraordinarily strong powers of smell. In Misha’s case, she sometimes experiences weirdness with electrical appliances:
If my energy gets too intense, into a “screechy” kind of frequency, it interferes with electronics. I have this one particular CD player that, if the energy gets too screechy, will pause the CD until I calm the energy down enough, and then it starts playing again from exactly where it was paused. And it can happen with Zoom as well.
It also happens with this one friend. I don’t know why, but it’s something about her technology. So that when my energy starts getting screechy, then she starts having problems with hearing me through her device. This doesn’t happen with other people’s phones, but just with that one particular person’s phone.
So, yeah, I can interfere with electronic devices, although I don’t do it on purpose. That would be kind of a nice party trick if I could do it on purpose, right?
Beyond these meaningless kinds of effects, there are also those paranormal abilities that can be considered gifts or blessings. These are often called siddhis, using a Sanskrit word meaning “accomplishment.” Jack talked with me about some of the kinds of powers or abilities that he has discovered and developed through his process of Awakening from Below:
I guess one of the funny things with the whole awakening experience is that when things start to open up, they become very ordinary very quickly. So, something that someone else might think is a siddhi, I might not even have realized or conceptualized in that way.
Like, I can see divine light, this golden white light, shining out of every object, every human being, everything. And, what I learned after a few years of seeing that was that when human beings are baring their soul, this light shines more brightly. And if I focus on it with an open heart and a lot of presence, it will shine more brightly. It’s like I help people to heal by holding their spirit with my spirit, but through my eyes. Just by seeing them, they become unburdened and their soul shines more brightly. So you could call that a siddhi. I use it for the healing of others, and I benefit by being healed and opened at the same time.
There’s also the beings that I channel: some people might say that’s a siddhi to be able to communicate with deities and dragons. And to allow them to occupy my body and flow through my body, and to speak to people through me. To be a link between their world and the human world. And I deliver messages from them to support people who are listening to me, and to do healing work with other people. And I can feel them expanding my consciousness too. They’ll focus in on a trauma held inside of the body of the person I’m working with, and then expand the field of consciousness so that I can sense where that trauma links to past lifetimes or other points in time in space. So that the trauma isn’t just held in this body in this moment in time, it now links to all moments in time and space. That, you could say, is a siddhi that I’m using to help people heal.
And then, there’s manifesting prosperity, which some people also would call a siddhi. The dragons I channel also are deities of wealth. They would be like, “Jack, you do realize that in all of the stories, we sleep on piles of gold, right? There’s a reason for that!” It’s all about flows of energy. You are this whole cosmos and this whole Earth, and that’s where all abundance flows from. All abundance that anyone can ever have, it always flows from the cosmos and from the earth, and it flows through energy channels. So, if you are blocking the channels of abundance that exist inside your body with shame or trauma, you are blocking the flow of the earth and you are blocking the flow of the cosmos. So by unblocking it, by allowing the cosmos and the earth to provide for you, you are allowing the cosmos and the earth to flow, you are undamming a river. You are doing that as a gift for the cosmos for the earth and for yourself.
In my opinion, there’s nothing wrong with courting synchronicity, premonition, or blessings in your life like the ones Jack is describing. There’s also nothing wrong with asking higher powers, ancestors, and other spirit guardians for guidance, help, or support — whether with spiritual matters or with mundane things like money or a job. But, I do believe it is a perversion of spirituality and an enormous karmic fault if you ever use siddhis you gained from your spiritual practice for greedy ends or to harm others.
That is why, in my opinion, if you start moving in the direction of cultivating paranormal powers — either intentionally or spontaneously — it is imperative to take responsibility to ensure that any powers you develop are used to benefit and never to harm others. Therefore, I think your first act of magic should be to place a permanently limiting spell on yourself that will prevent any siddhi you ever gain in the future from possibly ever bringing suffering to another being. At the same time, you should vow that any power you do gain, if you ever tried to use it for unenlightened purposes, would be immediately rendered ineffectual. With that limiting spell in place, then I think you can invite siddhis that will benefit all beings to emerge and to flow through you, as necessary, in order to help where needed. Set the intention and forget it. You need not cultivate any specific powers, but just see what arises naturally to meet the needs of the moment. And, whatever does arise, don’t ever cling to it as it moves through you. Remember that it’s never about you; it’s only ever about spreading love and alleviating suffering.
Another thing you don’t want to get hung up on is figuring out whether paranormal powers are real. As I’ve said now many times, you’ll do best to abandon that whole line of thinking, since any specific answer to the question will only serve to limit the possibilities of the mystery.