Okay. I have a confession to make. Don't worry. It doesn't involve bedding down with underaged boys (à la Michael Jackson) or taking up with a FRIEND'S husband (as Angelina Jolie is reportedly doing with Brad Pitt.) But it's a confession nonetheless.

I'm finally coming clean. I admit it. I am a professional eavesdropper. Whew! I feel better now.

I've always been the type who lurks in coffeehouses, quietly observing the carryings-on of patrons. I especially love it whenever two women have been overdoing the espresso and don't realize their voices are getting louder and louder. That's when I get to hear the really juicy stuff.

"Tyler had the nerve to announce that he's finally ready to settle down - only not with me!'

"The rat! Let's spend the next hour verbally emasculating him!

"Yes, let's! Get me another espresso, stat!"

I also like to frequent restaurants at lunchtime and focus my radar on business people, construction workers, and waitstaff. Since I work from home I have to get out of the house each day or I go bonkers. (Well, more bonkers than usual.) So lunch dates by myself or with my honey are a necessity.

As a consciousness researcher who earns her living writing about the human condition, it's part of my job to see what condition the humans are in. So I look at these outings as necessary field research. And they're fun, too. I often get inspired by the snippets of conversation I overhear.

Today I sat at one of my favorite diners. (I love how New Jersey is filled with diners. You can find one every five feet.) I was busy working on my forthcoming ebook and guzzling coffee when two guys near me began a heated discussion about women.

Their concensus opinion ran along the lines of "Women. Can't live with them, can't shoot them." It's not that they were bad guys, I don't think. They seemed very jovial types. But here's what one guy said:

"The only reason why my relationship is working is because she and I keep completely different schedules. If I had to be around her all the time, I'd go nuts. When we go on a vacation, like for a week or so, spending days together, I have to drown myself in beer. It's the only way I can stand it."

His lunch companion nodded and offered his own comments about how he can't bear to spend time with his wife, either. He stated he could never, ever retire, because he wouldn't be able to handle being at home with the Missus day in, day out. He talked about how "living together yet living apart" is the only way they've been able to stay sane. He and his wife were living vastly different lives and barely saw each other except early in the morning or late at night.

Yikes!

I sat there quietly wondering, "Is this a common thing? Lord, I hope not!"

I'm coming at things from a very opposite reality. My honey and I are a closeknit pair, best friend types, and we spend an unusual amount of time together given that we both run businesses from home at the moment.

But, um, am I weird or something because I love having him around?

Or did I just get very, very lucky?

I empathize with what the two guys in the restaurant were talking about. I mean, everybody needs to maintain outside friends and activities, and in their cases, it sounded like they didn't have a lot in common with their significant others.

But I couldn't help wondering - why were they WITH those particular partners? Didn't they ever "shop around" to make sure they were coupled with someone who was a soulmate on multiple levels? Or did they just get married to the first person they became involved with sexually, as one of the guys mentioned he had done? Did they not make time to find themselves first before they found a companion? All of those things were running through my mind.

I'm not saying it's an easy thing, finding the partner who will ultimately be best for you. But does that mean we should abandon the journey entirely? That's what the one guy was apparently doing. He wasn't married but was resigned to staying involved with someone he didn't particularly like. Where was the wisdom in that?

I am a big advocate of couples living together before they get married or have kids. You just don't know how the day-to-day stuff is going to be until you spend real time with someone, outside the heady experience of courtship and dating. It's not just about finding out whether your honey is a slob or whatever. (Um, if that were the case, my partner would have abandoned me long ago. Thank goodness he's tolerant of my messes!) Everyone carries a lot of stuff in their energy field. Sometimes, we don't find out if our energies truly mesh with someone until we spend a large amount of time with them.

How We Plug Into a Romantic Partner's Energy Field

Here's a case in point from my own life. About ten years ago I tried getting back together with a man I had dated for a while and loved very much. Since we had broken up, he had left New Jersey and moved to Maine. We attempted to repair our relationship across the miles, which was challenging. Eventually, I went up to Maine to spend real time with him. My hopes were high as I drove up there and prepared to share his living space for a whole week.

Although he was (and is) a lovely guy, I had a horrific experience once I was actually spending a long stretch of time with him. Prior to my visit, I had only spent time with him in brief stretches while we were dating. I had never been over to his "bachelor pad" before. We usually hung out at my apartment.

In those days I still had my psychic counselling practice and worked full-time doing consultations with people. I did many of these for people over the phone (although I also rented office space.) I had arranged my schedule so that while I was in Maine I could do a limited amount of readings by having clients dial my 1-800 line and directing all the charges to my phone.

Much to my dismay, I discovered that the moment I set foot in his place that I became covered in what I can only describe as "psychic gook." The atmosphere around him was so dense and dark that it completely shut me down psychically. When you're used to operating with six senses and that extra sense is completely shut down, it's as disruptive as if you are going physically blind. It was horrible.

I did some clearing of his actual apartment, which made things a little better. But I found that his energy was the problem. When our auric fields were connected for any length of time, all my senses were flatlined, and I felt like half the person I normally was. My mind was fuzzy and I found it hard to string two coherent thoughts together. My emotions were also strongly affected. I felt horribly depressed, even though we were having a pretty nice time together and Maine was a beautiful place.

We broke up after that because it just wasn't going to work. I couldn't continue being with someone whose energy field was so dense that it prevented me from being able to function. When I attempted to do readings while I was saturated with his energy and staying in his space, I wasn't able to access my abilities as a psychic. My talents were scrambled. I knew this wasn't a good thing and that it didn't bode well for any type of a future together.

We Are All "Pig Pens"

Over the ensuing ten years I learned WAY more than I really wanted to about how each of us can be a "Pig Pen," carrying tons of psychic debris, negative entities, and clouds of goop in our energy fields. (Remember Pig Pen? He was the Peanuts character who always had a cloud of dust and grime clinging to him.)Whenever you hook into someone romantically, you're not just sleeping with everyone they have ever slept with. You're also plugging into all the metaphysical influences that that person is connected to.

So let's say that your lover spent some time in a past life worshipping what I will gently refer to as "The Dark Side of the Force." They could have worked in an Egyptian temple, performed sacrifices at a Babylonian altar, or done time allowing dubious entities to take over their bodies during duties as a Delphic oracle.

Although the lifetime that person spent when they were hooked into questionable entities may now be over, guess what? THOSE CRITTERS ARE STILL IN THE PERSON'S ENERGY FIELD!

This is why personal self-cleansing and learning how to work with your auric field are SO important. If you don't revoke old ties to dark entities and reconnect yourself to a loving Creator energy, all of those ancient ghouls remain your dark companions. Indefinitely.

My current partner and I had a lot of work to do in this arena. Both of us were led through a process of self-clearing which enabled us to create the wonderful relationship we have today. Seven years later, we're still going strong.

But in the beginning there was a lot of interference. Let's just say that our "old masters," negative beings we had formerly been plugged into, didn't want us to merge in this lifetime as a couple devoted to healing and spiritual discovery.

In my work with individuals over the past ten years I've seen amazing stuff about how much questionable energy we can all be plugged into. And it DOESN'T MATTER if you become a Christian in this life and turn your life over to Jesus. That wonderful being known as Jesus will help you to connect with a loving God or a loving Creator again, which is marvelous. But you are still responsible for cancelling old vows, sacred agreements, blood oaths, and soul contracts you have made with varying dark forces throughout time and probability. After all, these were promises you made before God. (Or to beings masquerading as God.) It's up to you to exert your spiritual willpower to "undo" them.

Until you do that, you'll never have true psychic clarity or full psychic protection. Some of the WORST psychic attack, the stuff that has nearly killed me here on this physical plane, has come from Christians who didn't realize they were stilled plugged into demonic forces. (I also maintain many loving and incredible relationships with Christians. These are usually people with a fair degree of self-awareness who has done their "spiritual homework," who understand the energies they are uniting with from a multi-dimensional perspective.)

The Metaphysical Dimension of Romantic Relationships

Couples experience challenges on many levels, but the dimension nobody seems to talk about much is the metaphyiscal one. So many partners are psychically attacking each other without realizing it, sending their unresolved ghoul energies out at each other. No wonder the divorce rate is so high! It's a lot easier to walk away than to deal with this stuff. It takes vigilant self-awareness and a lot of work at understanding how your personal energy operates. Only by taking inventory in this way can you figure out how to heal and transmute those shadowy energies.

I don't mean to discourage my readers and make you think that this is a complex process. I mean, at its core, all it takes is love. Well, a LOT of love. Maybe supercalifragilisticexpialidocious doses of love (to quote a song from Disney's Mary Poppins movie.) It takes a certain amount of battery power to cancel out the power of the dark. Every time my honey and I would hit an energy obstacle in the early days, I got in the habit of taking that shadow and holding it in the divine fire of love to transmute it while also asking for help from God/Goddess/Great Spirit and my spiritual "posse," which for me does include Jesus and the archangel Michael. That's where whatever psychic strength I had was multipled by a gazillion times. (Handy fellow, that God chap. Or lady.)

Love is the fire that burns away all impurities. But self-cleansing is a process you have to work at. I've found that it occurs in layers. You're stripping down the auric "onion" or energy envelope that surrounds you and clearing out the crud at each layer. We accumulate a lot of psychic garbage through multiple lifetimes. That's the secret to permanent healing -- clearing through this stuff and sending it packing for good.

Engaging in this work is the most miraculous thing you can do because it completely changes you as a being, awakens spiritual abilities you can barely imagine, and forever changes your ability to experience peace and love.

But it's sad when some people resolve themselves to unhappy or incompatible partnerships without understanding this deeper level of healing that is possible. Even if you and your honey are at odds, getting down to the spiritual nitty-gritty of your relationship can shift things around.

Labels Separate Us Instead of Creating Unity

Those fellows I observed at the diner today seemed like nice guys. But how could I reach them with anything I've learned over the years? Dare to talk openly about spiritual stuff and people will throw verbal arrows at you: "Why should I listen to you, you're not a real Christian!" "You can't follow any teachings associated with New Age thought and be a good person!" "Astrologers are bad news!" etc. etc. ad nauseum.

People need to realize that you CAN be "Christian" AND "New Age" and an "astrologer." I am. I'm also a pagan. I'm also a shamaness. I'm also a healer. I'm also a comedienne. At the same time, I'm also a contrarian who is none of those things.

I don't much like labels because they separate people from the spiritual unity we should all be accessing as equal, beautiful, beings of light. Too often, we use labels to bludgeon each other over the head or place ourselves on a pedestal as the sole purveyors of truth. I try to avoid both. I prefer to cling to my "goofball" status!

I may not approach these things the way YOU do. But I do have very real, very transformative and healing techniques that I can share with you, if only you'll put aside your preconceived notions for a minute.

That's the dialogue I try to get into with people, and some days, it's not worth the energy because people are more interested in projecting hatred than sharing ideas.

So I tend to just quietly go about my business, attempting to reach others with love and light wherever I can, sharing the real stuff here on my website and sifting through the hate mail from readers whose hobby appears to be judging the qualities of my immortal soul as black and ugly. (I'll be having an assistant take over my email soon. If my response time on emails slows down in the near future, it will be because I'm having an assitant editor sift through my correspondence. It's already getting overwhelming at this point, although I enjoy connecting with people on a personal level as much as I can. That is, when they're not foaming at the mouth and doing their best Cujo impression.)

"You evil demon spawn astrologer woman, you! I bark in your general direction! AARF! Feel the harsh sting of my canine venom!"

And a lot of the "juicy" stuff I've learned will be going into my new ebook: The High Spirits Handbook: How to Banish Bad Vibes for Good. Plus the other 30 books to come after that.

I figure my job is to present stuff that can lighten your personal energy and bring in healing vibes. It's your job to sort out what you think or believe about it. I'll leave that part to you.

Meanwhile, I lurk in coffeehouses, marvelling at how much healing we all still need to accomplish if we wish to emerge into the fullness of the miraculous beings we were always intended to be.