Look for yourself in order to see

As an art student many years ago, I practiced the art of learning to see in a whole new way.

In my studio art classes, I learned how to use a view finder, which is basically a piece of paper with a hole cut out in it. It can be any size or shape, small or large. You look through the hole that you cut, and the frame around the hole blocks out anything that isn’t what you are looking at. This helps you focus and see more clearly, maybe even discover new things or compositions you hadn’t seen or considered yet.

Building the awareness of seeing for myself was one of the most valuable lessons that art school gave to me. As a budding artist, I was already starting to see things differently than how I was taught in school until now - especially Catholic school, which really wanted me to see in a specific way and not look outside of that. Learning to look (also the title of a popular book on this topic) made it possible to see the world, and myself in it, in a different way.

As I opened up my ability to see, my ability to see helped me open up too.

The permission to see what’s in front of us, and to imagine new ways of seeing, is necessary in every form of creativity. Artists get that way because they see things in a different way, and then want to express what they see, hear, feel or know. As an artist, I am drawn to working with certain kinds of colors and lines and images - they are often intuitive, emotional, pleasing to me in some way. As a clairvoyant, I’ve learned to trust my vision, and to rely on my ability to see for myself.

Many of us went through years of schooling that demanded and rewarded compliance, and often taught a rigid way of seeing.

So much of school is training to do anything but look for yourself. Pictures and images affect each of us so profoundly, on every level. If you decide to see for yourself, you will see things differently from others around you. If you keep practicing this way of looking, you’ll create differently too, simply because you decided to look. Whether you’re creating a painting, business, relationship, or yourself - it’s all creative work.

As a practicing clairvoyant, I know that the way I look at things affects the pictures I have of myself, and what’s possible for me to have and be. Clairvoyance has helped me become more skilled at seeing myself and creating my life.

Using your clairvoyance helps you to be the artist of your own life.

Each of us has this ability already built in, we just need to polish it and practice it. The demands on each of us to look through the same lens that others are looking through, can be overwhelming. You probably already know that when you try to create your life based on someone else’s pictures of how it should look, it won’t work. You’ll be in a lot of effort if you constantly copy someone else’s pictures and don’t look for your own. The trick is to do the work required to make your own pictures for yourself, to see through your own lens. Many well meaning experts and how-to books might look appealing with their promises of success if you simply follow these 10 easy steps. If you’re honest with yourself, you’ll know that one size does not fit all, not very well anyway.

We are each of us a unique spirit, with a one of a kind view finder. When you use your own vision to look for yourself, you won’t necessarily find all the answers, or even like what you see sometimes, but you can be clear about it being yours.