Adventures Of A Psychic

Rating:
Summary: Enjoy "The Other Side and Back?" You'll Enjoy This too !
Review: After reading, enjoying and writing my review of Sylvia Browne's "The Other Side and Back" for Amazon.com, I was inspired to read this book. Her 249 page book details her interesting life and her special gift of prophecy. She describes what a psychic is, and how her life revolves around this special God given "gift." This is a gift that doesn't really make one's life easier. She tells about how her gift has helped her advise police departments searching for missing persons and criminals, and how some of her predictions helped others avoid dangerous situations. She also struggles with tragedies that she warned about, which resulted in deaths when her warnings were ignored. This book may bring comfort to believers (and some skeptics) and clarify their thinking about the present and the future. The book's 15 chapters include: A Psychic in Love, Growing Pains, Following the Blueprint, The Other Side, Haunting Expressions, Why Am I Here, Medicine and the Medium, and more. It's a very interesting read, and you might find yourself going back and reading some sections again in the future. It is thought provoking, even if you're a non-believer. The work may even make a believer of you! Whether or not you believe in psychics, knowledge is power, and you can only gain with this knowledge. Worth reading. I found it well worth the $ 10.36 price.

Rating:
Summary: Impressive, enligtening and powerful
Review: If you've ever wondered what it's like to be precognitive, clairvoyant, clairaudiant, or to experience other psychic abilities, Sylvia Browne's ADVENTURE OF A PSYCHIC is a must read. For those who don't believe in psychic phenomena, this book will make the reader a believer. Written in clear concise tones, with undercurrents of both religious philosophy and pragmatism, Browne's ADVENTURE OF A PSYCHIC tells not only the story of Browne's life, but also gives a basic understanding of our purpose on this planet.

The voice of Francine, Browne's spirit guide, imparts a basic understanding of the purpose of this "learner's planet" and the dimensions beyond. Despite the ability to help others with her gifts, Browne also makes it clear that her gifts don't guide her own actions; her mistakes create her life lessons just like everyone else. In addition, Browne shares her experience in helping with hauntings, missing persons cases and predictions of various tragedies or world events. Throughout the book, Browne emphasizes that all people have psychic abilities, and offers insight to opening to those innate abilities.

Having listened to the abridged, taped version of Sylvia Browne's ADVENTURE OF A PSYCHIC, I assumed I was familiar enough with her story that the book would be a quick skim. While the tape includes inflections and details that might not be in the book that really give the listener a sense of Sylvia Browne the person, the book gives a deeper understanding of her psychic experiences and the lessons she wishes to share. While the text is less personal, less a "conversation", it does contain more detail, to the point that at times the book becomes a teacher. Indeed, both the book and tape must be experienced to fully appreciate all the lessons Browne has to share, as a person and as a professional psychic. Consequently, ADVENTURES OF A PSYCHIC both the book and on tape, as separate experiences, come very highly recommended.

Bright Blessings, Weaver

Rating:
Summary: Thanks, Sylvia
Review: One of the reasons I enjoy most of Sylvia Browne's books, as I did this one, is that she is very forthcoming about where she has been and that she conveys just how difficult it really is to be spiritually intuitive. To improve their credibility and keep their egos in check, it would be well that others in the New Age/New Thought circles would follow Sylvia's example in this regard.

One of her most famous truisms, one that I appreciate greatly, is that a psychic is rarely able to predict what will happen in their own life...a bit humbling to come to that realization, but if we all (including highly spiritually intuitive people) come here to grow, then this limitation would seem a given.

However, there is an aspect of her personality that comes through in the blunt assertions she makes about the reality of our progression through spiritual and physical existences. My own sense is that, while very sincere, she may actually be oversimplifying and even exaggerating the process.

Three things she appears to assert that I am not convinced of:
(1) All the "evil" people and most suicides don't get to go to her version of heaven because they take an almost immediate u-turn after death and come back into another life, which would seem guaranteed to make for yet another unfortunate and miserable existence on earth, not only for themselves, but (even worse) for many others.
(2) After death, everyone essentially goes to the same place to deliberately plan their next existence on earth. While this may eventually happen for many souls, I would tend to believe that a great many folks just go to a reality that fits their most recent earth experience and that they stay there indefinitely until their spirit has a yearning to grow and seeks out an understanding that will lead to another opportunity to facilitate that growth.
(3) Spiritual beings cannot read our minds unless we consciously allow them to. If psychic people here on earth are able to do this (and I have experienced it myself), then why is it that spiritual beings cannot do it? My own sense is that while some information is profoundly personal and off limits to others, we spiritually project our intentions here on earth and in the spiritual realm to facilitate the work we are intended to do.

I am also not sold on her notion that the spirit world is a squeaky clean place and, except for the suicides and "bad guys" who are sent right back to earth after they die, we all essentially go to the same wonderful and resplendent location after our physical death. Based on the NDEs described by folks like Betty Eadie and Dannion Brinkley, I am inclined to believe that the afterlife location she describes in her books may very well exist, but, as Jesus said, "my Father's house has many rooms". From personal experiences and readings of other authors' works (P.M.H. Atwater, Howard Storm, Bruce Moen, Robert Monroe, among others) my belief is that the spirit realm is actually a very complicated set of realities, with many layers and many shades of light and dark within those layers. I think our world here on earth is a reflection of that complexity.

It would be interesting if some day we could see some of the well known spiritual intuitives and serious researchers of reincarnation and paranormal events come together to have a discussion on some of the more controversial aspects (i.e. where they do not always agree) regarding what they assert about:
(a) Life after death
(b) The nature of good and evil
(c) The power that we possess individually and collectively to create our realities.

Such a gathering might contribute to a better understand of the source or basis of some of their more controversial and intriguing ideas. As it is, the more I read books like Sylvia's, more questions are generated than answered.