Dear Julia:

I have long been highly psychic, and able to accurately foretell what will happen in the future, both via divination methods, and just "knowing." I had a reading with you some time ago, and through this and some of your other writings, was led to study the law of attraction and how we create our own realities. This has turned some of my beliefs upside down, as I've questioned the power of self-fulfilling prophecies, for example. I recently had an experience in which I accurately predicted the end of a friendship, and now I'm not sure what to believe. Did I predict it, or did I manifest it? Was it "my fault" because I expected it, and gave it my attention? What do you think?
- Anne

Dear Anne:

This is a great question, and a subject that I struggle with myself from time to time. In fact, just recently it came up for me again. Basically, I believe that we create our own experiences of everything in life by deciding (or not deciding consciously) how we will interpret and respond to them. When we "predict" something, we have a lot more time to bring our own energy into the creative mix and thus influence it. Let me explain:

Recently, I was planning a surprise party for my stepdaughter's sixteenth birthday, and in the process of making the guest list with her mother, I said, "I predict that her sister is not going to want to go, because she's going to have plans with her friends come up that night." It just came to me. It was decided she'd have to go anyway, and I honestly forgot about it.

A few weeks later, which was about a week before the event, the subject of the party came up in conversation, and sure enough, my other stepdaughter expressed her desire to do something with her friends that night instead of going to her sister's party. This time, I had an immediate negative reaction to the situation. Everyone present talked her into going to her sister's party anyway, but I was aggravated about it (and thus gave it my attention) for several minutes.

Fast-forward to the night before the party, when a big drama erupts. She doesn't want to go. She outright refuses to go, in fact. There is a big brouhaha on the phone between my husband and his ex-wife (her mother), as everyone tries to decide how to handle it. I end up in the middle of the whole thing, and now it's becoming a fiasco. Suddenly it hits me - I "predicted" this. Then another thought hits me from the other side - or did I manifest it?

After all, I predicted and then expected this to happen. Perhaps the whole thing is "my fault." The only way to "know" is to go back and assess my vibration throughout. Upon reflection, I believe that I simply predicted the first incident. I had no resistance to this happening. I expected it, but I was light and easy with it, and gave it no more thought after the moments of the initial intuition.

When it actually came true, however, I had a negative reaction. I was energetically resistant to her NOT going. I got upset. I judged her as "wrong," and became anxious to ensure that the "right" thing would happen. I worried for some time about the feelings of everyone involved. This is when I began to contribute to the later drama.

It's all about vibration. When, in the midst of that fiasco, I surrendered all resistance and made peace with whatever was decided, suddenly everything started to work out. We said she didn't have to go, that it wasn't worth all the upset. As it turned out, she decided she would attend - on her own. She came up to me a few days later, hugged me, and apologized for the whole thing.

If I had carried no resistance to her not going, no attachment to what I felt "should" happen, then the drama may still have erupted, as this whole situation was not even about me. I, however, would not have been emotionally affected by it. I would have been able to watch it unfold with equanimity. Because I was carrying resistance, however, I was upset by it.

So in your case, with the friendship ending, if you sensed this coming and you felt sad, anxious, hurt or defensive, and you gave it a lot of attention (a.k.a. "worried" about it), you probably "added fuel to the fire," energetically speaking. If you had no resistance at all, then the friendship may have ended, but you would have been relatively at peace with it. You may even have been totally oblivious to it. You may have stopped one day in the future and said to yourself, "Hmmm, I haven't seen or heard from so and so for quite some time." Even if she decided to announce it, if you were floating your cork and not resisting anything, you would have been more perplexed or dismayed than devastated. To figure out what happened in your own particular situation, Anne, you'll have to retrace your emotional and energetic steps.

Of course, there are no absolutes here. We can't totally separate predicting from manifesting, nor can we pinpoint who is solely responsible for things turning out a certain way. All of this energy from all kinds of sources gets mixed together. Trying to figure out if we predicted something or manifested it is like jumping into a river with a cup of water, dumping the water into the river, and then swimming downstream, trying to figure out which water is "ours" again.

It is of course easier to sort this out when you're predicting for other people. When you have nothing personally invested in an outcome, then you and your water are not going into the river anyway. You're standing on the bank, which enables you to see further downstream than everyone in the river, so you can predict the twists and turns ahead. This is not to say that you don't wish your clients happiness and fulfillment - you're just open to that coming to them in whatever way is best for them. You're unattached to the details.

As for self-fulfilling prophecies, this is another matter, as most of the "water" in such situations is "yours." If you predict something is going to happen in your own future, you may tend to act in ways that make this happen. For example, if you predict you'll meet a tall, dark, handsome stranger next Saturday night, you may just decide to go out on the town that night, and when any tall, dark, handsome stranger comes into view, you may decide to walk right on up and introduce yourself. Did you predict it, or manifest it? (And who cares, if he's honest, trustworthy and charming too?) If it's all up to you, then of course you're influencing it.

Again, however, the truth is in your vibration. If you're very attached to meeting this stranger, you're likely to "make" it happen, either outright, or via manifesting as you give this idea a lot of desire and attention. If you're objective, you're probably just predicting. This is why it's essential to rise above the ego (attachment and resistance) before you "tune in." When things just "come to you" unbidden, you'll have to rise above the ego to double-check them too. This is why meditation is so important, and why formal training in psychic development is helpful, for that is how psychics learn to raise their vibration and alter their state of consciousness in order to perceive clearly and objectively. (But this is a subject for another day!)

In summary, if you're feeling objective (neither strong desire or resistance to whatever you're foretelling), then you're probably predicting. If there is strong attachment involved, however, and you end up giving a lot of emotional attention to what you've predicted, you can be sure that even if you ARE foretelling what will happen, your energy is going to get into the mix and enhance the likelihood that what you predict will actually come true.

- Julia