Where does love want to move today?

What if the future is like a tree, with many potential branches growing from every present moment? Some potential futures are strong, like thick branches; others are weak little twigs.

What if, when we focus on trying to predict the future, it’s like taking a chainsaw and cutting all the other possibilities away?

When I became an accidental professional psychic at the age of 16, this was exactly the dilemma I faced. At the age of 13, I had dedicated my life to wisdom – it was a desperate dark-night-of-the-soul plea to find a reason to live that was bigger than the pain of being alive. I had chosen wisdom because the word represented deep answers to life’s biggest questions.   

Only three years later, when my mother asked what I wanted for my 16th birthday, I asked for tarot cards. In my pursuit of wisdom, I’d stumbled across the idea that the one and only thing I could test was my intuition. Maybe intuition could help me find wisdom. Maybe intuition could give me a way to find answers for myself instead of relying on surrogate truth – the beliefs everyone asked me to swallow whole without question.

Now, you must understand that back then, tarot cards were contraband. This was in the 80s, when even Pink Floyd’s song Brick in the Wall had been banned in South Africa. The only shop my mother could find my taboo birthday gift in was in Hillbrow. But bless her – she bought me a tarot deck. The cutest, least frightening-looking deck, mind you: Hanson-Roberts.
So there I was on my 16th birthday, enjoying my special gift, sitting in a caravan – because that was all my parents could afford for a weekend holiday. The irony is not lost on me. With only the small instruction booklet to guide me, I made up how to choose cards and ‘read’ them.

Studying the meanings and practising non-stop all Saturday, I was still at it on Sunday when my mom’s best friend joined our family for lunch.
“Are those tarot cards?” Mom’s friend squealed with delight – she was a big fan. “You’ve got to do a reading for my boyfriend.” She insisted, despite my arguing that I was a one-day-old Tarot Reader.
But she got her way. I’m not sure who was more awkward – the boyfriend or me – as I randomly pulled cards from the deck for past, present and future. Even in those early moments, I saw that the real power of the cards wasn’t in the pieces of paper printed in China. The cards were a comfort blanket, helping me focus my intuition.

The reading sounded something like me fumbling with these impressions:
“Your past card shows… a woman… the swords represent stress… she had mental fatigue and there’s a feeling of being trapped. Your present card – there’s a struggle, delays and you’re feeling worried. And the future… well, that looks lovely. Ace of Cups is new love, celebrations and hope.”

He went pale and, without saying a word, got up and walked away.
I was summoned to the caravan by my mother, but instead of getting into trouble, I was greeted by a glowing, proud mom and her friend saying, “I knew my Col was special.” They told me I’d revealed a secret her boyfriend was keeping from her – about a past girlfriend who had a mental breakdown and whom he was still visiting in hospital to support.
Despite arguing that I knew none of these things, my mom’s friend announced that she would be referring clients to me for readings – which is exactly what she did.
And so, my accidental career as a teenage psychic began. I was terrified. The only reason I said yes was because, despite the fear, this felt like my chance to put this intuition thing to the test, to appease my sceptical mind and try to find wisdom.

For the next few years, I would get home from school, change, wolf down a quick lunch, then receive clients. The readings were stressful, but they gave me enough proof to be satisfied that there was something else – this intuition thing was real, but complex.
What I loved were the moments in a reading when, despite the client saying nothing and giving no clues, I was able to deliver specific, mind-blowing details about the past and present. Things like, “You have three children… your youngest… a son… is in trouble at school… for stealing a car.”

That’s when things would unravel. I was satisfied – my Sherlock Holmes hat was still on and I wanted to figure out how and why this worked. But they weren’t interested in that. These vulnerable adults, sometimes 20 years my senior, would hand me their power with the dreaded question, “So Colleen, tell me about my future.”

I’d squirm and stutter, because truly, whenever I tuned into the future, I felt more than one. Some wispy possibilities mixed with firmer, more solid timeline branches.
When I tried to explain this to my clients, they would argue, “I know you can see, Colleen. Is it that bad that you don’t want to tell me?”

And when I bowed to the pressure and said, “There is only a potential,” and “You can choose a different path,” these were ignored. I’d hear months later only how spot-on my predictions were – and how they would refer even more clients to me.

Please don’t get me wrong. I am beyond grateful for those years and have no issue with the role of an ethical psychic, which has its place. But I was after wisdom. After three years of accurate work, I felt hollow. I wanted to empower clients, not just impress them. And ultimately, I had to admit the truth: Being psychic did not mean being wise. So, I gave up my role as a teen psychic, pretending that I’d ‘lost my abilities’ to stop clients from calling.
What happened with these abilities surprised me. In my 20s and 30s, I learned to use the same fundamentals those testing years gave me – but I put them to work learning how to build my wisdom well (access inner wisdom).

A few important insights I found along the way:

• To do psychic work, I needed to not care, to feel empty (which is why I couldn’t read for loved ones or myself).
• To do wisdom work, the opposite was true. I needed to care, to feel love – which meant I could access wisdom for myself and for anyone (once I learned to feel love for everyone).

The common key was still attention and intention.
I saw that intention guided subtle attention. Like choosing which radio station to tune in to, it was an inner decision that sent attention like an ambassador to find the gold.

• For psychic work, I sent attention to find impressive ‘hits’ about someone’s past and present.
• For wisdom work, I sent attention deeper than ‘the surface mind’, to still, quiet knowing – like a bucket lowered into water.

What I found surprised me. Wisdom was powerfully healing – like water healing the dry, dead surface of things. Wisdom opened anything that was closed. It opened my heart. Healed my shyness. Gave me strength and clarity, often daily. And it took me home to my true being and true seeing, where our inner student lives with our inner teacher.

It also showed me how to support others deeply and help them claim their true being and seeing – and find their inner teacher.

This became the guiding force in my life. I spent decades learning how to improve my ability to access wisdom and tell it apart from ego – to translate silent being and seeing into words. As a result, everything changed.

What about the future and predictions?
When I have asked Wisdom about the future, I have still felt timelines as potentials. But instead of feeling afraid and closed, Wisdom shows me that we are ‘equal to’ all futures. The sovereignty of the true self is equal to the worst and best of life.

A mistake I used to make in the earliest years was believing that a closed feeling was an intuitive ‘no’ – like a ‘not this way’ – when choosing possible options and opportunities. And so, like a compass, I only followed the open feelings, thinking they were intuitive ‘yeses’ about which branch of the tree to focus on. But this was not true.

Wisdom showed me that:

• OPEN meant only that I was seeing clearly. I was equal to that path.
• CLOSED meant I was not seeing clearly. I was not equal to that path. Fear, ignorance, or not feeling equal to it was blocking my ability to see true.

This insight was life-changing. It meant that I was choosing only futures and options that I was already seeing clearly and felt equal to. Fear, which feels closed, was the chainsaw cutting away possible new futures for me.

My job was to help my heart, mind and body get equal to all possible futures – to turn closed feelings into open ones. And then, only then, in the inner peace and strength of this, could I see all options clearly enough to choose.

When all options felt open, then I could shift my attention to notice which open path felt as if there were a flow – a flow of love, inspiration, energy, or interest. As if the life force were stronger there. This, I came to see, was my way of knowing, ‘This is my path. This is the branch of the tree for me to nurture.’

When a pipe is closed, there is no flow. A lack of clear seeing blinds us intuitively to futures we could be saying yes to.

The truth is, we want a way to predict the future to avoid pain – which I’ve tried hundreds of times. It’s normal to want to protect ourselves and our loved ones. My ego and fear didn’t like the answer Wisdom gave me about this, but the truth of it was freeing:

“There is no pain-free path for the river to flow down a mountain. But there is a way to increase the flow, so that your life river can meet all obstacles with courage and the strength to overcome.”

Today, at 54 years old this year, I thank my teenage self for her courage. I am almost always tuned in to when I feel closed – because that’s when I know there is inner work to do. That’s where Wisdom is being called to heal.

Then I find the clarity of seeing that opens. When I feel open and equal to the paths before me – to saying ‘yes’ and ‘no,’ to ‘this way’ and ‘that,’ to success and failure, to tough days and good days – then I can feel the answer to the question:

“Where does love want to move today?”

And love, which is life itself, creates with quiet power.

Colleen-Joy MCC, a Master Coach Mentor and the driving force behind the InnerLifeSkills brand, invites you to join her global community of leaders, coaches, seekers of wisdom and visionaries who make a living making a difference. Colleen has taught over 35 000 people in 60 countries, delivering over 4 000 classes and talks. Two documentary television features have been made about her life story and she’s been a regular expert television and podcast guest for over 20 years. Join her online internationally ICF-accredited Master Coach classes and enjoy her many free resources. 

Colleen-Joy’s site https://www.colleen-joy.com/

Colleen’s InnerLifeSkills site https://www.innerlifeskills.com/

Colleen’s Youtube https://www.youtube.com/colleenjoy