Clairvoyance means ‘clear-seeing’. Almost everyone knows what clairvoyance is - it’s the ability to see Spirit. Clairvoyants can see auras, spirits, symbols and get visual premonitions.

Some clairvoyants see things in their mind’s eye and some can see with their physical eyes. Both are possible, but it’s more common to see in the mind’s eye. Whereas a clairsentient might look at your photo and pick up on your feelings and emotions, a clairvoyant would probably see your aura, the essence of your spirit and spirit guides or angels around you. When reading a situation, a clairvoyant may see a symbol or a movie-scene which is a metaphor for the situation.

Receiving clairvoyant images is one thing, but not all clairvoyants are gifted at interpreting what they see. To interpret, you need to use your claircognizance or clairaudience as well.

I’ve written articles on the three other major psychic gifts: Clairaudience, Clairsentience, and Claircognizance. The reason why I didn’t write an article about clairvoyance sooner is because clairvoyance is really not a common psychic gift.

On the other hand, I felt really compelled to write about claircognizance and clairsentience because they are so common and the people who have these gifts often do not know that they even constitute gifts which can be developed. By contrast, in my mini-readings, I’ve only read for about ten people who have been natural clairvoyants (that’s about ten people out of 350) and most of those people knew about their clairvoyance. I guess this rare factor could be why clairvoyance is thought of as THE psychic gift to have, because it’s more exclusive somehow.

Is clairvoyance better than the other psychic gifts, like clairaudience or clairsentience? I don’t think so. All the intuitive vehicles are meant to work together. In fact, I’d say that clairvoyance is not always needed, unless you’re a medium or something. I mean, think about it. You need your clairsentience, to pick up vibes from people and to empathize. You can do with clairaudience as well, to get quick warnings from your guides or higher self, like ‘run!’ or ‘don’t take that road’. But I can’t think of any situations where clairvoyance is absolutely necessary in daily life, unless you do psychic readings in your work. I personally do not require the use of clairvoyance in my work much. I do sometimes ’see’ clients’ past lives, but when I need to know details about a situation, my guides will tend to just put the information into my brain, rather than sending me symbols or metaphors or images.

How to develop your clairvoyance

Even if you’re not a natural clairvoyant, you can still develop your clairvoyance. Flexing my clairvoyant muscles was the first thing I did when I started developing psychically. I picked up a great book called ‘Psychic Development for Beginners’ by William Hewitt and began using his exercises to open up my clairvoyance (the exercise is below)

I have to say that the below exercise opened up my clairvoyance quite spectacularly for a few days, then I got scared and shut it down again! I started to see my guides in my mind’s eye, I saw things moving in the corner of my eye, I saw coloured lights around people and I began to have really strange and vivid dreams, in colour. I wasn’t used to seeing so much, and it was overwhelming for me.

The exercise is this: visualize yourself holding seven balloons, of the colours red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet and indigo. Let the balloons go one by one, beginning with the red balloon. Watch them float up to the blue sky until they disappear before you release the next one.

If you’re not used to visualizing, then this exercise could be quite difficult for you at first. You may find it hard to concentrate or it may be difficult for you to visualize vividly or in colour. It all depends on how developed your imagination muscles are.

Any activity which uses your visual imagination is good for strengthening clairvoyance, because your imagination is the tool that Spirit uses to send you information, in the form of images. The more well-oiled your imagination cogs are, the easier it is for spirit to send you clear images. How can you tell the difference between what’s from your imagination and what’s from Spirit? When you receive an image from Spirit, you are not in control. You are not creating the image. It just appears in your mind’s eye without any active participation from you.

Another way to open up your clairvoyance: Imagine a third eye, between your eyebrows. Visualize the eyelid on your third eye opening up. All visualization does is set an intention to do something. If you visualize this regularly, you’re putting energy behind your intention to open up your third eye, the centre of your clairvoyance.

Blocks to clairvoyance

A few people who are natural clairvoyants never see any evidence of their clairvoyance. When this happens, it usually means there is a blockage or an energy leak at the third eye chakra. At the bottom of this there tends to be some trauma caused by having ’seen’ something unexpected or unpleasant.

There are two reasons why I personally do not put much effort into developing clairvoyance: one is that I don’t need it too much for my work and the second is that I don’t really want to see, because I had a scary experience in the past. When I was about seven, I was playing in my bed late at night, looked up and saw a woman standing in the corner of my room, by the door, staring at me. Just writing about it gives me the creeps. I have never been more frightened in my life than at that moment. All I can remember is pulling the covers over my head and hoping she’d go away. I remember my heart beating so fast that I thought it would burst! I think I decided at that point that seeing spirits sucked. Which is probably why I don’t like seeing spirits now. I have done some clearing work around that experience, but I remain reluctant to explore my clairvoyance further.

Lots of people have a blockage like this, due to some sort of frightening psychic experience. If this applies to you and you can locate or remember what is blocking your third eye, use my angelic healing exercise (method # 3) in the article Four ways to heal yourself - it really works.

Any general blocks to truth can also affect clairvoyance (and the overall state of your intuitive faculties). For example, if you live your life in a state of denial or falsehood, your clairvoyance will be weakened. If you want to have strong intuition, get into the habit of facing up to the truth in your life, if you’re not already. If you kid yourself about something on a regular basis, it weakens your trust in your own perceptions and intuition and this will affect your clairvoyance.

Further tips:

Place a lapis lazuli or clear quartz crystal over your third eye chakra. Or go into a crystal shop with the intention of finding the right crystal to help you to open up your third eye. You may feel really drawn to one crystal in particular which can help you.

When you’re working with your clairvoyance at first, it helps to close your eyes and use your mind’s eye rather than expecting to see things straight away with your physical eyes.

Use the affirmation ‘I am profoundly clairvoyant. It is safe for me to see’

Release and heal whatever fears/trauma you have around seeing spirits.