CIIS Public Programs Podcast

TRANSCRIPT

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This is the CIIS Public Programs Podcast, featuring talks and conversations recorded live by the Public Programs department of California Institute of Integral Studies, a non-profit university located in San Francisco on unceded Ramaytush Ohlone Land.

For Afro-Indigenous intuitive healer and scholar Jennifer Vest, being an ethical psychic means being of service and learning how to navigate the thorny issues and unique risks inherent to intuitive work. In her latest book, The Ethical Psychic, Dr. Vest explores how and why energy workers must be of service, authentic, and self-aware. They must learn from their mistakes, embody sensitivity to client needs, be humble, and listen to a higher source.

In this episode, Dr. Vest is joined by CIIS Associate Professor and Chair of the Women’s Spirituality program Annette Williams for an illuminating conversation exploring how psychics and energy workers can build an authentic, equitable, and culturally sensitive healing practice.

This episode was recorded during a live online event on October 27th, 2022. To find out more about CIIS and public programs like this one, visit our website and connect with us on social media @ciispubprograms.

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Annette Williams: Hello, everyone. Good evening, and welcome to a conversation with Dr. Jennifer Lisa Vest on her book, The Ethical Psychic, a beginner's guide to healing with integrity, avoiding unethical encounters, and using your gifts for good. Jennifer Vest has the inheritance of multiple bloodlines and generations of seers. She came into this life with an extraordinary array of spiritual gifts as of clairvoyance, clairaudience, clairsentience, and mediumship. So, Dr. Vest, Jennifer Lisa, thank you so much for joining me in conversation this evening. [Dr. Vest: Thank you so much for having me, Dr. Williams.] So, begin, in the book, you make a statement that's really intriguing. And I'll ask you to expand on it a little bit. You said, “my entire life, I have been guided and taught by spirit teachers, who when I was a child, would come and get me at night, and take me to spirit school on the other side.” So, like, tell us a little bit more about your background. And, you know, what is it that makes you so well-placed to write this book? And why are you writing it now? What is the need that you saw or experienced?

Jennifer Lisa Vest: Okay. Yeah, I have a really diverse background, both spiritually and ethnically. And I think that has positioned me well to be able to write a book which is really speaks to a broad audience, people in different cultural traditions practicing different types of medicine.

Yeah, I had teachers, spirit teachers, for as long as I can remember. And when I was really young, they would take me to spirit school, where I would sit in a classroom full of little balls of light and learn. And later, I got to travel to the future, and the past, and to different places on the planet and other planets. And throughout my life, they just were giving me teachings.

And so, I believe that I was chosen to write this book by spirit. I don't really feel that it was so much my decision to write it, as it was my decision to listen and to do what I was told, [laughs] which is pretty much how I live my life. You know, when I look at some of the, you know, kind of earth-based reasons for why I might have been chosen to write this book, you know, they may have to do with the fact that I have training as a philosopher. I used to teach ethics as a philosophy professor, and then I've also taught psychic and healing arts for over 10 years. I've also worked, you know, as a medical intuitive, as a medium, as an Akashic records reader, and I've had a lot of colleagues. I've witnessed my students trying to take shortcuts, which is getting them into hot water in terms of ethics. Then, I've seen my colleagues make unethical choices. I've also lived in spiritual communities or been involved in different spiritual communities, where I’ve also seen unethical behavior by spiritual teachers. I feel like the combination of my training and my experience kind of predisposed me to want to address this topic.

The reason that I felt the need to write it now is because I just, I kept seeing, you know, all of these behaviors. What I could see was that my students didn't really have access to the knowledge. They weren't being taught ethics the way that you learn ethics, traditionally you learn it from a teacher. In a lot of traditional ways of learning medicine, you have a teacher who teaches you, you know, what is the right thing to do in the context of developing your gifts. Nowadays, everybody is learning from books, or they're learning from YouTube, or TikTok, or they're taking, you know, weekend workshops. They're not getting that same facetime with an elder, or a teacher who's going to teach them how to be a good person. I felt that there was a lack, and that perhaps this book could be used to fill that missing piece.

Dr. Williams: Thank you. Yeah, it’s true that, you know, in many, many spiritual traditions, most Indigenous spiritual traditions in this continent and on other continents, there is a long period of apprenticeship, before one dares to hang up their shingle, you know, and call themselves anything. [both laugh] [Dr. Vest: Right.] Yeah, so, okay. You quote a Lakota medicine man, Pete Catches, as saying that to qualify as a medicine person requires many, many sacrifices. What are the sacrifices made to be an ethical psychic, and what sacrifices have you made along the way?

Dr. Vest: Well, there are a lot of sacrifices, and I think that's why so many aspiring psychics and healers do end up becoming unethical is because they're not willing to make the sacrifices, or they don't think they should have to. I can name some of the sacrifices that I’ve made. I gave up status. I used to be a professor. I had a lot of status and clout. I gave that up to pursue this path. I gave up money. This is not a get rich quick scheme. You can make money doing this work, but there's no guarantees, and you may have to struggle financially for quite a while before that happens. You may have to give up the security of knowing you're going to have that money. One of the funnier ones is a presumption of sanity. A lot of people think you're crazy when you start dabbling in, you know, anything to do with the other world. People will question your rationality, whether or not, and if you're an intellectual, they'll question your intellectual rigor.

You know, I was a professor. I kept my psychic side of my life very quiet for many years because my colleagues made fun of it. They made fun of anybody who said anything about psychic or paranormal topics. Talking about it or coming out and really pursuing this path openly opens you up to a lot of critique from intellectuals.

You might have to sacrifice your love life. There are not a lot of people who are willing to date a psychic. [Dr. Williams: I wonder why.] [both laugh] You know, I can tell you some stories about people I dated who, you know, were not too happy. I used to spontaneously channel in the middle of the night in deep male voices speaking other languages. This was back before I had control of my gifts. Or I would sometimes predict the future, and that would scare them. Or I would, you know, telepathically connect with them and they weren't sure they liked that. You know, you might have to, you know, you have a much smaller field of potential lovers.

You have to sacrifice being seen as normal, you know, blending in, just being one of the whatever, you're never going to be that again. Family. Some family or friends are going to, you know, drop you off by the wayside. You may become a pariah, you know, drugs and alcohol. You can't really do drugs and alcohol and follow this path. That kind of spontaneous easy-going life of fun where you're just like, taking drugs and partying, that's something you have to give up to do this work.

Dr. Williams: A lot of those sacrifices seem based in other people's fear. You know, this is the fear and the misunderstanding of what the gifts are and how the gifts, you know, are used ethically. So, yeah.

Dr. Vest: It's also about just being very careful and very responsible. Like, with the drugs and alcohol, when you're doing this work, like we're doing mediumship, if you use drugs and alcohol, you can really get into trouble with, you know, maleficent beings.

Dr. Williams: Yeah. Well, as I'm going to, I'm going to come back to that point, actually. It's interesting. One thing, you know, in your book that you do speak to, we speak about authenticity and that trait of authenticity, and the importance of that in being an ethical psychic. So, you know, I was wondering if you could say more about that, especially as it's related to cultural appropriation.

Dr. Vest: Okay. Let's see. At some point I was going to read something. Oh yeah. I think I'm going to read something from the text about that. [Dr. Williams: Okay.] Authenticity is something I talk about a lot in the book. So, I'll just read a little excerpt from page 17 of the book.

“To be authentic, it's important to have clarity about your spiritual lineage, the true nature of your gifts, and the purpose of your gifts. What did you come here to do? What have your teachers taught you? When you know this, you will be in a position to make good decisions about how and when to work, and you can guarantee the authenticity of your work. Being authentic is arguably an important aspect of any endeavor, but with regard to super sensory work, authenticity is an ethical concern. The primary way in which inauthenticity manifests in the intuitive arts is through rampant cultural appropriation. Many intuitives who lack a grounding in their own culture will pretend to know about other cultures and will then use that pretended knowledge to educate others in order to sell workshops and goods. Cultural appropriation is a wrong that is committed against a whole community, against yourself, and against your ancestors.”

So, authenticity, you know, one aspect of authenticity is cultural appropriation. Another aspect of authenticity is self-knowledge, knowing what your gifts are, knowing what your purpose is, knowing what your limitations are, knowing what your lineage is, who actually taught you, what do you actually qualify to do? Those are all aspects of being authentic. You know, what happens with some people is they don't know those things. They don't know what their gifts are. They don't know their purpose. Then, they just kind of start dabbling, and playing around with the traditions, and decide they make money by setting themselves up as a certain type of expert. And they get into trouble, both spiritually and ethically when they do that.

Dr. Williams: I'm thinking again about the importance of having a teacher and having that training. If you don't know your lineage, if you don't know what it is that your gifts are, and if you're just dabbling, you're putting others and yourself at risk in doing so.

Dr. Vest: Yeah, it's so important to have a teacher. Of course, everyone doesn't have a teacher, and so you have to find other ways. This is why I wrote the guidebook, is there have to be other ways of being very conscientious about your development. Part of the problem is that people are in a hurry. Like you said earlier, apprenticeships take a while. I studied for a long, long time before I hung a shingle, for decades. I also read a lot. I had different teachers. I also practiced for years. I volunteered. I worked for free. I helped people for free just to practice. When you spend that time developing your gifts, then you're going to be able to learn what your gifts are. You're going to learn what your limitations are. You're going to hopefully figure out what your purpose is, and figure out whether or not practicing medicine, or practicing psychic or healing arts is actually in alignment with your purpose. Just because you have gifts doesn't mean you're supposed to use them in a particular way during this incarnation. There are people who have gifts and they use their gifts to invent things, or they use their gifts to be really excellent counselors or therapists. There's different ways you can use your gift. It's not always about hanging a shingle and calling yourself a healer.

Dr. Williams: That's a very good point. I was thinking about the various schools that I've seen over time that do offer, they call them psychic development classes, or in some ways, too. A lot of that is the practicing.

So, you have multiple lineages in your bloodline and trainings and multiple trainings. There's this whole debate around the mixing of spiritual traditions. How do you weave together the various tracks of your background in what you do? I know we had a brief conversation about the purists versus the mixing of traditions. If you're doing Bodun, you should not mix that with the Santeria. You should mix it with native spiritual traditions, you know, but if you have all of that training and also lineage, blood lineage, how do you navigate that?

Dr. Vest: Well, one thing I want to say just as a preface to this conversation is that there are different levels at which we learn things. When you're a beginner, you learn things at one level. Then, when you're more advanced, you can do things that you couldn't do as a beginner. When it comes to rules and guidelines, those are really always for the beginner. When a person really masters their gifts, they're able to break some of those rules. The problem is when people are just beginners and they're trying to break all the rules. I understand the purist argument that if you're being trained in a particular tradition, that you should do that tradition the way you've been trained, the pure form, the way that your teacher taught you. That's really advice for a beginner. Once you have done that for a certain amount of time, it usually is considered acceptable to then add on additional teachings from other teachers. When you're beginning, you can't really do all that at once. You're going to get confused or you're going to get things wrong.

I didn't mix traditions until very recently. I was trained in different traditions. For example, I got trained in some Afro-Caribbean traditions like Shango and revivalism and Pocomania. While I was receiving those trainings, that was the only thing I was doing. I wasn't mixing in anything else. I was then trained in Native American wweat lodge. While I was getting that training, that was the only thing I was doing. Then, I was trained by spiritualists for several years, and that was the only thing I was doing. I followed the rules. They say, don't bring anything else in, just do it this way.

Because I'm a mixed-race person, there was a way in which I was never going to be an authentic anything. Every time I was in a different community, when I was in the Black community, I was always passing as Black, always questioned about my true heritage. When I was in the Native community, I was always passing as Native, questioned about my true heritage because I was always mixed. I would try to kind of be a purist. I would try to segregate my life so that when I was in the Native community, I would just practice the Native traditions and the African American, you know.

It wasn't until really recently that basically spirit put me on this path of mixing traditions. I was actually told by spirit that I was supposed to go teach at this women of color healing retreat. Even though there was no logical reason why I would, because I didn't know the people organizing the event, and no one had called me. Anyway, of course it happened. I ended up at this event. I ended up teaching. I ended up being asked by the women there to continue teaching in the Bay Area. I ended up then doing ceremony that was for women of color. As a result, I mixed all my traditions because my class was several different people, you know, it was people from different ethnic groups. I wanted it to be something that was, you know, resonating with all of them.

Now, the reason I have the training I do and the different traditions I have is because for the most part, my teachers chose me, and I didn't choose them. Until about 15 years ago, all of my teachings were from people who kind of grabbed me and said, come here, little girl, you know, and we're going to teach you. You're one of us. You need to follow me and learn this. I was kind of reluctant and, you know, I was trying to lead a normal life. I was trying to be an academic, and an intellectual, and this kind of thing kept happening, where teachers kept priestesses, and mothers, and kept saying, hey, you need to do this. I ended up with this kind of eclectic mix of trainings that I didn't choose, but that did correlate with my heritage. I was trained by, you know, Caribbean and I have Caribbean heritage. I was trained by Black, I had lack heritage. I was trained by Native American, I have Native American heritage. Right. I was trained also by white spiritualists, and I have white heritage.

It really wasn't until I was then called to mix them. I think it also required a certain kind of maturity and self-confidence on my part. You know, I'm in my 50s now, and I think earlier I didn't have the confidence to take that risk, and to risk being criticized and being told, what are you doing? You can't mix those. You know, what do you mix blood? What are you doing? You're not authentic. I'm no longer afraid of that. I'm no longer worried about that. I feel very confident about how I've been guided. I feel very confident that the work that I'm doing is beneficial. I'm no longer worried about people saying, oh, that's not a pure tradition. I know it's not. It's not supposed to be.

Dr. Williams: Thank you. That sort of leads right into the next topic. Another one, a quote of yours is the ego is not responsible for the information we receive psychically. In this, you're speaking about the importance of being a clear vessel or a little hollow bones, which is a term used by Sioux Medicine Man, Fools Crow, who you quote. Yeah, I said, you know, again, there's an expansion on that concept of the clear vessel, and we need our egos to be in the world, but somehow the setting aside, or putting the ego to the side to allow, you know, to allow spirit to move through you, and to move you where it is that they think you need to be, where it is they know you need to be, I should say, where they know you need to be.

Dr. Vest: Yeah. I mean, you can see when I listed all the sacrifices, how much you have to give up the ego to do this work, because you're going to be made fun of. [laughs] You're going to be questioned. You know, those things just can't matter anymore when you're doing this work. The hollow bone is probably the one aspect of my teaching that I emphasize the most in all of my classes, the importance of becoming a hollow bone. This is Fool’s Crow, Medicine Man's idea, that I just then am carrying forward. You know, but he said that in order to be any type of a medicine person or any type of a healer, you have to become a hollow bone. He talked about how you really have to keep that bone clean. What I say is our whole job as healers or psychics is to keep ourselves clean, to keep our little bones clean, so that the divine energy can flow through us, because that's the source. You know, all of the divine, all of the information that I give people, all of the healing that I send to people, it's all coming from a higher source, and it’s just coming through me. My job is to be disciplined and clean and pure, and to allow that to flow.

One of the biggest obstructions to the flow of high vibration energy through your hollow bone, or your vehicle is ego. Ego wants to be right; ego doesn't want to be wrong, it doesn't want to be embarrassed, ego wants to be loved and admired, you know, and all of those things can get in the way of one's development. They can get in the way of your accuracy, when you're giving information, and they can also get in the way of your ability to be ethical. You know, when you're thinking about things like, how do I look or how am I being perceived, or how is this going to affect my status? If that becomes, you know, if that's more important to you than being of service, then you're going to be less likely to really be vigilant about not doing something unethical, you're going to be tempted.

Dr. Williams: I also really like how you stress the importance of service, you know, coming to this work from the form of that orientation of service. At the same time, you are in service to others, but it’s not at the expense of yourself. You know, there are many people who go the martyrdom route, you know, they have to give up myself until there's nothing left, and you say it very clearly that that is not service.

Dr. Vest: Yeah, self-sacrifice is not. Well, yeah, there's a whole ‘nother conversation we could have about that. When I work with souls, when I work with people's pre-life agreements, there are some souls that are martyr souls, that actually do incarnate with the purpose of martyring themselves for a purpose. So, there are those souls, but they're, they're few and far between. In terms of this work, you know, you do have to kind of be aware of how the work is affecting you. If it's affecting your health negatively, that's going to impact your ability to be of service. You're not really going to be able to help as many people if you're overdoing it and then getting sick.

Dr. Williams: You also mentioned that as a warning that those who focus on power will be limited in the gifts they can develop. One thing is that sort of like a spiritual check, you know, or a check by spirit that you know, it's like you're going on a power trip. You know, you can develop this, but we're not going to give you anymore because we know you’re going to take it out.

Dr. Vest: It's really one of the greatest temptations, you know, that the students I've had and the colleagues I've had who have kind of, you know, gone on that filthy magic path of using their gifts for, you know, to harm people or to overpower people. It's always about them wanting to have power. Either they want power, or they want money, or they want status and then they take shortcuts. That craving for power is really such a threat to being able to do this work to help people. You know, like if you see a lot of books out there on witchcraft and hoodoo and spell-making, they're trying to appeal to that base of nature. A lot of them are like, hey, you know, learn this spell and get anybody to fall in love with you or, you know, learn this spell to get your boss to promote you, or to get back with your enemies. A lot of those books out there, they're appealing to that kind of base desire to have power over other people, or sometimes just to have power in your life because you feel overpowered by other people. I understand it as a desire that people have, but it always leads to trouble. It always leads to trouble, and it always leads to people, you know, engaging in unethical behaviors because their craving for power becomes more important than their desire to help others or to harm others.

Dr. Williams: As you were speaking, I was thinking about, you know, don't they know about karma? Then you have, of course, you know, what is karma? They have a whole discussion also about karma as part of the soul's journey. I wanted to get into a whole other discussion about the soul and the soul's journey. Before we delve into that, you use some language that I think most people are familiar with, but I just wanted to, quick definitions, the Akashic record or the soul library.

Dr. Vest: The Akashic records is an energy library that contains records of all the souls that have ever incarnated. So, it has like, energetic imprints of, you know, souls, their different lifetimes, their purposes in those different lifetimes, their agreements in those different lifetimes. This is information that certain people can access.

Dr. Williams: Earthbound spirits and hungry ghosts?

Dr. Vest: Yeah. Those are kind of two different terms for the same thing from different cultures. I believe hungry ghost comes from Chinese culture, and earthbound spirits are the same thing. It's this idea that there are some spirits that, after they pass, instead of going to the light or moving on to the other realm and doing what they're supposed to do next, which might mean going to spirit school or getting some healing work or doing some spirit work on the other side or reincarnating, they will stick around Earth. They typically do this because they are attached or addicted to something in the physical realm, and they don't want to give it up. Either they're attached to people that they can't give up, or material things like their house or their belongings, or they are addicted to something like drugs, alcohol, food, sex, and then those spirits will hang out and be kind of bound to Earth, kind of stuck on the Earth plane.

Dr. Williams: You spoke a bit about that spirit attachment, but this is more spirit attaching itself to an individual.

Dr. Vest: Yeah. Often, earthbound spirits will attach themselves to individuals who are still living in order to fulfill those addictions. For example, alcoholics often have attachments of alcoholic ghosts, and they attach to them so that they could vicariously enjoy the alcohol.This is why it's so hard for alcoholics to become sober, because they're not just fighting their own addiction. They're fighting also the addictions of however many spirits are attached to them. [Dr. Williams: Because you can have multiple spirits attached to you.] Right. I did some work with some people. I've done some spirit release work. For a while, I was doing a lot of spirit release and I kept finding, that's how I found this out. I kept finding people who were having drug or alcohol issues. When I would put them on my table, I would end up pulling off like four or five earthbound spirits who were alcoholics when they were alive. A lot of them were family members. When people say, oh, it's part of my family history and it's in the genes, it's not just in the genes. It's also in the aura because a lot of these ancestors will stick around and haunt, right? Or attach to their descendants because they're still addicted. That's why you have things like alcohol and drug abuse that are multi-generational. That's one of the reasons.

Dr. Williams: Yeah, the other thing about the multi-generational nature of addictions and of alcoholism. As you're saying, why it's so difficult for certain people to release their addictions because of these…it's like, this gives it another whole level of meaning and understanding. They have multiple spirits attached.

Dr. Vest: Yeah. I talked to some native folks and some medicine people about how great it would be if we could start a program, because alcoholism is a big problem in the native community. It would be so great if we could start a program where in addition to the well-briety and sobriety programs that are already in place, if we could add that component of spirit release, that it would really help people to recover.

Dr. Williams: Yeah. And you also speak about angels and angelic orderlies, which I thought was fascinating. Angelic orderlies, huh? What a concept. [both laughing]

Dr. Vest: Yeah. I don't even know if other people use these terms because a lot of the terms that I have, I get them from spirit. Then, I tend to go in the world, and look for books, and look for people who understand what they are, to see if it's not just me. Angelic orderlies is a term that came when I started doing a lot of energy healing. When I started having a lot of people on my table, and in fact, when I started doing spirit release, I started just doing Reiki. I was trained as a Reiki master, and I was trained as a spiritual healer. I was trained in Pranic, and then I combined these different methods, and I was doing a lot of energy healing with people on a table with different ailments.

Then, I started doing a lot of spirit release. Again, it was not something I set out to do, so this is the case with most of my practices and gifts. I didn't set out and say, oh, I want to be an energy healer, or I want to be a spirit release. No, these things just kept happening, and teachers kept showing up, and then I just keep getting trainings. I was doing all of this energy healing, and I just kept getting people showing up with spirit attached. I started, so I would just ask the spirits I work with, you know, for guidance.

There are some angels that I work with, like Archangel Michael, which a lot of people are familiar with. He came to me when I was in my 30s, he showed up in my apartment, and started to work with me, and has been with me ever since, like when I want, I can ask him to help me. Then, these other angels started showing up, like Raziel and Shamiel. I'd never even heard of these. I don't come from a Catholic tradition. I didn't know anything about angels, but they just showed up. Then, I started researching them. Okay, who are you? Right. They would assist me with healing.

Well, then I started having these angelic orderlies. Sometimes when there's a spirit attached to a person, and I want to send them to the light, what I was directed to do was to open up a portal to the other world, and then to send the earthbound spirits or any other entities to the light. Sometimes, they don't want to go, or they're confused. They don't understand why they have to go, and so you have to have this kind of whole negotiation with them. Sometimes, I have to call in the angelic orderlies, which are like these big guys in white. [Dr. Williams: Yeah, orderlies!] [Dr. Williams laughs] Like, you see the hospital, the orderlies, right? But they're angels. They're made out of light, but they're henchmen, right? [laughs] They will come in and escort the being out. It's like they're helping me by coming and escorting the being out, if the being is too confused or is resistant, the angel orderlies will take them to the light, and going to the light is for their benefit. They're going to be so much happier over there. You're not hurting them, but they don't know that. Sometimes they think, well, why are you making me leave, right? And if you can't convince them it's better over there, sometimes the angel orderlies help them along.

Dr. Williams: Yeah. Well, if they're dealing with addiction or something, whatever it is that's keeping them and that they're attracted to and that they want to hold onto from this life, it's like, well, I'm having a great time. I'm having fun. Leave me alone.

Dr. Vest: Right. I mean, one of the things I've done with some of these beings is like, let's say I have an earthbound spirit who's addicted to food and they're causing their human person to be obese because they're kind of forcing them to eat all the time with these addictions. And I will tell them, hey, on the other side, there's an endless buffet. [both laugh] You can have as much as you want, which is true because when you go into other planes of existence, you can bring things into being with your mind. And so, you can have your fantasies fulfilled. The idea of heaven, it's a thing. There are levels of, there are dimensions you can go to where it's like that. And if that's what they need to get them through the door, once they get through the door, there are higher level beings who will take over and move them past the buffet eventually.

Dr. Williams: You spoke of portals. And so, you also spoke of, these are sacred portals and there are portals that exist on Earth, naturally natural place. And the portals that energetically open and that they're also negative portals that can be opened intentionally or accidentally and the various dangers associated with that. So, can you speak to that and the distinctions?

Dr. Vest: So, I have a whole section in the book on controlling disharmony through portals and possession. And so, this book is meant for people from a lot of different traditions. So, if you're a medium, that's the section of the book that may interest you the most because I'm trained as a medium and there are a lot of risks when you work as a medium and some of them have to do with harming human clients, but sometimes you can harm spirits. And because of my life purpose, I'm here to heal both sides. I'm here to heal humans who are incarnating and I'm also here to be a healing force for spirits who have passed on.

And so, I have become very aware of how certain forms of mediumship can harm spirits or can harm humans. And I've also just experienced a lot of shenanigans. And so there are these different types of portals. So, when I talk about opening a portal while I'm doing a healing to send somebody to the light, that's one kind of portal, spiritual portal, that's a positive portal that's actually when you have a spiritual portal that's supposed to be there, there are going to be angels or high-level beings that are guarding it, who are guarding the access. And so not just anybody can go through the portal. And when I open a portal to do healing work, nothing can come through because there are angelic beings who are in charge of it, but there is another type of portal you can open when you're doing things like drugs or engaging in filthy magic or what some people call black magic, dark arts, work where you're trying to overpower another person for your own personal gain. And so, there are people who engage in certain behaviors who can then kind of accidentally open a portal or intentionally open a portal where there's nobody guarding it. And so, maleficent beings can come through that portal into our dimension and create havoc.

And so, an example of this, I don't know if I told this story in the book, is that I knew somebody who was training, she was developing her gifts, but she was in a hurry. And this is what I say, a lot of students that get into trouble, it's because they're in a hurry. They don't want to spend 10 years studying and developing their gifts. They want to get their gifts overnight. And so, what did they do? They take drugs. And there's a way that you can work with plant medicine in a holy ceremonial way, which is mind expanding and beautiful. But in our culture, you know, us Americans, we don't want to do that, right? We want it quick, fast, and dirty. And so instead of having to go to a ceremony and fast and listen to a medicine person tell you what you can and cannot do and follow all the rules in order to have an experience with say ayahuasca or mushroom peyote, we would rather just go and get our own plants and then do our own thing. And this is what this person did. They went and got some plant medicine and got some friends together and went into a room and basically just got high and called it a ceremony.

But it wasn't a ceremony because, you know, they didn't pray. They didn't have a medicine person there to safeguard the people. They didn't have any protection set up. And so, what happened was when they did these drugs, they accidentally opened a portal in a room. And as a result of that was that a bunch of maleficent beings started coming. There's traffic. And this was a healing room where they opened the portal. And so, then people who were going into this healing room to get healings were getting harmed instead of healed. So, people who drink a lot of alcohol, people who do drugs, people who even do holy herbs like ayahuasca and peyote, if they do them improperly without a medicine person, without ceremony, without prayer, they can accidentally open up these portals, which can cause a lot of problems. And of course, there are people who open them intentionally because they think they're going to get access to some powerful beings who they can get to work for them to get them things.

Dr. Williams: You also mentioned that, you know, the use of substances can tear a hole in one's aura. So, would that make one more susceptible to spirit attachment?

Dr. Vest: Yes. And so, you know, one of the reasons you'll find a lot of people on this path don't use drugs and alcohol is because we know the negative impact it can have on our auras. And when you're a medium, spirits are already attracted to you. If you're a healer, spirits are attracted to you. And negative spirits are attracted to you because they want your power. And so, you have to work so hard to keep your energy pure. And drinking alcohol, it just kind of makes you vulnerable because it makes your aura more porous. And the other things that can affect your aura are things like trauma. Any trauma or like great illness can cause also holes in the aura. And so, a lot of us are susceptible to having holes in our aura and then having to worry about, you know, negative effects.

But repeated chronic use of drugs and alcohol outside of a ceremony is quite dangerous for the aura. And that's why it's always important to have a medicine person. So like alcohol traditionally was used in a lot of Indigenous cultures in ceremony. Tobacco is a ceremonial herb. It was used to create a certain consciousness in a ceremony. Same with these ayahuasca, all of these other plants. And when you use them in a ceremony, you have a medicine person who, because they are clairvoyant, they can see what's happening to your aura and they can protect you. And if any spirits come into the room while you're taking the medicine, they will get rid of them. Right? But if you're doing it on your own on a lark, just to get high or to have an experience and you don't have that ability, you don't have any angels working with you or any orishas or any high-level beings that you're working with who can protect you, then you're really opening yourself up to things.

And this is why, you know, this is a real problem right now. Plant medicine is really powerful and it's really great that so many people are becoming more aware of plant medicine, going to Peru, having experiences with ayahuasca. This is important and it's helping the consciousness of humanity. But that subset of people who are typically Westerners, Americans, right? We're the ones that do this. Let's be honest. You know, we want it quick, fast, and dirty. And we think we know everything, and we don't need some teacher telling us what to do. There's a group of people, you know, now in the US, particularly who are all caught up in having their own, you know, ayahuasca and peyote and different ceremonies without any ceremony, without any prayer, without any protection. And it's dangerous.

Dr. Williams: As you're speaking, I'm saying this is something that CIIS needs to hear because we definitely have a population of students who are very open to plant medicine. And I know who, I'll say dabble in plant medicine without the spiritual underpinning. So, you know, this is definitely a message for them.

Dr. Vest: Yeah, people have to find a way to do it respectfully. And of course, you want to work with someone, you know, whose tradition makes sense to you. So, it's not that you have to work with the tradition that doesn't make sense to you or doesn't resonate with you.

Dr. Williams: But it's having that spiritual protection. So, I think it was really interesting, you're saying that even for the disincarnate, the medium also has an ethical responsibility. And so, the responsibility of the medium is not to impede the progression of the soul in any way. So not calling on them frivolously, you know, they show up in a mediumship session. That's one thing, but it's calling on them, especially repeatedly calling on them, it can be impeding. And that you also mentioned the healing of the deceased and the healing of survivors that sometimes happen at the same time. And then the conversations facilitated between the two sides, a direct quote. And I have an example of that from my own life. But you know, I have my second cousin, my mother's first cousin, who's deceased, and my mother who's deceased, but my second cousin abused me sexually as a 13, 14-year-old. And I have a very good friend, a dear friend who's a medium. And one day she was giving me a reading and my mother kind of came through and my friend says she has somebody with her. And it turned out to be this cousin who was yeah, he was so remorseful. And many tears were shed on both sides. And, you know, and it sort of started this long process of like understanding and forgiveness. And it was an extremely healing encounter for both of us. And for him, because he came with my mother, because he just had he wanted to come and speak to me. And this and asked, you know, apologize, ask for forgiveness. And it was just it was totally mind blowing to have that encounter.

Dr. Vest: Yeah, that’s the way mediumship should work. Mediumship should be healing for both sides. And you know, I was trained by the spiritualists in Cassadaga how to do mediumship. And I was trained a certain way. And one of you know, I was trained as kind of a strict protocol, which I no longer follow. I've now you know, ultimate and that's an example. What I was saying before about when you're a beginner, you have to follow the rules. And then when you become really proficient, you're capable of doing other things. And I was trained to never call specific spirits that you wait and see who shows up. And there's a lot of good reasons for that. Because you could call somebody away from important work that they're doing on the other side. Or you could call in an impersonator, right, somebody who's pretending to be the person you're asking for, if you're so focused on that person, you may accept anybody who says they're that person. And so, it's really important that people developing mediumship do not call, you know, specific spirits, but they just develop the ability to receive information.

And because that's the case, because oftentimes mediums do not call specific people, but just allow whoever has who's ever coming in to come in, you have situations like what you had, where you would never have asked for that cousin to come through. But that was actually someone you needed to come through. And so, it's good to be open to, you know, sometimes the spirit world knows better than we do, what a person needs for their healing. And so, somebody may come and say, well, I really want to speak to my mother, because I love my mother, and I miss my mother. But then, you know, an uncle comes through, or cousin comes through, because that's where the healing is. And yes, it was very healing for your cousin. And so, your mother, I would assume was doing service by bringing him through, she was helping him and helping you. So, your mother is probably kind of an advanced soul, that she was in that position.

Dr. Williams: It’s funny you would say that because my mother has often just come through spontaneously. And sometimes she comes through, and the energy is like, I have things to do places to go people to see. Let's get this on what's going on. She's very busy over there! [laughs]

Dr. Vest: I'm sure she is, if she's taking on, yeah. And you'll see that I've seen that a lot where people who are kind of more advanced, they will bring through those, those less developed souls like your cousin’s in order to help them or to help someone else.

Dr. Williams: So, I want to go back to karma. And to the nature of soul contracts. And when I read that section is like, it's really interesting. I've got you know, from some of the examples you gave in the personal story, you know, the importance of keeping judgment sort of in abeyance, because you don't know what a person's soul contract is.

Dr. Vest: Right. And that's, that's such an important part of being an ethical psychic is not judging your clients, and not trying to give advice based on, you know, particular views you have or prejudices or biases or, you know, strong feelings you have about what your client should be doing. Because you don't know. And so, I give I tell stories about how I had some strong feelings about certain topics, but I had to learn by my encounters with certain spirits, working with clients that, you know, some people incarnated to be on a certain path. And we in society may perceive that a certain way.

And the example I give in the book is adultery, we might perceive that as, you know, really problematic. But I have people who come to me, and it turns out that they had a soul contract, a particular contract with different people. And one of the contracts was for them to leave a current spouse to be with another spouse, or sometimes their contract was that their marriage was only supposed to last a certain amount of time. And then they were supposed to do something else.

And there's also just all kinds of contracts that we have that on the Earth plane look like chaos. And or look like mistakes, or tragedy. But it's a part of a contract that somebody signed up for that in order to learn something or teach something. And if you don't know that, and then you make judgments about a person's life based on your kind of limited Earth experience, you won't be able to really help your clients as much as you can. And you could even hurt them. Because one of the things I talk about, one of the risks of psychic work is making matters worse.

And so, if someone comes to you as a psychic or as a healer, they're usually coming to you because they're in distress. They're going through something they're, you know, they're sick, or they're or they're dealing with financial distress or divorce, or you know, there's something going on in their life. That's, that's hard. And it's very easy for you to make matters worse, right? If you say the wrong thing. Or if you judge them, or judge their, you know, their choices or advise them to do something based on your preconceived notions about what's the right thing to do rather than what's actually in alignment with their purpose.

Dr. Williams: I want to ask you one last question. And that's the nuances of truth telling. You know, you mentioned the three D's, I think was death, disease, and divorce.

Dr. Vest: Yeah, so in my book, I talk about the three D's. And you know actually I'll tell a little story about that one. I used to run a fair, a psychic and healing fair. And I had a lot of different like psychics and healers who would come and do these little 15-minute sessions. And we offered it as a kind of a community service, because it wasn't a money-making operation, they were $20 sessions. It was a great way for people who were unfamiliar with this work to be introduced to it and to and to, you know, get something of benefit from a very little bit of money.

And I was, you know, the founder and the director of this. And I only had one rule for my psychics. And that was, do not give the three D's to your clients, do not tell them they're going to die. Do not tell them they're going to get divorced. And do not tell them oh, now I've forgotten my third D.

Dr. Williams: Death, death, disease.

Dr. Vest: Don't tell them don't tell them that they have a life-threatening disease. And I remember I had this one psychic who was very upset about that rule. And she said, I don't think that's right. I often tell people when they have a life-threatening illness. And I said to her, hey, that's okay in your private practice, because those are your clients and presumably, you're going to spend like an hour with them. Maybe you have their phone number, you can stay in touch if they need help, you can make sure they're okay. But somebody walking off the street for a 15-minute reading, we don't know them, we don't know what's going to happen to them when they leave here, we don't know the impact. If we tell them something really terrible, we don't know what they're gonna do with that information.

And, and so that's one of the rules that I that I, I teach to my students is try to avoid the three D's. And I say in the book, it's not that you can't ever give the three D's, it's that you have to be very careful when you do. And, and so some people might say, oh, like, you're not being totally honest, right? And I've had some psychics, I had this once this one client came to me in the fair. And she was asking about a divorce. And I was not giving her what she wanted. I said, you know what, I'm not the right person for you. And I said, I'm going to send you to someone else, because she's going to tell you the really bad stuff that you want to hear. Because I'm not going to tell you. And so, I sent it to someone else. And I gave that psychic permission, I said, you can go ahead and tell her everything, you know, that's not the way I work.

So, you have to be very careful, you tell somebody they have a life-threatening disease, it could become a self-fulfilling prophecy, you could be wrong. As psychics, the very best psychics in the world are only like 80, 90% accurate, the very top. And so, if you're not one of the very top ones, you're probably 70% accurate or less. Right? That means you've got to consider the possibility that in that 20 to 30% of inaccuracy, you may have that death, or that that disease or that divorce. And so, you don't know for sure. And if you tell somebody something that bad, it may cause them to take serious action in their life that's irreversible. You know, like if you tell someone they're going to die, they may quit their job and, you know, give away their belongings and get a one-way flight to some other country. And, you know, if you tell someone they're going to get a divorce, they may stop trying to work things out with their partner. Or they may go kill their partner, right? Because you have a lot of abusive spouses out there. So, you have to I what I say in the book is you have to really, really think carefully about what are the consequences of what you're telling them? Are you going to be there for them if they need support later on? Do they have the resources? Do they have counselor? Do they have right? A doctor, if you're going to give them this kind of dramatic information? Is it going to make matters worse for them? Or is it going to transform them and help them?

Dr. Williams: There’s underlying ethics.

Dr. Vest: Yes.

Dr. Williams: Ethical importance there. Well, thank you so much for this conversation.

And thank you again, Dr. Jennifer Lisa Vest, for this beautiful, wonderful, wonderful conversation and for your book.

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Thank you for listening to the CIIS Public Programs Podcast. Our talks and conversations are presented live in San Francisco, California. We recognize that our university’s building in San Francisco occupies traditional, unceded Ramaytush Ohlone lands. If you are interested in learning more about native lands, languages, and territories, the website native-land.ca is a helpful resource for you to learn about and acknowledge the Indigenous land where you live.

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