Day 128: Karen Hager
“I’m really passionate about helping people learn that everybody – and I mean everybody – has intuitive guidance available to themselves. That’s factory installed, okay? Not everybody is a psychic or a medium or whatever, but everybody has the ability to access their own intuitive guidance.”
.
.
.
Toni Reece: Thank you so very much, Karen, for giving up your time today to be part of the Project, and before we begin, can you please introduce yourself?
Karen Hager: Sure. Thank you for having me here. I am Karen Hager. I work as the Fog City Psychic.
Toni: Well thank you. Karen, when you think about that word inspiration, who do you inspire and how you do that?
Karen: You know, I try every day in my life as a mom to two rambunctious, wonderful boys … I try every day to inspire them to live their life with honesty and also to understand they have challenges just like everybody does. And I want them to understand that if they live with honesty and if they live as fearlessly as makes sense, they don’t need to be limited by anyone else’s preconceived notions of what they can and cannot do. So I try to inspire my kids as a mom to live honestly and fearlessly and without limits.
In my professional work as the Fog City Psychic, I work every day with clients who are feeling like they’re in transition, like they’re stuck, they’re at a crossroads, they don’t know what to do. I try to use my gift of clairvoyance and clairaudience to give them some spirit-led information about their next step so that they can move forward, they can be empowered to make change in their own life.
They can be inspired maybe to realize that there’s more to this existence here than just what we can see and taste and touch. I would like to inspire them to look around and see more and maybe see more opportunities for themselves as well.
Toni: That’s an amazing process to take someone through, and I wanted to … you used two separate words that I just would like to clarify for the audience that’s reading or listening to your interview. You said there were two approaches that you use; one was clairvoyance, but there was another word, a second term.
Karen: Oh, in terms of speaking of the intuitive gifts that I have that I use in my work with clients. Clairvoyance means clear seeing. It means that when I am working with a client, a lot of times I will see images or pictures. Sometimes it’s like seeing a little video clip or cartoons sometimes that gives me an idea of what I am meant to say, of what information it is that I am meant to pass on.
Clairaudience means clear hearing. So sometimes when I’m working with a client, I might hear a name or a word, or … I was working with a client yesterday, and I kept hearing the word “California,” so I asked her what that meant and we used that as a way to move forward.
So that’s what those two things mean; those are two of the gifts that I have. I also am a medium. Working as a medium is not right now a big part of my work but seems to be a growing edge of the work that I’m doing.
Toni: And all of that must play a significant role in working with the people that you work with as far as helping them to be inspired, including your children. The same way that you approach your children with the honesty and the no limits that make sense and being fearless, is that the same way that you try to inspire your professional clients as well?
Karen: Absolutely. You know, it is very difficult, at least for me, it is difficult for me to get the same kind of fearlessness and honesty and working to empower myself to make change. That’s a lot harder for me to do for myself than it is for me to help other people to do for themselves.
I do try to inspire people to understand that they are in control. They are the ones making choices, and you can make choices that lead you in a direction that’s for your own spiritual good, that’s for your highest and your best good, or you can make choices out of fear that limit you and sometimes can get you stuck. I like to try to inspire people to step out of that “stuckness.”
Toni: Okay. That’s a pretty powerful statement, too, not to make choices out of fear. And given everything that you’ve described as far as who you inspire and how, what do you think that that does to help people explore their own potential?
Karen: I think a lot of us, and this is true for me, too, we know we have potential. And in a tiny little forgotten corner of our mind, we know that we actually have unlimited potential, right? But for a lot of us, we’re afraid to even look into that. It might seem pushy, it might require us to do things that we’re not comfortable with. It might mean we look at ourselves in a whole new way and people would look at us in a whole new way, and sometimes people are afraid to step forward, even take the tiniest step forward on that journey to exploring what their own potential is.
Sometimes talking with someone like me who can maybe help you connect with what your passion is, to help you connect with where you’re meant to be on your soul journey at this time … connecting with someone like me sometimes can give you permission to begin that journey of exploration in yourself.
All the answers … you already have all the answers. You have all the potential. It’s all there inside you. Sometimes all you need is permission to go up and unlock that door and move forward.
Toni: Or I would imagine having someone like yourself helps others really understand where they’re meant to be, because I would imagine there’s a lot people who don’t know that.
Karen: Yes. Yes, I think that’s true. And when I say that we already have all the answers, I don’t mean that we know it already and shouldn’t ask anybody. We have the answers, but because we are human beings, we spend a lot of time rationalizing and we spend a lot of time, you know, goofing off, watching TV, and we spend a lot of time not taking a look at the answers, especially if they are things that we don’t necessarily want to see.
In my work as someone who teaches intuitive development, I’m really passionate about helping people learn that everybody – and I mean everybody – has intuitive guidance available to themselves. That’s factory installed, okay? Not everybody is a psychic or a medium or whatever, but everybody has the ability to access their own intuitive guidance.
If I can help people, if I give them tools to stop and listen and tap back into that intuitive guidance, you can use that with your common sense. It makes decision making a lot more powerful and locking your potential, making those choices, moving forward becomes much easier as a result.
Toni: Well thank you for that. Karen, let me ask you, what do you need to be inspired?
Karen: What do I need to be inspired? I get my best inspiration, I think, from listening to the stories that other people tell me, by learning from the people who I talk to all day long. I get my inspiration through quiet. And something else that’s necessary for me to get inspiration, I think, is a sense of kind of compassion and forgiveness, the understanding that even when I’ve messed stuff up I can start again, that I’m held and supported in a loving way — not just by my family and by my friends — but by what I would call God or the Source or Light in Life. I need those things. I need experiences that I hear from other people so that I can get inspired. I need quiet. I need that sense of being held and safe, and that’s the potential for me to start over to get inspired.
Toni: Are there tools and methodologies that you seem to reach for when you’re at that point that you’re looking and seeking for inspiration?
Karen: Yes. They’re not traditional tools. I love to knit, and I find that meditation and prayer is much easier for me when I have something in my hands to kind of … it helps quiet my mind, and the rhythmic motions of that kind of get me in a groove where I am able to maybe concentrate a little bit better, let go of outside distractions. So I reach for my knitting needles.
I also have been known to go out and play with my dog. I have a very enthusiastic, young dog. To watch the way that she takes tremendous joy in everything no matter what is a wonderful reminder to me that I am making the choice about how I live my life. I’m making the choices about how I see things, and I can make a choice to be as excited and happy as she is.
Toni: Karen, were you always this way? Did you always show up with this sense of self and honesty and fearlessness using your gifts that you were given? Did you always … were you always this way?
Karen: You know …. was I always this way? You know, I think that although I’ve certainly had intuitive abilities from the earliest time that I can remember, I spent most of my life trying to push those back and not use them because it made me weird. And I’m weird anyway, and having the intuitive abilities just made me incredibly, double-extra weird.
It wasn’t until I was in my 40s that I began to use my intuitive abilities as part of … I became aware that my intuitive abilities were part of what I was meant to do, that I was meant to use those in the service of other people.
I have worked as an actor in my life; I have attended seminary and got a wonderful education there. And after a period of physical illness in my 40s and a series of operations, I realized that my intuitive abilities were stronger — no matter how much I tried to push them back — and that what I was being called to do was use those intuitive abilities in combination with the experience I already had in counseling, in meeting small groups of people who were in transition, take my knowledge of theology and liturgy and all that kind of stuff and put it all together in a package so that I could help people who are in transition move forward.
Toni: And so it was really through a series of events that your awakening to really using these gifts became almost a no-brainer, that there wasn’t any option anymore to push them aside.
Karen: You know, I felt that … I always feel that everyone has a choice all the time. No matter how stuck you are, you always, always have a choice. I had a choice to ignore what I felt was a huge resurgence in my intuitive abilities, but I also had the sense that if I chose to push those back again, if I chose to ignore it again, it would probably be the last time that I would have the choice to do that; and instead, I was sort of called to step out and use those intuitive abilities. And yeah, it does take a lot of fearlessness, and I try to be as honest as I possibly can. And so I’m proud when I hear you say “Do I always show up with fearlessness and honesty?” Yes, I try to as hard as I can.
Toni: So what do you need then to continue to explore your own potential so that this great work can continue to happen and this great life can continue to be the best it can be for you?
Karen: I need to continue to stay connected every day. I need to continue to stay connected to my kids and my partner, to my wonderful, rambunctious, joyful dog, and I need to continue the connection that I have with everybody else through community. One of the greatest obstacles that I face is my desire to kind of go and lock myself in a room and eat Pop Tarts and watch television, right? And I can do that, that’s a choice, but I need to choose every day to continue to stay connected so that I can be energized and learn from community and from the world around me. So I think that’s what I need.
Toni: To just absolutely stay plugged in.
Karen: Yeah.
Toni: Yeah. It’s really been a fantastic interview with you, and I really … there’s great connections when I talk to people on these interviews, and the gifts that I get to be with you for these 15 minutes. And one of the things that you had said as far as the honesty that you try to present to your children and your clients and that fearlessness and then how you help people with their potential as far as one of the ways is to get where you’re meant to be — which I would think someone needs to be pretty honest about themselves to get where they’re meant to be — and then you needing to stay there yourself in order to continue to help others. That has been the running theme for me through this interview. I think that’s amazing.
Karen: Thank you.
Toni: It really is. Thank you so very much, Karen, for the work that you’re doing and being with us today on the Get Inspired! Project. And we will have a link at the bottom of this interview of how people can get a hold of you; and for your time today, we thank you so very much.
Karen: Thank you, Toni, very much.
___________________________________________________________
For more information about Karen Hager: www.fogcitypsychic.com
.
User Comments
Words That Inspire - CHOICE
On February 17, 2010 at 5:14 am
pingback
Post Comment