Clark Kent is walking down a busy street in Metropolis when he pauses and begins listening intently. He sifts through all the noise of the bustling city…until the voice of a man in distress comes into focus. You know the next part – he changes clothes at super-speed and dashes off to the rescue.

We may not have the super-hearing that comes from being an alien from a planet with a red sun, but we all have this ability and many others to lesser degrees.

Our basic senses are pretty cool in their own regard; sight, smell, hearing, taste, and touch allow us to experience the world in all its colors, smells, sounds, flavors, and textures.

Without any boost from superpowers, we can sift through huge volumes of input and information – of course, not as extreme like Superman.

• For example, when you are carrying on a conversation in a restaurant, consider how many other sounds are bombarding your ears: every other conversation, the game on the TV over the bar, the sounds of drinks being mixed, even the forks clinking against plates can be heard if you listen for it. But instead of being distracted by all the superfluous sounds, your sense of hearing focuses in on the one sound you want to hear, the voice of your dinner companion or friends.

This is true of your other senses as well, your brain tells them what to focus on and they ignore all the other input. Sensory perception is impressive, isn’t it?

Sensory Perception and Extrasensory Perception

Our senses have potential well beyond the scope of how we typically utilize them, potential most people rarely tap into, while others, however, are deeply attuned to the endless possibilities afforded by their sensory perceptions. They train and develop their senses to interpret and interact with the world in a way that is frankly, unexplainable. Their ability to use their senses in this way is often referred to as extrasensory perception or ESP.

“Seriously, ESP?”

When we think of ESP, we may think of clairvoyance, someone who can “see” events happening somewhere else or seeing into the future. It’s also used to describe seeing another person’s thoughts, as in telepathy. It’s a rather broad umbrella for many extrasensory abilities. It’s easy to dismiss at first but if we consider the possibility of training and developing our senses to be highly sensitive and greatly in tune with our environment, then maybe it’s not as far-fetched as we thought.

If we can train our senses to collect all the information available and then train our minds to filter and sort it, we might be capable of remarkable perception. Perhaps it is possible to discover pathways to obtaining information we never knew existed in our minds?

CLEAR!

“Clair” is the French word for the adjective “clear.” “Voyant,” is French for “seeing,” or “all-seeing.” A clairvoyant, therefore, translates to someone who “sees clearly” or “sees all clearly.”

There are six clairs in terms of extrasensory perception – five of them are directly related to your five natural senses and the sixth is in reference to interpreting information provided by the senses and knowing what it means.

Self-instruction in the development and application of extrasensory perception using the six clairs is more straightforward than you may think. Simple exercises through practicing and employing trusted mindfulness techniques can greatly increase your ability to perceive and interpret the world; this training lights a pathway to extrasensory perception.

Developing ESP

Developing each of these abilities requires practice.

Like muscles, your senses need to be stretched and challenged to reach new goals. Daily practice is best. Try incorporating the training into many areas of your life throughout the day.

Keep in mind that as you explore the six clairs, your strengths and weaknesses will be revealed. It is normal to be stronger in one clair and weaker in others, as well as common to find that you have no ability at all in some of the clairs. Work toward finding your strengths, rather than focusing on your weaknesses.

When you begin training, it’s important to be in the right mindset. Clear your mind and spend at least 10-15 minutes in meditation before beginning. Work up towards a goal of 30-45 minutes of pre-training meditation. Your mind must be free of daily worries and stressors. This opens the pathways to receive input.

Record Your Experience

Begin a clair journal.

1. Make notes within your journal about each training exercise and test.

2. Write at length about your feelings and sensory experiences. When you feel anything out of the ordinary, or that you cannot explain, highlight it in some way. Across time you will see progress in some areas, and it’s good to go back and connect the dots.

3. Divide your journal into nine sections: one section for each of the six clairs, two sections for reference charts, and one section for personal thoughts.

Now, let’s get to work.

The Six Clairs

– Clairvoyance (Clear Seeing)

For clairvoyance, place yourself in a completely quiet setting and prepare to observe. Make yourself comfortable.

Begin with objects that are closest to you, then look at objects farther away until you have studied at least 10-20 objects. Look beyond the simple recognition of the object. We can recognize an object at a glance, but instead study the object in its entirety. Study the lines, curves, and shape of the object.

Imagine how it feels in your hand. Imagine it floating in the air and turning over. Look for items which are partially obscured. Are you able to see the portion that is hidden? If you are unable to see the back of the item, imagine it.

Close your eyes and see the items in your mind. How many items can you remember from the room and in how much detail? Closing your eyes, practice visualizing the entire space in your mind.

Chart your experience in your clair journal.

– Clairsentience (Clear Feeling)

Sharpening clairsentience requires you to experience empathy at a deeper, spiritual level. Not just sadness, but all emotions: anger, fear, love, joy, peace, jealousy, and much more. It’s important to experience all the shades of each of these emotions.

One good exercise to expand your emotional palette is spending time in a public place, just people watching. Observe their demeanor and try to connect with their emotional state.

It’s also good to close your eyes and listen only to the words when trying to connect with their emotions. So many sensations are swirling in public places: a frustrated mother with a child, a young couple bickering, an older couple laughing and enjoying lunch, etc.. Begin to connect with them.

As you are journaling about these exercises, it’s important to broaden your vocabulary. Experiencing the full spectrum of feelings is of little use if you cannot express them in the same extensive way.

– Clairaudience (Clear Hearing)

Clairaudience is best exercised in public places. What’s important here is listening and sifting through all the layers of sound. Initially, you will be drawn to other sounds, but practice filtering those out until they become white noise.

Listen for footsteps, the clearing of a throat, the scuffing of sleeves against a table, etc. Continue to go deeper and deeper listening for the subtlest of sounds.

As you develop the ability to hear the fainter sounds, you can begin to practice bouncing between the dominant and overpowered sounds.

As you listen to conversations, the key is listening not only to the words but also to the feelings the words are attempting to convey.

When journaling these, it’s great to use free-form writing. Write without sentence structure, without punctuation or grammar. Write without regard for the lines on the paper. This free-form mirrors the sounds that are bouncing and drifting on the air.

Write the bits and pieces that speak to you.

– Clairalience (Clear Smelling)

Many believe that certain smells accompany spiritual visitors. So to develop clairalience, you want to broaden your ability to perceive and identify smells. You may have guessed that training for this clair involves smelling lots of things.

Common scent indicators are various smokes, flowers, trees, grasses, and foods. Exploring these will help you find your personal indicator. A personal indicator is a scent frequently experienced when you have a precognitive event.

Make a visit to a cigar shop or a flower district and smell all the varieties. In your daily life, stop and smell everything. Breathe it in deeply and with your eyes closed so that you are relying only on your sense of smell. Antique stores and vintage shops are excellent places to explore and practice this skill as well.

Make notes of scents that stir something within you or which give you an image or words when you smell them.

For this clair, begin a reference chart of smells and their corresponding sensations.

– Clairgustance (Clear Tasting)

Similar to clairalience, clairgustance training involves exploring new foods, new tastes, and new textures.

Reach out beyond your normal food choices and explore the foods of other cultures. When tasting, take care to rinse your palette with cold water before tasting the next item. Focus entirely on the taste, the consistency of the food, is it grainy, smooth, etc.

Try to identify ingredients in the food that are familiar and unfamiliar. Take the time afterward to ask about anything you couldn’t identify and make notes.

Close your eyes as you taste and see how the tastes make you feel. Not whether or not you “like” the food but does it stir an emotion within you or prompt a visual image in your mind?

As with clairalience, building a reference chart of your tastes and related emotional experiences is useful later. Consider adding both these reference charts into the back of your journal with enough pages to build upon.

– Claircognizance (Clear Knowing)

Unlike the previous five clairs, claircognizance is best practiced in the classroom of silence or in quieter public places.

Begin to explore. Visit a library, a cemetery, a park, a lake, antique shops, vintage clothing stores, or historical buildings. Walk slowly and think only about how the space makes you feel.

Recognize emotions that are stirred within you. Touch items and allow whatever thoughts they inspire to drift through your mind. With claircognizance, you will use all the other clairs to come into a state of “Knowing.”

In your normal environments, you can also try to read the room and gain knowledge simply from the space.

In your journal, make notes about common spaces and how they feel different at different times. Ask others who use the room about events that may have transpired within the room to gauge the accuracy of your impressions.

In this section of your journal, also jot down notes anytime you have a “feeling” or sense something. When you successfully anticipate something, write it down.

Do You Have ESP?

After several weeks of training, you will understand how to develop and expand your abilities in extrasensory perceptions.

Take some time to assess and review your notes. Determine which of the clairs seem to be your strongest abilities, and which is your weakest.

Order them in strength and shift your training to focus more on those which are the most powerful. Continue to work your weaker areas but do so by incorporating them into other training activities as opposed to focusing solely on them.

Over time, one of two things will become clear.

You may in fact have the ability to perceive, receive, and interpret your environment in ways that are difficult to explain. You may actually have a gift for extrasensory perception (ESP) that is remarkable, then you can begin a journey to hone these new tools and explore the ways in which you can use your gift for good.

Or…

You may not be able to interpret your environment in an unexplainable way. However, even if you can’t pick the lottery numbers or you don’t know what is going to happen before it does, you will have grown in sensory perception tremendously. Being more attuned to your environment, to people, and to places is a journey of mindfulness and peace.

Either journey grows you as a human being and makes you a better more engaged member of the planet.