The line crackles to life, a familiar static before the voice. The question, when it comes, is a ghost that has haunted my phone lines for years, wearing many different voices but always with the same yearning tone.
“I just want to know if he’s coming back.”
As a psychic, I am not a fortune teller in the carnival sense. I am an interpreter of energy, a link to the spirit world, a reader of the subtle currents that flow between people. And in these cases, the energy is painfully, starkly clear. I might see a cord, once vibrant, now frayed and severed, its loose end dissipating into nothing. I could see a door, not just closed, but bolted from the other side. I may see a path forking, with one figure walking resolutely into a new landscape while the other remains at the crossroads, staring back at footprints that have long since faded.
The person they are calling about has moved on. They are in a new relationship, a new city, a new state of mind. They do not think of the caller with romantic longing, but with a sigh of finality, or perhaps not at all.
I begin to explain this gently. “I see that his energy is very focussed forward… on his new life. The connection to the past feels… resolved for him.”
And this is where my work ceases to be about spiritual guidance and becomes a delicate navigation of the human mind’s most powerful defence mechanisms: cognitive dissonance and confirmation bias.
Cognitive dissonance is the profound mental discomfort that arises from holding two conflicting beliefs. For the caller, these beliefs are:
The Core Belief: “We are soulmates. Our love is epic, unique, and destined to be.”
The Inconvenient Reality: “He blocked me on all social media, told my friends to tell me to stop contacting him, and is now engaged to someone else.”
Holding these two ideas simultaneously is agonizing. It creates a psychological static that is almost unbearable. To resolve this pain, the mind must discard one of the beliefs. And for someone clinging to the wreckage of a relationship, discarding the Core Belief feels like a death. It’s easier, safer, to discard Reality. The psychic reading is the chosen tool for that—the hoped for ‘official’, spiritual validation that Reality is the illusion, and the Core Belief is the truth.
This is where confirmation bias becomes the loyal and ruthless bodyguard of their denial. Confirmation bias is the tendency to search for, interpret, and recall information that confirms one’s pre-existing beliefs. When I speak, the caller isn’t listening to the entirety of my message. They are panning for gold in a river of truth, armed with a sieve that only catches the tiniest, shiniest flecks of hope.
“I see him thinking of the past from time to time, but with a sense of closure, like closing a chapter in a book”
Cling. That’s the sound of the sieve catching something.
“But that actually means he’s still thinking of me!”, the caller might interject, their voice suddenly alive. The full meaning of my sentence is discarded. It doesn’t fit the narrative. It’s gravel, not gold.
I might add, “The path for him to return is completely overgrown and blocked.” Distorting the message they might reply: “I’m quite psychic myself, and I sense that this means that there’s still a path. The way just needs to be cleared. I love him enough to do this!”
I might explain, “I feel a great deal of finality around his decision to move onwards.” In response, the caller might attempt to redefine the message, “I think that he needs to move onwards, in order to realise how much he misses me, before he changes course and returns.”
It’s a desperate alchemy. They take my words, which are meant to be a gentle map toward acceptance, and they melt them down in an attempt to forge a key for a door that no longer exists. They will reject any and all evidence to the contrary. If I am firm and state unequivocally, “He is not coming back. You need to focus on healing,” the reaction is often anger or dismissal. I am suddenly a “bad psychic,” “not connected,” or “negative.” They will simply hang up and call another reader, and another, until they find one who is either less ethical or less perceptive—someone willing to co-sign their fantasy.
This obsession is not about the lost love anymore. That person has become a symbol, a vessel for all the caller’s hopes for happiness, validation, and a life they feel they were cheated out of. To let go of the hope of their return is to face a terrifying void: the need to build a new future, to find self-worth from within, and to grieve a loss that feels like a part of their own soul.
So they call me, and others like me, not for truth, but for permission to keep waiting at the crossroads. They are asking me to stand with them, point at the faded footprints, and lie, “Look, they’re fresh. He’s just around the bend. He’ll be back any minute now.”
But my duty is not to keep them company in their delusion. My duty is to gently turn them around, away from the ghost-haunted past, and point them toward the unexplored landscape of their own future. The hardest reading is one given to a person who has made it impossible to hear anything else. The real tragedy is that they are so focussed on a phantom from their past, they cannot see the vibrant, living person in their own reflection, waiting patiently for a chance to move on.
Worldwide Temple of Aurora 