Announcer (00:00:04) - This is Dream Power Radio, the place where your dreams turn into reality. Here is your host, Debbie Spector Weisman.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:00:13) - Hello, hello, hello, hello and welcome to Dream Power Radio. I'm your host, Certified Dream-Life Coach Debbie Spector Weisman. This is a show where we talk about dreams, both daytime and nighttime dreams, and how you can use them to make the internal shift to a life you love and rediscover the truth of who you really are. A few weeks ago, my husband and I were invited to a family event out West. First thing I did was jump on the computer to book our flights. I was in the middle of comparing airlines and schedules when the thought occurred to me that just wasn't the right time to get the tickets, so I didn't. A few days later, when I did feel it was time, I went back on the computer and to my surprise and delight, the prices had dropped. I bought two tickets right then and there, feeling I got the best deal I could.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:01:06) - So what happened here? Simply put, I trusted my intuition. And it's not some unusual power that I have. Anyone and everyone has the ability to use their own intuition to guide them. Do you? Well, if not, don't worry, because by the end of this episode, you'll be excited to work on getting back the native intuition you were born with. Here to help you on this journey is my guest, psychic medium, speaker and author Melanie Barnum. Melanie is the author of several award-winning books, including her latest one, Real Life Intuition: Extraordinary Stories from People Who Listen to Their Inner Voice, which chronicles how intuition helped many people experience those moments that led to positive shifts in their lives. Welcome to Dream Power Radio, Melanie.
Melanie Barnum (00:01:57) - Hi. I'm so happy to be here. Thanks for having me.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:02:00) - Oh, it's my pleasure. Well, Melanie, if we are all born with intuition, why do we lose it?
Melanie Barnum (00:02:08) - Oh, well, that's a loaded question, Debbie, because oftentimes what happens is we push it down. As we're growing up as little kids, we tend to hold on to those tangible things, those things that are right there that we can touch. And our parents, our teachers, our friends even will tend to push away those things that they can't see, or they can't feel, or they can't understand for themselves because they're not tangible. So we tend to lose it a little bit unless it's fostered in us, unless people encourage our intuitive awareness to come to the forefront. Otherwise, it kind of comes back to us when we get older, when we get a little bit smarter and we're able to use it for ourselves.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:02:52) - Interesting. Is there a difference between intuition and being psychic?
Melanie Barnum (00:02:57) - So that's an interesting concept, and a lot of my colleagues and I have kind of differences of opinion. It's not that big of a difference as far as words go, except that for me, psychic just means that it's more developed. And possibly it also means that you may do this for a living, that you may help others and not just yourself with it.
Melanie Barnum (00:03:20) - Intuition is more about having a gut instinct or having something for yourself, and possibly for other family members and friends.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:03:30) - And is there a difference between intuition and just plain wishful thinking?
Melanie Barnum (00:03:35) - Well, of course, you know, wishful thinking is a little bit different, although wishful thinking you can also think about as it relates to manifesting. So manifesting is kind of like a wishful thinking. It's making things happen. But your intuition is more about trusting that instinct that you have or thinking about the instinct that you have, whereas wishful thinking is just wanting something really.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:04:01) - I think it's also interesting that you talk about dreams reflecting our intuition. And as you know, I work with dreams and I always thought that the insights we get from our dreams are messages from our subconscious, or from our dream guides, or even from departed loved ones. Are we talking about the same thing or is it really something different?
Melanie Barnum (00:04:24) - Well, it really depends. Dreams can be a combination of things and they can be different things. You can most definitely have intuitive dreams. You can also have dreams that help you work problems out from your your daily life. You can also have precognitive dreams. That is your intuition helping you to understand the future or something that's coming up for you in the future. You can definitely have dreams that relate to your deceased loved ones, or it could be a visitation from your deceased loved one coming to, you know, either just say hi, I'm here or to give you information about your life and to help you kind of make decisions about things. So as far as dreams and intuition go, absolutely. The sky's the limit as far as dreaming and using your intuition through your dreams and through dream work.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:05:14) - Yeah, I guess because I just never associated that word intuition itself with. I always talk about being intuitive. I talk about understanding dreams. But somehow the word intuitive and intuition -- I just didn't didn't make that connection somehow.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:05:35) - And it does make sense. Absolutely. Well, talking about intuition, there are different kinds of intuition that we have of involving senses. And I think everybody's heard about the word clairvoyance. And that seems to be a common one when we talk about intuition. But it can be felt through all of our other senses. So can you do a little bit brief rundown of the different types of intuition we have and how we feel them?
Melanie Barnum (00:06:03) - Sure, absolutely. You know, think about our physical senses as kind of a jumping off point for intuitive senses, because our basic five physical senses are the same with intuition. We have those basic, same types of intuitive awareness moments or intuitive feelers that are out there. So we have clairvoyance, which you mentioned. And clairvoyance is actually often confused with the word psychic or intuition because people think that's what clairvoyance means. But clairvoyance is actually clear vision or clear sight. So clairvoyance is about seeing things with your intuition, with your intuitive mind, and usually it's seeing things with your third eye inside your mind.
Melanie Barnum (00:06:49) - So it's not external, it's internal. Most often some people do actually see things externally, but most often you'll discover it's internally. We also have something called clairaudience. Clairaudience is clear hearing. We have clairsentience, which is clear feeling like you feel things in your body or you feel things about other people. You walk into a room, and you may feel like, oh, this is this may not be a great place for me to be because you're picking up on the energy there that your clear sentience. It's also your gut instincts. And most people do have good instincts, whether it's a mother's intuition, a cop's hunch, or you just say, I have this feeling in my gut, that's clear sentience. And then we also have clear cognizance, which is a clear knowing. You just know things. And that's the one that can be tricky for people, because all of a sudden you just know something and you have no evidence or nothing to back up your knowing, but you just know it to be true.
Melanie Barnum (00:07:46) - So you may be thinking, Maybe I'll go and get that new car, and immediately you feel like, you know, you should not go do that. You should not go buy that car. You don't know why; you don't know what's stopping you. But you do know that you know it 100%. You know it for sure that one can be tough because you have no evidence.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:08:08) - Yeah, well, I think that's kind of like my example at the beginning of the show where I talked about why I didn't buy plane tickets. I just knew it wasn't right. It wasn't like, oh, I looked at the prices and said, I think I could do better. I wasn't, I was knew it's not right.
Melanie Barnum (00:08:27) - Yeah. And and it wasn't that you saw in your mind's eye a better price somewhere or that you heard don't buy the tickets. You know, internally it was just you just knew, and you trusted it. And that is awesome.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:08:40) - But I think the unusual ones that really caught me when I was reading your book are the ones that deal with smell and taste, because I wouldn't think that they would really lead to anything.
Melanie Barnum (00:08:52) - Yeah. And they actually can because think about if you're trying to decide whether or not to take a new job, and all of a sudden you smell something putrid, you smell garbage, or you smell... it smells like somebody in the restroom. That's kind of a sign. Even though it's not external, it's internal. It's a sign from your clairalience or your clear olfactory senses. Which are this? This. The smell. Smell. Senses, the smell. Psychic senses or intuitive senses. And those are the ones that, like I said, if you're thinking about getting a new job or something, and all of a sudden you smell these rotten smells, that's your intuition saying, don't do this. And a lot of people will experience a sense of their deceased loved ones, too. So it's very common to smell. You may hear stories about people smelling cigars or perfume from their grandparents, or the smell of a baby, or how an infant smells to you physically. You might smell that as well, to let you know that there's a baby that made it to the other side.
Melanie Barnum (00:09:57) - Okay. Taste. Taste is also a big one. Think about, you have a big family that has a Sunday dinner every week. And they make pasta and gravy and spaghetti sauce and meatballs and like, a big Italian meal, let's say. And your grandmother passes away and all of a sudden you start tasting that food that she used to cook. You can taste the meatballs, and they're her meatballs that you're tasting, nobody else's. That's your clairgustance or your clear taste. And that actually is very common for people who work with taste a lot. So if you're a chef, possibly you may have that as an enhanced intuitive sense. You may taste things more often.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:10:42) - I want to ask you about that. So would it be more common for certain types of people to have one of these senses more than another one?
Melanie Barnum (00:10:52) - Absolutely. So think about it this way. Somebody who works with their vision all the time, like let's say an artist, right? A painter, or somebody like a graphic designer, somebody who works with their vision all the time might be more apt or more likely to use their clairvoyant senses because they're already so enhanced physically.
Melanie Barnum (00:11:13) - That can also help you psychically or intuitively to tune into those senses. Somebody who works as a speaker or as a musician might hear things with their clear audience more often. And it's again, because your senses are already highly attuned. So are your intuitive senses. It kind of kind of follows suit.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:11:36) - That does make sense. So one of the things that is really very, very helpful to really define this, which you mentioned in your book, are all the examples of the stories that people told you about how their intuition made changes in their lives. Can you go through a couple of them? Talk about like for each sense, like how clairvoyance helped one person, for example?
Melanie Barnum (00:12:04) - Sure. So I can't remember the specific stories, but I do know that there's a I use the different stories in different ways in the book that people have shared with me. One story was of a police officer when he had pulled somebody over that he knew was part of an armed robbery, and it had already gone out on the radio, and he pulled somebody over because they fit the description.
Melanie Barnum (00:12:30) - And sure enough, there were two men in the front seat, armed and dangerous, who totally fit the description. He called back up, and he had the two men in the front seat get out. He didn't see anybody else. And as they're being handcuffed by the back up that that came, he heard the words in his mind with his clairaudience. He heard the words; I believe it was. Are you sure? Look again. And he looked into the car again. Didn't see anything at first. And then he looked into the back seat, and somebody was hiding. Another guy was hiding deep down on the bottom of the floor with a mac ten machine gun. And he was scared. The guy was scared so you could tell he was ready to jump if it came to that, because he was so scared and obviously, he had done something wrong. So,the police officer was able to kind of stop what could have been a really terrible situation by listening to the voice that he heard saying, are you sure? Look again.
Melanie Barnum (00:13:35) - And he looked again and was able to get the third subject's or the third suspect out.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:13:42) - You know, it's amazing. And there are so many examples where people's intuition literally did save their lives.
Melanie Barnum (00:13:49) - Yeah, well, there's another one where there was a young girl. She's about 14. Every day she would walk her dog around the block at her home. And it was a little dog. It wasn't a big deal. She would just walk the dog and enjoy her evening, take a quick walk around the block. And one day she saw a man standing about 100 yards away from her. And he wasn't doing anything. He was just standing there, and she just got the strongest feeling. And it was deep down in her gut that she needed to run. And so she picked up her dog and she ran. And the man started running after her. And I'm getting goosebumps just talking about it. Goosebumps for me are validation. What I'm saying is either true and accurate or that spirit is around.
Melanie Barnum (00:14:31) - So she picked up the dog and started running back to the house and looked back over her shoulder a couple of times and saw the man was still chasing her and she got into the house, locked the door, looked out the window and the guy had stopped running and started looking around in a panic and ran the other way. So even though there's no proof all the time, sometimes you just know things. And she's lucky that she trusted her. Intuit her intuitive guidance to run.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:15:00) - Exactly, because who knows what would have happened otherwise.
Melanie Barnum (00:15:03) - Exactly. She's lucky she didn't have any proof of something bad happening.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:15:07) - Yes. Well, we are speaking all about intuition and stories of people who use their intuitive abilities with author Melanie Barnum. And we're going to be right.
Announcer (00:15:48) - Welcome back to Dream Power Radio with your host, Debbie Spector Weisman.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:15:54) - Yes, welcome back to Dream Power Radio. I'm your host, Debbie Spector Weisman. And we're talking about intuition with author Melanie Barnum. Well, Melanie, when I was reading your book, I knew I was going to be speaking with you. I kept going through my mind when, if I use my intuition, the things I remember specifically, it seemed that when I was coming up with different instances, they were all instances of where my intuition prevented me from doing something that could have been bad. Is that sort of more common than using it for a positive thing?
Melanie Barnum (00:16:30) - Actually, Debbie, it's very common. And the reason is because if we get a feeling or we see something internally, or if we hear a message, we tend to listen to it when it's negative. We tend to listen to it more often when it's negative as opposed to when it's positive. So it's actually very common for people to listen to a warning, or for people to listen to something that keeps them from doing something that might not be so great for them in the long run.
Melanie Barnum (00:16:59) - So the warnings, the calling out of the negative people, or the negative energy around people, the keeping us from doing something or stopping us from moving forward in some way. Those generally are paid attention to more than the normal, everyday, positive things or the happy things. And a lot of times it's because we doubt those happy messages, we doubt those positive messages that we're getting from our own intuition, or our guides, or our loved ones from the other side.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:17:29) - That's interesting. It's funny to sort of have that relationship to dreams, too, because people don't come to me to talk about their happy dreams. It's right that they don't know, don't need to know more about that. It's only the negative ones that are causing the problems where we really need to pay more attention.
Melanie Barnum (00:17:47) - That's right. Oh, yeah.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:17:50) - Yeah. So do you have any other stories of people who did use their intuition to prevent them from doing something terrible, or kept them from something bad happening to them?
Melanie Barnum (00:18:00) - Yeah. And I've also got a story or two about people that didn't listen to their intuition or didn't follow what they should have done.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:18:08) - So I would think that's pretty common too, where we all get these hunches and it's like only pay attention to that. And then yet that's something that happens.
Melanie Barnum (00:18:18) - Exactly. I mean, we have the little things, like we go to the grocery store, and we see the coffee and we say, oh, I should grab some coffee. But you think to yourself, I don't need coffee. And then you see it again and some unusual place. Somebody put it back on the shelf. And you say, oh, you know, on a different shelf. I mean, now I don't need coffee, like we have plenty of coffee. And then you go, and you look at the register and there's a coffee, the same coffee again, and you say, oh, maybe I should buy that. And then you think, oh, I don't need that.
Melanie Barnum (00:18:47) - We have plenty of coffee and you get home, and everyone says, Mom, did you get coffee? You know, hon, did you get coffee? And it's because we don't listen to it all the time. Because we believe that we know better or we just kind of ignore it. So those are the little things. The bigger things are. One of the stories in my book is about somebody's mom who had a bad vibe about her son getting a motorcycle. She saw her son getting into a motorcycle accident. And it was going to be really bad, and he ended up ignoring her when she said, don't do it. And he got a motorcycle, and he was in the military, and he was stationed at Camp Legeune, I think. And the mother found out that he had gotten a motorcycle and she borrowed somebody's truck, drove down, snagged the motorcycle, brought it back home, and sold it without him knowing. And then let him know. Look, I'm sorry, honey, but I just sold your bike because I have a really bad feeling something bad is going to happen. I see the accident happening.
Melanie Barnum (00:19:46) - And then he gets a new girlfriend, and they talk, and the girlfriend is saying, I love motorcycles. And he says, oh, so do I. So they get a new bike. Sure enough, he ends up getting into an accident. A really bad accident. Now, luckily for him, he didn't lose his life, but he did end up enduring over 30 surgeries and he ended up losing his leg. So was that his ignoring his own intuition? No. He ignored his mom's intuition. And moms have that connection. And moms can also be very intuitive on their own. So should he have listened? Absolutely. Did he listen? No. But we also have to live our own lives. So sometimes we ignore those intuitive moments, especially when they're coming from somebody else telling us what to do.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:20:38) - Yeah, but that was also very typical. Sons never listened to their mothers.
Melanie Barnum (00:20:43) - Very true, very true.
Melanie Barnum (00:20:45) - We also have that that and I'm sure everybody has had this when we're driving, and the light turns green. There's a couple of stories about that in my book as well. The light turns green, and we don't go. We don't see anything right away, but we don't go because we know if we go, something bad's going to happen. And sure enough, one of the stories was a car full of kids came flying by and ran the red light, and if he had gone and pulled out, they probably all would have died. So that's one time that they did listen to their intuition. And that's one that's very common with us with the driving. Listen to your intuitive vibe. Don't listen to the people beeping at you telling you to go when the light turns green. Take a second. It may just save somebody's life.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:21:33) - Exactly. And it's interesting that that's common because you talked about precognitive dreams before, and there have been several instances I know of for people who had precognitive dreams about auto accidents where come through an intersection, that sort of thing. Then in their real life it saved their life because the dream was a total premonition of exactly what was going to happen.
Melanie Barnum (00:22:03) - Exactly. And like I said, that happens often in dreams. I'm getting tingly too. That's also a sign that our loved ones are around and that our guides are here, and that it's important that we talk about this. Dreams tend to be more difficult to pay attention to your intuition, to listen to your intuition, because we discount those as well. We think, oh, it was just a dream. It wasn't a big deal until it actually happens and it's in your face and you have to make a decision and you say, that's what that dream was about. So if we're lucky and if we're brave enough, we pay attention to those dreams, those intuitive dreams that we have, and we pay attention to those other intuitive moments or intuitive sparks that we have.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:22:46) - Right. Well, the people who listen to this know to pay attention to their dreams.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:22:50) - If they've listened regularly, they know I just hammer it over their head. The same thing with intuition, though. So if you've spent your life not paying attention to those little tingles you may get or discount them, and now you're listening to this and saying, oh, maybe I do need to start paying attention to my intuition. How do you start?
Melanie Barnum (00:23:16) - You just start. One of the things that I teach people, and I think I have an exercise about this in my book, too, is to kind of pay attention to symbolic information that you might see or hear or feel. because a lot of times, symbolic symbolism is the way that we receive information intuitively. So think about it this way. We have guides, right, that can send us like spiritual guides that can send us information, and they want to send it to us and even our deceased loved ones, by the way, and even our own internal subconscious. They want to get the message across to us in a way that we can understand.
Melanie Barnum (00:23:55) - So the easiest thing to do, instead of sending us a whole paragraph of information that we can't really understand or tune into, is the easiest thing to do, is to send a symbolic imagery in one way or another, whether it's through our clairvoyance or whether we hear the words or we feel it in some way. So one of the the exercises in my book talks about figuring out how to understand or interpret the symbolic messages that we receive, whether it's dreams or whether it's something else. And oftentimes it's easy if we all of a sudden see a stop sign or we hear somebody yell stop in our ear, then we know not to move forward. We know that's an intuitive message. Don't move forward. Stop what you're doing. Don't continue. Right. But other times, the symbolic imagery or the symbolic message is not quite as universal. Other times it's more personal for you. So when I'm doing a reading for somebody, if all of a sudden, I see an image in my mind baseball diamond, or I hear the crack of a bat, it can be two things for me personally.
Melanie Barnum (00:25:01) - It can be somebody that's involved with baseball. There's something to do with baseball players or baseball games or going to a baseball game. Or for myself, it can be about my mom, because towards the end of her life, my mother was very into baseball out of the blue. All of a sudden, she was very into baseball. So it can be a reference to their mother having crossed over, or it can be a reference to paying attention to their mom and what's going on with their mother. So for me, a baseball diamond can mean those two things. For you, it probably doesn't mean the same thing, although now it might it it might conjure up those thoughts. But one of the exercises that I have in the book talks about coming up with your own kind of symbols journal and discovering what different things mean. So if you were to see I'm looking at you and you have a beautiful rainbow behind you, if you were to see a rainbow, what would that mean to you? It could bring up thoughts or visions of the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, or that there's beauty and light arcing above you and around you.
Melanie Barnum (00:26:06) - You're being called out to do something special. Or it could be about the LGBTQ community, because rainbows are very present and prevalent in that community. So using your own interpretation of what a symbol may mean can help you to create a symbolic journal. And that in turn can help you to start tuning into your intuition and paying attention to the messages you get. So, Debbie, what does a rainbow mean to you?
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:26:37) - Oh, it means it means fulfillment. It means just happiness and joy. And I could go on, but it's very, very similar to what I talk about in dreams and understanding the symbols. It's what the symbol means to you is how you interpret what you see in the dream, and you work with it similarly. What got you interested in all of this in the first place?
Melanie Barnum (00:27:03) - So almost three decades ago, I felt like I was hit over the head, and I heard the words, you need to do this work now. And at the time, I was the controller of a company and had just left that job to open up my own store, and I kind of looked around. I was in my dining room, and I looked around and I said, who? Who just said that? I'm here with just my baby infant. Like there's nobody else here who just said that. And at the same time I thought, what are they talking about? But I knew instantly I knew exactly what they were talking about. And I said, absolutely not. I am not doing that. I'm not going to hang up a shingle that says psychic and go work on a boardwalk somewhere. It was not my idea of something that would be professional or something that I could even make a living at. But at the same time, I knew instantly of course I was going to do this. And so I set out to learn as much as I possibly could about how intuition worked and what it meant. And I realized through all of my classes and all the teachers that I had, and I was very, very comfortable, and I was pretty good at it. And so I decided, yeah, maybe this is a real thing for me.
Melanie Barnum (00:28:12) - And it just felt right. And I'd always been able to my whole life, I'd always been able to read people, and I thought that that was very normal. I didn't think that that was anything different or exceptional or strange. I thought everybody did it until I realized that everybody didn't do it. So that's my story.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:28:30) - Well, how can people find out more about you and your work?
Melanie Barnum (00:28:33) - Melaniebarnum.com is my website. You can also find me on social media. MelanieBarnumpsychic. And I'm not always the best at posting updates on my website, but you can definitely check that out and get on my newsletter. And like I said, Facebook, Instagram, all the other ones find me on MelanieBarnumpsychic.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:28:56) - Melanie, thank you so much for being on Dream Power Radio today.
Melanie Barnum (00:28:59) - Thanks for having me. It was great.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:29:02) - Okay. We've been speaking about intuition with Melanie Barnum. I hopr you enjoyed today's program. If so, please hit that subscribe button so you don't miss out on any future episodes. Until next time, this is Debbie Spector Weisman say sweet dreams everybody.
Announcer (00:29:18) - You've been listening to Dream Power Radio with your host, Debbie Spector Weisman. For more information on Debbie or to sign up for her newsletter, go to DreamPowerRadio.com. This has been Dream Power Radio.