I have often been asked about the ethics of doing intuitive readings for others. Here is an answer I sent to some students in a graduate intuition program at an online university.
Truth in Advertising
“Providing a service—in this case, it’s a more comprehensive perspective, a series of useful insights, and educational guidance—is like any business deal. It’s an exchange. The client requests assistance and we give what we can. The fact that they asked means they’ve given permission. To be professional, the client must ask, and must understand what is likely to be provided. That means we need to explain what we give in advance: truth in advertising.
Permission
There are times when an intuitive receives information about or for someone, without them asking. If you feel it is important, connect with them and ask permission to share what you received. Perhaps you give a disclaimer like, “I received this information and you’re free to interpret it any way that feels correct to you, or to reject it totally. Would you like me to share it with you?”
For a client to hear us, it helps to say out loud anything that might help assuage the client’s anxiety, if you pick up that they’re on the edge. We need to remember that any information we receive comes through our own filter, which is only as good as the level of emotional maturity we’ve reached. How they hear also depends on that as well. So anticipating potential blockages ahead of time and addressing them is always a good idea.
Motive
I think an important factor is the motive of the intuitive. Are you projecting some need of your own onto the client—like a codependent desire to rescue others and avoid having to feel pain? Or because you want to feel special and good? Or because by being in control of giving out “information from on high” you remain in an invulnerable, safe position? I think the best motive is: Let’s see what I get about this, and if it makes sense to you. If it doesn’t make sense, ask me some more questions and let’s try to clarify it. And let’s remember, what I’m seeing is just a snapshot of today’s pattern of information coming through my own filter. Take whatever you can use.
What’s Actually Private?
When you’re practicing developing your intuitive sensitivity, I think it’s fine to focus on anything or anyone you want and see what comes to you from the pattern of what it is (an oak tree, a box filled with mysterious goodies, or an ailing plant) or who it is (a celebrity who’s on the cover of People magazine, your dead father, a friend, or a historical figure like Imhotep or Mark Twain). All information is available at all times to all people. After all, we regularly dream about others and know things about them and that’s not an invasion of privacy.
At the level of heart, where you merge into the Field to allow knowledge to literally pattern your awareness, everything exists equally without fear. There is natural respect and allowing. So getting a neutral subjective sense of anything doesn’t infringe on the existence, free will, and potential of that person or thing. You are not invading their privacy unless you have a motive that’s based on fear: like jealousy, vengeance, attack, etc.
Open-Heartedness and Neutrality
If you experience what you receive with love and amazement, that naturally communicates through the Field to all people and things, and it greases the wheels of life. I believe this is what prayer and blessings do, when done right. If you experience criticalness or fear as you receive information, you add more contraction to the Field, and make the flow just a little bit tighter. You’re affecting your own reality as well as your client’s.
We are sensitive creatures. And quite telepathic. I have seen people who’ve had other people praying for them, who end up feeling energetically clogged. What’s behind that? Someone doesn’t love and respect your capacity enough that they think you must have their particular kind of divine help, whether you want it or not, and they lay it on you like an energetic wet blanket.
No Projections!
I’ve seen people crowded energetically by people who admire them or envy them too much. It doesn’t have to be overtly negative attention. Admiration and envy are really about not feeling the magnificence in your own self, and thinking you need to get it from elsewhere. And that is a misunderstanding of the way consciousness works. To the extent that you misunderstand the natural laws, you contribute to ignorance. We must work on not projecting onto others in any way, and I think that’s a big key to ethics.
Keep Clearing Yourself
Also, living in today’s intense world, where the subconscious minds of individuals and governments are opening like Pandora’s Box, we each have to learn a really workable method for clearing ourselves of clutter and distorted information, many times a day, and to return to our own preferred state of ‘the soul in the body.’
Learn How Consciousness and Energy Actually Function
The more we learn about the unified field, and how consciousness functions, the easier this is all going to be. For instance, just taking a memory (negative or positive) from the past and projecting it into the future can limit oneself and others, if they’re involved in your fantasy scenario. The power of right action, based on heart and soul, in the present moment, is being ignored and therefore the potential for destiny is being limited. There are many subtle distinctions to learn when you are a “consciousness worker.”
 Copyright by Penney Peirce