Spirit medium Carissa Schumacher believes we all have the ability to tune in.

She first became aware of her gift as a young child, and at times it overwhelmed and frightened her. However, as she grew older, Schumacher educated herself on the powers of the human mind by earning a degree in Behavioral Neuroscience, and has since worked to hone her special talents. Dedicating herself to helping others train their own empathic intuition, she conducts Pure Source energy channelings and guided Sacred Spirit Illumination Journey tours to help participants cleanse and align their energy fields to find heightened abundance, balance and joy. The majority of her time is spent in one-on-one sessions and readings with people all over the world to connect them on a deeper level with their spirit, as well as their soul's purpose.

Here, Schumacher describes how she and her family became conscious of her intuitive abilities, exactly what these abilities allow her to see and do, and how tuning out the physical world can help you take in the love we all crave.

Live The Process: When did you know you were a spirit medium and when did you know that you needed to use it to help people?

Carissa Schumacher: It wasn't easy in my early life. I'm referred to as a "lifer," meaning that I was born with the abilities. My entire life, every time I have closed my eyes, I have never seen darkness. I have always seen an incredible world of colors and visions. That doesn't mean when I'm in a dark room that I don't bump into things. It's simply when I close my eyes I see energies, auras, vibrations, and frequencies—the energies that surrounds us all at all times, similar to cell phone and electronic vibrations but these are actually the energies of life.

I was also born with deep-seated memories of my past lives, especially those as a Native American. I was born knowing certain things about my ancestry and ancient societies that there was no way that I could have known. I also needed an incredible amount of time alone. I first became conscious of my abilities, that I was different from other kids, at about 5. I was born in a Revolutionary War town and one of my first memories was hearing the sound of soldiers' feet marching.

When I was 7, there was one specific energy I kept sensing, named "Michael." He kept drawing me to one place in the forest and I often meditated there. Finally, one day, a neighbor saw me, came over, and found an unmarked soldier's grave beside where I was seated. Another time, I began to sense the strong presence of a spirit energy named “Sofie.” My parents assumed it was an imaginary friend. After the information I gave them, they contacted the neighbors. It turned out that the couple had lost a child, a daughter, named Sofie. It was then that my parents started to wake up to my abilities.

Over the years I went to many different doctors to try to find out what was "wrong with me" and no one could figure it out. Finally they settled on "electromagnetic synesthesia." Synesthesia means the ability to process sensory perception and energies in visions, colors, and sounds. After high school I attended Brown University and studied neuroscience to try to understand more about this.

LTP: They thought something was wrong with you?

CS: Yes. Unfortunately in our society, sometimes what we don't understand with our relatively limited, though increasingly enlightened, database of knowledge, is often deemed "abnormal," or “crazy," or given a diagnosis. This is incredibly sad. Many people with intuitive abilities and emotional sensitivity are simply given pills because we live in a society conditioned not to feel. And yet it is the ability to feel that allows us to connect to one another with love and compassion, and sometimes pain. But even pain makes us stronger! Why is it that we try so hard to mask or run away from feeling? The strongest masters and leaders in humankind, from Ghandi to Christ to Mother Teresa, all carried one thing in common: they felt deeply.

But my parents simply wanted the best for me. The more that time went on, the more accurate my readings became. One of my first big encounters with spirit energies was on a trip in first grade where we went to a variety of different cemeteries. I'd never been in a cemetery before, and became so frightened because I could hear all sorts of voices at once and began seeing visions of all the spirit energies present. We began passing graves and I was calling out the names on them twenty feet in advance. They all wanted my attention. Many were so sad, others were begging me to deliver messages. It was overwhelming and the teacher was shocked. I just started sobbing. She had to pick me up and hold me because I could feel the energies pulling at my feet, almost like sucking me into the earth.

Later in life, I released my fear and learned to set up boundaries in such places, but as a child it was scary. It was the first time I truly understood that I was different.

LTP: What about you personally do you think gives you the ability to do that?  Do you think that it’s a neurological structure or some kind of physiological connection that allows you to do that?

CS: For a long time, science deviated from the course of spirituality, but in many ancient traditions they understood the correlations of matter and spirit or energy. Let's take the aborigines, for example: they said, "Everything and everyone is connected via a series of strings of energy called the songlines." Scientists said, "There's no way that that's possible." Then, lo and behold, more recently, String Theory was developed, a physics theory that says everything is connected via a series of invisible strings that we can't see. Everything is connected through energy because everything is energy. You can look across the room and see a chair, and the chair is the five percent of the experience because you are conscious of it. The 95 percent is the space of energy between you and that chair, like the placenta in the womb we are living in now!

Physics is aligning with spirituality in whole new ways, as is neuroscience.  Many animal species have the ability to connect telepathically or via electromagnetic synesthesia or sonar. So perhaps I am simply more of a caveman or animal! Let's look at bats: they communicate using sonar. Dolphins can communicate when they're miles and miles away just as though they were right next to one another. Even dogs can sense the presence of another dog, even if they’re half a mile apart. Animals have that form of sensory perception and humans do as well.

Intuition is a muscle. Researchers have done studies on synesthesia. Monks, nuns and people who meditate for long periods of time can grow the frontal cortex in their brain. The frontal cortex is what is referred to as the 'third eye', so to speak. The more that you meditate, the more that you begin to be able to detect light frequencies and see colors when you close your eyes. I was simply born with the unique ability to use a little bit more of my frontal cortex than most people do. So, yes, there is definitely a physiological capability.

LTP: Do you think that everybody has that innate physiological ability and they just need to exercise their intuition, as you were saying, and tap into it, or do you think some people have an advantage?

CS: Absolutely, everyone has the ability to strengthen their intuition. We all have intuitive abilities and everyone has the ability to tune into them. I have been doing this for a long time and worked with people of all ways of life, like Catholic priests, and even they have had intuitive moments when they've known something about someone, knowing something was going to happen, had some sort of a pre-cognizant dream, or had contact with spirit energies, whether they want to admit it or not. Interestingly, most do, when empowered that it is okay to talk about it.

Everybody has the ability to tune into spirit because everything is spirit—everything is energy. So many times, it's ignored or it's brushed off because in our society, we're conditioned to just live within the physical five percent of the experience. If you can't see it, it doesn't exist. But it does exist and there is a growing body of empirical evidence for it.

LTP: So you're saying that society and the environment are what turn on or off people's intuitive abilities?

CS: Yes, very much so. When we were cavemen, we were far more intuitive because we needed it in order to survive. We needed to be able to say, "Oops, there's a lion around that corner." We needed our intuition to be able to find our food sources or to be able to detect danger. However, now we don't have those types of fears and concerns, and so some of those intuitive abilities, even biologically, started to shut off. At any moment we have the ability to turn that switch back on, but when we do, we go against the grain because there are a lot of people in society that say, "It's not real," or "It's bad. It's evil. It's demonic.” People are very scared of tuning in to the 95 percent because it is the unknown.

LTP: If people were more connected to that 95 percent, wouldn’t they have better sex?

CS: Intuition absolutely heightens intimacy in every way. When you can open yourself to feeling you can sense the other person's desires and connect to them more deeply on physical and emotional levels.

For so many couples, so much goes wrong as a result of people misusing their sexual energies or shutting down their communication systems and emotions. It’s through the intuition, feeling your partner, feeling their body, not just hearing their words so to speak, but connecting to them spirit to spirit that creates the art of the sacred relationship. When that happens, relationships enter a whole new level where it's not just about girlfriend and boyfriend or casual sex, you actually connect with every aspect of your partner. You feel where they want to be touched, they feel where you need to be kissed. There is telepathy, flow, movement and extraordinary bliss. I have worked with many couples, even those on the brink of divorce, to help them reconnect and develop heightened intimacy, and the results are just extraordinary when they are able to so.

LTP: How do you get to that point?

CS: It's really a matter of viewing your partner as divine, not just an object for your release. It is letting go of the idea that you want something from them, a desire, an attachment or a need. Viewing all people as divine includes viewing yourself as divine. Releasing feelings of “I need this person in my life or I won't be okay,” or “I'm desiring them because of sex,” or “I need them because I'm afraid of being alone with myself.”

The way that real intimacy is achieved is by first establishing balance within your own self and allowing your masculine energies to fall in love with your feminine energies—basically to forgive and fall in love with your own self devoid of ego and past mistakes. It is feeling compassion and reverence for your partner who is equally divine, and respecting them for their spirit and body. By practicing unconditional love towards self and communicating freely with your partner, sex is unlike anything that could ever happen with any casual encounter because there is a reciprocity in the giving and receiving.

LTP: Would you briefly describe what you do with your abilities?

CS: My entire life, I've had the ability to tune into spirit energies. I'm a specific type of medium, referred to as a mirror medium. Thus, I almost serve as a reflecting glass or mirror to help people illuminate parts of themselves that they can't see because they are veiled by guilt, fear, pain, anger, denial or victim consciousness. I am able to see a person's purest reflection and mirror the divinity inherent to their humanity back to them.

That also means that in my mirror, so to speak, I'll catch spirit energies for them, but I do not only pick up spirit energies. I also pick up family members, friends, love relationships, places, objects, memories, dates, pets, nicknames and sometimes even completely quirky information like if they're left handed or have a foot fetish! I almost always pick up things having to do with a person's past, including important timelines in their life. I often also pick their "horizons" or get glimpses into the future. This is because, in the spirit space, time does not exist. Time is only a human illusion. All we really have is the present, and yet we spend so little time enjoying it!

So more than anything else, what I do is I help to bring people closure, empowerment, clarity and validation. This enables them to feel worthy of love, forgiveness, happiness and joy, no matter what they have or haven't done in their lives. We all equally deserve love in every moment. Helping people to let go of what they perceive as past mistakes, especially with loved ones in spirit, so that they can feel worthy of receiving love, is transformational.

I also help people to see their truest potential. This includes helping them to unlock their intuitive abilities so that they can feel safe to open up and learn about them. This empowerment is liberating and enables many to step into a place of acceptance and peace. The most powerful transformations I have seen have occurred in the Spirit Journeys I have led in Sedona, Arizona. Out on the land in sacred ceremony with just the fire and stars, it is amazing how your spirit can be set free. We all seek and crave freedom, love and peace, yet we keep filling our lives with more and more, and sometimes less and less can so much more.

I also focus a lot on children. More and more children with special abilities are being born. They are referred to as the indigo or crystal children. Sadly, many of them are diagnosed with ADHD and Aspergers when, in reality, they just think in a different way and see into the 95 percent. Helping parents understand how to nurture these special beings is incredibly rewarding and important.

LTP: Have you ever received a very disturbing or creepy message that made you think, "I just don't want to say this to somebody?" 

CS: Absolutely. That came through actually not so long ago in the case where I knew that someone was being watched and followed. Of course, I didn't want to relay a message like that, and I was very careful about the way that I said it to them. They later thanked me but it is always a delicate dance of using the right words and emotion to deliver a message.

I've been doing this for so long, you can't imagine the crazy stuff that I pick up. People are weird, I'll put it that way. Even people that seem so normal on the outside have fetishes, quirks, loves, hates and phobias. I had one corporate executive that had lived for 40 years in paralyzing fear of the Smurfs. Helping him get over that saved his company, finances, and marriage. We sometimes all judge one another or point fun but, in reality, fear is relative. Your fear of spiders was his fear of Smurfs. This is how we can derive compassion and understanding for one another.

LTP: Energies are telling you to do things quite often and I wonder: do you ever wish you didn't have this so you could just get some peace and quiet?

CS: I do get peace and quiet. I spend an extraordinary amount of time alone. I need my alone time. I live kind of a monastic lifestyle. I spend a large portion of my day in meditation. What I do takes maintenance. I appreciate silence. I grant myself that time and space to connect to and purify my energies. Yet I also love my time with others. I have learned to structure my "mirrored shield" so I'm not a constant sponge for other people's energies and I help teach others to do the same. But overall, my joy is derived from those I trust and love within my life, and the fact that I'm doing what I was put up on this planet to do.

LTP: Is there anything else that you wish people knew about mediums, psychics, or your abilities?

CS: I do not like the term "psychic" because I believe that, if we empower our right to free will and choose the path of love, no matter how painful it can be in the process, we can re-orchestrate outcomes. Meaning, that even though the outcome of our lives will be the same, how we get to the finite point can either be gentler or more difficult. We can easily take the gentler path of surrender and acceptance by releasing the ego and empowering the truth of the heart, or we can resist, seek externally, and struggle through life.

There are many psychics and mediums out there who legitimately tap into the past and future. There are many others who simply prey on people at their most vulnerable times. I am not a medium that just tells people what they see and doesn't care about the person's wellbeing. Sessions require intimacy, communion, transmutation and deep love. I work on healing all aspects of those I work with. This first required me to find peace with my self; to accept my imperfections, scars and all. Helping individuals, couples, groups and children to feel okay with who they are is what this is all about. We are all equals, all lovers, all mothers, fathers, daughters and sons. Trusting the heart is harder than it seems. The intuition is the gatekeeper.

The more we all tune out the outside and feel validated in our worth on the inside, the more we can receive love. That is intimacy, communion and peace, what it means to be a true man and true woman. Helping people to find their voice, be it through the living or the dead, getting them out into nature and getting them to feel is a dance of grace and passion. We all do this tango every day. I propose we do it well with one another. So, let's dance.

To contact Carissa for additional information, please email thespirittransmissions.com.

photo credits: annie.hb, wayne levin