Mia Dolan - Mia’s World - An Extraordinary Gift. An Unforgettable Journey

I told Roz how, over the years, I had come to know and trust that the voice belonged to a kind wise soul who had been sent to help me become a better person. The quality of her attention helped me touch on other parts of my life too. I was a protector, from an early age looking out for others. But I couldn’t protect myself from pain or, ultimately, loss.

‘Did your gift help you to cope?’

Roz was a strange mixture. Sometimes her questions were searching and tough. At other times she exuded such a strong sense of empathy that I wanted to tell her more about myself.

‘At first, no. When my son died, I felt terribly let down. I shut Eric out of my life. I thought: “What’s the point in having a psychic gift if it can’t stop terrible things from happening?” Then something changed that. I gave a reading to a woman who had lost her daughter and I saw the comfort it gave her to know that her child’s spirit was safe.’

‘Nothing can take away the pain of bereavement, but knowing there is life beyond death, and knowing that she would see her daughter again, made the loss more bearable. This knowledge breathed life back into her love, and allowed her to bring the pain under control. In the beginning, being psychic was an adventure – now I see its true value to heal.’

There was a silence. Eventually Roz spoke.

‘I still can’t get my head around the idea that someone can see into the future. Can you give me proof that you have a psychic gift?’

There was only one way I knew.

‘Shall I give you a reading?’

Eric doesn’t always come when I do a reading but, as I began to tune into Roz, he was there straight away. His voice in my head was clear and strong.

‘Eric says that you are on a spiritual journey yourself.’

I sat on the hotel bed opposite Mia, enveloped in her big presence and her warmth. I had interviewed many people in my career but the focus was always on the other person. They trusted me with their stories and I tried to honour that with my attention and receptivity. It was odd, then, to suddenly find myself under the spotlight.

I’m a private person – Mia’s attention made me slightly uncomfortable. Yet in her first sentence she had connected me to a part of myself I didn’t always have time to think about. I wondered if this was one of the reasons people went to see psychics: to focus on their lives and feelings, to spend a bit of time with their deepest dreams.

Since my late teens, I had been intrigued by the idea of a more spiritual life and interested in a holistic approach to health and well-being. Ten years previously, I had gone on a year-long round-the-world trip and been drawn to the spiritual traditions I found in India. There, life is lived on the street and everything is visible – the beauty and the brutality. People live very openly and their spirituality is relevant to the ups and downs of their everyday lives.

In India, for the first time, I met people who were devoting their lives to their spiritual practice. One very old man lived in a cave on a sacred river. He had nothing materially, yet every day he found a way to cook a meal for wandering beggars and sadhus.

In the Himalayas, I met Buddhist monks and nuns, exiled from Tibet. I took to heart their message that all the suffering and happiness in my life come not from external things like success or money but from my own mind – my own attitude. I met teachers who spoke of the need for loving-kindness towards ourselves and the importance of a fearlessly compassionate attitude to our own pain – and that of others. I soaked up teachings on honesty, kindness and bravery. Mia was right. I found the Tibetan Buddhist instructions gutsy and helpful – and, a decade later, I was still trying to put them into practice as well as I could.

Mia and I were off to a good start but, as we sat in silence, I wondered if people were impressed with the readings they received because they unconsciously, inadvertently coached the psychic. Desperate for reassurance, perhaps they ignored the irrelevancies and errors and, instead, exaggerated the insights and references that made sense to them. It might not even be manipulative on the psychic’s part – but rather that natural human communication was given a supernatural spin by two parties desperate to believe. I understood the human need for certainty but if wool was being pulled over anyone’s eyes, I wanted to understand that too. This reading was an opportunity to test Mia. I determined to give nothing away.

‘I am going to close my eyes for a couple of minutes – nothing weird is happening, I am just relaxing. Then I’ll open my eyes and we’ll begin.’

‘I’ll start with a health scan. This will make you sound like you’re ready for the knacker’s yard but hopefully will only be light-hearted. I am going to start with your head. Your eyes are weeping and irritated … you have whiplash or muscular problems …’

There was no trance, no meditation, no holding on to objects that carried my ‘vibrations’; Mia just looked into my eyes. But by the time she had finished scanning my health, my journalistic hat was firmly back on my head. Anyone who works at a computer will have tired, sore eyes, so no points for that one. And no whiplash or muscular problems I knew of, just the usual desk-bound, bad-posture backache.

Was it all going to be vague from now on? I felt the glimmerings of disappointment. Maybe my belief in a higher power was a childish desire to believe in magic. I settled back into my cynical comfort zone.

‘I am going into the floater now. This will give me random images of things that have just happened or are just about to happen. The first things I see are wind chimes inside a door.’

I had brought a set of chimes back from Thailand – and for years now, they have been positioned inside my front door so that every time the door swings open, I can hear their sound.

‘You are organized but chaotic. You’re fiercely independent but, at the same time, you would give everything that you have away, given half a chance.’

It seemed that Mia was keying in, reading me. I began to see how people could give power to psychics. People often go for a reading when they have reached rock-bottom – they are distressed and their distress makes them vulnerable. Suddenly it can seem that a psychic has all the answers …

I made my face impassive.

‘I see a fridge-freezer with a wonky door. I see you in Wellington boots looking at chickens. I see you putting on walking boots and you will be buying a new computer. And in the next two and a half to three years, you are going to be a well-known novelist.’

Mia was not looking at me. She had moved her head to the right as if someone else was talking to her. After a few moments, she laughed.

‘Eric wants me to tell you that your characters have dreams and wishes as well as adversity. He says, “Let them win sometimes.”’

Every once in a while, something comes along that, perhaps, you can’t explain away. As a journalist, it was not a huge leap for Mia to assume that I had also written a novel, but how did she guess that my characters needed lightening up? My first two books had been called beautiful – but bleak. Only someone who knew my writing could have given me that advice. Had Mia read my book or did the information come from another source? The words were so pertinent, so right for me. I felt energized.