What do we mean by SAFE? Secure rather than vulnerable ? Whole rather than fragmented ? What happens when our safety is compromised while we are dowsing? What we can do about it ? I hope that, following this article, a lively debate will ensue. Please add your views by writing to the newsletter or to the online forum. Everyone deals with protection while dowsing in different ways (or not at all) and we can all learn from each other. I am offering below many thoughts Roy and I have already discovered or heard of from our students and associates.

As we understand it, when dowsing you are opening yourself to another dimension of consciousness, a dimension in which things are Gnown, rather than Known. The former mode is relatively uncharted territory,
whereas the latter can be traced to the thoughts and writings and research results of people, past and present. One of our students told us it felt like walking in a dark alley with only a very small torch lighting up a limited area: how can we know what else lurks in the shadows ? Some dowsers rely on faith that nothing can come out at them from those shadows, perhaps because they have a religious structure which makes them feel secure. Joey Korn is one such. However, we have recently met a retired clergyman who uses dowsing and prayer in his Ministry of Deliverance - i.e. clearing spaces and releasing spirits. He has always relied on his Faith, but has got into big difficulty over a recent case, when a spirit he hadn't noticed hopped across, like a flea, and lodged with him rather than move out into its rightful sphere of existence. He is very unwell. Others maintain that the whole business of dowsing and healing is materially based, so no subtle protective measures are needed. An Austrian professor did a huge amount of space healing on this basis, dowsing mainly with his body rather than tools. He died on the job, of a heart attack. Another scientist insisting on the same materialist premise, had a heart attack but survived. However, he subsequently suffered severe psychotic episodes, and is no longer effective. Scary stuff ! I am sure readers, like us, have met plenty of dowsers who feel exhausted, have a headache or "spaced out" feeling when they have been dowsing in certain contexts. This needs serious consideration.

Let’s try some analogies.
I have a childhood memory of going fishing with my brother. We were about 8 and 6 years old, and we made a fishing rod out of a long twig, a piece of string and a bent pin. We were keen to catch a beautiful trout like the ones which had been served us for dinner at the farmhouse where we were spending a family holiday in Wales. In our innocence we had no idea we might catch something else, which we did: an eel about a yard long ! It squirmed and lashed about in a terrifying way, and even our Dad, to whom we ran screaming, could not get it off the hook. What else do people catch when they wander around ancient sites with a pair of bent coat hangers to see what they can find ?

Some time ago Roy and I were glider pilots, venturing into the sky in a way really intended for birds rather than humans. We had a number of rituals designed to maximise our safety: regular and thorough inspections of the gliders, signals for communication with launching facilities, rules about which way to pass other gliders in the air, and we wore emergency parachutes lest disaster happened while airborne. How many dowsers view the possible pitfalls and protect themselves accordingly?

More recently Roy has taken to sailing. He would not forget to wear a life jacket, or venture into waters for which he did not have an up-to-date chart: you can't see submerged rocks, and currents in the water depend a lot on the state of the tide. so you can easily be swept to danger if you don't pay attention to these factors. When dowsing, the terrain is within the psyche of the dowser, and is largely uncharted. But there is a psychological map which might help with this:

This diagram was first mooted by Assagioli in the 1960's. The spot in the centre represents the centre of the personality, the 'I', the place
from which we are looking out into the world at any given moment. Immediately around it is the area we are conscious of right now. Beyond that is an area of our unconscious which is near the surface, available quite easily via associations and reminders. Then the deeper layers of the unconscious are divided into higher and lower sections, and these are more accessible through dreams and visualisation practices making use of right
brain intuitive function, but still belong to the individual. The link with the spiritual level of that individual is via the Higher Self, or Soul
might be a more familiar term, which operates all round the periphery of the egg. Beyond the egg is the collective unconscious, shared by everybody. In this area it is possible for us to find anything we need to know.

Perhaps that is what we are tapping into when we dowse? In which case we are likely to encounter some unexpected phenomena.
In considering possible ways in which dowsing works we have to look at the nature of the human being beyond not only our physical bodies, but also beyond the individual psyche. Most religions incorporate the concept of a Super Spirit, God, Goddess or Creator by whatever name may be used. They also teach that there is an aspect of us that continues after death of the physical body. There has been a vast amount of research into other lifetimes and near death experiences which supports these views. Roy and I think that our non- physical component exists in some other state that is not usually accessible to us as physical beings, but is very closely linked to us. In fact it is vital that it is linked as otherwise our body fails to function, "His spirit has left - he is dead". This concept leads to the idea that our memories may not be stored in our physical brain, but in this spirit component. This is not to say that memories are not accessed through the brain. We think the brain may be like a radio receiver in that it links to one's own spirit as demonstrated in the egg diagram. and retrieves memories and information as required. It is no good trying to find the music inside the radio receiver, it is somewhere else i.e. in the programme being broadcast. Dowsing allows a person to access the music directly, without need of radio receiver. But are we sure that we are tuned into the appropriate wavelength? Is the one we are tuned into being distorted, or jammed ?
If we had complete access to all information available to spirit at all times, the results would be overwhelming. Thus limiters are put into the system for our protection. Dowsing is a way of bypassing some of these limiters and hence accessing information from another level of our being.
This level is not constrained by time and space as we are in our physical body. So it could, for instance, travel to a house needing healing, look over the fence and see the energies affecting it, then come back and
report to the dowser. Another way of looking at it is to conceive of a vast 'library in the sky', which some would call the akashic record. The Internet is not unlike this in a more physical form! Dowsers are allowed
access to various sections, according to their speciality. This would account for some, like us, being able to dowse for healing purposes, but hopeless at finding lost objects. There are specialists in the use of dowsing just as in any other skill. But if you wander into a hitherto unexplored area of the library and start reading books about which you know nothing, and have no discernment, what may you pick up ?
Thinking about discernment; in offering to teach dowsing to people, we need to be aware of the need for "ego strength"; a bit of psychologist's jargon, but nonetheless descriptive for all that. Human beings need to develop a solid base in this world as children, so until they are reasonably established, probably in late teens, encouraging children to dowse at all frequently could knock them off balance and cause problems rather similar to psychedelic drugs. As I have worked in a psychiatric hospital I am aware that the same applies to adults who have not developed sufficient ego strength for one reason or another, and whose mental health is less than stable.. (We require parental consent for students on our courses under 18 years old, and we ask people to tell us in confidence if they are on any ongoing medication). To take another
analogy: if an aircraft has insufficient inherent stability it is more likely to become uncontrollable if wobbled by air currents.

There are some people who are much more "thin-skinned" than others. Their armours are permeable, they take in and absorb energies which other people don't notice or have not experienced any effect therefrom. We find that people getting into dowsing and healing become thinner-skinned as they develop their skills. On the other hand beginners can be more vulnerable than experienced dowsers because they have not yet learned how to protect themselves, or even that protection is necessary. You can't have more access to these other dimensions without risking being exposed to the whole spectrum within those dimensions. If the energies or vibrations experienced there are not reasonably compatible with those of the dowser, it can feel very uncomfortable. You could compare the resulting feeling with being bombarded with music which jars and fragments rather than soothes and integrates.
We could use a model of inter-penetrating parallel universes, inhabited by stuff of which we have very little knowledge. Interference for dowsers means meeting the inhabitants of one or more of those universes, and not discerning their intent or motivation. Are they "friend or foe" ? Indeed if we are working to detect entities or presences which are affecting people in their homes, for instance, we are asking to meet those inhabitants, so our critical faculties must be firmly in gear. It is arguable that a very clear focus on the matter being dowsed can exclude any other input. If you are searching for potable water which is capable of being extracted, do you avoid becoming embroiled with any energetic or informational aspects carried in that water ? This may be one reason why the Church, while banning divining, did not outlaw dowsing for water, although it is more likely to be because finding it was essential to life. It could be that the motive was to protect people from this "work of the devil" because of the dangers of unprotected dowsing, seen as meddling in other dimensions which were uncharted to all but the most elite, i.e. those who claimed esoteric knowledge of the worlds beyond normal comprehension.
So what can we DO about it ? Firstly I would agree with Judith Parsons, who corresponded with us on this matter, that we need to keep our own vibrational level above that which we are dowsing for. What does that mean ? Perhaps this diagram will help:

When we are dowsing we are asking our questions at a mental level; we are using our intellects to focus on the subject matter, or the substance which we are seeking, and we are (or should be) checking that we are unambiguous and clear. Then we "switch off", "let the mind go into neutral", inviting the intuitional level to come up with the answer. So we need to be protected at that intuitional level, or "higher" still, from the spiritual. Those who rely on protection at a physical level are putting themselves in danger, and at the instinctual level still more so, and this particularly applies to work on earth energies, as we share awareness of these with animals who, as I understand it, do not have the same access to the "higher" levels as human beings and can only protect themselves by moving away. Whatever we are using our dowsing for, we really do need to keep our emotional level of awareness out of it: it clouds our clarity of focus and brings in "gut feelings", sensations which are strongly allied to past emotional memories which cannot be guaranteed to be appropriate or reliable. It also means that our answers will more likely to be what we want rather than what we need to know, so somewhat short of the truth.
So . . . how to find protection from those "higher" levels ? I mentioned Joey Korn at the beginning of this article. Faith in spiritual protection is very powerful indeed. But how many of us can feel totally secure in this ? Do we need some artifact or ritual to key us in to what we need? For many a prayer or a quiet centering and grounding before a dowsing session is important, and need only take seconds once the habit is established. Certainly a disconnection after a dowsing session related to someone's health, or to negative earth energy concerns, is vital so that we do not stay mixed up in the alien material we have been investigating. We would advise at least washing hands. Acupuncturists tell us to wash at least well over the wrists, so that all the meridians are covered. A whole body shower and/or flushing through internally by drinking water and going to the loo would help, provided it is done as a meaningful ritual.
Many people use visualisation techniques for protection, and these are as varied as the people using them. They connect the intuitive level with the spiritual very effectively. Some are very simple, such as surrounding oneself in light, or creating an all-enveloping cloak. It really can be child's play. Our elder daughter suffered night terrors, and we none of got much sleep until, at the age of three, I taught her to put herself in an eggshell of light. It worked a treat ! I have heard of seven-fold spirals, rising from beneath the feet to over the head, and then visa versa. Then there is a breathing routine using the rainbow colours: you start an in-breath below the feet, bringing red up the right side of your body, and then as you breath out, take that red down the left. As it goes under your feet, change it to orange and repeat the in breath up the right and the out breath down the left. Then go on through the spectrum: yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet. Then do the same again with the in-breath up the back and the out- breath down the front. This is an enlarged version of the eggshell of light, and at least ensures 14 slow and deliberate breaths, which is a calming and centreing exercise in itself!
During one course I attended the tutor suggested protecting ourselves with a roller blind extending down in front of us, but we preferred it to come upwards, with the option of looking over the top. During the tea break we relapsed into giggles and thought that a warm sleeping bag would be a much cosier protection ! Actually, any of these will do fine: it’s what's in the mind of the dowser which matters, and if you GNOW you are protected in this imaginative and intuitive world, you are.
You could choose to invest that security in an object; the effect would be the same. On our initial course we include a short demonstration of the effect of negative earth energy on the physical strength of a person, using muscle testing on and off a dowsed negative spot. One day, a young New Zealander was not affected, and we wondered why. Out of his pocket he took his "tiki", which had been given to him by a Maori elder to
protect him when he came to England to train as a firefighter, and he never went to a fire without it. So this little object acted as a talisman and gave him faith in the security he needed. I have a small cross on a chain
round my neck. We dedicated a crystal to protect Roy on his travels when he was working in the aircraft industry. Crystals are particularly appropriate for being "programmed" for this purpose. Anything will do if
you invest it with your belief that it will protect you. Whatever you use, inside the mind or externalised in an object, indicates you are aware that possible dangers exist, but are confident they will not harm you. The
opposite is fear, and fear attracts the feared scenario. By linking with our intuitional and spiritual levels of awareness we can make ourselves as safe as it is possible to be. There is a big difference between, as an
example, locking your car doors while driving through a city centre at night for fear of being mugged, and locking (actually or in imagination) to assure yourself that you are protected. The former comes from fear at the instinctual level, the latter from use of intutional and spiritual dimensions.
Coming down to brass tacks, are you safe in a legal sense when you are dowsing ? Have you permission from the people who might be affected by your probing into information which could affect them ? Suppose you are asked to trace a missing person: e.g. a man's wife has gone missing. Suppose you dowse where she is and actually get it right. So the man goes and knocks on the door you have designated, and there she is, shacked up with another chap. How will the dowser stand in the ensuing fracas ? The police have actually advised a dowser who helps them find illicit drugs that he keeps a loaded gun in his hall: the drug dealer is not likely to be very friendly ! One day out of the blue I had a very unpleasant phone call from a woman in Lincolnshire who was selling her house. She accused us of trespass. Her solicitor had given her a copy of a letter we had sent to a prospective purchaser who had asked for a "dowsing survey" before making an offer. The owner simply would not believe that we had provided this information without stirring from our home in Somerset. Of course the purchaser's solicitor should never have passed on our letter, but mercifully our client made very fierce representations and the row subsided. It could have been really nasty. Have you got insurance cover for professional liability ? The B.S.D. has been looking into this, but has not yet found a suitable scheme. We have a policy as individuals via David Balen (a dowser and healer himself) of H&L Balen & Company, 33 Graham Road, Great Malvern, Worcs WR14 2HW; expensive, but comprehensive.
But do make sure also of your subtle insurance policy, all within yourself, as is the dowsing skill.

Two books we recommend on this subject:

"Psychic Protection." By William Bloom. Piatkus 1997.
ISBN 0-7499-1603-6.
A very readable book by one well respected in this field.

" The Art of Psychic Protection." By Judy Hall. Findhorn Press 1996
ISBN 1 899171 36 3.
This covers much the same subject as William Bloom's book but, of course,
treats things differently, thus enlarging possibilities for the reader.

© Ann Procter & BSD/EEG 2003