That Time I Saw a Fortune Teller

If you’ve been reading this blog, then you know I’ve gone through a sort of spiritual breakthrough of sorts over the past few years. A lot has changed about me. I’ve gone from a logical, skeptical, person who would raise my nose at people who call themselves “spiritual’ to a true believer. I see the light now, I understand now that we are all spiritual, and it is we who can choose to ignore it or not. And it wasn’t the spiritual hippies that brought me over, either. It was a dream. A lucid dream. It was so powerful and enduring that it felt like an acid trip.

It got me asking questions like: Is all of this a dream too? Are we even real? Where do I go from here? What do I do with this new-found information and appreciation for life and energy?

Then, one of my best friends Hong told me about how her father saw a fortune teller when he went to India a couple decades ago. It got me thinking.

If she had told me a few years ago, I would have rolled my eyes and said they were scamming him probably by telling him vague things like “you don’t take criticism well” that could apply to millions of people. But that’s not me anymore. So I was intrigued.

I researched the people her father saw and was fascinated! Their history dated back thousands of years! The fortune tellers are called “maharishis”, and thousands of years ago in India, they had visions of people’s lives that are alive today and wrote them down on palm leaves, which have been kept to this day in libraries across the country. These libraries are filled with tens of thousands of different people’s fortunes, just waiting to be found by their owners. Each palm leaf is organized by the fortune tellee’s fingerprint. There are over 100 different categories, so the slightest difference in the grooves of your print will be significant- so it’s important to send them an accurate print.I thought to myself “wow, so my fortune could be tucked away somewhere in those shelves..waiting for me”. I didn’t trust it 100%, because I still have a little skepticism in the whole existence of fortune telling. But I was soo damn curious and semi-convinced that I thought it was worth the money to at least try it out.

So the skeptic in me hatched a plan.

First, in the age of the internet, you can look up the life history of practically anyone. So I wouldn’t give them my full name, any picture of me, or even a traceable email address. So I made a brand new email address and contacted them using it.I gave them my first name, Amanda, and that was it.

To do the fortune, they needed 4 pieces of personal information:My genderMy left thumb printCity of my father’s birthCity of my mother’s birth

I figured that wasn’t enough to look anyone up, so I sent the message.Of course payment could be another way to track me. So I made sure my full name didn’t come up on the paypal transfer.

So that was done, and they had no way of searching me. I had no criminal record, so no fingerprints on file with any government. And the rest of the information was so vague, I was convinced it wouldn’t be enough to look me up.

During the next few weeks, they sent the readers at the library in India my fingerprint and the hunt for my fortune began. They found my category of fingerprint, but there were hundreds of possibilities within that category. There was no way to narrow it down other than reading each one to me and checking if it described my life.

You see, on each palm leaf, there are two sides. The front describes the person’s life at the time of the reading, so it’s not a fortune, just a way of confirming if you're the correct person this fortune is for. It lists 10-15 specific facts about the person’s life and if they all accurately describe you, then it is your fortune. Then, on the back side is the fortune, and you can read it. Well, it can be read to you since it is written in ancient Sanskrit and needs to be translated to English.

So, after emailing back and forth, we decided on a date to skype. I was in New Zealand, the organizer of this business was in Canada, and the maharishis with the actual palm leaves were in India of course. So we had to find a time that would work in all our time zones, which isn’t super easy. But then, on the day of the skype session, the woman in Canada explained how it was all going to work.

She says I have to understand that this process of finding the fortune may take a while. We may have to go through hundreds of wrong fortunes to find mine, so it’s a tiring and grueling process. And sometimes, the fortune is never found because the person is not at the exact point in their life yet when all the things written on the front of the palm leaf is correct about them. They need to wait until it’s the right time in their life for their fortune to find them. So not finding one now doesn’t necessarily mean they don’t have your fortune.

And if I do find my fortune during the skype session, it’s important for me to understand that these fortunes are not ‘written in stone’ as they say. I am the master of my destiny. If I don’t like something the fortune says, then I can actively take steps in my life to avoid it. And if there are things I do like in the fortune, I still have to act to ensure they still happen, because if I give up on life because I assume those good things will happen anyways, then maybe they won’t anymore because I don’t put effort into them.

So once she was convinced that I understood all of that, we began the session and had the maharishis join in on the skype call.

There were two dark Indian men in the camera sitting on the floor of a temple room. One was the reader, who would read the Sanskrit tablets in his head, say it out loud in Hindi, and the man next to him would translate from Hindi to English for me. Sanskrit is a dead language, so only a few religious or academic scholars really understand it. And the probability of them also knowing English is very small. The woman from Canada remained on the line in case translator #2’s heavily accented English proved too difficult for me to understand and would repeat it again for me. So I had a translator from Sanskrit to Hindi, a second translator for Hindi to Indian English, and a third translator for Indian English to North American English.

The reader had a bundle of about 60-70 palm leaves that looked like compressed bricks. He untied them, picked up the top one and started to read it. I waited to hear the translation from the second man. I was instructed to say a firm “YES” or “NO” in response if what I heard was accurate or not about my life.

“You have 2 sisters” said the man.

“NO”

The translator mumbles something in Hindi to the reader and he discards the palm leaf to his left and picks up another from the pile.

“You are in a different country than you were born in right now” his translator says.

“YES”

So he goes onto the next life fact: “Your parents are still together”

“NO” I reply. And he tells the reader “no” in Hindi, and the reader picks up the next palm leaf. It continues like this for a while, and it gets boring until they start getting random facts about my life correct..

“Your mom’s name is Mary”

“NO”*next leaf

“Your mom’s name is Anne”

“YES”

“You have an older brother”

“YES”

“Your parents are not together anymore”

“YES”

*Wow, this is getting weird*

“Your father’s name is Mike”

“NO”

Then he tells the reader to go to the next palm leaf, and it happened so many times it starts getting weird just thinking about how the owners of those fortunes have oddly similar life details to me..and we all share the same fingerprint type. I’m a little overwhelmed to be honest.

They didn’t find my fortune in the first pile, which took 3 hours..and he goes straight to the next pile. I’m getting tired because I’ve been sitting on a hard chair, just repeating “YES” and “NO” into the computer without a snack or bathroom break for 3 hours. I’m starting to get frustrated, but soldier on because I’m keen on finding my leaf.

So he starts the second pile and I get 2 or 3 leaves that are correct for the first 7 or so facts that I start to think it may be the one! But they he says something false like “You have a sister”, and I say “NO” and deflate in my chair as the reader grabs the next one.

Then…After another hour, he starts reading a new one and started repeating some of the facts they already knew were correct from last leaves.

“Your parents are separated”..”YES”

“You have an older brother”..”YES”

“Your mom’s name is Anne”..”YES”

But we were on what must be the 8th fact and they were all correct so far! He kept going

“You aren’t renting the place you live in right now”..“YES”

“You are a writer”..“YES”

“You work in a restaurant”..“YES”

“You meditate often”..“YES” *oh my god, this could be it. My heart starts beating faster*“Your birthday is september 20, 1993”..“YES”

“Your name is Amanda”..“YES”

“Congratulations. You have found your leaf”

So after 4 long hours in our skype session, we found my leaf!

I was thrilled! I was so emotional, I started to tear up. It was like a dream, all of this. I started out skeptical, but I knew my plan was fool-proof..there was no way they were able to look me up on the internet. And besides, some of the life facts the reader said weren’t public knowledge. In fact, they were deeply personal things that only my best friend knew about me. I tested them. And they passed!

What do I make of this?! There’s no way they could have cheated. They couldn’t have known all this information about me..but they did. They knew. Thousands of years ago. My life. Right here. Right now.

W..What do I make of this? This is exactly what was supposed to happen. It’s what I paid for..yet I was still so shocked and so emotional (not to mention exhausted) I couldn’t even handle my fortune right then.Then the translator said he couldn’t give me my fortune right then, anyways. The man who originally wrote my fortune 1000’s of years ago basically wrote a little *asterisk* saying I had to do a pooja before I heard my fortune in order to cast off any bad energy.

So they gave me instructions to perform a pooja and we scheduled the next meeting to read me my fortune after that was done.I asked if I could have my palm leaf, but they said no, it had to stay in the library. I could have a photo of it, though.

I had two weeks before the next skype call to think about what’s happened. I thought a lot because there was a lot to consider. How could someone alive thousands of years ago know the personal details of my life? Can I trust him? Does he want what’s best for me? Are the higher powers that gave the maharishis their talent...friendly? And if he knows the future, does that mean life is all planned? Am I really in control? And some of the facts on my leaf were only true in the past month..does that mean that when I decided to pursue my leaf, it was always going to happen precisely then..like it was written that way? I know it’s my life and I’m the one doing the living..but is something else doing the pushing? Is something gently nudging me down a certain life path? And will the act of knowing my future change it? And would they ever not read someone’s fortune if it would negatively impact their life? Like what if their fortune said they would die by the end of the year, so upon hearing that, they have a nervous breakdown and die of stress..?

Anyways, after a few weeks, we all met up again on skype. This was it! The moment I was going to hear my fortune! I was so excited and scared at the same time. I really truly do believe in fortunes now, and I knew they would give me an accurate reading. I didn’t need to be convinced anymore. But a part of me couldn’t help but wonder why MY fortune in particular would warrant a pooja..was there some bad juju in my future?? I was a little nervous to find out..

The skype session started and it was just me and the lady in Canada at first. She prepped me before adding the Indians to the meeting. She said the way it worked was they would give me my fortune in roughly 3 year increments. They might tell me things about myself or my family members. They will have a lot to say and I might not remember it all, so this session will be audio recorded so I won’t have to take notes.

So I was ready and she added the reader from India into the meeting and we were all waving at each other from around the globe.

It was time.We all got prepared and the reader took the palm leaf in his hand and began reading it aloud in Sanskrit. His translator began “Right now, you are financially insecure”. I pursed my lips, thinking about my current situation. I was living in my car..

“But,” continued the translator “by the end of the next year, you will find money and financial security.”

My ears perked up at that. It’d be nice not to have to worry about making ends meet with my lifestyle of travel anymore.

But then I started to worry. How would I magically run into some money in the next year? I hoped it wouldn’t be an inheritance or anything requiring some twisted Monkey’s Paw sense of humor. But then I tried to relax and not let the possibilities scare me.

He continued. I’m not going to write down everything this reader told me about my future, or even half because I know it’s a bad idea to share that with others. It won’t help me, in fact it might hurt me sharing it. But I will say that what he revealed to me in the hour and a half skype meeting that night affected me considerably.

I felt blessed. Literally. They had very good things to say, including the best news of all- that I’ll feel fulfilled when I die.

I can tell you that what they said felt like very “me” things to do with my life, so it wasn’t necessarily surprising, but strange indeed to be told about one’s own life as if reading a book summary. A part of me was scared of knowing my future in case I’d feel trapped or haunted by it. But now I can confidently say it’s quite the opposite. I know I’m still in control of the direction of my life. The way I see it, they were giving me a snapshot of what my future could look like, but the second they tell me, it changes the course of everything because the simple act of knowing has power. But you know what? I liked the future they told me. And I’m going to work towards it.

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If you have any questions, or want the contact details of the people to try and find your own leaf, just send me a message at lucidtogether@gmail.com(I didn't include it in the post because I don't want to appear like an advertisement for them.)