This question was asked in the "Ask Polaris" forum.  You can read the full question with all the background here, but the full question can be summarized as:

"This friend was missing, and I energetically searched for her and got a clear sense that she was alive, and then I found out she wasn't.  What was happening?"

We will approach this different ways. We will speak to the particular events that have been asked of us and we will also speak to generalities. In this particular case there was enough energy left behind by the departing soul so as to create a sense of reality to the person who was sensing her.  In other words, in the reality (the particular parallel)  in which Miché's friend exists, her relative died early on during this time period.  There was quite a lot of energy associated with it that she was able to tap into and to feel an "aliveness".  Upon receiving word that the person had died and had been found, that energy source was then immediately terminated and that sense of aliveness was no longer present.  However at the same time, there was a parallel in which she lived for some time afterward.

Now, your question is: what energy was being accessed here? The energy of the parallel where she died or the energy of the parallel in which she lived?

We would say that there was more than one parallel going either way.  There was more energy associated with the parallel that terminated, and we would say what we said earlier is technically correct in that the energy was being accessed was the energy that was being manufactured and was not the energy of the actual parallel.   There is a parallel in which that person still lives, however.

And so your further question of how can you tell when it's a parallel and how can you use information from parallels to better inform you about the reality that you are living in.

It is true that all of you walk in multitudinous worlds all the time. You are always involved in almost an infinite number of parallel worlds that you are creating and letting lapse all the time, constantly. Some of you pay more attention to this than others. It would be disorienting to pay complete attention to it all the time; you could not function well in the society you live in if you did this.   So you allow yourself to get different messages at different times.  All of this is happening all the time; it would be overwhelming and disorienting to experience and receive input from all of those worlds that you are creating and living in every moment.

But yet you do.  You are informed by that all the time.  You make each choice, the choice to open your hand and close it, the choice even to breathe - though not necessarily because that's a reflex, but at least the choice to breathe consciously. You make all these choices informed by what's going on with you in all these other worlds at the same time. So the question is:  do you really want to be conscious of that?   And how do you pick and choose which ones are useful to you in a given moment?

Question:  It seems like a big topic

Its an infinite topic - and of your creation.

The short answer is that it's a different answer for everyone.  Obviously, not everyone is going to need to utilize this information all the time.  [We would happily answer for each person individually]   However, this type of "it depends" answer is not very useful to you.   So we will give you something general that is useful to all of you, that you can take with you and learn to build on.

The fact is that each of you allows some of this input - from parallel lives and other realities - in at various times for reasons. You give yourselves "signs". Some of you are more attuned to signs than others.  Some of you attribute more weight to signs than others.  But the fact is that you are seeing them at all times.

Perhaps your glance swings around the room and you notice there are quite a few things that are red in the room - in which case red is your sign for that moment.  It is up to you to attribute meaning to whatever sign it is that you are seeing.  This particular example, of course, would only be for those who resonate with color and have a meaning for it;your essence, or Higher Self, will always know what will have a good chance to bring communication to your personality.

Or maybe your sign is that you see a clock time of 11:11 repeated many times throughout a day.  That may be your sign.  Perhaps you see a certain shape, animal, like a cat, if this would bring meaning to you.

It's whatever meaning you attribute to the sign that gives it meaning to you.   But the meaning you attribute, if it resonates, will also come from your essence.  It is a powerful way of increasing this connection.

Again, this is very a simplistic answer, a general answer. There is another simple way of allowing these signs into your life simply by asking, simply by trusting. So you say "all right, Self, I want more signs of what's going on for me in my other parallel lives."

There's an important corollary to this:   "I need to trust the information that I'm already giving myself, and trust that it really means something."

That's where people run into difficulty. Its hard to trust this.  You want to think concretely, tangibly.  Intellectually you want things to "makes sense".

This is not going to make sense.  You're trying gain information from a world that you don't 100% walk in.  It's a parallel that's similar to your world, but there are different things going on, even perhaps different laws of physics and energy that are operating in.  Because of these differences - and even differences in brain chemistry from another of your parallel selves - those worlds are not going to make sense.

So you have to let yourself be okay with things not making sense.  In your linear world and your physical existence, this is very difficult to do for most of you - to let go of control that you'd like to have around your orderly little molecules and how things nicely line up.   If you were to let them,  your laws of physics might work at all.  It makes you feel better to have them there.  At the same time, letting go of this control lets you access literally multiple universes of information and energy.

In summary:

• You're all the time getting information from your parallel words that you exist in. 
  
• When you receive these messages you should take them seriously because they mean something in your letting something in for a reason.
  
• It is totally okay if you miss something or you don't listen, because there will always be more messages.  You are very kind to yourself in that way.