I don't want to derail this thread, but I saw this and wanted to offer a little friendly advice. Trying to use meditation to develop abilities is putting the cart before the horse. Meditation creates certain states of mind and opens you to certain perceptions and understandings. These states, perceptions, and understandings then create certain abilities (empathy, telepathy, precognition, etc) as a matter of course, almost as side effects. One cannot have the abilities without the states of mind, and trying to do so will actually push both the states and the abilities away, since the point of meditation is to step away from desires and attachments and to calm the mind.

So my advice it to meditate simply to meditate, and see the abilities for what they are, amusing and occasionally useful side effects of a heightened consciousness.

CS