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I do not need signs to know God. I cannot "prove" to anyone else that God exists, nor can anyone "prove" that God does not exist, except to themselves ( and anyone who wants to believe it ). Proof is just another illusion. If you have to rationalize the existence or God then you don't know God.
That said. Signs are whatever they are to whoever sees them. God and happenstance may very well be the same thing.
So. I once had a massive tree fall on my head ( and no, that doesn't explain everything ).
The 911 operator who screamed at me not to go to sleep while waiting for the VFD saved my life. I would have just let go.
The volunteer firemen who got to me first and started the IV saved my life. I would have died without them.
The EMTs who got me to the trauma hospital saved my life. I would have died without them.
The trauma surgeon saved my life. I would have died otherwise.
Were these signs from God? Don't know, doesn't matter. What matters is that I am grateful to God for everything.
Horror is a good word for it. The same psychic who told me the dragonfly thing also said, "he was very angry about what happened to him". I said, "Oh yes he was." He did not go gentle into that dark night, although the very end was peaceful.
But she also said that when we are in human form, we are fish out of water, and after death, we see things more clearly.
For what that's worth to anyone.
Your story has continued to weigh on my mind, and as I mentioned before, I'm always curious about "the rest of these stories" perhaps not being told. Or perhaps not known, so with all due respect, really, may I ask a few more questions about your experience?
You wrote that your best friend treated you to a visit with a psychic she likes. So needless to say, your best friend had seen this psychic before. Is it at all possible she told the psychic about you and your lost loved one? Had you conveyed the dragonfly story to your friend before you then saw her favorite psychic? Being your best friend, I would guess you did. Is your friend beyond possibly passing along some of this critical information to the psychic?
This would be at least be one possibility I am inclined to explore or investigate before I can be convinced without question your friend's favorite psychic could know the dragonfly story without a little bit of help from other than the great beyond. Please forgive the skeptic in me that way, but given so many other stories I've heard explained away in the same way, I have to wonder about this one too.
Makes me wonder all the more how a session with a psychic who knew absolutely nothing about me would do. At least in that case I could control/know the psychic knew nothing about me or any of my experiences. My wedding band would be something of a clue about me. My gray hair as to my approximate age, but otherwise, would she know my father died of Alzheimer's for example? Or that he was even dead?
I know how it is with the heavy Italian accent BTW. My mother is 100% Sicilian, and immigrated to America without knowing a word of English. Though she was able to speak English by the time I was in high school, I would always have to translate what she was saying to my friends because they couldn't get past her heavy accent. I suppose this is why I have a much easier time understanding people with similar accents. That I also speak Spanish helps a bit too. I wonder if a psychic could know this about me too, without any clues. I look like your typical white American male and have no accent to suggest I speak Spanish. Which is why Spanish speaking people are always surprised when they find I can also speak their language.
Let me try to explain. First of all it's not so much a 'belief' as a 'not ruling out' of 'something'.
Whatever that something is, if there is indeed something, is physical, of this universe, and not in any way supernatural.
I've spent a lot of time trying to understand how the universe works. I follow developments in physics as far as I can understand them in theory. I think whatever that something is lies within the physical laws within the universe, same as everything else.
Let's take for example this news story from a couple of days ago: https://phys.org/news/2023-12-physic...hastening.html
Here's a quote from it.
150 years ago, nobody would have even contemplated or conceived of such a development.
If this is possible and beginning to be understood why should it not be possible that other things that we don't understand or even begin to contemplate have some explanation that lies within the physical laws of the universe?
Why do I rule out a god? Because 'God did it' is too easy. There's no version of god that fits as far as I'm concerned. It doesn't answer anything or explain anything. I'm not anti god, but the concept of god just doesn't provide any answers for me. It's superfluous in a way. The universe is more amazing without imagining some being came before it and invented it.
There are lots of things that we currently don't think too hard about how they work. Consciousness is the big one but there are all the other things that go alongside that like intuition and instinct. Or why a heart spontaneously beats for the first time and doesn't stop for it's hosts entire lifetime. Or why some people have extraordinary savant abilities that the rest of us can't begin to contemplate, like knowing instantly what day of the week any given date is in the past or future, or being able to draw an entire cityscape accurately from memory having only seen it once.
There are many things that defy explanation. But whatever they are are physical and of this universe even if I don't know how to explain them.
Ah! Thank you. "spooky action at a distance" indeed! If only these scientists could explain how these molecules can be quantum mechanically "entangled" even when separated by great distances. Talk about wild...
I had read almost half of the article when I realized I was out of time. I need to get on with preparing our customary BSB now, and as I sign off I look forward to getting back to this very interesting article as well as the rest of your comment/explanation. The others in this thread I can't get to today too.
Thanks again! Cheers, go 9rs and a good Sunday to you and yours!
I do not need signs to know God. I cannot "prove" to anyone else that God exists, nor can anyone "prove" that God does not exist, except to themselves ( and anyone who wants to believe it ). Proof is just another illusion. If you have to rationalize the existence or God then you don't know God.
That said. Signs are whatever they are to whoever sees them. God and happenstance may very well be the same thing.
So. I once had a massive tree fall on my head ( and no, that doesn't explain everything ).
The 911 operator who screamed at me not to go to sleep while waiting for the VFD saved my life. I would have just let go.
The volunteer firemen who got to me first and started the IV saved my life. I would have died without them.
The EMTs who got me to the trauma hospital saved my life. I would have died without them.
The trauma surgeon saved my life. I would have died otherwise.
Were these signs from God? Don't know, doesn't matter. What matters is that I am grateful to God for everything.
Well, it does matter. When someone shares an experience and says, basically, 'God done it'. It does matter.
It matters because when you tell us a "sign story", you're sort of testifying...proselytizing...and you want us to believe you.
Heck, we've had people 'testify' here that god helped them find their car keys. Millions of people around the world starving and dying from dread diseases, but god is helping Irma find her car keys. No. Just no.
And when I told my story here on this forum...about why I tended to believe in past lives (as a Buddhist)...did I get any sympathy from christians about the signs that led me to that belief. Not at all. Quite the opposite. Do unto others had no part in that discussion!
So believe what you wish, but when you testify publicly, expect to be denied.
Well, it does matter. When someone shares an experience and says, basically, 'God done it'. It does matter.
It matters because when you tell us a "sign story", you're sort of testifying...proselytizing...and you want us to believe you.
Heck, we've had people 'testify' here that god helped them find their car keys. Millions of people around the world starving and dying from dread diseases, but god is helping Irma find her car keys. No. Just no.
And when I told my story here on this forum...about why I tended to believe in past lives (as a Buddhist)...did I get any sympathy from christians about the signs that led me to that belief. Not at all. Quite the opposite. Do unto others had no part in that discussion!
So believe what you wish, but when you testify publicly, expect to be denied.
Watching Miracle on 34th Street and thinking about you, phet.
Your story has continued to weigh on my mind, and as I mentioned before, I'm always curious about "the rest of these stories" perhaps not being told. Or perhaps not known, so with all due respect, really, may I ask a few more questions about your experience?
You wrote that your best friend treated you to a visit with a psychic she likes. So needless to say, your best friend had seen this psychic before. Is it at all possible she told the psychic about you and your lost loved one? Had you conveyed the dragonfly story to your friend before you then saw her favorite psychic? Being your best friend, I would guess you did. Is your friend beyond possibly passing along some of this critical information to the psychic?
This would be at least be one possibility I am inclined to explore or investigate before I can be convinced without question your friend's favorite psychic could know the dragonfly story without a little bit of help from other than the great beyond. Please forgive the skeptic in me that way, but given so many other stories I've heard explained away in the same way, I have to wonder about this one too.
I find this vaguely insulting, yet amusing. Do you honestly think. LM, that YOU would have thought of this but somehow I wouldn't have? Do you think I was going to slap my forehead and say, "GOLLEE, I never thought of THAT? Good thing ol' LearnMe learnt me that." Seriously.
I did not even ever think to mention my brief encounter with the dragonfly to my friend. I was spending time at the late bf's home in a rural area hundreds of miles from the area where I, and my best friend, live, and it was a solitary experience that I tucked into the back of my mind and forgot about until the psychic mentioned the "message".
My friend recommended this psychic because when she saw her, the psychic told her two significant things. One was that she saw a woman (spirit) who was holding a remote control in her hand. My friend's mother died holding the TV remote. The other thing was that the psychic told my friend to get her shoulder looked at. My friend had had a single tumor on her spine treated earlier that year. Her shoulder was giving her some pain, which she thought was from moving furniture, but on her follow-up visit with the oncologist shortly after, it was discovered that she now had five spots of the cancer in her shoulder and was officially diagnosed with multiple myeloma (the single spine tumor is referred to as a primary myeloma). She's since had a stem cell transplant and is in remission.
By the way, when I walked into the room with the psychic, the door to which is a movable bookshelf, very clever and cool, my friend said she watched her "scan" me up and down, since doing a sort of health check is apparently part of her thing. She told me my liver and lungs were in good shape, a relief as an ex-smoker who has enjoyed her share of alcoholic beverages over my lifetime; that I will never get dementia, also a nice thing to hear, but of course in my head that also means I could be dead younger than anticipated, lol, and then she said to get my thyroid checked. I told her I have a rare thyroid condition and see an endocrinologist every six months. Also, not being as dumb as I might look and in fact being quite cynical and skeptical myself, my first thought was "yeah, I have a visible scar at the base of my throat where they attempted to remove my thyroid ten years ago and had to abort the procedure because of what they found when they opened me up."
As it turns out, when I saw my doc in October, he said it was time to do an ultrasound on my thyroid since it had been four years, and subsequently he called to say there was a new growth that was large enough that it needed to be biopsied. It was, and it's benign. Lucky guess, maybe.
Quote:
Originally Posted by LearnMe
Makes me wonder all the more how a session with a psychic who knew absolutely nothing about me would do. At least in that case I could control/know the psychic knew nothing about me or any of my experiences. My wedding band would be something of a clue about me. My gray hair as to my approximate age, but otherwise, would she know my father died of Alzheimer's for example? Or that he was even dead?
I know how it is with the heavy Italian accent BTW. My mother is 100% Sicilian, and immigrated to America without knowing a word of English. Though she was able to speak English by the time I was in high school, I would always have to translate what she was saying to my friends because they couldn't get past her heavy accent. I suppose this is why I have a much easier time understanding people with similar accents. That I also speak Spanish helps a bit too. I wonder if a psychic could know this about me too, without any clues. I look like your typical white American male and have no accent to suggest I speak Spanish. Which is why Spanish speaking people are always surprised when they find I can also speak their language.
Would be interesting to find out...
The only way you would know is to go find out. OF COURSE I would recommend that you not leave any clues. I believe there are more shysters out there than there are genuine psychics, and the best way is to not give them too much information. But you know what? You'll be able to tell.
Here's one more for you, which I'd posted once before, some time ago. This one left me in more of shock than the lady with the dragonfly did.
I'd gone a "witchy" store where I buy jewelry and incense and whatnot, again, with the same close friend. We went to the store to shop, and at the last minute we checked to see if they had a reader available. They offer $20/10 minute Tarot readings, and if no one has booked in advance, they will do walk-ins. As it turned out, they had two openings.
My friend went first and walked out in tears after hearing something about her then-recently-departed mother. Then I went in. The woman said, "Before I do the cards, I like to see if I can pick up anything about past lives or any spirits that may be around you." Well, allrighty. She went on to say that she saw me in a past life, possibly during the medieval centuries, washing dishes for some sort of community of which I wasn't actually a part, but I felt as though they were not that different from me. I have no idea what any of that meant; in fact, at the time, I did not have a working dishwasher and my first thought was gee, maybe that's why I am still washing dishes by hand, lol.
But then, she said, "There is the spirit of a child near you. I don't know whether the child was a boy or a girl, but this child died when you were both very young, and you went on."
That got my attention. When we were both six, a child in my life did indeed die, of leukemia, and her death had a far-reaching impact on me for the rest of my life for reasons I've described elsewhere on this forum.
Then the psychic said, "Second cousin is what is coming into my mind."
Kathy was my second cousin, as my father and Kathy's mother were first cousins, although as children, we just knew we were friends and that our birthday parties were close together. But "second cousin" is one hell of a guess to pull out of one's ass when taking a chance that the person you are reading experienced a death of a playmate in childhood in the first place.
The psychic then went on to say that Kathy did not forget us playing together and that we will play together again one day. I said something stupid like "I hope that's not anytime soon", but I was in complete shock. I also had this weird sensation, like an electrical charge was going up my neck into the back of my head. My friend who was with me and with whom I have been friends for forty years did not even know about my lost childhood friend/cousin. I had to explain it to her after the fact.
The psychic then went ahead and read her cards, but to this day I have no idea what else she said, I was so stunned.
When I previously related this story on the A&A forum, one of our resident "I'm smarter-than-everyone-else" know-it-alls, who I know for a fact believes some very wrong information about a subject on which I do know quite a bit more than most people, told me how stupid I am because the psychic probably checked social media before I came in and blah blah blah--except that this information has never been on social media, and the psychic had nothing but my first name which I scrawled on the schedule ten minutes before I ever met her.
I tend to assume people are smarter than they are, and I'm often proven wrong. It works the other way, too. If someone else has had different experiences than you have, or if you cannot immediately reconcile what you know with what someone else is telling you, it does not further your knowledge or the dialogue to assume that the discrepancy is born of the idea that they simply aren't as bright as you are. Because, well...that wouldn't be very smart.
Learn Me, be skeptical, but at the same time, keep an open mind. Balance is the best way to proceed in most of life's ventures. If you do decide to consult a psychic, find one through a recommendation by someone whose judgment you trust, and when you get there, trust your own intuition and judgment to help you accept or reject anything you might hear.
And bring the stories back here.
ETA: TO BE CLEAR, I am NOT putting forth these stories as any sort of proof that a deity exists or is involved in sending messages in some way. I honestly don't know where any of this comes from, and I won't pretend that I do. I just know what I experienced.
I've read many a word passed down through the ages that not everyone including you believes was given to them. Or to be believed. There are many churches different people belong to. For all variety of different reasons. Of all different faiths. Most of which you have not adopted as for you.
Why do I need more? To clear up some of these differences and disparities just for starters...
Why do I deserve special revelation? As it seems so many other people claim to have received or deserved all kinds of revelations, why not me I wonder? Special or otherwise? Why nothing of the sort given so many other claims by other people? Why not?
What would be wrong with adding just one more believer? Like back when I used to be, because I thought those signs were actually signs from God. Why not?
So I ask...
I would say I was in your same boat for awhile. I had no interest in God whatsoever. But something changed after I read a message in a book True Gospel Revealed Anew By Jesus. First thing I learned was Jesus isn't God. He was the first Divine man on earth.
After reading this book, I became a believer and began doing what was suggested - praying for God's Divine Love. Now 48 years later, I have a very personal relationship with God, which is what He wants. I receive His Love in my soul delivered by His Holy Spirit and when I ask Him for a hug, I get one!
God is awesome. All any of us need to do is reach out to Him. He's knocking on the door to our heart so that we may know Him as our loving Heavenly Father. He created us to be with Him in the next world.
Whatever you do... do not fear Him. He is LOVE. He is FUN.
P.S. Hell isn't eternal. There's no actual fire and brimstone. What is felt is the burning sensation of shame, guilt and remorse. Best thing is not to go there in the first place. God's Divine Love removes all the junk on our soul, so that we don't have to experience it in the next world. Our soul cleansings take place in the here and now. Not pleasant, but a must to get rid of negativity, etc.
Best of luck and I hope that you will experience this wondrous Love of God in your soul. It's life changing.
Let me try to explain. First of all it's not so much a 'belief' as a 'not ruling out' of 'something'.
Whatever that something is, if there is indeed something, is physical, of this universe, and not in any way supernatural.
I've spent a lot of time trying to understand how the universe works. I follow developments in physics as far as I can understand them in theory. I think whatever that something is lies within the physical laws within the universe, same as everything else.
Let's take for example this news story from a couple of days ago: https://phys.org/news/2023-12-physic...hastening.html
Here's a quote from it.
150 years ago, nobody would have even contemplated or conceived of such a development.
If this is possible and beginning to be understood why should it not be possible that other things that we don't understand or even begin to contemplate have some explanation that lies within the physical laws of the universe?
Why do I rule out a god? Because 'God did it' is too easy. There's no version of god that fits as far as I'm concerned. It doesn't answer anything or explain anything. I'm not anti god, but the concept of god just doesn't provide any answers for me. It's superfluous in a way. The universe is more amazing without imagining some being came before it and invented it.
There are lots of things that we currently don't think too hard about how they work. Consciousness is the big one but there are all the other things that go alongside that like intuition and instinct. Or why a heart spontaneously beats for the first time and doesn't stop for it's hosts entire lifetime. Or why some people have extraordinary savant abilities that the rest of us can't begin to contemplate, like knowing instantly what day of the week any given date is in the past or future, or being able to draw an entire cityscape accurately from memory having only seen it once.
There are many things that defy explanation. But whatever they are are physical and of this universe even if I don't know how to explain them.
Agreed! Thanks again.
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Do you think I was going to slap my forehead and say, "GOLLEE, I never thought of THAT? Good thing ol' LearnMe learnt me that." Seriously.