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My apologies. I don't know you but I've long felt you were an intelligent woman from reading your comments. I didn't really think my question would be a gee golly moment for you as much as I was just interested to know more about the circumstances. That your best friend took you to this psychic put those questions in my mind. So I asked. Glad you found the questions also amusing anyway. Too bad people can feel insulted by such questions, and I can certainly understand how and why that can happen, but I didn't mean to come across as smarter than you or anyone else.
I would have no problem heeding your advice, but sadly I don't know anyone who can recommend a psychic to me. Not that I know of anyway. Seems you've had more than a few "believe it or not..." experiences. I wonder why I haven't a one. I've traveled the world. Engaged with thousands of people professionally. Lots of friends and family too. I've almost been killed a few times. Lots of stories both good and bad, but so far anyway, none that have left me feeling, seeing or experiencing the likes of what you describe.
Thanks for taking the time.
That's a fair question. I don't know the answer. My knee-jerk reaction is that you are just not open to it, or not listening/looking, but I really can't know if that is true.
The fact that you don't know anyone to ask about a psychic is a clue, though, that you don't have people in your life with whom you discuss and explore that side of life. Again, only you know this. I do have such people in my life.
Interestingly, my own younger sister, who lost her own husband last year, is very skeptical and completely close-minded to the possibility of anything woo-ish. I did not even give her much detail, but I did tell her the dragonfly story, and she affected her usual look of superior disdain, sort of rolled her eyes, and said, "Well, I haven't heard ANYTHING from Bill." Then mumbled something about "people who believe that stuff". And I thought, "Well, you wouldn't ever hear it anyway, would you, since your mind is closed off."
In general, she is a person very rigid and black-and-white in her thinking, and is not very accepting of things outside of the world she thinks she knows. She is resistant to change when presented with anything that does not fit her preconceived beliefs (about people or life, not religion--she is an atheist). I love her, but that is a big difference between us. I am more open to possibilities, including the possibility that I might be wrong about something.
It's very personal to talk about it. I feel like I lose something doing it. I realized that the relationship with God is very dear and personal. But I can share one instance here.
God responds to devotion. So, some years ago, I started to talk to God. Mentally and at the end of my meditations. I said: "God, please help me to love you." And in time, I changed it to:"I love you, Lord."
One day, I was repeating this mantra over and over in my head with great attention. I drove to JOANN to buy some yarn and when it was time to pay for it, there was something written on the furniture there. At the checkout there, there was a displaying piece of furniture (for merchandise) with something written on it, in pencil, by a child I suppose. I looked closer and it said: "I love you."
This was not there before, I used to go to that shop quite often. Some people might say that this is just a coincidence but I don't believe in coincidences.
In general, she is a person very rigid and black-and-white in her thinking, and is not very accepting of things outside of the world she thinks she knows. She is resistant to change when presented with anything that does not fit her preconceived beliefs (about people or life, not religion--she is an atheist). I love her, but that is a big difference between us. I am more open to possibilities, including the possibility that I might be wrong about something.
That is a fair description of my wife. She is technically speaking an atheist but until she met me wouldn't have considered accepting the label. She is able to embrace that now at least privately but I think she considers it too divisive to admit to in mixed company. And that is fine with me.
She is more open than I to "woo" and on occasion we have had fun exploring "woo" together, whereas on my own I wouldn't have done it. We had our auras photographed and hobnobbed with alien abductees in Sedona, for example (and then laughed uproariously about it all afterwards). I did it mostly to rid myself of any residual operant conditioning from my religious past, which would have taught me to be terrified of "demonic influences" in such things.
I could have gone the path of your sister, or something closer to it, because I'm a heady person and it's tempting to render everything 100% explicable empirically and intellectually. But the truth is, there will always be mysteries and there might just possibly be some that would surprise me.
My wife's approach is more to embrace and laugh at the absurdities of life and the human condition. It's her way of celebrating the mystery. I still prefer a more mystery-free existence, thanks very much ... but I cannot deny that mysteries exist.
Last edited by Mightyqueen801; 12-11-2023 at 12:05 PM..
Reason: Superfluous words in my quote
That's a fair question. I don't know the answer. My knee-jerk reaction is that you are just not open to it, or not listening/looking, but I really can't know if that is true.
The fact that you don't know anyone to ask about a psychic is a clue, though, that you don't have people in your life with whom you discuss and explore that side of life. Again, only you know this. I do have such people in my life.
Interestingly, my own younger sister, who lost her own husband last year, is very skeptical and completely close-minded to the possibility of anything woo-ish. I did not even give her much detail, but I did tell her the dragonfly story, and she affected her usual look of superior disdain, sort of rolled her eyes, and said, "Well, I haven't heard ANYTHING from Bill." Then mumbled something about "people who believe that stuff". And I thought, "Well, you wouldn't ever hear it anyway, would you, since your mind is closed off."
In general, she is a person very rigid and black-and-white in her thinking, and is not very accepting of things outside of the world she thinks she knows. She is resistant to change when presented with anything that does not fit her preconceived beliefs (about people or life, not religion--she is an atheist). I love her, but that is a big difference between us. I am open to more open to possibilities, including the possibility that I might be wrong about something.
Now see. This too is always a little insulting. This explanation having to do with not being "open to it, or not listening/looking." Have you given any thought to what that really means? Are you suggesting I could get on an elevator with someone who vanishes somewhere between floors, and I wouldn't notice? Or that if someone unknown to me came up to me out of nowhere and told me my youngest was a civil engineer in San Francisco and just got into a car accident, and then I found sure enough he was in a car accident, that I wouldn't register such an experience? Not want to know how he could know any of this about my son? Or that I'm not "open" to such a possibility? There are surely other explanations for why I've not had such an experience I think. Before assuming I am in any way not open to them. Why would I not be open to any such possibilities? How could I be? I don't deny anything I have seen or felt or experienced.
It's also not as if I don't have people in my life who have a strong belief in God or who have claimed to have God-like experiences of all variety. My sister often likes to go on about the "synchronicity" of things that happen. Most people I know claim to have some sort of spirituality. I just don't know any that have talked about psychics that I can recall, or that use them that I am aware about. I don't have people in my life who talk about witches either. Or who are conspiracy theorists. Or white supremacists. What sort of clue might this be for anyone?
I am NOT closed-minded as you describe your younger sister. Quite the contrary. No more than I am closed-minded about UFOs. I've just not seen any is all. I've not seen any ghosts either. Does any of this mean I'm closed-minded? I don't think of myself as a "black-and-white" thinker either. This tendency people have to describe people like me in somewhat negative ways for these kinds of reasons is always a little difficult to accept without objection and a good deal of correction about one thing or another.
People who seem "close-minded" about people who haven't necessarily experienced what they claim to have experienced. Not very understanding in any case...
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:
[URL="https://phys.org/news/2023-12-physicists-entangle-individual-molecules-hastening.html"]https://phys.org/news/2023-12-physicists-entangle-individual-molecules-hastening.html[/URL]
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.
This is, in its own way, quite humorous. It is PRECISELY the atheist version of a "God of the gaps" argument: "There are lots of aspects of reality I can't explain, and some of them are puzzlingly suggestive of a designing or guiding intelligence, but I KNOW the explanation will eventually prove to be a materialistic one and that there is nothing supernatural." Uh-huh.
It reminds me of the famous Dawkins quote that biology students and even practicing biologists have to be constantly reminded that even though nature gives an almost overwhelmingly compelling indication of having been designed, "IT WASN'T DESIGNED!!! GET THAT IDEA OUT OF YOUR HEADS!!!" Uh-huh.
I happen to be reading the recently released second edition of The Design Inference by William Dembski. The first edition, now almost 30 years old, was a pioneering work of probability and information theory with far wider application than just the Intelligent Design movement. The second edition is greatly expanded and refined. Dembski makes the point early on that a favorite but misguided attack on the first edition was that inferring design as the best explanation for a body of evidence is an "argument from ignorance" similar to a "God or the gaps" argument.
In fact, Dembski points out, when it comes to evolution it is the Darwinists themselves who play this game. Their god is natural selection. No matter how unlikely probability analysis may indicate it is that some aspect of biology can ever be explained by natural selection, Darwinists insist it eventually will be. It HAS to be, you see, because natural selection is their god. An inference to the best explanation simply can't be allowed if the best explanation is design.
To return to the topic of this thread, and why I believe "signs" such as I and others have described point away from what Cruithne is saying, it is the overarching INTELLIGENCE and PERSONALITY that I find compelling. These aren't just "weird things that happen" in the abstract. Again and again, whether we're talking about complex sequences of events or what I've called "one off" occurrences, we see COMMUNICATION, PURPOSE and even HUMOR. In short, we see every indication of intelligence and personality behind them.
In my long involvement with anomalous phenomena, both as an experiencer and a serious student, I've always been struck by what I and others have called the "trickster" quality. Again and again, as with the experience I described above with Vicki, these experiences are playful and often humorous. They don't happen on demand - in fact, TRYING to have them is entirely counterproductive (and often dangerous). They happen when they will and on their terms. As I believe is true of God Himself, they provide hints and clues rather than answers.
For all the reasons that have contributed to my belief system, I'm satisfied that materialism is COMPLETELY false - pretty much 180 degrees false - and that the ultimate ontological reality is both supernatural and highly personal: a master consciousness, a designer, a creator, a deity.
Likewise humorous to me is Cruithne's statement, "The universe is more amazing without imagining some being came before it and invented it." Well, YEAH. I fully agree that an eternal universe in which matter and consciousness are simply brute facts, which for some mysterious reason operates according to mathematical principles and uniform laws, which has mysteriously generated life and information-based systems such as DNA, which mysteriously gives every indication of having been designed, which mysteriously provides innumerable hints and clues of a creative intelligence interacting with odd creatures who have evolved to a self-aware state and who share an intuitive sense of a higher reality and a creator - well, YEAH, I agree that would be "more amazing" than a God. A supreme intelligence is, however (it seems to me), the best explanation to be inferred from the available evidence.
It's very personal to talk about it. I feel like I lose something doing it. I realized that the relationship with God is very dear and personal. But I can share one instance here.
God responds to devotion. So, some years ago, I started to talk to God. Mentally and at the end of my meditations. I said: "God, please help me to love you." And in time, I changed it to:"I love you, Lord."
One day, I was repeating this mantra over and over in my head with great attention. I drove to JOANN to buy some yarn and when it was time to pay for it, there was something written on the furniture there. At the checkout there, there was a displaying piece of furniture (for merchandise) with something written on it, in pencil, by a child I suppose. I looked closer and it said: "I love you."
This was not there before, I used to go to that shop quite often. Some people might say that this is just a coincidence but I don't believe in coincidences.
I felt very humbled. It was beautiful.
So let's say exactly the same thing happened, except that what was written was a violent obscenity (I have seen such)...would that have been a sign from god?
Let's take for example this news story from a couple of days ago:
[URL="https://phys.org/news/2023-12-physicists-entangle-individual-molecules-hastening.html"]https://phys.org/news/2023-12-physicists-entangle-individual-molecules-hastening.html[/URL]
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?
I didn't comment on this, but I believe it actually adds to my argument. The scientists have not explained quantum entanglement in physical terms. They have merely applied it. What the article is talking about is more in the vein of applied physics than theoretical physics.
From the materials I have read, the phenomenon of entanglement is best understood in terms of information. Here's a recent article from Scientific American that makes the point ("But we now know that quantum information provides the most accurate description of nature, which is written in a language we do not speak."): [url]https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/quantum-entanglement-isnt-all-that-spooky-after-all1/[/url].
Increasingly, it appears that reality is fundamentally information-based. Not exactly good news for materialists.
this man did not care about going to Hell
and he accepted to go to Hell
because he thought that he will die or his skin
will not feel a continuous pain because it would be burn and the cells dead
then he got the sign
Now see. This too is always a little insulting. This explanation having to do with not being "open to it, or not listening/looking." Have you given any thought to what that really means? Are you suggesting I could get on an elevator with someone who vanishes somewhere between floors, and I wouldn't notice? Or that if someone unknown to me came up to me out of nowhere and told me my youngest was a civil engineer in San Francisco and just got into a car accident, and then I found sure enough he was in a car accident, that I wouldn't register such an experience? Not want to know how he could know any of this about my son? Or that I'm not "open" to such a possibility? There are surely other explanations for why I've not had such an experience I think. Before assuming I am in any way not open to them. Why would I not be open to any such possibilities? How could I be? I don't deny anything I have seen or felt or experienced.
That's why I took the time to qualify that statement with it being MY knee-jerk reaction but that this is something I can't really know about you. No, I'm not suggesting ANYTHING except that maybe things do happen to which you haven't paid attention. That's not an insult. In fact, I exactly think that these messages or signs have always been around and that for much of my life I didn't pay attention to them because of my religious upbringing saying it's BAAAAD to pay attention to those things. I didn't allow myself to be open to these things until a therapist suggested that some of my OCD "stuff" may be a backfiring from me not paying attention to my natural intuition (and by the way, that therapist is himself an atheist, and I never discussed woo with him except to untangle some of the damage religion had done to my emotional state and psyche, as part of my getting better).
By the way, Michael Way's disappearing guy didn't vanish between floors. MW and his brother saw the guy enter the elevator car before they got on it, and when they got in, no one else was in the car.
Anyway, I'm glad to know you are open to possibilities. Thanks for making that clear.
Quote:
Originally Posted by LearnMe
It's also not as if I don't have people in my life who have a strong belief in God or who have claimed to have God-like experiences of all variety. My sister often likes to go on about the "synchronicity" of things that happen. Most people I know claim to have some sort of spirituality. I just don't know any that have talked about psychics that I can recall, or that use them that I am aware about. I don't have people in my life who talk about witches either. Or who are conspiracy theorists. Or white supremacists. What sort of clue might this be for anyone?
Geez, you are pretty lucky in some respects. I know WAY TOO MANY conspiracy theorists, including my own brother who tells me I was simply brainwashed and didn't experience what I experienced on 9/11. And that I don't know what I do know. (You might be getting a interesting picture of what life is like with my five still-living siblings...) I am the only one who had any religious affiliation in adulthood. Growing up in the Reformed Church of America was quite the religion-killer. In fact, most of the people I do have such conversations with are, like me, people who were brought up in or otherwise involved in religious pursuits but abandoned belief in traditional religion and/or the Christian God. We tend to think there is something, but what that is, none of us know. Maybe we are all just weirdos attracted to one another on some level.
Or like one of these people, we joke, but still say "hmmm", about having known each other in a past tragedy very similar to the one we got out of on 9/11. We became friends at the WTC when we realized we both had an obsession with the previous historical event. <Twilight Zone Theme>. I still mull about a screenplay based on this.
Quote:
Originally Posted by LearnMe
I am NOT closed-minded as you describe your younger sister. Quite the contrary. No more than I am closed-minded about UFOs. I've just not seen any is all. I've not seen any ghosts either. Does any of this mean I'm closed-minded? I don't think of myself as a "black-and-white" thinker either. This tendency people have to describe people like me in somewhat negative ways for these kinds of reasons is always a little difficult to accept without objection and a good deal of correction about one thing or another.
People who seem "close-minded" about people who haven't necessarily experienced what they claim to have experienced. Not very understanding in any case...
Good to know. But I wasn't ever describing YOU, only my sister. I don't know you well enough to make those statements about you; again, as I stated.
So let's say exactly the same thing happened, except that what was written was a violent obscenity (I have seen such)...would that have been a sign from god?
No, that would have simply been irrelevant to farm108. Duh.
There are, of course, pure coincidences that are nonetheless striking. Carl Jung, however, defined synchronicity as a meaningful coincidence (technically an "acausal connecting principle").
At one time, I was listening to a CD set of Homer's Illiad as I drove the 40-mile commute to and from work. This particular evening, the goddess Athena figured prominently. I got off the freeway and stopped at a Walmart before going home. Almost the instant I stepped through the door, the PA system blared "Athena, please come to customer service, Athena to customer service." Weird - I'd never met anyone named Athena and still haven't. Nevertheless, a pure coincidence with no deeper meaning to me.
Now a genuine incident of synchronicity from my large personal catalogue:
I had been reading the biography of famed American medium Arthur Ford (who may or may not have engaged in fraud as circumstances required). He described a very odd sitting involving a friend named Sherwood Eddy. I had never heard of Eddy and Ford told us nothing about him. The name stuck in my mind because it somehow reminded me of Durward Kirby, the host of the old Candid Camera TV program.
The next morning, my wife (shortly after her diagnosis of breast cancer) and I were driving to a town where I always visited a large used bookstore. On our way, I described the incident with Sherwood Eddy from Ford's book. I even explained why the name had stuck in my head.
At the bookstore, I was browsing in the New Age & Occult section. The shelving units are taller than my head. At about knee-level, a thin book was sticking out about 2" as thought to say "Notice me!" I could see that it looked kind of old, which always interested me more than the modern New Age fluff.
I pulled it out. It was You Will Survive After Death ... by Sherwood Eddy, published in 1950. (It can be downloaded here: [url]https://archive.org/details/youwillsurvive_20190906/page/n1/mode/2up[/url].)
Synchronicity, not coincidence.
As it turns out, Eddy was an influential Christian missionary and administrator who died in 1963. [url]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherwood_Eddy[/url].
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