Webdiary - Founded and Inspired by Margo Kingston |
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Leap of faith
Today I told my father the times over the last two days that he woke up. We live a kilometre apart. When he's on the go it's an alarm clock in my head, and most Webdiarists know I'm not a natural 6 or 6.45 a.m. riser. At certain times as soon as he's awake and motivated I'm bolt upright in bed.
Another useless ability is knowing when people and animals are about to die. There's bugger-all you can do except try to be there. Convincing people of the imminence is useless, as they won't believe you till after the death.
Do I consider this stuff extraordinary? No. I consider it extraordinary that mental links between people aren't considered a natural part of life.
I play games with my daughter, with her full consent. Nothing like flashcard stuff, but, say, walking down the street visualising a sausage roll till she says she feels like one, and letting her know she's read my mind. She has since taught me to keep my mind closed from her when necessary.
One more. Gave myself a bad haircut last week, the coldest in Adelaide for donkey's years. Looked at scarves in shops and on people (nice to see them back "in fashion") and rekindled my fantasies from the Tom Baker Doctor Who era of owning a really long patchwork scarf. I'm wearing a luvverly cashmere from Lost Property tonight, though will have to return it to its owner on Friday. So much for visualisation. Mind you, the karma's ok.
Why should any religion hold copyright on the intertwining aspects of human nature? Why should abilities that are disciplined and learned through the focus on a deity be disregarded (or worse) if they aren't developed or practiced as part of a "sanctioned" doctrine? There's lots of things people do that are regarded as inexplicable, and yet in our temples we're required to take a "leap of faith." Why can't we take the leap without the theology?
Can you have a saint without a god? In my beliefs, yes. If the individual believes in him or herself and enough people focus their energies into that person, Christ knows (perhaps literally) what might be possible. The copyright religion has taken on utilisation of mind power is a really simple cash-cow. Unfortunately, it's to the detriment of humanity. How are we going to know what we can do if we don't believe it's possible to do it under our own steam?
Sorry if this sounds like pontificating. I have as much right as anybody else.
Disclosure: The writer wears a pentacle on one hand, a yin-yang on the other, and has a cat named Merlin. Mind you, the last one was a Tom named Britney Spears.
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Unexplained power and obsessions
F Kendall, yes, Daniel Dunglas Home (pronounced Hume) was one of our mob, though David Hume the incomprehensible philosopher is closer to our line. Yet I think I have more in common with the former. Many events in my life about which I had a premonition or forewarning about have come to pass. It did not matter if it was about something benign, like knowing beforehand where a cow that was lost would be found, and that I could say that she would be found with a dead white bull calf at her feet. My brother always acted on my "knowledge" and never once was I wrong. I think I saved him a lot of time over the years.
But there was one time when I wish my premonition had not come to fruition. It did and broke the family into a million pieces from that day on. But I won't revisit all that.
I hate the sound of an ambulance. I can well understand your reaction.
For me the obsession was reading number plates of cars as they pass. I have done that since the age of ten. I know why I do it, but that is best left untold. I do it a lot less nowadays. Too blind to read them till the car is almost on top of me, I suspect. Could be useful if I ever witness a crime, I suppose.
As forDaniel Home
But there were plenty of preachers in the family to hold the family forts over the centuries.
Only if you dare
Richard, first let me say that you are a very brave, or a very foolish, man!
You touch on area which I walked away from repeatedly until sometime in my early to mid twenties.
In my late teens I worked with an engineering friend of mine on gun actions. You have undoubtedly seen the computer programs that ‘run’ a model of a machine so that you can see all the moving parts. I used to do it in my head and when I saw the problem my friend would say, ‘that’s it’, and we would go out to the workshop and he would make the necessary adjustment/modification
That is without any discussion whatever.
Came crashing back when in my early thirties, I returned toSydney
Anaesthetist refused point blank to have anything to do with putting me under, because of the breathing problem, so I convinced the specialist that we could do it with self-hypnosis. We did.
It has nothing to do with religion, at least from my perspective, but for me it was a dangerous place to go. I like me as I am, but it would have been so easy to very different and at close to seventy flashes of ‘it’ still surface and the effect upon people is still as it used to be.
If you can use it gently, and without harming anyone, enjoy it.
Supernature
Of course Richard, I'd forgotten you're a relative "babe" (in Fiona's words.) Lyall Watson wrote an excellent work on para-normality over thirty years ago.
I've just discovered he died last month.
Personally I've had experiences of telepathy; in my younger days I transmitted very strongly (and incidentally, it got me into trouble with a young lady on two occasions, you try explaining you were only having a joke with yourself).
I've only been a recipient once and with someone I wasn't remotely close to.
Solid Catholic family mother and did it freak her out.
Interesting, Richard
I think many people have had the sensation that someone is looking at them, and turned to find that this is so....and find it unremarkable. A commonplace example of your experiences, Richard?
I understand that such as MRI imaging are giving more credence and understanding to such. For example,"Brain imaging studies reveal that when we answer the question, 'How are you feeling?' we activate much of the same neural circuitry that lights up when we ask, 'How is she feeling?' The brain acts almost identically when we sense our own feelings and those of another." (Daniel Goleman: "Social Intelligence: The New Science of Social Relationships" ).
Now, I don't see a need to connect the experiences you mentioned with religion at all. I think that they are aspects of human ability that have been ignored or denied, or falsified - a great area for quacks - but that are coming out of the shadows.
As for saints: I was taught that anyone who made it into heaven was a saint. Those recognised here as such are because their miracles prove that they are there. But, it also means that if your ancestors were at all good kinds of people, then you may as well pray to them for aid. Well, the Chinese have believed that for centuries, haven't they?
Mind you, I also think that there are dimensions beyond what you are speaking of, where I wouldn't want to go.
Where you wouldn't want to go
F Kendall, where's that? Definitions of reality and time? Mental abilities to influence flow of events (have read of experiments at quantum levels), deities been anthropomorphic gestalt manifestations of colective unconscious, the dead walking the earth?
Daughter proposed to me the other day the concept that past, present and future were occuring simultaneously. We may have to lay off the Doctor Who for a while. Then again, she could be right. Thought it was interesting thinking for a nine-year-old though... think she's been rummaging in my head again.
Is somewhere in there what you speak of?
Anthropomorphism
Richard, your reference to Dr Who and your nine year old daughter reminded me of something that happened many years ago, when the original Dr Who was on.
I forget, but I think I must have been baby sitting. I was on a chair, and the two little kids were on the floor; we were watching Dr Who. It was a favourite of theirs. Aliens appeared on the scene — they must have been enemies; because one of the good guys zapped them with some kind of ray gun. The aliens collapsed to the ground, writhed around a bit, and turned into blobs of goo, which reduced to piles of ash.
I said "Bloody hell," or something similar. This sort of stuff was what kids were supposed to watch? Give me Aunty Jack any day.
The eldest of the two, about eight or nine, turned to me and said, sounding like a mother reassuring a traumatised child: "I think they're bionic."
One of those magic moments that stays with one forever.