Do ghosts/spirits exist?
What's really interesting about this question is that you don't need postulate any new physics, or anything else, for that matter, for ghosts to exist, you just have to recognize and accept that fact that the body of science isn't complete. Or, to put it another way, "science doesn't know everything." Just have a look at what we have already: There is "dark matter," something nobody's ever seen or detected, despite over 100 years of looking, yet scientists say makes up over 90% of the universe. You and me included. Also, thanks to quantum mechanics, we have particles that behave like naughty children, doing one thing when you're "watching" and something quite different when you're not. (Double Slit Experiment)
The debate is still raging about what it means that you can change the outcome of a physics experiment simply by observing it. I mean, how do the particles "know" that you are looking at them anyway? Isn't that a case of human minds directly influencing matter, i.e. a "psychic power?" If not, why not?
Getting back to ghosts. What are ghosts? A common definition is that they are some form of consciousness, disconnected from a material body. Millions of people around the world claim to seeing or interacting with spirits every day, so there plenty of empirical evidence that they exist. However, it is all subjective, and there is no, really good, object evidence, so far. (Before you say "Ah ha! If it was there they would have found it by now!" Remember, they have been looking for Dark Matter for 100 years, have not found anything, yet it's still respectable to spend millions of dollars on experiments looking for it.)
Now, before you declare victory for the materialists, consider this: There is no hard, objective, evidence that consciousness exists. Yup, there is a group of respected scientists that believe the consciousness does not exist, and the thing that you call "consciousness" is merely an illusion. (The hard problem of consciousness) Even among those who agree that consciousness exists, nobody knows what it is. Since we can't detect it or measure it in any way, we have no way of knowing if consciousness is dependent on the brain or not. Thus we have the two main models: Brain as Generator and brain as Phone.
Brain as Generator says that the physical brain generates consciousness. Brain as phone says that the physical brain acts like a cell phone, a conduit through which the "spirit" interacts with the physical world. These two models are debated, but the phone model not given much credence. All the evidence that I can find for the Generator point of view, consists of noticing that damaging or stimulating various parts of the brain effect perception and consciousness, and saying that demonstrates that consciousness is created within the brain. On the other hand, is someone out there willing to argue that messing with the inside of your cell phone, so that it doesn't work so well, or not at all, proves that the voices, texts and internet content it displays are generated within the phone? If not, then the Generator model has no evidence at all.
The empirical evidence implies that consciousness survives death and does not need a physical brain to exist. (i.e. "ghosts") But we're not likely to find out more than that anytime soon, because the real question is, why is it considered rational and scientific, to ignore the vast body of empirical evidence, and ridicule anyone who attempts to do serious research in that area, in favor of a position that, admittedly, has no evidence, even anecdotal, to support it's position?
Friday, August 28, 2015
Sunday, August 23, 2015
Asking For Help
I haven’t been writing much lately, I’m finding it hard. My life’s in a bit of turmoil, what with finding a job and all, I just seem to have a hard time focusing. I’ve also been told that, since I’m looking for work, I should back off on the touchy-feeling stuff and focus on technology. I find that a bit hard to do because I just don’t care that much about it. It’s what I have to do for a living, I don’t really want to think about it in my spare time.
I used to think that knowing a lot about tech made me cool or special, in some way, so I forced myself to read a lot of magazines on science and technology so I could “keep up.” It seems that having a bunch of current “technological tidbits” at my fingertips made me feel like I had something to say. Heaven forbid that I actually share something about myself or listen to what the other person had to say. Now I realize that I tended to hang out with people that did the same time as I did, talking only about stuff “out there.” I did it because I was uncomfortable talking about anything else. I didn’t think that my life was interesting and other people’s lives made me jealous, angry or depressed. No wonder I always had dysfunctional relationships.
I am trading sessions with another practitioner this weekend. I was disappointed with my session, I didn’t get to the answers I was hoping for. I did see an interesting “past life:” but wasn’t able to reach the subconscious and get any clear answers to my questions. I’m constantly blocking myself and this truly seems to be a theme of my life.
The “past life” took place on some other planet and I was humanoid, but not human. I was very tall and thin and wore a dark blue, suit-like thing. It resembled a stylized business suit, but I had the impression that it was more than just a covering, that it helped me maintain my shape, in some way. There were a few scenes with parts of the suit removed, and the body seemed like a blob that couldn’t hold it’s shape.
All the scenes took place on a kind of platform, high in the air, that stuck out from the side of some dark, cliff-like thing I that never really got a good look at. These images seemed stylized, almost like colored pencil sketches around the edges. The platform had no straight lines or any consistent curves, it’s outline resembled a stylized flame, with the tip of the flame pointing a way from the cliff. The surface of the platform wasn’t very flat, it was shaped somewhat like a frozen wave. Near the end of the platform was a fairly ordinary upholstered chair, with something like a skeletal end table/lamp nearby.
I saw most of this from the outside. It’s like there were two somebodies: One doing the stuff and me watching. We both looked the same, though it seemed that I was larger. It seemed that I was both watching and being the other being. I could feel what he was feeling and know what he was thinking, but partially from the inside and mostly from the outside. Hey, I was beside myself!
At first, I was standing near the base of the platform, looking out at the chair, and past that into a hazy-cloudy vastness. I/he went and sat in the chair. He could control what he was seeing out beyond the platform. I don’t know how, there were no controls of any sort, I knew that he could. He was looking at rolling agricultural fields with scattered houses. He had some kind of job to do that partially related to the weather.
My memory is a bit fuzzy here, but there was a scene where he was sitting on the edge of the platform, dangling his legs over the edge, and watching thick, billowy, clouds. There was no sky visible, just clouds, ranging from light gray to dark.
The final scene had fire. I couldn’t see much more than an angry glow and a few glimpses of bright flame, the smoke was too thick. He was on the edge of the platform, watching, feeling remotely sad and like a failure. He was feeling like he’d had one purpose and he’d blown it, but the feelings weren’t all that strong. But still, there was a feeling of emptiness, and pointlessness to it all.
I disappointed with the rest of the session. I couldn’t get a purpose or a lesson from that life, and the subconscious wouldn’t come through. Looking at it now, I’m a little surprised that the lesson has nothing to do with failure, but revolves around being alone, and doing “it” all by myself, Never asking for help, reluctantly accepting help or assistance, no matter how much I need it, and believing that I’m “not good enough” unless I can do it all by myself. Wow. Never really brought that into focus before. I’m going to have to ponder that and see what comes out of it.
In a few months I will be living alone, for the first time in my life, if roommates count. Clearly a new experience. In a way, I’m already living it now. Knowing it’s coming is already putting me in that space. Now I get the feeling that a bad relationship is better than being alone. I hope this will pass soon. I don’t need to feel isolated, it’s just that the reality’s sunk in and it’s going to take some time to get used to. Having a job will help to give me some sense of purpose and a sense of self worth. Transitions are always hard, no matter how positive they eventually turn out to be. I’ve heard about this stuff forever, but this is the first time I’ve been self-aware enough to see what’s happening as I’m going through it.
The past two years have been good preparation. I’ve been finding new interests and making new friends, getting out and doing stuff. I used to be such a homebody. Now I won’t be stuck by myself 24/7, but I’m going to have to make some choices soon, as my current path is not sustainable. Once I find my new direction, I will probably have to rearrange, or give up, some things that I like. I suppose that’s a good thing, that there are enough good things in my life that I don’t have room for all of them at once, but it’s more change.
Perhaps I should truly take the lesson of that “past” life to heart: Ask for help, accept help, accept assistance in small ways and large ones. I have this thing about not being a bother, I don’t want to annoy anyone, that asking to hang out or something, is being a stalker, or weird, or just plain awkward. Now I get to spend the next period of my life figuring out how all that works. It could be worse: It could be raining.
Wednesday, August 19, 2015
Paracon 2015, Part 2 - Impressions
Some more thoughts on the Grey Ghost Paracon aboard the USS Hornet. This is the just the second time I’ve been to a “haunted” place since I’ve come out of the closet about the paranormal, both to myself and to world at large, and allowed myself to notice and feel whatever there was without discounting it. The evening “investigation” tours took all the attendees, in small groups, to many of the shipboard hot spots. My group was led by a woman who was an intuitive, and was a member of an investigation team that is based on on the Hornet. She had many personal stories to tell, which I find more interesting than the second hand ones.
The first stop was CIC. Though somewhat technically interesting, it was also hot and stuffy. I felt there was zippo activity there and the tech people got nothing as well. I the next stop was a Ready room, I think. This was the most interesting for me. There I had impressions of two people, one in the hall, outside the room, and one inside the room. It also seemed to me that these entities were less than full-fledged personalities, they just seemed two-dimensional, somehow. Perhaps these were what are called “residuals,” more like recordings than spirits.
The one in the all seemed to me to be a cook. He was sweaty and dirty and a little angry about something. He was stuck in the hall because he wasn’t allowed in the room, officer country, maybe? The other person was at the other end of the room from me. He was wearing a flight jacket, but he wasn’t a pilot. It took a while to sort out the impressions, but finally I realized that he was dressed more like a WWII Army pilot, not navy. He was extremely angry about something “she” had done.
The tech seemed to react more here than anywhere else. Near the end of our allotted time, I felt both impressions leave. A little while later the guide suggested that we move on, and I spoke up, for the only time on this tour, to vote yay because the entries had all left.
The next notable spot was one of the emergency generator rooms. The guide had a great story about what she, and others, had seen and felt in this room. All the interesting stuff happened on one place, but I couldn’t see where that was, because of the dark and all the people and equipment blocking my view. After she finished her talk and had answered questions. I wondered about the general area and got strong chills in one, particular, spot. I don’t know if that was “the” spot or not. (I’m not too worried about being “right” these days, I just want to experience what I can.)
Sick bay was the last interesting spot. This consists of a suit of rooms including offices, and a variety of examining, operating, testing and treatment rooms. It was interesting because of all the equipment and other details of the era, and because of a general feeling of the place. I had strong chills when I first looked into the entrance, and occasional “bumps” in various places.
I have now accumulated several first-hand accounts of ghost encounters aboard this ship. Most of them seemed perfectly ordinary, except that the “person” vanished, inexplicably. They happen to people alone in the dark, and on the hanger deck, in broad daylight, with hundreds of people present. Most often the ghost was seen by only one person, but sometimes more than one. I can’t help but wonder if many more people see these things, but just never realize it. I mean, how would they? If you saw a “sailor” on a ship with lots of veterans and others wearing various kinds of uniforms, would you notice?
This is an idea that has been forming in my head for a while. If the paranormal exists, then it’s part of nature and it’s happening all the time, all around us, the effects are just too subtle to notice, as a rule. On the other hand, we don’t want to notice this stuff, so it’s easy to edit it out of our experience. We chalk it up to inattention, confusion, wishful thinking or coincidence. Many great scientific discoveries have been the result of someone noticing a series of anomalous events, errors, odd things that were considered not worth explaining, and “connected the dots” to realize that there was a pattern here that said something new about the world.
Right now, the whole paranormal/psychic phenomena area is a mishmash of weird stories and scientific data points. All very confusing and mostly anecdotal, with no clear rules to sort the wheat from the chaff. By far, most investigators and ghost hunters are out to find cool stuff, so that have a good story to tell. It’s not really about advancing understanding, which really isn’t too surprising. I guess we are still waiting for a Newton or Einstein who makes the one, critical, observation that begins to make sense of it all.
The first stop was CIC. Though somewhat technically interesting, it was also hot and stuffy. I felt there was zippo activity there and the tech people got nothing as well. I the next stop was a Ready room, I think. This was the most interesting for me. There I had impressions of two people, one in the hall, outside the room, and one inside the room. It also seemed to me that these entities were less than full-fledged personalities, they just seemed two-dimensional, somehow. Perhaps these were what are called “residuals,” more like recordings than spirits.
The one in the all seemed to me to be a cook. He was sweaty and dirty and a little angry about something. He was stuck in the hall because he wasn’t allowed in the room, officer country, maybe? The other person was at the other end of the room from me. He was wearing a flight jacket, but he wasn’t a pilot. It took a while to sort out the impressions, but finally I realized that he was dressed more like a WWII Army pilot, not navy. He was extremely angry about something “she” had done.
The tech seemed to react more here than anywhere else. Near the end of our allotted time, I felt both impressions leave. A little while later the guide suggested that we move on, and I spoke up, for the only time on this tour, to vote yay because the entries had all left.
The next notable spot was one of the emergency generator rooms. The guide had a great story about what she, and others, had seen and felt in this room. All the interesting stuff happened on one place, but I couldn’t see where that was, because of the dark and all the people and equipment blocking my view. After she finished her talk and had answered questions. I wondered about the general area and got strong chills in one, particular, spot. I don’t know if that was “the” spot or not. (I’m not too worried about being “right” these days, I just want to experience what I can.)
Sick bay was the last interesting spot. This consists of a suit of rooms including offices, and a variety of examining, operating, testing and treatment rooms. It was interesting because of all the equipment and other details of the era, and because of a general feeling of the place. I had strong chills when I first looked into the entrance, and occasional “bumps” in various places.
I have now accumulated several first-hand accounts of ghost encounters aboard this ship. Most of them seemed perfectly ordinary, except that the “person” vanished, inexplicably. They happen to people alone in the dark, and on the hanger deck, in broad daylight, with hundreds of people present. Most often the ghost was seen by only one person, but sometimes more than one. I can’t help but wonder if many more people see these things, but just never realize it. I mean, how would they? If you saw a “sailor” on a ship with lots of veterans and others wearing various kinds of uniforms, would you notice?
This is an idea that has been forming in my head for a while. If the paranormal exists, then it’s part of nature and it’s happening all the time, all around us, the effects are just too subtle to notice, as a rule. On the other hand, we don’t want to notice this stuff, so it’s easy to edit it out of our experience. We chalk it up to inattention, confusion, wishful thinking or coincidence. Many great scientific discoveries have been the result of someone noticing a series of anomalous events, errors, odd things that were considered not worth explaining, and “connected the dots” to realize that there was a pattern here that said something new about the world.
Right now, the whole paranormal/psychic phenomena area is a mishmash of weird stories and scientific data points. All very confusing and mostly anecdotal, with no clear rules to sort the wheat from the chaff. By far, most investigators and ghost hunters are out to find cool stuff, so that have a good story to tell. It’s not really about advancing understanding, which really isn’t too surprising. I guess we are still waiting for a Newton or Einstein who makes the one, critical, observation that begins to make sense of it all.
Friday, August 14, 2015
A Wonderful Freedom
I had a client recently that was very attractive, and, in a way, I kinda didn’t notice. Well, I noted it but I didn’t feel any response, and that struck me as odd. She certainly seemed pleasant enough, but there was absolutely no reaction inside me to her prettiest smile.
Another practitioner mentioned something like this, in passing, a while back. She had noticed that, as she worked her way up the “spiritual ladder” so to speak, she reacted less and less to the world around her, and people thought her cold. I am also beginning to notice something like that, but I would amend it to say that I react less and less out of habit, and to things I don’t care to react to. But in areas that matter to me, I feel more deeply, and more profoundly than ever before.
I think it’s a matter of removing all the triggers and habits, and “ought toos,” so that I’m free to care about only what matters to me. And it’s a matter of being comfortable with who I am, knowing what I’m about, what I am and am not, so I don’t get all flustered and flattered when a pretty girl smiles at me. It’s kind of nice to realize that I’ve reached a level of maturity where my ego doesn’t run around like a hyper-active dog, humping everything in sight, unable to resist any sign of approval, from anyone.
The downside is that some people may consider me unfeeling, or think that I just don’t care. And that’s ok. I’ve also learned that if I want people to know what I’m committed to, I tell them. If people can’t get that it’s possible to be passionately committed to something, without all the desk-pounding, hyperbolic, over-heated rhetoric, that stands in for intelligent discussion these days, then that’s ok with me. People either get me or they don’t, and since I have no control over how people’s beliefs will cause them interpret me, I no longer worry too much about it. Not needing the approval of the masses is a wonderful freedom.
Monday, August 10, 2015
My visit to Grey Ghost Paracon 2015, Part I.
A Paranormal convention. This was something that wasn’t even on my radar six months ago, and here I was a vender at one. I honestly don’t know what to expect, so I guess then it’s hard to be disappointed. This convention took place on the aircraft carrier Hornet, in Alameda, California. Originally commissioned in 1943, the Hornet served from WWII through the Apollo program, and was decommissioned in 1970. This ship saw a lot of action and is famous for being haunted.
I had never been there before, so I didn’t know what to expect. I really didn’t have much time to indulge my interest in the ship itself, so I’m going to have to go back there sometime when I have the time to look everything over and go on the tours. I had first heard about the convention through a couple I had met through my MeetUp group on reincarnation. They had worked on the ship, and so I was able to hang with them and other docents at meal times, got a little peak behind-the-scenes and some of the inside dope on some of what goes on there.
The convention started with the usual stuff, vender tables and presenters giving talks for about two hours, then dinner, and then we were all divided up into “investigation” teams, each with a couple of guides, that toured the ship’s hot spots. After these tours were finished, about 1:30 am, people were free to wander the open areas until 3. I quit at the end of the tour. I was really tired and had seen enough.
During vender time, I set up a table for my services and immediately started learning. The first thing I noticed, is that everybody else had a banner that they hung from the front of there table. I didn’t. Next time I’m going to have to look into that. The other thing I got, was that almost nobody seemed to understand what I was all about. I suppose that I assumed that people really into ghost hunting and the paranormal would, at least, know about releasing spirits and de-possession, but apparently not. Or they only were acquainted with it in a peripheral sort of way, it really didn’t have anything to do with what they were interested in. In fact, the whole concept of de-haunting might actually piss them off a bit, I mean, they’re into investigation, if we clean out the haunted places they’ll have nothing to do.
It seemed like a lot of the conventioneers were from various investigation groups. Now that I think of it, I should have spent more time talking to the different groups and finding out what they did. What little it did pick up showed me that there are many different approaches and goals for these groups. Who knew that there were so many? There was also a group with t-shirt messages I won’t repeat here; Any convention attracts all kinds, I suppose.
I haven’t watched too many ghost shows. I have seen some, but they didn’t prepare me for what I ran into at this con. I really hadn’t realized how much the paranormal world was divided into Sensitives and Techs. (I made up these names, but the division is quite real.) The TV shows I’ve seen give short-shift to the sensitives. (Probably because there’s not much to see there.) There is also a third category, the pure scientist, who is less interested in ghost hunting, per se, and is focused on parapsychology and the science behind the whole phenomenon. I only saw one person in this last group, who I’d already seen at HCH Institute, where he teaches classes. The Sensitives tend to focus on developing their intuition, and so don’t pay much attention to the tech, and the Techs seem to pay little attention to their senses, so the groups seem to have an uneasy partnership, each not really sure what to make of the other.
It seems logical that there should be crossovers, intuitives that also know their tech, but I didn’t meet any. One of the presenters was a fellow that apparently has created and built most of the devices that are out there now. He makes his living selling these devices and doesn’t really have anything to say about whether ghosts exist or not. He just builds stuff that people like and looks good on TV shows. At least, that’s what he says.
For me, this raises a question. I’m capable of building whatever hardware might interest me, but I’m also an intuitive. I find it easier and more interesting to depend on my senses than to depend on a bunch of cranky and clumsy devices to detect and communicate. On the other hand, tech is completely objective and creates a record, so there is that to consider. But, what would happen if the engineers and intuitives got together and built devices that detected what the intuitives felt? I have read up on the tech, to some extent, and it seems that most of it is based on the idea of looking at random signals or input and looking for non-randomness, that is then translated into output. Presumably, the spirits are able to influence the random signals in order to communicate. What if you, instead, searched for things that are sensitive to psychic energy in the same way that other instruments are sensitive to light, heat, x-rays, ultra-violet light and other forms of radiation?
One of these days I’m going to have to seriously sit down and consider this whole idea. It seems to me that all the people building tech are not sensitive, so they have no way to reality-check their ideas. It’s like blind people trying to design and build a camera. How do you develop the science and technology of optics for lenses, for example, if you can’t see? My theory is, that any device or detector that you can buy, has already been de-sensitized to the paranormal as much as possible. Because these influences are pretty much everywhere, all the time, it’s just that most people don’t notice them, except when they’re unusually strong, or they’re unusually open to it.
My idea, if anyone wants to fund it, is to investigate sensors and circuits and devices of all kinds that are generally avoided because they “don’t work right,” or exhibit, seemingly, random behavior at times, to see if any of them react to the paranormal things that I can sense. It’s like when scientists that stumbled across x-rays, and had to figure out how to image and control this new form of energy that nobody had ever seen before. I’m sure that there are methods of objectively detecting paranormal “energies,” for lack of a better tern, but these methods have all been discarded by technologists because they appear to be unstable and unreliable by people who didn’t recognize what they are actually responding to. If anyone wants to fund this, let me know. ;)
Paracon: To be continued. There’s lots more to talk about.
I had never been there before, so I didn’t know what to expect. I really didn’t have much time to indulge my interest in the ship itself, so I’m going to have to go back there sometime when I have the time to look everything over and go on the tours. I had first heard about the convention through a couple I had met through my MeetUp group on reincarnation. They had worked on the ship, and so I was able to hang with them and other docents at meal times, got a little peak behind-the-scenes and some of the inside dope on some of what goes on there.
The convention started with the usual stuff, vender tables and presenters giving talks for about two hours, then dinner, and then we were all divided up into “investigation” teams, each with a couple of guides, that toured the ship’s hot spots. After these tours were finished, about 1:30 am, people were free to wander the open areas until 3. I quit at the end of the tour. I was really tired and had seen enough.
During vender time, I set up a table for my services and immediately started learning. The first thing I noticed, is that everybody else had a banner that they hung from the front of there table. I didn’t. Next time I’m going to have to look into that. The other thing I got, was that almost nobody seemed to understand what I was all about. I suppose that I assumed that people really into ghost hunting and the paranormal would, at least, know about releasing spirits and de-possession, but apparently not. Or they only were acquainted with it in a peripheral sort of way, it really didn’t have anything to do with what they were interested in. In fact, the whole concept of de-haunting might actually piss them off a bit, I mean, they’re into investigation, if we clean out the haunted places they’ll have nothing to do.
It seemed like a lot of the conventioneers were from various investigation groups. Now that I think of it, I should have spent more time talking to the different groups and finding out what they did. What little it did pick up showed me that there are many different approaches and goals for these groups. Who knew that there were so many? There was also a group with t-shirt messages I won’t repeat here; Any convention attracts all kinds, I suppose.
I haven’t watched too many ghost shows. I have seen some, but they didn’t prepare me for what I ran into at this con. I really hadn’t realized how much the paranormal world was divided into Sensitives and Techs. (I made up these names, but the division is quite real.) The TV shows I’ve seen give short-shift to the sensitives. (Probably because there’s not much to see there.) There is also a third category, the pure scientist, who is less interested in ghost hunting, per se, and is focused on parapsychology and the science behind the whole phenomenon. I only saw one person in this last group, who I’d already seen at HCH Institute, where he teaches classes. The Sensitives tend to focus on developing their intuition, and so don’t pay much attention to the tech, and the Techs seem to pay little attention to their senses, so the groups seem to have an uneasy partnership, each not really sure what to make of the other.
It seems logical that there should be crossovers, intuitives that also know their tech, but I didn’t meet any. One of the presenters was a fellow that apparently has created and built most of the devices that are out there now. He makes his living selling these devices and doesn’t really have anything to say about whether ghosts exist or not. He just builds stuff that people like and looks good on TV shows. At least, that’s what he says.
For me, this raises a question. I’m capable of building whatever hardware might interest me, but I’m also an intuitive. I find it easier and more interesting to depend on my senses than to depend on a bunch of cranky and clumsy devices to detect and communicate. On the other hand, tech is completely objective and creates a record, so there is that to consider. But, what would happen if the engineers and intuitives got together and built devices that detected what the intuitives felt? I have read up on the tech, to some extent, and it seems that most of it is based on the idea of looking at random signals or input and looking for non-randomness, that is then translated into output. Presumably, the spirits are able to influence the random signals in order to communicate. What if you, instead, searched for things that are sensitive to psychic energy in the same way that other instruments are sensitive to light, heat, x-rays, ultra-violet light and other forms of radiation?
One of these days I’m going to have to seriously sit down and consider this whole idea. It seems to me that all the people building tech are not sensitive, so they have no way to reality-check their ideas. It’s like blind people trying to design and build a camera. How do you develop the science and technology of optics for lenses, for example, if you can’t see? My theory is, that any device or detector that you can buy, has already been de-sensitized to the paranormal as much as possible. Because these influences are pretty much everywhere, all the time, it’s just that most people don’t notice them, except when they’re unusually strong, or they’re unusually open to it.
My idea, if anyone wants to fund it, is to investigate sensors and circuits and devices of all kinds that are generally avoided because they “don’t work right,” or exhibit, seemingly, random behavior at times, to see if any of them react to the paranormal things that I can sense. It’s like when scientists that stumbled across x-rays, and had to figure out how to image and control this new form of energy that nobody had ever seen before. I’m sure that there are methods of objectively detecting paranormal “energies,” for lack of a better tern, but these methods have all been discarded by technologists because they appear to be unstable and unreliable by people who didn’t recognize what they are actually responding to. If anyone wants to fund this, let me know. ;)
Paracon: To be continued. There’s lots more to talk about.
Monday, August 3, 2015
How Deep the Rabbit Hole?
Yesterday I had a massive anxiety attack in a social situation. I’ve had the feeling before, and I’ve been in similar situations before. Sometime they trigger it, sometimes they don’t, but this time it was unusually strong. I knew the situation was coming up, and I also noticed the feeling beginning to rise. I decided to go through with it anyway and put as brave a face on it as I could; no reason to be weird in front of my friends.
Anxiety seems like such a trivial word for such a powerful emotion. It seems like there should be some great and impressive name for the feeling that can sometimes cripple me in certain situations, but, as far as I can tell, there isn’t. There’s just this unnamed emotion that sucks all the enjoyment out some social situation. I hope that some people didn’t feel avoided. I did the best I could, but I when I reached a certain point, I just had to take off or, I don’t know. I really don’t know what would happen if I just let it all out right there. In a way, it’s just a huge feeling of dread and the only solution is to get away.
As I said, I’ve been through this before. In the past I just stuffed it down or ran away, depending on how strong it was that time. This time, I decided to follow my own advice and find and remove the beliefs that, I assume, underlie this emotion. And I was in for a surprise.
I kept the feeling present all the way home. It appears that it was time for this emotion to go, because, unlike most times in the past, it was fairly easy to keep it present until I had time to work on it, and I dawdled quite a while before I got around to it. Today I’m facing my own duplicity in the fact that, although I knew what to do and how to do it, I was still extremely reluctant to face and deal with these emotions. In the back of my mind, I tend to fault others for not dealing with the emotions that are clearly making a mess of their lives, and here I was doing the same thing! Reality Check!
Yes I did get around to processing these emotions, and, fortunately, they were still easy to get present to. So I dived in. It only took a little while to figure out that the core belief I was up against was “I’m worthless.” It seems that all the similar beliefs around it had already been cleared, but I seemed to have missed this one. The processing was fairly textbook, though a bit tedious. One of the drawbacks of working on yourself is the tendency for your mind to wander. The more powerful the emotion, the greater the tendency to “forget” what you’re doing. I had to pull myself back on course more times than I can count. When you’re working with someone, they can help keep you focused.
In a way, it’s a relief to be able to depend on someone else. On the other hand, though, you have to tell them all those secrets that you trouble facing inside your own head. And also, it seems to me that sometimes having to articulate my emotions, and explain what’s going on to a coach, can sometimes get in the way of we’re trying to accomplish. I guess in any aspect of health, you just have to take responsibility for yourself, because you can’t expect that someone will always be there to take care of you.
So, I finally made it to the bottom and there got my surprise. There I was at the bottom, and all the emotional charge was completely flattened, and the belief was still there. That was something I hadn’t seen on a long time! Usually, once the charge is completely gone, the belief disappears without any further effort. Not this time.
When I was first taught to remove or “pull” beliefs, we always to go through a lengthy process for each one, and emotional charge was not addressed. Looking back on it, it seems rather odd, for the charge often got in the way. Now I’m sure that no belief can be released without removing the charge that holds it in place, but, at the time, we simply didn’t consider it. For that past couple of years, I’ve been secretly patting myself on the back because I’d noticed that I didn’t seem to have to “pull” things anymore, all I had to do was clear the emotions and they vanished on their own. I was thinking that was a sign of my advancement!
Ah well. Today the reality I’d been ignoring is pretty clear, and the mechanics of how beliefs work are, once again, present to me. “Beliefs,” whatever they actually are, come in two flavors. One type, a core type, just is, in a manner of speaking. It seems to always accumulate emotional charge, but it’s not dependent on it. It always must be explicitly released, but it won’t actually disappear until all the it’s charge has drained off. In the old days, we would struggle with releasing beliefs, trying various techniques and approaching the process from different angles, until it finally went. At the time, we didn’t get that we were, indirectly, draining off the charge through all our fiddling.
The second type of belief, is dependent on a core belief. It also contains charge, but it needs to be anchored by a related core belief in order to exist. These dependent beliefs are easy to release, you often only have to look at them sidewise and they go. But they will return, if you don’t deal with the core belief that they are related to. Once you release a core belief, all the beliefs dependent on it become “free floating” in a way, and will often release spontaneously, as soon as they are triggered by something in the environment. If not, a few seconds of focused concentration will do the trick.
I hadn’t come across a core belief in a long time. They tend to be well protected and hard to locate. They disguise themselves so well that we accept them, without question, as “just the way it is.” The most difficult skill I’ve had to learn, in the process I’m calling “enlightenment,” is distinguishing the patchwork of beliefs that make up this thing that I call “reality.” I am coming around to understand that the world you experience is a product of your personal beliefs. Even the most hardened materialist accepts that how you perceive the world is effected by how you feel, and how you feel is determined by your beliefs. But how far does this go, how much does perception create your personal reality?
How much of reality is “fundamental” and how much is a construct of your perceptions? I still don’t know; I’ve been digging for years and still haven’t reached the bottom. How deep does this rabbit hole go?
Anxiety seems like such a trivial word for such a powerful emotion. It seems like there should be some great and impressive name for the feeling that can sometimes cripple me in certain situations, but, as far as I can tell, there isn’t. There’s just this unnamed emotion that sucks all the enjoyment out some social situation. I hope that some people didn’t feel avoided. I did the best I could, but I when I reached a certain point, I just had to take off or, I don’t know. I really don’t know what would happen if I just let it all out right there. In a way, it’s just a huge feeling of dread and the only solution is to get away.
As I said, I’ve been through this before. In the past I just stuffed it down or ran away, depending on how strong it was that time. This time, I decided to follow my own advice and find and remove the beliefs that, I assume, underlie this emotion. And I was in for a surprise.
I kept the feeling present all the way home. It appears that it was time for this emotion to go, because, unlike most times in the past, it was fairly easy to keep it present until I had time to work on it, and I dawdled quite a while before I got around to it. Today I’m facing my own duplicity in the fact that, although I knew what to do and how to do it, I was still extremely reluctant to face and deal with these emotions. In the back of my mind, I tend to fault others for not dealing with the emotions that are clearly making a mess of their lives, and here I was doing the same thing! Reality Check!
Yes I did get around to processing these emotions, and, fortunately, they were still easy to get present to. So I dived in. It only took a little while to figure out that the core belief I was up against was “I’m worthless.” It seems that all the similar beliefs around it had already been cleared, but I seemed to have missed this one. The processing was fairly textbook, though a bit tedious. One of the drawbacks of working on yourself is the tendency for your mind to wander. The more powerful the emotion, the greater the tendency to “forget” what you’re doing. I had to pull myself back on course more times than I can count. When you’re working with someone, they can help keep you focused.
In a way, it’s a relief to be able to depend on someone else. On the other hand, though, you have to tell them all those secrets that you trouble facing inside your own head. And also, it seems to me that sometimes having to articulate my emotions, and explain what’s going on to a coach, can sometimes get in the way of we’re trying to accomplish. I guess in any aspect of health, you just have to take responsibility for yourself, because you can’t expect that someone will always be there to take care of you.
So, I finally made it to the bottom and there got my surprise. There I was at the bottom, and all the emotional charge was completely flattened, and the belief was still there. That was something I hadn’t seen on a long time! Usually, once the charge is completely gone, the belief disappears without any further effort. Not this time.
When I was first taught to remove or “pull” beliefs, we always to go through a lengthy process for each one, and emotional charge was not addressed. Looking back on it, it seems rather odd, for the charge often got in the way. Now I’m sure that no belief can be released without removing the charge that holds it in place, but, at the time, we simply didn’t consider it. For that past couple of years, I’ve been secretly patting myself on the back because I’d noticed that I didn’t seem to have to “pull” things anymore, all I had to do was clear the emotions and they vanished on their own. I was thinking that was a sign of my advancement!
Ah well. Today the reality I’d been ignoring is pretty clear, and the mechanics of how beliefs work are, once again, present to me. “Beliefs,” whatever they actually are, come in two flavors. One type, a core type, just is, in a manner of speaking. It seems to always accumulate emotional charge, but it’s not dependent on it. It always must be explicitly released, but it won’t actually disappear until all the it’s charge has drained off. In the old days, we would struggle with releasing beliefs, trying various techniques and approaching the process from different angles, until it finally went. At the time, we didn’t get that we were, indirectly, draining off the charge through all our fiddling.
The second type of belief, is dependent on a core belief. It also contains charge, but it needs to be anchored by a related core belief in order to exist. These dependent beliefs are easy to release, you often only have to look at them sidewise and they go. But they will return, if you don’t deal with the core belief that they are related to. Once you release a core belief, all the beliefs dependent on it become “free floating” in a way, and will often release spontaneously, as soon as they are triggered by something in the environment. If not, a few seconds of focused concentration will do the trick.
I hadn’t come across a core belief in a long time. They tend to be well protected and hard to locate. They disguise themselves so well that we accept them, without question, as “just the way it is.” The most difficult skill I’ve had to learn, in the process I’m calling “enlightenment,” is distinguishing the patchwork of beliefs that make up this thing that I call “reality.” I am coming around to understand that the world you experience is a product of your personal beliefs. Even the most hardened materialist accepts that how you perceive the world is effected by how you feel, and how you feel is determined by your beliefs. But how far does this go, how much does perception create your personal reality?
How much of reality is “fundamental” and how much is a construct of your perceptions? I still don’t know; I’ve been digging for years and still haven’t reached the bottom. How deep does this rabbit hole go?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)