Category Archives: Mind
Out of the mouth of babes
I have struggled so much in my life with relating to others that I am very careful to give my children a conventional upbringing. Even though I am convinced that life is far stranger than most believe, I do not want to let my children become alienated from the culture they live in. I do not discuss the stranger aspects of my life with them yet, but I do tell them that not everyone believes the same thing. I want to let them find their own way as much as possible.
My son is in pre-school and loves to pretend, but he sees pretending as part of playing a game. Most of the time he works very hard at communicating in a concrete and serious way. Like me he is an Aspie and is dangerously honest. He finds any kind of misleading behavior or inaccuracy as totally unacceptable.
Tonight on the way home, we were talking about his best friend at school. Out of no where, he tells me that this boy is his favorite friend. He knew as soon as he saw him that they would love each other and be best friends. He went on to explain that when he first saw this boy at pre-school, a rainbow of light came out of the boy. He claims they both saw it. I asked him to describe the light. He said it was straight up out of the top of the kid’s head. It split into the rainbow colors and went out to points and came back around. I asked him how he knew the other boy saw it on him. My son said that they did not talk about it, but he could tell by the way they looked at each other that they both saw it.
About a year before, in the car on the way to pre-school, my son told me that he could see the ghosts under the road. Now, we do not let him watch scary/horror shows so his exposure to ghosts is strictly through cartoons. He also knows that when people die they are buried in the ‘sad place’, otherwise known as a cemetery. I can’t think of a reason for him to think there were ghosts under the road. He seemed convinced that they were there and they were real. This is the only time I know of where he as spoken about seeing ghosts.
Since he and I are so much alike, I can usually read him very well. Yet, there are times when it seems I am tuned in to him on a deeper level. Oddly, I don’t feel the same level of automatic understanding with my toddler daughter, so it must be something other than just that he is my child. He recently told me very seriously that it was rude of me to say what he was about to say, because it was the same as interrupting him. I told him, I was sorry that I had not meant to do it. Since I so often seem to tune in to the people I am close to, I could see how this would be frustrating if I regularly jump the gun in conversation. I just wish I could tell when I am doing it.
Lately he has started telling me he can smell things from far away. By far away, I mean from the next room or another building. I am not quite sure what to make of that one as it does not sound like anything I have heard before.
When he was about three, he told me how he died when he was with his other mom and dad from before. He said he was on a train with this other family and their dog. Then a bad man came on the train and started shooting people. He said his dog tried to pull him off the train to get away from the person who hurt him. But he said it was too late because he kept bleeding and he died. Hearing about this other family and tragic end did make me sad, but he did not seem very upset about it.
Parenting is hard enough when you realize that every small mistake you make can lead to a lifetime of emotional baggage for your children. I am beyond baffled as to how I am supposed to be parenting when I am such an odd duck and dealing with an odd duckling. The only thing I know for sure is to keeping loving him and giving him support and room to grow. Maybe he won’t grow up feeling that he has to hide from the world.
Hindsight and regret
I think it was winter 2001, I was living in the northern suburbs of Chicago. My apartment complex had a long winding drive that passed a few small ornamental duck ponds that sat in between the buildings. At one point, the road curved around the edge of a pond with only about six feet or so between them. There was an iron fence separating the pond from the road.
One evening after an exhausting day at work, I was driving through my complex past one of the duck ponds and the road was covered in snow. All I could think about was getting home and warming up. Then out of nowhere, an instant strong thought overwhelmed my mind – with so much snow on the road, a car could go straight through the middle of the iron fence and be submerged in the adjacent pond. This thought was not an image or words, but a concrete finished conclusion – more like replaying a memory than a what-if speculation or daydream.
As soon as I thought it, I immediately discounted it as not realistic. This drive had curves, snow and speed bumps. No one goes fast enough on it to have a big accident like that. Although a car could certainly drift or slide off the road, I could not see how it would make it all the way into the pond from that spot. It would have to do a very strange maneuver to go from the outer edge of the curve – which at that point is headed away from the pond – then make a 90 degree turn and hit the fence straight on. That path would be exactly perpendicular from the direction it had been traveling. Based on my limited experience, that was not how cars skidded in snow. Besides, the plowed snow created little berms on each side of the road, which would probably slow down or stop a car. Then I thought that the iron fence would further slow down or stop any car that had managed to drift that far. The whole idea of such a dramatic accident in such an awkward spot seemed ridiculous and I told myself firmly that it just could not happen.
Assuming that my very tired brain had simply cooked up some silliness to make me pay attention to my driving, I was extra careful going the few hundred more yards to my place. After some rest, the next day I headed back out to work. There was still lots of snow, but everything was normal in the complex and I did not think any more about the strange thoughts from the previous night.
Another long day and another drive home, took me back to the apartment drive about the same time of day and with the same snowy conditions. As I carefully made my way along, I could see something was a little different up ahead. There was something yellow flapping in the wind on the fence, but I could not see it clearly from the angle I was travelling. Then as I rounded that last curve and looked to my right, my heart stopped and I started shaking all over.
There were two tire tracks in the snow leaving the road from the furthest out part of the curve. They were exactly perpendicular to the direction of travel. They continued right up to the fence, or what was left of it. Now there was a car sized portion of the fence missing. The tire tracks continued past the fence, through the frozen crust and into the pond. There was a car sized hole in the icy surface. The yellow flapping in the wind had been the police tape warning people away from the scene.
My teeth chattered, my mind stopped completely and I felt devastated. Why? What was I supposed to do? I didn’t know any of my neighbors. I had no way to know which of them I could have warned. I had not even believed the warning, so why would they have listened if I had spoken up. Yet, no matter how I tried to rationalized it, I felt responsible. I felt like I failed and that the consequences were my fault.
I could not handle it. I did not know what to do, so I did nothing. I did not tell anyone. I did not watch the news. I did not read the paper. I completely avoided learning the fate of the person who ended up in that frozen pond. To this day, I do not know the end of the story.
But, I have learned my lesson. Now I do pay attention. I no longer dismiss the odd thoughts that intrude on my days. I try very hard to catch even the small warnings that pop up multiple times a day. I just hope that the next time I get a life or death message, I will know what to do. I can’t imagine anything worse that knowing something awful will happen to my loved ones and not being able to stop it.
Out of the blue
For me the awareness of a psi event happens when a focused thought enters my mind that does not fit the flow and pattern of what I had been thinking about. People refer to the ‘stream’ of consciousness, which can provide a helpful metaphor. As my internal ruminations drift along gradually flowing from one topic to another by association, at times something else will intrude. The new thought does not fit the flow and usually has a more defined substance than the usual aside thoughts. To me, it seems like an outside thought, but some have proposed that it is a deeper part of the self getting attention. Regardless of the source, it feels like a rock has fallen into the stream and created ripples that disrupt the smooth flow. A big event creates a big splash of awareness and completely displaces my prior thought process. A minor event barely is noticeable. After a long process of trying to ignore these irritating interruptions, I have learned that they are warnings I should pay attention to.
I have sometimes described the minor warnings as a feeling of ‘uh-oh’ when I do something that will soon create a problem. Being stubborn by nature, when I first became aware of the distinct sense of warning, I felt that I was being micro-managed or supervised by something. I did not like the idea of having something looking over my shoulder uninvited and telling me what not to do. I have issues with authority and being directed by anyone or anything. To me it seemed my independence of will was being impinged. I am not implying that there is a separate entity behind the warnings, only that they have a feel of otherness, rather than me-ness to them. So for a couple of years, I would argue with the gist of the warnings and go out of my way to not respond. My contrary Scottish heritage must be to blame. But time after time, as I tried to convince myself that the warning was silly and made no sense, it would in fact be valid. Finally, a warning came that could have been a matter of life and death, unfortunately I did not listen and could not have prevented the event, even if I had. I will tell that story in my next post.
Oddly enough, most of the warnings are so minor as to be more irritating than useful. For example, not long ago I was getting out of the car in my garage with a half full soda. I got an ‘uh-oh’ thought that I would spill it. So I decided to put the can down on the garage floor where it would be out of the way, while I got the rest of my stuff out of the car. As I moved around the car, I bumped into something that rolled across the floor. You guessed it. Right into the can and it tipped over. Arrrrgggghhhhhh! to quote Charlie Brown. What is the point! I can’t even begin to express how distracting, frustrating and useless it is to feel that sense of ‘uh-oh’ and then have to try and avoid something when I don’t know exactly what it is I am trying to avoid. Not to mention, who the heck cares if I spill soda on the floor of my garage. Surely, this is not the work of some supreme being or paranormal entity. If so, I have had the extreme misfortune of being ‘protected’ by the most nit-picky, OCD, over-eager guardian that ever existed. If there are non-human guides and guardians, don’t they have more important work to do?
Reaching out into the void
Why has it been so hard to measure extra sensory perception and other psi abilities in a lab or academic setting? I have been reading some recent research into psi abilities in order to try and better understand my own experiences. Unfortunately, I have not found the currently published academic and scientific information to be very helpful. My abilities have been evolving over the course of my life so exploring them has been a gradual process of discovery. As a trained observer and analytical person, I have begun to notice some patterns that may help clarify which research models would better capture the measurable events. It appears that the current model of research methods may have built in assumptions that tend to mask the very abilities they are trying to measure. Not to mention, that perceptions vary so much to create one research method that captures them all would be nearly impossible.
I decided to present my thoughts on this and share my experience. I hope that experts in the field can refine the research methods in such a way as to fully legitimize these non-standard abilities. For those like me who do not try to trade on our skills or even publicly acknowledge them, there is a hidden life we cannot share. It is nearly impossible to find others who genuinely share our experiences in such a way as to form a meaningful community. Too many people who are focused only on selling something or trying to present themselves as prophets and spiritual advisers. They have created a culture of belief in a higher power giving spiritual gifts, rather than an innate or developed talent. Some in the alternative spiritual culture seems hostile to trying to understand them in a scientific way. Then the mainstream mechanistic culture does not accept unexplained abilities as anything but a form of self delusion. This leaves folks like me isolated and feeling like we I need to hide in the shadows. After all, it was not so long ago that people who were too different were burned at the stake.
About me… I have a Masters in Sociology. I intended to be an academic researcher, but was accidentally diverted into better paying work. I have spent my career in software implementations. Although I do have some spiritual beliefs, I do no follow any particular religion or dogma. I do not see my abilities as necessarily spiritual in nature. I am also a rational person with a strong interest in biology, medicine and theoretical physics. To me these are not contradictory at all. They are different ways of experiencing the world. Together they provide a more complete understanding of the human experience. I do not wish to become some kind of spokesperson or public figure. As a matter of fact, I am an Aspie with a fairly strong social phobia. So I have struggled for many years with the idea of publishing my experience. I finally realized the only way to overcome the isolation is to reach out and hope to connect with others like me.
Remembering the future
Knowing that something bad will happen is not as useful as you would think. For many years, I was able to write off my odd synchronistic events to coincidence or a vague sense of order in the universe. But eventually the warnings became so frequent and occasionally dramatic, I could no longer dismiss the pattern.
While growing up, when I had an out of place thought that something was not right, I attributed it to being a high strung worrier, which I am. Being raised in a good Christian rural home had taught me to discount magical thinking outside of the biblical framework. Of course, for my parents, their fundamentalist beliefs would not count as magical thinking.
As an adolescent, I tried very hard to interpret my odd awareness as a spiritual gift in the Christian sense. But as I became older, I finally gave up trying to hold to the fundamentalist biblical world view. Now I stay far away from dogma and institutionalized religion. I am still a spiritual person who feels strongly that we have a level of existence beyond the physical. But I want to explore that for myself, not have someone else tell me what to believe.
I have always had a strong interest in the sciences, including science fiction. So following the principle that magic and technology are often indistinguishable, I began to research everything that might somehow explain my experiences. So far, I have learned that quantum physics has begun to explore the idea that future events may interact with the present. Since a critical element of my experience is the nature of time, I am fascinated with the cutting edge debates on the nature of time. Perhaps my experiences can in some small way contribute to that exploration.
Learning to use my earth suit
I always knew I was different, but did not know why. I felt like a changeling who had been switched at birth with a human child. I did not feel any form of kinship with the people around me. These odd, volatile people could not be my family. Although there were minor physical resemblances, I was nothing like them on the inside. My life felt wrong. It was as if I had an internal compass that pointed somewhere and I needed to get away. I could feel the pull of it every day. But I had no idea where I was supposed to be. I kept waiting for my real family to show up and take me away.
When I looked in the mirror, I could see a face but it did not feel like me. I could see a body, but it felt remote and I still have no emotional attachment to it. I often bump into things wherever I go because I don’t sense where my body is in relation to the stuff around me. This body continues to feel like a suit of clothing that I am wearing temporarily.
As I was trying to fall asleep one night in my teens, I felt a peaceful sense of drifting. It felt a little like falling asleep but more focused and aware. As I drifted, I had a memory of drifting similar to this, but no idea of when or where I remembered it from. I began to re-experienced a hyper-clear memory of gradually letting go. It felt so good, like a kind of relaxation only more of the mind than body. The peacefulness was complete and felt wonderful. I drifted further and further while holding just a tiny attachment to myself. Then finally I chose to let go completely. I left the body behind and became only peace. I knew with utter certainty that I had remembered dying. I could choose to leave again if I wanted. This was my freedom to experience this life only if I choose to.
So I understand why I am not attached to this body. It is not my first one and I will someday leave it behind. The body is not truly me. It is an incarnation of me and will serve it’s purpose. These human bodies are adequate, but do not come close to being enough to house our entire existence. Being human feels like a larval stage of development. Somehow we must complete this part of the cycle before emerging transformed in the next.
Having an earth suit is useful and I value the ability to experience the colors, textures, food, music, conversation and snuggles. But often all that input is overwhelming and distracting. Only in the calm and quiet of my own inner world do I ever feel like I am my true self. Maybe it is only the inner awareness that will continue past this life that is the truest part of me.
I have recently learned that there is a label for people like me. I am just beginning to explore what I am, and it has given me a new perspective. I know who I am and always have been. Finding a label could not change that. But it has given me some way to finally begin talking about my experience and what my place in this universe could be. Someday, I hope to have a homeland and a people. Until then, I will consider myself in exile and dream…
Visionary Explorer 