(no subject)

[mamculuna]

OK, this will be a woo-oo woo-oo topic that will bring mostly rolled eyes. But I'll raise it anyway. What do you think of the possibilities of knowing or communicating in some way other than overt and physical? I had two examples today that made me wonder. First, in yoga, we did a meditation on sending metta, a sort of compassionate love, and the guidance was to picture someone who's struggling and send them support. So I pictured Elmer (the homeless guy who sometimes does yard work for me). And then later this afternoon, he stopped by to tell me he's entering the county's drug and alcohol abuse program and intends to get clean and go back to voc rehab to get a job. Also, I passed a display of orchid plants in the grocery store and debated buying one for my 85-year-old cousin, thinking her day might need brightening, and thought, well, I'll come back later and get it on the way to see her (and I almost never do go visit--she's usually out playing bridge or taking trips with her pals). Later my sister called to tell me the cousin had fallen and is in a recuperation center. So I guess the rational mind says these are just coincidence, but I'm not totally rational. Sometimes I think we know in some other way.

Comments

[ann1962]

What do you think of the possibilities of knowing or communicating in some way other than overt and physical?

Had to reply, without rolled eyes too ;-) This sort of stuff happens to me all of the time. I can't decide if it is of the physical material world, we just haven't discovered it yet, or if it is something else. I have had connections with people and can tell many stories about such things. I know it is sometimes easier to dismiss as irrational or made up, but the question becomes when does the cumulative amount become more than just coincidence. I think we can sense stuff that we cannot give an explanation for. The threads that tie us to each other that seem to rise about the physical.

[ngakmafaery.livejournal.com]

...I completely believe it's true. If we can think of Paris and be able to see the sights of it from memory, say, then why can't the mind and other forms of awareness perceive all sorts of stuff? I'm probably way more woowoo than you, but I consider it completely likely...

[mamculuna.livejournal.com]

Oh, yes. Somehow the ideas of emptiness--that we see nothing as it truly is--come closest to helping me grasp this and why/how it happens.

[ngakmafaery.livejournal.com]

...sure, since we all have only partial knowledge, and also because we are not solid entities...to me that explains why I have been able to see at a distance or see inside bodies etc. ...simply because that's where I looked! ahahaha!

[angels-nibblet.livejournal.com]

I totally believe it's true. I came home from University one day last September and my Mum wasn't home, I asked my Dad where she was and he casually informed me she was at our doctor's. Two words came into my mind at this stage - breast cancer. I had absolutely no reason to think that whatsoever. A week later we found out she had it.

Sometimes, you just know, especially when it's people close to you.

[mamculuna.livejournal.com]

My mother dreamed her father's death the day before it happened--as Lincoln dreamed his own. Is it time that we don't understand, or separateness/connection, I wonder?

[angeyja.livejournal.com]

I agree, and tend to explain it the way Ann did. I've had some that don't fit well with that, and it got a bit scary, and have gone as far as to do some intentional blocking at times.

;-) Yes, woo woo. I don't talk about this much.

[mamculuna.livejournal.com]

I understand not talking about it. Yet Jung proposed that, much as we connect things sequentially as cause and effect, we might also legitimately connect things that happen at the same time--he called it "synchronicity." So if I want to feel respectable, I connect with that concept. But for me, this whole thing is a step beyond respectability. I also am very careful about where and how I talk about it. But I'm always validated, when I do.

[atpocailleagh.livejournal.com]

Totally non-woo woo! Its completely normal and natural. I do that kinda thing all the time. Intentionally or not.
There really is nothing to be embarrassed about, or scared of for that matter.

[mamculuna.livejournal.com]

So how do you explain it?

[angeyja.livejournal.com]

this made me *smile*

One of the things I have been watching the last couple of years is the drawing together, blending of things that (I think) sort of maxed at the disparate ends.

Things like studies of flow state.. and relationships between creativity and what we've termed bipolar ( a reaction?) or not quite skizoid (empath? something else? it involves an ability to switch or have naturally stronger faster connections between different areas of the brain.)

I want explanations myself. But I am me as I was raised where I was, and that in part was a reaction to befores of explanations based on deities (which I do not discount either.)

[angeyja.livejournal.com]

made me *smile* in a good way.. btw.

I love these discussions.

[mamculuna.livejournal.com]

Animal brains, too..turtles and birds and fish that can somehow find the same tiny spot of a beach or island, cats and dogs that find their way home over great distances. Clearly they use some kind of directional signals we can't interpret...so we too have senses besides the ones that are accepted as normal.

Glad that was a good smile, but I don't mind looking (or sounding) a little silly, either!

[atpocailleagh.livejournal.com]

Sorry, not online too often!
Most people have some sort of psychic ability-whether they acknowledge it or not. Its not something that is easy to explain in a few brief sentences (at least, not at 2 in the morning), but most theories seem to be based around the holographic universe/holographic brain concept.

[mamculuna.livejournal.com]

Will have to learn more about that, somwhere.

[fraydecat.livejournal.com]

Is that Spike? Sorry I don't know his name. I LOVE him.

[atpocailleagh.livejournal.com]

Yes. It is Spike (James Marsters). He is lovely, so the LOVE is understandable.

[fraydecat.livejournal.com]

I wonder about this type of thing as well, often. I don't know about the "phenomena" or the inter-connectedness of happenings. I do believe in a sensitivity some people(like you obviously) have. I also believe it's the way you look at things, a very subjective thing. Does that make sense?

[mamculuna.livejournal.com]

I'm certain I pay more attention to things like that when they happen, and I'm also sure that people who are totally convinced that there are no other forms of knowing and communicating would not pay much attention, writing it off immediately as coincidence. Since our society favors that last kind of person, and people like me who do sometimes pay attention to it know we'll be written off as weird and therefore don't talk about it and doubt it, I do wonder how much more common and stronger the sensitivity would be if it were given the same credence as science. I guess that's why people write fantasy and science fiction...

[(Anonymous)]

Well, some things can't be anything but coincidence. Yesterday, I was listening to the news on the radio & heard that Peter Benchley had died. At the moment when the reporter said he had died of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, I was looking at those very words in a manuscript on lung diseases that I'm working on. So sometimes unlikely juxtapositions happen w/no psychic or woo-oo implications, which tells me that sometimes, at least, cases that might have such implications are just coincidence too.

And in other cases, I think some people are more tuned in to what you might call a gestalt of cues that individually are below the level of our conscious awareness. Some might be physical/chemical, like subtle visual cues, smells, shifts in air currents. Others may not be so easily explained. There are probably factors that could be explained on a physical basis if we knew more about them, some of which may be detected when we have more sensitive ways to measure them, or when it occurs to someone to look at (for?) them. (So much is a question of knowing where to look.) But these kinds of factors seem more reasonable to explain the kind of connections you're talking about when they happen closer up rather than at a distance.

I've taken aikido & had reiki healing done. Both of these deal w/ki (or chi), an energy that as far as I know can't be measured by instruments. I tend to be skeptical about this kind of thing, but I learned to feel that energy, or at least its effects. So I take reports of events like those mentioned in this thread w/a smaller grain of salt than I might otherwise. Still, I think coincidences occur more often than we realize.

Most important, mamculuna, I'm glad Elmer is getting into a program, & I hope your cousin recovers well.

[mamculuna.livejournal.com]

That's a very good way of putting it, and I do agree that many, many things are just coincidence. It's interesting though that observations of apparent cause and effect relationships that also may be meaningful or may not not have led to the development of scientific methodologies for investigation, while the same is not true in the case of coincidental relationships.

And thanks for the kind thoughts on Elmer and my cousin. I know what a long hard road that is for someone in Elmer's situation, but he seems to see pretty clearly that it's the only road he can follow. My cousin's doing as well as I expected--not too happpy with her situation, but working hard at her physical therapy.

[(Anonymous)]

@>)

"It's interesting though that observations of apparent cause and effect relationships that also may be meaningful or may not not have led to the development of scientific methodologies for investigation, while the same is not true in the case of coincidental relationships."

I'm sorry, usually I avoid pointing out typo-type stuff unless asked to. But I think something's missing around "may not not," & it's enough of a problem that I can't tell what you mean, & I want to. Or maybe it's just an extra "not." Could you clarify, please?

[mamculuna.livejournal.com]

Cause and effect is also an "invisible relationship," one based on sequence in time, but proving that such relationships exist (or don't) has led to the development of various kinds of scientific methodologies. But we don't do the same for things that happen simultaneously or "coincidentally."

Not sure that's any clearer, but best I can do right now :-)

And I'm not sure who I'm writing to?

[atpo-onm.livejournal.com]

One the one hand, the most rational part of me say that it was just a coincidence bolstered by the fact that huamans are incredibly talented at connecting things that aren't really connected.

On the other hand, being a big fan of The Matrix "cosmology" or whatever you want to name it, it might be that you just managed to "write a little code" into the universe without realizing it.

Way to go, mamcu_luna_neo!

:-)

[mamculuna.livejournal.com]

Hee! Without even realizing it.

Good to see you over here at LJ, OnM.