Paranormal series: Science or fiction or just the facts, ma’am.

http://openclipart.org/clipart/people/magnifyi...

Back before the net, it was a lot harder to know what was fact and what was fiction.

For instance, if you went to a health food shop and they told you that the herb Echinacea helped your immune system, you would accept that as a fact.

You really didn’t have many ways to verify that it was true and really, if someone who was in the business of knowing such thing told you this, why would you doubt them? That was their job after all.

I did look up such things in herbal books that were in the metaphysical bookshops, however, they give the same information, so it appeared to validate what I was told.

Trouble is, many things are told to us based on vague or apocryphal information.

It took me years to realize that Echinacea did nothing for me, and it was the vitamin C in the complex that was actually helping and the claim that it helped ended up being based on very shaky evidence.

It does seem that once people believe something, they are very reluctant to change that belief, even in the face of new or overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

Long term readers of mine might know that I used to be an avid follower of Tuesday Lobsang Rampa. Many things felt right and made sense to me, and the rest I would just accept on faith. However, it was the rest that, while clearly wrong, seems to be ignored by his followers.

For instance, he made a lot of predictions about world events that should have occurred by now. From my observations, none of them have actually happened, but that doesn’t seem to bother his fan base, who just seems to completely ignore such things and never call them into question.

Any suggestions that he might be wrong are ignored or met with hostility.

This is generally typical of people who choose to believe in something but refuse to look at any inconsistencies critically.

The question is: Why?

When something is so clearly shown to be wrong, why aren’t people calling such thing into question? When something has inherent contradictions in the philosophy (and I’m looking at many cults, faiths and religions here) why do we resist looking at it or dismiss them as not important?

Just because some parts are wrong, it doesn’t mean it’s all wrong. And just because some parts are right, it doesn’t mean it’s all right.

We stymie our own growth and give our power away to others by refusing to think critically about everything.

You might say, I’m a researcher for the truth, and I use the word ‘truth’ very loosely here because the more I look, the more I see that there are no hard and fast rules, but there are come consistent universal laws that seem to apply to everything.

When I write about something, I write about my own observations and experiences. I’ve always done this, though I have been just as guilty of being dogmatic about a particular belief system, even if there were some blatant inconsistencies there.

Now, I know this type of talk might seem weird or even hypocritical coming from me, as I have written about belief systems, astral levels, alternative time-lines and many other unprovable subjects.

However, I do try and come from a place of observation and research and try to find other alternative explanations.

Next: Adapting to new evidence. 

Paranormal series: Being a skeptic or let me just ignore that fact.

Image-1There’s a balance to being Empath who has psychic experiences and yet tries to be remain objective to what is going on.

To say that I’ve had more than my share of interesting experiences would not be an exaggeration. To say that many of these could not be explained away somehow would also be correct.

Some of them can’t. Some things that happened would require either a shared delusion, or timing and circumstances so contrives that it would make the most blatant Hollywood blockbuster script look disjointed by comparison.

I suppose it would be easy to ignore everything that doesn’t fit, but I also feel that would be doing myself a great disservice.

For instance, if someone tells me about having the same types of experiences as me, I need to consider if they had them before they met me or read any of my works, or if they arrived at the same types of conclusions independently.

Fact is: We, as humans, have a tendency to make stuff up, or change the facts ever so slightly to make it fit our stories.

I noticed this in my mother from a young age. She would adapt her stories and just put a small little twist into things to completely change the meaning.

She would tell you about her own psychic experiences, but only after she got your version. Then, mysteriously, it would match.

Or she would have the answers to puzzles that she claimed she already knew, but only after she was told the answers.

I never called her on these things, and really, I didn’t see the point to doing so, but it did make me very much aware of just how easy it was to make something into whatever you wanted it to be.

I do a lot of research and listen to sceptical podcasts because I learn a lot from them. (Plus, I find their observations hysterical at times because they are true.)

Problem is that it’s at the other extreme of the spectrum.

Where the true believer seems to accept everything they are told, the sceptic seems to refute anything they are told.

There just doesn’t seem to be a balance.

We need to be able to think critically about things. If something doesn’t seem to fit, look closer at it. It may not appear to fit because it does not fit.

Next: Fact or Fiction.