Tag: critical thinking

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Paranormal series: Being adaptable or Swinging like a pendulum.

English: The seconds pendulum, a pendulum with...

One thing I have done several times in the course of my lifetime was change what I actually believe in.

In fact, like a pendulum, I’ve swung back and forth on several subjects as new or compelling experiences or evidence comes up.

Each time I seem to get a bit further, and each time more of the missing puzzle pieces seem to fall into place. What is important is that I need to acknowledge when I am wrong and believe me, it is a blow to the ego because you doubt yourself and call your entire reality, and your own credulity, into question.

Also, when you’re trying to be a credible source, anything that is shown to be wrong can hurt your reputation.

But that is the illusion.

Personally, I’d trust someone who is willing to admit they had it wrong and will take new evidence into account. At least you know they are doing their best to be honest and trying to find out what is really going on.

Of course, there is also the hope and excitement that something really is happening.

What if all those phenomenon are real? What if the house you live in really was haunted or what if we were really being visited by aliens from other worlds?

And the same goes for things such as past lives and the like. Part of us wants it to be real, even if we can’t prove it.

Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not suggesting that they are not and I’m not suggesting they are fake either. I’m saying that making things fit to try and prove our case will, in the end, discredit it.

We need to try and remain as objective as possible, and not become attached to results which actually end up proving nothing, or hurting our case.

For instance, for myself, I have either remembered or created past life memories of things that may or may not have happened. I honestly can’t tell you which. I have no way of proving it, and only other psychic people seem to validate them or claim to share certain memories.

But are they making it up, too? Are they fitting their own created thoughts to match mine? There are no easy answers.

I can only go on my feelings, and if something feels right, then I’ll trust in that. However, I should also point out that something can feel mostly right, but you still feel you’re missing part of the story, or you don’t have all the facts.

And that’s where you need to look deeper, and continue researching the answers.

Thankfully, from time to time, I do get validation of certain things I have done and happily they occur before I mention them to anyone.

When I get confirmation of events or memories before I mention them, it helps a lot. I’ve had various people arrive at the same conclusions about who I was without me telling them a thing.

And it helps, yes, but it certainly doesn’t make it sound any saner or believable.

As always, I try to remain critical about things, but accept the evidence as it comes and see how likely other explanations are and hope people aren’t making it up or telling me what they think I want to hear. (Fortunately, there are cases where I know they were not.)

However, one thing I had learned is you should be careful what you wish for, and messing around with the paranormal  can really spiral out of control very quickly and end up becoming a nightmare.

This is the case with people who mess around with Ouija boards, and end up feeling there is something following them around.

The Ouija board is actually a game, however when used as a device to contact spirits, it may produce undesirable results. To date, I don’t think anyone has been able to use one under scientific conditions, making their validity debatable for getting answers, however that does not mean they don’t leave people open for mischievous entities or spirits to cause trouble.

When I was a preteen, I remember we tried to hold a couple of séances. We cut out the letters and numbers, lit candles and messed about with that once or twice. Nothing happened. Nothing ever came of it and it certainly had no impact on my life.

There was one other séance I took part in, though and that in 1980. I was fifteen and got caught up in the excitement of what appeared to be a haunted staircase.  Certainly very odd things happened during a two week period, and no doubt we, as teens, gave it the energy to do so.

As some may find it an interesting story, I’m going to retell it in full over the next week or so and make some observations about those events.

Next: The haunted stairway. 

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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.