Forums IMPORTANT: PLEASE READ Beyond Human Convincing Skeptics

Hi HF;

You know, I really like your common sense approach to paranormal abilites after having you explain it like that. I also tried on many Superman suits when I was young, hoping to fly but never did. Had to settle for bullet trains, planes and ships.

Maybe we have a misunderstanding regarding Guru's. I realized that you are talking about those that make public claims and I am not.

My first teacher made no claims, probably close to a Zen experience. The nothing experience. His words were "Do Nothing, Be Happy". He taught us a Mundra to unify mind and body. After a few years of training we all sat down to do breathing exercises for a few hours. I sat directly in front of him.

When we would exhale I felt this energy cutting through me like nothing I had ever experienced. I was almost in terror then I realized it was coming from my teachers breathe. The Mundra came to mind but formality of the breathing didn't allow me to use my hands. So I made the Mundra in my mind and focused on that. My energy stabilized and I felt solid against his energy, like wind blowing against the mountain. At the end he smiled and gave me a nod.

Many times I had seen others just get up and leave and they couldn't explain why.

Why this worked I can only guess but I think it falls into the area you refered to as Emergence. As in Tai Chi when the posture is correct your strength is multiplied many times.

Hey, I think we're talking now.

Aloha

Jeff

I just finished watching the movie "Contact" from 1997. I had seen it before, but someone recomended I watch it again and pay attention to the science vs. spiritual debat in the movie. It is not unlike this thread. At the end, Jodie Foster's character gives an impassioned speech. Her character says that she had an experience that she can't prove, can't explain, but it was something wonderful that changed her...

That is my main interest on this board, is to share experiences. If enough people say, yes, I had a similar experience, at least we can build a powerful list of anecdotal evidence. I think that is the most we can hope for when dealing with normal vs. paranormal. And not just the standard list of paranormal "abilities", but things like premonitions and synchronicity.

I have had quite a few magical and mystical experiences. I have shared a few in this forum. And I suspect that anyone here would be changed if a few of the things I have listed had happened to them. But if I sound like a "true believer" of the paranormal, it is because the sum total of my experiences is more than I have I already spoken about. And the most profound of these experiences, much more profound than I have already spoken about. In fact, some of my experiences, defy words.

Coyote

If it sounds too good to be true, do it

What I think is funny is the long term effect "frauds" have on people. Years ago, in the 1980's those "no money down" real estate seminars were popular. They were total scams. In the end it wasn't possible to buy and sell real estate with no money down, eventually you had to put up something but the seminars got so many people to buy and sell real estate anyway that they did actually do some good. A small number of people, including some teachers I had in high school, got into buying real estate, fixing it up and selling if for a profit. I'm sure out of the hundreds of thousands of people who bought these books and went to these seminars only 1/2 of 1% probably got off their couch and did it.

Years ago, when I was about 10 I ran into 2 older kids at a park who told me they were motorcross stuntmen and worked for Hollywood doing stunts. I believed them and thought they were cool and we used to build ramps and do jumps on our regular bikes and they showed me how to do it right and for a couple weeks I had a great time thinking I was learning real Hollywood stunt jumps from experts. Then one of them said they were just kidding about being stuntmen and I felt like an idiot and stopped hanging around them and I was depressed for a while. Weeks later I built a jump at the bottom of my driveway using bricks and wood planks that my dad had and my older brother laughed at me because "there was no way you're going to jump that" and I went to the top of the driveway and came down and hit that jump as hard as I could and I must have flew 10 yards before I landed. He couldn't believe it. He wouldn't try it either. I just did it because I had just done it so much that summer. I was just so used to it because I had practiced so much. Those kids "scammed" me into believing something that was a lie but WHAT I DID was REAL. I was really doing something I probably wouldn't have done without those kids. I was confident because I believed something. I believed I had the truth, I believed I had guidance and I acted on it and got real results. At that point the lie didn't matter anymore. In fact, I was glad I got "fooled" because I got something out of it. My older brother was too old to be fooled by someone claiming to be a Hollywood stuntman but I was just a naive little kid who would believe anything. What was REAL at that point was that my older brother who was 3 years older than me was too chicken to do something that I could easily do. That really changed my attitude toward alot of things. From then on anytime someone told me I couldn't do something I did it just to tick them off.

This is probably not the best analogy for spiritual guru's but who's to say they just aren't "Stuntmen from Hollywood" trying to get us excited and do something? What's the point of being bored, boring people who just sit around and gossip about everything that can't be done, everything that isn't "real." What's the point? Our friends and relatives already do that enough.

From time to time I encounter "Stuntmen From Hollywood" and just for the hell of it, I believe.

Here's a very active forum loaded with the kind of anecdotal accounts of
the paranormal which TheCoyote seems to want to gather:

http://psipog.net/

Their basic rules:

1. Be a Good Leader
2. Respect Others
3. Be a Good Author
4. Be a Good Skeptic
5. Be Credible
6. Be Responsible
7. Keep Things Fun

You might find a lot of support for your goals there.