Psychic Connections – Dispelling Myths and Fears - LONG

[Guest guest]

The problem with a lot of this " stuff " is that it is couched in

religious or mystical terms. And as anyone who has ever studied

language or communications knows, words have power. They carry

emotional charges and can cause physiological reactions. Awareness

of the power of words is a key element for anyone in business,

trained in human relations and performance evaluation. And the

same word can mean different things to different people, evoking

entirely opposite responses and reactions.

The word " psychic " certainly meets this criteria. For believers, it

might evoke awe, wonder, and the thrill of discovery. For total non-

believers, it might instead cause fear and revulsion.

Unfortunately, the " power " of the word can also close someone's mind

to all critical thinking, whether that person believes or not. On

the one hand, it can be a blind acceptance bordering on faith

alone. On the other, it can be total rejection to the point that no

proof is possible.

For purposes of this discussion, I am going to use the following

definition from my previous post: " Of or pertaining to

extraordinary, especially extrasensory and nonphysical, mental

processes … Outside the known laws of physics. " In terms of this

definition, you have to understand that I believe neither in

miracles nor the supernatural as most people think of the

supernatural. On the other hand, I believe equally strongly that

seemingly miraculous and/or supernatural things happen all the

time. My acceptance of this seeming contradiction is that I believe

that nothing happens contrary to " natural law, " and if something

does happen which appears to be in contradiction or is an exception

to that rule – it just means that we simply don't yet understand the

underlying cause or mechanism.

There is an absolutely ridiculous saying that " the exception proves

the rule. " What an utter bunch of garbage. The only thing in my

mind that an exception proves is that the rule is wrong. A very

strong belief in this principle has been an equally strong guide for

me for most of my life. It has certainly been more than a little

bit influential in " molding " me into whatever it is that I am

today. Whatever the basis for my " belief system " at the time, if I

got hit with an " exception to the rule, " I started questioning

everything about it and then moved on to something else. But in one

sense, no matter what " basis " I was under at the time, I have always

been a " seeker. "

Barb and Cindy both did a pretty good job of describing me, and my

personality. I am most definitely analytical and logic driven, and

absolutely accept nothing on faith. Cindy may have been content to

stick her hand up the mule's butt and turn it inside out like a hand

puppet. I probably would have dissected the mule and looked at all

its parts under a microscope.

After sending my long post two days ago I got thinking that it had

so much of the " scientific basis " slant to it that it probably

didn't totally destroy whatever credibility I might have built up in

recent months with the list. I then got thinking that, since I have

already at least opened the door to my own closet (in Cindy's

terms), I might as well just jump out into the room and do a " flash

and streak " with everybody. If this one doesn't destroy any

lingering shreds of my credibility – nothing will.

I just scratched the surface the other day and have spent most of

the last two days sitting here trying to decide where to start with

this. So I guess I will start at the beginning – way at the

beginning. From the time I was old enough to reasonably understand

the spoken word (and deemed safe enough to take out in the general

public without totally embarrassing my parents), until I went off

to college the first time, I was raised as a Lutheran. This

included Sunday school, church, youth activities, choir, and all

that goes with it. When I was in High School, I gave very serious

thought to becoming a Minister.

In High School, however, I started what has since become a life-long

study of what can best be described as " the enigmas. " The world

around us is not always as it seems at first glance, or as we are

taught to believe. Enigmas come in many shapes and forms but are

essentially just " things " that don't fit the then currently accepted

ideas or beliefs. Museums around the world have backrooms that are

literally vast storehouses of enigmatic artifacts.

The easiest way I can illustrate this concept is that, since about

the turn of the last century, the accepted archaeological tenet has

been that man crossed the Bering Strait ice bridge about the end of

the last ice age (about 10,000 years ago) and migrated into the

North American continent. In the last several decades, there have

been hundreds of man-made artifacts that have been found in strata

that carbon-date the finds to MANY thousands of years older than

that. Did this cause our learned academicians to question the

validity of the ice bridge dating? Not at all - the finds were

simply hidden in a store- room, out of sight and hopefully

forgotten. Well, in the last few years, there have been some very

significant digs, one in Mexico, one in Chile, and a third one

someplace in the States but I can't remember exactly where off the

top of my head. These digs have conclusively pushed the dates back

to around 20,000 years, totally trashing the accepted theories of

the previous hundred years. As a side note, the person who

discovered the dig in Mexico several years ago had her career

totally ruined because the dates she came up with didn't match what

was then accepted as " true. " She has since been vindicated, but it

was too late by then to resurrect her career.

Crap like this happens all the time and in all of the scientific,

academic disciplines. Those, who by profession, should be the most

diligent seekers of truth and knowledge are all too frequently the

most close-minded of all because of " vested career interests. " At

least today, all that gets ruined is a career. There have been many

instances in the past where things like burning stakes came into

play.

I also got very interested in myths and legends over the years. One

thing I have come to believe about them is that, however far removed

from reality they become over time, there is a kernel of truth

somewhere in them that started it all to begin with. In other

words, legends tend to be stories about actual events that have

become embellished over time. Over long enough spans of time,

legends evolve into myths. Take a look at the saga of Helen of

Troy. This was viewed for years as nothing more than a classical

Greek myth – until Shliemann (sp?) actually found Troy. And we as

a society make a very grave mistake when we fail to look for those

kernels of truth in our cultural and cross-cultural myths and

legends.

A very heavy part of my study of myths and legends has had to do

with cultural creation myths and stories. Every culture in the

world, and I mean literally every culture in the world, has its own

story of " creation. " Even more interesting is that they ALL share

common threads, including stories of a great flood. Be that as it

may, there are essentially only three creation " stories " once you

distill them all down to their bare essence. The first falls under

the category of Creationism – the world, and everything in it, was

created by the Divine (however one defines the Divine). The second

is called Evolution, most commonly epitomized by Darwin's theory.

The third is called Castrophism. This can best be summed up as

a " belief " that everything came about by " natural " processes but

that life has not evolved over millions of years, it has plodded

along and made quantum jumps along the way as a result of

cataclysmic change in very short time spans.

In addition, I have done an extensive amount of reading over the

last 50 years about things psychic and extrasensory. The only

reason I didn't pursue it in college (at the J.B. Rhein Institute

for Parapsychology at Duke University) was that Stanford gave me an

academic scholarship and Duke didn't. Money-grubber that I was at

the time, I took the cash and went south instead of east. But

that's a different story.

I'm now going to do a bit of a side-step here. What does any of

this have to do with psychic connections and beliefs about them?

Nothing at all – and everything. It was all just a lead-in to say

that we all are products of our belief systems, me no more and no

less than anyone else. Our beliefs may be based on faith, logic,

hard science or a combination of the three, and usually are. I went

from the pure " faith base " of my early upbringing to the " prove it

to me " of my middle years, to the melding of the two where I am at

today. Truth be known, my personal belief systems have encompassed

all three of the above " creation " categories at different times in

my life.

I treated my study of psychic phenomena the same way I did my study

of enigmas and myths, and as just another part of what I considered

interesting, unexplained phenomena . I found the whole subject

fascinating – as an academic exercise – because I had not one shred

of psychic ability personally. Up until less than two years ago,

the sum total of my personal psychic experiences had been one, what

I have since come to consider legitimate, out-of-body experience

(although at the time it happened I discounted it heavily because I

was practically delirious from a 105 degree temperature for five

straight days), and two intuitive " flashes " that could just as

easily been good guesses. These three, and watching my mother-in-

law humiliate my father-in-law by finding a broken water main by

dowsing for it.

I will readily admit that I found the subject more than just

fascinating. I had a whole library of books on the subject,

history, theory and practice. Auras? Out of body experiences? I

thought it would be the neatest thing to be able to see auras and do

OBE's. If I found a book that said it gave lessons in how to, I

would buy it and read it. But no matter how many times I tried to

do both, and believe me, I tried – nothing; no way, no how.

After I got into the massage program, I started getting some really

good results with the family. But there was nothing extraordinary

about any of it. The fact that I was getting results where a number

of doctors over quite a few years had failed simply meant that I was

using some sound bodywork techniques that they had neither tried nor

suggested. But the point is that there was a sound physiological

basis for what was happening when I was working on the family. It

all made perfect sense and was completely understandable.

Then, about 18 months ago, I came home from a class and worked on

Barb … and things happened that I couldn't explain. And it quite

frankly scared the living crap out of me.

Why, after close to 50 years of trying with no success at all, did I

suddenly start to sense at least something that qualified as out of

the norm? I know why. I started doing some basic acupressure and

was getting solid, physical results. On a sliding scale, basic

acupressure can be considered at the very bottom of a wide-

ranging " system " of belief. I did not need to feel or sense

anything and I did not have to believe in anything to have it work;

apply pressure to the points, get results. After a month or two of

working with it, I suddenly asked myself – if this works and I

accept it, why am I rejecting everything else that goes along with

it? I didn't just jump in and immediately start accepting

everything else. What I did was suspend my disbelief. I stopped

just automatically rejecting the rest of it and, frankly, started

treating the whole subject with an open instead of closed mind.

As soon as I did that, somebody or something tossed me on a roller-

coaster and I have been on one wild ride ever since. And my life

started getting even stranger … and scarier.

My logical mind-set being what it was/is, I was faced with a real

dilemma. I had some choices to consider and decisions to make. I

could turn my back on it all and simply walk away. Or, I could

branch out in my continuing education studies and try to learn as

much as I could to see if I could come up with some answers – like

how and why?

So I started taking more classes – and things just kept getting

worse. Almost every time I took a class, I would come back and find

out that my " power level " had gone up another notch. I was able to

feel more and do more than I could before – and what I was feeling

and doing just kept getting stranger. Time after time, I was faced

with the same choice – walk away or learn more.

The direction my studies have taken me was prompted in many respects

by knowing that studying and learning was the only thing that was

going to preserve my sanity. And I am not exaggerating on this

point. One of the things that can happen during bodywork is called

an emotional release. Without going into a long discussion on it

here, it simply means that there frequently is an emotional

component associated with physical dysfunction. Releasing the

physical dysfunction sometimes means that the emotional dysfunction

has to be released first as part of the treatment.

Some of them can be pretty gut-wrenching, as I can only too well

attest since I have personally gone through at least eight in the

last 18 months. I am not talking about a tear or two or a couple of

tame whimpers. I have shed enough tears on massage tables in the

last year and a half to fill a five-gallon bucket. They have been

tears of joy, tears of anguish, tears of pain … and tears of

fear. I have had my body jack-knife with convulsions, go rigid as

a board, and lay there with silent screams to the point it felt like

my very soul was being ripped out my throat.

Every one of these cases involved someone working on my right

shoulder. I have had chronic, constant pain in my right shoulder

for literally years that would not heal, no matter how many times I

had it worked on or the type of treatment. And in five successive

classes I had either a classmate or instructor ask me if I wanted to

know why it wouldn't heal and every single one of them then told

me " It's because you are not doing what you are meant to do. "

I didn't retire a year ago because I wanted to. I retired because I

HAD to. Whatever was tormenting me drove me to it. All I knew was

that I had to make a change in my life to preserve my sanity. So I

retired. And kept taking classes. And kept having my power level

increase. And kept having my life get stranger and stranger. And -

kept getting the crap scared out of me. You have no idea how many

heart-felt conversations I have had with instructors where I have

basically asked " what in the hell is happening to me? "

Today, I fully understand (at least to the point of being

comfortable with it), what I was doing and the mechanisms by which

it was happening when I had my first experience working on Barb that

I couldn't explain. Not only that, I routinely do things today that

two years ago would have sent me blithering down the hall in

terror. Being able to reset subluxed bones or to make pain go away

by simply touching someone would have definitely brought me up short

back then. Today, I do it all the time and never give it a

thought. Today, I know about such things as entrainment,

bioelectromagnetic fields and field interactions. Some of what I do

today definitely qualifies as " psychic " by definition because it

involves something other than the five standard senses. On the

other hand, I don't consider it either miraculous or supernatural in

the standard spooky context. Two years ago, I would/might have,

because I had no rational, logical basis for it back then. Now I do.

Barb posted a story about a women's self-defense class where every

single person was able to detect the presence of someone coming up

behind them. Is this a psychic ability? They obviously could not

taste, touch or see the person behind them. So, assuming that they

also could not hear or smell the person approaching them, their

awareness was by definition psychic because they received

information from something other than one of the five standard

senses.

Do I consider this to be a supernatural ability? Not at all – I

consider it to be a perfectly natural and perfectly understandable

ability inherent in ALL of us. It is demonstrably a sixth sense,

and therefore psychic by definition, but it is also perfectly

logical and supported by hard science. Remember what I wrote about

the body's bioelectromagnetic fields and heart monitoring.

Those " fields " extend beyond our physical bodies. The

expression " getting in someone's space " and that feeling of unease

when someone is standing too close is nothing more than the

interaction of our electromagnetic fields. Depending on who is

standing next to you, you might feel all warm and cozy because your

field is interacting positively with theirs. You feel uncomfortable

when your fields are repelling each other.

The irony is that I have also now come full circle. I said at the

beginning that I had a solid religious upbringing, that my education

includes a very solid grounding in Christian fundamentals, including

Bible stories in general and the New Testament stories of the

miracles in particular. But as I got older and more questioning

about everything, I drifted away from my religious foundations.

Many years ago, I reached a point in my life where I rejected those

stories because my logical mind would no longer accept them on

faith Today, I fully accept those stories, and not as allegories

but as actual events. And I don't accept them today based on faith –

I accept them based on what I have come to understand about a lot of

the so-called psychic stuff the last couple of years. The healing

miracles by laying on of hands? I totally accept their validity.

Do I believe that the walls of Jericho could have come tumbling down

by a blast of sound? You bet I do, because I know what sound

vibrations are capable of. The halos one sees in classical

religious art? What do you think the aura is? And so on.

Does that mean that I fully understand everything that I have done

over the last year? Not at all. It just means I haven't found the

answer yet. I am still seeking. There is nothing sacrilegious,

demonic or " unnatural " about any of this. It is simply a part of

what it means to be human. Our modern, scientific bent in the last

few hundred years has simply caused us to move away from things that

were once commonly accepted (and still are in some cultures).

Fortunately, " science " today is finally starting to catch up.

OK – I said early on that I was going to " flash and streak " and have

hinted at things happening beyond what you already know about,

including things that I can't fully explain to myself yet. To avoid

at least a dozen off-list emails asking for more – here goes.

Six months ago I worked on my cousin in California. The day that we

got there was when she got her MRI confirmation of a gall-stone

lodged in the duct. She had been in agony for close to three weeks

and unable to sleep without taking some pretty serious meds. I

worked on her for about 90 minutes that evening. During the

session, I had my left hand under her (she was on her back) level

with the gall bladder. I had my right hand finger tips pointed down

onto the gall bladder. I could physically feel a hard, sharp,

pointy lump. After a few seconds, I started getting a really

vigorous energetic sensation, almost like a scrubbing motion. Then

it switched to feeling like drops of water beading up on a hot

skillet – very fine and very rapid. It then suddenly felt like

everything softened and the energetic sensations stopped. We left

the following morning and she went in to the hospital that afternoon

to have the stone suctioned out through a tube down the throat. In

the doctor's words, not mine, he was shocked to find that there was

no stone there – all that was there was a " sludge. " I have no doubt

in my mind that the treatment I gave her the night before basically

broke the stone apart and dissolved it.

Can I rationally accept this as real? Most definitely, and it has

to do with vibrations. Can I prove it? Not a chance. Everything in

the universe is nothing more or less than a " vibration. " Light,

sound, and physical matter are basically just different

manifestations of vibrations of different wave- lengths. There is

nothing mystical about this at all. This is hard science and a

basic principle of physics. If sound " vibrations " can knock down

walls (and they can), and if ultrasound can be used to break up

kidney stones (and they can), it doesn't seem strange to me at all

that my hands might have given off the appropriate " frequency " to

take out a gall-stone.

A year ago, I had a very painful lump in my right breast, just to

the right of the nipple. The lump was in the breast tissue, not the

lung. Since I am well aware that men can develop breast cancer also

(a very small percentage compared to women, but still frequent

enough to cause concern), I called it to my doctor's attention –

three times. All three times, he basically just blew me off and

ignored my concerns. I suppose I should have gone to a different

doctor for a second opinion. I didn't (and caught holy hell from my

wife and daughter about four months ago when I finally told them the

story). I simply went home, sat down in my recliner, cupped my

palms over my chest, dropped into a meditative state – and

started " running energy. " After about ten minutes, no more lump, no

more pain. And I haven't been bothered with it since.

Miraculous? It could seem to be if you didn't have an understanding

of the underlying principles and mechanisms of energy medicine.

Remember what I wrote about SQUIDS and the measured fields given off

by the hands of energetic practitioners? That the emanations are

not constant or steady, that they scan a range of frequencies from

0.3 to 30 Hz? Now think back to my post a few days ago where I

talked about PEMF therapy – Pulsed Electromagnetic Field – for

treating slow healing bone fractures. Bone healing is just one

example. There has been a vast amount of medical research in the

last few decades regarding tissue repair and healing in general that

has clearly demonstrated that the body's healing mechanisms are a

function of different " frequencies " depending on tissue type –

organ, bone, etc. Again, there is nothing mystical about any of

this – it is hard science. The work I did on myself? In my mind,

it was simply a case of my hands scanning to the right frequency to

get the job done.

I don't think I need to mention anything further here about the work

I did on 's two daughters, 's knee and Lindsey's

shoulder. To all of them, it may well have seemed miraculous

because none of them had an understanding of what was involved. It

not only did not seem miraculous to me, I just took it in stride and

moved on.

I still have not, however, answered one question that I suspect is

out there. Since I have pretty much kept my closet door firmly

locked for months, why am I now opening up to the list? There have

been a number of posts from either Cindy or me about my being in

Detroit. Most of them have involved the work done on Dylan, with

just some fairly minor and innocuous references to the work Cindy

did on me. I mentioned earlier that I have had at least 8 major

emotional releases on massage tables in the last 18 months. Well,

two of those 8 took place in Detroit and another one took place last

weekend.

I have mentioned a number of times about having had a chronic,

constant pain in my right shoulder. The first time Cindy worked on

me, she addressed my right shoulder – and all hell broke loose.

Mentally, I was suddenly back 40 years in time to a very painful

period of my life that involved severe, suicidal depression, trips

to the ER to get my stomach pumped – and one very specific incident

involving a loaded .45 automatic. It isn't necessary to go into

more detail here, other than to say that the tension suddenly went

out of my shoulder. Today? My shoulder hasn't bothered me since I

got home from Detroit.

Well, the above release is well within what I know and understand

about emotional releases. It is exactly the kind of thing I would

expect to have happen. I was not at all prepared for what happened

the second time she worked on me.

The following morning, she decided that I needed to get " balanced "

by working on my left shoulder. She said in one of her " psychic

connections " posts that " When I feel it, I pull white light from

above and send it through my hands. " Well, that's what she did to

me. I am still trying to come to grips with what happened when she

did. As a start, I suddenly started seeing lights in my head as a

manifestation of energy. My initial reaction was " super " because I

have never been able to see the lights. Many of my classmates in

previous classes sense energy " visually " in the form of lights. I

was familiar with the idea – I just had never experienced it.

Then things started getting strange. I suddenly realized that I

could see all the way around the room – but my eyes were closed. I

could see Cindy standing behind me and pictures on the walls –

images that were outside of my field of vision with my eyes open.

And then everything switched to a deep sky blue with billowy white

clouds and I had the sense that my " awareness " was some place other

than in that room. I had no idea where – just that it was someplace

else. I didn't feel like I was someplace else, just my awareness.

Then I got a shimmer of pure white light at the foot of the table.

The light kept building until it formed first a dome over me and

then completely encircled me like I was in a ball of white light.

And then, faint and fuzzy, I " saw " two people standing at the foot

of the table on the right side and one more on the left side – and

then very clearly heard the words in my head " It's time to let it

go. It's time to forgive yourself. " After that, the light just

swirled around above me and then spiraled down into my heart. I

cannot even begin to describe in words the sense of peace that I

felt.

I said earlier that I have had to make choices and decisions in the

last couple of years to preserve my sanity. The path I took brought

me to a level of comfort, understanding and acceptance of much of

what I have done – and do. My logical mind has a certain hard

science foundation for it and I can live quite nicely with that,

thank you.

My logical mind does NOT have a hard science foundation for what

happened to me in that second session in Detroit. I have been

struggling the last six weeks with trying to decide whether (a) I

had the mother of all hallucinations in Detroit or ( there is

another reality out there that I need to come to grips with and try

to understand. Simply walking away from it is not an option for me.

Especially not after last weekend. I mentioned in an earlier post

about having taken a three-day class last weekend. The reading

material for the third day scared the crap out of me like nothing

else has in the last two years. Considering what all has happened

to me in that time, that says a lot. Without going into a lot of

detail here, it was talking about using specific meridian points and

differing sound frequencies to open up channels of awareness. I

came extremely close to not attending the third day because I

couldn't shake the feeling that if I went, I was going to end

up " going someplace " I didn't want to go and facing something I

didn't want to face. I was absolutely terrified. I got to class

early and ended up sitting in my car, crying and shaking for a good

15 minutes before I went into the room.

Well – my forebodings turned out to be correct. We always do a

first thing in the morning check-in – go around the room and talk

about the previous day's session and how it might or might not have

affected us after class – any reactions? How did we sleep? Things

like that. When it was my turn, I told everybody about my reaction

to the reading material and that I was scared to death to even be

there.

And then I just seized up. I wasn't even on the table – I was

sitting in a chair – and I had the roughest (not strangest –

roughest) emotional release I have had in two years of classes and

treatment work. Again, considering what I have already described,

that also says a lot. I turned myself into a good imitation of a

human armadillo, except the armadillo was shaking and sobbing

uncontrollably. At any rate, my instructor started talking me

through it. Without going into a lot of detail here, I was once

again mentally someplace else. But it wasn't just someplace else –

it was some " when " else, and that when had nothing to do with the

here and now. And once again, there were very clear voices in my

head saying, this time, " It's not about this life-time. " And as

soon as I heard those words, all of the tension went out of my

body. Can I explain that one? About as fast as I can explain

Detroit.

But in answer to the question about why I decided to come out of my

closet now, I felt I HAD to. I have lost count of the number of

times the last two years where I have felt like my life was no

longer my own. I have been faced with having to make choices and

decisions that at times were downright uncomfortable and scary. I

have asked repeatedly, not only " what in the hell is happening to

me? " but " why me? " I still haven't got a clue on either one of

those questions.

And like I said, if this doesn't totally trash my credibility –

nothing will.