Great blog post. Two thumbs up.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Sam988  I do have an open mind, but i still never experience anything supernatural, so if the spiritual world does exist, what am i missing to be able to experience it? |
I got good results from keeping a dream journal. I didn't start keeping one in the hope of stumbling into any kind of psychic weirdness, I just wanted some insight into my own mind. At that time, I didn't have any belief that there was anything psychic about dreams (though by that time I was more open-minded about things like that than I had been just a few years before that).
But then, to my surprise, it became clear that sometimes my dreams contained elements which coincided in startling ways with things happening in the world, mostly with people I knew and cared about - things which I can't think of any way I could have known about, other than explanations like telepathy, clairvoyance, etc.
I had no clear impression at the time I had those dreams that they had anything psychic about them - it was only sometime later, when I finally heard some news about someone or something that coincided with my dream, that it started to seem like either a) a weird random coincidence or b) maybe something psychic.
After it happened a whole lot of times, I started to think the answer was probably b), because it seemed rather illogical to think such weird odds-defying coincidences could happen so often as a result of random chance alone.
I actually already wrote a bit about the idea of keeping a dream journal a couple of years ago at another group. I guess I might as well link to that:
Questions From an Envious Skeptic - alt.astrology.moderated | Google Groups
A different example I didn't share in that thread was the time I dreamed about my grandma falling off a bicycle. After I woke up, I soon heard the news that my grandma had in fact fallen and broken her hip. (She hadn't fallen off a bicycle, though - she tripped over something in the hallway of the house she was staying).
I don't often dream of my grandma, and that might be the only time I ever dreamed of her falling, and that day is probably the only time I know of that she fell or had any kind of major accident like that. Yet another strange coincidence.
(Happily, she's fine now, by the way; that was years ago, and she also recovered remarkably well and quickly).
I might easily have never noticed a lot of weird dream coincidences if I hadn't been writing down my dreams, since I tend to forget my dreams unless I write them down. Without a dream journal, it would have been a lot easier for me to dismiss the coincidences (or never notice them in the first place) and keep being skeptical.
My journals are absolutely useless for convincing anyone else, of course, especially since my journals are only in computer files, without even any hard copies.
But, if you're simply looking for your own personal evidence of weird phenomena and don't care about proving it to anyone else, keeping a dream journal might help you. I suspect these kinds of dreams can probably happen to anyone, but since most people don't keep dream journals, they rarely notice it when it does happen.
What I haven't had is any kind of convincing experience of communicating with dead people. From a subjective reality perspective, this could be because I just don't want it. The idea of communicating with spirits spooks me because I don't know how I would be able to identify whoever is coming through. I would never be able to trust they're not some kind of evil demon or something.
As for that computer game coincidence I mentioned in that link... I'm still not sure how to explain that. It certainly wasn't something I was consciously trying to will to happen, it just happened and shocked the heck out of me. It's so weird I wouldn't blame anyone for thinking I was lying about it.
I don't think trying to play a computer game with random elements and seeing if any really weird synchronicities randomly pop up is likely to work as well as keeping a dream journal, but, I guess you never know.
I guess another thing I could mention is that astrology can be rather fun. Especially asteroids.
For instance, twice, it has happened that when transiting Apollonia (the asteroid with the name closest to my internet alias) was approaching a conjunction with the transiting asteroids with the names of two of my online friends that I hadn't written to for a while, I ended up getting back in contact with them.
The first time it happened, I hadn't even been aware of those transits, I just wrote to the person out of the blue on a whim. The second time it happened, my other friend simply showed up suddenly on a message board they hadn't posted to in about a year, so I said hello, and we began corresponding again. Just two minor but amusing (at least to me) coincidences that could easily be explained away as random, meaningless occurrences.
Best wishes,
Apollia