[John Freestone]

Hi tonality, my thoughts on this are close to Dannyboy1 and foxyfox. I don't believe in telepathy, unless we define it has happening through subtle clues in body language, etc., and I believe there is quite a good amount of evidence that these natural (as opposed to supernatural) forms of communication are the only way people get to know our internal dialogue. We read very subtle changes in skin tone, tiny movements of muscles, and perhaps pheromones too, while the context of the meeting and other observable things about them can allow us to make lucky guesses about them. The phenomena of cold reading, loose interpretation of what is a true statement, and a whole bunch of other logical stuff adds to the feeling that these must be valid experiences: see, in fact, they often are somewhat valid, because of that ability, and there are many debunking mind-readers who will demonstrate exactly how it happens, but it doesn't mean that you are broadcasting everything you're thinking, or that your imaginative interpretation of what they are thinking is right.

As some have said, one of the ways forward would be to test your apparent gift/curse/ability or whatever you want to call it, but be warned: unless you are a very careful investigator, you are likely to be biased in ways that most of us don't even know about. In fact, I would suggest that because you have these ideas so strongly, you are very likely to be biased in your investigation of it. I don't mean that as an insult at all. Most of us are extremely open to blurring the divide between reality and imagination.

The fact that you are asking about this, for instance, someone has suggested shows that deep down you know it's true. That's the kind of circular thinking that keeps people trapped in their illusions. I could say, equally logically, that since you asked "Am I really just schizo?", that you really are just schizophrenic. If you sit quietly and let yourself think that, you will know, 'deep down' that it's true. If you sit quietly and let yourself think that you're gifted with the power to read minds, you'll find that 'deep down' it's true. We can only get at the real truth by more careful, roundabout means, I believe. Deep down I was once a believer. Now deep down I'm an atheist. Neither of my deep downs will make God true or false, or he's a curious kind of a God at least.

And on the subject of mental illness, you might like to think about this: what you describe are symptoms that - I'll take a guess - maybe several million? people will tell you were very like theirs. They will tell you, quite calmly, that they know now that they were suffering from a mental illness and imagined all sorts of things. I have some knowledge of this area, since I am an ex-therapist. Some of them recover and do not need any ongoing treatment, others find that they prefer to keep taking some kind of medication to control the symptoms. Now, I'm sure some people reading this will balk at my entrenchment in old-school rationalism and think it's awful that I'm scaring you with suggestions that you're mad. On the other hand, people are mad, millions of us, and maybe they are too. If some people are ever mad, then logically it is possible that you are, or I am, or we both are, and we must take whatever steps we need to to deal with that fact squarely. I suspect that you will, perhaps in the course of this discussion, recognise the power of your imagination and don't need any psychological treatment. On the other hand, talking to someone, like a counsellor or a caring friend or family member whom you trust, might help to put things in perspective.

You're young. You have an unruly imagination. It is in fact a great gift if you can learn to bring it under the control of your reasoning power, something that separates you from the birds. Thinking critically might help too: do you think, for instance, that birds have some spiritual dimension on which they can actually understand anything a human being says (other than reacting to a general sense of how threatening you appear, etc.)? For your idea of transmitting thoughts to the birds, you would presumably have to have dismissed the scientific world view, in which birds are pretty dumb animals descended from the dinosaurs, and in which human beings are probably the only species with anything like a rational thought process. It almost goes without saying, too, that you must have dismissed the centuries of scientific investigation into telepathy, which has - despite what people will tell you here - found no evidence for it whatsoever.

I have entertained such beliefs most of my life, you're not alone. I think of myself as a recovering mystic.

All the best
John