Hidden behind the idea of “practice” and “success” is this idea of separation.
If we want to become a great baseball player, then we clearly need practice. Becoming a great baseball player takes some natural talent, but like other skills, it mostly takes dedication, training, and repetition.
A lot of times I will equate psychic abilities to other normal skills. I might say that, just like becoming a great baseball player, if you want to learn to be psychic, then you need to practice it as if it were any other skill. Don’t treat it special. Don’t think of it as something mystical. Treat it as if you were learning anything else.
I like this method of instruction for a lot of reasons. The main reason I like to equate psychic abilities to other normal skills is because it breaks down the association between psychic abilities and religious beliefs.
It would be silly of me to be religious about playing baseball. While some great baseball players are certainly religious, and some might even claim that their religion has helped them become so great - one thing is certain: You don’t learn to hit homeruns by closing your eyes and believing in some mystical force. You hit homeruns by practicing. Maybe religion plays a role in motivation, but the actual skill needs to be developed, and the only way to do that is to practice.
Likewise, when I talk about psychic abilities being like any other skill, my real goal is to break this mental association between psychic abilities and personal religious beliefs. I might instruct someone to treat psychic abilities like any other skill, but what I’m really instructing them to do is to drop their insistence of explaining something unknown using religious ideas.
There is a slight problem with this though. Psychic abilities aren’t like other normal skills.
Normal skills need to be learned. The skill is external to yourself, and through training and practice, you slowly learn to perform the task correctly. The information on how to perform the task is external to yourself. Someone else created the game “baseball”. You must learn what they created. The information is inherently external.
Psychic abilities are not external. Psychic abilities are inherently internal. This is where the analogy breaks down. At this point, psychic abilities are not like any other skill. They are not something created by someone else, that we must learn the rules to. They are inside ourselves, at this very moment. We are psychic creatures - right now.
We are not all baseball-playing creatures right now. Some of us learn to play baseball, others don’t. But we are ALL psychic creatures.
It’s important to think of psychic abilities like any other skill in order to break our addiction of explaining unknown things using religion. However: once that addiction is correctly broken, we must deal with the reality of the situation. Psychic abilities are not like other skills. Normal skills are external to ourselves - something that we must engage with the world around us to learn. Psychic abilities are inherently internal.
Put another way: a newborn child, whose destined to be the greatest baseball player of all time, must at some point learn the rules of baseball. But a newborn child, whose destined to be the greatest psychic of all time, doesn’t have to learn anything. In fact, they may already BE the greatest psychic at the moment they are born.
So the next time you find yourself looking externally for answers on “how to be an awesome psychic”, remember that you are psychic right now - it is something inside of you at this very moment. The real question is at what depth do you understand your own true nature.
April 12th, 2008 at 7:47 am
Even if I belive spirituality is important, I’m always saying that it’s not good to put together religion/spirituality and psionics. This is how a lot of fluff is born, when people are trying to find some religious explanation for strange events, instead of looking for logical explanations. And this baseball player is a nice metaphor ;).
April 12th, 2008 at 10:57 pm
More people need to realize that it is a natural ability and it is only paranormal because we do not accept it. I made a psiball before I knew what it was just goofing around I did it many more times because I found it fun.
April 13th, 2008 at 12:55 am
nice post, even though you were a bit repetitive.. lol,
this is actually my belief, we’re all psychic,
its kinda like arms, you can choose which one to use, and if you choose to not use ol lefty.. then it gets weaker.. but it doesnt fall off
April 13th, 2008 at 4:01 pm
I find it strange that evolution has deliberately chosen to make the skill recessive to everything else. If anything, we should be Homo Psionicus-Sapiens’es right now…
What went wrong?
April 14th, 2008 at 11:20 am
Looking at the theory of evolution, it must be that it is not a succesfull skill to have when you have to survive. On the other hand, it could be that we are wrong and that it IS an external skill (how strange it might sound).
Anyways, what I think is that it was a mutation a long time ago which also gave us our intelligence (I mean higher then other animals then) and has been there ever since without anyone knowing of it or knowing how to use it.
April 14th, 2008 at 6:54 pm
It is curious too that the “old times” and superstition tend to go hand-in-hand. Earlier the time, more cases of “supernatural” occurences have been reported.
But since the Jewish religion and its later extensions Islam and Christianity came about, the whole concept of “magical and supernatural” feats performed by an individual could as well be called death sentence with flying stones.
Some 4000 years of unnatural selection and hunt for heretics would easily cause a skill to be forgotten.
Then again, the people living in Asia had no such opressions, but they aren’t actually psionic masters either…
It might be so that only during the last 100 years we have been abled to afford “wasting” our time with obscure hobbies. In the medieval period, your life was not as free as it is these days. Illiteracy and slow spreading of news and religion induced peer-pressure would easily cause one to abandon any interest in stuff that is after all defined evil.
These days we can communicate with a single well understood language with people all around the world. Most of us can read and write, and we sure as heck have more spare time than the peasants back then. Entertainment is here too… Star Wars, Harry Potter, numerous Anime series and many tv-shows show supernatural phenomenon as cool and desired skill. This causes some people to develop interest in things that are by default labeled “impossible”.
Hmmm.. Any chance of having a simple spell-check feature?
April 15th, 2008 at 1:39 pm
well, the asian people do have an tradition of “psionic” skills, like matrial arts ect. (karate, judo) Those trained in those ways can preform feats most people can only dream of… (I mean the real masters)
And in the netherlands we just had a show for the new Uri Geller. 2 of the 3 finalists were trained in eastern ways.
April 15th, 2008 at 1:39 pm
and what do you mean with the spelling check?
April 15th, 2008 at 1:43 pm
When I write “flelonies” instead of “felonies”, it would be nice to have a spell-check button to eliminate all those horrible embarrasing mistakes from my long posts =P
April 15th, 2008 at 2:21 pm
ah, so
but back on topic, I think you might be right, but what kind of supernatural cases were reported?
April 15th, 2008 at 5:54 pm
History as we know it, is full of legends.
Bible alone is full of miracles and supernatural events. However, these are all explained through monoteistic viewpoint and thus, only God can make “good mircales”.
Ancient Egypt had lots of superstition in its culture.
According to recent studies, many people attempted or used “spells” or rituals in order to accomplish goals during the Ancient Greece period.
Somehow the magical thinking seems to be somewhat natural among humans. There are few (if any?) atheistic and uncivilized cultures around the world. Tribal life and rituals / worship tend to go hand in hand.
After the Catholic church began losing its influence around 14th century, one belief after another was challenged. Earth was round and rotating around Sun. Soon technological achievements began to offer surefire ways to produce “mircales”. Boats swim up the river against the wind. Hollow pipes can kill people hundreds of yards away. Machines can fly like birds. People can talk even if separated by a huge Ocean.
Only thing I cannot understand is the fact that Cold War seems to have produced tons of psionic reports and materials. Alas, the actual results are slim and none.
Sure, people can occasionaly do a accurate remote viewing, or affect a random number generator with thought alone, but come on! They just dropped the ball once the Cold war ended.
PEAR. labs were closed down too not long ago.
The biggest wonder of psionics is the fact that it has remained hidden this far. And is likely to stay this way for a long time…
April 17th, 2008 at 6:50 am
So is Sean saying that we already are full blown psychics, we just have to sort of “discover” or “unlock” our potential? Also, I think that humans are capable of doing truly amazing things with psionics, not just randomly, but at will, with ease. I think that there is some kind of major mental block or illusion that is sort keeping us from “freeing our minds”, and once we overcome it, moving a psi wheel will be seen as like crawling is to running.
April 17th, 2008 at 2:09 pm
We can indeed do great things even now, with some training. But what I don’t understand is that psionics have never been discoverd. How can it remain hidden with our information based society?
April 17th, 2008 at 3:16 pm
Or it has been discovered… Merely discredited.
Pop culture has it all in a neat bundle: “Magic”.
Make magic seem ridiculous and childish, and you have discredited everything associated with it. And you can associate everything paranormal under that label.
April 18th, 2008 at 12:00 pm
that is a possebilety, but isn’t magic something entirely different? Or am I mistaken?
ah well, I probably am because on all those sites about magic or “Magick” they use all kinds of things to focus themselves. But how come that not everybody knows about this?
April 19th, 2008 at 8:21 pm
To add insult to injury:
”
People with schizotypal personalities often have odd patterns of speech and ramble endlessly on subjects tangent to a topic of conversation. They may dress in peculiar ways and have very strange ways of viewing the world around them. Often they harbor unusual ideas, such as believing in the powers of ESP or a “sixth sense.” At times, they believe they can magically influence people’s thoughts, actions and emotions.
”
And
”
For a diagnosis of schizotypal personality disorder, at least five of the following criteria must be met:
* Incorrect interpretations of events, including a feeling that something innocuous has a direct personal meaning
* Odd beliefs or magical thinking that’s inconsistent with cultural norms
* Unusual perceptions, including illusions
* Odd thinking and speech patterns
* Suspicious or paranoid thoughts, such as the belief that someone’s “out to get them”
* Flat emotions, appearing aloof and isolated
* Odd, eccentric or peculiar behavior or appearance
* Lack of close friends or confidants other than relatives
* Excessive social anxiety that doesn’t diminish with familiarity
”
These pieces describe a mental condition called Schizotypal personality disorder.
Gee. I wonder why people are so hesitant to pursue psionic interests publicly?
April 21st, 2008 at 2:23 pm
point taken
but we don’t all have flat emotions, nor are we all paranoid etc. most of us are just plain normal…..
hmm, the world is a strange place and humans are even worse….