Why I am against 'powers'

[SFJane]

Perhaps some of you have wondered why I seem so down on cultivation for siddhi, empty force demos, psi and the like. I thought I'd offer an explanation and see what you folks think. This is a long post but I beg of you read it carefully. Please.

 

I spent a lot of time in isolation as a kid with nothing to do but use my own mind to entertain myself. Solitude and seclusion make for an ideal set up to work on one's mental ability. Practicing psi was something I have done a great deal of.

 

My fascination and attraction to 'powers' started very early in life. I was a member of the Third Order of Franciscans and I have personally witnessed the Laying On of Hands as well as Speaking in Tongues. I fell in love with devotional practices. My parents did not need to motivate me to pray. I used to do devotionals (long repetitions of prayers on one's knees) to the 12 stages of the cross all by myself. This was the beginning of my concentration training.

 

The first thing I ever told my mom that I wanted to do when I grew up was be a nun. A life devoted to religious contemplation seemed to me to be what I was born for. Like a lot of teens I went through my heretic phase and deconverted while pursuing occult practices.

 

One of the most inspiring stories in the bible that actually led me to get into the occult was Moses vs the Egyptian Pharaoh. At one point Moses throws down his staff which becomes a serpent. But the Pharaoh's magi were also able to turn staves to snakes. In the story Moses's snake eats the others. (Thereby proving George Carlin's thesis that it's all about 'My God has a bigger dick than your god'.)

 

What I learned was that the magi also had powers. Even if God's power was stronger it validated for me that there was more than one path to attaining magic power. There were other portions of the bible which have to do with not allowing witches to live and distrusting clairvoyance as the work of Satan. To me it spoke of a deep seated fear of other forms of magic besides what faith in God could grant you so I became interested in what those paths might be.

 

To that end I have fed like a starving animal on as much magical knowledge as I could possibly consume. Some of the traditions I have either studied, practiced or been initiated in, include: Satanism, Kabbalah, Order of Thelema, Wicca, Lightbody, Shamanism (totems and spirits) Shamanism (elemental forces) Chaos Magic and Santeria. That is just a sample of the stuff I have partaken of in the magic(k) department. The whole Neo-pagan revival thing. I was in on it since the late 80s.

 

In the psi department, the first ever book I bought was called 'You are psychic: the Free Soul Method' by Peter Sanders which comes with instructions on how to open up energy gates in your brain to achieve psychic sensing, hearing, vision and knowledge.

 

That book, combined with The Astral Projection workbook and the Psychic Energy Workbook were some of my first purchases in the realm of how-to and theory. I bought them using my allowance I made from doing chores at a foster home as a teenager.

 

As some of you know from my earlier posts I was trained in what I thought to be real meditation when I was thirteen by older teens who shared my interest in occult matters. From my Catholic devotions I already possessed the ability to sit still in one place and do repetitive mental tasking like prayer for long periods of time. When I started meditating and practicing all those psychic and astral energy methods, certain things began to happen.

 

The first real symptom was de-ja vu. I began having deja vu on a weekly basis as though the time stream was acting up a little in my vicinity somehow. Then came the first transmission that I plucked out of thin air.

 

It was the end of last period class in junior high and I knew, I just knew, with total certainty, who was going to be called down to the office during the afternoon announcements. Sure enough within a minute or two of my perception, the announcements began and the first two people called were the names that had popped into my head. My whole body began to shake because I thought I was a mutant. I thought this was the beginning of me becoming Carrie or Firestarter.

 

I discussed this experience with my older friends and it was their idea that meditation had accentuated my natural psi ability, jump starting it or amplifying it and I had received a true precognition. Their theory was that I was becoming a psychic antenna. This deja vu and these small precog events continued to increase. I knew what outfit the math teacher was going to wear before I got to school. The vision popped into my mind completely unbidden. I knew what the next song on the radio was going to be before it came on. Little things like that were happening and I began to wonder how powerful I could become.

 

I had my first full out of body experience when I was fifteen. My new foster parents had just grounded me for a week for some misdeed or other. Coincidentally I had just been to the mall and bought 'Opening the Energy Gates of Your Body' and the 'Astral Projection Workbook'. It so happened that I set aside OTEGOYB first and got to work with astral projection. For twelve hours I tried to rise up or fall backwards out of my body. Hour after hour I tried. Finally, I was so tired that I literally collapsed forward onto my face, all tension and effort left me as I crashed into the mattress and then I was staring down at my body from the ceiling.

 

When it came to ways to use my mind my imagination was the limit. One parlor trick I developed around that time involved controlling my blood flow. I had gained the ability to cause my blood to slow down when I got cut. I discovered this quite accidentally. I slipped with a kitchen knife and suddenly blood was running freely from my hand or finger or whatever I cut at the time.

 

I mentally willed my blood to slow. I visualized my mind as a giant construction boss at the cellular level. I would visualize my cells as tiny laborers or bots that would quickly divide and seal the wound. I would visualize my finger cut as the size of the grand canyon and would literally command my cells to start drawing the canyon edges closer together.

 

This had the net effect of noticeably slowing down blood coming out of a wound. It became a parlor trick for me. I would show off for my friends. I would take a Swiss knife, make an incision in my finger and then try to hold back the bleeding through sheer will. (I was a pretty strange high schooler as you can imagine.)

 

I convinced several friends on more than one occasion that I could control the wind and the rain. We were doing a midnight march to a 24-7 convenience store to get Pepsi and smokes and we were getting soaked. I began to create an elemental binding spell on the fly and as I chanted aloud the rain began to ease up and up and then it stopped.

 

I demonstrated that I could increase the ambient temperature of a room by a couple of degrees by visualizing the air as vibrating faster and faster. Another phenomena that occurred in front of witnesses was my presence seemed to turn off street lights when we walked by. I used to try to influence the roll of dice and had enough wins vs my losses to make my friends believe that I had some micro-psychokinetic ability.

 

After awhile I had quite the little following going on. I was a coven leader. People my own age did not dispute my abilities. The more people who heard about the little psychic witch who had once been forcibly treated for schizophrenia and psychosis the more people came to see my 'abilities' for themselves. I would meet people who had already heard about me and were biased to believe that I had real powers. I found myself with the natural ability to hypnotize people with my voice and eyes especially people who already believed I had magical and or psychic ability.

 

The more I flexed my powers the more power I wanted. I made a bet with a friend that I could seduce someone into intimate relations within twenty fours of encountering me and I won the bet. It was really something to have my own believers. People who were interested in and believed in me because of the things I could do. At the age of nineteen I had a very very tiny but nonetheless real cult following among some local people my own age.

 

In spite of my tricks with hypnotism and regeneration and weather control the one power I wanted the most above all was telekinesis. I would spend literally hours at time trying to make a cigarette lighter, penny or marble move. In class I would ignore the teacher and the lesson plan and just concentrate on making the papers on other student's desk fall off or blow away. I used to choose seats in the back because it made it easier to practice aura reading discreetly.

 

I can't even being to approach an accurate estimate of how many hours of my life I have sunk into the practice of mind over matter from a distance under the belief that if I tried hard enough, long enough, my brain would grow the appropriate circuitry.

 

As time went on I became more and more interested in ways I could supercharge my mind, body or spirit in search of more and more power. That was how I initially got involved with aikido, kundulini yoga, tai chi and chi kung. If there was an energy system in Western or Eastern cornucopia that would lead me to becoming a full blown TK I was going to find it.

 

As part of this quest I began to seek out other people who had supposedly attained higher levels of psi or magic. I began testing people. The more I tested people the more I began to believe that Eastern energy practices that lead to psi were a more potent road than ceremonial magic. Nobody seemed to be able to do magic(k) on-the-fly.

 

I'd ask for a demonstration of power, right now, but witches and warlocks seem to need the stars to be in alignment, fasting and purification, special foods and or herbs, drugs, crystals, an athame, staves and an equinox to be able to strut their stuff. A power that takes hours or days to charge up for that only works best on a full moon after a six hour ritual was not useful to me. I wanted defensive and offensive power I could conjure in an instant and magical healing was much slower than directed energy healing. Gradually I began to focus less on the occult and more on chi based systems for my goals.

 

I had been able to feel chi in my palms years before I learned actual chi kung because of two books. Scott Cunningham's 'Wicca for the Solitary Practitioner' has a chi sensing exercise in it and the Psychic Energy Workbook has many of them. One of my practices was to simply extend my hand towards an object and then practice sending chi at it to move it. I would set a pack of cigarettes or a Pepsi can on a table and walk five or more feet away from it and try to move it.

 

The following is just a sample of different ways that I used to practice manipulating chi to influence objects to move.

 

Pushing techniques

Project chi from my hand like a wind and push objects away.

Spiral chi from my hand to push like an energy spring.

Pulse chi from my hand in bursts as a kind of 'chain punch' made of chi.

Cause force to build on an object until it reaches a critical mass and moves the item.

Change the gravitational constant of the object by Will to make it movable by chi.

 

Pulling techniques

reach out with my chi, magnetize the chi of the object and pull back my chi

continual wave pullback (tractor beam or roll back)

spiraling vacuum suck (black hole gravity)

increasing my density to cause the object to fall towards me. (neutron star gravity)

 

I've tried brute force pushing and pulling where I gathered chi in my mind and body and hurled it like one would a projectile into objects to get them to move. I've gone the opposite way and tried to cause one atom to began to slide towards me very gently as though I wanted to move a spider web without breaking strands. Thinking if I could get one atom to move in my direction by sheer will or chi flow that the other atoms of the structure would have to come along for the ride.

 

In terms of modulation I have tried using various emotional energy frequencies to see if it had any effect. Would practicing telekinesis while angry, happy or emotionally neutral have an effect? If I pursued celibacy would that help? Telekinesis was one of the reasons I got into stillness meditation and fasting. If my thoughts were quiet and my body wasn't wasting energy in digestion maybe I would have more chi at my disposal. To me it was all a puzzle box. Some combination of energy circulations, asceticism and concentration would have to unlock the full power sooner or later. That hope is what drove me to practice psi as much as I did.

 

I practiced on everything. It was not enough to find some gimmick like those psi wheels on youtube. I wanted something more impressive. The power to move a

is not going take the gun out of an assailants hand. It's not going to move a car that is about to collide with an oblivious old lady. I would try to open and close doors and turn on or off light switches with my mind before doing it manually just for practice. I would recall the scene in Empire Strikes Back when Luke gave up moving his Xwing out of the swamp because it was 'just too big' and Yoda then pulls it out. I'd get bored at a bus stop or traffic light and try to move cars just to keep flexing my psi muscles.

 

There probably isn't too many psi abilities that I haven't tried. I've tried to control earth, wind, fire, water, metal, crystals and chi. I've tried to phase myself through solid objects. I've tried to dislocate myself through space time in order to teleport or blink through walls. I've tried to fly using psi.

 

A lot of those experiments did not yield the kind of results that make your spine shiver. But there was a few things that I've done involving the mind that have more seeming success than not. One trick I used to practice in school was to stare as someone until they turned and looked at me. Just practicing that I have tried different methods from visualizing beams from my eyes making contact with my target's head, to causing their nervous system and muscles to force their head to turn and whispering the suggestion that they turn and look at me telepathically.

 

I've practiced the opposite of that which is cloaking your thoughts and becoming invisible in a crowded area. One aikido instructor I had liked to have us students come up and tap him from behind and he would try to sense the person coming and dodge them. I would imagine my psychic presence phasing out like a Klingon Bird of Prey cloaking, then I would run up and tap him on the shoulder every time. I made it a point to show him that I could sneak up on him by preventing my chi or intent from projecting in advance of me so he couldn't detect me.

 

It was hardly the first time for me though. I had been through a painful break up with someone I did not want to let go of. Consequently I used to stalk this person mentally and physically. I would spend time using every trick at my disposal, from astral projection and remote viewing to the heart-to-heart spiritual connection to visit my ex. I would stalk my ex in the flesh for hours undetected by keeping my thoughts cloaked. I racked up many hours of practice in the field of psychic stalking and invisibility as a result of my obsession and inability to move on.

 

This all came to a screeching halt as a consequence of a brief talk I had with Master Frantzis at the first retreat I went to. I asked him if he knew anyone who had developed their chi enough to move objects with it. I could make my chi extend out of my hand, surely it was only a matter of hitting the right energy shape to cause objects to move. In Bruce's own books he talks about magnetizing chi during pushhands and how his teacher Liu moved him like an industrial magnet.

 

Perhaps it's an issue of more practice to magnetize objects that you are not directly touching? I told him I had been practicing telekinesis for years and that at this point it seemed like moving chi was going to be the path I was looking for. He asked me to show him and I did. I reached out my hand to a salt shaker on a picnic table and tried to use the energy of Ji and Lu to either push or pull the salt shaker. My entire palm vibrated with the amount of chi I surged into it but no matter what the salt shaker would not leap the four feet of distance that separated it from me.

 

I told Bruce “Not today, apparently, but sooner or later I'll get it.”

He says to me, “And if you do get it? What then?”

“I will know I am on the right track and will continue my efforts working with larger and larger objects. I want to find out how strong I can get” I replied.

“Ok, to what end? How much power is going to be enough for you? It seems to me like you are trying to become an 800 lb psychic gorilla,” He says.

Busted, I shrugged and smiled and said, “Yea, I guess I am.”

Then he says to me “You had better be careful what you wish for. If you are not ready when it comes you could destroy yourself. If you've never read the story 'The Monkey's Paw' I suggest you do.” And that was the end of the conversation.

 

His warning was not enough for me at the time to stop my wanting it. I felt validated and relieved actually as though he had taken my sincerity as genuine. If you talk like that to a psychiatrist you get a Dx of schizophrenia and an Rx for zyprexa or seroquel or haldol. It was not until I read his book 'Relaxing into Your Being', specifically the segment on the addiction to psychic energy and the cultivation of psi as a dead end that I finally realized the error of my ways.

 

I felt like Bruce had written that section just for me. I was self conscious when I read it that I was probably more addicted to psychic power than anyone I had ever met. His words resonated with me. I did some meditation to find out why I was so hopelessly obsessed with acquiring powers.

 

Insecurity and fear. I am sure most of you saw Star Wars prequels 2 and 3. You saw how the combination of former slavery mixed with fear and a desire to become stronger led Anakin straight into the Dark Side. “I will become more powerful than any Jedi” That was kind of my motto. I would be more a powerful psi or witch than anyone before me even dreamed of. In my case I was inspired by watching Stephen King's 'Carrie'. Because I had been picked on at school and wanted to fight back with my mind.

 

I was inspired by SK's 'Firestarter' for similar reasons. In fact the movie Firestarter inspired me to drop upwards of a half sheet of acid stretched out over a couple years in my late teens and early twenties in an attempt to open up my psychic abilities more. I would drop acid then start to open my chakras and energy meridians and then sit for hours trying to move objects in my room.

 

Then I got real honest with myself about what I would do if I really succeeded. I knew that I would keep training until I could move buildings with my mind or separate people's atoms through sheer will. I came to face to face with the certainty that if I did indeed trigger real telekinesis I would become like Jean Grey in X-men 3. People would piss me off and I would disintegrate them. I would stalk my rivals and snuff them. I would find the John Chang's of the world and toy with them for a good long while before breaking them. I would be a telekinetic and telepathic bully.

 

So bit by bit I gave it up. While I was giving it up I encountered an idea that changed me forever. Two simple words rocked my entire universe. 'Confirmation Bias.' I began to research how to evaluate scientific evidence of phenomena and I exposed myself to several concepts that I had previously never heard of. There is always a first for everything right? We are not born knowing this stuff.

 

Confirmation bias led me to more and similar terms like selective thinking, magical thinking, Forer effect, cold reading, self deception, Occam's Razor and communal reinforcement. I took inventory of each of my apparent 'powers' and honestly tried to reproduce them on command. I tried to control the wind and the rain and fire and be honest with myself about the results.

 

Sure enough, much of my 'psychic' ability to divine people's thoughts was natural cold reading aptitude. No one ever paid for me to go to cold reading school but I did have plenty of experience with Tarot and trying to interpret meaning from readings which involves the Forer effect. Something that also explains astrology and personality tests.

 

I came up with other tests for my abilities. What I found was that I had very little in the way of real psychic power that I could prove. My blood slowing trick did not seem to work with extremely deep lacerations. I could not in fact, influence the roll of dice. I had simply made a big deal about a cluster of attempts which seemed to prove that I was micropsychokinetic. I weighed some criteria as higher than others and rejected other possibilities which is what 99% of people do when ascertaining a miracle or a power. They default to their expectations.

 

There was one power that I did find that I really had. That was the power to convince people who were already predisposed into believing, that I had demonstrated real power. When other people Oooh and Aaah you feel more confident about your ability. People gave up their free thinking in my vicinity and agreed after a minimal amount of parlor tricks, that I was special. Some of kind of mutant or witch reborn into this life. An Indigo Child or Atlantean or whatever. You'd be amazed at the reasons I've heard people come up with for my having 'mastered' magic and psi so early in my life.

 

Then one day I heard about the James Randi challenge and how no one ever took his million dollar prize. I tried even harder to find just one of my tricks that would withstand the test of a controlled experiment. I didn't have anything. Just a few people who would swear on a bible that I was the real thing and that they had seen me call ravens to me or cause people to call me on the phone by thinking about them intensely.

 

All that stuff, from turning off streetlights and causing the rain to stop was magical thinking fused with confirmation bias mixed with reinforcement from unskeptical witnesses. And for all my effort I could not demonstrate anything but the ability to bullshit people.

 

That was it. I let go of the quest for powers once and for all. All that was left in terms of 'power' was fa jin really. Subtle and gross projection of chi. I once tested the range of how far people could feel the chi extending from my hand. A girlfriend of mine who was a yoga student placed her palm a few inches away from mine and started walking backwards.

 

She could still feel my chi at fourteen feet away in the cold and wind. But I would never do a Kong Jin video because it proves absolutely nothing. It's why I laugh at every Kong Jin or energy transmission video I've ever seen since. It only works on people who can sense chi. Other than subtly moving another person's chi there is not a lot you can do with it in practical terms. You are not going to win the Randi challenge with kong jin.

 

It's a waste of time to practice it much because you are not going to be able to chi pulse your enemies away from you. If you want to use chi for fighting you are better off learning how to gaze people and sink your chi.

 

As some of you know I went on to focus on the Water Method of dissolving and gradually dissolved my physical, chi, emotional, mental and spiritual bodies. I cured myself of depression. I turned off the voices and visions in my head. I dissolved this mass of energy blocks that stemmed from years of abuse I endured as a child. I learned how to love myself and be happy in this life.

 

If you think about it there are millions of people who are depressed in this world. Mental illness afflicts people of every walk of life. Stress ruins people's minds and bodies. I was able to destress myself and gain happiness and spiritual contentedness. I didn't need to have children or God or a PHD or win the lotto to get that happiness and feel complete. I realized years after the fact, that the ability to heal your own spirit is a kind of power too.

 

Trying to become Carrie or Firestarter or the Phoenix didn't make me happy. It really only made me obsessed and attached to something that was not doing me any spiritual good. It was a distraction. I learned a lot about myself in the process of trying to become psychic and during the process of debunking myself.

 

When I finally did get a 'power' (of sorts) it was like nothing I ever imagined or aspired to. People don't think of the ability to be content and happy or still your thoughts as a 'power'. And I finally lost my fear that someone was going to win the psychic arms race and beat me to becoming the Phoenix. Most people will never put in the amount of time I invested on that ultimately futile endeavor.

Edited April 5, 2010 by SFJane

[Cloudhand]

If you train for powers karma will pay a vist and knock you on your butt. So beware, freedom remains the quest, but the path is full of dangers. Cloudhand

[C T]

First there was craving. Then dissatisfaction, which resulted in giving rise to aversion.

 

Buddha taught the Middle Way.

[thelerner]

Thank you SF, another great post thats informative and personal.

 

I think if 'powers' come, fine.

If powers don't fine,

but to grasp for them is to move away from the path.

 

 

Michael

[SingaporeGuyHere]

interesting life story SFjane ! congrats on finally moving on to a better path

[forestofclarity]

Nice post. Interesting reading.

[Birch]

Excellent post SFJane. In fact, before seeking any kind of "siddhi", I'd suggest cultivating the following (lesser?) powers:

 

- critical thinking. It ain't easy. it's very technical and a storehouse of learning IMO

- scientific method - I want to underline method

- awareness

- empathy

- compassion

 

I should maybe add that the above are also valid for oneself as much as for others

 

Just IMO

[sifusufi]

Brilliant!

Write it!

If I was a publisher....

[Spirit Ape]

What a painful read!!!

 

If you attained any powers you would truly think totally different. Sorry if it comes across rude Jane, I understand you did this and that but powers come from good methods not evil!

 

my 2 cents worth...

 

Ape

[SFJane]

What a painful read!!!

 

If you attained any powers you would truly think totally different. Sorry if it comes across rude Jane, I understand you did this and that but powers come from good methods not evil!

 

my 2 cents worth...

 

Ape

 

A method is just a method. An effect is an effect or it isn't. It takes a human frontal lobe to judge a method or effect 'good' or 'evil'. I really have no idea what you are talking about Ape. Do you believe that you have powers that you obtained by being 'good'? (whatever that means)

[That Guy]

Thanks for the story, your "powers" you thought you had is exactly why I can't accept anecdotal evidence from people.

Proof > Faith if you're planning to truly invest on something.

 

As for wanting special powers i think its fine, maybe in your case there were deeper issues at hand, but not all are like this.

 

I'd love to fly, it would be fun and very convenient to get around. Birds do it, and they don't seem to be on some kinda power trip

 

But I also agree with Spirit Ape, though I'd just change 1 word "If you attained any powers you might truly think totally different."

[SFJane]

And thank you very much to Kate, sifusufi, forestofemptiness, thelerner, singaporeguy, that guy and everyone else for reading and commenting. If there was any group of people online that I could post that and be somewhat understood it's here.

 

Edited April 5, 2010 by SFJane

[SFJane]

Thanks for the story, your "powers" you thought you had is exactly why I can't accept anecdotal evidence from people.

Proof > Faith if you're planning to truly invest on something.

 

As for wanting special powers i think its fine, maybe in your case there were deeper issues at hand, but not all are like this.

 

I'd love to fly, it would be fun and very convenient to get around. Birds do it, and they don't seem to be on some kinda power trip

 

But I also agree with Spirit Ape, though I'd just change 1 word "If you attained any powers you might truly think totally different."

 

 

You are welcome. Thanks for commenting. I want to make it clear to anyone that did not understand that I do not believe that I had powers then, now. Even if some of what I said sounded magical. I didn't confess to those powers to brag, get awe, respect or anything. I wanted to illustrate just how fixated I was and how easy it can be when we believe in magical thinking, to assume magic is happening.

 

Nor do I believe I have powers now either. When I said that I finally got a power, what I mean is, a reliable ability that comes from within (from my mind no less) that I do not have to try for. The evidence of that 'power' is that it continues to work. I mean it strictly metaphorically, just in case that is not understood by anyone.

Edited April 5, 2010 by SFJane

[mYTHmAKER]

You are welcome. Thanks for commenting. I want to make it clear to anyone that did not understand that I do not believe that I had powers then, now. Even if some of what I said sounded magical. I didn't confess to those powers to brag, get awe, respect or anything. I wanted to illustrate just how fixated I was and how easy it can be when we believe in magical thinking, to assume magic is happening.

 

Nor do I believe I have powers now either. When I said that I finally got a power, what I mean is, a reliable ability that comes from within (from my mind no less) that I do not have to try for. The evidence of that 'power' is that it continues to work. I mean it strictly metaphorically, just in case that is not understood by anyone.

 

Thanks for the post.

Reminds me of someone who once said " We all want miracles - powers - everyone is trying to hear with their mouth, smell with their eyes.

see with their nose - The real miracle is that we see with our eyes, hear with our ears, taste with our mouth"

And yes you should write a book.

[de_paradise]

Another theme I picked up from this story is that you got to where you are by using the spiritual path accessable to you at that moment. Its unlikely you could have at a young age even spent a moment on a holy shmoly boddhisattva-like course of meditation to reach enlightenment for the benefit of all beings. And in the end your compass righted itself. Is that by coincidence, or just how things tend to work?

[Aetherous]

Another theme I picked up from this story is that you got to where you are by using the spiritual path accessable to you at that moment. Its unlikely you could have at a young age even spent a moment on a holy shmoly boddhisattva-like course of meditation to reach enlightenment for the benefit of all beings. And in the end your compass righted itself. Is that by coincidence, or just how things tend to work?

 

Great point.

[Spirit Ape]

Hi Jane,

 

Depends on what you consider a power? We all have it in us, its part of us just unlocking using the correct tools is all you need. What you do with it is up to you, there is no good or evil in the universe or right or wrong. Attaining powers isnt a bad thing thats all im saying!

 

Ape

[enouch]

A method is just a method. An effect is an effect or it isn't. It takes a human frontal lobe to judge a method or effect 'good' or 'evil'. I really have no idea what you are talking about Ape. Do you believe that you have powers that you obtained by being 'good'? (whatever that means)

 

 

 

What I believe Ape means[i could be wrong] are effective methods that bring true siddhis. You know, like Wim Hoff, swami Rama, Prahlad Jani, John Chang, Chunny Lyn, ecetera have. I noticed in your report not a mention of desiring powers for healing [like Drew proclaims he wants] was mentioned. Super normal healing is a siddhi as well. As for good...sure everything is filtered through human consciousness, nothing interpets itself. However, that does not lessen the distinction between the two dualing forces at work in human experience. Just as a rape victim.

 

I do believe you are correct about critical thinking coming first, it's just we should beware of western mechanistic, materialist bias dominating our entire world view.

Edited April 5, 2010 by enouch

[NeiChuan]

For better or worse they still are you.

 

Can be as beneficial as your generosity and as negative as jealously. Matters how you see it.

[Spirit Ape]

Thanks Enouch, you are spot on bro!

 

cheers

Ape

 

P.S With good training and real methods you will attain it even if you may not want it, then what will you do Jane?

[Martial Development]

Thank you for sharing your personal story.

 

Are you for, against, or indifferent to the Summer Olympics? There must be thousands of people who trained countless hours for them, only to be disqualified on their first event.

 

On the subject of "powers", Wikipedia says:

For many years, the scientific and athletic communities thought that it was impossible to run a four-minute mile. It was first achieved in 1954 by Roger Bannister in 3'59.4". The 'four minute barrier' has since been broken by many male athletes, and is now the standard of all professional middle distance runners. In the last 50 years the mile record has been lowered by almost 17 seconds.

[tyler zambori]

Wow, that took courage to post, thanks for being open about it. I do take issue

with something, but I do not mean to put you down in any way.

 

Are you really sure that you came to your conclusion that "psychic powers" are

basically all fake, by really scientific means? I ask, because I don't think so.

 

For example:

 

"It was the end of last period class in junior high and I knew, I just knew, with total certainty, who was going to be called down to the office during the afternoon announcements. Sure enough within a minute or two of my perception, the announcements began and the first two people called were the names that had popped into my head. My whole body began to shake because I thought I was a mutant. I thought this was the beginning of me becoming Carrie or Firestarter."

 

How was it that later you decided you didn't really know who was going to be chosen after all?

(If I'm understanding you correctly). You can't "cold read" something like that.

 

Also: "I had my first full out of body experience when I was fifteen. My new foster parents had just grounded me for a week for some misdeed or other. Coincidentally I had just been to the mall and bought 'Opening the Energy Gates of Your Body' and the 'Astral Projection Workbook'. It so happened that I set aside OTEGOYB first and got to work with astral projection. For twelve hours I tried to rise up or fall backwards out of my body. Hour after hour I tried. Finally, I was so tired that I literally collapsed forward onto my face, all tension and effort left me as I crashed into the mattress and then I was staring down at my body from the ceiling."

 

Also, how did you decide that this experience also was not real after the fact, when you did expereince it as real at the time you had it?

 

Could it not also be that you needed to reinforce facing your tendency to desire for power with

the scientific position (and jargon) on the matter, to help you get off of that track?

 

I was also involved with an occult group, and they did not have quite as many "powers" as they wanted

people to believe, but they had some, and they used them to really bad ends. They also did not

have their act together on the physical plane - they did not have decent jobs, could not afford

good food, and were always on the verge of being kicked out of their apartment by the landlord.

Seriously they would have been far better off becoming something like money-grubbing lawyers than

doing what they were doing because it was the worst form of what the Hindus call "Tamas."

 

The reason I'm pointing this out, is that maybe in the future I will have a reason to want to

talk about things going on with me that have to do with "powers" without feeling like I have

to turn myself into a petri dish. So I will give one exampole from my own experience:

 

When I was in the process of getting help with leaving that occult group, the woman who was helping

me wanted to see for herself something about me, so she put this ring in the palm of my hand to

see if I could feel anything. So I stood there for a minute or so with the ring sitting on my skin

and felt nothing. It looked like the would be no reaction, so she took the ring off my skin.

Then the reaction happened - painful chi in my hand. I said that my hand was starting to hurt,

and she performed her own technique for getting it to stop, and it did.

 

Ok, she was a friend of a friend, and there was no exchange of money. If the power of hypnotic

suggestion was so good that it could cause me to feel this pain my hand, why could't I use this

in better ways? Why couldn't I use this all the time, in every way? I've tried self-hypnosis,

and lemme tell ya it does nothing for me. In fact, that occult group had actually wanted to

hypnotize me to get me better under their control, but in the end decided it would be too

much work.

 

She told me afterward she had picked up the ring somewhere in Russia, and knew it had an evil

influence on it. (er. why did she want it then?) I dunno...but she helped me for no money.

That was the extent of the involvement.

 

I am able to feel nice happy chi too. I don't see auras or go chasing after OBE's.

I would much rather make a successful film than get occult powers over people.

 

I think the reason nobody really took the amazing Randi up on his challenge, is just because

a human is not a petri dish. For example. would I want to do that ring experiment on

national tv, even for a lot of money? Heck no. How would I even prove that I was

experiencing pain from having touched the ring? I couldn't. And then there is the

psychic barrage of skepticism. Sorry, no thank you. And yet it was real.

The fact that I cannot, and would not want to, turn myself into a petri dish,

doesn't mean I didn't experience it.

 

Congratulations to you on snapping yourself out of the hunger for power, it takes

a lot of courage to face that and deal with it.

[Spirit Ape]

So how do you attain powers and decide I don want them? You got it in you already....

[3bob]

Hello Jane,

 

Do you believe you were fortunate not to have bumped into a lot more trouble than some of what you have mentioned here?

 

Many of these types of methods and so many others "of the world" so to speak, more or less come down to everyone looking to be happy and secure don't they? And as you imply to me you have gotten back to understanding and attuning to more of the true desire - which had been taking the shapes of so many of the spin-off desires that you've described in great detail.

 

The true power can and will use any method or form (and countless tests which are not in vain) to reach to us for that is it's true desire. And ultimately it has us like the Ocean has drops, instead of us having it separately.

 

Om

[Ya Mu]

Jane I agree with a lot of your perspective. You may or may not have noticed that I usually post against utilizing qi to attempt mundane things. The latest thread about moving paper with qi is an example. From my perspective and experience, these attempts do not help a person train their qi and my conclusion is like yours; this is a total waste of effort.

 

 

...

P.S With good training and real methods you will attain it even if you may not want it, then what will you do Jane?

Agreed.

If the training is real, it will happen because it is a natural part of you. IMO we should embrace the totality that we are. All natural talents will manifest.