practice for aspiring psychics

[shadowofwind]

As some of you know, I haven't lived with my wife and kids for a few years because we haven't been able find jobs in the same city. Now my wife has found a decent job in San Diego and they have moved there. Houses down there are fantastically expensive (~$1M), particularly near decent schools, so I can't move unless I find something that seems likely to work. I've applied to every plausible position and haven't received so much as an e-mail or phone call, with the exception of one for a contract position with a one-man company that looks like a very bad gamble. The only thing I haven't tried for is radar surveillance research, which I have experience with, and there's some of it down there. But I think that work is evil and also a bad long-term risk. Eventually my wife might be able to find a job in the San Jose area where I am. But I don't think she should have to give up a good job for something marginal where I am, when my job kind of sucks to, and the housing and commute situation here is even more insane than in San Diego. And I don't want to wait that long, my kids are half grown already and I haven't been there for them. Now they're close enough that I can fly and visit a couple Saturdays a month at least, but that's really not enough. So my question is....how is this going to play out? And if you have an intuition about this, how can you tell the difference between an impression of what is likely to happen, and an impression of our hopes and fears about what is likely to happen? This is the difficulty I have with something like a Tarot deck when considering my own situation. It definitely works in the sense that it displays relevant images, not just random images that I'm reading stuff into. But it looks to me like reflections of my thoughts and my wife's thoughts, and I already know what those are. My dream intuitions are like that also. But the dynamic changes when other people are brought into the picture.

[Original Poster]

The problem for me is that I think what you hope and fear are what is likely to happen. If you want a better outcome, spend more time hoping and less time fearing. You seem to clinging to certainty, as though there is a certain future and at least knowing it can dispel doubt. The only certainty you can have in this situation is that you will try your best. There is a position, but there's some sort of obstruction delaying your ability to get it. So keep hoping, and keep open.

[TiredPhil]

I think you already have the answers somewhere in your mind. Sorry for the short answer, but most people ask for help, when the solutions are already in front of them. If you are given advice, and the advice turns out to be wrong, you can blame another person. Make your own choices, but do them with much careful thought first. Hope this does not sound negative. Good luck,( which you make for yourself ) Phil

[shadowofwind]

The problem for me is that I think what you hope and fear are what is likely to happen. If you want a better outcome, spend more time hoping and less time fearing. You seem to clinging to certainty, as though there is a certain future and at least knowing it can dispel doubt. The only certainty you can have in this situation is that you will try your best. There is a position, but there's some sort of obstruction delaying your ability to get it. So keep hoping, and keep open. Thanks for the thought. I don't think I care very much about knowing what is going to happen. I posed that question more as a predictive test to play with. And I'm pretty comfortable with ambiguity and change, at least in the context of events. Maybe more comfortable earlier in my life than was wise, with retrospect. What I care more about is how to fix the situation, even though I also understand that 'fixing' it isn't the right way to look at it. Yes in some ways everything works out, but also in some ways things don't work out. We can be all idealistically philosophical about this, but meanwhile there's an irreversible clock running: my kids are already half grown up without a dad around. The solution is not just a matter of hope. Hope is good, but its not enough. Other things help to. I know what some of those other things are, but not all of them, so to speak. Quite plausibly I do need more hope also though, so thanks for the suggestion. One thing I know I need is more love.

[shadowofwind]

OK, here's what I'm afraid of: I'm afraid that reality as we experience it is real, and that there is no possibility of redemption. By redemption I don't mean that a god is judging us, I mean that there's no better way for a cosmos to work that we can ever get to. In microcosm, this means that I won't solve the central problems of my life before I die. But I really care more about the big picture. Maybe because I know that in some sense the 'big picture' is my picture. I don't believe that the Buddhist 'Path' or 'Way' is a solution. I'd go so far as to say I know its not. I know there's an awful lot that I don't know, and that an awful lot is possible that appears impossible from our current standpoint. So that offers a lot of room for hope. But I fear that the same logical imperatives that make our world the way it is are not ultimately answered by all that, and in a fundamental way things are 'this way' everywhere. Most people have no fucking idea the suffering that goes on at a modern farm, for example. I don't mean to be offensive, and in a way what I just said isn't true. People do have an idea, but keep a distance from it inside themselves because they don't know what to do about it, they can't do anything about it. And a lot of people know a lot better than me. But I can't keep away from it, its with me every moment, not because I'm thinking about it, but because I feel it. And I'm not projecting something onto it, misinterpreting it. Yes I am misinterpreting, but not like how natural-order-apologists imagine that I am. Can you feel even a tiny glimmer of my vast surging reservoir of hatred? Its not hatred, its pain, alive. My pain, but also everyone's pain. And none of our stupid little toy philosophies are making the pain go away, they're mostly just drugging parts of the body so that those parts can blissfully ignore other parts. And the ignorance leads to behavior that makes the pain in the other parts worse. The most optimistic vision that I currently have is that our apparently vast hell-hole of a cosmos is a tiny projection of an even vaster cosmos. Elsewhere all is joyful, and every time a being begins to think about making a mistake that might erode that beauty, they feel it as a mistake in their heart and they correct. Our world is a projection of that thought experiment, its a kind of moral derivative calculation that tells everyone 'else' which direction is 'up'. I can accept that, even if there's no way out for 'us'. Because its all 'us', I don't have to be conscious of the other aspects of it to understand and accept that. (At least two people on this forum have contributed to my view of this, so thanks for that.) But still a part of me says its not OK, that the enlightened views are all rationalizations, that this shit needs to change. Even though the fact that it was this way to start with seems to suggest to me that it can't. I guess other people are afraid of the same thing as me. Otherwise why would otherwise intelligent people make up implausible stories about attaining everlasting life through the sacrifice of God's son or whatever, and somehow manage to believe them. Maybe they're even more afraid of me, and my lack of fear is what gives me the luxury of being able to reject their gods without being paralyzed by despair. Or maybe my stance has as much to do with a lack of common sense. I need to feel, I need to go diving into that lake, it is essential to me. As for everyone I guess. Yet when I go there I feel all that fear, all that misery inside of all of us, and I'm not willing to lie about it. I think this is part of the reason for some of the major problems in my life - fate will not let me forget about the more general realities that affect all people, and which are manifest in my problems also. If I can learn what I need to learn and do what I need to do, then maybe the problems will change into other conditions less problematic. Or maybe the problems in my life won't stop no matter what I do, nature will keep crying up pieces of its broken heart forever, inconsolable. Anyway, thanks again for your thoughts. Don't take what I said too seriously, except for where it may help you.

[blackbirdrising]

So my question is....how is this going to play out? And if you have an intuition about this, how can you tell the difference between an impression of what is likely to happen, and an impression of our hopes and fears about what is likely to happen? I dont see you and your wife moving in together any time soon. She will not give up. Her perspective of the relationship is centered around the desire to make money, not the desire to fulfill love. She loves you very much, but she is managerial minded and practical, and that is what guides her, not the need for affection or togetherness. She feels independent. I pick up that your children want to see you more than she does. I know thats not what you want to hear. sorry. The difference between the impression of what will happen and what you fear will happen is something you cant learn in books. It takes years of practice, learning to trust your instinct through experience. I've been a reader for 26 years. I tell people in my online profile (I joined a cast of online readers back in 1999) that I'm not going to shower you with glitter and sparkles, if you want a fun unicorns dancing and rainbows kind of reading, you need to go somewhere else because I will not present you with any of that. As a result, I tend to get the people who need serious help with serious questions.

[shadowofwind]

I dont see you and your wife moving in together any time soon. She will not give up. Her perspective of the relationship is centered around the desire to make money, not the desire to fulfill love. She loves you very much, but she is managerial minded and practical, and that is what guides her, not the need for affection or togetherness. She feels independent. I pick up that your children want to see you more than she does. I know thats not what you want to hear. sorry. Thanks very much. I think this is a good example (for the 'Psychic or Bullshitter' thread) of how its difficult to isolate the use of extra-sensory information when doing a reading. Your statement could have quite easily been made just based on a general understanding of how things are likely to be for people in our stated situation. I'm inclined to think it was more than that, in part because of my sense of it, and in part because of other experiences I've had where the 'general understanding' explanation clearly wouldn't work. It would be pretty hard to objectively verify which is the case here though, because of course my wife has a multifaceted personality, as do I. She is independent in some ways, for example, but also remarkably attached and dependent in other ways. Likewise for myself. So there isn't an objective way to say how accurate or inaccurate it may be in relation to how our situation develops. I think its a good response though, and I'd be interested to ask you some other questions offline if you have time and interest for that. (I'm too cheap or too stubborn to pay, if you do this for money, but maybe I can offer something else that you find beneficial.)

[blackbirdrising]

I PMed you

[Weirddreamsorg]

I'm an atheist and I don't think there is an afterlife although perhaps non personal consciousness may survive. The disturbing 'big picture' is always present for me too. When I tell skeptics that I don't think there is an afterlife, but perhaps that's just wishful thinking, they never get the joke.