Messages

Hi Chris,

I'm not too sure whats happening with Nodes. As far as I am aware he's been deleting his own posts and has deactivated his account. I'll attempt to contact him to check that everything is ok.

Wow, all this while sober Mister Jingo?

yeah, it's why i've never really had to do drugs   

Seriously though, I think such moments come when we centre on the 'here/now' and see the society we live in for what it is (rather than seeing it as all there is) - with such an outlook, we can glimpse the reality which lies beyond the veil of human led belief and presumption.

A medium at church? All the churches I've been to would toss her in a cauldron of boiling holy water. What are these spiritualist churches called? And tell me your story   

Hey Alaskans, in the UK, Spiritualist churchs are churchs which are concerned with spiritualist activities, things such as healing, clairvoyance, contacting the dead etc.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiritualist_Church

[I'd decided I wasn't going to be]

When I saw him live, he told the audience that he was going to show a short clip (film) with subliminal messages that when watched, would subconsciously make those sitting in certain rows/seats feel compelled to come on stage.

He warned us beforehand that we would be watching subliminal messages, and if we were prone to epilepsy or were parents and wanted to protect our children, to leave the auditorium now.

No-one left. 

We all then watched this strange and, I have to say, terribly boring clip about old scientists.  It was in black and white and was about the history of scientists (from what I remember).

However, being Derren Brown, before this clip he had already written in a sealed envelope those seats/rows/ to whom the subliminal messages would resonate.  Thereby telling us that he knew the formula, knew the magic, and knew how to manipulate it before it happened.

As it happened, the four people who came forward tallied with his predictions, apart from one, who was one seat out (but on the same row).

It was odd, because the people sat around me were saying to their friends "I feel I should be up there on stage, I'm sure it's me blah blah blah.  Even the person I went with (a total sceptic) got sweaty palms. 

Me being me, I decided to not be influenced before the clip was shown - and therefore wasn't influenced - but I knew it was easy to influence me.  Now me being me is very gullible and influential, but once I'd decided I wasn't going to be, whatever, I wasn't.  I sat there calm as cucumber.  When the film was over and everyone was fidgeting, I was looking around, slightly smiling and feeling very "above" everyone (in a levitating way, not an ego way).

...

I definitely need to go see him – although I'd probably regret going if I was pulled out of the audience to go on stage .
You bring up some interesting points . You were aware of his attempt at utilising subliminal messages and so you didn't react to them – but what of we are not aware of these attempts, and so such messages are seeded into our subconscious.
It's interesting that subliminal messages work at all, it at least suggests the brain has evolved in a way to take information in through such pathways (bypassing the conscious 'I'. Perhaps we utilise the same pathways for intuitive knowledge, such as we soak up intricate detail on a person body language, intonation, facial expression (even down to slight singular muscle movement) and through this we immediately build a gut feeling of a person, situation etc. People calling themselves empaths just more into the moment and so able to take in more information.
It also opens the possibility that we unconsciously affect others (who take on board such information subconsciously), and they affect us in similar ways.

I'm rambling.

I went to a spiritualist church service for the first time last night and there was a visiting medium...

I will tell more if you ask... suffice to say it was interesting.



Sarah

I'd be interested to hear about this . My elder Sister has been to many spiritualist churches and always has fantastic stories from there – I've been meaning to go with her to one for years, but haven't got around to it yet. I always wonder if the sensitive people in such places would be able to pick up anything from me based upon my OBE activities.
Through my life I get a lot of comments from people regarding my eyes, some saying they seem to 'buzz with electricity' and really see into them, others say my eyes are full of goodness, and they can tell I'm the kind of person who makes people happy, others and yet others (a teacher being one!) telling me they would never trust anyone with eyes like mine. I just find it highly unusual to get any comments like these at all – they're a bit out of the norm.

It sounds like the 'you create the world around you' concept going around right now. Actually I commented on it earlier "but our universe is already being imagined, and not by us. We are not God, not even close", our individual immagination in the physical world cannot compete on large scales.

I think someone is explaining the concept of being a creator to you.

What immediately struck me on waking was a similar dream I posted to here a while back:

http://www.astralpulse.com/forums/welcome_to_dreams/more_wormhole_dreams-t22405.0.html

That dream concerned a wormhole expanding out and obliterating my 'self', the dream posted in this thread was about the universe shrinking down and obliterating my 'self'. Although the wormhole did it in pure brilliant white, and the universe fading smothered it in pure absolute blackness.
Each dream made me experience death of everything in very slow detail multiple times.

hey Cerrak,

Watching yourself in 3rd person during dreams is not uncommon, at least not for me. Also, regarding your point on Deja Vu, this happens to me a lot too and specifically with the example you gave . Just last night I watched a film, then this morning I was thinking back on it, it felt very familiar. I seemed to have memories of seeing it in the past (Although i seriously think I haven't).
I'm not sure what causes this, but meditation, energy work, obe practice etc cannot be rules out as a potential cause. Any discipline which causes reflection on self (usually to the exclusion of external stimulus) will effect the brain and consequently mind over time. My baseline (C1) mindstate now is very different to what it was even 10 years ago, and this is due to the gradual change such tehcniques effect over time. I have a feeling my Deja Vu experiences at least have some of their roots in this.

I posted this as there was always doubt in regards to the effectiveness of subliminal messaging, but it looks like it might actually have a greater effect than some presumed. I think the part in fightclub ( a bit of a weird example, but I guess they tried to think of a popular culture references their readers would know about), they don't play it at 24 frames a sec, so the viewers actually see it. If it was at proper speed it shouldn't register.
Derren Brown has produced some fantasic examples of subliminal messaging, in one episode he actually used a group of professional advertisers to create a compaign based upon a very broad spec he gave them. They all produced a very similar idea to what he had created prior to them arriving. It turned out that he had set up a series of subliminal ques on their way to his building, and these, with the spec, forced their minds to travel towards the same idea. It just shows how great an influence environment has on our mind, outlook and decision making processes and we are not consciously aware of it (it makes one considder how we could possibly seperate our own decisions from those influced by our environment - and how we would ever be able to tell them apart).

"Stars drip down like butter"

I used to stand and watch the stars, and mini enlightements would bend my mind, See the stars fall back until - I could see the 3d space between them, see the vastness of it all and, be reduce to less than an atom in the wake of such vastness and
feel myself shirink down, be crushed almost, by this unfathomable difference in size.

Welcome River

Hey Chris, Welcome to AP . I Hope you enjoy what you find here.

Hey Alex,

Welcome to AP . THeres lots to learn here, and no doubt lots you can teach us. I hope you enjoy your time here.

Ps. I'm going to be in Australia soon, stopping over there on my way to New Zealand! cant wait

Hey Leary,

It's great to hear of your progress with MAP. It seems that each of us respond to different stimulus and different techniques can prove potent for some and do nothing for others. In attempts to OBE, one must push things forward and be willing to try new things, evolve techniques, use what sits best for them. It's something which is within everyones reach, the task is finding the key.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/6427951.stm

Interesting dreams last night. I was lucid, but not really lucid enough to escape the belief the dream world was reality. I was near my high school; it was a dull gray afternoon/evening and I was attempting to cross a very busy duel carriageway. Across the road was a set of buildings which aren't there in reality, one being a large BandQ centre. While trying to cross the road, there was a sense of danger, lots of cars were driving erratically, and some large articulated Lorries were almost skidding down the road at an angle, like they had lost control. As I was crossing (I was at a set of traffic lights in the middle of the road), a large flaming mass came from the sky, and it seemed to be an airplane which finally crashed near BandQ. Not long after that, a lorry had lost control, skidding along the road sideways; I had to run to avoid it.
I went into BandQ, and was chatting to some people, it seemed I gained the knowledge that the universe was ending, reality was breaking down. It seemed things were fading into oblivion/blackness as the universe shrunk down. Its centre seemed to be not far from BandQ, and standing on it was small room with a secure door.
For some reason I knew I had to get there, so I left the building I was in through its back, and started running to this epicentre. I got to the small building and ran inside, shutting the door behind me. I was now in total darkness. Soon the oblivion was around the building (everything else had gone) and I felt it permeating the building I was in, I felt my mind fading, unravelling into nothingness as the fingers of oblivion destroyed who I was. And then everything had gone.
I was now at the beginning of the dream again, and once more reality was breaking down. I seemed to have some knowledge of the previous cycle, and so tried going straight to the epicentre again – although this time I had some trouble from the BandQ security guards as I tried to cut through there.
Once again everything repeated itself and I experienced myself fading into oblivion.
After many cycles of this, I discovered I needed an object which would stop me fading away.
After more cycles of not finding it, I was once again at this structure, this time though there was a man and a woman in there. They seemed to know about the universe fading but were reluctant to let me into the room. When they did, they seemed to have a (wooden?) bowl with an emulsive liquid in it (yellowish in colour) and they had rubbed it into their skin. This appeared to be the object I was after, and I rubbed what little was left into my own skin.
The ending came again, and I felt the oblivion envelope me until I was just awareness in nothingness. I seemed to have survived fading into oblivion this time but, there was just nothingness. It seemed from that point of nothingness I created the entire world through the use of my mind, and so I opened up the door of the shelter I was in, and the world outside seemed so stunning beautiful (perhaps compared to the nothingness).

I'm not sure if it was the same dream or a later one carrying this idea on, but at some point I seemed to be given the knowledge that each end of the universe was actually a sub-universe ending, one which somehow had branched away from the main universe and couldn't sustain itself so evaporated into the void.

This is something call wave particle duality. It comes down to something called the double slit experiment, where a detector is used to determine if a wave or particle hits it. If a single photo is fired at a barrier with two slits in it, the detector picks up interference patterns (these occur with waves); this seems to suggest that the particle interacts with itself and goes through both slits at the same time. If we close one slit, the detector shows a single particle hit it.
Why this occurs is still open to debate, but recently there have been ideas which might overturn log held beliefs on this subject:

IT ROCKED quantum theory when it was first proposed in 2004, unleashing a dam-burst of vitriol in the physics community. Now the controversial experiment that questions our understanding of the wave-and-particle nature of light has finally been published, forcing some of its initial opponents to take it seriously.

The experiment, carried out by physicist Shahriar Afshar - then at the private, Boston-based Institute for Radiation-Induced Mass Studies - challenges a principle proposed by Niels Bohr 80 years ago. It relates to subatomic entities such as electrons and photons that seem to behave as if they were particles in some experiments and as waves in others.

According to Bohr, these wave-like and particle-like properties are complementary - no experiment can reveal both at once. Until Afshar's results, no experiment had seemed to contradict this principle.

When Afshar went public with his first findings in New Scientist (24 July 2004, p 30), he raised a storm of criticism. "I even had my religion and ethnicity attacked," says Afshar, an Iranian-American, now at Rowan University in Glassboro, New Jersey.

"This was especially unfortunate," says Antony Valentini of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics near Toronto, Canada. "One can understand that different people interpret the experiment differently, but that he should have had such trouble is peculiar."

Afshar believes the simplicity of his experiment - which could be done for $20 in a high-school lab - made people feel it could not be right. "Nevertheless, it's hard to understand how anyone could not see that this was an intriguing experiment," says Valentini.

"There were a few times when I felt like giving up because of the emotional intensity of the opposition," says Afshar. However, he persevered and has now refined his experiment so that he can measure the path of photons - the particles of light - while also observing their wave-like interference pattern.

His set-up is based on the classic "double-slit" experiment that first showed the wave-like properties of light. In that experiment, light is shone onto a screen with two pinholes in it. The light that passes through the pinholes fans out from them like ripples from a stone thrown into a pond and produces an interference pattern of light and dark fringes where the spreading waves either reinforce or cancel each other.

Afshar's apparatus is similar, but with a lens on the far side of the pinhole screen (see Diagram). The lens refocuses the spreading beams onto two mirrors, which reflect them onto two photon detectors, allowing Afshar to work out the path taken by the photons. According to Bohr's complementarity principle, that means there should be no evidence of an interference pattern, as Afshar is observing the light as particles, not waves.

However, Afshar observes the interference indirectly, by placing wires in front of the lens at the positions where he would expect the dark, lightless fringes of an interference pattern to be. If the photons do not interfere, Afshar argues, there will be no dark fringes and the wires will block some of the photons hitting the lens, reducing the photon count at the detectors. No such dip in the signal is seen - implying that the light does form an interference pattern, violating the complementarity principle.

The revised experiment is being published in the journal Foundations of Physics (vol 37, p 295), which is currently edited by Nobel laureate physicist Gerard't Hooft, who also believes that there are fundamental problems with quantum theory (New Scientist, 6 May 2006, p . Afshar himself now hopes for a more cool-headed discussion of his work. "I do think he was treated unfairly," says Lucien Hardy, also at the Perimeter Institute, who was initially sceptical about the experiment, but has now been won round.

Neil Gunther, a physicist at Performance Dynamics in Castro Valley, near San Francisco, interprets Afshar's findings in a way that does not violate Bohr, and is now designing an experiment to test that theory. "Afshar may have inadvertently put his finger on some new physics that could have important implications for quantum imaging," he says.

Hi Nikki,

Perhaps not the answer you are searching for, but my experiences in areas such as this have shown me that such spells require the belief of the person who is affected by the spell. Belief can start very small, but then it grows through a feedback mechanism until, in the context of this spell, a person can control another.
Very similar to this is cursing someone else. There was a very simple technique which could be very effective on suggestible people. It simply involved doing something strange (words, hand movements etc) to catch a persons attention, then you would tell them you have cursed them. Next you say the only way to break the curse is to fall to the floor on their knees (if they did this, then you tell them they believe in the curse and so now it is true).
A suggestible person would do just that, and that is the hook. They believe enough to fall on the floor, hence reinforcing their belief in the curse - potentially starting a feedback mechanism which will see it have greater effect.
I'd ask people to not try this as scaring others is never good .
The only way to beat such a thing as this (once again from my own experience), is to start to reduce the belief over time. It will take time, and it might cause unpleasant effects (unconsciously induced) but the spell/curse will diminish until it is barely noticeable.
I have been in a similar situation (long story, but it was with something called HPPD) and I used to look for its effects everywhere, and started finding them, until my reality was dominated by it. It took a few years of concentrated ignoring and grounding myself to return to a state which I saw as 'normal' and free from this condition.
The above is my own experience and others might vary.

This has been something I've been wrestling with for a long time.  I have a friend who is really into Vedanta, and he assures me it's only my own ego worried about its extinction!  I hope he's wrong, but there is the big "I" again.     DH

It's something which occupies my mind too. Something which gives me some comfort is that we cannot remember anything prior to birth, and there is not fear in that. At worst, if oblivion occurs, we simply return to that state. Also, the fact that I am (or at least believe I am) alive and conscious now, when at one point it might have been nothing also leaves the possibility I might be aware again one day (without any knowledge of this instances of me of course. But these are the worst case scenarios .


Some ideas regarding this I sort of believe are:

I guess non-existence could be likened to unconsciousness with no memory, i.e. undergoing general aesthetic and the hours you were under is less than a second to your conscious awareness as it's not recorded or even experiences of coma patients who have lost years and it seems instantaneous to them. Non-existence could be like this apart from you would never wake up.

Although if there isn't any afterlife it might not be all bad. Something I posted elsewhere:

I reason that if there is oblivion on death (yes I have projected since childhood, and do have some convincing evidence we are more than the physical body - I just can't totally discount all potential theories which have some weight - well until I truly do die   ) and we are the product of a physical brain/genetic pattern, we will live again an infinite number of times. In infinity infinite possibility must be carried out (even within certain strict rules) so the conditions to produce 'you' will be reproduced an infinite number of times. With oblivion there will be no passage of time, so even if vast amounts of time pass between each recreation, it will literally be instant to 'you'. Another theory I've reasoned is that consciousness is the same in each of us. That is every human who exists (and potentially every aware life form) shares the same basis of consciousness, individuality arises from different life experiences. So in effect every person on this planet is you but with differing life experiences. What this means is that if death is oblivion, you will exist in the next new born child. Not as 'you' but as a new point of consciousness which is exactly the same as your core. So either way, if there is life after death or not, we will be back

From this thread:

http://www.astralpulse.com/forums/welcome_to_spiritual_evolution/not_everyone_has_a_soul-t20346.0.html;msg185107#msg185107

It's not as articulate as I posted elsewhere, but I can't find that post .

I too am schizophrenic, i was diagnosed in 2001. I sometimes think that ppl know everything about mentel illness also, and at times i would get frustrated with ppls comments. a way i got over this is to realize that no one is trying to make you feel inferior. sometimes ppl can actually help. for me i naturally feel that ppl are generally like this, but i feel i need to let my guard down and stop being so defensive.

Hey Canicula,
I think with schizophrenia, a lot of people still don't know much about it, so although some people might mean well, they might come across as offensive. Certainly in these forums, no one would mean anything bad (I hope  ).

For me it was obe and meditation that helped with all of what i been threw. i started taking obe seriously about 3 years ago, and since then i have been able to get off the medication. now i just take an omega 3 supplement and I'm still under doctors supervision. but once i started being consciously aware of obe i was able to cope with reality alot better, it was like i gave myself the time in obe to experience the things that would have otherwise slipped into my everyday life. Its kinda like obe and meditation was exercising the very part of my brain that was causing the imbalance, like it grounded me in a sense.

This is fantastic. If I'm honest, if someone stopped medication *and* stopped seeing their doctor I'd be a bit concerned. But you definitely seem to be on the right path. As much as people can rubbish the current medical system, it can still do some good (I am aware it can still do bad too – with anything, be cautious).
I think the whole OBE phenomenon can help a person become a lot more comfortable with conditions which seem to be out of the norm, it helps give things meaning and can take away a lot of fear.

i hope i did the quote thing properly I'm kinda new to forums so still learning

I sorted out your quotes, I hope you don't mind .

Well I dont see how encouraging people to belive they are ill or that they are defective or that there is a vast body of evidence supporting the wrong in there life is helpfull at all.

Hey Nodes,
I definitely don't believe people with this condition are defective in any way shape or form. Normality is just a point on a bell curve – it's a fantasy which doesn't exist. Everyone has something which moves them away from the imaginary line of normalcy. People just 'are'. With conditions such as schizophrenia (Which really is an umbrella term for a large number of symptoms) I think that while some people can help themselves, others might need medical treatment to help them on their way.  So I think it's best to keep all options open. Understanding the cause of some of these symptoms could aid in helping to control some of the more serious ones.

as my old boss used to say to me
"you have to be insane to live in this world" and realistically hes right were all nuts if were given a little push in the wrong direction. if you live in a negative situation it scars your mind with memories.
the more and more you try to "Fix" it the more brain cells you sacrefice to the problem.

I can agree with the above.

and if your brain constucted everything you was why would you need DNA or a Soul. the brain is little more than a hard drive to store information and emit protiens. do you think that when your brain dies there is no more realitys for people. because if there is thats a vast body of information suggesting its just a device for the young and is not responcible for higher thought or conciousness.

This is definitely another topic for discussion. The more I experience personally, the more I am uncertain what of us exactly survives death (that's if anything actually does).DNA is simply a mechanism to encode traits and predispositions of reactions to certain stimulus, this helps produce a large variety of personality traits, and in a way, helps reinforce the illusion that we are all unique individuals.
As mentioned previously, damage to specific areas of the brain over large numbers of people have shown the exact same symptoms. Such as people acting differently, their personality changing, their ability to act socially responsibly (i.e. not grope random people etc), becoming increasingly violent. And this doesn't even touch on the incapacities. What this shows is that even the most gentle, good natured soul can become a violent predator if his brain has specific damage. This at the very least has to make use question our concepts of souls and spiritual progression through lifetimes. If our brain affects our innate goodness to such an intricate level, what exactly would be left of us when our brain dies and rots away? Directionless, unknowing conscious potential?
Perhaps one day i'll have answers, but for now I'm willing to sit on the fence and see which way the wind blows.

and although I acknowledge people with seriouse mental illnesses is bad we cant be sure that it was derived from the phisical plane at all .. more over nobody knows whats going on inside there mind.
...

I agree with you here too . The fact that we have so much to learn, and that we know so little, is what at least grounds me in a sometimes sceptical view. Everyone is different though, and has to walk their own path.

also I would Like to say Mr jingo I noticed you quoted me but I was not replieing to you, I hope you did not think I was, I was replieing to the entire thread I dident want you to think I was implying that you was amusing to me or somthing. I was generalising about the way some people think across the entire world and how it effects this issue.

NodesOfYesod

I'm sorry if I cam across a bit strong, i was just finishing up after a stressful day at work, perhaps not the best time to reply to serious posts as this .

The thing that amuses me about non scitzophrenia people talking about Scitzophrenia people is that you simply have no idea what your talking about. you just read a thing some doctor wrote and suddenly your qualified,

The thing that amuses me about people who make presumptions is that they make assumptions about people they know nothing about. Many in this thread could fall within the criteria of schizophrenia, they could have family or friends with the condition, or they could actually work with schizophrenic people. Hence they do know what they are talking about.
I'm not taking a dig, just saying you don't know the circumstances of those who post in this thread – and no one here is claiming to be qualified in anything.

its not true!. people with scitzophrenia just think more. why is a white whitch who sees spirits angels deamons and can talk to people telepathecly why are they concidered evolved and spiritually mastered.

look at adrian the boss of the pulse ok he has obe in other worlds other realitys talks to dead folk sees aliens and uses his psychic powers all over life for his life.. many folk from down the pub would call him a scitzo... they be like other realms psychic powers year right.

This isn't exactly a good analogy. People who OBE and experience these things usually have full control, they actively seek these experiences, and they feel comfortable within them. With schizophrenia this isn't usually the case.

the reason that many suffer with there thoughts are environmental and sencetive souls behave in this way. we are the ones who listen we are the ones who learn. I cant put it more clearly than I have already its not an illness its a sencetivity to the environment. and being a Scitzophrenic im far more qualified to Judge than any doctor. our entire life is in our mind its not brain damage or a lac of anything its an over developed sencetivity to the environment. this can be for many reasons like lonelyness or a bad up bringing but at the end of the day. all of us think. an you should not be coming to a place like the astral pulse if you dont care about the astral and its inhabitants. and if you stimulate your third eye center you do become more clearvoyant and you do see more and you do hear more and guess what thats what its for! to percieve


Scitzophrenia means to listen to every idea in your mind and follow the path.
all the "normal" people belive every influence inside them is them, where as a scitzo decides what they want to be part of them and what they dont want.. its all thought thats all. and the terrors that we see are not as ugly as pure ignorance

NodesOfYesod

We have to walk a careful line between believing everything is in the mind, and taking onboard rational observations of the reality we all share. There can be no doubt the brain constructs that which we are, as even minor damage to the brain can have profound effects on a persons internal and external worlds. Slight damage to one area can alter a person's behaviour and habits irrevocably. The sheer body of evidence out there which supports this cannot be ignored. What also cannot be ignored is the vast body of evidence which shows the brain grows through stimulation, and various deficits in required stimulation create stunted or deviated growth – leading to behaviour and personality changes.
Perhaps outside of the physical the brain is unimportant, but while we are here, it constructs everything we are, and controls our behaviour and personality.

Schizophrenia can be a terrible condition to someone who suffers from it (please note I said 'can be' not it is in every case) and I believe we have to be very careful with giving people alternative explanations to their condition.

Found this thread late, but there is truth in what Tina said. Recent studies have shown the environmental conditions can drastically increase the likelyhood of schizophrenia developing.

http://society.guardian.co.uk/socialcare/story/0,,1953959,00.html

Something interesting to note is discoveries over the past few years of brain development in children being led by external stimulus. For example, parts of the brain dealing with communication will shrink if the right kind of stimulus is not experienced as the brain develops, in the most severe cases, children who have been in a  communicative deprived environment until after the age of around 3 will never be able to generate comprehensive sentences. The brain areas needed for it simply failed to grow.
Similarly, it seems that lack of both parent figures can causes areas of the brain which require stimulus from both to not grow correctly, or be stunted. This could partly explain many problems with the current generation of children and behavioral problems - although the crap we consume through food or absorb from our environment in this modern age no doubt has a part to play.

The brain has been found to be a dynamic organ, and even changes in adulthood (neuroplasticity) depending on the stimulus received. Although it does seem that there are certain points after which certain development cannot occur (Such as the language problems).

Please note, not everyone or every child brought up in such conditions will experience schizophrenia, it's a much more complicated issue than that. Although regarding the ability to make cohesive sentences, this does seem to be hardcoded at the age of 3 or so. Even a lifetime of schooling will never correct it (if you are interested, google wild children, and there are a number of cases where children were locked in seclusion by their parents for years who experience it too.)

MAYBE(this is just a thought) but maybe some things dont manifest because most people believe it DOESNT exist. and that belief is stronger than the belief that it does exist. this my be why it is difficult to manifest objects and perform feats like psiball flaring and telekinesis. maybe our own conviction must be stronger than everyone elses. of course, it may affect your performance that you are concentrating on manifesting this phenomena and other people who dont believe arent focusing on the object. just a wild thought. who knows.

This is definately an area open to speculation .

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6388575.stm

Vegetarianism is NOT healthy for you!!

Look at this study:

"The vegetarians of Southern India eat a low-calorie diet very high in carbohydrates and low in protein and fat. They have the shortest life span of any society on Earth, and their bodies have an extremely low muscle mass. They are weak and frail and the children clearly exhibit a failure to thrive. Their heart disease rate is double that of the meat eaters in Northern India. HL Abrams. Vegetarianism: An anthropological/nutritional evaluation. Journal of Applied Nutrition, 1980, 32:2:53-87. The optimal diet for humans can be determined by anthropological research studies that show humans have primarily been meat-eaters. Anthropological Research Reveals Human Dietary Requirements for Optimal Health   by H. Leon Abrams, Jr., MA, EDS"

BTW, Monroe called the vegetarian and low fat activist "Nurtition Nazi's" and persisted on having meat at TMI because he personally loved meat.

The population of southern India were shown to have low iron stores, which increases the risk of heart disease greatly. The Indian population to the north had normal iron levels which explains the difference. Indians who are vegetarian and live in the US/Europe show no difference in heart disease or life span to those who eat meat. This is because they generally have a much more iron rich diet.
The study you mention is quite skewed against vegetarianism as it misinterprets why the lifespan was lower and heart disease higher (purely to do with iron - not vegetarianism or high carb intake).
I've been vegetarian for 10 years now, I give blood regulalry. If my iron levels were low they wouldn't allow me to give, and they check them before each donation. Also, i'm 14.5 stone (6'2"), go to they gym 3-4 times a week and am very healthy. A balanced diet is what it's all about (for vegetarians and meat eaters).

The problem is I dont believe the entire world is allowed to know, without a doubt, the truth. Theres never been a successfull highly publicized scientific study on the 'paranormal.' According to results there is no such thing as psychic powers, astral projection, auras, there is nothing according to them.

There have been a lot of studies done into these areas, but people really have to dig down to find them. The problem is, such experiments done under scientific conditions return very poor results, or results which are not far from what chance would dictate.
Something to keep in mind is that science is purely a way of finding consistent  truth using unbiased methodologies. Nothing more or less. Scientists themselves might be biased, but that is a different story.

Well, guess my life is over, might as well kill myself and fade into nonexistence...

I personally believe there is equal possibility of us fading to oblivion on death as I do there is an afterlife. The possibility of  the electrons diffusing into surrounding matter and personal oblivion occurring is not a terrible thought which makes me want to give up on life, if anything, it makes me appreciate the beauty in life even more.
Regardless, oblivion or not, the pinnacle of spiritual development - returning to the source, would be no different than fading into non-existence.

sorry I got carried away  You're only allowed as much as you can handle, correct? What would happen if all the hard nosed atheists out there were shown indisputable, impossible to deny proof of what we believe? It would be too much for them, as such, highly publicized experiments nearly always fail.

What if such experiments fail not because of biasness, but because they simply fail to produce any results in an unbiased environment (unbiased from those with total belief who might be colouring the results with their desire for the results to be true).
Biased-ness stretches both ways. I've seen many people who consider themselves open-minded because they believe in energy and auras, but, they are closed minded in the respect that they won't consider the possibility that their beliefs might be wrong.
True open-mindedness is walking the line between absolute scepticism and absolute belief.

And Selski is right, the tests are always done in a way not conductive to the 'paranormal.' On top of this hot fudge sundae of orthodox sterility sprinkle a bunch of people who purposely sabotage the experiment or its results because they themselves are not able to look the truth in the face.

As above, experiments done by believers can equally be falsified and sabotaged to produce results which will reinforce their beliefs. The brain itself utilises confabulation to construct our world, this means if our belief is strong enough, we will see reinforcements for that belief anywhere and everywhere (this goes for those on both sides of the belief).
I personally don't believe there is a global conspiracy to keep truth of the paranormal from us. The world has shrunk too much, equipment which could easily validate paranormal activity can be found in near every home, and we are linked by a communication network which could get the truth out in seconds.  I find it increasingly disheartening we still do not have this proof.

Im sorry, I know I totally overdid it, it's in no way directed to you MJ. Im just sorry for all those people who still dont beleive, and agitated I cant do anything about it. So much for keeping opinion out.

Opinions are good, so don't worry about it . From the age of 16 to around 22 I was a total believer in all these things, but as I personally experienced more, researched more and read the research out there, my beliefs have been stripped away until now I sit on the line between scepticism and belief. I've experienced some amazing things, but nothing which an irrefutably justify my previous beliefs. I actually went through a very black period in which I first tasted deep depression after I took a long hard look at what I believed, and removed all the unjustified stuff. I found that a lot of my beliefs in the astral and paranormal phenomena were borrowed from authors because I wanted it to be true, and I held such beliefs as absolute. Dropping them was painful.