Indications of the Metaphysical

[Bloodcinder]

For those who believe in something beyond the material world, such as a spirit realm, God, ghosts, demons, et cetera, what has indicated for you that such things exist? This isn't about what you believe in. It's about why you believe in it.

I will start.

I was raised a Christian, and for most of my life I claimed to be one. My faith then was based on the Bible. Various things happened in my life and my views changed. It would probably be dishonest of me to identify as a Christian, although I believe there is God and I believe that Jesus's tenet of grace is the only way to cure the world.

I've had several encounters with metaphysical beings. I've talked about this with Chef and SP some, so they probably know more than I'm going to tell here. Basically, when I "turn on" my ability to sense these things, I become aware of presences. I don't optically see things, but I "feel" what they look like, where they are, what they want, and what their "alignment" is. They've never been dead people: they are always non-human entities.

Also, I "feel" God's awareness. I don't necessarily believe in the Abrahamic God... and I don't necessarily not believe in the Abrahamic God. But whatever God is I can "feel" that it exists and knows what is going on.

Since I started experiencing this stuff, my belief in God has become less of a faith and more of a knowledge. Of course, that which has transformed faith into knowledge for me is not something I can authoritatively convey as proof to others, but for me it is proof that the metaphysical exists. And there is always the possibility that I have some kind of mental defect causing my "ESP."

So... what do you know about the metaphysical and how? Those who disbelieve in the metaphysical can't rightfully answer the question but may wish to participate in the conversation regardless.

[Seegtease]

God of the Bible, old and new covenants. But I'm sure everybody here has picked up on that by now.

[Bloodcinder]

But I was hoping to go deeper than that. Do you feel God? Do you feel the Holy Spirit or Christ? Have you had contact from any of them? Have you ever seen a miracle?

[Gio Takahashi]

I will post my long answer later, but this is my short answer:

Do I believe in ghosts? Yes

Do I believe in God and Jesus? Yes

Have I been contacted by a Ghost? Very likely so. that will be part of my long answer later on.

[Charlie]

I believe pretty much in what Zeit believes. The God of the Bible as the supreme ruler of the universe, and his son Jesus Christ as our lord and savior. And a primary source of communication to the two through it all being the Holy Spirit, which is the ONLY "ghost" I'll place any sort of belief in. If anyone's interested in hearing it, I could go into every last detail of why I believe, as well. But right now, I don't feel like it. Let's just say that my nervous breakdown two years ago more or less put things into a new perspective for me. And it still is, a little bit at a time.

As far as everything else goes, I don't believe in witchcraft, seyonces, ghosts, any other sort of religion on the face of the planet outside of non-denominational Christianity, decapitated talking heads, flying pigs, or any of that crap. I don't believe in aliens, I don't believe in UFO's, whatever you throw at me. If it's not for God, it's against God.

[Bloodcinder]

I hope to read your long answer soon, Don... I'm interested in your ghost encounter.

I'm curious, Charlie: did you know that Saul got a witch to summon the ghost of Samuel?

[Charlie]

Didn't know that. I'm still a long ways behind in the bible. I could really only quote back the events of Genesis or Job the way I'd want to, since I actually finished those parts. Add in a few extra bits of scripture from random other parts, as well.

[Bloodcinder]

Until you have finished reading for yourself, I encourage you to be open to the idea that the things that God opposes (such as witchcraft and spirit summoning) are real and capable of harming you. Jesus didn't take otherworldly forces lightly, and you could be in trouble if you did so as well. This is just a friendly admonishment. I'm not trying to dictate your faith or what is right or wrong.

[Gio Takahashi]

Charlie, keep in mind that Alien and UFO is Not of the "Metaphysical" and can be as physical as you and I am. Second of all, what makes you think Alien and "UFO" do not exists? Just because the Bible never spoke of them, doesn't mean it's impossible.

I don't think that you can possibly dismiss the idea of extra-terrestrial life. Why would the outer space be so vast and open?

[Charlie]

I understand where you're coming from, BC. And thanks.

And maybe the bible doesn't mention them, Gio, but I just always thought the idea was too far out there. After all, when was that whole Roswell thing, anyway? 1947?

[Gio Takahashi]

I think it's very possible. One of the explanation, is that the Bible focused only on human's faith and relations with God.

[Seegtease]

As far as everything else goes, I don't believe in witchcraft, seyonces, ghosts, any other sort of religion on the face of the planet outside of non-denominational Christianity, decapitated talking heads, flying pigs, or any of that crap. I don't believe in aliens, I don't believe in UFO's, whatever you throw at me. If it's not for God, it's against God.

You're right on the last part. But some of those things do exist. They aren't necessarily good things, but they do exist. Contacting mediums are indeed mentioned in the OT (punishable by death, I believe). The Bible does make it clear that Satan has power (nothing compared to God) but God does allow him to use some of it, usually for reasons beyond our understanding. The book of Job would be a good book to read to learn about the influence Satan can have if God allows it.

Anyway, it's my take that a lot of things, like witchcraft or mediums, exist as devices of Satan. But there's no doubt that they exist. Even Pharaoh's magicians did tricks to try to show Pharaoh that they can do what Moses could do. It's quite possible that this was an exercise of witchcraft, but their tricks were petty compared to the plagues God brought. For example, when he turned the water into blood, they simply turned water into blood too (could have been dye but still), but that's not very useful. They certainly couldn't turn it back. Possibly because God wouldn't allow it.

I'm curious, Charlie: did you know that Saul got a witch to summon the ghost of Samuel?

I know you didn't say whether he did or not, but I'd like to mention that he did get punished for it. This was not something God wanted him to do, since He did forbid such things.

Anyway, I hope my comment to Charlie elaborated more for you too, LH.

[Bloodcinder]

What you said is what I would have said if I had devoted more time and could fairly claim to be a fellow believer. I think it was all sound advice to Charlie.

I'm just curious if you have encountered anything metaphysical, Zeit.

[Seegtease]

Personally, no. Not even a maybe. Not looking for anything, but not avoiding anything either.

[Bloodcinder]

Do you have the feeling that you have HS inside of you or do you just believe that you do?

[Seegtease]

God never described a certain feeling I should be feeling. My particular faith does not depend on feelings or emotional highs, but only what can be gathered from the Bible. I believe the Holy Spirit is in me, though. That's entirely Biblical. I question most of what is not. Not that everything non-Biblical is wrong, but I can't immediately know its true, either.

[SpaceProg]

My feelings on things like this BC knows now. Trust me, they're very unorthodox and trippy so I won't divulge them here for fear of making you all think I need to be committed.

[Bloodcinder]

Not that much more unorthodox than my own. I already admitted to "seeing" things. You can't do much worse than that. [Stuck out tongue of comradery.]

[Detrevni]

Either the metaphysical doesn't like me or its not real. No experiences, no nothing. No feelings. No unexplainable circumstances.

Also people who claim to be witches are silly.

[Bloodcinder]

People who claim to be witches are usually Wiccans (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wicca). I'd call them more frightening than silly.

[Arainach]

Why, exactly? I've known a few, and they were all rather ordinary, well-balanced people.

[Bloodcinder]

I knew one, and his spells worked. So, from my perspective, they are frightening.

[Gio Takahashi]

That is quite amazing.

Anyway, the experience I was referring to earlier in this thread is about my dead grandfather. He was my grandfather on my mother's side. the family on my mom's side is nothing short of dysfunctional. Even my mom and her mother would have their arguments, constantly. Anyway, he was probably the only one that truly cared for me, and taught me pretty much everything, and has been there for me, when I was younger.

Every birthday (and other holidays at school) he would deliver fudge for me and my class, everyone loved the fudge. Best damn thing to have (I miss it so much, now that I think of it :( ).

The last time I saw him was on my 13th birthday, when he was delivering fudge for me, a month later in June, I had a very realistic dream, I saw him in my dream, we were at at a resort that we used to stayed at when I was... 7 or 8 years old, I could recognize the living room, even though I couldn't remember it until then.

Everyone else in the dream was fuzzy though. I wouldn't recognize them, but I knew who they were. However, one person that wasn't fuzzy was my grandfather. He appeared to me, said Hi, in that smile he'd always have, and then I woke up.

That night, I woke up around 3am, I was getting a drink, and saw the light on my dad's desk left on. I was going to turn it off, until I found a letter that my mom was writing before she went to bed. she was writing how she remembered my grandfather, her step-dad (Even though he's not my biological grandfather, I DO see him as such), then that was how I found out.

Normally, I have dreamless sleeps, and when I do have dreams like this, I dont' take it seriously. Ever since that night, a lot of times I wonder if that was really him saying goodbye to me, since I haven't seen him since my birthday.

It's not exactly the most credible thing when it comes to this, since it was a dream, but when it comes to this sort of thing, what we know of metaphysical amd supernatural is limited.

other experiences I've had:

I've seen objects just mysteriously falling down, forexample a glass cover for the light on the ceiling fell out of the blue, yet there could not be anything that could cause it.
the creepy part is that the glass cover was in my room, over the spot where I normally sit to play video game. That thing could've hit my head O_o

a recent experience: I was sitting on the computer, right here. and I felt something grabbing my shoulder. Really made me jump.

[Bloodcinder]

Interesting. The dying-goodbye dream is actually fairly common, and I think that there may be something supernatural about it.

[SpaceProg]

I've had similar dreams myself. One with an aunt that had died, and another with a cat that had died not long before that.
Though the cat one was less a dream and more of a walk-on-my-back-and-lay-down-in-a-catty-way-and-when-I-reached-back-nothing-was-there experience.

[Gio Takahashi]

My mom told me that she felt that all the time. She would feel a cat walking along the top of the couch, and nothing is there.

[SpaceProg]

I know the feeling. I miss my cat that got sick and died very much too. I'd like to believe that she visits from time to time and that's when I feel her walking on the bed. She used to do that a lot in life, hehe.

[Seegtease]

Interesting. The dying-goodbye dream is actually fairly common, and I think that there may be something supernatural about it.

You could be right, but I'm personally more inclined to think that when somebody dies, they may be on your mind, and you are likely to have a dream about them. Wishing you had said goodbye, your subconscious could be trying to create this memory.

I could see why it'd be common, though.

[Bloodcinder]

No, it's common that somebody dreams about a person dying just before the person actually dies, meaning that there was no reason for them to have the dream.

[Gio Takahashi]

You could be right, but I'm personally more inclined to think that when somebody dies, they may be on your mind, and you are likely to have a dream about them. Wishing you had said goodbye, your subconscious could be trying to create this memory.

I could see why it'd be common, though.

Keep in mind that this dream was before I found out.

[Seegtease]

Oh, I missed that you didn't realize he was dead.

[SpaceProg]

In my experiences when that happened to me, I knew they were dead, but oddly enough I didn't know the aunt that had died well enough to have developed very strong feelings for her, nor did I expect my cat to make a visit.
My aunt visited to tell me what heaven was like (As much as she was allowed to, anyway, which wasn't much, but it sounds good to me.).

[Z]

I've never seen a ghost. I've been in situations where I definitely didn't feel like I was alone but as far as actual experiences, I've had none.

I have, however, had prophetic dreams multiple times. It's not something I can do at will or anything but about once a month I will have a dream and it will come true either that day or the next. Any other dream I have, I forget within 5 minutes of waking up but if it's going to happen and come true later on, I can always remember it no matter how much time has passed.

My girlfriend used to be Wiccan-ish (and I phrase it that way because she was more of a researcher than a practicer) and she said the Wiccans of today aren't the same Satanic stereotypes of the past. A lot of their modern beliefs involve the balance of nature and whatnot. I don't know if she ever tried to cast a spell or anything but I kinda doubt it. I'll be sure to ask. Right now, though, she is waving the Agnostic flag.

My mother once played with a Oiji board by herself and she swears up and down that the thing moved on it's own and to this day she won't allow anyone in the family to own one because she said whatever moved it just felt dark.

[Seegtease]

Wiccans of today aren't the same Satanic stereotypes of the past. A lot of their modern beliefs involve the balance of nature and whatnot. I don't know if she ever tried to cast a spell or anything but I kinda doubt it. I'll be sure to ask.

All I can think is Druid.

[Z]

lol, tis true, though.

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

Wicca is a pagan, nature-based religion popularised in 1954 by Gerald Gardner, a retired British civil servant, who at the time called it Witchcraft and its adherents "the Wica".

Beliefs:
Wiccan views on theology vary, though the vast majority of Wiccans are theists, believing in some form of God, and/or gods. For most Wiccans, Wicca is a duotheistic religion worshipping a God and a Goddess, who are seen as complementary polarities, and "embodiments of a life-force manifest in nature.

Morality
Wiccan morality is largely based on the Wiccan Rede: An it harm none, do what ye will, which is usually interpreted as a declaration of the freedom to act, along with the necessity of taking responsibility for what follows from one's actions and minimising harm to oneself and others.[17] Another common element of Wiccan morality is the Law of Threefold Return which holds that whatever benevolent or malevolent actions a person performs will return to that person with triple force.

[Arainach]

All I can think is Druid.That's pretty close, really.

[Seegtease]

Any of them figured out how to turn into a wolf yet?

[Bloodcinder]

Michael J. Fox.

[deathofcheese]

I have, however, had prophetic dreams multiple times. It's not something I can do at will or anything but about once a month I will have a dream and it will come true either that day or the next. Any other dream I have, I forget within 5 minutes of waking up but if it's going to happen and come true later on, I can always remember it no matter how much time has passed.
When these happen, does it feel like strong deja vu? I get those prophetic dreams a lot, and I can usually tell when they are such dreams, but I usually no way of knowing when they'll happen or where I'll be, but when I do find myself in that situation, it'll happen exactly like how my dream went. I only recognize the dreams when I dream them and when I live them. I might remember them vaguely outside of sleep, but I largely forget them until they come to pass.

My mother once played with a Oiji board by herself and she swears up and down that the thing moved on it's own and to this day she won't allow anyone in the family to own one because she said whatever moved it just felt dark.
My best friend from high school and I played with his sister's board once. We both asked to talk to our respective grandfathers, both of whom were dead. Mine was dead before I was even born (he died when my father was real young); I don't remember if my friend ever met his. The board didn't do anything funny, but my friend swore that as he walked through the wallway to get something out of his room, the christmas tree they had set up in their house flashed once, grabbing his attention, then flashed again. He said it gave him a sense of purpose, like something caused it beyond a simple power explanation. I thought he was full of shit at the time, even though there was no power flash at all (we were listening to a radio and their family computer was on the same circuit breaker as the tree, neither of which did anything at the time) and those lights weren't designed to flash at all.

----------

The house my family currently lives in was built in the early 50s by a semi-wealthy/semi-well-to-do landowner named Hayes. He had three or four sons, all of which settled around in the area (you can walk to all the houses that they built and lived in) and still has descendants in the area. We bought the house, as well as a 16 acre lot in 1991 when we moved up from Jacksonville. We spent a year renovating the house before moving in.

In a period of five years from the time we moved in, my dad and my sister claimed to see ghosts in the house. From the stories we heard, no one had ever died in the house, nor had they died while living in the house. Old man Hayes had moved out to a nursing home or something before he died, and all his sons of course lived down the road. The first ghost was witnessed by my dad in the old master bedroom. He said he was having trouble sleeping one night (he didn't feel tired, or felt like he was in the state of awareness that you enter when you have a serious conversation with someone) and he felt this presence come over him. He couldn't say how he knew, but it felt like it was the spirit of old man Hayes checking out the new residents and making sure they would treat his house right. Since I was pretty young at the time, I remember the story as dad waking up one night to see a benevolently-seeming elderly man standing at the foot of his bed. He was only there for as long as it took dad to register that something was there at all before it faded into the darkness without moving.

The other ghost was witnessed by my sister in what is now currently my room. She said she woke up one night to see two men standing in the middle of her room. She didn't feel frightened, although she certainly seemed to have a right to be. One man had an axe in one hand, and the head of the man standing next to him in the other hand. When she realized what she was seeing, both men turned to her, looked at her for a couple seconds, then turned to the wall of the back of the house (the wall that my bed is currently against now) and walked through it (there used to be a window in that wall). After a couple seconds, she got up and calmly walked to the window to watch the two ghostly figures walk slowly through the yard and into the woods, where they could no longer be made out.

One event I have witnessed myself came during either last school year or my freshman year. At that time, the two inside cats we had got sick and one of them had to be put down. Although the one that had to be put down was one that didn't like me (I tended to torment her, or rather, she thought I was tormenting her), when my mom called me that day to let me know what happened, I could've sworn that that night, and for a few nights after that, when I laid down to go to sleep and got relaxed, my chest/stomach felt like I had a cat curled up on top of me, snoozing. Even though I could plainly see that there was nothing there, I "pet" the "cat" as if there was really one there. It didn't really weird me out; on the contrary, even though that wasn't the one that liked me, I felt kind of reassured by how I was feeling and what I thought I was going through. Weird.

Sorry for rambling a bit. I tend to throw a lot of details in.

[Gio Takahashi]

Sounds very interesting. I was wondering if that was residual or intelligence haunting. do you feel that they still watch over the House?

[deathofcheese]

Nah. There's never been anything other than those stories to suggest that there's something here. Like I said, our knowledge is that no one ever died here, or while they were living here. Could've just been late-night hallucination.

[Gio Takahashi]

If anything, it's probably residual.

[Z]

When these happen, does it feel like strong deja vu?

YES! You've described it perfectly! It's fuckin weird, lmao. But, yeah, that's exactly it. As soon as it happens I freeze becuase that sudden sense of deja vu kicks in and I have to take a second to remember why it's kicking in. Crazy, crazy feeling but I'm glad I'm not the only one.

[SpaceProg]

Huh... I get that at times too. Usually I attribute it to a dream I had that coincidentally is like the RL experience, though sometimes I also chalk it up to a temporal hiccup. Hic!

[Angelus]

I believe in God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, in Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit.

Aside from the intellectual side of my faith, I believe to not only have experienced a miracle, but I believe I am one. Not in the "I was born so that's so awesome!" way, but that I survived a car wreck that, by all human accounts, should have killed me on impact.

I believe that to be nothing short of a miracle.

I've also awakened one morning, after my mother died, with a very strong sense that I'd had a visit from her. Could just be a dream and subconscious self-induced feeling, I'll grant, but I believe it could be that it was what I felt it was.