It's Getting Scary Out There, BUT . . .

I'd like to know, too, because that seems so obviously wrong that I'm stunned somebody would say it.

One day I was led to a woman in hospital who asked me to help her light a cigarette. We address this topic to which she replied indignantly "I am in control of my life". Two days later when revisiting the hospital I asked after her and was told she was dead. She was about 45 years old.

If we have control of our lives then why do we have accidents, loose loved ones, bear handicapped children, struggle to fulfill our dreams, and all too often try to do something only to find that no matter how hard we try we cannot do it. Often too something happens 'out of the blue' that changes our lives and our direction completely.

The unexpected is often call luck, disaster, accident or something else. But when it happens it can also affect the lives of those around us.

A few years ago a gunman went berserk in a tourist attraction in Tasmania, called Port Arthur. It is an old historic jail. He killed 35 people and wounded many others. They were from all over Australia and some from overseas. In one case a man's wife and two children were killed leaving him with nothing. Did he control this? Did anyone control it.

The result was incredible. The whole country reacted and gun laws were brought into force that affected many other people. Was this really what anyone wanted? Was it because of their 'free will'.

It is hard for people to get their minds around the big picture when we think that we can plan our day and have everything fall into place as we would want it. But then the unexpected happens and we do not accomplish what we set out to. Is that our free will at work or something else.

I believe in the master planner and that the great Spirit of the Universe is in control of all things. It organizes us to do its bidding and while ever we are doing that things go well. As soon as we change from that course things go bad. And that may involve a major disaster, a death, even a shooting.

The lady in the hospital was surely not there because it was her will to be sick and I know she did not intend to die, yet she did.

So what is your take on you having free will. Can you tell me when you will die, whether or not your wife will one day leave you (if you are married), whether or not nothing will ever happen that opposes your will?

Hopefully this explains my take on it.

Barry, visions are of 2 types. Those that one imagines for the future, such as their life in clover and their willingness to try to achieve it, and, of course many do, and then there are the visions that come quite unexpectedly into your head often when you are completely engaged in something else.

Bryn, welcome to the forum. Looks like you will be an interesting participant in some lively debates. If there is no super power why does everything in nature work so well. Sure we have the disasters, like drought, flood etc. but these recondition the land and force life into new areas. Even fire fertilizes the earth. So why does the wind turn up on time to help trees shed their dead leaves and limbs that fall down to provide fertility and habitat for new life if there is no guiding force? Why do the flowers bloom to feed life forms? and so on.

Everything depends on everything else, even a long way along the chain. Its a ripple in the ocean that multiples as it spreads.

Visions are given to some people as a warning or as a confirmation that the future is known. One of the classic cases of a psychic prediction came from Jeanne Dixon, you may or may nor know of her, but she predicted President Kennedy's assassination, pleaded with him not to go to Dallas and even gave the initials of the assassin.

Skeptics love to argue the negative when it comes to a higher power because they want to believe that only man has authority and only man can make things work. Well he hasn't done a very good job of it if that is the case. For all his attempts to create heaven on earth allhe appears to be doing is to make a great hell of it.

Also religion is not spirituality. They are 2 completely different things.

Religion was born out of 'elders' dreaming about what happens to you after death. I did a thesis on this and published a book on the way the ancients used everything of nature to imagine the dead in the after-life. It examined archaeological sites and symbols on 3 continents and proved that religion is the same everywhere only the way it is done may vary. It was compared to a PhD by 2 professors in the United Kingdom.

Kings used religion to elevate themselves and take control of the living and the dead. they promoted so-called prophets as having turned up miraculously from a Father god, usually by a virgin birth, and then gave authority to the king and his religion to speak for him. That's how we eventually got a male god in heaven and this was refined by contemporary 'faiths' to further the cause of man.

Religion is the greatest turn-off for many, especially those who are spiritual, as it is full of make-believe and fiction. As a spiritual person I cannot read or look at anything of fiction as it drains the spirit from within. By the same token it is impossible for me to lie, so to be called a liar or a dreamer is wrong. That's why religions around the world are struggling to get numbers at their meetings.

As one who is open and willing to share my experiences it is my experience that only when one cannot counteract the truth that they turn to slander and ridicule. This is a sad state of affairs but it is a trait used especially by men and one commonly employed against women. That is not meant to imply that anyone in this thread is doing that but it is why many spiritual people choose to remain silent and only talk to those of the same mind.

When presented with alternative viewpoints it is a challenge that one with an open mind will examine from all aspects and either accept or discard. That is why I spent most of my life looking for the source of the lies that oppose my experiences.
Yes, true enough there have been but never on this scale and never with so much going on at the same time. Many civilizations and empires were wiped out by changed environment, including that of the Romans. but even then there were not the same conditions that exist today.

The Spirit is to blame for 9/11 and everything else including man's destruction of the earth. That is why prophecy predicts the end of the world and people like Nostradamus detailed many other things to come. Man is to destroy the world, well at least all life on it, in fulfillment of the plan which is bringing mankind to an end.

That is why the Spirit directs him into such chaotic and apparently useless acts yet devastating acts. Every action has a reaction and the Iraq and Afghan wars are a direct result of that but so too are many other things which would not have happened if 9/11 didn't happen.

I honestly couldn't bypass this thread without responding. This reply focuses on statements such as this by Norma (who clearly cannot tell the difference between fact, fiction and simple-minded, subjective interpretation):

"The Spirit is to blame for 9/11 and everything else including man's destruction of the earth. That is why prophecy predicts the end of the world and people like Nostradamus detailed many other things to come. Man is to destroy the world, well at least all life on it, in fulfillment of the plan which is bringing mankind to an end."

This is laughable. There has never, in the history of the world, been a single shred of credible evidence for the existence of God or any other such imaginative, mythical beings such as 'Spirit' as you call it.

To argue that 'Spirit' is to blame for the 'goings-on' in the world is completely irrational and to harbor the illusion that there is some divine 'plan' for man to bring the world to an end is simply delusional.

People make choices - some good, some bad - some we like, some we don't. To believe anything else is exactly that - simply a belief which, like all other beliefs, only reside in the mind of the believer.

Problems only arise when 'believers' feel it their duty to convince everyone else that their (the believer's) beliefs are right and true, and everyone else is somehow 'mis-guided'.

I see this kind of woolly thinking here - statements made as fact by Norma, all based on subjective interpretations of such things as (of all things) Nostradamus and (by her own admission) visions!

This type of pink and fluffy new-ageism leads to the slippery slope of relativism - when nothing is ever right or wrong, and fatalism - 'what's the use'? It also leads to mental paralysis - it is easier to simply believe (some nonsense or the other) than to engage mental process and have a good old blood, sweat and tears, rational, logical, hard think about it.

Do not allow laziness and the desire for there to be 'something greater than mankind' (because you fear death) to divert you from rationality.

Remember, you get what you focus on, what you focus on grows and becomes more real to you, and you always find what you focus on in the world around you - this is how beliefs are formed.

How do you think people like George Bush and Tony Blair became so thoroughly convinced of the existence of 'weapons of mass destruction'?

How do you think religious fanatics get that way?

The answer - by single-minded focus on an idea or ideas.

The fact that these ideas may be completely illusory is besides the point - the more they focus on them the more real they become (to them), and the more (often completely irrational) justifications they find for harboring them.

So the bottom line is this - start focusing on what you want, not what you don't.

Never blindly believe anything. Never 'just have faith'.

Challenge and question everything.

You owe it to your mental health, your credibility, and the patience of those around you listening to some inane new-age ramble based on nothing but pure fiction.

I can't see the outside world affecting the 'internet' world TOO much. Now, its the internet world itself that I'm worried about.

I think you are confusing God with religion. Religion is certainly not God and fanatics don't act spiritual but anti human in their approach to things.

To me God is a Spirit and if there was no creator there would be nothing. You can't create from your mind except what you dream up and most of that will be wrong. At least that's how I see it but everyone to their own.