Writer's Block: Spirits

[fajrdrako]

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There are various things in this world that I don't know the truth of. I've never seen a ghost, but I know people who say they have, and I believe their stories because I know they are telling the truth, and I'm talking about sane, intelligent people. I don't know what it was they experienced, or how it happened, or why. I don't know what a ghost might be.

I do believe that strange, unknown and apparently unreasonable or impossible things happen in this world. I don't believe lack of an explanation means it didn't happen. It just means it can't be explained.

We're a long way from knowing everything about everything.

Comments

[walkingowl.livejournal.com]

Ah, thank you. (For calling me sane and intelligent!)

What a ghost might be, I also do not know. I suspect, a collection of energy. Even though this Victorian lady was a visual incident, I point out again that I did not see her in color. Also, as you know, I am not a visual-thinking person; someone asking me if I dream in color is asking me the wrong question, as I do not dream visually, but eidetically. Anyway, back to the Victorian ghost... the full awareness of the physical form was there, and also a personality and an intent. I can't say it would have shown up in a photograph of that moment. I think perhaps I just perceived the energy, receiving it in the way that the spirit sent it to me. And I wish you'd seen it too! That would have been fun. I've only ever seen ghosts while alone. Four now, total. One other was in 1988, in Septemer, in a 200-year-old log farmhouse in easter Pennsylvania near the town of Hanover: it was a mischievous boy who dashed from inside the room through the door and into the hall outside, grinning at me the entire time -- because he dashed literally through the ajar door, which apparently in his day had had its hinges set on the opposite side of the doorway! I found out later that an eight-year-old named Mose (short for Moses or Moises) had been run over by a carriage near the barn, in around 1805. And the other two ghosts I saw were in the house I now live in: one was a simple form, striking me as what you would get if you held a beach towel by the top hem and let it twist slowly from its own weight; it was crossing from my front living room into the kitchen, across what was originally the door to the back porch... and it too had no color. And the last one -- coolest of all, I'd say -- was a grey cat, who ran past my ankles as I sat at my desk in the corner of that front living room, at about 5 AM, writing a paper for class! It was grey because that was its fur's color, and the fur had highlights and texture as any living cat's would. Whoa, was I startled. Jumped up, looked under the desk, then turned on every light in the house.

Ah, fun to remember. Such nifty atypical experiences! (Have you really never seen a ghost? Nor heard or smelled one? Can I try again to teach you to see auras, someday?)

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

No, I've never seen a ghost, or anything like it. I can see auras, sometimes. But I don't like doing so; the effort is just a little uncomfortable. My mother's pyschic group used to say that their results were better when I was around, but after the first few times I attended (out of curiosity) I didn't want to continue - I found it tiring and I didn't care about the results.

[walkingowl.livejournal.com]

(Now, this time the boxes and lists are not here! hm)

No, I've never seen a ghost, or anything like it.

It happens when it happens. But I guess being sleep-deprived and in a house built in 1836 might have helped the process along a bit!

I can see auras, sometimes. But I don't like doing so; the effort is just a little uncomfortable.

Yes. I understand that. I now realize that I was seeing auras as a matter of course, the first several years of my life, and I had to find a way not to see them or else I couldn't function in the non-aura-seeing world that everyone around me assumed was the right reality. It was just so distracting. I re-learned how to see them in autumn 1986, and have worked at doing it only by choice, since then. But it's not comfortable, no.

My mother's pyschic group used to say that their results were better when I was around, but after the first few times I attended (out of curiosity) I didn't want to continue - I found it tiring and I didn't care about the results.

Good reasons not to participate. I've never been to a Spiritualist Church meeting... what's it like?

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Do you think there's a real value to seeing auras? Or ghosts?

The Spiritualist Church... Well, it's sort of like going to any Protestant church, only they talk to the dead, and it seems the dead talk back, in their way.

[walkingowl.livejournal.com]

I think there is value in not being mainstream. I find it comforting to be able to do something that so many people think is either a hoax or an instance of the person fooling himself that it actually is happening. I like to know that I have first-hand evidence that there is more to our world than the narrow mainstream accepted "reality."

And I enjoy seeing ghosts, and communicating through spirit boards, and seeing auras. I find it interesting. I pick up energy from locations and physical objects. Someday I'll understand all my energy-perceptual abilities... but, for now, I do know that there is energy everywhere, and that most people probably pick it up just as I do, but unlike me they don't really let it be a conscious thing. Thus they can deny that it is happening, and to them this is an honest belief.

Spiritualist Church. They talk to the dead, eh? Wonder how they manage to stay Protestant, then, as there is a passage in the Bible about "don't interact with 'familiar spirits,' I recall.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

I think every religion or sect (even Catholicism and the more intentionally fundamentalist) has those parts of the Bible they ignore or don't follow - they have to. I don't think the Spiritualist Church is considered Protestant, though.

I was looking at a list of statistics (which I will probably talk about in Apaplexy or on LJ, when I find time) which listed how many Canadians are in each of various religions, and it listed Catholicism, Protestantism, and non-Protestant Chritian churches separately. I wondered what the distinction was, since I tend to think of "Protestant" as meaning "Christian, but not Roman Catholic or Orthodox". According to Wikipedia, it Protestantism refers to "the forms of Christian faith and practice that originated in the 16th century Protestant Reformation." Which makes a lot of sense, though in Canada most Protestants are in the United Church, which was technically formed in the 1920s - amalgamating Presbyterians and Methodists - and Methodism itself is kind of late for the Reformation, but is usually considered Protestant. I think. But I guess if you get too fussy about the definition you end up with nothing being Protestant except Lutherans and Calvinists. To make it all more complicated, I've known Anglicans who refer to themselves as "Catholic not Protestant" - perhaps all Anglicans do this, I don't know. In which case Anglicans themselves might fit into the category of "non-Protestant Christians".

And then there's the historical distinction between 'Protestants' and 'dissenters'.... It's so complicated!

Anyway, by this (logical) definition, the Spiritualist Church, founded in the 19th century, came long after the Reformation and would be a "non-Protestant Christian church".

[walkingowl.livejournal.com]

That's fascinating. I can shed some light on "non-Protestant Christian churches" for you, perhaps. Methodism arose about 230 years ago, in America. It remains a separate entity here; I didn't know what the United Church of Canada was until you explained it to me. Now, I'm not sure why "non-Protestant," but I can tell you, starting in the 1810s and going strong for about fifty years, people started taking over their own church activities in a way that has been both deplored and celebrated -- "the democratization of American Christianity," the revivalist movement; versus what Naomi Klein (I think that is the author) who terms it the assertion of the masses of their right to be non-scientific and literal-Bible-creationist-like. Out of these revivalist and camp-meeting church congregations arose all sorts of sects: Baptists, the Church of God, the Church of the Nazarene, and a host of others. "Gospel Churches" and "holy rollers." Some are connected to a wider church organization, others are totally separate. And then there are the Christian Scientists, eh? And I'm not even at the Amish, Mennonite, and Jacobite Brethren yet... yeah, religion fascinates me.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Methodism started in the UK in the 18th century; well after the Reformation, but it is still counted as Protestant, because it arose out of Protestantism.
(See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methodism.) There are still Methodist churches around here, as well as, of course, Presbyterian churches - they didn't all join together.

I had naively thought that all religions that weren't Roman Catholic or Orthodox were Protestant, including all the ones you mention, but obviously it isn't that simple.

There are so many religions - and this is all within the general framework of Christianity.