Conference hydra::dejavu

    Re .0:
    
    >                             ...                    When my friend
    >and I got there, she had all these religious symbols outside on
    >her lawn. Inside, the walls were lined with pictures and symbols
    >of thanks that were sent to her from people all over the world.
    >There were even autographed pictures of celebrities.  Seeing all
    >of this, I assumed she must be good.  ...
    
    Maybe she is, but I have a bit of suspicion about someone who has
    to display testimonials for her effectiveness.  Admittedly, she's
    in the business to make money; however, usually a reputation doesn't
    require that kind of buttressing. 
    
    Generally, a good prognosticator can tell general trends but cannot
    _guarantee_ the future because of that funny stuff called "free
    will."  Now this prognosticator indicated you'd have more than one
    husband.  You could make her prediction erroneous if you make _and
    keep_ a vow never to remarry.   Sometimes it's easier to "go with
    the flow"; however, sometimes it's in your best interests not to.
    So look to any prognostigation for suggestions rather than accepting
    any pronouncements blindly.
    
    Steve Kallis, Jr.

    I agree 100%.  At first, it was like I was in a state of shock.
    But then I mellowed out and looked at it logically.  I'm definately
    not saying that what she told me is etched in stone somewhere. 
    I'm just living life a day at a time and making the best of whatever
    happens.  I kind of reassured myself by telling myself that, if
    you know what supposedly is going to happen, then you have the power
    to change it.  Some people feel that subconsciously you can make
    those things happen and then, of course, you'd believe what she said
    was true.  Either way, I don't regret seeing her, at first I did
    but, I feel better about it now.  I just know that I wont go to another
    psychic for a long, long time.  A palm reader, on the other hand,
    I'd love to see.
        
    -d
    

    
      I find it very helpful for my wife to do a Tarot reading for me
    at least once a week.I can then see what direction i am going and
    decide if i need to make changes.I also believe in "free will" and
    believe our destiny is not set ahead of time,but that we have control
    of it.
    
    
    MIKE

    
    Someone I worked with a few years ago went to a psychic and later
    described her experience.
    
    One very interesting thing that she said was that the psychic mentioned
    that up until now my friend did not have the ability to control
    her life and destiny, but from now on, she would, and that she would
    now be provided with choices instead of blindly following the life
    path set for her in the past.
    
    Up until that point, I had always thought that it either had to
    be one way or another (and the jury was still out for me).....but 
    this made me think that perhaps it is not that way at all.
    
    Yet another paradox(?).
    

RE: .0,.2

	It is odd that a psychic to relate a death of yourself or friends
and family.  I consider that going too far.  I believe that we have a
pre-destined life that we can change.  A psychic describing future death
events based on what is pre-destined is a gross misuse of talents.  I would
suggest not seeing that psychic again and connecting up with psychics that
other people in this file have seen and feel comfortable with.

	When integrating what a psychic has read be sure to use a phrase
similiar to what the Cosmic Muffin on 'BCN says:

    "It's a wise one who rules the reading, it's a fool who's ruled by it."

Dan

    Could you provide me with information to contact this physic - name,
    address, phone, etc
    
    thanks,
    peace
    

    I've been to 4 different psychics (3 female and 1 male) over the
    last 5 years.  I saw each psychic once.  Twice I was part of a
    group of women.  On both of these occasions every other participant
    received very detailed readings and all have turned out to be quite
    accurate when compared to the cassettes made at the time.
    
    I, however, was never with a psychic more than 5-10 minutes.  In
    every instance the psychics informed me they could not get a
    reading, or words to that effect.  All 4 psychics were very
    nice, apologetic and insisted I accept a refund.
    
    I'm a very open-minded person who is descended from a psychic who
    is still talked about by many people she "read" in her liftime.
    I therefore do not feel I approached any of these readings with
    bad vibes or a closed mind.
    
    I do not, and never did, feel that I am "doomed" with no future.
    
    Although I am somewhat puzzled by my experiences, I can only
    conclude I just haven't made the right "connection" yet.
    
    PC

    re: .8
    
    It is not an uncommon thing for a psychic to be unable to read
    for a person.  It just happens.  There could be a number of reasons
    for this -  perhaps the person's energy is just not "available" for
    the psychic to connect with, or the two people just aren't on the
    same wavelength, etc.  No big deal --- it doesn't mean that you are 
    about to disappear in a puff of smoke!
    
    Regards, Carole
    

    ...another possibility as it occurs to me is that perhaps none 
    of the "other four" was willing enough to create her own reality
    and, like so many others in this conference, was "waiting for a
    destiny" to be prescribed.  As I have pointed out before, there
    is a very positive, strong, and visible portion of our kingdom
    (i,.e., humans) who believe in creating of our own reality...as
    such, no one else is going to be able to do a very adequate job
    of foreseeing our future.  The future is ours to create...not for
    someone else to predict...or at least not too far into it.  So,
    if I were the one who went to a pyschic and was the one for whom
    the psychic was unable to predict anything, I'd say to myself
    "Thank 'God', I must be doing something 'right.'"  Count your
    blessings!
      
    Frederick
    

    re: .9 & .10
    
    Sorry if I was unclear in .8, I did not mean to imply that I
    was at all frightened or concerned about my experiences.  Based
    on some replies to the base note, I only meant to convey that
    "no reading does not mean certain imminent death".  Maybe I should
    have said "I truly believe no connection was made" versus "I assume..."
    
    Pat C.
    

    Re: .8
    
    You may be like my husband.  He, if he has any Talent at all, seems
    to be a "blocker" of sorts.  I described one of those manifestations
    in the note on Ouija boards.  He is interested in the paranormal
    and believes that there are certainly things out there to which
    we haven't found all the pieces of the puzzle.  But I don't know
    if he can always be "read for".  I have an enormously difficult 
    time doing it, even after knowing him for 20+ years and having 
    studied his birth chart extensively.  So he now has his own Tarot 
    deck and I Ching book.  
    
    When he reads for himself, he is quite accurate and I've been impressed
    by his detachment regarding himself.  The one time he did ask a mutual
    friend for a Tarot reading (and got a whoppingly accurate one about a 
    then-current situation) he was under great stress and so his defenses 
    may have been lowered.  Also, the intuitive communication interaspects 
    between their two charts are very strong.  But she's the only person
    I've met who could "read" him.
    
    I agree--inability to get a reading on someone is not their kiss
    of death.
    
    Marcia

I attended a Gathering, where the psychic gives individual readings in a group
setting, a little while back and found that she had no problem reading for any
of us.  For me and the others whom I have known for sometime, she was on target.
Regarding opinions in previous notes about creating your own reality, I under-
stand the concept but don't practice it.  I just go with the flow right now.
So as described in previous notes, about not being able to read for those not
creating thier own reality, it didn't hold true between myself and the psychic.
I also called her up for a reading and she went indepth into the mechanics of
how I and my environment operate/react.  I asked "Describe me to me."  She read
for about 10-15 uninterupted minutes, then said "That's all for this level."
Again, she was on target.  Pointing out patterns, and then offered suggestions
on growing/improving.

When asked how many children I would have she said that I was pre-destined one,
a boy, and my wife was pre-destined two girls, preferably twins.  When asked
exactly what she meant by pre-destined she said that when we are born we are
"set-up" with parameters, can't remember the exact wording, but this is close.
And that we can change this.

Dan

RE: .12
    
    The existence of psychic "blockers" is fairly -- but quietly --
    accepted in parapsychology.  A few experiments have been done which
    clearly seem to indicate this.  The reason it is not spoken of much
    is that it becomes too easy an excuse for failure which is actually
    due to other reasons.
    
    Closely related to a psychic "blocker" is what is known as a psi
    misser (roughly half of the "general" population seem to be psi
    missers).  When tested a psi misser gets much *less* right than
    can be explained by chance.
    
    					Topher

    	RE .14
    
    	I suppose this means that the 50% who get better than average
    must have positive ESP, while the 50% who get worse than average
    have negative ESP (or are "blockers"?).

        People who score *exactly* average must be the *only* ones with
    no ESP?   Perhaps an exactly average score must take a third type
    of ESP?   (kind of like statistical invisiblity?)
    
    	According to this logic, we all have ESP.   Positive results,
    negative results and average results, all indicate specific "types"
    of ESP.
    
    	With logic like this, why bother with the testing?   ;^P      :^)
    	Alan.
    
    
    PS.  Psychic readers always seem to come up blank on me.  I still seem 
         to have continued having a future, although it may be more 
         indeterminate than most people's future (not planned in advance).   
         Maybe I just don't send a lot of cues to the reader to 
    	 subconsciously notice?

    I, too, have had psychics come up with totally wrong
    readings....I'd estimate that 95% of the readings I've
    had have been 100% incorrect.  That is, 'predictions'
    for the future have been completely offbase, although
    information about the present, or about circumstances
    and people (including names) has been very correct...
    
    Psychics seems to come up with 'facts' related to me
    or my life, and with current situations...they just seem
    to be way off base in describing what will happen in the
    future, including when giving readings to others that are
    involved with me, when the info involves me.
    
    I have interpreted this to mean that my future is not to
    be known to anyone, including myself.  That my lesson to
    learn is that I have the info inside me (the learning ex-
    perience is how to access that info), and that I control
    my own future thru my actions.
    
    

    re: .13
      
         Perhaps I shouldn't respond too much here about creating
    your own reality since that is what 358 is all about, however, let
    me state simply that you DO create your own reality whether or not
    you wish to believe it.  How much control you have is up to you.
    You can turn this control over to another being, a system or another
    aspect of yourself (e.g. unconscious mind or ego)  What you stated
    in regards to yourself says that you got a reading about your future
    and you don't actively create your reality...which was my point.
    Everything occurs now...past, future and present...you change it
    from this point.  Do you wish to have a future that validates
    a current belief?  Fine, you'll get it.  What are your emotions
    now?  Since that is all that ultimately matters, that is what you'll
    "get".  You don't always get what you ask for (or what you "think"
    you want) but you'll ALWAYS get what you "want" emotionally.  You
    want fear, self-pity, a way to blame the past or parents or your
    past?  Then THAT'S what you'll get.  How will you get it?  That's
    up to you.  A psychic is simply one way to find the "cause" for
    whatever "effect" you wish to have.  I, for one, am EXTREMELY
    careful, whenever I can catch myself (more and more as I go along,)
    of WHERE and to WHOM or WHAT I give MY POWER away to.  Generally
    speaking, it won't be to some off-the-wall psychic nor to a "GOD"
    nor to a religion nor to a country nor to a government nor to
    virtually anything else...I make exceptions for individuals whom
    I trust and I share intimacy with.  I accept co-creatorship with
    all aspects of myself, but if I turn over my responsibility to 
    something else then I find myself with "blaming" them when things
    don't go "my way."  I take full responsibility for myself  and the
    world which I create.  There is a great deal of freedom in that.
    A pyschic, to me, can only reflect what I WANT that person to show
    me and I can only accept it as a reality that exists THIS MOMENT.
    That future is only what the current energy would PROBABLY lead
    to.  All I have to do is transmute the energy to change that
    probability.  In other words, value yourself enough to value the
    moment...the past no longer matters and the future can take you
    wherever it is you WANT to go.
      
    Frederick
    

RE: .15
    
    > With logic like this, why bother with the testing?
    
    Well, I certainly agree that the ability to interpret the results
    of tests of anyone who shows such logic is very limited.  Of course
    the logic is all yours, it has nothing to do with what I said. (;^P).
    
    Given a sampling of people attempting to say, guess the color of
    cards in an ordinary playing deck, some will guess exactly 26
    correctly, some will guess exactly 27, some will guess exactly 25,
    and (in theory given a large enough (!!) sample) some will guess
    all correctly and some will guess none of them correctly.
    
    Elementary statistics tells us how many people we would expect to
    guess 27 cards correctly and how many we would expect to guess 25
    cards correctly.  More importantly it tells us how frequently we
    would expect under those conditions that any particular number of
    people guess exactly 27 cards correctly.  If we have some number
    of people guessing exactly 27 cards correctly which is too unlikely
    (I'm simplifying this discussion somewhat, of course, "too unlikely"
    has to be defined) then we say that we have a significant deviation
    from chance and that something has probably happened.
    
    In practice we don't look at each possible number of correct calls
    individually.  Instead various procedures are done which is equivalent
    to the following: the absolute value (magnitude) of the deviation
    from the "mean chance level" (in this case 26 correct) for each
    subject in the experiment is measured (e.g., the value would be
    2 both for someone who got 28 right and for someone who got 24 right)
    and the average of all of these deviations is found.  Elementary
    statistical theory tells us how large that average is expected to
    be in any particular case and also how likely or unlikely it is
    that the value will be greater than any specific value.  If the
    result is greater than a value with a specific probability (one
    chance in 20 is standard in the sciences, one chance in 100 is
    frequently used in parapsychology) than the results are treated
    as "significant", i.e., probably showing something other than chance
    effects.
    
    When this is performed the results are frequently (many times more
    frequently than can be explained by chance) significant.  What this
    means is that there are *more* people than you would expect guessing
    *either* too many or too few right.
    
    This is all very elementary statitistics.  You will find it disscussed
    in virtually all Stat I textbooks under the topic of one-tailed
    vs two-tailed tests of significance.
    
    To put it into concrete terms, according to your reasoning, if I
    had 210 people, 100 of whom always guessed all of the cards, 100
    of whom always guessed none of the cards, and 10 of whom always
    guessed *exactly* half the cards, I would be unjustified in suspecting
    that there was something unusual going on.
    
    For what its worth, you are in good company.  Many critics of the
    field of parapsychology, including some who should know better (e.g.,
    Martin Gardner) seem to be of the opinion that you can only test
    if a coin comes up heads too often; that it is a logical absurdity
    to perform a test to see if a coin is biased in either direction.
    
    By the way, the people who consistently guess correctly less often
    than can be explained by chance are known as "psi missers" not
    "psi blockers".  Psi missing is a statistically/experimentally very
    well established phenomena.  A "psi blocker" is much more hypothetical,
    and is, if (s)he does exists, someone in whose presence a consistent
    psi hitter's (opposite of a psi misser) score drops to roughly mean
    chance expectation or below.
    
    					Topher
    

     RE: .14,  .18    Hi Topher...

	Actually, I agree with you that there are people who are
     psychic "missers" or "blockers".    I was just taking an
     objection to your phrasing in .14;     Perhaps I left out
     the appropriate face? --�     ;^P     :^}    ?�

from .14;

>    Closely related to a psychic "blocker" is what is known as a psi
>    misser (roughly half of the "general" population seem to be psi
>    missers).  When tested a psi misser gets much *less* right than
>    can be explained by chance.

	Which makes it seems like a rather trivial result, statistically
     speaking.    I suspect you may have left out some critical details
     in this experiment that measured 50% of us as "missers" ?   For
     instance, were that 50% of the people *always* missers?   Day after
     day?    Or were they some days guessing right more often ?   

	Then you try to put words in my mouth;   ?

from .18;
>    To put it into concrete terms, according to your reasoning, if I
>    had 210 people, 100 of whom always guessed all of the cards, 100
>    of whom always guessed none of the cards, and 10 of whom always
>    guessed *exactly* half the cards, I would be unjustified in suspecting
>    that there was something unusual going on.

	In this case, I would say you had found 210 people, at least
     200 of whom look like statistical oddities, and you would be 
     justified in suspecting something.   This is a far cry from the 
     vague statistics of your reply in .14.     Saying that 50% of us 
     are missers, I hope you don't intend to imply that 50% of us would
     miss 100% of the time.    I presume you must mean that 50% of us
     miss significantly more than expected, significant if true....

    BTW:
	My brother tells a story about a girl who was in one of his
     chemistry classes, who had a fear of science, and a deep seated
     belief that NOTHING would work for her.   The story is that
     chemical reactions that *always* work would not take place 
     if this girl was doing the measuring and mixing, even when the
     instructor supervised her experiments.   *That* would be a
     significant case of psychic blocking.   I regret I did not see
     this case personally.

	Alan.

RE: .14, .18, .19
    
    This discussion is off the topic so I have posted a reply as note
    440.0.
    
    				Topher

    If it is any consolation I went to the same psychic (gloria james?)
    8 years ago and I have to say that she was really accurate on my
    past and some things on my future, but she predicted two deaths
    in my family that should have happened 4 years ago but never did.
    I had the same emotional feelings you did when i left but after
    a few days a got a couple of goods laughs out of her 'act.'