Ok. So we have all heard the old saw about "The Power Of Positive Thinking".
Is there anything to it?
For example. A while back on RHP I stated that everywhere I go "bad things" seem to happen. The crew and all the passengers of an airplane flight that I was on in China crashed two weeks after I left. I sat on that same flight and saw the lake where it crashed and daydreamed about how cold the water was.
I left Japan two days before the biggest Earth Quake in the recent past hits them. I sat in my hotel there and thought about earthquakes. Then I leave and am in Hawaii when it hits? Any connection? Why?
Later here on RHP I said that my next trip had to be to "Indonesia" because I had to be "At the Focus". Then they have this terrible earth quake disaster.
Should I worry? About causing these thing? With my "Quantum Mind"?
Why? Why not?
<edit> Ok. This might be a good time to talk about superstitions too. What power do they hold over us? As rational beings? Why are we so vulnerable to superstitions?
Ok. Now let me load the deck a bit.
One time in Ririe Idaho when I was twelve years old I was run over by the rear wheels of a twenty ton IH tractor going fifteen miles per hour. Also got hit by the fully loaded trailer full of sprinkler pipes. Not a scratch. Why?
One time in 1965 I flew into a cloud formation over Smoot Wyoming and as it was the first time I had did it... went into an uncontroled spin. I let loose of the controls. And recovered the airplane about three hundred yards off the end of the runway at Afton. More than twelve miles from Smoot. Why?
Or is any of this real? Am I lying or telling the truth? How to know?
One time I was driving home with three friends from BYU in provo in my brothers Cougar. We hit a pot hole just the other side of Cokeville and I lost control. We spun around three times... right down the middle of the two lane road at about 85 MPH. We were all in a hurry to get home. At each spin we passed a different oncoming car. Then continued on at the legal speed limit. Why?
Ok.
Also the three weeks before I turn 13 and I get to have sex with myself for the first time ... 🙂😵😲
I have a "big lump" show up on my back that my mom sees. We go to idaho falls. The doctors (cancer review board at LDS) tell us that we need to operate.
We do. I am just about over the surgery when the results come from the lab.
Rhabdomyosarcomas
Which is a fancy way of saying my spine is surrounded RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF MY BACK with a very bad form of cancer. So on my thirteenth birthday we go in for surgery. Again. Ugggh! I now sport a twelve inch incision on my spine.
The doctors are very sorry. It is out of control. I have no chance.
Really? I seem to be here forty five years later.
Why?
Ok.
So one time I got really really depressed and decide to kill myself. I have already drank twenty cans of beer. I swallow over forty "Corgard" tablets, two hundred asprin, twenty little blue sleeping pills and just for good measure... a bottle of an anti-inflamatory called "Feldene". Oh yeah. And whatever was left of a prescription of Hydrocodone from the dentist.
Woke up three days later with a terrible hang-over.
Why?
<edit> Ps... killing yerself isn't what it's cracked up to be. Nobody Cared! Just like real life. Maybe living through it ruined the effect? Oh well. It was still a good experience. At least I know that it didn't change anything. 😛
Ok.
So one time I was framing a house (alone... nobody but me would work in ten below zero temperatures) in Harvey Estates II over in West Jordan in 1986. I fell off the second floor onto a piece of half-inch rebar sticking straight up in the fireplace. It went through my chest, about four inches off center to the left. I had failed to bend it over. Stupid me. I lay there and thought about death for a while. I gave a surge and rose up a couple of feet. And passed out.
Woke up a couple of hours later in a blizzard. Drove myself home. Went to the doctor. Got it cleaned out and 'bandaged'. Didn't need stitches. Can't even see the scar now. Front or back.
Why?
Ok.
So two weeks after my second surgery we move to Mesa Arizona. So my dad don't have to pay for my surgery. My mom pulls the stitches from my back.
We are in the Mesa 17th LDS Ward there. I play softball that spring. Win the "Mesa City League Junior Fast Pitch" athlete of the year. And "All Star Catcher" by catching mr. Stapley on the senior league and throwing out the "fastest" athlete Arizona had ever produced. Four out of four times.
But... enough bragging.
But Why? I never even saw a softball until i was an "All Star".
But...
Then Mr. Jennings... our scout master in the 17th ward took us to the Superstitions. We ran for the whole day, leaving him far behind and decided to climb Weavers Needle.
I made it almost to the top... then fell. No climbing experience or equipment. But woke up unharmed from 800 feet.
Why? And will my scout companions ever be normal again? The one guy ( an Eagle Scout, assistant troop leader) I told to relax... won the national driving rodeo the next week. I told him to just grin and do like I did. He did.
God! He had the most awful Robin Egg blue Plymouth you will ever want to see.
Why?
Not getting a whole lot of discussion on the nature of "reality" here.
This is supposed to be a "Debates" forum. Where we exercise ideas.
Is there a bigger "idea" than the consideration of the meaning of "Reality"? And "superstition"?
If so... what the hell is it?
Ok.
So one time I decide to drive a VW Bug up to the star in Afton. Me and a girl friend.
We make it up about a thousand feet and then lose it. We roll back down the side of the mountain, hit the road up swift creek and then tumble over the bank and roll seven more times.
I grin. Until I notice that my date has passed out. I gently wake her up. Her brother Gary shows up in about three minutes... winches us up out of the gully and we go to the airport and go flying. In the dark. One fine date. Those Jenkins girls are tough!
Ps... I give Gary his first (and probably only) flying lesson. Not too legal. Student pilot and all. But fun.
Oh yea. Sorry Barlow. About the "borrowed" airplane. Wish you were still alive. I would call you tonight. (SVW Cries a tear for a wonderful teacher and a good person.)
Ok.
So one time we (my wife, kids and I) drove to Culver city to stay with my wifes aunt. While we went to disney and universal studios and tried to find michael jacksons house for my daughter... ok. ok. It was 1984 fer cryin' out loud. Every kid can be wrong at least once!
We missed the turn off (at about 1 am in the wee small hours) and I finally exited the freeway at Santa Monica and emptied out at the Pier. I turned around, made three turns, drove for seven miles( or what seemed like it) , made a left, a right. Stopped. Looked up at the sign. "Roberts". i turned... drove three blocks... turned left again.. .then three houses on the left and we were there. Not bad in a city of millions. I gently awoke the kids and the wife. We went in and grabbed a bed and had fun for a couple of weeks.
I had no idea of where Culver City was. Nevermind the house we needed.
Why?
Reality is all about perspective. If you brought up a child telling him the numbers ended at 10, not even giving him the idea of numbers then he wouldnt know any better without outside simulation or the inward ability to question what is after 10. I think the questioning can only come after interation with other people.
Take a baby, leave it in a dome, let it grow up there with say a pink sun. That would be its reality. Your reality is defined by what you have learned.