Not so Metaphysical Post from boondocking blogger

This post was published on my other blog by mistake. I compose on Windows Live Writer, using the boondocking blogger template as it is black on white. The colour scheme of this blog is not rendered well in the draft mode and this makes it harder to see. This time however, I published the post to the other blog without thinking. As a matter of interest, I looked at the proposed links for world map representations and found one that was most appealing. And is probably more accurate as it was created by NASA. It is the Winkel-tripel-projection at http://www.winkel.org/other/Winkel%20Tripel%20Projections.htm

Surfing the net can yield surprising results. Having been skeptical about anything that I could not apprehend through the five senses myself for many years, it was almost a modus vivendi to doubt. To ask for proof, even if seldom receiving any, but heck! I had to support my belief system! Or, shall I say disbelief?
After experiences that I would term as shattering as they negated all that I had been living by, I returned, after 20 years, to asking questions. And I kept at it. Still do. Now, I’m interested in learning all about searching for possibilities, especially since my exposure to things unfathomable to perception (mine) through the accepted five senses has brought me surprising discoveries... I know that I mentioned Winston Wu in a previous post. He simply is using the tactics that I used for debunking anything that didn’t fit in my own concept of the universe. Thankfully, I’m now more accepting that there isn’t just one version of the Universe and that there might be other “realities out there”.  The ultimate Reality, however, might still be beyond our ken.
However, in this post, I want to mention Lloyd Pye, the Hominid and Starchild researcher, who has a very interesting video about climates across the map, and eventually relates it all to the map that we use in the Western World. It’s mind-blowing. It makes it awfully hard to refute the findings, i.e. the accepted concept that the Mercator map (dating back to 1569) is representing the Earth continents correctly. It appears all wrong! Period. I recall that years ago, I did wonder why, if the Equator sits halfway between the Northern and Southern hemispheres, in fact delineating them, the physical representation of this hypothetical line should be so LOW down on the world map. But it was no more than a fleeting thought. (I was young and foolish, in those days.)  
I had seen the Peter map, or its twin, claiming that our Europeo-centric concept was all wrong. However, since this was the period of my ardent socialist days, I eventually relegated it to “Things to Check Out…Later”. This is much later, but never too late. Enough said. I hope that you check this out for yourselves at http://www.petersmap.com/page9.html

Fascinating. Not exactly the most esthetic, or even accurate as was pointed out to me. But an eye-opener.

LiveJournal Tags: Mercator map,Representation of earth continents on map

An Excellent Read for the Validity of Psychic Phenomena

“Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.” - Arthur Schopenhauer, German philosopher

I’m reminded of the time when it was widely believed that the Earth was flat, and at the center of the known Universe. Galileo was jailed for proposing that it was round and revolving around the sun. Lucky for us that he wasn’t killed for such a heresy! For anyone who is interested in having a different look at the denials of the so-called skeptics or debunkers of psi phenomena, this treatise by Winston Wu presents compelling arguments in favour of open-mindedness. It can be found at http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/ together with such a number of  links that, I for one, have had and will continue to have hours of delicious reading. When I say delicious, I mean mind candy. It’s been said that the mind is like a parachute. It works best (or only?) when it’s open.

Here’s a little joke about what Wu calls “rationalization through cognitive dissonance”. One woman meets another for the first time and, after an introductory chit-chat, asks her, “…Have you ever been to Australia?”; to which the other responds in the negative. The first one then exclaims, “… Oh! Then you probably know my sister, She’s never been there either”. I’m aware that it’s facetious, but sometimes, a joke or cartoon gets closer to depicting reality than we could express in a thousand words.

Seriously now and for the record, let me state that, after 20 years of atheism and even dogmatic disbelief, when I came to personally experience so-called psychic phenomena, I kept doubting even the reality of what I was experiencing. Yet I could hardly deny that those experiences were validated to me in that, most of the time, they were about helping someone other than myself. For instance, just discovering how past lives had serious implications in one’s life when difficult relationships or seemingly insoluble problems kept occurring invariably made that person burst into tears. Those tears and even the almost choking reaction were proof enough to me. Such a spontaneous and immediate reaction could hardly be faked.

Here’s what I think about the experiences I’ve had and all the others that skeptics invalidate. They were of such a personal and individual nature, how can one replicate them under detached lab conditions? However, Dr. Gary Schwartz, a professor of psychology at the University of Arizona, devised experiments that left no doubt about the validity and accuracy of psychic readings. But it did involve real living individuals with their unique traits and experiences. And it invariably had an emotional content. Wu has definitely done ample research and is so not stingy in quoting or giving references, arguments pro and con, that it amounts to a course. I’m still learning from it. Its tone is calm, matter-of-fact, never strident as that of those who have been termed pseudo-skeptics, or “debunkers”.

Randi, Carl Sagan, and cohorts—step aside!

LiveJournal Tags: Psychic phenomena,Pseudo-skepticism