User	Comment
bill	posted 11-Jul-2008 7:13am   I think I mostly don't do this, at least on a conscious level. I suspect that my assumptions would not be accurate. I'm more likely to see this as judging the other person and thus not good and not fair. ...interesting survey, though.
Matty	posted 11-Jul-2008 7:56am   B. I can get a general impression as to whether I am going to like him/her. Of course, if it's a woman with a really big rack; I'll spend most of my time pretending not to stare at her boobs and won't get much of a first impression other than how much I like her boobs.
Kristal_Rose	posted 11-Jul-2008 8:51am   People rarely vary over the years as I get to know them better over my initial impression. Sometimes I will unearth a sublime tertiary theme running through their life or some hidden quality that I didn't catch right away, but not too often. They pretty much just follow the script as if I had seen a biographical documentary series about them the day I met them. When I was in a deeper spiritual state it was lonely and depressing the degree to which this was true. It was as if girlfriends had no will of their own and just followed whatever plot I secretly wrote between meetings, with no surprises at all. It wan't so much the lack of surprise that was bothersome, but believing they loved you when it was as if I were putting wods in their mouth. My last girlfriend even said as much, that she had to keep time and distance between our meetings because she felt she had no will of her own around me. That's different than what I meant about 'reading' people, which also takes all the surprise out of life.
TeddyMiller	posted 11-Jul-2008 9:05am   I'm in the "It can take years" category.
Cain	posted 11-Jul-2008 9:09am   My intuition gives me a very general feeling about people, which is normally fairly accurate despite being vague, but there have been many times where I've been caught by surprise by the actions of a person. A recent example is a lady who works for me, who is very quiet, very well spoken and polite and who you might assume wouldn't say boo to a goose. She came in recently on her day off, to have lunch and a drink, and was getting some backchat from one of the plonkers who occasionally frequents the pub - after a minute of his being rude (and he was only getting warmed up) she had shot him down in flames and he was positively meek for the rest of his visit. Never saw that happening!
jettles	posted 11-Jul-2008 9:12am   i think i am so much better at this now then when i was younger but that said, i can get a general "feeling" about someone and their temperament. i know if i will like them for the most part but they will surprise me at times. i still have a hard time believing my uncomfortable feeling when i just don't like someone when i first meet them.
Kristal_Rose	(reply to bill) posted 11-Jul-2008 9:48am   If you'd be making deductions, that's probably true, but I think you're not trusting your intuition. Either way though, not knowing is probably lightening your load and making life more interesting. I recall when I was a teenager studying tarot, one of our Renn. Faire captains told me he wouldn't want to know the future or people's inner secrets, even if he could. I found out the hard way decades later the wisdom in what he was saying. While not 'bad', living with that sort of knowing is sort of like not living, more like living in an eternity in which nothing ever changes, from minute to minute, from year to year, it just flows exactly as scripted. It took years for me to break out of that state, and for the first couple I felt terribly disconnected. I still can't say I've fully accomplished a return to a physical surprising interaction connection with the world from the holographic directors dream connection I had for a dozen years. On the other hand, I can't leave that director's connection either, because at least for my on life, I find little even happens to me unless I write the plot beforehand myself. I've got great neighbors keeping me intrigued now, one a love at first sight as I was hoping for. I'm afraid to mention to her though that I had a long list of like 20 exacting specifications (age, looks, race, job, major, preferences, persona, knowledge familiarity, desired living location..) which she filled perfectly. On one hand she could interpret that as 'we were meant to be' but as with others in my past it just might creep her out instead. I scared off one woman I was in love with just by things like 'knowing' her unlisted phone number. That was years before I got to the stage of writing my reality (or having nothing happen). It's kind of a Catch-22. I could just play dumb, but that's entirely contrary to my goal of honestly sharing my deepest thoughts with someone. Fortunately with my neighbor there's a ton of stuff I didn't specify which has been a pleasant or disappointing surprise. Dd you ever see the original Bedazzled movie with Dudley Moore and Peter Cook? That's almost exactly how my life works. ..and it's just as frustrating. All of my apartment building neighbors were specific requests, and in each request some unspecified loophole went wrong. Hmm, come to think of it I made no specifications for the guy downstairs, and he's purely uninteresting. Worse, he sleeps opposite hours and curtails my ability to work noisily at night. For the previous guy downstairs I wished for a night owl oblivious to noise, and got a guy who disturbed the whole neighborhood with rock music and tone deaf guitar playing til 5am. I think I was reluctant to put in requests after that one. The place next door was amazingly vacant for months till I made a decision to get a young lesbian couple (I'm not so sure now that that was such a hot idea either. I wasn't planning on them being inseperable, as seems to be the case so far).
Kristal_Rose	(reply to jettles) posted 11-Jul-2008 10:07am   I suddenly recall that I have once really really blown my estimation of others to my detriment. There was a homeless couple which I let watch my apartment while I was on Christmas vacation. I knew they were sad, had shattered hopes, had guilt of some sort, etc etc., but at least the best of intentions. What I failed to pick up was that they were heroin addicts, and had to sell a lot of my stuff while I was gone to support their habit. They were the spitting image of the addict couple in Requiem for a Dream, which I almost watched just before my trip, but didn't watch till I got back. Two hours spare time to watch a movie before leaving could have saved me two grand in replacement costs. There's no way I could have watched that movie and not recognized that was exactly who I had in my house at the moment.
Matty	(reply to Kristal_Rose) posted 11-Jul-2008 10:22am   You never once suspected they were junkies?
Kristal_Rose	(reply to Matty) posted 11-Jul-2008 11:01am   Unbelievably no. I had never knowingly met junkies before. Well actually one old HS friend come to think of it, not too close or revealing, but she managed to hold down an office job and manage rock bands for 15 years through it before finally quitting, I did wonder why the gal spent so much time in the bathroom. I just thought it was a mental disorder. I'd seen a lot of that before in many forms. A lesson learned. Fortunately most of the stuff stolen actually did me a favor, dropping projects I never really had time for, dropping cumbersome 35mm photography for light quick digital (far more appropriate for the eBay purposes my life moved on to since the art career days). A lot of it really irked me though because it was really rare specialised stuff for my purposes, but I'm sure worth next to nothing in pawn shops. I would have preferred just paying them whatever they sold it all for.
Matty	(reply to Kristal_Rose) posted 11-Jul-2008 11:08am   Do you have any idea where they landed?
bill	(reply to Kristal_Rose) posted 11-Jul-2008 11:27am   My perception of what you're saying is that you're probably fooling yourself or are delusional in some way. In my reality tunnel, what you're claiming about intuition/requests is not possible. I'd be more likely to attribute experiences like that as coincidence and/or selective interpretation of data (or worse, fraud -- though not in your case). But, that would be me judging you and so I'd try to push thoughts like that out of my mind. But, given the topic, I thought I'd mention it. I do understand and agree with the logic behind what you're saying about it being a drag to know too much. Though, I see it more as a hypothetical thought experiment (or a good plot for a Twilight Zone story). Yes, I could see where mentioning stuff like that could hurt your chances romantically. Though, I also see the dilemma it causes because you want to be fully honest. I suppose it casts you into a role that is akin to a stalker. You know far more about the person you've fallen for than they know about you and that is by nature a bit creepy. I agree that it's a kind of catch-22. I don't see an easy solution. Though, it would seem in time, if things progress, the inequality will even out and you'll find yourself in a place where you can openly talk about everything. In that case, patience is your solution. I haven't seen the original Bedazzled, just the more recent remake with Brendan Fraser. But, I think I get your meaning. I suppose it's the classic wish-granting paradox or trickery. I think Aladdin faced similar problems with his lamp. Perhaps, your situation would make for a modern retelling of the classic tale with a bit of a new age spin to it.
Galomorro	posted 11-Jul-2008 11:47am   It can take years -- and maybe never -- before I can predict a person. I only have a rough intuition as to whether I like or trust a person or not -- and usually I do NOT trust people right away. It amazes me that people can see these things in others so easily. Some peoples' actions turn me off more than others' do, and that's because I actually SEE them doing things that totally turn me off. But I can't tell just by looking at them anything like that mentioned by the survey creator. I often DO wonder what they're about when I observe them but I just can't "read" them well as described in this survey. I especially like it when others are friendly and outgoing because then I feel more at ease with them, and this makes me more outgoing as well. I am more the type that tries to figure them out because of what seems to give them away by physical details, as described by the survey creator, the "Sherlock Holmes" way.
LindaH	posted 11-Jul-2008 12:49pm   I can read people somewhat, have a rough intuition about whether I like or trust them. But I know it's all perception, and perception is wrong a lot. I don't draw conclusions. Sometimes people surprise me, and often, people who think they know me turn out to be very wrong about me. I can only guess this goes both ways. I could be totally wrong about someone.
Enheduanna	posted 11-Jul-2008 12:59pm   I'm not particularly good at this, although I'm getting a little better. My SO and a good friend of mine are both fantastically good at this. They are excellent judges of character and get a read on people very quickly. I tend to just assume people are more or less nice, unless it's something really obvious, and then I'm surprised later when they turn out to be really annoying (at least, this is the way it usually happens). Then I tell my SO or this friend, and they say, "Of course. What were you expecting?"
jettles	(reply to Kristal_Rose) posted 11-Jul-2008 1:10pm   wow, now that is a blown estimation!! wow!!!
Biggles	posted 11-Jul-2008 1:25pm   Sometimes I think I can. When I've then had the opportunity to test my assumptions, I tend to find some were right, most were wrong.
JessicaWoman99	posted 11-Jul-2008 9:46pm   Yes I can read people very well and i can tell if something is bothering them and when to back away and leave that person alone, I do know when the chit is about to hit the fan oh can i ever read a person
JessicaWoman99	(reply to Cain) posted 11-Jul-2008 9:51pm   > My intuition gives me a very general feeling about people, which is > normally fairly accurate despite being vague, but there have been > many times where I've been caught by surprise by the actions of a > person. A recent example is a lady who works for me, who is very quiet, > very well spoken and polite and who you might assume wouldn't say > boo to a goose. She came in recently on her day off, to have lunch > and a drink, and was getting some backchat from one of the plonkers > who occasionally frequents the pub - after a minute of his being rude > (and he was only getting warmed up) she had shot him down in flames > and he was positively meek for the rest of his visit. Never saw that > happening! Oh shot him down in flames that is me? Oh yes i can get warmed up and they start in on me and it is all over for them and the lights go out and there is a pity party boo hoo
Kristal_Rose	(reply to bill) posted 12-Jul-2008 12:10am   Well I'm glad you can at least address this seriously as a Twilight Zone hypothetical. My life had long been freakier than any Twilight Zone episode. If anything, such shows (like Voyager) were appearing as timely biographies of what I was going through that week. My life isn't one that breaks the laws of physics happenings, rather it can be one of absolute constant mind-matter coincidence which obliterates the likelihood that the world is a chain of cause and effect events at all, and replaces it all with a dimension in which everything is created on the fly in accordance with a single cosmic mind. I mean absolute coincidence such that not a single event or word of any concern or meaning is out of place with the inner dialogue. I have been back in your reality (the one of my first 26 years) so long now that I take it seriously and forget it's not real. My other reality of total cosmic mind in the moment is equally convincing, Physically-causal reality can not explain it, but it can explain explain any dimension with or without set laws of physics. One reason you would have difficulty accepting it is that you believe things are built on history, and time flows only one direction. The only cause you have for such a claim though is that your own memory has such a linear directional quality, not recalling what you call the future. Yes, 'stalker' is exactly the relationship I wish not to be perceived as. So far the best solution has been to find friends familiar with my reality in the first place, but they are few and far between. Hmm, that's another specification I forgot to put in this neighbor request (actually I didn't want it. I was hoping for more of the honeymoon exploration sort of life I had before my awakening). You're right on the patience thing though. Given a few months working with someone I can get them to see my reality in action. What Bedazzled lacked was an elegant comprehensive cosmological explanation. I used to dream up thoughts for movies which would make the deeper nature of reality apparent to viewers, before I came to realize that the average person is not meant to know, anymore than microphones or set construction are meant to appear in movies. You would enjoy the original Bedazzled, a true witty classic, more Monty Python than cheap action movie. Last Christmas I decided our family gathering in No. Cal. should be blessed by a visit from the housemate I'd scared away from us all 15 years earlier with the psychic knowledge. I underplayed it, just mentioning to her that her visit had been my main 'wish' for the trip. Way back when though she had already likened me to Clay in that ST-NG episode in which he builds a console in the holodeck to fly the Enterprise to the center of creation. To further explain the mind-matter reality, it's not like I'm a minor deity and others are not. We're all like clock gears, and the only difference between me and the other gears is that either I want what's going to happen anyhow, or at least see it coming. I use the gear analogy because it's like we each have our private existentialism, our view of the teeth operations, but they are all centrally synchronized. More so than Bedazzled, the Matrix and Le Guinn's 'Lathe of Heaven' describe what reality looks like to me at times, except that it's so synchronized I can hold mental conversations with the TV or radio. Once you've seen behind the curtain you can never fully believe in the show anymore. Even if I never had prophecy or will again, I could never take back having seen our puppet roles in a central clock-work orchestration. It considerably affects one's pespective on things like fear and adventure. Not only have I seen that physical causal reality is a delusion, or at least a minor parallel plane, I have seen that the same is true of human egos. We go through the same motions with or without our egos there to take credit for making decisions. They too are a minor parallel plane. For years I wrestled with purpose in life. My prayers were 10,000 fold more effective than any direct physical intervention, which gave my cause to wonder why be physical at all. My conclusion is to merely enjoy the experience. Just to hedge my bet though, I making improving the world my physical entertainment over pure hedonism. As far as the 'classic wish-granting paradox or trickery' goes, I've found it's a sublime balance between ego and non-ego. It's the non-ego universal cosmic mind which has all the gifts I mention, and the ego which has all the self-interested desires. You can't exactly have your cake and eat it too. It's another Catch-22. To reach the cosmic mind and it's powers you have to dissipate the ego, in which case you have no desire to control what happens, nor even preference in what to experience. The only satisfying compromise I've found is to lose the ego just enough to write the upcoming script, then drop back into the plane of ego ignorance where I can appreciate it as if it were happening spontaneously by surprise. Unfortunately that's about as difficult as getting into a movie after having just discussed it's production with the crew. It can take years to get back into the movie, and then you wonder if you weren't better off being part of the directors crew. Fortunately the system has a sort of natural checks and balances. It's far easier to become a saint than a sorceror because of that caveat of having to dispense with the personal ego. The more one's tweaks to reality are ego motivated (for good or bad, if such could be said to exist), the more it seems that the Tao or the Trickster kicks in with an equal opposite reaction which nullifies one's impact. I have patience to a fault. I said an interesting thing to the neighbor gal which got me in the door for a night of drinking and card games, and that was that I was 'bored'. It was probably the first time in 18 ears that I could have even honestly said such a thing. Suddenly the eternal content flow of my life's habits was no longer of interest, and reckless spontaneity felt like the only true spark of life available.
they	posted 12-Jul-2008 12:57am   I read people quite well. Little if anything about their behavior ever surprises me or contradicts my expectations of them once I've really met them.
JessicaWoman99	(reply to they) posted 12-Jul-2008 1:07am   > I read people quite well. Little if anything about their behavior > ever surprises me or contradicts my expectations of them once I've > really met them. But we cannot read them well enough to know if they will take advantage of us and some of them do this to us it has happened to me and it hurt me deeply
Kristal_Rose	(reply to jettles) posted 12-Jul-2008 1:12am   Much of it was just overblown faith in humanity in general and the degree to which I was blessed and invincible to harm from the outside world. I was taking pride in the reckless chances I could get away with, and the world finally chose to prove me wrong. I had mostly nothing but miracle circumstances till that point. Even now I'm of the theory that I'll continue to have miracle cicumstances 'as long as I'm physically present'. Perhaps that bubble will burst some day too.
bill	(reply to Kristal_Rose) posted 12-Jul-2008 7:38am   I did put the original Bedazzled on my list... I have some software I wrote that scans for movies on cable channels I get. Maybe it will pop up on AMC at some point. I have enjoyed other Dudley Moore movies (though, it has been a while). I like Brendan Frasier movies too. Maybe "Gods and Monsters" was a fluke, and clearly he played a naive in it, but that was a great movie. I love his Mummy movies too, can't wait for the latest to come out. Cheap thrills, I know, but great for some escapism. I'm not seriously interested in trying to debunk your claims, but it's tempting. There does seem to be a kind of "delusions of grandeur" aspect to it (in line with your "deity" comment). If you truly had this ability, wouldn't your life be more together and generally awesome? I'm sure you can rationalize that it is... I suppose with subjectivity it's impossible to argue against that. More practically, I would suggest that you set up some sort of scientific test of your pre-cog powers. Get someone to help you so your own mind wont play tricks on you. From what I've heard (e.g. Amazing Randy) there has never been a psychic who can prove their powers scientifically. I've seen a couple movie version of 'Lathe of Heaven', good stuff. How much do you trust your own mind? Does any part of you wonder if you've just fooled yourself into thinking things like this have happened? I've had some drug experiences where that what seemed to be happening to me. I actually experience something like you describe about having trouble enjoying things that you have some kind of higher abstract awareness of. But, mine is more mundane (existential?), I think. For me, it's usually a kind of cynicism I have toward marketing and consumerism. Also, a "emperor's new clothes" suspicion of fancy luxury stuff (related to marketing). Given this point of view, a lot of stuff that society expects me to get excited about don't excite me. This is nice in a way because I can feel above it all. But, on the other hand, it can also cast me out of normal interactions with people because I may see things very differently than them. Probably everyone experiences this in some way, though. I certainly fall for some marketing and some products that I'm sure other people would find silly. Have you ever read Catch-22. I listened to an unabridged audio tape of it in the 90s. It's a great book, alternately funny, then gut-wrenching. I suppose, as a whole, it's an apt metaphor for war or perhaps the human experience in general. That sort of ego thing you're talking about is something I've felt some too (have run into the notion from a few different areas of exploration). I think it can help me get over myself, sometimes. Though, I've never quite accepted the idea of being ego-less as a good thing. Maybe that's similar to what you're saying. "18 ears" ... an amusing typo... but, in your reality, maybe it has some deeper meaning?
LJD	posted 12-Jul-2008 2:02pm   In a way..yes. But, one can't "judge" a person by their cover, or first meeting.
Cain	(reply to JessicaWoman99) posted 12-Jul-2008 3:19pm   Its good for guys who think they can bully women to get a shock every now and again!!
LindaH	(reply to Kristal_Rose) posted 12-Jul-2008 4:10pm   I think being trusting actually puts you at an advantage to reading people. People who are too mistrusting and guarded have this foggy layer that keeps them from reading trustworthy people.
kcthedog	posted 12-Jul-2008 7:48pm   I think I can, but then they end up surprising me. What you smoking?
Kristal_Rose	(reply to bill) posted 12-Jul-2008 9:01pm   M life is smetimes full of truly awesome, or truly horrific things. I could write a book about them. Things like storms or 9/11 take on entirely different meanings when you had just prayed for them to happen, &/or when they fit into some larger story about thematic forces at work. As far as personal stuff goes, it's always been the fullfillment of a humble ego. If I wish for smething like a cat tree to appear in the alley, a TI-93 calculator to appear at the thrift store, or my ex to get an orange swimsuit, it happens. Th bigger requests are non-personal, like for the UFPJ peace groups to unite nationaly, or to meet a presidential candidates campaign mnanager to hand over my platform concepts. Although I usually get my wish, something usually come along with it which nullifies it. It's not the material stuff which is most interesting anyhow, it's the stories about supernatural forces. For instance one week I could be studying the deity Garuda and HAARP forces. The sequence for that week was as follows: Study Haarp on internet. Get stoned with a friend and both of us watch a womhole form in her bedroom. Get introduced to Garuda statue at an orchid garden, in which I can feel it's presiding deity connection to Haarp technology. Peer into an travel bureau while biking home late at night and find an eight foot tall wooden stantue of Garua there. Run into a guest at my friends antique store who is Bill Gates programming liason for th HAARP project. See an exhibition test of HAARP over the Santa Monica ocean the very next night (which most of my local friends ended up seeing too). ..and all through this, I have the inner-dialogue with the synchronized radio discussing such phenomena in spiritual terms. Likewise I was having weeks like this where the theme was ghosts, shamanstic rain dances, ancestor spirits, and all the details which came into my life that week we rounding out the complete story. My real life was as exciting as being in any episode of ST-Voyager, (which was serving as a metaphoric biography of what I was going through each week). I left that reality because it was getting too heavy for me, and because of 9/11. I couldn't rehearse theater pieces on my bicycle, saying phrases like 'strike him dead' 'burst into fireworks' without it happening on a city wide level at my fingertips. I spent three in dialogue with spirit about taking vengeance on capitalism and computer surveilance by going through a spell simulating flying objects crashing into th NSA. I was told it would happen soon. One night I went through the transubstantiation ceremony to better learn what Christ was about. I awoke from a tearful first-hand vision of the resurrection it which Christ was sorry to realize he had started a holy war. I turned on the radio to get more clarification on my vision just in time instead to get the very first 9/11 report. Years later I found that the NSA was in fact in building 7. So, to answer your question about why wasn't my life more awesome, back then I was the world. If the world was awesome, so was I, because I was directly connected to the spiritual strings behind the events. This all came at a cost to having any physical personal life. I couldn't do something like the music instrument busines I'm working on now, because my life was like a phone operator, connected at every moment on several types of psychic channels to every thing happening around me: to my friends, in my neighborhood, in LA, in my activist groups, and in the world. Basically I had surrendered being a person to be an angel of sorts, and though wildly intriguing, it came at a severe depressing cost to my ego which wanted some direct physical consequences to life instead. Yeah, I have a slight sense of your ego, which is perhaps why I feel I have the slightest hope of explaining any of this to you. For the most part living egoless was a sort of limbo. Even when my meditation world experiences resembled Voyager episodes, it was between weeks of meditation where I could say with pride "Guess what I experienced this week?". On the other hand I once had a fairly life changing week and a half of 'Heaven on Earth' which was only possible without ego. It was scintilating delight, near telepathic heart-to-heart dialogue connections, no judgement, decisions, fearful concerns, or motives, just going with the flow on a sort of auto-pilot, working and playing in bliss. Having a ego there would have wrecked it in the same way that one can't hear a person if they are busy thinking. It wasn't the first time I discovered that one didn't actually have to 'think' to utter wise or intellectually complex philosophical arguments. All that stuff can occur on auto-pilot. There's no point in debunking here anyhow. I gave up trying to push my understanding back with Caleb. I imagine debunking anyone is futile anyhow unless they have doubts themself already. Rather I'm presenting this as curiousity, much like a movie, where you can see a different configuration of world event-perception-event feedback loops, and just add it the database of surreal concepts, or take it seriously as you choose. I listen to about 800 hours of spiritual lectures per year, The nice think about new age lectures is that they evolve just as if I were attending conferences with database programming peers, and now integrating xml is th hot topic. Unlike trying to unravel the 'one' biblical guideline, it's an ongoing experiment, this turned out to be bad for the ego or backfires, were trying this now instead, sort of thing. Anyhow, I hear that apparently in the mystical traditions of all major faiths, it's pretty common for mystics to do just as I have done, soar to great deep spiritual heights, then take on a mostly mortal role instead. It just now occurs to me that we may have a common motive in doing so too, the realization that spiritual inquiry can be continued for eternity, but that the opportunities of exploring this physical life run short with age. Fortunately I haven't physicaly aged much these last two decades, at least not in appearance. - If I'm not mistaken, your new avatar comes from Jane Wyatt in a movie I just watched last night 'Lost Horizon' (a worthwhile movie about Shangri-La).
Kristal_Rose	(reply to LindaH) posted 12-Jul-2008 11:00pm   Yeah, that's quite true. It works both ways, but their mistrust just becomes an influenial component a reader can read. We have quite few mistrustful young women here, and you'll notice they are the ones who don't believe in reading people. It's also true on a deeper level. It's love of a sort (though resonant frequency also strongly factors in) which facilitates telepathy. It's much harder to read minds clouded by anger. Come to think of it, it's probably even harder for those people to read their own minds.
JessicaWoman99	(reply to Cain) posted 12-Jul-2008 11:27pm   > Its good for guys who think they can bully women to get a shock every > now and again!! Oh yes indeed the biggest shock to ever hit them and they are like wow what happened oh duh got stung and most deserve it because some are real jerks and real bastards they need something to shock their manhood
bill	(reply to Kristal_Rose) posted 13-Jul-2008 9:07am   My avatar is Patricia Neal from The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951). I just watched it yesterday for the first time. They are doing a remake, so I wanted to see the original. But, Patricia Neal seemed very familiar to me. I looked her up in IMDB, but couldn't figure out where I'd seen her before. There's something about her face. My avatar isn't quite the expression I was hoping to find, but close enough. I read a little about her. Later in life, she was married to the guy who wrote Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I may have mentioned this before, but there's a book I've read a couple times now by Robert Anton Wilson (the book is Prometheus Rising). It had a significant effect on my (I read it for the first time when I was 19). It's very structured and essentially outlines Timothy Leary's 8 circuit model of consciousness (though, I think Wilson flipped a couple of the higher circuits). You may have already read it. I'm sure you'd like it as it touches on a lot of stuff you talk about, especially the higher circuits (where I tend to get lost and/or skeptical). For each chapter in the book, he gives some exercises. In one of the earlier chapters, a key exercise is to look for quarters wherever you go and see if you find them (e.g. on the ground). Then you're left to wonder the meaning of it. What I took away from that, after finding some quarters, is that our minds can easily get focused on coincidence such that it seems like a pattern. But, it's really more like selective attention against the chaos of existence. You can find patterns (ie quarters) everywhere if you focus enough, but that doesn't mean the patterns are meaningful (the quarters are put there by some cosmic force). So, essentially, that's the skeptical point of view. Though, at the same time, I think this effect can be used to adjust ourselves, via something like "the power of positive thinking".
southernyankee	posted 13-Jul-2008 11:32am   I have a strong feeling that this is a Krisal Rose survey. Would that count as "reading" her. Check: I don't attempt to second guess what they are about. {why not?} It isn't really possible to do, and you might as well be honest about that. People who claim to be able to read others simply dilude themselves with some vague notions of "special ability", but really all they're doing is remembering their hits but "conviently" forgetting all their misses. Check: I only have a rough intuition a to whether I like or trust the person or not. I think most of us do that to certain extent. Whether or not that is accurate is up to debate. Well, intution is better than nothing, but its also important to not let first impressions guide you. Check: It can take years before I can predict a person. Like it or not, there are no shortcuts in life. If life was only so easy as "oh, they blink their eyes 3 times every 5 seconds, not 4, and they wave their hands like that instead of like that. That obviously means that this person is an butt-hole." No, thats just not how life works. If you REALLY want to know what a person is all about, you have to geninily put in the effort of getting to know them. Talk to them, ask them what they think, cross your fingers that they aren't liars, ask their friends about their past behaviors, etc. Whatever happened to asking people their opinions on things. "By reading well (for this survey) one might miss a person's objective taste for polka music or aversion to roller-coasters,and still claim to read them well, but being surprised by their yelling at homeless people or organizing a charity event probably indicates not reading them well subjectively." In that sense, I can't, and neither can most people. The best way to predict a person yelling at homeless people is to ask them directly "so, whats your opinion on homeless people"?
LindaH	(reply to southernyankee) posted 13-Jul-2008 2:46pm   I think this survey seems more about common, everyday hunches than about a special 'gift' of reading people by things like how often the blink or how they move their hands. You are right about hunches. I think they are more often wrong when it comes to trust. People have mistrusting hunches that are wrong a lot of the time. People who think they can spot a dishonest person without knowing them seem to peg more people as dishonest than the average person does.
southernyankee	(reply to LindaH) posted 13-Jul-2008 3:16pm   I've always found that notion very creepy and unfair. By making a judgement that someone is dishonest because of a "hunch", you would be basically making a false accusation on someone and treating them guilty until proven innocent. If you're the sort of person who would treat someone unfairly because of a hunch and trust someone else, and turned out to be wrong, you deserve exactly what you get.
LindaH	(reply to southernyankee) posted 13-Jul-2008 3:32pm   True! I totally agree. I never looked at it that way before. These people who get bad vibes about honest people might one day get a good vibe about a dishonest person. Like passing over a decent, hard worker, and hiring a sticky-fingered slacker. It would serve them right.
Kristal_Rose	(reply to bill) posted 13-Jul-2008 7:44pm   I spent my afternoons after HS in the metaphysical bookstores. I carried around a R.A. Wilson book (Satanic Bible) around along with a friend for the shock value (like dressing punk) but felt 95% of it was BS (not that read it all). Basing his ceremonies on the reverse of catholic ceremonies was enough to discredit him fo me. - Oops sorry, that's Anton LaVey I consider BS. Thought I knew Wilson, but apparently not. I didn't really read Leary either (hear some Ram Dass though). Apparently I run my life a lot like his 'look for quarters' experiment. I go quite further though, for instance reading people by the tv shows or art they've attracted at the moment I meet them. I enjoyed a quote posted as one of his web epitaphs (which requires some contemplative interpretation) ~ "People will only be replaced by artificial intelligence to the extent people employ artificial intelligence in the first place." Choose to find gloves, tools, or whatever else you might need instead of quarters on the street. The place you apparently didn't go on the quarters test is full immersion, where 100% of what catches your attention is a reflection of what you held in mind. A similar experiment I offer others (takes less time than watching a movie if you want to try) is that of keeping a journal of every ad or lyric you hear on the radio. Spend the first half-hour heart-felt dwelling on all your past miseries, then spend the latter half-hour dwelling on your hopes and delights. As I've said before, their are levels of immersion to this. The most superficial level is regurgitation of objective subject matter, a bit like like déja-vu (and a hellish state to get stuck in for long, terribly boring and claustrophobic when combined with trying to meditate away your range of thoughts), next comes an objective/subjective reflection of your thoughts, mixed perhaps with reminders and vague omens requiring intuition. Above that is the conversational level. For the first three years of my spiritual awakening incidental pop songs and such were coaching me on meditation techniques. Above that is unnecessary magic tricks like using the radio/tv as a sort of crystal ball to spy on other people, or study things which have escaped history. There was a time here, especially when doing tarot readings for others, that instead of composing replies in my head, I would just transcribe wod for word whatever I heard on the radio. ..half to channel info I wouldn't otherwise know, and half to prove it could be done that way. Unfortunately there is one additional angle of interpreting surrounding text I didn't mention, and that is where the text lies between the omen and conversational level, still fits your context quite well, but turns out to be nothing but delusional 'what you want to hear' .. bad advice to follow. Because the Word can offer miraculous hidden treasure map sort of advice, the temptation is to always trust it. On one hand it knows more than you can as a mortal, but on the other it doesn't always turn out true. Part of this, I'm sure, is beacuse it's not particularly God, Satan, or your ego & soul-ego (something I don't talk about much (as I do with lower-egos), as it's really sublime high-level stuff and not relevant to most peoples experience), but a hybrid of all of these, hence self-purification is required to have a pure guidng spirit. And then there's one other sort of experience in this group I find humorous in retrospect. Whenever I was really desperate for answers, my radio would suddenly switch to Spanish or white-noise. I'm reading a page on 8-circuit now. I can't buy it. I've already experienced that consciousness can be entirely independent of the physical mind. I can understand given his academic psychology/neurology background how he'd have to come up with such a thing. It seems the guy was having traditional transphysical experiences, but was firmly rooted in a western need to explain everything as causal physics. For what's is worth, New Age understandings have come a long way since the 60's. Alan Watts (I'd cal him a guru of mine) was rather ahead at explaining eastern cosmology in western scientific structured (but practical) thought (as much as one can, and still convey a true practical sense of such experience). I may check out Wilson. Back to the quarters.. - "but that doesn't mean the patterns are meaningful (the quarters are put there by some cosmic force)". You know I believe in two levels here, lower objective - the quarters were put there; higher subjective - they impart meaning. The implication of such a belief is way larger than the existence of some deity force with the power to adjust objective reality. It means (in full force) that the moment one asks a question, that that tv is ready to answer the question, even though the show broadcast was produced six months earlier. Two possible explanations exist here, that everything is not only centrally orchestrated, but also predestined. The other explanation, which I find more fitting, is that reality does not flow from past to present to future; it is created this very moment, and history and future are potential off-shoots packaged with this moment. It's as if the whole universe were being created from nothing this very instant, like a holographic dream. The hugest supernatural experiment I ever worked my way up to was rewriting the past, 'Lathe of Heaven' style. My experiment consisted of, on the fly, deciding that life on earth should be rewritten to always have had mineral based life forms. Upon choosing such a belief, I then found that scientists discovered sub-oceanic high-temp volcanic sulphuric acid based mineral life back n 1972, and that this in turn implied that mineral based biology had always been around, most likely as a primitive precursor to organic biology. You may choose to believe that even if one has such authentic experiences, that they are the result of tight focusing in a vast field aready containing a near infinite range of things to focus on. The philosophical implication from the context of any individual experiencing this however, is exactly identical, from that context, of living in a virtual cosmology created on the fly to suit the experiencer. I don't know how much you ever paid attention to my work here. For one fellow I went a bit beyond quarters, and told him he could choose to have parrots at his window for an alarm clock, which he did then for two months. For K77 I kept escalating his paranormal experiences in utter disbelief that he was denying them as coincidence. Finally he asked me for a major miracle, an end to his Australian drought, and after a dozen hours of conjuring here, within 48 hours I had 40 days of rain going at his place. His response was to stop visiting here. With far lessor remote miracles I was able to turn Monkeeee's life around, to see that it was blessed interaction, not an anbandoned rock, if she wanted such. I gave up on that sort of thing though, in part because of the 9/11 mishap, and in part because my spirit dialogue was accusing me of 'killing' those people I was 'awakening'. - This brings us back full circle to where I started this conversation, that the abilty to control one's dream is not quite worth the cost of finding it's a dream in the first place. This is probably why you have a ton of depressed rather than ecstatic sorcerer spiritualists. Such knowldge eradicates most every form of inspiration, purpose, and meaning of life the ego typically speculates upon.
southernyankee	(reply to Kristal_Rose) posted 13-Jul-2008 9:08pm   You're responsible for 9/11? Wow! Should I call Homeland Security and report you?
Kristal_Rose	(reply to southernyankee) posted 13-Jul-2008 10:00pm   You don't have to know their opinions on homeless people. It would suffice instead to recognize that they can get uptight and angry, that they have no reservations about expressing their opinions, that they prefer things classy and orderly, that they don't deeply contemplate conversations from others peoples perspectives, and that their behavior is based foremost on short-sighted self-interest than idealized justice. These are qualities one should be able to gather in a good first meeting, and once you know a person has this combination of qualities, their yelling at a homeless person should come as no surprise at all. Perhaps other factors are involved, and the person would no in fact yell at a homeless person due to other qualities or experieces you are still unfamiliar with, but still, in general such behavior shouldn't be a surprise. So, if you don't believe in reading people quickly (in my effort to understand this), do you mean that you can't do some sort of predictive extrapolating as to how their qualities will affect their behvior, or that you can't discern their qualities in the first place from behavior they exhibit when you first meet them? Well apparently you're far from alone, based on these survey results. One thing I can read in others is a gift for reading others. I apparently overestimated the degree to which it is also present in those who don't exhibit such a gift. I'm always shocked and disappointed when someone has mis-estimated anything about me. It rarely happens, but when it does, as can be expected, it's by the same people who generally mistrust others and I'm sure believe that people can't be easily read. I'm trying to figure out why it is that some people can't read others. It occurs to me that the reasons probably vary. For some it may be an inabilty to highly discern the emotional quality behind words, and thus the more intellectual intent behind saying such a thing as well. Honestly I'm not surprised at all that you have difficulty reading people. It goes hand in hand with two distinguishing attributes of yours. The first is your inability to discern shifting context from word to word. You seem to preestimate the entire structure of a topic, and then fit every word said into the context you expect them to be talking about instead of constantly reevaluating the mtive and purpose of their words. In other words, you are a victim of your over-thinking instead of genuinely listening to what the other person is trying to say. The second obstacle to your being able to read people is that your mental framework is heavily objective. You don't really process or store your thoughts qualitatively or subjectively, but rely on rational causal objective relationships instead. That's great for science or computer programming, but next to useless for reading people, as objective things in a persons life are hardly related. An interest in coffee mugs tell you nothing about their interest in cars. The associations are subjective, the more subjective, the more associating. A person is unlikely to have any association between clocks and dressers which implies one comes with the other, but, they may have a more subjective objective affinity between natural products such as wood and stone, or even more specifically, an interest in natural grains, and that, while not affecting whether they get a clock or dresser, will affect their preference in clock or dresser designs and materials. A fascination with organic form, rigid orderliness, motion, or interplay of color would further impact their furnishing preferences. Those same fascinations will also affect their preferred entertainments or even the structure they feel appropriate for a meeting. It just occurs to me that besides all the new age familiarity, early influences in my life which increased my ability to read people include a degree in abstract art (which is all about sublime qualitative communication), and two college courses almost specifically about reading people. These courses involved capacities like identifying if a person thought visually, kinesthetically, or auditorially, and observing the consequences that had on their environmental interactions. ..Thus I've naturally been developing and honing these capacities for the last 20 years. It's not a faculty or toolset you ever particularly acknowledged, thus never developed as I'm sure you have with other faculties others let lie more dormant. I had some academic exposure to the premise, and was comparatively aloof my first 20 years, but it certainly also comes naturally to some people more than others. To develop it though requires long deep commitment to learning people from the inside out and making observations and connections. Again, some people do this naturally all their life without the realization they even do it. Unlike Freud, this sytem of understanding people does not presume that people think in any particular way. All it presumes is that are guiding patterns to peoples perceptions and behavior evident though observation of expression or deeper inquiry. It may be that one in fact has an oedipus/electra complex which affects their interaction with life, But there are 1000's of others they may have instead, and only familiarity will help in identifying the over-arching thought pattern expressions. Because it's a matter of familiarity, I can't read everyone well. I have little familiarity with criminal type minds. At best, I can recognize that their expressed patterns aren't in my mental emulation database, and that I need to be wary of them. Every sentence I exchange wih a person is adding to that mental database of mine. I strive to comprehensively emulate a person's train of thought and personal universe such that I understood exactly the motives and sentiments behind their words and their choice of inflection for each word. There are some places I choose not to go internally, such as with those criminal minds, because one can't really emulate a train of thought without adding it to your own character. If one understands the jealousy motive, for instance, it's only because they can understand the entire world view in which people have competitive restrictions. For the most part I can weed out more vulgar mindframes because I can compare to loftier more mutualy benefical ones. There are times though that I pick up a new maner of thinking from someone for which there is no quick simple antidote. It's a good exercise though, because once I figure out the antidote to that strain of thought, I can more readily spread it to those suffering from it. While there are only a few mental frames I strategically avoid understanding, it seems to me that you never tried or found value in being a mental/perceptual chameleon in the first place, and wrote off hopes early in life of ever fully undertanding many people. You have not made a life-long commitment to reading people, and having read my synopsis of what's involved, probably wouldn't care to now even if you had faith that it could be done effectively. Until you've have had such a life though, you are in no position to determine it can't be done, and even if you were to commit yourself and fail, it's no proof that others can't do it. You mistakenly presume that people operate internally the same way you do. That was the first mind-opening, potential-expanding revelation of both those psychology classes, and my spiritual awakening, that people are not in fact at all the same internally. That they all tick differently, and if you are to understand them, you need to learn to tick in a 1000 new ways yourself. Until I was in my mid 20's I made many of the same sorts of presumptions you make, for instance presuming everyone else's thought processes were like mine at the time, entirely of a non-sequential symbolic photo/schematic sort. ~ For the record though, I still give people the benefit of the doubt and treat them as innocent until proven guilty. If for instance I see someone engaged in deception, I still wait till I can discern their values and patterns in respect to deception. There is a huge diffence between Enron sort of deception and jokingly disguising a birthday present. It's not just what factors in, but how and why it factors in. Still, there are ways of quickly delineating such factors. If for instance a person believes the world is generally deceptive to them, and that it's a 'dog eat dog world' where 'alls fair in love and war', you can expect that they too will employ deception without reservation. Next you need to discern if they have different policies for friends and strangers. They may feel it's ok to deceive a stranger, but not a friend. Even this stuff though can be picked up by subjective association. If one is intimate with their close friend, but timid or shut off amongst strangers, you have one cue that different policies exist for them. For any sentence a person utters you could write a long paper on the potential implication of where they're coming from. With enough sentences or behaviors you can put together the common denominators and rule out others. It probably helps being able to recall every word and expression a person has said over the last three months. I have a feeling most people can't do that, especially those cell-phone multi-tasker types we were discussing. Perhaps I have some aversion to their culture because I see them as anti-thetical to a utopia where everyone can read each other well.
Kristal_Rose	(reply to southernyankee) posted 13-Jul-2008 10:50pm   In part. Fortunately it's not so 1984 thought-police that they can prosecute for prayers gone awry without even a shred of indirect physical association, or I'd be in Guantonomo now. Rather it's more like I'm the Nixon of the spiritual plane, self-exiled from my office. I'm not the only one who makes such mistakes. Katrina was in part the result of prayers gone awry by a popular TV evangelist a week before. I stepped out of exile briefly to prevent that one from being worse (that sudden last hour 90º change in direction)(which clearly wasn't much help).
cloudhugger	posted 14-Jul-2008 8:15am   I don't attempt to second guess all those details. That's called psychic. It would feel like I am seeing inside them and inside their brains. I can see alot, and predicting???I don't know really. I pretty much don't care that much. If it came down to the last cookie on the plate, and there was a fresh pot of coffee just made...I would certainly use these talents to take out the weaker ones.
bill	(reply to Kristal_Rose) posted 14-Jul-2008 11:21am   I saw a YouTube video last month by a mentalist who has a TV show. He hired a couple different pairs of ad campaign guys to create a storyboard of an advertisement for some product he made up. On the way over to the office where they were to come up with their ideas, he had them drive by some very specific sights in the city (he recorded what they saw too). When each team presented their ad storyboard, it had elements from what they'd seen on their drive over (which he correlated with the video of their ride over). I like the first 4 circuits in Leary's model, they seem to make a lot of sense to me. Wilson is good at stressing the "map is not the territory" idea (it's one of the major themes in his life's work). So, even though he's presenting Leary's idea, he's also saying, it's just a model and thus it's imperfect and more or less something to consider but not buy into 100%. I like that about Wilson. I suspect Leary may lack that aspect. I thought the latter 4 circuits might hold some appeal to you. They are all "far out" and remind me of the way you often talk. Looking at the Wikipedia page for 8-Circuit Model of Consciousness, I immediately get the impression that Wilson explains Leary's circuits better than Leary. But, that's probably my own bias. Wilson links them all, especially the first 4 to many other discipline-spanning ideas (e.g. Joyce, Maslow, Dickens, Freud, etc.). I think it was what Wilson did his doctoral thesis on. Wilson is most famous for his fiction, though (The Illumanatus Trilogy, in particular). You say, "two possible explanations exist here". I think there's a 3rd possibility which also seems the most likely to me. That the subject (ie You!) is choosing to interpret their experiences as meaningful; that the human mind's ability to pattern match can easily lead someone astray and thus cause a perception to seem meaningful despite the data being entirely random and unrelated. One can almost always find a pattern in randomness. But that doesn't mean the pattern has meaning. As children, we lie on our backs and look up at clouds in the sky. Eventually, we begin to see shapes. It's a fun game, but are the shapes meaningful? Perhaps our minds would like to think so, but... Your rain story is amazing, but just an anecdote which doesn't make for good scientific proof. You know how science works. You need controls, double-blind, etc. Usually, when someone makes such claims they are neglecting to mention all the failures they had before they had something be correct. This is another kind of pattern matching we do. We see the pattern and ignore all the data that disproves it. As I said before, I'm not really interested in trying to debunk your claims. You don't need to prove them to me. Our egos don't need to play that game. I do enjoy hearing your point of view and trying to relate my own. It's hard to do without my ego warping the language, but I think we're doing OK. I can get a little overwhelmed with the length and breadth of your posts, though. Forgive me if I don't respond to everything you say.
Kristal_Rose	(reply to bill) posted 14-Jul-2008 9:42pm   That is the page I was on. It's decent, seen in the context of Maslow and such. I was just let down expecting it in anyway to explain cosmic consciousness. It's physical psychology. Alan Watts and his influencees are perhaps still best at that. The majority of spiritualists don't deal with explaining, connecting, or understanding any of that mind-matter stuff, and are more like lyric writers than atomic physicists. Your 3rd possibility is somewhat the vast-field for focusing theory I was suggesting you had. Undoubtely it's true to some extent. I could call it yet another parallel dimension. It's especially true for me, as I can easily compose complex music full of elaborate patterns others find no pattern in at all. There is another (at least) component to it though, that of intuition. It's one thing to strive to derive meaning, and another to sense exactly what was meant, just as in a conversation with someone solemnly hinting at something. The whole phenomena could easily be dismissed in debate if it weren't for the extended times that things are so in synch that the meaning is as clear as any direct conversation, and only in retrospect does it even occur that a more mortal interpretation pertaining instead to the causal realm was also meant. It's also my undertanding that no single mortal-causal and higher interpretive meaning exists, but rather that several channels of meaning exist for every perceiver, and one can tune their radio to the appropriate frequency. To use a purely mortal metaphor, our words are s rich with meaning that one person can derive a new structural concept from something said, while someone else derives emotional content, and both listeners derive something true which keeps their life processing mode engaged. Speaking of clouds, I recall a time with a couple when the gal and I were in serene delight, and watched Gabriel form in the clouds. Meanwhile her grumbling husband missed the whole thing because he managed to step in a cow pie just as it began. We were three feet from each other, and each experiencing a world as suited our mental state. There are infinitite concurrent experiences to be had here, and whether or not it's just selective focus is moot compared to the more fascinating phenomena of us each experiencing that which fits the theme and flavor of our lives. I have no interest in scientific proof. The important thing is that one can experience such a thing, and I only bother to impart it one person at a time for their sake. I mentioned that connection to the cosmic mind is inversely proportional to ego. Motives of wealth or scientific faith are products of the ego. These miracles come to those who have no attachment or investment in them. I have no more faith in someone trying to prove psychic phenomenon to the world than you do. I have that section of my living room where I reversed magnetic North during a ceremonial experiment. For me it true, and I've been able to show it off to believer friends to whom I was not trying to alter their belief sytem. It would not surprise me at all, if I were to show it off to a science tv show, and they found some alternate explanation like combined orientation of the local smoke detectors in the neighborhood or something. - In my book physical narrative truth is relative in the eye of the beholder, not a single universal absolute. I enjoy the mental exchange. Though not new to me, your understanding contributes to my succinct formulation of the 'vast-field' aspect of my beliefs. The need to debunk someone or prove one's self is usually an ego thing too. I spent my first three years of spiritual aakening desperately trying to explain to others what I was witnessing. When I finally surrendered to being alone in that respect, I met several random people the very next week who agreed that of course it's as I was seeing it. That, btw, I've come to find is a general rule of reality: you don't get anything that you can't let go of first. While the vast-field aspect is certainly present, it's not my total explanation. I still believe in the law of attraction - that people looking for quarters or horses run into far more than their fair share. So many meditation practices are tools designed to increase understandings and abilities. If one has 1,000,000 thoughts and experiences daily, it's easy to chock up exprience to the vast-field theory, but if one curtails their thoughts and events through meditation to 5,000 thoughts and events, the awareness and frequency correlation becomes far more evident. There seems to be a sphere of influence componnt too; People claim my sort of coincidental/omen/miracle reality happens for them in my presence, but not when they're away.
Gomezy3k	posted 15-Jul-2008 1:20pm   I can pick out people who I dislike almost immediately... Which is most people LOL
rustygirl50	posted 16-Jul-2008 10:44am   I have to listen to them talk about different topics. Even animals judge other animals by sniffing. Glad I'm not a dog.

 
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