The Experiments

Wretched virus. I've been down for the count since last Sunday with some kind of flu. It could be worse. I don't have a sore throat or tummy troubles. For the first three days I was in and out of a low fever. Yesterday afternoon I felt so much better I set my alarm to go in to work this morning. It was not to be. I'm too weak. I had to go back to bed. I'm getting sick of being sick. But like I said, it could be worse.

I don't like being off my schedule for so long. I'm an achiever. I get satisfaction from my weekdays based on how much I got done. Sitting on my butt for this long makes me anxious. What can I do about it? Sit on my butt some more and wait. :-p

For now, I'm going to tell you two stories. They explain how I finally concluded, to my satisfaction, that I really do pick up on other peoples' feelings with a sixth sense, not the regular five.

I'm a scientific woman. In high school I was that geek that got A+ on all my math, chemistry, physics, and computer science courses. I have a mystical side, but I'm not one to completely throw rationality and logic out the window. Even if I can't document these experiments so that others can duplicate them, at least I proved something to myself.

The first experience happened when I was taking a night course in intuition. I can't remember most of what we did in the course. It was pretty dippy stuff, some of it. The reason I signed up was that it was a pre-requisite for a "professional" two-year part-time program in psychotherapy at the same school. The school was New Age. Some of the things they taught had merit, and, in my opinion, other things were way out to lunch. However, it was the best school I could find at the time, so I tried to get what I could out of it.

On the last night of the course, we did this exercise. Half the class put on blindfolds and sat across from empty chairs, placed in a circle. The other half of the class walked around the outside of the circle until they received a signal from the teacher, at which time they sat down across from whomever they were closest to, musical chairs style. The sighted person gave one hand to the blindfolded person to hold. The blindfolded one had to talk for some time, maybe five or ten minutes, about whatever impressions they got from that hand.

I didn't know anyone in the class very well. When it came my turn to be blindfolded, I didn't even know if the hand I held was that of a male or female. One of the restrictions was that the sighted person was not to utter a sound during the experiment or give any type of feedback. I had no clue who was sitting across from me.

I started to ramble. It's very weird to talk to an unknown person for a long time about whatever pictures form inside one's head. I felt like I must sound crazy or stupid. I started describing a house that I saw, a very specific house. It was not in the city. It was in the country, near a lake. I saw that the main living room and kitchen did not have flat ceilings, but opened to the underside of a peaked wooden roof, like that of a log cabin. The kitchen had sliding glass doors at the back, opening onto a wooden deck, which faced a thickly wooded forest. I described a dog, and some other aspects of the house. I described activities I saw the occupant of the home doing, like jogging and embroidery. At one point the hand I held began shaking noticeably. I had no idea what that signified.

Finally we took our blindfolds off. I was sitting across from a 30-ish woman with her long hair pulled back in a braid. She told me that I'd just described her home as well as if I'd been there, including her dog and her hobbies. She said the only thing that was slightly off is that she doesn't do embroidery - she knits. The reason her hand started shaking was that she couldn't help but laugh with surprise at how clearly I'd seen her life.

I suppose she could have been lying, but she seemed genuine to me. I was pretty freaked out by that experience. I was convinced that I'd really tapped into something.

The second experience was at the same school, in the actual psychology course. We were learning techniques to use with clients to get to their hidden emotions. The technique being demonstrated that day was the use of non-verbal vocalization.

One student volunteered to be the subject, and the teacher played the therapist. They started talking about a certain topic, and when they were well into it the teacher invited the student to express her feelings vocally in a non-verbal way. The student, naturally feeling self-conscious, made a few odd noises, and then started to laugh at herself.

The teacher encouraged her to continue. She made a few more noises, and this cracked her up even more. The teacher also started to smile. The rest of the students, myself included, were seated nearby on a couple of old sofas in the corner of the room. My classmates had started giggling.

Meanwhile, out of the blue, I began to feel sad. I had felt fine when we all came back from lunch, and could not explain to myself why I had a sudden urge to curl up into a ball and hug myself.

The experiment escalated. The student up front kept sounding louder and laughing more. My classmates on the sofas laughed until they were holding their stomachs. The teacher was laughing. The student at the front laughed until she could hardly stand up straight.

I felt like I was going to burst out in tears at any moment. I thought I might have to leave the room. I distinctly remember asking myself what was wrong with me. I thought it was just another manifestation of my messed-up craziness that I couldn't join in with my classmates for an innocent laugh. I felt stupid and left out.

But then, just when I was on the verge of actually letting tears pour down my cheeks, something shifted in the room. The student at the front suddenly broke down. Her laughter turned to weeping; great wrenching sobs from the gut. This was the subconscious emotion that the teacher had meant to uncover. And I had been feeling her repressed feelings, until she finally let them out.

As soon as she broke down, all the sadness lifted off me in one wonderful, relieving wave. I felt completely fine again, instantly. Everyone else in the room calmed down, stopped laughing, and put suitably sympathetic expressions on their faces. Meanwhile, I was trying to absorb the meaning of what had just happened. It was moment of realization that I'll never forget. I can't imagine a more clear demonstration of the process. I was lucky to have been present at that class, so that I could finally understand the process of my own intuition.

I never did finish that psychotherapy course. This was years before I discovered any type of protection from all the unfelt feelings floating around in the ether, so I was a sitting duck. In that course a lot of touchy subjects came up, but there wasn't time for every student in the classroom to express their emotions regarding how the subjects of addiction, or sexual abuse, or violence, had touched their own lives. Sitting in that classroom was very difficult for me, because there was so much Other Peoples' Stuff swimming around just below the surface. I even developed physical aches and pains which I believe were as a result of all the emotional pain I was being exposed to.

I attended most of the classes, but declined to do the next step: 100 hours of case studies. I didn't think it would be good for my health to continue.

So there you go. Those are the best proofs I can offer of the truth of my abilities, for what it's worth. And I don't think there's anything wrong with asking for proof of some sort. There's way too much wishful thinking in the New Age movement. It'd be easy to get lost in a world of daydreams. I don't intend to do so.