Evolution Through the Acceptance of Paranormal Experience

Why do we tend to deny the very thing that might be key to our most profound transformation - The paranormal?

More often than I can count, I'm hearing a story from a friend, a family member, a colleague, a stranger about the weird thing that just happened to them.  

One of the most recent of which was a story that was featured in my new book, Conscious Musings about a dear friend who personally witnessed the lid of a pot she was preparing to put away, fly in mid-air like a frisbee, probably some twenty feet, aiming and landing right at her foot. Then there was another friend who insisted that a rocking chair in a family friend's home began moving erratically with no one in it - witnessed as well by both her niece and her mother. And then there was another story featured in Conscious Musings about "Lisa," a woman who shared with me an occasion where she heard her deceased father's voice on the phone while in conversation with her sister.

Now as an investigative journalist - a collector of accounts of  the "strange and unusual," you can imagine the stories I get.  They range from the classic experiences of ghostly hauntings to the outright bizarre.  But many of these anecdotes, told with the most passionate of intentions I feel are quite authentic, especially to the experiencer.  Their zeal denotes their belief that these things really happened to them - or at least you would think....

Interestingly, each of the aforementioned scenarios - the paranormal occurrences witnessed by the individual(s) that conveyed them, have a twist of the skeptical as well.  In the case of the "flying lid" account - the individual who told me the story, although she believed what happened to her and moreover that it had some supernatural or nonphysical origin was even more horrified about the backlash she knew she would receive should her husband or daughter find out about it, more horrified in fact than the spookiness of the incident itself!  "They'd think I'm crazy," she said.  Perhaps this was a self-fulfilling prophecy!  In fact, when I finally convinced her to tell them, her surmise was correct.  They laughed her out of the room, calling her silly and full of #$%. After that, I sensed a tone of abandonment in her - she was more willing to let the incident go for fear of sustained ridicule, rather than explore it further. In the case of the moving rocking chair, when the witnesses who were house guests at the time informed the homeowner, she said, "Nah, I doubt that happened...you were just imagining it."  After that, they decided not to mention it again, never mind investigate it further.  And in the case of Lisa who conveyed the story of her "dead" father breaking in on she and her sister's phone conversation, at the end of her admission, she then shrugged her shoulders and said, "I don't really believe in these sorts of things."

So the real question becomes WHY are people so loathed to accept experiences that don't fit perfectly within the nicely behaved Universe they think they inhabit?

I suspect there are a few explanations for this.  First, from the time we land on this little blue planet, we are taught and told what reality is.  It's black and white.  It's three dimensional.  If you can't see it, touch it, feel it or kick it, it doesn't exist.  Various belief systems have rules, and if an experience doesn't fit within the given framework you've been taught then it is impossible to have any validity.

Dr. Dana Zohar

I recall this quote from physicist and philosopher Dana Zohar who commented (about the experience of after-death communication): "People experience things.  And that experience is denied because science doesn't have the instruments of the moment to measure it."

Measurement comes in many forms. Experience not being the least of them. And yet, so many are so quick to deny the experience because it doesn't fit within the 3D reality they've come to know, or the science they've come to trust.

The late Michael Talbot, researcher and author of the acclaimed book, The Holographic Universe once said:

"It's not that I am just interested in the 'weird,' I am interested in what these things have to teach us and the practical applications."

Late author of The Holographic Universe, Michael Talbot

And yet, for some reason we are dumbfounded and perplexed by "the weird," and thus quick to dismiss it altogether.  We are not keen to investigate and are more apt to shrug the paranormal off, determined to dig for some practical explanation that will keep our nicely behaved reality in check (and our relationships in tact).

On the other hand, some have chosen to truly explore the world of the unseen and inexplicable- determined to probe the underpinnings, realizing that these experiences may shed light on who we really are, what reality really is and ultimately, our true potential.

It was Albert Einstein who said, "The only source of knowledge is experience."  But he also said, "Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one."

I agree.  In fact, as a child I would have "unusual" experiences, mostly in the form of what we call pre-cognitive dreams.  I'd dream of an event, whether mundane or magnificent, and invariably the event would play out in real life!  But rather than shrug it off , I made the decision to explore it, delve deeper into the true mechanisms at work in this reality that the Hindus refer to as Maya, roughly defined as illusion.

Anita Moorjani, author of Dying to be me

Speaking of unusual experiences, it would behoove me here to mention this para-normal, extraordinary and life changing experience of a woman named Anita Moorjani.  Moorjani had been suffering from a terminal form of cancer and given the edict that she would not live long.  After experiencing what is referred to as a near-death experience (NDE), and given the opportunity to evaluate her life and her reality while in this supernatural state, she woke up to the notion that her life was so much more than she surmised.  In this state she was healed and subsequently emerged from a coma, despite the doctor's certainty that she would die in just a short time.  She was completely healed of her cancer.  But what is more profound about this experience is that while having the NDE, she had the epiphany that life and reality is far greater and infinite than we have been accustomed to knowing. Moreover, she realized that the reality that we are mostly acclimated to, is illusory and that we are only glimpsing a tiny portion of the scale of reality.

Talbot's holographic universe intimates much of the same - that reality is but a holographic projection emanating from another level of reality that is far from 3D.  It's infinite, fluid and malleable.  And if this is so then the idea of paranormal experience is far more plausible, making the idea of a sticks and stones reality as the ultimate reality the real illusion!

But if this is so - If 3D reality is a construct, an illusion of sorts, why do we hold on dearly to the illusion?

Now that's a loaded question.  But let's look at this...

Does Hollywood influence our perception of reality?

Over the years, many have criticized Hollywood's portrayal of extraordinary or paranormal experience.  In some cases it's glorified and magnified but ultimately vilified as an inauthentic component of reality.  It's just "fantasy" or "fiction."  The larger than life possibilities that are portrayed in movies under the auspices of "fiction" are paraded in front of our eyes and our senses, but are relegated to wishful thinking and pure entertainment.

These days, our "entertainment" is Reality TV.  A snapshot of "real" life, complete with the defective and demented behavior of everyday people (or so we would think).  No time for paranormal stuff here, and thus, no time to reflect on the extraordinary goings on (the underpinnings of reality). Most importantly, with the media projecting reality to us, we certainly have no time to investigate our own potential, on our own terms.

To veer our attention away from the real juice of reality is to veer us away from ourselves. Maybe some want it that way!  ...But that's another story altogether!

As you peruse this post, contemplate the vast nature of reality, of the Universe and most importantly of self!  When you have an experience that doesn't fit within the average, everyday world you've come to know, you might ask yourself the question, "Am I the average, everyday person that I've been taught to be or am I much more?"

Recognizing the paranormal in your life might just hold the answer!

Explore - Embrace -  Grow - Share - Live!

Alexis Brooks is the best-selling author of Conscious Musings - Contemplations to Transform Life and Realize Potential and is the host of the popular  Conscious Inquiry Radio program, exclusively presented by Conscious Life News.  Visit Alexis on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube!