Nope, actually the opposite. I promise you I have experienced many of the things you have and a few you haven't. But still discernment is key and vital to not sounding like a lunatic and falling for every headline that splashes across the National Enquirer. My worldview is pretty much open ended. I guess you didn't gather that from my little notes at the end of a couple of posts; everything's possible, maybe not probable, but possible and the previous about ghosts bumping in the night (kinda sounds nasty lol) My point is that just because I believe in certain things and have experienced certain things does not mean that automatically I accept and believe EVERYTHING floating around out there....do you? So, in my opinion there is the POSSIBILITY that RainyDays friend was being given some esoteric message specially encoded and sent just for RainyDay to hear, But it is much, much, much, more PROBABLE that it was simply stoned rambling. You see the distinction there, I'm not discounting any possibility, just using logic and rational thought to DISCERN what is the most probable answer.
drinking fresh goat milk before it has cooled makes the milkmaid all dreamy . try it ? in a wink all is love and poetry gets all flowery pastoral . the cat takes another nap . of such things - to drink it is to know goats can talk , and even , they may cry when you are gone . cows complain and KICK! ? could be your friend was once aquainted with a goat , then one time she returns expecting to see it , but no , now there's no goat and instead a brown cow ... and so a grandma tells her a story of life .
Oh! Well shut mah mouth! How do you know I haven't? You couldn't...unless you're like my hag Deanna. Maybe you are. Anyhoo I don't know any statistics that could tell me which explanation is the most likely. Maybe in your omniscience, you do. And I do agree - one explanation doesn't fit all. And I was suggesting as much when I mentioned hypnagogic perceptions in an earlier post. And absolutely discernment is important. Well I dunno - for me it is. I want to know the truth as much as possible. It just seems to be impossible to know in so many regards.
I think the goat is actually a reference to a friend that killed herself. I'm not sure why she was called a goat though. Well, goats are sometimes sacrificed... Hm.
there's an odd little book titled The Essene Gospel of Peace . it describes Jesus as a raw-food vegetarian who also loved goat milk and thought killing animals was horrible . well , to get milk from a goat the nanny need first have babies . then after they are weaned the farmer has to decide what to do with them . mostly (and especially the little bucks) they get eaten and perhaps by the priests in the temple but certainly not by Jesus . people in their worried sorrows can be led like sheep into complacency and compliance yet still there is no comfort . billy the goat will just butt the king of the world in the arse . (not the gentle shepherd)
I have been attampting to write a book with a story plot that just "came to me" that seems similar to this, and I wanted to write it but all of my knowledge of it has disappeared from my brain since trying to finish the second chapter draft. Was my use of it to write a book intended for publishing for public viewing inappropriate? When it came to me, I had a viewing of the entire universe, it's creation, and the creation of the "Divine Realms" (for lack of a better non religion specific description) and an "unknown" force watching us all. But as this is all I can gain from what I have written, I feel as though it was not intended to written it down. How may I regain it? I have no true psychic abilities that I know of, but your topic title jogged my memory.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schizophrenia Delusions and hallucinations form part of many mental conditions aside from schizophrenia, but here is just one possibility. You'd need to see a professional to know for sure.
Which tells us that you are experiencing delusions and hallucinations. You having a mental disorder is vastly more likely than there actually being alien/angelic/demon beings which the vast majority of people cannot see or hear which nobody has any evidence for whatsoever who are watching you specifically for some unknown reason. The fact that you seem incapable of weighing up the true probability of each of these things is further evidence of a mental problem, which is, as I said, common as muck and not an insult.
With regards to the schizophrenia seriousness argument, I agree that it is a terrible disorder to be landed with and I wouldn't wish it on anybody. They do however greatly vary in their ability to function in society. Schizotypal personality is perhaps a more likely diagnosis, or one of the many other disorders which include hallucinations as a symptom, but without knowing far more about you there's no way we could say. A professional could.
This thread seems like it's turned into something that should be posted in the mental health forum. Those weren't my intentions with this topic that I was very curious about. I actually have been evaluated professionally, and no I am not schizophrenic. I think I'm gonna take a break from these forums for a while. I need a break. I guess I just don't care anymore about this at the moment.
Unfortunately even among the psychiatric community you get a rare few quacks, but it's well worth persevering and just seeing somebody else if you suspect quackery (It's easy enough to look into the diagnostics and likely medical interventions needed yourself as a very rough guideline). Psychiatrists, being biology and medicine-focussed, are normally more trustworthy than psychotherapists, counsellors and other mental health workers, as unfortunately some of these didn't get the memo that the brain is an organ. The study and treatment of mental health issues has a murky past, and a few well-meaning but misguided dinosaurs remain. The good news is that the science is making tremendous progress, and there is absolutely no reason why the matter should be taboo these days. It's a shame that mentioning the possibility of mental disorder still automatically raises the "you're calling me crazy and insulting me!" alarm. In my mind it's simply pointing out a likely medical explanation for what this girl is experiencing. If someone on the forum talked in depth about bouts of painful heart palpitations and how he felt this was the spirit world talking to him I'd feel it would only be the right thing to do to point out the far more likely medical implications of what he was experiencing.
So wuddya think, Fingermouse, can we now lay this schizophrenia issue to rest and stop pounding her with it, or is a second opinion needed? Didn't you just say something about needing a professional to determine something like this? And though you are gifted with a high degree of astuteness in many ways, I seem to recall that you don't qualify in this regard. It's just that Rainy is not a statistic, she's an individual, whose experiences need to be evaluated on their own merit - not based on probabilities. Certainly the possibility of weird neural misfirings should be considered, but there seems to be a major push in this thread to force this down her throat as if it were a foregone conclusion. What are we trying to prove here? Don't let it wear you down, Rainy. I think what you've experienced is very interesting, and in some ways seems similar to some of my experiences. Unfortunately, based on the responses you've received, there seems to be not much to go on at this point that provides any really definitive answers. And that's how a lot of this stuff goes. Sometimes we get some glimmers of light in the darkness, and every so often a burst of bright sunlight. I hope you'll get one of those bursts at some point regarding these experiences. And who knows, it might be sooner than later.
No, I think only a professional can provide a true diagnosis of a mental disorder. I think the definition of the words "hallucination" and "delusion" can be learnt by almost anyone.
Honestly, if this girl hasn't been diagnosed with anything with regards to this, even based on what she has written here, then yes, I would advise a second opinion. She is displaying well-documented symptoms of many mental disorders. It goes without saying that I am just a faceless stranger on a forum so she can tell me to fuck myself and ignore this advice if she so chooses, but it's a forum, so I'm giving it.
The probability of a mental disorder would be far greater than the probability of an angel/demon/alien invisible species we have no evidence for watching them no matter who that individual was. If we don't have this basic grounding for our understanding then we walk around believing that the likelihood of there being an invisible planet beside our own which is made out of mashed potato and the likelihood that fish have gills is even, which would plainly hinder progress.
It's just that even for psychiatrists with outstanding brilliance and integrity, there is still a great deal of murkiness surrounding mental health evaluation - that's all I'm saying. In many ways it's as much an art as it is a science. I have had extensive conversations with psychiatrists - my own and my two daughters' - and I know these issues are not cut-and-dried, by any means. And also btw, the materialist paradigm of brain function is looking more and more like an outdated notion in the psychiatric community. Let's not get stuck in the state of psychiatry in the days that corresponded to our own limited notions. This is all well and good, however I think the discussion has gone way beyond pointing out something Rainy should consider. At this point it's looking a lot more like stubborn insistence and a refusal to give Rainy any peace until she acquiesces - in short, harassment and derailment. Howzabout we give it a rest now?
As I have only made 3 short posts addressing the poster in question, I think accusations of harrassment are a little far-fetched.
