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This is just a little dive into why it is that children see things that we do not. I have clear memories myself from when I was quite young, maybe 6 or 7 years old, of things that do not make sense in this general accepted reality. Seeing or hearing things. I remember seeing a floating fish-like creature in my neighbors backyard right by the chain-linked fence that separated our yards. I attempted to grab it but couldn't reach it. Another memory in what was possibly kindergarten, we were outside for recess and as the teacher was calling us back inside, out in the school field was this peacock bird with a massive tail sticking up with vibrant colors. I ran after it, but apparently my teacher couldn't see it. Auditory example - I must have been around 8 years old, sitting in the back seat of a car my mom and grandma were in the front seats we must have went shopping somewhere because there were grocery bags in the back seat, and by my feet was one of those "angel soft" toilet papers that had the baby's face on it. For whatever reason I kicked it once or twice, and I then heard a baby crying, clear as day. Frightened me a little bit lol.
Is it hallucinations, imagination, or something along the lines of having more perception. Do we corrupt our own consciousness when we grow older and become accustomed to unsavory things? In the way a computer can be infected with a virus, does this occur within our individuated consciousness?
If anyone has their own stories to share whether they are your own or if you have kids yourself, please do.
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When I had just turned 4 years old I remember waking up one morning at the crack of dawn and going into our little kitchen in our house on Agate Drive. I got it in my head that I was going to balance all 6 chairs at the kitchen table on their back two legs. I remember the extreme confidence I had that I could do it. I took each chair one at a time and carefully pulled it back and then guiding it very gently ever so slightly at its balancing point with my hands and then just when it was nearly balanced with just my breath (a soft breath like you would use to fog your glasses so you could clean them with a cloth) and I balanced 1, then 2, then 3, and on until I had all 6 chairs balanced. My Mom got up and came into the kitchen and screamed. I had my little laugh. One of the chairs tipped over. I could never again repeat this trick. It was almost like I willed the chairs balance that way long enough for my mother to see.
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First of all, I love this topic - thanks for starting it, Jon. I feel like I have a few of those memories but they are deep in the back of my mind and not coming out right now. The one I can think of is recalling clearly that our church had two major fires in it and everyone else in the family only remembers one. I remember watching the fire and thinking how weird it was that it was the second time. I'll try to think of more. Tashi (my fiance) is also thinking of some - this topic resonated with her to the point where she got chills. jdlaw wrote:When I had just turned 4 years old I remember waking up one morning at the crack of dawn and going into our little kitchen in our house on Agate Drive. I got it in my head that I was going to balance all 6 chairs at the kitchen table on their back two legs. I remember the extreme confidence I had that I could do it. I took each chair one at a time and carefully pulled it back and then guiding it very gently ever so slightly at its balancing point with my hands and then just when it was nearly balanced with just my breath (a soft breath like you would use to fog your glasses so you could clean them with a cloth) and I balanced 1, then 2, then 3, and on until I had all 6 chairs balanced. My Mom got up and came into the kitchen and screamed. I had my little laugh. One of the chairs tipped over. I could never again repeat this trick. It was almost like I willed the chairs balance that way long enough for my mother to see. jdlaw, does your mom still remember this? On the topic of what it is, there are always these stories about children who recall past lives or feelings and experiences from other realities, but they fade. In the digital simulation paradigm, we could theoretically run sims that are in parallel with consensus reality - as in, trying something out to see what happens, and the other actors are just digital replicas of the real "free will" versions that are in the consensus reality. If so, those real actors won't remember the sim. The more prosaic explanation of course, is that our memories fail or they are confabulated memories. But I like the more esoteric explanations - children are closer to their past soul memories and/or are still open minded and creative enough to not reject unusual things that they experience. And it takes years of materialistic conditioning to get us to NOT see what is there. Eastern cultures don't reject such things as quickly as western ones do - see tulpas for example. How about those stories about native tribes completely ignoring explorer's ships because they didn't fit with their reality. I always wondered whether that was truth or fiction. It's sort of the opposite of Jon's idea - not seeing things that ARE there.
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jim wrote:jdlaw, does your mom still remember this?
Jim, unfortunately my mother has succumbed to what age can do to the mind. She is still alive (as is my father) but Mom is in a care facility now. She has developed a very complex (yet consistent) view of her reality that simply does not meet with the consensus reality (i.e. diagnosed with non-Alzheimer's s schizophrenia where she believes things that are simply not true - though extremely real and true in her mind). These delusions are not the day to day inconsistencies with consensus reality type of delusions. In the moment she is always very aware of what is going on and who is around her. But she has developed these very consistent stories about how the government, doctors, bankers, and everyone around her have plotted to steal her money that she won while watching the wheel of fortune on TV. She claims this happened twice, where she was one of the "wheel watchers club" home audience winners. She swears they called her name (two different times) and each time sent her checks for lots of money (one time $180K and the second time $240K) but when she deposited the money in the bank, "they" (this great web of conspirators) plotted to steal her money and put her in rest home. It is a very odd schizophrenia because like I said it does not affect her reality day to day or moment to moment, but whenever you talk to her, the conversation will almost always sooner or later turn down this path where it becomes an almost Tourett's like syndrome, where she gets very upset and uses curse words ("F'ing" this and "MF'ing" that) from a devout Christian woman who never said a swear word in her life. It is very sad for her and for us the family.
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jdlaw wrote:When I had just turned 4 years old I remember waking up one morning at the crack of dawn and going into our little kitchen in our house on Agate Drive. I got it in my head that I was going to balance all 6 chairs at the kitchen table on their back two legs. I remember the extreme confidence I had that I could do it. I took each chair one at a time and carefully pulled it back and then guiding it very gently ever so slightly at its balancing point with my hands and then just when it was nearly balanced with just my breath (a soft breath like you would use to fog your glasses so you could clean them with a cloth) and I balanced 1, then 2, then 3, and on until I had all 6 chairs balanced. My Mom got up and came into the kitchen and screamed. I had my little laugh. One of the chairs tipped over. I could never again repeat this trick. It was almost like I willed the chairs balance that way long enough for my mother to see. That's very cool. It coincides with my idea that limitations come as we begin to understand the "norms" of society. Generally the more we learn, the less amazing things we can do, in that sense. It's like throwing a piece of candy behind my back into a trash bin 30ft away and sinking it with ease on the first go, not thinking about it. I could attempt to replicate it 100 times afterwards and miss each time. Keyword: attempt. Attempting something is approaching it without full confidence. When you attempted to repeat the chair trick you did, it was never the same as the first time you just did it without thinking. The first time was not an attempt. Why does it take basketball players so many years to be good free throw shooters? It's not the physical motion/mechanics of the shot adapting as much as it's the mind being further convinced that shot should go in.
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jim wrote:First of all, I love this topic - thanks for starting it, Jon. I feel like I have a few of those memories but they are deep in the back of my mind and not coming out right now. The one I can think of is recalling clearly that our church had two major fires in it and everyone else in the family only remembers one. I remember watching the fire and thinking how weird it was that it was the second time. I'll try to think of more. Tashi (my fiance) is also thinking of some - this topic resonated with her to the point where she got chills.
If you happened to remember any, please share! I love such stories, and I think they can hold important clues to further understanding things. Imaginary friends, seemingly impossible feats, hearing/seeing things that others could not perceive. I think the stories of past lives may be connected, and how the memories fade soon with time reminds me of the way dreams function. It's quite often I wake up from a dream and remember every detail of it, even the emotions within it, and within minutes it all fades away. It's like this local reality is rejecting such memories, not to be retained here. Your story about you remembering the church having two fires reminded me of something when I was about maybe 6 or 7 years old. My cat Ivan must have gotten bit on his tail or something of that sort by another cat, and I clearly remember him coming home from the vet without a tail, as if it were surgically removed. I clearly remember the image of him with no tail, and this blue-ish stuff in the area where his tail used to be, with a bandage. I clearly observed and inspected it. Then shortly after over time I assumed his tail just grew back. Later I was told that obviously never happened(as cats don't grow tails back), just an area near his tail was shaved where I think an abscess was. What was it that made me see no tail? Very strange. I would bet the stories about tribes ignoring explorers had truth to it. But at some point, the two realities would collide.
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Quote:
Jim, unfortunately my mother has succumbed to what age can do to the mind. She is still alive (as is my father) but Mom is in a care facility now. She has developed a very complex (yet consistent) view of her reality that simply does not meet with the consensus reality (i.e. diagnosed with non-Alzheimer's s schizophrenia where she believes things that are simply not true - though extremely real and true in her mind).
These delusions are not the day to day inconsistencies with consensus reality type of delusions. In the moment she is always very aware of what is going on and who is around her. But she has developed these very consistent stories about how the government, doctors, bankers, and everyone around her have plotted to steal her money that she won while watching the wheel of fortune on TV. She claims this happened twice, where she was one of the "wheel watchers club" home audience winners. She swears they called her name (two different times) and each time sent her checks for lots of money (one time $180K and the second time $240K) but when she deposited the money in the bank, "they" (this great web of conspirators) plotted to steal her money and put her in rest home. It is a very odd schizophrenia because like I said it does not affect her reality day to day or moment to moment, but whenever you talk to her, the conversation will almost always sooner or later turn down this path where it becomes an almost Tourett's like syndrome, where she gets very upset and uses curse words ("F'ing" this and "MF'ing" that) from a devout Christian woman who never said a swear word in her life. It is very sad for her and for us the family.
Very sorry to hear about this, jdlaw. unfortunately, it does seem to be a pattern as i've heard of this kind of paranoia in many other cases, including "nervous breakdowns". i'm sure it must be very tough to witness. :(
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Jon D wrote:
That's very cool. It coincides with my idea that limitations come as we begin to understand the "norms" of society. Generally the more we learn, the less amazing things we can do, in that sense.
very well said, Jon D. i like the notion of norms of society. reminds me of this study that NASA did in the 60s, when they were on top of world. they were looking to hire as many creative, "out of the box" people as they could so they developed a test to assess creativity and gave this test to all demographics - men, women, children, all age groups. what they found was that 95% of 5-year olds passed this test, 10% of 12-year olds, and something like 2% of adults. it was as if the creativity and free thinking that children had was conditioned out of them through the "norms" of society and our educational system; e.g. "no, the sky is blue, you can't draw it any other way" Jon D wrote:
It's like throwing a piece of candy behind my back into a trash bin 30ft away and sinking it with ease on the first go, not thinking about it. I could attempt to replicate it 100 times afterwards and miss each time. Keyword: attempt. Attempting something is approaching it without full confidence. When you attempted to repeat the chair trick you did, it was never the same as the first time you just did it without thinking. The first time was not an attempt.
Why does it take basketball players so many years to be good free throw shooters? It's not the physical motion/mechanics of the shot adapting as much as it's the mind being further convinced that shot should go in.
this also feels very familiar to me. i know that i have done things that i KNEW were going to succeed, but later unable to repeat with practice. it was the "knowing" not the "hoping" that worked. if only i could tap into that better. i remember as a kid wondering if i could walk through a door by really believing that i could do it, and then trying and failing, and wondering if i just hadn't believed hard enough.
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