Musings: Here's a topic, talk amongst yourselves

1) I am a scientist, raised by atheists. I don't believe in much that I can't rationalize. 2) Someday, I want an explanation of ESP that is not religiously or otherwise hocus-pokus based. I have had one very specific experience in my 52 years that I really want to understand. I do not believe it was a post-hoc analysis and fitting of facts to a previously amorphous situation, I really don't. OK, here's my story: My first husband was mentally ill and a substance abuser. There were times he would go away "to sober up" (whatevah) for months at a time, but I always expected that he would return. During one of those times, in the early 1990s, I had THE most specific dream -- I dreamed I was standing in someone's combined kitchen/dining room that was completely unfamiliar to me. I was looking at a man's back, a tall man with stooped shoulders. I asked him why I was there, and he said, without turning around, that I needed to know something. "You need to know that I am The One." I responded that I was already married and that even though things were bad with my husband, that I loved him dearly and wasn't interested. He shrugged his stooped shoulders and said, "well, that may be true now, but it won't be forever." At that point, I realized that I heard voices in another part of the house -- children's voices and a woman's voice. He then said, "yes, we're both married and we both have to go through some really bad times for a long time, and we're not going to meet for a long time, but I felt that you needed to know that we WOULD meet someday, but first, things are going to get really bad for you, so you need to know this so that you don't give up hope and stop looking." Now, this statement really pissed me off in the dream, and I said (and mind you, in my dream I was very aware that there was NOTHING about the man that I felt attracted to at all -- he was a complete cipher to me) "well, then, if we're supposed to be together some day, why don't you just turn around and look at me and let me look at you, so we can start looking for each other in real life NOW?!" He shook his head and said no, that he probably shouldn't have even let me know this much now, but he was afraid I would give up during the long miserable time coming if he didn't tell me that we were going to be together someday NOW. And then I started to get the kind of mad that makes me cry, because I still loved my husband -- my children's father -- and didn't want to think about getting divorced and being alone and having to find another husband. But he wouldn't turn around. I woke up from the dream crying uncontrollably -- I didn't take the dream as fact or that I had had a preview of the love of my life, but was pretty sure I understood it was a metaphor for the fact that I might need to start coming to terms with my husband's probably incurable illness, and that I was going to have to get divorced because I could not allow him to keep hurting me and our children. It was so specific and the metaphor was so apt, that I referred myself to that dream many times over the coming years -- which WERE pretty awful. My husband DID eventually leave me for a crack ***** he met in a rehab program that I paid for. I went through some pretty awful post-separation and divorce stuff with him, and then with other men I met online (which was actually pretty good, truth be told, but didn't result in more than a couple of semi-long term relationships). And I gained weight again. Sometimes, I would think about that dream and look back on the fact that it sort of prepared me for what I was going through, both in accepting that our marriage was over and that perhaps someday I might be happy again. I didn't really believe it. Then, for a while, I stopped internet dating because I was geting fat and I didn't think anyone would want me. I actually got quite depressed and even went on Prozac for a while. I was despairing of ever being happy again. I kept reading the message boards though, and one day I saw an ad and didn't answer it though it interested me -- a few weeks later, I saw a similar ad under a different name, and answered it this time -- we ended up writing furiously back and forth for a couple of days, met for an hour and a half at Border's on a Wednedsay night, played hookey half a day on Thursday, then he spent that night with me (yeah, you'd think I'd be smarter than that, but I was swept away!). The next morning, he announced he was going to marry me. I laughed and told him it might be a good idea if I knew what my last name was going to be in that case -- and I about fainted when he said "Cox" because in high school I had dated a boy whose last name was Cox and had practiced signing my name that way when I was 16 (and I am still friends with him -- I introduced him to his current wife!). And then, as we walked out of the bedroom with him in front of me looking at his back I almost fainted again -- it was the tall man with stooped shoulders! I immediately asked him about the room I had been in in the dream -- I had a very specific recollection of the color of the room, the placement of kitchen counters, windows, sliding glass door, the walls of a house that could be seen out the door, and the layout of the house, which was a little strange -- it sounded like the wife and kids were in the back of the house behind the kitchen. His eyes got even bigger than they already are and he told me I was describing a townhouse he had owned nearby at around the time (this was about 6 years before we met) I had my dream, and that he had enclosed a porch on the back of the house to make a sunroom/family room, where his kids played. OK, so how does this get explained?? I don't believe a diety gave me this preview of my life -- I'm pretty sure this was an out-of-body experience that involved an actual connection between us -- because it was SO damned specific -- but I can't figure out how it could happen. If somebody else had told ME this story, I wouldn't believe it, but I am CERTAIN of this dream having happened YEARS before we met, as I deliberately recalled and "relived" it in my mind many times in the intervening years to comfort myself when times got bad, so I had a distinct impression of what he looked like from the back and what the house looked like, as well as what was said. Of coure, the prediction isn't so bizarre -- it was highly likely I would divorce my first husband, and it was not unforeseeable that I might someday remarry -- and it is not inconceivable that my subconscious wanted me to start thinking about and preparing my conscious self for the likelihood that my first marriage might not work, despite how hard I tried to get him to want to get well. And I NEVER took the dream as being literal -- I was completely taken by surprise and shock when I realized that I recognized my now DH from behind 36 hours after I met him (at that point, it had probably been months since I'd thought about the dream). When I met him, it never occurred to me that he was "The One" from my dream -- I didn't see it until I walked behind him. I never expected there actually was a specific person that I dreamed about, much less to actually meet him. I didn't "believe" my dream until I met him. I might also note that my now DH has told me that he has had occasional premonitions in his life that frequently come true, and that they scare him. But he did NOT have a corresponding dream. OK fellow disbelievers/scientific thinkers -- 'splain it to me!!

Very interesting story. I do think about things. I have had some pretty strange things happen to me as well. I used to often have dreams that the dead would come to me and ask me things. I once had a murdered little girl in a pink coat come to me in a dream and ask me to contact a man who was an attorney of her family. In another dream, the dead son of a man that knew my father-in-law took me to a cemetary to show me his fathers grave and the name was clearly on the tombstone. He wanted me know how highly his father thought of my father-in law. A woman I once knew came to me(she died of drugs), and asked me to forward soem letters she had written to her family. I told her I was unable to help. I have had these dreams since I was a child. They are very vivid and a little creepy. I have dreamed things that eventually happened in a round about way. My dad died last year and I had to sit for hours with his body. I have yet to dream anything good about him. I only dream his dead body chases me around and tries to touch me. I have no idea if any of this is real. I have no proof that any of these things were more than coincidences or just my overly active, sleeping imagination. I am really ok with saying I just don't know. I think it would be fair to say there could be things that happen that we just do not have answers for yet. Do we really know what the human mind could be capable of through the course of evolution? We are smart, but we do not know everything. Some things just do not have answers yet. I tend to believe that my dreams were just dreams, and I do not believe that John Edwards talks to the dead.

WOW... this is a REALLY COOL story!!! And you look especially great in that New Years Eve photo Diana! I was thinking what I might write as I read your post and you ended up already saying what I was going to say! I'm absolutely positive that for some people, their subconscious takes care of them through dreams. It used to happen to my grandmother all the time. She was always dreaming of dead relatives and she found it amazingly comforting. The most significant story---She lost her first child very tragically a few months after the baby girl was born. She was inconsolable of course. Until she had a dream that the baby came to her and somehow made her know that she was in heaven and she was fine and happy. (my Nana was a very devout Catholic in the old-fashioned way. Always had her rosary....) That dream comforted her completely and she never cried over that loss a day again. When my mother was pregnant, Nana had a dream that I was going to be a girl and that god was giving me to Nana to take the place of the baby she lost. Now, there were two girl cousins already! But they lived out of town and were my uncle's children. And I can't tell you why Nana didn't consider my Mom her "gift from god" child but they were very close so I guess the only daughter of her only daughter was to be a special child indeed! (Yes I'm talking about MYSELF!) My parents's work situations had me spending most of my childhood at my grandmother's house and we had an extraordinarily close relationship. That was self-fulfilling because nobody in the world adored me like my Nana did! She dreamed about me all the time but it was easily explained as what she most wished for me. Your dream---hmmmm. I think there are wishes we don't acknowledge. They seem so impossible we're scared to bring them to our conscious mind. But our subconscious holds on to them. You said it yourself, your subconscious was where you were processing the tough choices and eventually you would make them. But obviously, you also wished for love that on some level you thought would be impossible! But how do we explain really REALLY bizarre coincidences and what seem like premonitions? You met a wonderful man. You were swept off your feet in no time. Is there anything more powerful in our lives than that flush of brand-new love? Did your mind MAKE him THE ONE because that's what you wanted? How distinctive or uncommon is a "tall man"? How much had the memory of the dream faded until you subconsciously filled in the blanks with the attributes of your real-life dream man? Ah yes, but how do we explain THE HOUSE? OK that's just freaky! I'm reminded of those TV shows like John Edwards where he makes suggestions and people seem to convince themselves that he's describing something in their lives. There was a house... a house with a kitchen... a kitchen with cabinets... a yard out back where children played.... It's hard to remember a dream in detail. Are you REALLY sure you gave him small details, sufficiently specific enough to rule out common situations? That's a weird one alright! But I haven't told you---I have useless ESP myself! I think of something obscure for no good reason and within a day or so, what I thought of is in the media. Maybe a different angle to consider is to ponder what unexplainable experiences tell us about our world. Is it proof of a deity? Obviously no, what kind of deity would limit him/herself to giving people premonitions AND s/he never makes a guest appearance. Do premonitions indicate a spirit world of some kind? We're talkin' 'bout the human brain here. And it's mighty powerful. When I was watching the Schiavo saga, I was continually stunned at the power of her parents's denial. It gripped them completely! People have an amazing capacity for manufacturing their own reality! My point here is simply that what's unexplainable is the HUMAN BRAIN. It's not the experiences, it's the SOURCE that is the mystery. The brain! And speaking of the brain---near-death experiences. People see "a light" and think they're floating. It seems obvious to me that near-death experiences are signals from the brain as it's shutting down and affects various body systems (like the optic nerve) under certain physical conditions in an impaired and struggling body. Add drugs, anesthesia, the atmosphere of an emergency room and sure, people are going to think they experienced all kinds of things....