CLICK HERE FOR BLOGGER TEMPLATES AND MYSPACE LAYOUTS »

Monday, November 16, 2009

My Experience with a Psychic.

Let's just say that it was interesting, to say the least. This evening, Alan Cable, a radio personality on a station I listen to (from far away… I listen on the internet) hosted a psychic, and apparently he does this every night and I just don't listen enough. Anyway, the point is, I was sitting here thinking, I don't have anything to ask a psychic, I don't believe in them anyway and then I thought of something. God has been calling me to India (I think) and I have been thinking a lot about it. Anyway, I decided to call in and ask this psychic if I was going to go to India within the next two years (because the next time that I would be able to go would be between now and after I graduate from college with my degree in a year and a half. Now, let me tell you, calling in is no easy feat. I had to hang up and call again SIXTY-NINE TIMES before I got through. We're talking mass busy signals. Anyway, Alan picked up and asked what I wanted to ask, and I told him my question and he puts me on hold, and before you know it, he's back on the phone with me, asking my name and my question. Here's how the conversation went:

Alan: Hi, what's your name?

Me: J.

Alan: And what is your question for Sylvia the psychic?

(is it just me, or are all psychics seemingly named Sylvia?)

Me: I was wondering if I will be going to India within the next two years.

Sylvia the Psychic: Yes. Yes, you will be going to India, and you will be meditating a lot there.

Me: Oh really? Will I be doing anything else?

Sylvia the Psychic: Yes, yes, you will be meditating a lot, and you will have a large spiritual awakening.

Alan: What are you going to India for?

Me: Oh, it's just a career choice.

Alan: Well, what do you want to do?

Me: I want to open a shelter for the homeless, using art as catharsis.

Alan: Well, you are just a great person. Have a great night!

Me: Thanks, you too. Bye.


 

This, if you have been following my blog, kind of follows what I want to do in India, but isn't quite the focus of what I want to do there. I won't be meditating in the most used sense of the word, and if I am meditating, I will be meditating on what God is telling me, and what I read in His word. But she didn't say anything about "bind[ing] up the brokenhearted, proclaim[ing] freedom for the captives, [or] release[ing] from darkness the prisoners." (Isaiah 61:1) She didn't say anything about the work that I would be doing there, taking children out of the brothels and slums, working creatively with them, ect. This makes me think that all it takes to be a psychic is a little general knowledge of the world and some really good guesswork that can be backed up with logic. In fact, several of the calls that I, as a listener heard her take, the person asking the question answered it his/herself. Anyway, my guess is that Sylvia the Psychic knew that India had the Taj Mahal in it, and that there are two dominate religions there, both very strong. Therefore, my situation is so specific that all she had to go on was guesstimates. So, I said thank you and hung up. But I started wondering… why do people believe and depend on psychics so much? Psychics make their money by creating self-fulfilling prophesies, meaning, they put an idea of what the person wants in person's head (because the person often asks a leading question with a yes or no answer). Because what the psychic said was what the person wanted to hear anyway, the person works harder to make what the psychic said happen, or if what the psychic said was vague, it is easy to interpret the psychic's answers the way you want to, molding them to the outcome you got or you wanted, like I did with Sylvia the Psychic's answers, therefore fulfilling the prophesy that was made, and further reinforcing your belief in the psychic. For example, a woman who wants another baby is going to try harder to have another baby if the psychic tells her she will, and she will give up, or not try as hard if the psychic tells her that she won't.

And I got to thinking, maybe people believe in psychics because they need something to believe in to be secure with themselves in the world. Maybe it just makes them feel better, knowing what is coming. But while I was thinking this, I was also thinking that atheists say the same thing about people of religion. We're just two different groups of people. Psychics and their followers have psychic books as their Bible, and they have self-fulfilling prophesies as their miracles, and they depend on what will happen in this world instead of what is promised for the next world, where as Christians follow a God that is not of this world, we have a sacred text, miracles like the one I witnessed (a girl's knees were healed by God through a group of people), and we depend on what is promised for us in the next world and live by a code. I've often wondered if we're all worshipping bastardized versions of the same God, imposing our own prejudices on our religion, making the differences between religions. Maybe this is sacrilege, but it's a theory.

0 comments: