My Offical Introduction

[font=.SF UI Text][font=.SFUIText]Hello, everyone! I joined Skeptiko several months ago to find like minded people. I have known about Psciencequest for a month or so now and finally decided to take the plunge and officially join! I enjoy reading about the supernatural/paranormal and like to conduct my own experiments as well. Poetry is my passion and you’ll most likely find me either reading it or writing it(surrealism is my favorite). [/font][/font]I come from a Christian family, though there was no dogma or fundamentalism in our practice. I gave up the religion at age thirteen and became a Hellenic Pagan and also practiced witchcraft(which I still occasionally do). At the age of fifteen, I was diagnosed with Schizotypal Personality Disorder and became so disillusioned by everything paranormal. I didn’t know if the stuff I believed in was real or all in my head. I became a militant atheist and rejected all the concepts of god(s) and the supernatural. I became very depressed and could barely leave my bed at times. I decided that the best thing for me to do was to slowly incorporate spiritual practices back into my life. I tried meditating and it gave me a horrible experience that made me stay away from the spiritual for six more months. I can’t remember how I find out about psi, I just know that Skeptiko was suggested to me by a psi proponent website. I was very weary going into all of this. I went through the entire forum, ‘Critical Discussion Among Proponents and Skeptics’ (I found this forum the most useful) within a couple of weeks and came to the conclusion that psi wasn’t something that could be so easily dismissed and needed to be incorporated into mainstream studies. That leads me up to where I am now. I’m pretty happy with myself and my beliefs and I still continue to research and discover things about psi. Any questions I’d be happy to answer. Thank you all for creating a wonderful forum!

[Laird]

Nice to have you here, TheRaven. What sort of experiments do you conduct yourself? And can we read your poetry anywhere?

[Laird]

By the way, your arrival is kind of synchronous as we've recently been discussing crows who have learnt to crack open nuts by dropping them on the road for cars to drive over - OK, so crows aren't ravens, but they're closely related.

Nice to have you here, TheRaven. What sort of experiments do you conduct yourself? And can we read your poetry anywhere?

Lately I’ve been trying out some sigils to test their validity. I mainly experiment with evps and channeling spirits. As for the poetry, I’m afraid not. I’ve been debating sharing it with the rest of the world, but I haven’t made up my mind on that yet. Nobody has read them besides myself. I will let you know if I decide to share them  I am currently writing some short stories that I’m going to try and get published, but that’s a long time away!

By the way, your arrival is kind of synchronous as we've recently been discussing crows who have learnt to crack open nuts by dropping them on the road for cars to drive over - OK, so crows aren't ravens, but they're closely related.

I love a good synchronous event  Crows and ravens are such magnificent creatures and partly why I chose this screen name( the other reason being the famous poem by Edgar Allen Poe).

Welcome to the forum, sounds like you've been through a lot. I remember when I was studying psychology in university my one takeaway from schizotypal personality disorder was that it's diagnosing someone with "believing weird things."

It was like some doctors went "well, we'd really like to say you're crazy, but we're not allowed. There's this pesky legal technicality that says we can't lock people away and heavily medicate them for liking things we don't like."

I'd be interested in hearing about the horrible experience you had during or because of meditation if you're willing to share it. Also Yay! Other people who do their own experiments!

Welcome to the forum, sounds like you've been through a lot. I remember when I was studying psychology in university my one takeaway from schizotypal personality disorder was that it's diagnosing someone with "believing weird things."

It was like some doctors went "well, we'd really like to say you're crazy, but we're not allowed. There's this pesky legal technicality that says we can't lock people away and heavily medicate them for liking things we don't like."

I'd be interested in hearing about the horrible experience you had during or because of meditation if you're willing to share it. Also Yay! Other people who do their own experiments!

Thank you, Mediochre! It’s a bit more with me than just ‘believing weird things’. I have extreme social anxiety and paranoia. I lack close friends, have hyperactivity(ADD), and my speech can be a bit ‘bizarre’ at times. I basically check every symptom of SPD. Schizophrenia runs in my immediate family, so I’ve been under “watchful eyes” since I could talk. It’s better to diagnose personality disorders early so they don’t get worse. So I was basically showing signs of early schizophrenia, thus my diagnosis of Schizotypal. 

I do agree with you on how doctors and the general public treat schizophrenia. In recent years, there’s been rampant talks about depression and anxiety(which is great), but it feels like people want to sweep personality disorders under the rug and label us as ‘crazies’. My meditation experience is connected with my SPD. To put it simply, I had an episode of severe psychosis.

People who have SPD don’t generally suffer from psychosis and when we do it’s not to the severe level of schizophrenia psychosis. I had had a couple episodes of psychosis before, but they were minor episodes and went away within two hours. The one that was triggered by meditation lasted a whole week and got so bad I had to be transported to a psychiatric facility where I stayed for a week.

I heard voices in my head and saw hallucinations. I barely got sleep and when I did it was not more than a few minutes. I started to destroy furniture, convinced that someone planted a transmitter that was making me hear the voices.  I got really angry at my family and started to act violent towards them. A lot more happened that I won’t get into but that’s the gist of it. Apparently, this is a common occurrence for those on the schizophrenia spectrum.

I didn’t know if the stuff I believed in was real or all in my head.

First, welcome to the forum.

Second, the sentence I quoted above applies to most of us. I've read the rest of your posts in this thread and understand that this is made more complex given your own health situation. Regarding what is 'real', I think it is necessary to find a balance point. On the one hand, we need to seek verification and a grounding in 'facts' when considering psi. On the other hand, if something occurs just once and is not repeatable, we can't simply carry out an experiment to test it, so may have to use some judgement.

First, welcome to the forum.

Second, the sentence I quoted above applies to most of us. I've read the rest of your posts in this thread and understand that this is made more complex given your own health situation. Regarding what is 'real', I think it is necessary to find a balance point. On the one hand, we need to seek verification and a grounding in 'facts' when considering psi. On the other hand, if something occurs just once and is not repeatable, we can't simply carry out an experiment to test it, so may have to use some judgement.

I agree. It’s taken me a long time to find a nice balance point, but I’m finally there

[font=.SF UI Text][font=.SFUIText]Hello, everyone! I joined Skeptiko several months ago to find like minded people. I have known about Psciencequest for a month or so now and finally decided to take the plunge and officially join! I enjoy reading about the supernatural/paranormal and like to conduct my own experiments as well. Poetry is my passion and you’ll most likely find me either reading it or writing it(surrealism is my favorite). [/font][/font]I come from a Christian family, though there was no dogma or fundamentalism in our practice. I gave up the religion at age thirteen and became a Hellenic Pagan and also practiced witchcraft(which I still occasionally do). At the age of fifteen, I was diagnosed with Schizotypal Personality Disorder and became so disillusioned by everything paranormal. I didn’t know if the stuff I believed in was real or all in my head. I became a militant atheist and rejected all the concepts of god(s) and the supernatural. I became very depressed and could barely leave my bed at times. I decided that the best thing for me to do was to slowly incorporate spiritual practices back into my life. I tried meditating and it gave me a horrible experience that made me stay away from the spiritual for six more months. I can’t remember how I find out about psi, I just know that Skeptiko was suggested to me by a psi proponent website. I was very weary going into all of this. I went through the entire forum, ‘Critical Discussion Among Proponents and Skeptics’ (I found this forum the most useful) within a couple of weeks and came to the conclusion that psi wasn’t something that could be so easily dismissed and needed to be incorporated into mainstream studies. That leads me up to where I am now. I’m pretty happy with myself and my beliefs and I still continue to research and discover things about psi. Any questions I’d be happy to answer. Thank you all for creating a wonderful forum!

Welcome to our new mostly asexual misanthropic member. I like you already.