Rabbit Holes and the dangers of feeding Hungry Ghosts

It seems to me that having anomalous experiences is not without some risk. For instance, NDErs have very high divorce rates because such experiences change who you are at the core in a very significant way and one's spouse either embraces the new you or they don't.

Just having an interest in these experiences can also cause problems. Everyone has their line in the sand, and when you cross it there is cognitive dissonance to deal with.

John Keel suggested that we are all just cattle. Jacques Vallee has talked about UFOs as a control mechanism. Tom Delonge has been selling the idea of evil aliens. How would a belief in such things affect an individual? Is it better not to go down that rabbit hole? George Knapp has said that maybe there are some things we just don't need to know about.

Then there are those who get obsessed with the paranormal to their own detriment.

Here is the case of journalist Joe Fisher and what happened to him.



Jeff Ritzman's Blog, Numinous Den is all about how the paranormal affects people, places and things. Well worth checking out.

http://numinousden.blogspot.ca/

It seems to me that having anomalous experiences is not without some risk. For instance, NDErs have very high divorce rates because such experiences change who you are at the core in a very significant way and one's spouse either embraces the new you or they don't.

Meditating a lot can turn upside down your relationships and career. Developing equanimity is like growing up, but if the people around you don't change too, you grow apart, and you develop a different set of values and priorities.

More here: Dangers of Meditation:
https://sites.google.com/site/chs4o8pt/m...ion_danger

Meditation might bring you to the realization that much unhappiness in your past was needless, and all the pleasure you get from the things you love and enjoy is just an illusion. ... When your world-view gets turned upside down, and you are left facing a completely new reality that is unfamiliar to you, there can be a psychological upheaval.

Just having an interest in these experiences can also cause problems.

Yeah, I know a podcaster and forum owner who has gone round the bend.

I think the challenge is if there are entities out there treating us as cattle it feels a bit odd to just assume that the Veil is maintained by lack of exploration? Eric Weiss has noted that it takes effort to separate the influence of entities in the Subtle Worlds. For example I had some Muslim friends talk about this idea to me, that messing with djinn leaves a person vulnerable if not from djinn themselves but because mentally you are in two dimensions - our mundane one and the one w/ the djinn.

I didn't have the heart to note that Hungry Ghosts might easily desire quite a few terrorists in order to feed off conflict, as noted in Zap Oracle's review of the Siren Call of Hungry Ghosts by one commenter.

These beings, in their different guises, have directly formed our very religions. And anyone who has studied the history of organized religion must be aware that (religion) has been responsible for more death and destruction than just about anything else. And yet we all stagger blindly on, oblivious to this manipulation for thousands of years…

Of course this is throwing the baby out with the bathwater, the ancient religions do provide inspiration for nonviolence, charity, etc as well. 

Yet in the mundane world we would want to know if someone or something was preying on us - think of those fungi or wasp larvae that can alter the behavior of insects used as hosts. 

OTOH, people who get caught up deeply in the paranormal do seem to be in danger of descending into madness. A person can go from a moderate openness to, say, the potential of having some spiritual awareness to full blown Chosen One mentality. Others seem to be incredibly gullible, paranoid, etc. I wonder if this is an effect of the paranormal itself, the challenge of living in societies that don't have real outlets for this sort of thing, some artifact of our own biology coming into contact with information (beyond the mechanistic/computational sense) not readily processed, hitting Gnostic safeguards in the Black Iron Prisons' security system, or something else entirely.....

OTOH, people who get caught up deeply in the paranormal do seem to be in danger of descending into madness. A person can go from a moderate openness to, say, the potential of having some spiritual awareness to full blown Chosen One mentality. Others seem to be incredibly gullible, paranoid, etc. I wonder if this is an effect of the paranormal itself, the challenge of living in societies that don't have real outlets for this sort of thing, some artifact of our own biology coming into contact with information (beyond the mechanistic/computational sense) not readily processed, hitting Gnostic safeguards in the Black Iron Prisons' security system, or something else entirely.....

You see something similar in artists and musicians, which are essentially occupations that invite "the other", downloads, inspiration, or whatever you want to call that feeling you get while creating music or art. I grew up in those communities, and you see so many artists/musicians resorting to alcohol, drugs or self-destructive behavior as a means of finding inspiration. I always believed it was possible to find one's inspiration without resorting to shortcuts. It's very much like sleeping. You can take a drug to put yourself to sleep or you can place yourself in a comfortable situation that facilitates sleeping. Sleeping on cue isn't easy. It's better to just develop a habit of sleeping every night.

Of course artists/musicians are those rare individuals who do have outlets for coming into contact with "the other" in our society.

Where Did the Road Go? covered this topic in their latest show. Jeff Ritzman talked about the difficulties he and his wife went through because of their unusual experiences.