Throughout high school I was a fan of young earth creationism. Their material is quite compelling and many otherwise intelligent Christians I know believe in it. When I started university I chatted over the internet with an ex-creationist who mailed me stuff about the Green River formation and then I ended up becoming a depressed (and then manic and then schizoaffective) atheist.
Anyway near the end of high school I was investigating anti-creationist books including the pathetic “Telling Lies for God”. I remember being alone at home and saying to God in my mind “I want to know the Truth no matter how depressing it is”. i.e. without God and Heaven I wasn’t that happy with my life (girl problems) Then I felt a very strong tingling throughout my body for a couple of seconds.
At the moment I don’t believe in the supernatural but sometimes suspect there is an intelligent force out there causing me to be very fortunate in many ways. Maybe it also was responsible for that tingling feeling.
Also when I watched Ghostbusters in 3D last night I felt a mild tingling the first three times the theme song played.
Anyone also experience strong tingling feelings, especially those associated with some kind of epiphany?
A couple weeks after starting college I met this guy at a party. Upperclassman. He seemed kind of cool and mystical and all that, but then I was tipsy and could only hear about every fifth word because of the music. I think he might have said some interesting things about spirals. Anyway, he invited me to stop by his dorm room the next day, said he had something very important to give me that was essential for my “journey”. So I stopped by. He answered the door and invited me in. His long stringy hair was wet, like he’d just got out of the shower. He said he was meditating, was almost done, and asked me to wait there while he finished. So I stood in the cramped dorm room and he sat down crossedlegged on the one spare spot on the floor and, L guess, resumed his meditation. He had a placid grin on his face and breathed deeply through his nose. And as I looked around at the various and sundry neohippy paraphernalia that that I had heretofore not seen but would soon come to know as the commonplace and in some ways requisite flotsam with which one in one’s college days at that particular institution of “higher”(if you get my drift) learning should adorn and litter his surroundings, I got that tingly feeling, just as you describe. It was significant, had to be, I knew it. Perhaps this patchouli/pot/Pantene odored guru will, when he is done meditating, begin the process of setting me on the way to similar enlightenment. I even had the thought that he may be connecting to me right then, psychically, through the mystical ether. Well, he finished meditating. We exchanged some opening pleasantries. As we did he poured a glass of water out of a decanter and opened a plastic container from which he scooped several heaping spoonful’s of green powder, which he then stirred into the liquid. I asked him what that was. He then launched into a nonstop hard sell about the wonders of Spirulina, about how it was essential for spiritual and physical health, about how he could give me some to try and then supply me with quantities that I could then sell to others and thereby not only further my spiritual quest but make some good bank on the side.
Long story short, I have learned not to trust that tingly feeling.
Being a boring old skeptic, I’m gonna go with the confirmation illusion. You probably have tingling feelings like this more often than you realize, but you aren’t particularly aware of them in most cases. But when one came, closely associated with a strong emotional experience, the two appear to be causally linked.
I have deja vu experiences all the time. Tons of 'em. Once in a while, by the ordinary workings of coincidence, they are correlated to some strong emotional experience. This makes it feel like something significant has happened, but, really, it’s just happenstance.
I once met a lovely woman, and had a powerful, almost overwhelming sense of spiritual oneness and destiny. She was “the one.” It was “recognition” (if you’re an ElfQuest fan.)
Nah… She and I are still friends, but she married someone else, and that’s probably all for the best. These vast, dramatic, revelatory, epiphanatic experiences feel as if you’re plugged directly into the circuitry of destiny, but, in reality, it’s just our brains being weird.
Yeah I tend to believe our minds are just purely physical machines that sometimes malfunction. On the other hand I know lots of otherwise intelligent people (including fellow programmers) who believe that the mind can interact with and be possessed by demons and Satan. In a letter a guy said I was possessed with an “intellectual” spirit.
BTW this is a book my sister wants for her birthday: https://www.koorong.com/search/product/a-more-excellent-way-with-dvd-henry-wright/9781603741019.jhtml#/info
“The root of psychological and biological disease is spiritual. Author Henry W Wright not only equips the church with respect to defeating sickness, but he also demystifies it by showing, from God’s perspective, why mankind has disease in the first place. A More Excellent Way is a valuable resource in assisting spiritual leaders, health-care professionals, and all individuals in understanding the spiritual dynamics behind diseases of the body, spirit, and soul.”
Yes, I have had that tingling feeling a number times associated with a thought that seemed revelatory, and thinking to myself, “I will see everything a little differently from now on.”
At the moment, I can’t remember the specifics of any of them, and I don’t think any of them changed me for more than a few days.
Siam Sam: Tingling? That one hits deep in the bowels, not unlike a punch to the gut. It doesn’t tingle: it physically hurts, quite literally in the form of a quick, tight, muscular cramp in the abdomen.
Cost me a goddamn $150 to get the lock picked. I could have paid less to a burglar.
That’s the advantage of living in a condo in Thailand. The one time I did have to have a locksmith come out, the building office sent for the guy they kept on call. He was here in 10 minutes and charged about US$10 or so.