Monday, October 01, 2012

Is it psychic? Or just experience?

Intuition/psychic ability and experience form a spectrum of knowledge, and it's not always possible to tell where one begins and the other ends. Here's what I mean:

There's an old story about a factory owner, whose very complicated, very expensive piece of machinery stopped working. This machine was essential to his manufacturing, so he couldn't let it stay idle for long. So he called a crusty, old repairman,  who arrived with his ancient tool kit. He looked at the machine for a few minutes, opened his kit, took out a wrench, and tapped a pipe 3 times. Then he presented the factory owner with a bill for $1000.

The factory owner was furious. He said to the repairman, "You've only been here 5 minutes. All you did is tap 3 times on a pipe. How can that cost $1000? I want an itemized bill."

The repairman wrote out a new bill, which looked like this:
  • Tapping on pipe                       $  15
  • Knowing where to tap              $985
 The joke obviously revolves around the value of experience.

At the extreme other end of the spectrum, there is knowledge that can only be gained psychically. For example, 25 years ago, when I was first starting to do psychic readings, I volunteered to do readings for a small women's group, to whom I'd been referred by a mutual acquaintance. I eventually became friends with a couple of the women. Last year, one of them told me that she knew right away that I was for real because I told her something she'd done that she had done by herself, and never told anyone. So clearly that was psychic info.

Sometimes it's not so clear. Last November, another acquaintance approached me about joining a network marketing group he had joined, saying that in 5 months, he was already making a ton of money on his tiny investment. The company was Zeek Rewards, in which he bought penny auction bids and gave them away via an automated process arranged by the company. He said he was making "1.4% average a day or 42% a month and it compounds" in just a few minutes a day. This man has proven himself trustworthy over the years, so I believed him.

But I'm not into network marketing (some of the products don't work, all are overpriced, and even if the products work, the commission set up has to be good enough to make money.) I have never made money on any network marketing. It's fine for other people, just not for me. I ignored his email.

I ran into him in early July, and he extolled the virtues of this particular network marketing company, telling me I was missing out on a good thing, taht he was still making money, exactly as he'd told me. Something in me said, "Ponzi scheme". Not only did I not go for it, I told him to take his money out ASAP, before he couldn't get it out at all. Honestly, I can't tell you if it was a feeling (clairsentience) or a voice in my head (clairaudience or telepathy).

Here's the funny thing: I was right.

So was it psychic knowledge? Or was it just that I've been around businesses for a long time, and I know a scam when I hear one? I honestly don't know -- and that's the point. Experience and psychic knowledge go hand in hand -- and maybe that combination is what people call 'intuition'.

No comments: