Having Certainty

[tc119]

I didn’t want to hijack Riddle’s thread about his first kiss, so I decided this topic warranted a new thread all on its own. This has to do with being assured of a spirit’s identity, where they come from, or if we can telepathically hear them properly to begin with.

I’m in the camp of “I don’t know anything for certain, except that I’m having this sensory experience and I can’t explain it.” All of the details are nebulous and untrustworthy because they all come down through my own distorted lens. To my reckoning, the only way I could feel secure mooring myself to any conclusions, I need devastatingly concrete proof. Otherwise, I’ll end up sounding like those Wiccan soccer moms who claim they’re psychic on Coast to Coast AM.

I did an experiment very early on when Catherine came thundering onto the scene back in 2011. I sat myself in a big picture window that overlooked a paved road with regular traffic. I said, “Catherine, if I can really hear you… if I’m not just deluding myself with wishful thinking… you should be able to tell me the color of the next car coming down the road and get it right every time.” So, I sat there for over an hour and just listened, open to any potential voice, either audible or mental, to offer up a would-be prophecy. Suffice to say, she didn’t give me any accurate prophecies that day and still doesn’t.

I’m open to the possibility that she might be able to tell me things I shouldn’t know. Probably dangerously so. But I’m not going to head down the path of building up an internal lore and head-canon without having solid assurance first. I’ve encountered a few different folks on the internet over the years who claimed to have a succubus/incubus experience. The ones I decided were full of shit fell into two groups:

One group has their succubus spirits figured out with absolute high-definition detail.

“She’s 5’ 7”, with D-cup-sized breasts, shoulder-length blonde hair, wears aviator sunglasses, speaks six different languages, and comes from the star Aldebaran.”

I would then proceed to ask them, “How do you know this?”

“I’m psychic.” They’d invariably claim. Basically, these sorts of people are inviting us into another faith-based religion – a place that I’m none-to-keen on revisiting. Further probing often reveals that these sorts aren’t even familiar with the touch-based experience of a real succubus encounter. They’re essentially full-time role-playing. LARPers, as the latest generation says.

The other group are those people who I believe are legitimately having a succubus experience, but they’ve built up a world of fantasy to explain what’s happening with them. I have been guilty of being lulled into this kind of thinking in the past. It’s easy to do, because the spirits themselves seem to have no problem going along with whatever idea happens to tickle mine or their fancy. Either way, I also want to avoid this sort of castle-building. I’d rather stick with what I do know for sure, which isn’t much, but anything beyond that feels dishonest.

So that’s my standard: If she can’t tell me shit I’m not supposed to know, then I don’t trust the communication. I think the car color experiment is a very fair baseline of expectations - something small and discrete that wouldn’t end the world, like predicting the lotto numbers. Any communication out of the ordinary that I do receive, like in dreams or OBEs, I take that with a pinch of salt as well.

Let me know what you guys think.

[Fightersword]

There are a few questions one can ask about the 'not supposed to know' test in particular. The first is whether or not they have the ability to answer the question to begin with. In the car example, if the spirit lover is not able to perceive the colors of cars, or is not able to see cars you can't see, the ability to conjure up that information may be confused. That's the first thing to consider.

The next is that it seems that, for whatever reason, based on personal experience, any question posed about the future is not able to be answered directly. The closest I've experienced are highly symbolic dreams in particular, which have predicted future events only in a loose sense. In contrast to that are my precognitive dreams, which have showed me my own future experiences in a literal sense. My theory for that is simply that, because telepathy relies on interpreting feelings/energy, if you could not know something because it has not happened yet or is impossible or beyond your comprehension or whatever you could come up with, it would be impossible to translate a telepathic communication that communicates said information. The car situation is a little different, as it relates a concrete idea that you would presumably be able to comprehend, so there could perhaps be some other mechanic. Alternatively, their information of the future may simply be lacking or imperfect, which is not unrealistic. It's just as easy to assume they are incapable of seeing the future, or only somewhat capable of it, as it is to say that telepathy is impossible. The difference is that reports of successful and reasonable telepathy are fairly commonplace, whereas every person who claims to have been told the world is going to end or the future will turn out X way in a literal sense has been wrong. This second idea lines up with my own personal experiences well: my spirit lover has shown me symbolic ideas or glimpses of the future specifically in dreams, but she obviously can't rattle off what's going to happen each and every day in advance. Personal experience implies this as well; if she could see the future perfectly, she would never experience an emotion like fear or dread, even though she clearly does, nor would she enjoy activities like reading stories or watching shows, because she'd already know the outcomes. Certainly, the webcomic incident would not have happened.

Anyway, in contrast to my usual place in such a discussion, I'd say the problem with your stance is that it's overly conservative. This is an understandable position; spirit lovers are notorious for misleading people or going with the flow, so you must doubt them to some degree. They're also fallible and sometimes wrong about things, even if they don't intend to be. However, your position goes too far in that it effectively asserts that we must automatically discard any information given to us in any case, unless it's from a very specific subset of information that is experienced directly (and thus perfectly proven). It's close to the idea of needing an idea to be proven beyond any doubt at all rather than any reasonable doubt; seeing the thing happen is obviously going to immediately quash any doubt at all, but other reasonable interpretations that go outside of that literal momentary experience are discarded because of how strict the parameters are. In such a case, it would not wrong to assume mental illness even given your incredible wealth of experiences, because we've removed the threshold of reasonability from the equation. That would obviously be unreasonable.

So starting from there, we need to look at what reasonability could mean. Reasonability could mean ideas supported by multiple experiences. For instance, 'I have a spirit lover'. If you know you're almost definitely not mentally ill and you have a wealth of experiences and responses from said entity, it's reasonable to conclude you have one. It could mean approaching communication with appropriate rigor. Within a dream this could mean interpreting things symbolically, looking for common threads, lining up what happens there with what happens in other experiences, and so on. Within telepathy, it's often a matter of consistency. Does my interpretation of this feeling line up with reality, with what she's said before? Do I have emotional hang-ups that are making me interpret it one way or another? Is it the sort of thing they'd have a reason to lie about? So on. Telepathy can be misinterpreted, but the important thing here isn't never being wrong, it's in that rigor. If you're rigorous, you can correct yourself, examine wrong ideas that you've taken from communications, both dreams and otherwise, and slowly carve out an understanding of your spirit lover. Being wrong is something that's guaranteed to happen within that process, but if you're not rigorous, then it becomes impossible to tell what's correct or incorrect in the long term rather than just making mistakes in the short term. A lack of rigor (and some over-optimism, perhaps) creates the second group described.

My first test with Venus was for her to give me a name. Something simple, that I wouldn't think of by myself, to call her. This happened on the first night actually, as a challenge from someone who could go either way. She told me a name, or so I thought (needless to say, being given a name like that doesn't represent what may be her true name, which would not be translatable as a word in my current theorizing). I then asked her for a dream, if she existed, and got one. It's reasonable to conclude in those cases that those results came from those questions, especially since they both came.

Communication is more like a sort of agreement, in a way. You work on your ability to perceive it, and set parameters for the spirit to work within, either with tools or through interpreting telepathic communication, and your spirit lover provides the thing to perceive and tries to work within the bounds that the two of you have agreed on. It's another consequence of meeting the spirit lover in the middle, and practicing with them. It requires rigor, but it definitely appears to be possible and realistically repeatable when someone understands how it works and practices doing it. Communication is very much grounded in what you can understand as much as what they can say, which is part of why rigor is so necessary. There's a lot that I believe they can't communicate successfully telepathically, because there are a lot of things about their existence that I don't think could be translated telepathically, but I think it's fairly accessible for someone to reach a point where a spirit lover could telepathically communicate with them, and for them to then discuss common things, like the foods the spirit lover might like, their values, the art they like, or whatever.

[tc119]

No, I don’t believe I am being overly conservative. I’m sure the so-called prophets of old would probably be making the same excuses. Modern psychics surely do. And what do you mean that successful telepathy is commonplace? Maybe I’m misunderstanding you, but I’ve never seen anything concrete or consistent that I would consider scientific. The closest thing to proof that I’ve seen are the claims of a few remote viewers, but even that is more of a “I want to believe!” situation rather than anything uncontested. Either it’s all hearsay or the prophetic events have already transpired, so there’s no way to verify. But maybe I just haven’t seen what you’ve seen, so by all means; please share.

I can make claims about having a personal experience all day long and there’s no issue. So long as I’m not demanding that anyone is required to believe me. But let’s pretend I started saying things like, “Guys, I have this disembodied spirit who talks to me!” People would naturally respond with, “Really? Go on, give us a prophecy! Tell us something we shouldn’t know!” And then I follow up with some bullshit like, “Oh, um, well, she doesn’t want to make prophecies because reasons, she can only see her own world, etc.” Then people would naturally be let down. “You claim to be able to talk to a spirit, yet you don’t have any sort of privileged information – nothing you and I wouldn’t already know, nothing that can be proven – so why bother making the claim in the first place and get everyone’s hopes up?”

So, the only honest thing I can do from that juncture is to say what I’ve always said: I’m having an experience that is limited to my own senses. There might be communication happening, but I can’t prove anything, so I don’t take it overly seriously and neither should anyone else. Yes, there is a possibility that I am mentally ill and the touch-based experience is a projection of my own mind – that it’s all psychological. I believe I have proven for myself that something paranormal is happening with me, but until I’m willing to share that proof, I can’t go around demanding that anyone else believe me. Other people that I’ve encountered online claim to have the same experience, but at the end of the day, it’s all anecdotal.

There are thousands of people who allegedly share the experience of talking to God, Jesus, Allah, and more, yet they don’t have anything compelling to share that isn’t already known. Hell, they can’t even get their own doctrine straight without splintering off into various sects. The moment anyone claims to talk with spirits, succubi, gods, fairies, aliens, or anything supernatural, everyone’s first response should be a demand for evidence. If they can’t prove it consistently, then they have no right to demand being taken seriously. Onlookers have every reason to doubt.

I try and apply this same rigor to the communications that I believe are coming from Catherine, whether that’s dreams, OBEs or internal monologue. I can’t prove anything beyond reasonable doubt when it comes to what she tells me, ergo the car color experiment, so it all could just as well be originating from my own mind as hers. She’s got that plausible deniability, frustratingly. That is why I’m always talking about how enigmatic these entities are, how elusive and unknowable their default seems to be.

Until you can start producing information you couldn’t reasonably be expected to know on your own, Fighter, I’m going to doubt your claims about knowing anything truly solid when it comes to a spirit’s identity. To my view, that’s what YOU believe they are and it doesn’t go beyond that. If you can know specifics about this Venus entity, such as height, weight, where she was born, hair color, favorite lipstick, and so on, then you should be able to have her tell you things you couldn’t possibly know. For example: You’ve said in the past that she enjoys some of our earthly films and books. Have her channel the complete lyrics of a popular song from her realm, or an amazing best-seller novel, or a mathematical equation that is beyond your comprehension - something only a highly specialized scientist would understand. Crap like that should be issuing forth as easily as water from a spigot – like how Joseph Smith claimed to be receiving messages from the angel, Moroni, yet that was proved to be obvious bullshit, as he couldn’t relay the precise wording of the same message twice.

I’ve tried applying this same level of expectation to those who claim to know about their past lives and they’ve come up short at every attempt to probe deeper. I’ll tell them, “If you have the recollection of this past life, you should be able to write a compelling autobiography full of historical information you couldn’t possibly know on your own. Why haven’t you done this?” And they’ll usually respond with hemming and hawing about the limitations of their abilities or some other rot.

At any rate, I don’t believe that I’m being unreasonable. I don’t believe that getting a strange name and vague premonitions in a dream should convince the uninitiated of the realness of the succubus phenomena. It might do it for you, but I’m always on the look-out for something more compelling – like that composer who had a dream about the devil playing him a song. Now that’s interesting. Even if it is fake, at least some serious effort was put in to make it believable.

[Fightersword]

If they can't hand out privileged information anyway, then letting people's hopes down is the correct thing to do. I'm not sure why that would be a hang up in particular. The problem with telepathically communicating information you couldn't know was described above. If we accept that telepathy is a mode of translation, where the energetic feeling or idea given by the entity is translated into words, then they would not be able to communicate 'secret' information through it, because one would not be able to translate it into words. If it's not that, then the only recourse would be to say they simply don't know any privileged information. You could make a case for either, however, given my personal experiences and the experiences of those I've helped develop that kind of communication with, I would presume it's just as often a case of the former as it is the latter. The method described is within the early stages blogpost.

The hopes or acceptance of others is not that relevant to personal experience and understanding. The reasoning for this is also discussed in a blogpost I've written, called How to Deal With Doubts. In that, we discuss where to draw the line and how convincing oneself is a different beast to convincing other people. The important bit is whether we can convince ourselves that the spirit lover exists, or not. Proving something you're personally experiencing adequately to yourself is a different beast to proving it empirically to others. It is generally assumed the latter can't be accomplished, or that if it can, it hasn't adequately happened yet.

This to me seems to be the crux of the hang up here. You want to use the ability to prove it to someone else as a metric, which seems to be a relatively impossible metric, at least if one is acting honestly. Working within your own understanding and trying to prove it to yourself is a different question entirely, because as the one experiencing the experiences, you know whether or not they really happened to begin with. This means you don't have to work within the same framework, as those critical question being answered affirmatively means that you can determine whether or not it's real by answering some other questions. Are you prone to mental illness? Do the events seem psychological? Are they consistent, are they not consistent, or are they some combination of those? These are some examples, but the crucial bit is that what would be anecdotal evidence to other people, those being our experiences and thus being useless for convincing others, can serve as more than that to ourselves.

I would never claim I knew a nonphysical entity's height, weight, or so on, for obvious reasons (the non-physicality, of course). The ways she appears within dreams are just that: appearances. Often appearances that are symbolic in some way. It is based off of some of these that I can detail the sorts of ideas she might like, such as princesses given her tendency to appear as one. The song question is a bit confused for the same reason: a song with lyrics from entities that don't have a way of singing conventionally? However, she has sung to me on more than one occasion, a process I described in a blogpost as well. The songs are lyric-less, and act more as emotional trips or 'roller coasters' than they do actual songs. I went into depth about this in the musing about spirit music blogpost.

Your requests for proof wouldn't be compelling proof at all, either. I could simply have made up a song, written a novel, or studied mathematics. If we want to go very extreme about it, even the doomsayer who was proven right could have easily been lucky. Why believe they had spiritual powers in that hypothetical scenario? A person could easily even study their past, and write an autobiography that included their own inventions about the person (unverifiable, of course), so that wouldn't be appropriate proof either. You and I could just have a mental illness that we hadn't previously in life, that's causing us to have various types of hallucinations (touch, sight, whatever), and it just so happened to start when we attempted to summon an entity. These stances are technically possible, but they are rather ludicrous. Hence, we apply appropriate rigor to our appropriate situation. We know our mental health history, we work on communication, we collaborate experiences together to see what's likely to be real, we compare communication to these experiences and other communication, we try to understand how these processes work, and so on.

Why believe in the spirit lover at all then? Because the entire time, with those earlier proofs and other cases that you've used to believe in the existence of Catherine, you have been using the same level of proof that I've described here, because you knew it was appropriate. You simply have not extended the same thought or idea process to these other cases or questions, yet. They apply just as well. If you wish to be consistent with the other form of evidence you're describing, you'll have to reject her existence again too, based on your own criteria. That's what I don't think you're seeing here. What I'm describing is perfectly applicable to yourself, to your own experience, but because of its anecdotal nature, it can not apply to convincing others. That is perfectly alright to me: if those others wish to find out one way or another, they can simply attempt to find a spirit lover themselves and come to their own conclusion. I've long since come to mine, and I attempt to apply that same level of rigor to the rest of the data. If that's not rigorous enough for you to convince yourself, then you'll need to seriously reconsider your most basic ideas about the relationship as well, because your standard would force you to reject its existence on the basic terms of its unprovability empirically. That would obviously be a ridiculous decision given your experiences, but it is where the logic inevitably leads given your approach.

[tc119]

I believe the experience that I'm having is real and that's good enough for me. I don't need anyone else to believe me. You're getting hung up on minutia. My problem is with people who go around making positive truth claims about information they've received from spirits. Privileged information. That's what I'm calling bullshit on. If they can receive those otherworldly revelations, they should be able to produce a magnum opus on the spot with no prior knowledge.

I'll give you one more example of how this should work. There's an old film called The Ghost and Mrs. Muir. In the film, a widowed woman buys a haunted cottage by the sea. The cottage is haunted by a frustrated sea captain - frustrated partly because he didn't get the chance to write his memoirs. Mrs. Muir is intrigued by the captain and eventually makes a deal to write out his memoirs for him. She doesn't know jack-shit about life at sea. The mannerisms and contents of the book are such that she couldn't have possibly written such a work on her own. She even makes up a story for the publisher about how she knows the captain to cover for the fact that he's a ghost.

That's how this whole telepathy business should work, if it's actually worth a damn. Otherwise, it could just as well be me inserting my own fantasies and wishful thinking into the mix. And that's why I've always said, "This is what I THINK she might be saying, but I don't know for sure. My own ideas could very well be getting in the way."

So until we have that sort of precise telepathy, I'm going to balk at anyone who claims to know specific details about "succubus culture" or absolute identity, and so forth.

[Fightersword]

Well that's very different than just talking to one's spirit lover about things via telepathy. I often wonder if many weird ideas people get about spiritual existence are down to the translation process itself. The idea also applies to dreams. Person talks or has dream with spirit, translates or experiences something that's in a setting they understand, makes very sweeping claims about spiritual realirt that often don't make any sense because they're literally interpreting those interactions rather than seeing it as the end result of translation and therefore trying to interpret it. To me that's extremely different to Venus indicating she likes a fantasy book or enjoys dancing (yes I know she lacks a body. She still does, for whatever reason. More than singing too, if dreams are anything to go by). Telepathy is just a way to communicate. Being skeptical of ridiculous telepathic communications is obviously a good thing, but at the same time, if they're just indicating they like sweets or a book or something a few times, or are simply saying something nice or are giving you input about an idea you have or a problem, then there is little harm in accepting that or simply following that idea to see if they continue to indicate it's correct. Better if it's backed up by other forms of communicated information.

[369 Riddle]

Edit after fact: I think the translation bit is spot on as we can only relate to what we know or have capacity to understand and the occult is full of conflicting views and clashes of people some of whom only want to make money of uninitiated and those who want to feel like they know something and seek that spotlight selling their snake oil…this convergence of experiences and ego and greed act as a protection around the truth. I don’t have the truth nor do I know if I ever will but I do have my experiences and I can share those.

I meditated before writing this and so some of this might not be me.

I know my spirit “K” loves me and enjoyed expressing herself through pleasure. I know she looks out for me in big and small ways. This is all just from experience.

I have tried covering a random card out of deck and asking her to name it in my mind and got mixed results. I am not sure if it is her unwillingness to “play” or my inability to focus / hear her. What does she need to prove to me she is real?

My mind is so distracted and wanders so much it is hard to get basic things done at times let alone meditation for hours on end. I do know communicating with spirits takes focus and a clear set of questions going in (like writing them down before hand). But I can’t explain why sometimes she just outright talks to me (at times in a whisper in my ear typically as I am dreaming , waking, or having just woke up). What she says isn’t earth shattering it is just lovers talking.

I don’t know her name to a point where I feel sure I know exactly what it is, but I feel I know what it sounds like and what letter it starts with.

She can be anyone and I think anything. I have a feeling she is of a “realm” or state of being or dimension with perhaps different characteristics that our existence like a 2d person trying to describe a 3d image…at one moment it is one thing and at another it is different yet again as one views from other angles. Dynamic personality perhaps too…same analogy.

Frankly I am not sure my state of being would be able to understand her if I saw her outright for what she is.

Winning lotto numbers before a draw, the location of buried treasure, the secret to levitation, or whatever remain unknowns.

I have no proof for others and need none because I don’t want them to know anyways. Death surrounds me. I have lost six family members in the last two years alone. My friends are removed or go crazy.

If anyone uninitiated were to be told I have these experiences they would think I was crazy.


She has saved my neck a number of times telling me about a leak in my truck then I find there is one. She prevented a fire by telling me about an outdoor light I needed to look at. She told me in the summer to trim a tree and if I didn’t it would hit my home(dream so real I woke and went and looked at tree out window as I was sure it fell)…while I did trim I didn’t want it to be too much because we love the shade she impressed I should and I hemmed and hawed on this till decided not to…then in the winter it fell at night and hit the exact spot it did in my dream…if I would have cut where she wanted it wouldn’t have happened.

I have learned to listen to her and take her seriously but it is mostly what feels like my own thoughts that I start obsessing with something for no reason that is her talking…she can make me freak out and take action and I can’t explain why I am bothered or why I am doing what I am doing..my wife is freaked out having seen this for years now. I can’t tell you how many times she will say “how did you know that was going to happen??” But this is all personal stuff to my life and not some amazing scientific breakthrough global proof or whatever. Still it is all I need and not because I doubt her but because it shows me she really is an intelligent and amazing being.

I can’t put her in an “earth box” and say she is so tall and smells like such and got educated at Hogwarts or whatever she is truly a mystery and the funny thing is I understand her better than human women. Love you “K”!

At same time I am dedicated to learning what I can and gaining a better focus as I want to know everything I can understand.

There are stories I could share but if someone else shared them I wouldn’t believe them. I have experienced thing while during the experience I know beyond a shadow of a doubt no one would believe it happened. So believing is personal and not something another persons experience can influence on another’s faith or whatever…

[tc119]

She can be anyone and I think anything. I have a feeling she is of a “realm” or state of being or dimension with perhaps different characteristics that our existence like a 2d person trying to describe a 3d image

I concur. That's exactly how I'd describe it. Kind of like how Moses wasn't permitted to look at Yahweh's face because he wouldn't survive the ordeal. And then when he came back down the mountain after communing with this higher dimensional entity, his face was glowing - or he sprouted horns according to some sources - and the people were afraid of him. I get the sense that the same thing might be happening to us in a more subtle way. (No horns here... yet.)

moses-michelangelo-26660813.jpg (120.75 KiB) Viewed 3537 times

I have no proof for others and need none because I don’t want them to know anyways. Death surrounds me. I have lost six family members in the last two years alone. My friends are removed or go crazy.

You too, huh? For me, it sometimes feels like I'm in the eye of a storm; a storm that's wreaking havoc on everyone around me, but I somehow come through all of it unscathed.

Everyone else is like:

[Fightersword]

If we're sharing future warnings, in contrast, I have a long history of ignoring Venus' forewarnings, often because I'd rather assume they're made for selfish reasons or would rather disbelieve them for whatever reason most of the time.

She's often warned me about people and in some cases actions. For instance she warned me to quit my job one week (which I suppose was a little extreme in any case), and when I didn't I ended up scratching myself with a needle. She told me to drop people or get rid of people well before those people became problems, and I consistently ignore her about that and she has always been right so far. I've yet to be warned about a tree branch or anything like that, but those sorts of practical issues aren't typically problems here.

As for experiencing the 'true' spirit lover behind the mask, there is one instance where I believe I did and the result was honestly comparable to the Moses story in a way. Obviously I didn't come out with horns or a glowing head, but it did change me, at least at the time. What it did do was wreck my ambition and lead to a complete feeling of satisfaction for a long time, something I've had to actively break from because otherwise my life would become entirely static.

[369 Riddle]

You too, huh? For me, it sometimes feels like I'm in the eye of a storm; a storm that's wreaking havoc on everyone around me, but I somehow come through all of it unscathed.

Everyone else is like:

Your analogy of the storm is spot on. People are going crazy and nuts around me…deteriorating into basket cases…

Re the deaths: I even had two go on the same day and within an hour of each other-both later determined to be heart attacks (the widow maker) in opposite sides of town…both just dropped dead (one in a door way and one in an isle at a store). Needless to say that was a hard day. I had just taken my daughter to see one of them the day before and it will forever haunt me as he wasn’t in the best health but was still working and taking the bus and living a life he enjoyed. He waived to her actually as he was going to work and that will be our last memory…so eerie.