Why only some ways for some people?

[carillion]

The only 'divination' thing I am half way good at is Tarot. And believe me,I've tried just about *everything* else including Kau Cim . I'm very 'visual' so I can sort of zone in and out with the cards. I have multiple decks and natch, the one that doesn't work so well for me is the Cary-Yale Visconti. My kid is dynamite with tarot and is a detail freak. As a child, complex labyrinth puzzles and such were the order of the day.

However, I totally blow at anything else.

And I wonder why that is that for different people, only some methods seem to work. I do not know nor cannot guess what the 'mechanisms' are that appear to make some things work for divinitory purposes. What I do wonder is why can I get very specific information from cards but could stare at a scrying mirror until doomsday and not even get as much as a busy signal.

Or maybe it's just I'm divination challenged.

Anyone else find this selective nature of tools that work to be the case or if you have the knack, anything works for you?

[Jack]

Anyone else find this selective nature of tools that work to be the case or if you have the knack, anything works for you?

 
I find that some work better than others. I tend to equate it to the way that I prefer some art mediums to others; some give me better results, and some I've learned over time, and some I've never quite clicked with.

[Darkhawk]

Anyone else find this selective nature of tools that work to be the case or if you have the knack, anything works for you?

 
It seems to me that any tool, skillset, hobby, endeavour, and so on, is something that some people will excel at, some people will be decent at with work, some people will be okay at, some people will be mediocre at, and some people will just fail at getting anywhere with.

[carillion]

I find that some work better than others. I tend to equate it to the way that I prefer some art mediums to others; some give me better results, and some I've learned over time, and some I've never quite clicked with.

 

So do you think we choose the medium in accordance with our innate attributes ( and those strengths are 'what makes it work') as opposed to there being some kind of 'main line' of info. around us that only some people can fully grab onto?

[carillion]

It seems to me that any tool, skillset, hobby, endeavour, and so on, is something that some people will excel at, some people will be decent at with work, some people will be okay at, some people will be mediocre at, and some people will just fail at getting anywhere with.

 

So it's driven by 'self' as opposed to there being a river of info. out there? Sorry, not articulating well.
I've sometimes wondered if there is other 'realities' or levels of information out there and that what we think of as divination or psychic experiences is our being able to , for some people, for some times, dip into that river. This leads me to wonder if I am lacking something that I can't dip further into that river, or if it's just some people swim better than others but in this situation one cannot get better, only hold onto what one has. ( I'm sorry, that was very convoluted!).

For example, I love the visual arts but though I've spent a lot of time drawing and such, I totally can't get my hand to second what my eyes see. No amount of practice gets me there. There are many things I just...can't ...do and never will.

And I always wondered if some kind of level of information existed outside our own perceptions but that it was *not* freely available to everyone and no amount of trying would get one there.

Yet, and yet...

If it's there, why can't it be reached? It's certainly not constrained by *our* limitations, is it?

[Jack]

So do you think we choose the medium in accordance with our innate attributes ( and those strengths are 'what makes it work') as opposed to there being some kind of 'main line' of info. around us that only some people can fully grab onto?

 
I have not experienced a "main line of info" personally, anyway. I just go with what works the best for me. For me, though, divination is part "symbols make you think about things you might not have otherwise" and part intuition, where intuition means "knowing what questions to ask", and a tiny bit of "input from higher powers" but generally they're specific higher powers, not a specific Force Of Divination.

[carillion]

I have not experienced a "main line of info" personally, anyway. I just go with what works the best for me. For me, though, divination is part "symbols make you think about things you might not have otherwise" and part intuition, where intuition means "knowing what questions to ask", and a tiny bit of "input from higher powers" but generally they're specific higher powers, not a specific Force Of Divination.

 

Not a specific force of divination per se, more like a parallel reality or even some time loop we can sometimes, but mostly not, tap into. Humans can only access some areas on the electromagnetic scale by themselves, but using some devices we increase that range. So for me it's wondering 'how can I tune this radio to pick up those frequencies'?

[Faemon]

I've sometimes wondered if there is other 'realities' or levels of information out there and that what we think of as divination or psychic experiences is our being able to , for some people, for some times, dip into that river. This leads me to wonder if I am lacking something that I can't dip further into that river, or if it's just some people swim better than others but in this situation one cannot get better, only hold onto what one has.

I always wondered if some kind of level of information existed outside our own perceptions but that it was *not* freely available to everyone and no amount of trying would get one there.

Yet, and yet...

If it's there, why can't it be reached? It's certainly not constrained by *our* limitations, is it?

Short answer: I have no idea.

Long answer...

...I warn you, it goes on forever and it's about the effect of depression on meditation so it might contain death. Please feel free to scroll fast past this post especially if you're prone to triggers.  

So. I used to be amazing at meditating. I dabbled in it as a child because I watched Seven Years In Tibet and appreciated the institutionalized kindness to animals that, because I wasn't raised in a Buddhist family, marked me eccentric or oversensitive. I only knew to sit still, and my mother told me to think of my belly button and like...then...I'd be Buddhist. At that I got bored of trying to be Buddhist and stopped until I became a teenager and tried to be psychic, with New Age Theosophical influences that prioritized meditation.

It was still boring. I kept at it anyway. I practiced. Almost a decade later, I could initiate an out-of-body experience within 20 minutes of meditation. That takes, I can really remember, a profoundly silent and relaxed mind.

But that was all cerebral. My emotional state was really repressing a lot and depressed, really. My out-of-body experiences were dedicated to finding a way that I wouldn't have to come back. I would starve myself for months and attempt suicide.

One avenue that really helped me to begin to recover, actually, was the pathologizing of this horrible depressive experience. I got medicated.

The medications changed my brain chemistry.

I can't go out-of-body anymore. There's too much chatter that just never stops, even if I haul up a decade of experience doing just that. I don't want to practice from square one again because it took a decade of practice before the first success, which I could do because I was never busy.

While easing the intense emotional pain was worth the sacrifice of not getting to go out of body anymore, I had taken the integrity of my own mind for granted. It's horrifying, really, to realize that a tiny, 2.5-gram pill can change the way you think--memory, attention span, and thought process. That is all people are. Take that away and what--and what--?? So, in a way, I didn't survive depression. This is somebody else who, for whatever reason, remembers firsthand experiences of going out-of-body; but now I do the visualization meditations that pre-depression me used to be really snobbish against "because if you have to imagine something then it's not metaphysically real."

Whether it was a past life that I had practiced out-of-body experiences was remembered, or whether it was present opportunities in this "real" life conditionally revoked because that's just life with timing and stuff happening, or whether some omniscient divinity put me to work writing up a how-to guide for the people who would read it and have it work for them--and now that the consequences of my experience weren't "needed" by the world, I'd be forced into new experiences with new limitations and challenges, whether I wanted to or not...I don't know. To think about it at best confuses me and at worst really upsets me.

I don't know why it's some ways for some people sometimes. If your instincts tell you that there's a reason, then might as well follow them.

By my experience, though, it's not only "some ways for some people", but "some ways for some moments for some people." Sometimes I want to give myself a tarot cards reading but my deck doesn't come alive in my intuition. Sometimes I draw well in my opinion; other times, even if I remember all the studies and angles and tips and tricks to drawing something, even if I give into obsessive perfectionism and draw page after page of the same thing and try to get it right--the drawing just remains terrible. There was a season that I had three to five lucid dreams every week--now I haven't had one in years, even though I use the same technique...what I thought was a lucid dreaming technique. I try to keep things consistent to formulate as effective an execution as I remembered, and the only difference that I see in most cases is the time at which I did it. Which, of course, is only ever not at the time that the previous success was done.

But normal people's worldview has continuity. I'm insane. I can't have that. I have tried, so hard, in so many ways, to nothing. And I dedicated so much time to perfecting one kind of meditation, and I believed so much in the idea that nobody could ever take away a skill from you...and now it's just gone.

Whenever I manage to, technically, apparently, "do" something--it feels like a gift from the gods. It never feels like something that stacks or even connects properly to past practice--not to my mind, not anymore, although believe me I have tried because that's how society works and that's how almost everybody else I've ever met works, and I have to work with all those other people in the world just to survive. And I want to be reliable, I really do, for other people--not just so that I can have a sense of self again after a devastation to aforementioned self.

And how I can make myself a vessel for the river water as per your example? How I have made myself worthy of that much reprieve?

That continued to be a mystery to me, even in hindsight.


As I said, if you feel like you're onto something, then I'll cheer you on with following that...but I'm inclined to believe that you'll ultimately only figure out the answer that works for you personally. Although, of course, I'd be interested to hear what answer you find best, which is why I offer my wall-of-text experience above as a sort of amateur case study. But I don't have methods, sorry. I'm just one person who had a drastic shift in mindstate that left me a complete stranger to my past self--if I can't trust my past self to understand the way I think now, then what more other people?

[carillion]

Short answer: I have no idea.

Long answer...

..

Thank you so much for taking the time and thought, painful as it must be, to write such an inclusive response. It is also a salutatory reminder that one must never take the word 'reality' and assume one really has a total fix on one, let alone trying to speak with any kind of sureness of others.

[Emma Eldritch]

The only 'divination' thing I am half way good at is Tarot. And believe me,I've tried just about *everything* else including Kau Cim . I'm very 'visual' so I can sort of zone in and out with the cards. I have multiple decks and natch, the one that doesn't work so well for me is the Cary-Yale Visconti. My kid is dynamite with tarot and is a detail freak. As a child, complex labyrinth puzzles and such were the order of the day.

However, I totally blow at anything else.

And I wonder why that is that for different people, only some methods seem to work. I do not know nor cannot guess what the 'mechanisms' are that appear to make some things work for divinitory purposes. What I do wonder is why can I get very specific information from cards but could stare at a scrying mirror until doomsday and not even get as much as a busy signal.

Or maybe it's just I'm divination challenged.

Anyone else find this selective nature of tools that work to be the case or if you have the knack, anything works for you?

 
I read tarot, and I do it quite well. But sit me in front of a scrying mirror or anything like that? Forget about it. I suck.

As for WHY this is, I'm not entirely certain. I suspect it's just the way my brain works - there's something about tarot that makes sense to me and allows me to open up to receive information. I'm a fairly control oriented person, and I think maybe the fact that tarot has structure and also physical images makes a huge amount of difference.

Reading Faemon's story, I do have to wonder about what would happen if my brain were changed. Would I become more like my mother and sister, more intuitive and able to 'just know' things? Would I see spirits? I can't say. All I know is that with my current brain, tarot is the method that works for me when I'm trying to access a greater depth and breadth of information.

[DancesWithHorses]

Anyone else find this selective nature of tools that work to be the case or if you have the knack, anything works for you?

My answer will be much like Faemon's. There was a time when you could hand me any form of divination and I'd be good at it. Now, I can barely read a Tarot Card. My gut instincts which were solid and well-alive months ago are completely shut down. It's like I'm sitting in a cage of my own making that I'm trying to get out of but I lost the key and I can't remember how I built my walls so that I can take them down again.

So if it works for you, cherish that gift for what it is, because one day, it might not be there, like it was for me. I used to be able to "read" people with just a look or if necessary, a touch. All of that is gone. Almost overnight but I didn't miss it until it was gone and I didn't know how to get it back. I have a gorgeous new deck of cards that I can feel the pull from but when I deal them, I get nothing. Just vibrant images and readings that just beyond what I can reach.

I still "know" the odd thing here or there, it's like a ray of sunshine on a cloudy day but its rare, so rare that I've come to doubt it which makes it even worse.

[Jake57]

So if it works for you, cherish that gift for what it is, because one day, it might not be there, like it was for me. I used to be able to "read" people with just a look or if necessary, a touch. All of that is gone. Almost overnight but I didn't miss it until it was gone and I didn't know how to get it back. I have a gorgeous new deck of cards that I can feel the pull from but when I deal them, I get nothing. Just vibrant images and readings that just beyond what I can reach.

I still "know" the odd thing here or there, it's like a ray of sunshine on a cloudy day but its rare, so rare that I've come to doubt it which makes it even worse.

 
I think it's just that some arts work better with certain folks.  I'm great at astrology, like I was born for it, but am poor at Tarot.  I don't do I Ching for others, but it strangely seems to work when I do it for myself, which seems counterintuitive to me.  Just focus on what you do best.  Personally, I love to get a great Tarot reading!