catboxer
I have come to believe that all human beings are born with the ability to sometimes "see" or visualize future events in some manner. Often called "second sight" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_sight) or "the sixth sense," this ability, like any other, is present in some people to a greater extent than it is in others.
Unfortunately, we live in a culture which tends to negate and sabotage the sixth sense. People living in modern industrialized societies are brainwashed from an early age by advertising as much as anything else, which tends to reinforce the idea that our existence on earth is exclusively material, without a spritual dimension, and fundamentally meaningless. This causes people to often ignore or doubt instances of their own capacity for foresight when such moments occur.
An example happened to me a few years ago, and I thought nothing of it until recently. It concerns the old Spanish mission church at San Miguel (http://www.missionsanmiguel.org/), California, where this incredible godseye (http://www.geocities.com/slim_93304/god.html), painted in 1819, still hangs above the altar.
I've considered San Miguel a sacred place since I discovered it in the early nineties, but it's also a very sad place, which I associate with death. I've stood numerous times in the little graveyard on the north side of the Church in which over 2,500 Indians are packed tightly under the soil, most of them having died from diseases against which their immune systems offered no defense, brought by their European shepherds. It seemed sometimes as I stood there that I could hear a soft moaning, and feel a tangible sadness, though without any bitterness, emanating from that ground.
In November of 1997 I had a dream of San Miguel so vivid that I wrote down an account of it upon awakening. In this dream I entered the church at San Miguel as a talent show for adolescents was in progress. The room was very crowded, so "I head to the back of the church where there's a kind of storage room or cloak room," as my written account explains it. "Numerous people are milling about in this room, which is well lit, but I don't know any of them. I see a dark cardboard box with V--- J---'s name written large on its side..."
Now V--- J--- was one of my favorite students, a lovely, vivacious, and talented girl who showed great promise, despite her having to drop out of school her sophomore year to have a baby. She returned the next year and did even better in her studies than she had before. But then, I had a lot of favorite students, and there was no particular reason why her name should have figured so prominently in this dream.
Two years almost to the day after this dream, one of my students came up to me between classes and asked if I'd heard about the recent grad who was killed in a car crash on an isolated rural highway in Tulare County over the weekend. He had a photograph of the victim, and of course, it was V--- J---.
I now believe that I foresaw her death, for the box in the dream was long and narrow, like a coffin. I didn't realize any of this until recently.
Unfortunately, we live in a culture which tends to negate and sabotage the sixth sense. People living in modern industrialized societies are brainwashed from an early age by advertising as much as anything else, which tends to reinforce the idea that our existence on earth is exclusively material, without a spritual dimension, and fundamentally meaningless. This causes people to often ignore or doubt instances of their own capacity for foresight when such moments occur.
An example happened to me a few years ago, and I thought nothing of it until recently. It concerns the old Spanish mission church at San Miguel (http://www.missionsanmiguel.org/), California, where this incredible godseye (http://www.geocities.com/slim_93304/god.html), painted in 1819, still hangs above the altar.
I've considered San Miguel a sacred place since I discovered it in the early nineties, but it's also a very sad place, which I associate with death. I've stood numerous times in the little graveyard on the north side of the Church in which over 2,500 Indians are packed tightly under the soil, most of them having died from diseases against which their immune systems offered no defense, brought by their European shepherds. It seemed sometimes as I stood there that I could hear a soft moaning, and feel a tangible sadness, though without any bitterness, emanating from that ground.
In November of 1997 I had a dream of San Miguel so vivid that I wrote down an account of it upon awakening. In this dream I entered the church at San Miguel as a talent show for adolescents was in progress. The room was very crowded, so "I head to the back of the church where there's a kind of storage room or cloak room," as my written account explains it. "Numerous people are milling about in this room, which is well lit, but I don't know any of them. I see a dark cardboard box with V--- J---'s name written large on its side..."
Now V--- J--- was one of my favorite students, a lovely, vivacious, and talented girl who showed great promise, despite her having to drop out of school her sophomore year to have a baby. She returned the next year and did even better in her studies than she had before. But then, I had a lot of favorite students, and there was no particular reason why her name should have figured so prominently in this dream.
Two years almost to the day after this dream, one of my students came up to me between classes and asked if I'd heard about the recent grad who was killed in a car crash on an isolated rural highway in Tulare County over the weekend. He had a photograph of the victim, and of course, it was V--- J---.
I now believe that I foresaw her death, for the box in the dream was long and narrow, like a coffin. I didn't realize any of this until recently.
