Do you accept metaphysical happenings?

I still believe in “metaphysical elements” in life. I just can’t say for sure what they are, and I attach a lot less tertiary meaning to them.

I believe in “whisperings of the spirit,” for example. To make it a more generic and universal idea, I call it intuition or intuitive intelligence. But this could also be a way of describing the vast resources of our subconscious intruding into our conscious mind. And THAT, to me, could also be a way of describing our non-local nature in a metaphysical sense (meaning we are not confined to our time and location or even the confines of our own mind).

What I am getting at is this: these “whisperings of the spirit” empirically happen to people (to use your standard). I personally feel dishonest with myself trying to say humans don’t experience this phenomena. What is it? What does it mean? I have much less surety about those questions. I feel like I am groping in the dark when it comes to that. By tertiary meaning that I said earlier, I mean — God helped me find my car keys; therefore, I am a prophet and everything I say after that event is true. I also have a harder time extending the meaning of these events farther along what I call “chains of logic.”

Do you believe in metaphysical elements in you life. In other words to you believe in such things as whisperings of the spirit, intervention by God in the daily events of your life, or your ability to have a physical effect on a situation solely by faith. Or are you more empirical? Do you need evidence and confirmation to hold to something being factual.

I believe in metaphysical elements, absolutely.

I also need confirmation and evidence to hold to something factual.

It mostly depends on the thing, or the subject. I do not expect whisperings of the spirit on the statistical analysis I just completed on safety measures at work, but I would certainly appreciate it if they came to me on work topics (which have happened on rare occasions).

I don’t look for empirical evidence on how much I love my daughter. I seek emotional confirmations on some things.

I think life is full of different types of truth and different fields of study (religion, philosophy, intuition, experience, science) that lead to different approaches for me to get confirmation or evidence, not just one vanilla flavor for all things.

I used to accept these more mataphysical things quite readily, then moved to being much more empirical, then began moving back to accepting and believing in the metaphysical. I believe that metaphysical events and empiricism are not at odds and that this is not a categorical issue. At a basic level, I’m of the camp saying “science hasn’t caught up with spirit”, though in the next sentence I would say, “but it’s getting there”, then I would talk about the research of some really cool psychologists like Gary Schwartz, Linda Russek, and Paul Pearsall who are empirically measuring these metaphysical type things. Gary Schwartz, in particular.

Do you believe in metaphysical elements in you life. In other words to you believe in such things as whisperings of the spirit, intervention by God in the daily events of your life, or your ability to have a physical effect on a situation solely by faith. Or are you more empirical? Do you need evidence and confirmation to hold to something being factual…Me I tend to lean to the empirical side, which is completely 180 degrees from what I use to be. Mostly due to recent experiences in my life but that is another topic

Yes, I definitely believe there is more to life than what we see and I believe in many so-called “supernatural” or paranormal “happenings” such as prophecy, revelation, inspiration, divine interventions, and the occasional manifestation of ghosts, evil spirits, etc. not so much as a common occurrence in my life but I think things like this do happen sometimes. Why not? There is already plenty of anecdotal evidence for these things and the best that skeptics can say about it is that they think the people making these claims must all be liars, crazy, and/or misinterpreting some natural process or lucky coincidences. To me skeptics all sound like my favorite Book of Mormon character Korihor when he said:

“O ye that are bound down under a foolish and a vain hope, why do ye yoke yourselves with such foolish things?…no man can know of anything which is to come…these things which ye call prophecies, which ye say are handed down by holy prophets, behold, they are foolish traditions of your fathers…How do ye know of their surety? Behold, ye cannot know of things which ye do not see…it is the effect of a frenzied mind…”

As common and convincing as this general idea is to many people it is not necessarily fair or accurate to assume that if you haven’t experienced something directly in a convincing way then that must mean that no one else could have ever experienced something like that either. Just because you don’t see any good reason to believe something based on your own understanding and experience it doesn’t necessarily mean you should expect everyone else’s perception of reality to be almost exactly like your own. Maybe other people know about some things that you don’t.

I agree to some extent if you mean that the burden of proof should be on people making any unusual claims if they honestly expect everyone else to accept their story as a matter of fact. However, I just don’t see the harm in people believing things based mostly on faith in the testimony of others as long as it makes sense to them and they are comfortable with it. Many things people take for granted as being true cannot ever be proven to everyone beyond a reasonable doubt so why can’t I make similar assumptions about some “supernatural” claims that I like to take at face value without being ridiculed as superstitious, irrational, or worse?

I am inclined to believe that these things do happen, but I tend to bristle when I hear others claim that such and such wonderful thing happened as a result of such and such expression of faith. That probably says more about my personality failings than anything else.

For instance, recently my wife was relating a third-hand incident in which a certain local priesthood leader had a visiting general authority in his home. During a routine family prayer by the GA, knowing that an event was about to take place in the extended family, he asked that it happen soon and without incident, et voilà! Upon investigation the following day, said event occurred at just about the time the prayer was offered! Unfortunately, I let an ‘oh, please’ escape my lips before I realized what I was doing and ended up regretting it.

I don’t deny that there might have been a correlation, that maybe God staged the whole thing so that certain people would learn to have deeper faith in the power of prayer, or that GAs have a particular ability to get God to do things they want done, but it seems doubtful, particularly given the number of times it doesn’t work out that way. If it happened to me, I would of course wonder about these things and be grateful, but I would like to think I would have the consideration to keep it to myself and my family.

Does anyone else struggle with these kinds of thoughts? Maybe that’s the point of the thread.

Does anyone else struggle with these kinds of thoughts? Maybe that’s the point of the thread.

I was just having a discussion with my wife about this today. I do struggle with this, but I still hold onto faith that these kinds of things can happen, but I’m skeptical at times of stories told third hand about some GA that visited some friends’ grandmother’s ward … or whatever the chain of oral history is.

I just try to realize that the experiences I’ve had in my life are real to me, but I just can’t tell what others experience and I neither pooh-pooh them nor relay them.

I find myself holding strongly to a few things that can only be upheld by faith – such as a belief in the Savior and His Atonement and our Heavenly Father and Mother. And yet, over the years many other beliefs such as the BofM, Word of Wisdom, and many statements made by modern day Prophets have fallen into the category of uncertainty or outright disbelief. So I admit that it is ironic that have held on to certain things that admittedly require faith and have no objective evidence supporting them while allowing other things to slip outside of my testimony because I admittedly do not have enough faith and/or do not find enough objective evidence. I think that my dilemma largely hinges on my uncertainty of modern day revelation. Or at least my faith in the consisteny and reliability of it. This allows me to rely on my own feelings rather than accepting the entire LDS package.