In Reply to: bamboozled clarification posted by porceleindoll on July 16, 2005 at 19:13:00:
I had an interesting experience the other day, where i mistook an exfamily poster for someone I knew closely in the past in the family. I was convinced it was her, and excited to have possible contact again. There was one 'big thing' that caused me to draw this conclusion from her post, and then the more I looked at it, all sorts of similarities appeared to me. Closer scrutiny however made me realize without a doubt that the 'big thing' I'd noticed first off was purely coincidental, and that there were just as many non-similarities that should have shown me that this was not the person i once knew.
What was really interesting for me, is the part that both my emotions and wanting a belief system played in the process of deciphering the facts of it all. Becase I wanted it to be so, I was seeing God's hand in it all, and all the similarities I saw were things that, in my past life in the family, I would have doubtless attributed to God SPEAKING to me. As well, the sleuthing that i did that finally proved to me that it was not her but merely coincidence, was something i wouldnt have even considered in my past family life, not only would it be questioning God, but I wouldn't have deemed it necessary, knowing already as i did that GOD had spoken to me. As well, if i'd noticed the non-similarities in the past, I would have attributed those to 'the devil's lies' rather than to my own rational mind sorting things out. Or else it would have become a bigger battle in my head as to which voice was God's and which was the devil's, maybe God was showing me it wasn't her and maybe it was the devil making me think it was, for some evil twisted reason of his own!!
My point? I don't know either what I believe any more. I believe there's more than just the physical, but i think our desire to have things laid out for us causes us to see things that perhaps aren't there. And how complicated it made things, trying to interpret everything as to God's will or the devil's schemes! This recent experience was a minor one, but none the less it was very freeing to be able to believe one thing with all my heart and mind one minute, and the next, in the face of factual evidence, to be able to let it go.