I've resisted posting this up to now, concerned that I'd get the "Duh, exp, that's kinda obvious" response. But fuck it, it might start an interesting discussion, which is better than me looking good any day...
I've had two main problems with most divination up to now. The first was Biblical condemnation, to be honest. As my perspective on my faith has widened, my belief in the final authority of scripture has changed from dogmatic (which I wouldn't have admitted to myself in a million years) to fairly realistic and critical. The second was my upbringing, raised in a Charismatic Christian family in which my father is an internationally recognised prophet. Without pulling punches, forms of divination that rely on some kind of external framework just seemed plain cowardly to me. I'd been trained to give prophecy without looking at external phenomena, trained to be critical of people who based their insight on what was being picked up using their senses (although I naturally seemed to perform a kinesthetic check on knowledge/insight/wisdom that I felt was downloaded). And I still haven't totally given up that way of thinking, either: I recently became incensed at a Church meeting in which a glorified NLP practitioner passed off what he was doing as something more than just observation techniques and communication skills. Don't get me wrong, I've got no problem with NLP, but I have got a major problem with liars.
The difficulty with adapting from my prophetic training to other divinatory techniques has been a predominantly philosophical difference. Christian prophecy involves communion with God to determine His will, with very specific results; a lot of divination is based on a universe that is chaotic and random, and gives results that suggest more of a flow in a certain direction rather than specifics. Put simply, one seemed to me to emphasise divine purpose, the other had its basis in an arbitrary framework that seemed in direct opposition to that purpose. Having mellowed somewhat in the last year, I'm kinda working on my stance between these two seemingly contradictory approaches. On the one hand, my understanding of God and His will is changing daily, and now rests on probabilities rather than absolutes. On the other, I'm starting to realise that everything is divination anyway - that we can't avoid spending our entire lives interpreting the seemingly random and chaotic data that comes our way.
So that's my work in progress change in understanding, based on my perception rather than any attempt at a commentary on the diversity of divination systems, which I know very little about anyway. Please forgive any judgementalism and put it down to inexperience. As far as the purpose of this thread, respond to the above in any way you like. I'm particularly interested in whether people draw a line between observations and interpretations made in their *normal* daily lives and their practise of divinatory techniques, and if so why. I'm also interested in the pros and cons of various techniques, and how they compare to each other. |
