Is Reiki a form of Force power?

You say false? well can you prove it false?
I have heard of stories where prayer experiments have affected entire cities to lessen crime so I dont think its false at all. What if everyone did that? we could end all kinds of bad things. Maybe even affect the weather or clean the oceans of all the junk in them! that would be amazing. Now I dont believe in prayer like christians but I think they used the Force!

What I believe the Force is is the mystical power within each of us to affect the natural course of events in our lives in such a way as to enable either enhancement or deterioration of our condition for ourselves or others.

And why I dont believe in a god is because I believe in Truth. If a God exists then there is no truth, everyhting is according to the view of another, even things like gravity. I have an opinion on what it is and so does God, who is right? neither one because both opinions are valid. and God can change whatever he wants to why do we believe in anything if a god exists? It seems much more likely that a Force exists and from that force a truth can emerge that cant change. Thats my view of what the Force is. The thing that cant change but the thing that we can use to change other things!

Fyxe wrote: You say false? well can you prove it false?

If we define our terms in such a way as to make it a testable claim, probably, yes. The way I put it myself, and judging by the example quoted in the next passage, yes. I have actually also explained - admittedly briefly - how it is that I mean that the passage I commented "False" over is judged fairly so.

I have heard of stories where prayer experiments have affected entire cities to lessen crime so I dont think its false at all.

Of course you wouldn't. We had already established a few pages back that you only consider evidence (if one dare call it so) in support of what ever conclusion you want to reach. You've heard stories, that's good enough for you. No need to actually look into what city that was, who prayed at what time, how the crime statistics correlate with the prayers (aside from the obvious albeit ludicrously ironic contribution), what the city's crime statistics were like otherwise, what other prayed and unprayed for cities it was compared to... And heaven forbid looking up any other studies about the efficacy of prayer to affect the outcome prayed for. No, you've heard a story, so you believe it, because you decided that you would and that story was what you wanted to hear. Well, I've heard read stories of the boy who lived named Harry Potter, don't you know, and those are actually written in print, not word of mouth, so how impressive is that!

What if everyone did that? we could end all kinds of bad things. Maybe even affect the weather or clean the oceans of all the junk in them! that would be amazing.

Frankly, I'd find it terrifying. Imagine just wishing things away could make them vanish like that. What if enough people wished you or me away tomorrow? Poof, there we go, out into the aether. What if they didn't want the earth itself around? Poof, there goes our planet, as if it was never there. Give it a second or so and the moon is on a collision course with the sun, and the rest of us are falling towards it.
Fortunately, however, that cannot happen, not because there aren't enough people to wish it to, but because wishing up upon a star does no such thing. If there was a mechanism by which this could work, we'd have measured it by now, instead we keep failing at any attempt to do so, stuck alone with I've-heard-a-stories for "evidence".

What I believe the Force is is the mystical power within each of us to affect the natural course of events in our lives in such a way as to enable either enhancement or deterioration of our condition for ourselves or others.

So... basically, motivation then. The "mystical power within each of us" that makes us act in the world, thereby influencing the sequence of events in our lives. Fair enough, I suppose I can even say I believe in that, too.

And why I dont believe in a god is because I believe in Truth.

Except it's relative, isn't it? What may be role play to one, may well be reality to another. Right?

If a God exists then there is no truth, everyhting is according to the view of another, even things like gravity. I have an opinion on what it is and so does God, who is right? neither one because both opinions are valid. and God can change whatever he wants to why do we believe in anything if a god exists?

I have no clue what difference it makes. With and without God, people can have different opinions. With and without God, "validity" can mean a number of things not all of which necessarily boil down to usefulness. With and without God, some things change, others do not, and I see no reason why much of anything has to be more or less changeable with a God than without one. Finally, with and without a God, we are stuck getting convinced of some things and not of others and so we believe as we do.

It seems much more likely that a Force exists and from that force a truth can emerge that cant change. Thats my view of what the Force is. The thing that cant change but the thing that we can use to change other things!

Hang on, I thought you said the Force was the mystical power we can change things around us with. How does truth "emerge" from anything like that and what makes it unchanging if it does so? Also, seeing as we can change things around us in a variety of ways and amounts of zeal at different times, and the Force is the power by which we do it, in what sense is the Force "the thing that cannot change"?

Kobos wrote: That would be me Rex. I am secretly Marianne Williamson......Be nice please everyone.

Much Love,
Kobos

Oh, Kobos, you are a riot! I liked that post.

That said, I am adding a little here in the hopes of helping to guide Fyxe and readers in a similar position a bit. To frame this properly, as previous posts show I am an advocate that there is, under some circumstances, legitimacy to some forms of healing like Reiki. But I also want to emphasize some significant limitations to how far we can, based on current knowledge, extend that claim. Anecdotal evidence - some of it very credible, imo - appear to indicate that sometimes such healing can be of help. But some of the anecdotal evidence is also contrived or the result of poor perception, and even what we see happen in credible reports of benefit is not repeatable with a consistency that would support a scientific conclusion endorsing the reliability of energy healing. Skeptics may take that to mean the whole phenomenon is balderdash, while even believers, if we are being honest, have to say that based on what we know the benefits are conditional on something; sometimes there are no results. The situation resembles the use of ether as an anesthetic in the early days of dentistry a bit; dentists of around the year 1900 found that ether worked great to numb pain in many people, but in others it totally failed, and the dentists did not then know why.

Sooo ... to address the studies that Fyxe cites: there are indeed studies that show practices like prayer and Transcendental Meditation (TM) have measurably good effects. The studies about prayer seem to focus primarily on its impacts on illness and injury, while the studies about TM claim that in a community with many meditators, crime and social unrest diminish. The reservation we have to acknowledge is that at least some of the studies on prayer - and, as far as I can tell, nearly all of the studies on TM - are poorly designed. The TM studies tend to show examples of how various crimes - say, burglaries, assaults, and muggings - go down in an area where many Transcendental Meditators are meditating, but suppress the findings that at the same time other crimes, like homicides and domestic violence, simultaneously go up. An honest conclusion about those studies is that they are subject to bias (since most are funded by the Transcendental Meditation organization), and poor reporting. I recall less about the studies on prayer now; the last time I looked at this issue was a decade or more ago, but from what I recall there were some studies about prayers' effectiveness that could be dismissed because of poor methodology, and others that seemed more reliable.

For those of us of the opinion that energy healing or Force healing is a reality to avoid delusion and causing harm, we have to admit that our understanding of it is pretty primitive. While I believe I've benefited from it, I'd avoid recommending its use rather than surgery to the patient of an orthopedic surgeon planning a knee replacement.

I admire the vision and hopefulness of something like force healing setting right the ills of the world. A vision along these lines is actually fairly commonly held, and while some would call that a mass delusion it may also be that it is an expression of an intuitive perception of what humanity may in some distant day experience. We need that kind of vision. But for now ... well, I am reminded of a book popular in the 1970's and 1980's titled The Hundredth Monkey. It purported to tell of a Japanese study in which the young members of a secluded band of chimpanees began to learn to clean their food in a river, with one young chimp showing another how to do it. The older chimps, the study observed, were not so receptive to new ideas and didn't adopt the new behavior, until - when about half the chimps on the secluded island were washing their food, all of the rest of the chimps on that island spontaneously began doing it too - as did chimps on neighboring islands who had no contact with the original food-washing chimps! The thesis was that a vision of world peace held by a sufficient minority of people could reshape the consciousness of everyone on Earth. The problem with this study is that, years after The Hundredth Monkey was published, the author admitted he made the whole thing up. He felt it was acceptable to lie about research in order to promote the secondary theme of his book, which was a critique of nuclear armaments. Thousands of people believed in the book, though, and some were seriously disappointed after learning it was a lie.

The moral here is that while there's tremendous value in bold exploration of new traditions and mastering the art of extracting truth from the conflict that may occur between your own observations and those of others, that needs to be done within the context of recognizing that there is a reality external to us and our beliefs ... and that reality has a tendency to assert itself if we ignore it. I know of people who tried to cure their cancers with laetrile or a macrobiotic diet, and quickly died. Famed stage magician Doug Henning fervently believed his ayurvedic diet, recommended by the founder of the Transcendental Meditation movement, would cure his liver cancer without the aid of Western medicine, and he died too. There is an emerging community of believers in the New Thought spiritual tradition - which maintains that our thoughts create our reality and so we are 100% responsible for everything that happens to us - who are critiquing that tradition, noting that while they do yet believe that the tone of our thoughts has some influence over shaping our reality, we also are affected by external factors; these independent souls accurately point out how asking people how they caused their own illnesses or loss of wealth is unjustified victim blaming.

Balance, balance, balance. Be willing to step into the unknown and unfamiliar and see what you find - there's much of value there, though you may not be able to convince anyone that your experiences and discoveries are authentic. But remember to stop short of deciding to trust your ability to jump off a skyscraper and see if the Force holds you up. That's just a metaphor of course, but you understand what I mean; the laws of physics can administer their form of justice far more quickly than the laws of man, no matter what we believe about them.

I am sorry this got so wordy, but if an important life lesson can be conveyed in five minutes' reading maybe it's worth it. I hope it's helpful to someone.

I semi-agree Omhu, the problem is that people compare the benefits of something like Reiki/TM/prayer against nothing. If you put any of those up against just deep relaxation, the results are nearly identical.
The benefits aren't from the mystical framework built around those practices, and I'm sure if you linked a couple of those studies we could have a discussion about omission of results, test controls, etc.

If you can prove it false, absolutely and completely without a doubt, then please do.

So your saying I dont believe evidence is just a lie. I never said that. I said that scientists can lie like anybody else, that was all.

I have personally seen the mystical. I have touched a spirit. In that realm most dont seem to see I have talked with the animals there. I taste that acrid taste of astral energy. The smell of things long past are everywhere. How do you get to tell me those things dont exist?

I know they are there, and for a long time I got told to never speak of them. But I dont want that, why should I? The force is my salvation, my comfort, my peace. I thought you guys would understand this.

Fyxe, It's not that there aren't spiritual beliefs and convictions here. It's that for many if not most people here, it is more of a psychological, existential basis than a supernatural one. This is not so much because spiritualism would sound cooky to people but more that we aim to strike a balance between practical critical thinking and personal conviction (each one informs the other in an equilibrium of sorts), since personal conviction, while it carries a lot of information we need subjectively that is not satiated by mere science, is however naturally made up of biases that skew the actual picture of what we are experiencing. This is what Gisteron is trying to get at. Spiritual beliefs for many here aim to be tempered with critical thinking so that our view of reality doesn't float off into the clouds and we end up in utter denial of everyday reality. The basis for reiki and its effects should take both science and spiritualism into account to give a more rounded picture of what may be going on.

Minors arent allowed to admit their age here and im guessing that maybe adults arent supposed to ask so instead I’ll pose this to the general membership: would it make a difference in how you replied to someone if you knew for sure that you were talking to a 14 yr old? Or even a 20 yr old with an.....atypical neurological profile?

Or is this already obvious to everyone else and i just dont understand that other people expect more from children than i do?

OB1Shinobi wrote: would it make a difference in how you replied to someone if you knew for sure that you were talking to a 14 yr old? Or even a 20 yr old with an.....atypical neurological profile?

Thats a difficult one. Yes, I would act differently knowing these things, but I don't know them.

The nature of this forum and the level of anonymity it affords our members means that we have to make certain assumptions. Given that the majority of our membership (at least the one's most active in the forum) tend to be adults, I think it better to assume everyone is an adult when first meeting them.

This works two fold, because the majority of the time it means I'm correct and I also avoid coming across as patronising by talking to everyone as if they were a ten year old.

The down side of course is that I can come across as callous or dismissive to people who turn out to be minors or atypically neurologically minded.

I think all one can do is their best. I'm usually polite when first meeting people here, whatever age I believe them to be. But unless I have strong reason to suspect that they are a minor or of an atypical neurological profile, I will continue to treat them as a 'regular' (for want of a better word) adult.

OB1Shinobi wrote: Or is this already obvious to everyone else and i just dont understand that other people expect more from children than i do?

As I said, I tend to be more polite and accommodating when I first meet someone. However, assuming the child in question is above the age of 13 (which to be here, they should be), of a typical enough neurological profile to pose these sorts of question in the first place, then I'd expect them to have basic comprehension of a discussion when myself and others have repeatedly answered their questions.

I don't believe the frustrations apparent in these threads comes from a disregard of a quizzical youth's, or an atypical neurological profile's, questioning, but rather that when these questions are answered there appears to be a conscious effort made to intentionally disregard or misinterpret the answers given at a level I would deem unreasonable for either a 14 year old or an individual of atypical neurology capable of posing some of the questions posed in the first place.

If any of that makes sense? lol

Fyxe wrote: I have an opinion on what it is and so does God, who is right? neither one because both opinions are valid.

That...that's not how gods work.

I dont know much about exetential or supernatural stuff, I just know what I experience. and I follow my logic but also my intuition and that is balanec right? people have forgoten how to intuit stuff and just want to pound the logical stuff into other people. I think there is a place for personal experiences, at least in a church there should be right? like with spiritual stuff that cant be explianed but should just be accepted as faith to exist.

my experience of god is that he cant exist or all this stuff woujld be meaningless cuz he could just change whatever whenever and by his opinion of things. so the faith comes in that its not that way and so that leaves god out totally. Im not sure why anyone gets to tell me thats not the way god works but then not provide another explanation. thats just complaining not offering comments to me.

i see the force this way, as the basis of all that is and never changes. from that all things come, it is the base of all that there is. I sorty thought thats what Jedi believed.