This is a great topic!

To me, powers mean anything you want it to mean including but not limited to seeing, smelling, hearing and feeling spirits, ability to heal or manipulate energy, empathy, telepathy, telekinesis, levitation, etc. With these things, one can help others in a multitude of ways, but we must ask ourselves what is the motivation. Is it to boost our own ego (as we have discussed in another thread), to test our limits of what one can do, or to truly assist others for their need and not ours. These abilities are great in that they often drive us to ask these questions of ourselves. They also drive us to ask the why's and how's, but at the same time they can divert us from what may perhaps be their real purpose.

To me they can all serve as distractions if we allow them too. Some get caught up in the things they can do. They see it as a product of their greatness or power, while still others take it in stride. To me, they all serve one purpose, and that is to help us understand just how connected we truly are. I can feel you because you are me. I know your pain because you are me. I know your anguish because you are me. To me each one of these things can do one of two things, bring us together in an understanding of one another, or they can drive us apart in one-ups-manship. Anyway, those are just some thoughts.

In the end there is no real power, not by any of us anyway. There is only One power.

I think that I'm more than happy that I don't have the ability to read others' minds, for Tourbi's reasons, and also because (as I've said a few times in my posts) I like surprises.  Of course, there have been a few times in my life when reading another person's mind would have saved me so pain and grief, but I think I'd still rather learn the hard way!    (Besides, these days, when it's something really important, I have, um, extra help with that, and now sometimes get told things before it's too late...and I've learned to listen!)

I often find myself apologizing to my "guide" (wish I could find a better word than that   ), because in order for us to be able to communicate without my looking like a lunatic talking out loud to the walls, he needs to be able to read my thoughts--and they're not always pretty, or pleasant.  It does make me self-conscious not to have that extra layer of self-censorship that comes between thought and speech, but on the other hand it keeps me on my toes and makes me think more deeply about the "offhand" things I think about people and things, but would never say out loud--because I know that someone I care about is listening.  I'm getting somewhat more introspective as a result, and that can't be all that bad, I guess!

Doe

Looking Glass, I honestly wish that I'd thought about things HALF as deeply as you do when I was your age.  At 28, I was the most self-centered mess you can imagine.  But that was also the year that changed my life forever, too.  Just thinkin'...

Doe

I think you brought up a great point about self-censorship. I just feel like we (people in general) get so caught up in what others think of us that we would rather swallow our words, than be heard even if it is the truth. To me that gets us no where because we become a people of "follow the leader," and the one leading may not always be right. We are each given a mind to think with, a heart to feel with and a body to act with. As long as we do not purposefully set out to hurt others, then why should we hide ourselves? There is no reason except for shame, a shame that comes from denying who we are in all that glory.

Know thyself and you shall know others.

LG, I agree with you to a point.  What I'm talking about more, however, are those "off-the-cuff" thoughts that flash through my mind.  Sometimes I'll "hear" myself thinking these horrible, intolerant, prejudiced, etc. thoughts--things that I really don't (or hope I don't) feel or think in "real life".  And sometimes--again, because I feel that someone else is paying attention, and I can't just always pass them off as anomalies in my thinking--I now have to make myself stop and examine WHY I would have thought that.  Is it something I still have to work on, even though I just love to think of myself as the most tolerant, non-prejudiced human being ever?     And at times it turns out that I DO have more to work on.  It's good to know that.

But I'd prefer to acknowledge these things to myself, and work on them in my own mind, without those who might be hurt by those thoughts and attitudes being aware of them.  It certainly wouldn't help them to know that I thought that way, and might even do real damage.  In those cases, being "brutally honest" doesn't seem like the best way to go.  (My mother prides herself on "telling it like it is", regardless of others' feelings, but she has hurt me and others very badly sometimes by doing that.)  Sometimes things are best worked on in private.

Doe