Just Off Center

Last night I was on break at school so I stepped outside for a smoke. As I walked out of the building I noticed a rather strange transaction going on. The smoking area is a large paved spot outside the building with curvy, stucco, backless benches forming a peanut shape around the entire smoking area. One the bench closest to the building there was a woman in her mid to late forties sitting and coughing. She obviously was suffering from some mild lung sickness, like bronchitis. It's the season, and I've had it several times. Her coughs were echoed by the bass-like growl of a lung trying to expel fluid.

Standing next to her was a woman who must have been in her sixties. She was about 5'6" tall with a slovenly appearance and drooping features. She wore a blue, floral full length house dress that did absolutely nothing for her. She stood next to the ailing woman, facing her right side. Her right hand was placed squarely on the sick woman's chest, right between her tits. Her left hand was placed at the same point on her back with her fingers slightly curled. Every couple of seconds she would pull her left hand away from the woman's back and return it in a wafting motion. After a few pulls she stepped away from the woman and begin shaking her body and arms like you do after washing your hands. She then made jazz hands touching the tips of her thumbs and index fingers, placed her hands over the woman's head, and began to run her hands down the woman's body as if massaging her aura, supposing the aura exists.

I stopped dead in my tracks and stared, quite rudely, at the pair. I just couldn't believe that I was standing outside my university, a place of higher learning, watching some goddamned new age faith healing. The old bitch had her eyes shut and was spouting bullshit phrases like "I can sense the sickness in your red chakra". I was sensing something too, like the woman might have fucking tuberculosis and needs to see a medical doctor. But I can't blame the older lady entirely, no matter how much I would like to. The coughing woman was sitting there hacking her lungs up, in the smoking area, and kept telling the high priestess that she "really believed in this stuff". After about another three minutes of this, with me staring, biting back the laughter the entire time, the witch healer stepped away and said how exhausted she was. That really took a lot out of her. The lunger said that she actually felt a lot better and began to thank her profusely, just before another coughing fit.

What the hell is wrong with you people? Look, let's get this settled once and for all. You can NOT heal a person with your thoughts. You are unable to sense illnesses. There is no such thing as ESP, psychic healing, telekinesis, magic (or magick to the bigger idiots), chakras, or auras. And even if there were any of these things, why is it only uneducated women who have the ability to control these things. What deficiency exists in womankind that makes them believe they have psychic powers? Don't you realize that ridiculous behavior like this is the main reason why we don't take any of you seriously? So long as I hear women say silly shit like "I feel very attuned to the spiritual world" there will be men who add your name to the glass ceiling list.

What boggles me most about this sort of thing is that people who believe in this shit are so critical of logic and reason. The very idea that mysterious occurences can be explained by physics, psychology, and the law of averages is offensive to these spiritual beings is amuses me most. If the natural settling of an aging house frame causes a subsidence to fill, resulting in a loud crack, the answer must be that the ghost is angry...or happy...or whatever makes the idiot believer feel most empowered.

The bottom line is that if you want to believe in the paranormal, go ahead. You might want to look up the theory of spontaneous generation as the basis for all scientific method while you're at it. I know that grounding yourself and transferring your energies makes you feel connected and knowledgeable. But just because you believe it don't make it true. And the more you root your belief structure in something that is unprovable the more difficult it will be for you to be taken seriously by the community at large. Will Rogers once said "if you find yourself in a hole, stop digging". That applies to you too.