Do you believe that people can actually have premonitions? Recently I was watching a couple of shows that deals with paranormal type situations and this topic came up. Some people had dreams about them and others had visions. What is your opinion on this topic?
For thousands of years it has been a common belief that dreams are visions or messages, from God or the gods, about something that is going to happen. I can understand why, because I know that some things have happened that were closely related to a vivid dream that I could remember having. I don't think I have the abilty to see the future, it's more likely to be a coincidence. We dream all the time about things that never come true, but on the rare occasions when real live events reflect what happened in a dream, we think it must have been a premonition.
This topic reminds me of the movie Premonition with Sandra Bullock. The character Linda Hanson couldn't determine if she was having dreams or visions of her husband's death. It does make you wonder if does occur. Some people probably won't want to acknowledge that ability I would think.
I totally believe in premonitions. I think that some of them come from instinctual processes that we have, and don't even realize that they are working, but I think there are others that can't be explained away that easy. My mother had a strong faith in God, and when she thought He was talking to her she listened. She said that when you listen you might never know what was going to happen; but if you do not listen, then you will usually wish that you had paid attention. Here is a true story that happened when I was a young girl. It was Memorial Day weekend, and the whole family was going to a cemetary aboout 30 miles away from home to put flowers on the graves. The highway was old and windy, and there was one place where it was like a Z in the road, and a railroad trestle over the top. When you made the sharp corner under the trestle, the sides were concrete, and there was no way that you could see anyone coming from the other side until you were most of the way under the railroad tracks. Just as we got close to that corner, my mother suddenly swerved off of the road and into the grass beside it. Before anyone could even ask her why she did that, one of those huge auto-transport semi's came through the underpass towards us, and he was so far on our side of the road that he nearly crashed into the concrete wall on our side. If my mom had not pulled off of the road when he did, our car would have been totally smashed between the semi and the concrete wall of the underpass. It was amazint that even the semi made it through without hitting the underpass, and if he had hit us, everyone would have died right there. We knew she couldn't have seen the truck coming, and when we asked her how she knew to stop and get clear off of the road; she said that God had told her and she listened.
That is a very interesting story. It reminds me of a lot of other premonition type stories. Even if what your mom had was not an actual premonition it is still an amazing thing and you are very lucky it did happen. The world can be a crazy thing sometimes.
I think we all have sixth sense that can tell us when something is going to happen. We just need to know how to tap into it. I also believe that dreams can tell us stuff. I have had dreams that actually became reality some time later. Also, how many of us get that gut feeling. You know that feeling that something is going to happen or that feeling that warns us not to do something. In a way that too in a type of premonition.
I think that sometimes we do have premonitions, but I have never had a dream that was a premonition that I know of. I do think that this does happen, though. I do not think that it would just be a coincidence if we dreamed something and then it happened, unless it was just a very common occurrance that was apt to happen anyway. I have had feelings and thoughts that just came into my mind as a warning. Sometimes, I listened, and sometimes, my mind just said it was stupid, so I ignored the warning. Many years ago, I had a little white Poodle. Every night at bedtime, I put him out for a last run and bathroom trip. One night, as I was getting read to do that, a "voice"popped up in my mind and said "If you put that dog out, you will never see him alive again". That was kind of shocking; but it was such a silly notion that I dismissed the thought and put him out. Well, the end of that story is that something killed my little dog that night, and we didn't find the body in the dark, and not until the next day. It must have been a coyote, or maybe a wandering dog that got him. I never knew for sure; but it was enough to teach me that I should listen to the warning, no matter how ridiculous it sounded.
I think we can have premonitions, I get them in dreams sometimes, other times it is just a feeling that something is going to happen. In the last week I had a dream about my dead grandmother, now all my life when I dream of her it has been about a career change or a job change, and in this one it was about my son and this huge fish swimming around in the dining room that he caught and had to wrestle with but everyone said he did a great job so he manage it. I told him the first thing in the morning about the dream and said he was going to get news on a new job and sure enough that very day he did get news. I would say coincidence but this has happened more then once in my life, and whatever the premonition is has come true, sometimes right away, sometimes in days. There is a downside to this, because sometimes if I have a dream that is unsettling i will have fear that maybe it is really about something that might be going to happen. This is not always the case, but just the same it can set a mood and a tone for the day. I do have of all things weather dreams that have happened, when we got that seven feet of snow I knew that it was coming for days before it happened, in that case it was more like I felt it and that i mark up more to instinct then premonition.
I do believe in premonitions because I've have at least 3-4 experiences I can acknowledge for certain. The first I can remember happened to me when I was 12 and woke up having a dream at which I saw myself running with my father to escape from a car in flames coming our way while he was taking me to the school. It was so vivid and real that I didn't want to go to school on that day, but my mom says it was a poor excuse to skip classes and told my dad to take me there as regularly. The school was a few blocks away, so we used to go walking, and such morning wasn't an exception, but one block before reaching the school, a car out of control crashed in the corner we were crossing through. My dad has some injuries and I got a fractured arm. Fortunately the car was not in flames like in my dream. Later, now In college, I was walking down the street when I felt an inner voice saying "hurry, run across the street" and instinctively I did such a thing. When I reached the opposite side, I saw how a huge billboard above the store I was a about to walk across fell down, and would hurt me badly if I would attend that premonition voice that pushed me. Besides these, I could present the death of grandmother, killed in a car accident, but while I begged to stay with us the day before this happened, knowing something bad was going to occur (ignoring what this was going to be), my grandmother refused to stay, and her death was overwhelming to me, thinking that knowing this, I could prevent it, but she ignored me. I'm unsure after this premonition at least another came to me, but I can't remember exactly; this last shocking experience seems to have blocked my premonitory sensibility.
I do believer we have premonitions, we just don't know what to call them if we even realized we had that still quite thought. I believe you have to be quite to hear what your inner mind is saying to you, cut out the noise and distractions of everyday life to get in tune with nature to hear more. You know how madding it is to have misplaced something and no matter how hard you look you can not find it. I have learned to ask to be shown where I put the thing I am looking for just before I go to sleep. Most of the time when I get up the next morning I can go right to that thing that I tore the house up looking for, I saw it in my dreams.
I believe premonitions do occur to people. Some people are gifted in this area and they know about things like when you get a "bad feeling" about things it's usually telling you to not do it. I don't understand how people get premonitions, but it's like intuition in a way. Some people attribute it to a guardian angel who helps you for premonitions and others have a keen gift while they live that may save their lives. It is good to have premonitions to help you in life. Here is an article from ABC news: "Evidence of Premonitions In New Study" http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/health/2012/10/22/evidence-of-premonitions-hinted-at-in-new-study
I have no such power to predict anything and sometimes when I think of something and it happens, I consider it a coincidence. My husband is a mild believer of the occult and he admits that he also has no such power. Isn't it scary to have a strong power of premonition, that you can sense that something bad is going to happen? We have a friend who said she has a third eye and can sense if something bad will occur. But her batting average is just 50%, that means the odds are against her.