Dead People Don't Care About Lighting

image credit: prairieghosts.com

So recently I convinced my husband to try table tipping. I follow a number of Spiritualist groups on Facebook, and have seen a few of them post about participating in this particular kind of physical mediumship, so I thought I would see for myself what all the fuss was about. That's how I roll. I'm a "see for yourself" kind of person.

Now, I confess, I could have researched it more. I perused a few videos on YouTube, and I surmised that even if you could get the table to move, it would be a very slow means of receiving information, as it looked like you could only ask yes-or-no questions, and the table would tip one way or another. Still, I imagined that perhaps in the same way that the leaf moves around our talking board, via a combination of our energy and "outside" energy from whatever entities are present at the time, that the table tipping concept might work in a similar manner.

My husband didn't want to try it, but I talked him into it. "It's total bullshit," he warned me. I took it with a grain of salt; what was going to happen anyway? If it doesn't work, then so what?

So we used a tiny, antique end table we have here at the house. We sat there with our hands on it with about the same level of casual expectation that we have when we use the board. And: nothing happened. I felt a few brief moments of maybe a pulling sensation, as if the table wanted to tip, but didn't have the momentum, and a bit of a vertiginous feeling myself, but yeah, nothing. Oh well.

I'll probably research this practice more seriously at some point, because I have seen other people do it and I would like to see it work in person, even if it's not a technique I'd be likely to use. Perhaps I was not approaching it correctly? I don't know.

So I searched for "table tipping how to" online. One of the first links I came to was from ehow.com. This ought to be rich, I thought, clicking the link.

The article "How to Talk to Spirits by Table Tipping" featured such gems as "Pick up a special table from an antique shop to give your table tipping a little historic feel," and "Take the table to someone else's home or to a more haunted location if you don't get a response." But none of them made my eyes roll back in my head so much as:

"Provide indirect lighting for effect. Have candles around the room or indirect lighting so that you have a spooky ambiance."

Yes, because when trying to talk to dead people, the most important thing is "spooky ambiance."

image credit: companionspirit.com

This is why we can't have nice things. I can recall a few times when I thought it might be nice to share our board with others who had never used one before, and being asked by one of the new participants, "Should we turn down the lights? Should we light candles?" Just so we're clear: spirits, the dead, whatever you would like to call them, don't give two shits about the lighting in the room, or any special "prayers of protection." Protection from what? People who want to help you?

Now, I agree that I am probably being harsh. If someone has never done anything like this before, how should they know what is important and what isn't? I guess I just get annoyed with the misconceptions that are out there about what talking to the Collective entails. It's not a spooky 80s horror movie. These people don't occupy the physical plane in the same way that we do; it's immaterial to them (literally) how bright it is in the room, what it smells like, what time of day it is, how loud you talk, or anything else like that.

You don't need to be in a "haunted location." The Collective is everywhere and yet not physically anywhere. You can talk to them from pretty much anywhere you'd like. The only preferences I have seen them even express so far is that there not be a whole lot of distractions, like the TV being on, or being with too large a group of people, but that seems to have more to do with the energy in the room than anything else.

Talking to dead people isn't spooky. It isn't mystical. It is as normal as talking to any other person, just these people don't have flesh to lug around. Now let's put on our grown-up pants and stop with the movie lighting effects and silly chanting, mmkay?

Worth Your Weight in Mustard

Riddle me this: Why is it when you go to a fast food joint it's so hard to get some mustard?

Mustard's a normal burger/hot dog topping, right? Ketchup and Mustard, the ever-together condiment twins. Am I nuts here?

Hey man, I'll sell you this '87 Iroc Z for 2700 packets.

The chick at the counter hands me my tray of food. I ask, "Can I get a packet of mustard?" Rather than just grabbing a couple mustard packets and handing them to me, I usually get one of three responses:  I might get, "You want honey mustard?" with a facial expression and tone that conveys skepticism and confusion. Did I f**king say honey mustard? No I did not. "No, just regular mustard, thanks," I respond. Which can sometimes bring me to the next response, which I sometimes actually arrive at first, bypassing the honey mustard litmus test altogether: the person helping me has to say, "Just a second," and is forced to consult another employee. An entire Mustard Committee must be formed in order to discuss, vote on, and accommodate my apparently freak request. "Do you know where we have any mustard?" they will ask their coworker in a baffled manner like I just asked them for a potted cactus and a can of shaving cream. I'm at a burger joint right? Mustard should not be that weird of a thing to ask for. I get so annoyed at the predictability of this scene that I end sentences like that last one with prepositions. The third type of response I get is the suspicious, "How many do you want?" They have the mustard back there, oh yes they do. But unlike the ketchup, which they will foist upon you in double fistfuls, like they can't give the stuff away, the mustard they guard jealously and mete out like there's a global shortage, or an impending apocalypse and the Wall Street bean counters have predicted that the vinegary yellow stuff will be the new world currency after we fight off all the zombies.

Seriously, am I effing crazy? I see other people putting mustard on things. I'm not the only one. Why are they holding out on me? I had a McDonald's employee tell me that they didn't have any mustard. At all. You're a burger joint for f**k's sakes! Is my family going to have to have an intervention on me and break the news that I am the last living person who wants some mustard on their burger, like they had to explain to that one lady on The View that the world isn't really flat? Is that what's going on here?

Is this important in the grand scheme of life? No it is not. I just don't understand this phenomenon at all. But I think I'm going to start hoarding mustard packets just in case. The first sign of zombies and I'm the next Bill Gates, muthaf**ka.

You'd Better Have a Good Morning. Or ELSE.

I have to say that I find the social obligation to greet everyone you meet first thing in the day with a cheery "Good Morning!" is a bit oppressive for me. Even after specific formal training I have undergone that has helped me understand the logic and value of being a smiling, friendly, font of joy, I still cannot force myself to manufacture enthusiasm for at least a couple hours after I wake up. Never have. What can I say? I’ve never been a morning person. I just can’t seem to get excited about leaving my warm comfy bed before I’m good and ready, which I assure you is almost never at the time of the morning that I have to get up for work. For whatever reason, once I’m physically out of bed, I need an hour or two to become Socially Awake. My interpersonal coffee needs time to brew, if you will. And I’m not alone! I know lots of people who aren’t shot out of a cannon in the morning, and if I know so many non-morning-people, I’m sure everyone else must be aware of their existence as well.  So why is it then, that people in a workplace cannot seem to live and let live in the AM? It’s like, We know that not everybody is super-enthusiastic in the morning, but people better fake it or there’s going to be an interrogation, right here in the breakroom. And if I can struggle past the obligatory Good Morning, some people even feel the need to take it one step further, and want to also know How I’m Doing. And you’d better not come back with a simple “Fine” either. You’d better be Great! “How are you this morning?” “Fine.” Disapproving tone: “Well that doesn’t sound good.” You can almost hear the tisk-tisking, the implication hanging there, heavy with disgust, like Why can't you just get your shit together and just be theme-park-ecstatic like everyone else? Why is it unacceptable to be having just an average day? Why are you made to feel like something is wrong with you if you aren’t singing and dancing at the crack of dawn? No one wants a real answer to the How Are You Doing question anyway. “How are you this morning?” “Meh. I’d rather be home asleep in my beat-up sweatpants and green furry socks that make my feet look like a Muppet's, but I’m here anyway because I’ve got to pay the bills and the boss won't just let me stroll in at whatever time I feel I've had enough sleep and am ready to tackle the day.” Just chew on the reaction you’d get to that one. One of my favorite responses is “I’m alive.” That's my go-to expression for days when I'm just not in the mood to play the False Enthusiasm Game. Somehow this always gets taken as a negative, rather than what it really means, which is, hey, things are humming along at about the normal rate; the needle is not jumping around that much on the seismometer of my life. Not bad. Just average. Nothing wrong with that, in my opinion. There is a much lower tolerance for honesty in our daily lives than one would expect. If you want me to put on an act for you right after I wake up, then I’m gonna need you to pay me Scale.