Have you seen "The Secret"

Interesting, Ankesh. To a certain extent I agree with you on most points.

I, too, skimmed a bit in my post because I didn't really want to open up a can of worms by stating my personal theory of things tho' I did allude to it when I stated 'but not as most folks think' in re: manifesting.

Some of my experiences lead me to 'know' that there is a type of intelligence behind the universes and their evolvement. It is this 'universal intelligence' that we tap into when people do things that are apparently beyond the normal functioning of humans. A 98# woman picking up a vehicle off her son, for example, or people 'picking up on' knowledge not yet apparent, such as happened with the school cave in or with Lincoln's dreams that, unfortunately, came true.

You asked about handicapped children. They are a gift to themselves and others. I believe we are here to both learn lessons needed for our own growth and to help others to progress. Handicapped children are some of our greatest teachers. Through love and suffering they teach others compassion and skills they may need to learn. Some of our most advanced medical discoveries are helping many folks because another's suffering helped along the discoveries.

A more pointed question is: why do adults become handicapped? They came into the world whole but they leave a handicapped body behind...why? Well, consider Steve Reeves. He not only taught others how to persist and overcome, he inspired many others to learn how to help others by contributing his intelligence and feedback about various therapies that were tried on him. In a very real sense, he was a test subject and teacher as a result of becoming handicapped.

Anyway, this is quite long and would require an encyclopedia to be fairly comprehensive on such topics so I'll quit for now.

One more point: we DO learn from things we experience on the internet and marketing arenas, too. Anyone who's been scammed came away more aware, more determined to personally avoid, and help others avoid, scams. Spammers are teaching us...again...to do unto others as we'd like done unto us by causing some of us to suffer at their hands. I'm looking forward to the spammers progressing and going beyond their narrow minded attitudes...with or without their cooperation.

Sandi Bowman