How does someone with no small measure of psychic ability and numerous accurate “previews” of the future incur so many injuries? I’ll tell you, exactly.

After several days of intensive foreboding and weeks of a feeling of impending doom, last Sunday night I walked into a restaurant and tripped over an unseen hazard that partially blocked the entryway. I went flying parallel to the ground, smashing face-first into the wall beneath the ordering/pick-up counter, breaking my nose, injuring my forehead, incurring a concussion and numerous impact injuries, including whiplash.

Many negative results, obviously, which I am still recovering from, but one positive one: the sensations of ominousness that had been hanging around and inside me for weeks were gone.

How does that all work, exactly?

My definition of presentiment includes: prescience, precognition, premonition, which, taken together, translate into vague or specific feelings, knowledge, images, words, or other sensations of the future for oneself and/or others.

Key problem with the kind of presentiment I had been experiencing: VAGUENESS. Meaning, nonspecific: No details, images, words, dates, times, locations, circumstances; not even a list of who’s involved or who’s to be negatively affected.

I developed the following list, the Four Major Upsides and Downsides of #Paranormal #Presentiment, to explain my precise predicament.

UPSIDES
1. Time for advance planning.
For me, this meant I did a lot of cooking/shopping for food, laundry, blog posts, writing/editing and other tasks much more in advance than usual so that when I became mostly incapacitated, “life went on.”

2. Emotional preparation .
Even as I was literally facing disaster, I wasn’t surprised, emotionally shocked or refusing to acknowledge the extent of my injuries. I immediately understood, as soon as I went flying, that “this was it.” Fortunately, I was remained conscious. Because I had been “warned,” I was not in denial. Therefore, I was able to make several key decisions with a clear head that helped me later.

3. Advance warnings for self and others.
See #numbers 1 & 2, above. Also, I had followed my intuition and cleared my schedule for this week without knowing exactly why. Having almost no obligations during the first crucial week of recuperation left me with less stress, aiding recovery.

4. Possible avoidance of the worst aspects by being especially cautious and observant.
In the weeks immediately prior to this accident, I had had three near-misses on the road, including having a tree branch fall just in front of my car during a bad storm (but I was able to swerve around it since I was going very slowly) and several other small mishaps that could have been a lot worse had I not been exceedingly cautious already.

DOWNSIDES
1. Vague premonitions of doom and general senses of tension and foreboding cause elevated stress levels for indeterminate periods of time.
Human bodies do not do well with chronic stress. Mine has had way too much from actual stress as well as perceived or anticipated stress: not recommended.

2. Focusing on the negative can cause undue paranoia and suspicion.
When I have this strong sense of impending disaster, I get very jumpy, especially when I have no idea the scope, timing, location, cause or target. Everyone is a bad driver, every rumble of a truck sounds like an earthquake (I live in California on a fault line), every airplane overhead sounds as if it might be flying too low (I live under the flight paths of two major and one minor airport), every passerby might be a mugger… you get the idea. Nischt gut.

3. Intensive self-referentialism and self-absorption to the point of unhealthy obsession does no one any good, ever.
Did you know there is a serious mental illness diagnosis consisting of a person having the unshakable belief that everything is a sign, message or communication meant just for him/her, like the character played by Russell Crowe in A Beautiful Mind? Also, it is antithetical to Buddhism to spend much time focusing on oneself, which is a temporary embodiment of an illusory existence, at best. Try sitting around believing that disaster is about to strike while trying to meditate: bad plan.

4. Once any negative circumstance arises, one may relax prematurely and then lose special cautiousness just when it’s most needed.
Three small mishaps had already occurred, however (stubbed my toe very badly at the pool; cut my finger when a knife slipped; hit my foot on the edge of the shower/tub enclosure). After the third one, I made the mistake of believing I had encountered all the negativity associated with this premonition. I did not see nor did I expect the floor obstacles in the restaurant. Hence, the face-plant.

Perhaps, next time, I won’t believe the doom warnings have been fully heeded until the presentiment actually passes.