This May be the Biggest Perspective Shift I've Experienced in Years

Last month my understanding of the world was utterly obliterated, and I am here for it.

An Open Mind is Everything

I call my Substack newsletter “Perspective Shift” because I think having an open mind is one of the most important contributors to a life well lived.

Embodying the courage (or, to use a phrase from my religious heritage, the “faith”) to have your ideas challenged, your horizons expanded, and your perspective shifted is evidence of someone who is taking life seriously.

A closed mind signals someone who’s basically given up already. No interest in growing. No curiosity. No humility that maybe they’ve haven’t gotten everything figured out already.

But an open mind?

Whew… now we’re talking.

An open mind is—dare I say—sexy.

It shows that you’re keen to the truth that you don’t know everything. It shows that you have the awareness to know that it’s highly unlikely that you just so happen to be lucky enough to be right about everything, all the time, for the rest of your days.

As mentioned above, an open mind is evidence of someone who has a deep and thriving faith.

But not everyone is this way, of course. Changing your mind can be painful—especially when it involves the renunciation of a position you previously held.

And yet as the adage asserts, “No pain, no gain,” and in this context the gain is a deeper, more mature approach to what it means to be alive.

So yeah, I love a good paradigm challenge.

Or, to say it again, a good perspective shift.

Last month I experienced one of the most significant perspective shifts I’ve encountered in many, many years.

And it has to do with…

(wait for it)

telepathy.

That’s right, I am now a full believer in the reality that (some) people can read other people’s minds. 😳

Don’t unsubscribe just yet.

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It’s a Trick

Mind reading, huh?

That’s just a trick.

A scam for the simple-minded.

An illusion used by mentalists and street magicians to create the mysterious aura of, “Wait, can this person actually read my mind?” 🤯

While I’ve never believed it’s actually a thing, that hasn’t stopped me from thoroughly enjoying the elaborate performances of such illusionists.

I’ve been mystified by Darren Brown seemingly knowing what people are thinking before they externalize it.

I’ve been sucked in to the dead eye stare of David Blaine as he calmly acts as though reading a person’s mind is just another Tuesday, no biggie.

And of course there’s the thing Derek DelGaudio did at the end of his special on Hulu, In and Of Itself, that truly should be viewed by all.

For years I’ve been an enjoyer of such tricks and shows. I love to lay aside my rational mind and become a willing participant in the magic of it all.

Knowing all along it is just that: a magic trick. It’s not that I actually believed any of them were reading people’s minds, of course.

But I also didn’t have any other logical explanation for what as happening, so I just let myself be delighted. Magic is fun.

My general takeaway from the above mentalists and their “powers?”

As long as your name starts with “D,” maybe you can actually practice telepathy.

But for everyone else it’s obviously not actually a thing.

Like, we all know this, right?!

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Miracles or a Materialist World?

Furthermore, beyond telepathy (aka, the ability to send/receive messages via the mind) I typically arm myself with skepticism anytime someone brings up the topic of mediums or other such non quantifiable, metaphysical communicative prowess.

I assumed what most reasonable, rational, scientific people assume: it’s a parlor trick. It’s using generic enough claims that people then fill in the details on their own (aka, cold reading). Or doing just enough research on a subject to be able to convince them you’ve contacted their long lost uncle who died in a tragic tourist accident while scuba diving in the Bahamas (aka, hot reading).

While at times impressive, I’ve nonetheless chalked up such efforts as anything other than actually communicating with dead people or reading folks’ minds.

By the way, it should be noted that I’m well aware of the irony in personally adhering to a religion centered around the miracle of someone coming back from the dead all the while rejecting the possibility of (what strikes me as) far less difficult miracles such as mind reading or communicating with the deceased. One would be reasonable in their objection of, “Colby, why are you so quick to dismiss supernatural phenomena when you accept that miracles can and do happen?”

That’s a complicated question. And one that I’ve gone on a bit of journey with over the years.

In fact, you could probably find a version of Colby from 6-8 years ago in which I tried on a worldview for a while in which miracles do not actually occur. I spent time, in other words, as a strict materialist. Still Christian (though admittedly a rather thin veneered one that made metaphors out of everything), but largely I’d decided that God—whatever that word means—does not actually intervene or interfere with the strictly material and physical world of our cosmos.

Such a position would not define me anymore. I’m back on the Miracle Train, for what it’s worth, even if I have less ideas about how or why or when than ever.

Eventually I couldn’t help but get back on the Train. I’ve experienced too much, I’ve learned too much, I’ve seen and perceived too much to conclude that we are indeed inside a closed universe of nothing more than protons and atoms and (mis)firing brain neurons.

There’s more going on here.

There’s more happening in and around… and through.

As St Paul once said, God is somehow the one IN whom we live and move and have our being.

I think he was on to something…

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What Changed it All

All this to say, cards on the table, my starting position (as of December 1st, 2024) was that telepathy belonged in the realm of Sci Fi.

It’s fine to imagine Professor X getting inside the minds of others, but out here in the real word such a thing just isn’t real.

Right?

Riiiiight?!

Well, as of a month ago, I feel safe saying that all my previous assumptions and convictions on this kind of stuff are now officially out the window.

Thanks to The Telepathy Tapes.

In this podcast series, journalist/documentarian Ky Dickens spent the last several years traveling, interviewing, researching, and conducting experiments with non-speaking kids—meaning, kids with severe cases of autism who cannot/do not speak, and who rely upon spelling out their thoughts via devices such as iPads—and is now bringing to light something that evidently many, many families and teachers of non-speakers have known for years: not only is not true that non-speakers don’t have anything going on up there (points to brain/mind) as has been believed for centuries, but what is happening in (and between!) the minds of non-speaking kids is,

well,

unbelievable.

Except that… I believe it.

If you have not yet checked out The Telepathy Tapes, I highly recommend you go and do so now. Episode 10 just dropped, and I promise you this series will blow your mind.

And possibly, like me, it will shift your perspective in the most radical, beautiful, holy-crap-what-is-happening kind of way.

I’ll have more to say in future articles but for now I just wanted to get this on your radar if it wasn’t already.

Now go.

Open your mind.

Expand your thinking.

Get your perspective shifted.

And enjoy.

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Have You Heard it Yet?

If you’ve listened to The Telepathy Tapes I’d love to know what you thought about it! And what you think about such things now after having listened.