Cosmic Ordering - let's try again?

[SylviasSlippers]

Logically I know it "should" be a load of crap but every time I've tried it, I've received what I asked for. Way back as an 8 year old we were moving house and I so desperately wanted a garden with steps on the path (no idea why). I visualised it and "prayed" for it and the house we ended up with had two steps on the path which was very rare in that area.

More recently I stumbled across the concept of cosmic ordering and decided to "order" a money find. A few nights later we were walking through a graveyard and there on the ground wet through and covered in muck was a £10 note staring up at me. I put it down to co-incidence.

A couple of years later I met a guy, fell in love with him and looking back it was obvious that I liked him more than he liked me ... So out of desperation I "cosmically ordered" for him to tell me he loved me on one specific night. So there we are, camping in a field, messing around and I do something daft and he laughs and says "oh god, I love you!" - he was not being serious, he was being sarcy but he still said it.

So a few months later I placed a cosmic order for him to say he loved me and meant it. So there we are, great night out, we're back in the hotel, he'd not said it. I tried to prompt it by asking how he thought the relationship was going and he said "great, but let's take it slow eh? I mean, I don't want to say I love you ... We've not been together long ... But I do, I do love you ..." Wtf? Cosmic order granted but not quite in the way I'd hoped.

A year later, we're still together. I place a cosmic order for him to ask me to marry him on this specific night. So we're sat in a restraunt and I do not prompt the conversation at all. All of a sudden he laughs and says "let's run off and get married in Vegas?". I didn't know how to take it so didn't say anything .. He then added - "I'm joking ..."

A few days ago I "ordered" an iphone 5c in green for less than £300 - that same night dp told me he'd won me that same phone on ebay for £260 (almost impossible to get one so cheap in "like new" condition.

It just seems that I get everything I ask for when I try it but never in a way I expect it. Does anyone else have any stories about cosmic ordering?
If you're not into it, don't take the piss please :-)

Today, I'm going to try it again. I'm going to start small and order the sighting of a red balloon by the end of the day. I'll update tonight whether or not it appeared.

Beast Burial or cremation can have psychological value for the mourners though.

Personally I'm not that bothered, though sometimes I quite like the thought of nobody seeing my dead body, no post mortum having to be done. That is because I find the thought of my body being processed in death quite intrusive. This I know is ridiculous. So my wishes are more to do with making it easier for surviving relatives.

No problem, col! I managed to do the same.

I wonder if more women donate organs, as we are all so conditioned to be sensible, waste not want not, kind of thing.. Agree that a lot depends on what would comfort relatives, my family has agreed already that they would prefer me to be donated for spare parts than be wasted.

I'm off to bed now, night night all.

night Beast. I don't think my family mind what I do with it. They know I am totally unsentimental about my body and they know I jost consider it to be a shell. The only thing I have said is I want a green burial under a tree and I am happy to be buried in a card board box.

oh and before I go this is the abstract to the study about AIDS and distant healing that Beast linked too. Yes it was done on only 40 people and there was a bigger study that didn't back up this up. However there was some statistically significant results in this study - see the data in the abstract - and that is enough for me to atleast think there is a chance of further research in this area proving it can help alongside allopathic medicine - I am an optimist though! Still here it is in case anyone is interested.

Abstract

Various forms of distant healing (DH), including prayer and "psychic healing," are widely practiced, but insufficient formal research has been done to indicate whether such efforts actually affect health. We report on a double-blind randomized trial of DH in 40 patients with advanced AIDS. Subjects were pair-matched for age, CD4+ count, and number of AIDS-defining illnesses and randomly selected to either 10 weeks of DH treatment or a control group. DH treatment was performed by self-identified healers representing many different healing and spiritual traditions. Healers were located throughout the United States during the study, and subjects and healers never met. Subjects were assessed by psychometric testing and blood draw at enrollment and followed for 6 months. At 6 months, a blind medical chart review found that treatment subjects acquired significantly fewer new AIDS-defining illnesses (0.1 versus 0.6 per patient, P = 0.04), had lower illness severity (severity score 0.8 versus 2.65, P = 0.03), and required significantly fewer doctor visits (9.2 versus 13.0, P = 0.01), fewer hospitalizations (0.15 versus 0.6, P = 0.04), and fewer days of hospitalization (0.5 versus 3.4, P = 0.04). Treated subjects also showed significantly improved mood compared with controls (Profile of Mood States score -26 versus 14, P = 0.02). There were no significant differences in CD4+ counts.
These data support the possibility of a DH effect in AIDS and suggest the value of further research.

BTW the ex-professor of CAM Edzard Ernst - who has spent many years trying to prove that CAM doesn't work - reviewed this piece of research and gave it the highest scoring possible for methodology showing that he felt that it has been done well from a methodology point of view.

I recommend you read Bad Science.

"Yes it was done on only 40 people and there was a bigger study that didn't back up this up"

And what did that tell you?

Cote - It tells me I am an optimist because I still think that one day it will be proven. As the conclusion to that small study says - more research is needed.

Cote - I have read Bad Science and I generally like Goldacre's stuff but didn't agree with all of it.

We report on a double-blind randomized trial of Distance Healing in 40 patients with advanced AIDS.

OMG! How did they get that past an ethics committee?

Was the control group treated by conventional medicine, or just left to carry on dying?

Garlic - yes treated as normal by the medical profession. This was about distance healing being used alongside conventional medicine.

I should say both the control group and distant healing group were being treated by the medical profession as normal.

Phew! What a relief! Thanks, Colin.

"Cote - It tells me I am an optimist because I still think that one day it will be proven. As the conclusion to that small study says - more research is needed. "

Yep, and more research was done and no link was found!

garlic =

Colin - If you have read Bad Science, I don't think you understood it. It is about facts, historical truth and explanation of the scientific method. You can't really decide not to agree with it.

Also, if you read it, you would understand the power of placebo, which is what your "therapies" sound like. People feel better and perform better when they are told something will help, and even when they are being observed, as extensively shown in that book.

Again, if you read that book, you should have at least a minimum understanding of how a small study can be an outlier and what a statistically significant sample looks like (i.e. not 40).

Also, in that book, you should have read how the phrase "more research is needed" is no longer used to conclude a study.

I'm not an optimist, so can't think of any other option than the following:

• you didn't read it
• you read it but lacked the bare minimum of knowledge to understand it
• you read it to say you did but didn't try to understand it because it debunks your belief system

Cote I did understand it thankyou but no I don't have to agree with every single thing in it. I an well aware about sample sizes, I was talking about the data such as 0.04 etc which is a statistically significant difference in quantities research. I do think it warrants further study.
If you had read all of my earlier posts you would have seen what I have written about the placebo effect. I know quite alot about placebo having been taught it by a neuroscientist. I also know alot essential oils having studied biochemistry of the oils.
There's no need to be so patronising btw.

Sorry that Autocorrected quantitative

And no I don't read things to say I did Cote.I have a life

Cote - last thing. As I am sure you are aware about half of the effect of morphine has been proven to be placebo. Some of all medicine is placebo. I have never denied that some of what I do is placebo - although I do also believe some of it isn't - however as the placebo effects does make chemical changes in the brain I don't see this as a problem anyway. My clients are just pleased that they have been helped.

IndigoBarbie Oh, how lovely, I made you laugh. Again. I've done it before - usually when I ask you support your outstandingly ridiculous assertions with a few facts. As usual, though, you choose to run off and hide rather than provide any.

I'm not holding out any hope, but let me try.......energy gifts?

What energy? Kinetic? Magnetic? Electrical? Nuclear? There are quite a few to choose from. What form is your "gift".

What generates this energy gift? Or is it simply beamed down to you from outer space?

Don't worry if you don't want to reply. Your silence speaks volumes as usual.

Colin

Are you not a very happy person Hettie? As happy people don't normally feel the need to belittle people and try and make them feel small

Really? Do you know what this says about the strength of your "argument" when you reduce yourself to this? That's it's weak. Grow up.

And yes, the crap about denying people palliative care is cheap, emotionally manipulative and irrelevant.

Like it or lump it, you make a living selling "therapies" that have been proven not to work to people who are unwell and receiving real medical treatment.

I don't doubt for a second that on some level your "clients" often feel better - massage, a setting that looks like a clinic, someone to talk to, all will have a beneficial effect.

Your "therapies" won't, and that's what you're selling. I don't know how else to see this other than as fraud.

You tell your clients that it's "unscientific"? Do you? Honestly? I suspect what you actually say is "Science can't explain how this works" - which is not true and is deliberately deceitful because it implies off the bat that it does work. Science, in reality, has checked these claims rigorously and found they do not work beyond the placebo effect.

Do you actually tell your clients this? I truly doubt it.

And I wouldn't get hung up on the placebo factor if I were you. This kicks in in only a minority of cases, most of the time your "therapies" do precisely nothing.

I agree with Cote that there's nothing in Bad Science to "disagree" with. Unless you're someone who doesn't like facts very much....as you appear not to.

Evidenced by your handling of this AIDS thing. You said you were involved in a study that looked at distant healing of African AIDS sufferers. It showed that it worked. That's what you said.....and that's all you said.

Beast then quickly found the study and within moments we discovered that a) it didn't say that it worked, it suggested further investigation, b) further, bigger and more comprehensive investigation was undertaken and showed unequivocally that it did NOT work and c) other studies along a similar theme showed a similar lack of efficacy.

So, why didn't you tell the whole story? Because the truth does not support your worldview, so you'll hide it.

But you remain optimistic that they'll discover it does work, huh? Why? What mechanism can you think of that can make a thought process fly across the world into the body of a particular person and get to grips with it's immune system?

Me belittle you? You do that all by yourself, Colin.

Allow me to quote from pubmed on the larger trial

The efficacy of distant healing for human immunodeficiency virus--results of a randomized trial.
Astin JA1, Stone J, Abrams DI, Moore DH, Couey P, Buscemi R, Targ E.
Author information

1California Pacific Medical Center, San Francisco, CA, USA.

Abstract
BACKGROUND:

While data are conflicting, studies have appeared in the literature suggesting that mental intentions sent from a distance (eg, intercessory prayer, spiritual healing) can possibly influence clinical outcomes in patients suffering from an array of medical conditions. The purpose of this study was to examine the potential efficacy of distant healing in a population of patients with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)/aquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS).
METHODS:

One hundred fifty-six patients with a history of AIDS category C and at least one AIDS-defining opportunistic infection were randomized to 1 of 3 study arms: (1) 10 weeks of prayer/distant healing from professional healers, (2) 10 weeks of prayer/distant healing from nurses with no prior training or experience in distant healing, or, (3) no distant healing.
RESULTS:

No significant treatment effects of distant healing were observed for either professional healers or nurses on any of the primary or secondary outcomes. Despite being blind to group assignment, subjects receiving distant healing (from healers or nurses) were significantly more likely to guess that they had been receiving healing than were subjects randomized to the no-treatment control group.

CONCLUSIONS:

Distant healing or prayer from a distance does not appear to improve selected clinical outcomes in HIV patients who are on a combination antiretroviral therapy.

Col this appeared in 2006. That's 8 years ago. I think it is wrong of you to quote from a discredited earlier trial when this has been in the public domain for so long.

What mechanism can you think of that can make a thought process fly across the world into the body of a particular person and get to grips with it's immune system?

Spirit Hettie according to my belief system.

No belittling to be had here. Since a spirit is a non physical entity it's existence cannot be proven, since it does not exist in the physical sense.

However I do believe spirits can affect physical manifestations / physiological changes. Again this is a belief it cannot be proven (see above).

"However I do believe spirits can affect physical manifestations / physiological changes. Again this is a belief it cannot be proven "

No it can't. But an example which can't easily be proven to have a rational/physical explanation would be a good start..........

The rational explanation for someone being healed is just that it spontaneously got better.

I have had a few health complaints that spontaneously got better. Not very dramatic though...

"The rational explanation for someone being healed is just that it spontaneously got better.

I have had a few health complaints that spontaneously got better. Not very dramatic though..."

Absolutely. A lot of things do spontaneously get better. Or go into remission. If the spontaneous getting better or remission coincides with the application of healing/prayer/CAM then they get the credit. It's interning that the conditions that respond best to healing/prayer/CAM seem to be the ones that do get better by themselves.