There are charlatans and incompetents in physics, in metaphysics, in conventional medicine and in alternative medicine. Unfortunately metaphysics and alternative medicine do offer great opportunities for charlatans. The important thing, especially with medical choices, is to think for yourself.

I once saved myself from possibly drastic problems by thinking for myself. A resident at Johns Hopkins looked at the results of an allergy test for an extremely toxic IV drip, ignored my protests that the test showed I was allergic, and started to OK the IV. I finally told her to Get somebody in there who knew what they were doing! She did. I didn't get the IV. It's so dangerous it can only be given once in one's lifetime.

You have to pay attention. You have to use your mind. Same as with anything else in life. How much energy you put into it depends on how important it is. In the case of Mickey191's chiropractor, she wasn't urging anything on him, she just made a remark about what she believed she saw. Mickey asked about it here but didn't put a whole lot of weight on it one way or the other. That makes sense to me.

On the other hand, refusing conventional treatments and risking your life without seeing some really good evidence that the alternative treatment is better, doesn't make sense to me. But in any medical matter, nowadays, conventional or otherwise, people have to check out what the doctor is telling them if they can.

Some of my best progress since my heart transplant has come from taking nutritional supplements. The doctors look at me, tell me I'm doing splendidly, then say, "But you've got to stop taking all those over-the-counter medications." Right. If I take a supplement and a longstanding problem goes away, then it comes back when I drop the supplement, I know what I'm going to do.

Bad doctors happen. So do bad alternative practitioners. So do wonderful, competent people. My own chiropractor may see auras, for all I know, especially considering some of the other methods she uses. That's fine. I don't need my aura read. Suppose it's really ugly? But she has made a huge difference in the amount of foot, back, neck and shoulder pain, numbness, pinched nerve problems, etc that I use to experience.

A lot of these questions are unanswerable. (Like, Can you have more than one spirit guide? And what or who are they, if they are there at all?) There are possible answers that seem plausible if your mind works that way.

A lot of the answers above seem to be contradictory, but that may just be because our minds are limited. My own feeling is, pick the one that works for you, they're all models of how things work. But I don't think any of them can be more than a best guess. Even the "purely material" explanations.

As for me I suspect it's possible that people who love you and have died, or maybe even loved you in earlier lifetimes, may sometimes be guiding or protecting you. I don't believe these ideas in the sense of assuming they're true. I don't even believe that people exist somehow after they die although I strongly suspect they do, based on both what I've read and what I've experienced. I believe these things are possible, whereas other people such as bb or my spouse believe they are not possible and that any matter-based or conventional explanation is preferable.

Rita F