Telepathy
Telepathy is the ability to read
thoughts, usually surface thoughts. Telepathy is fairly common to some degree.
The most common type is between close family or friends and manifests as
answering questions before they are asked, knowing when a family member is
thinking of you, or thinking about them and they call. Slightly less common is
the ability to read the surface thoughts of strangers. Even less common is being
able to read the deep or subconscious thoughts of people, friends, family or
anyone else. It is not, however, completely unknown. If you have the
disconcerting habit of knowing everything about a person when you meet them, you
are at least a highly gifted telepath. In crowds this may manifest as "white
noise" or constant buzzing in the ears (brain), accompanied by a feeling of
pressure on the brain. This is due to the constant noise of all of the thoughts
of others that one is unable to block. Many highly gifted telepaths are unable
to live in highly populated areas, and an apartment complex is a nightmare. They
are also prone to intense headaches. This gift may or may not be related to
proximity. For strangers, it is usual that the person must be close by (though
not always the case). Family seems to be instantly accessible, due to the
non-local nature of the gift, speed of light laws do not apply. Strong thought,
as in a disaster or violent attack, may be picked up without prior knowledge of
the person at all, if they are in the vicinity or there are enough people
concentrating on mentally screaming at the top of their lungs. This gift also
manifests more strongly if one really desires something (a strong focus of will
or emotion). To block out the noise, shielding must be practiced constantly, and
the person should put up permanent shields around their home. To develop this
gift, one should focus on an individual and relax, allowing whatever impressions
one is receiving to come through. Write them down. This is best developed with
close friends or family. Telepathy can manifest in three ways. A sending
telepath can not "hear" the thoughts of others, but instead broadcasts his/her
own thoughts to anyone even remotely sensitive. A sending telepath can influence
others, without being aware of it, by strongly desiring something. A danger is
that one who is a sending telepath, without any of the other gifts, has a
tendency to be self-centered and demanding, and petulant when they don’t get
their way. A receiving telepath can "hear" but can’t send, others don’t pick up
their thoughts. This person might believe the voices, thoughts, or impressions
of ideas to be internally generated, and might doubt his/her sanity. As is often
the case, the thoughts are incongruous, and seem to come from nowhere, but the
individual can not distinguish the internal thought from the external. Most
common is one who can both send and receive, and the response is usually enough
to convince the person that s/he is not crazy, though the gift might be hidden
out of a fear of being unusual, especially if the person’s church mistakenly
equates the gifts with possession. The "voices" or impressions gathered by the
telepath are relaying accurate, verifiable information based on the consensual
hallucination we call reality. Ask. The information is usually pretty mundane,
and the telepath, upon thinking about it, can learn to tell that the thought did
not originate in his/her own brain (for example: "I need to remember the ice
cream" when the individual is allergic to ice cream and is talking to someone on
his way to the store.) If one is hearing voices counseling them to murder or
warning that the toaster is influencing our thoughts by controlling the
television, then some mental health care is definitely in order.