younger generation believers...with experiences, page 3

I am of a similar age to you (26,) and when I was younger (12, 13) I had some pretty unusual experiences as well as dreams. As a result I discovered that my mother had had similar experiences when she was a teenager, on into her early adulthood. At that age, I was totally convinced that something paranormal or alien was happening to me/us.

However, with greater age, distance, time, perspective, and years of introspection and life changes since then, I've become unconvinced. There are a lot of alternative explanations for what we experienced, and dreams could always just be dreams, however strange they may have been.

That said, there has always been one experience that will always plague me, because I simply remain at a total loss to explain in. One night I, my mother, and several friends all had the same dream on the same night. The events in the dream were initially similar to the stereotypical "mass abduction" phenomenon you might read about, but devolved into something more human oriented, confusing, and frightening in nature. Not only were the dreams the same, but the details of who did what when, where each of us stood, what each of us did, etc. all matched. My mother remembered seeing a street sign from her perspective in the dream, and so she, I, and one the only friend who was willing to tag along with us went to that street to look for a location similar to that in the dream. I couldn't have been older than 14 at the time; my memory is a bit fuzzy on my exact age off the top of my head, but I have journals that would pin point it.

Lo and behold, we found a place that was not only similar or reminiscent of our dream, but which had identical topography, landmark locations (such as trees, a hillside I slid down in terror fleeing something none of us can remember, the parking lot my mother was "kept" in while myself and other children were taken to a nearby playground for whatever was happening to us,) space between locations, directions that had to be traveled between one location and another, and "feel." We even came back at night to see if it was just like the dream, and it was so frightening that we had to leave. My friend even stopped talking to me shortly thereafter.

I'm a skeptical person. Skepticism, contrary to popular perception, doesn't mean not believing; it means not believing without proof, but also refraining from making any assertions of your own, such as the assertion that these things do not take place, without proof. In essence, I neither believe nor disbelieve. However, I know something happened that I can't explain. I just can't make any sort of assertion as to what, because I simply do not know.

To answer the OP's questions, I do feel a powerful empathy for other beings, and a strong connection to the cosmos, the stars, and nature. My mother also has this. Even as a child, when she was having her experiences and dreams (those which could be explained via mundane extrapolation,) she could "sense the life" in things like plants, rivers, etc. according to her. We keep an open mind.