How do we sometimes know things which we have no way of knowing?

When I was in college, I knew someone who was going through a difficult academic semester. Finals were just starting, but she told me she had a terrible feeling something was wrong at home.

She called home — hundreds of miles away — to check on everything. Her mother assured her that everything was fine and told her to just concentrate on her finals. She went back to studying, but she couldn’t shake the feeling of dread that something terrible had happened.

She finally got through with finals and called home. She found that her family had decided to hide something from her. A grandmother who she had been very close to had died — right about the time she first started experiencing the apprehensive feeling that wouldn’t leave her alone. The family had decided not to tell her until finals were over — so as not to academically sidetrack the first person in her family to go to college.

The woman was convinced that she somehow knew something was wrong, even if she never could put her finger on it. I’ve experienced this oddness in my own life. For the second time in the last week, I’ve experienced one of those inexplicable feelings today — and I have no idea what I’m sensing.

I’m rational enough that there’s a part of me that wants to ignore such feelings. I certainly can’t prove they mean anything. I’ve tried talking myself into believing the things I’ve experienced have been coincidence, but something in my gut tells me that’s not true.

So I’m left in the odd position of believing something with firm conviction which I don’t really want to believe. I’m left believing that we have ways of communicating with each other — that our mind or spirit or something inside us somehow knows how to access information that doesn’t come through the five senses which we understand.

Late last Tuesday night — actually very early Wednesday morning — I started feeling something peculiar. It was hard to pinpoint when it started, but I suddenly knew it was there. I had no way to know what it was about or what I was feeling. I felt the strong need to talk about it or to start checking on people I cared about — to see if something traumatic or troubling was happening to them.

In my gut, I know there was something going on with someone — but it has more to do with pure instinct than with reason.

Every now and then in my life, I get an odd sensation that there’s something going on somewhere — right at that moment — which is going to affect my life in a major way or which is affecting the life of someone close to me. I can’t explain it and I certainly can’t provide any evidence that it means anything, but I’ve come to trust this odd sensation.

It’s a nervous feeling — which could be about something good or bad — but it feels as though something is going on in someone else’s mind or in a conversation or an argument or some other action which will end up having a huge impact on me. Rationally, I can’t say it’s anything other than an odd intuitive feeling. But something in my gut says it’s important.

When I woke up the next morning, the feeling was gone. Since these feelings rarely happen — every two or three years, I guess — I didn’t think I’d feel it again soon.

But I woke up this morning knowing that something was wrong. Again. I can’t say what it is. I can’t say for certain who it even involves. I just knew there was a strong apprehension in me — like the sort of nervous energy that makes me want to drop everything and go fix something that’s wrong or help someone or…

That’s just the thing. I don’t know what it means or what I should do. It feels as though there’s an emergency and I want to spring into action, but there’s nothing to do — since I don’t know anything specific to do.

It’s maddening.

Some people think anything that smacks of non-rational thinking ought to be shut down as ridiculous. Those people might be right. But there are a lot more people who will quietly admit that they, too, believe they sometimes know things — even if they don’t want to admit this to people who might laugh at them.

I don’t know why I’m feeling this. I just know that every gut feeling in my body says something is going on that I should know about — something which I have no way of rationally knowing.

How do we know such things? I have no idea. I don’t even have a theory. But I’ve experienced enough — in my own life and in the lives of others — to be certain there’s something to it.

I just wish I could look clearly into some crystal ball and see what’s happening — something my spirit knows but which my rational mind doesn’t — and find out whether there’s someone I need to send love and help to.

Maybe I’m crazy, but I believe in certain things I can’t see and can’t explain. There are some things which we just know — and I’m human enough to be frustrated that I can’t know what I’m seeing.