Thanks for sharing your thoughts and experience, Deb. You also, Konane.
I can't claim I've ever doubted that there's a strong metaphysical element to the numbers and their behavior, once I began looking closely at them. Judging from the number of anecdotes on the Mystic Forum I'm also inclined to lean to a view that people who are already into metaphysics and mystical matters seem to have a somewhat 'special' sensitivity to whatever drives those behaviors, making them a bit more predictable for them on occasion than the numbers might be otherwise.
It's possible to poo-poo anecdotal evidence as has been done many times on these threads. It's also possible to simply discount the patterns, behaviors and improbabilities as something that 'just happens', is 'merely coincidence', is inevitable in the old infinite monkeys and typewriters theme of producing a flawless copy of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
I think I've made it plain that I'm a believer that much of metaphysics is nothing more than physics that hasn't yet been sealed with the approval of physicists. A growing body of academic physicists are beginning to privately express a similar view, though they aren't in love with it and, in fact, some are being dragged kicking and screaming into it by evidence before them.
I've done a lot of thinking about those numbers and their behaviors over the past few months. One of the concepts that recently began to gel for me is the actuality that the numbers are, by definition, a metaphysical phenomenon. They and their behaviors are an artificial construct of the human mind, the warp and woof of which has been imposed since the first elements of human thinking began to emerge. Numbers might well have been the first abstraction ever to occur to the human mind.
If this is true, I'm still not ready to concede that the weight of human thought history and tradition isn't imposing a mechanical behavior on the numbers as they appear in lotteries. I'm yet pursuing both avenues in trying to understand them.
Jack
Edited in as an afterthough:
Although it's popped out of the deeps a time or two, this thread is probably going to drop off the bottom of the page and vanish before too much more time passes. For that reason, I'd like to answer in public a question I've been asked in private several times.
At the beginning of this tread I offered, as a means of rattling crystalized denial and belief systems, to do some online pain killing for anyone who wanted it, or needed it. That offer is still open. But the only contact I've had from any reader wishing to accept the offer was a complaint of frequent migraine headaches. The person wasn't suffering from one at the time I was contacted, but mentioned a physical problem that might have been the source.
I attempted to work on the problem that person believed might be the source, leaving permission to contact me on the next occasion a headache was happening, or failing that, if the 'source treatment' worked to let me know if no headaches emerged in a month or six weeks, just by way of feedback.
That might have been a month ago and I've heard nothing more.
I'd surmise we're a surprisingly healthy, pain-free online community.