My mother said similar things before her death, and I accepted them with love while privately dismissing them. But since then I've softened a little. I still don't believe in those ideas in a literal, empirical sense, but they have emotional value for me anyway.

I guess I'm trying to say that, at least for me, it's been more pleasant to entertain these ideas as comforting fantasy, and I don't think that small personal allowance has eroded my more practical abilities elsewhere. Not struggling so much against this kind of thinking has freed me in a certain way.