Free Will versus Predestination

Posted on May 24, 2011 by Trish and Rob

 

The photos and video of the devastation in Joplin, Missouri from the powerful tornado that struck on the evening of May 22,  seemed eerily similar to the photos and videos of the tornado that swept through parts of Alabama in April.  It’s impossible to look at these photos and not feel a deep communion and profound sadness for these people. One moment, life is humming along as usual, the next moment, your world is turned inside out like a filthy sock and you’re in the middle of nature’s washing machine.

The images prompted me to wonder about why these tragedies happen to particular communities. Yes, Missouri and Alabama are prone to tornadoes in the same way that Florida and the Caribbean are prone to hurricanes or that the countries perched on the rim of fire are prone to earthquakes and tsunamis. But why Joplin and not Springfield, Missouri, just 74 miles away?

Why did Hurricane Andrew in 1992 flatten Homestead, Florida and not nearby Miami?

Why did the Indonesian tsunami hit where it did and not some spot two hundred miles away?

Does the mass consciousness in a particular place attract such a disaster for some unknown reason? Do the individuals involved agree at some unconscious level to be involved in something like this? Just how far does free will go? Do we have any free will at all?

Years ago, when I read The Bridge of San Luis Rey, I was struck by the synchronicity of how five people ended up on a rope suspension bridge in  Lima, Peru in 1714 that subsequently collapsed, killing the five individuals. The novel, published in 1927, was Thornton Wilder’s second and won a Pulitzer Prize in 1928.  The story is told by a Franciscan monk who witnessed the tragedy and investigated the lives of the victims, seeking  an answer to why these particular five were in the wrong place at the wrong time.

On a smaller more individual scale, the same question can be asked. Shortly before actor Christopher Reeve was thrown from a horse and became a quadrapalegic, he played a paralyzed police officer in the HBO special Above Suspicion. Was the role a kind of dry run – a synchronicity – for what later happened to him? Reeve ultimately became the spokesman for individuals with spinal cord injuries. Did he agree to that role before he was born? Was free will operating or was this a random event?

Nothing, in my mind, is more heartbreaking  than the loss of a child. Personally, I don’t think I would survive it. Yet, people do. Several individuals who frequent our blog have lost children. What I’ve always wondered is whether child and parent agree to the possibility of this event before the child’s birth – or perhaps even farther back – or if it’s just a random tragedy.

The woman who has cut my hair for the last 20 years lost her son several years ago to an oxycontin overdose. She feels it was God’s will. I actually had done her son’s chart a few years earlier and told  her he needed to be very careful with drugs, that the possibility of overdose was in his chart.

She reminded me of that not long after her son died and over the years has recounted the ways in which her son’s death forced her to grow, to evolve as a spiritual being.

If we’re born with free will, then  perhaps there are experiences we agree to explore in our present lives – our appointments with destiny, an oxymoron in the free will scheme of things. Then the event approaches and maybe we’re allowed to back out, to choose something else, or to go ahead as planned. One of the Weather Channel anchors choked up while viewing the ruin of Joplin, Missouri. Only ten minutes before the tornado struck, he and his crew had to pull off the road into Joplin because of the intense and violent hail. If they hadn’t been held up, they would have been in the middle of the tornado. Or, as another anchor put it, You and your crew might be dead.

If we follow this in a quantum sense, was an alternate reality created when he and his crew got held up? The Many Worlds Theory of quantum physics says that for every decision we make – or don’t make – an alternate path is created.

In the final scenes of Sphere, Michael Crichton explores this idea. The novel Replay, by Ken Grimwood, remains one of my favorites for its exploration of the strange quantum reality of the afterlife.  The movies Sliding Doors and The Source Code also explore these concepts. Although we haven’t seen The Adjustment Bureau, I’ve heard this movie explores the idea of free will versus predestination.

What if. Our lives, as lived from day to day, seem to be predicated on these two words. But perhaps the larger world is also built on this same premise. As above, so below.Makes sense. But really, I don’t have any  answers on this topic. I’ve just got  lot of questions.

 

 

Posted in Uncategorized | 45 Comments

Graduation Signs

Posted on May 23, 2011 by Trish and Rob

Travel often attracts synchronicities and our recent trip to Sarasota, Florida for Megan’s college graduation was no exception. Odd little synchronicities kept popping up.

1) On our first night, Megan took us to her favorite college drinking hole. We were sitting at the corner of the bar, music playing loudly, when I noticed a television nearby was showing a movie with subtitles. I glanced up and saw Mel Gibson. I looked again and caught a brief glimpse of a reptilian alien, and knew it was Signs.

That caught my interest because I’d recently decided I wanted to see that movie again. I didn’t think much of it the first time, but decided to give it another try. In fact, Signs was at the top of our list on Netflix.  I was about to mention the synchro to Trish when a subtitle came up with the Gibson character saying: “There are no coincidences.”

2) When we checked into our hotel room, we saw that we had a spa bath. We mentioned that we couldn’t remember seeing a bathtub, much less a spa tub, in a hotel room.

The next morning, we went downstairs to the lobby for breakfast and picked up a copy of USA Today. I scanned the summary headlines on the left column of the front page and was surprised to see one that read: “Where are the bathtubs? Most Hotels Go Shower Only.”

Besides being a synchronicity, it was an odd article to feature, even as a brief capsule, on the front page above the fold. If it wasn’t so visible, we probably wouldn’t have noticed it. It was almost as if a special newspaper was published just for us to give us a bathtub synchro!

3) Besides attending Megan’s graduation, we were also helping her move out of her dorm room. She’s on crutches with her broken foot and needed help. On one trip down to our car I carried a piece of wood about three feet long and a foot and a half wide. On one side was painted a single word in red: LOVE. It had been hanging on Megan’s wall.

As I walked down the sidewalk leading from the dorm, an attractive young woman walked toward me. As she came closer, I noticed her t-shirt featured a single word: LOVE.

I fumbled with my board for a moment, thinking of flashing her my LOVE, but then she was past me and moving on. If I’d been quicker, I might’ve even greeted her, ‘Hi, Love,’ and raised my board. Instead, I just turned to Trish and said, “Hey, did you see that girl’s t-shirt?”

Maybe it’s a sign., love is all around us… so let’s bathe in it.

 

 

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Soul Mates – or What?

Posted on May 22, 2011 by Trish and Rob

This amazing video certainly reveals what we don’t know about our animal companions. I’ve never seen anything like this cat and owl – playing, coddling, obviously buddies.

 

 

Posted in Uncategorized | 10 Comments

The May 21, 2011 Alignment and Doomsday Prediction

Posted on May 21, 2011 by Trish and Rob

 

Every so often, the doomsayers come up with a date when the world is going to end, when the rapture will begin, when the world will start to unravel at the seams, shaken apart by massive earthquakes, floods, eruptions. God is always responsible, of course, and supposedly has left us clues in the Bible, particularly in the new testament. December 21, 2012 is one such date. Another target date is today, May 21, 2011. According to this article, at 6 PM local time, a massive earthquake will hit the rim of fire and all the true believers will fly toward heaven and everyone else will suffer 153 days of torment until the universe and the planet are destroyed. Harold Camping, who made the prediction, has predicted the end of the world before, in 1994. Obviously, that prediction didn’t happen.

Here’s a list of the best 10 failed predictions about doomsday.

Gypsy woman asked us the other day if we were going to do a post on the planetary alignment for today. Since we’ve been busy with work and Megan’s graduation, I hadn’t been following the weird news on the internet and hadn’t even looked at what’s coming up astrologically. So after we got her email, I put up some astro charts and took a look.

The alignment the doomsayers are referring to occur in earth signs – Taurus and Capricorn. The planets involved are: Mercury, Venus, Mars, and Pluto. I’ve circled them in the chart above. The three planets together in that slice of the chart labeled 9 (9th house) are Mercury, Mars, and Venus. That loner in the slice labeled 5 (5th house) is Pluto.

The first three planets are closely conjunct in Taurus; that means they are within a degree or two of each other. The fourth planet, Pluto, forms a beneficial angle called a trine (120 degrees) to these three planets.  Jupiter is in there with these three, but it’s in the latter degrees of fire sign Aries, It could figure into broader picture, but not until June, when it enters Taurus.

Just five days earlier, on May 16, I actually noticed this configuration when I was looking at Rob’s solar return chart for his birthday on that day. I thought: wow, this looks really good for him, since he’s a triple earth sign. I didn’t look at this configuration and think: Holy crap, the world is going to end, the sky is falling, god is sending thunderbolts and chaos and havoc our way, head for safety. Here’s why:

Mercury governs communication and travel. Venus governs romance, love, beauty and art, and money. Mars governs sexuality, aggression, the ways in which we pursue what we desire. Venus is yin, female; Mars is yang/male. Pluto governs irrevocable change, transformation, the underworld, the power structures in our world.

Taurus, the sign in which three of these planets now reside,  is the most stubborn in the zodiac, both resolute and sensual, and usually finishes what he starts. He may not move any faster than a snail, but one way or another, he finishes the marathon. Taurus is dependable, steady, a rock. Capricorn, the sign in which Pluto now resides, is one of the more focused signs of the zodiac.

In 2008, when Pluto entered Capricorn, the financial markets collapsed, the U.S. elected its first Afro-American president, the health care debate ensued. Big, profound changes. This was Pluto doing his thing, transforming stuff from the bottom up, then asking us to rebuild from the ashes. Pluto will be in Capricorn until 2024 when Pluto moves into Aquarius, the structures we see now in our societies, cultures, and countries, either won’t exist anymore or will exist in some new and hopefully improved form.

On May 21, Pluto forms a beautiful, exact angle with Mars. This aspect should energize all of us. We become aware of just how powerful we are as individuals and if there are enough of us, we create a collective voice,  a momentum, and become like a force of nature, capable of bringing about profound change.

On the 21st, Pluto also forms close and beneficial angles to Mercury and Venus…wow, are you kidding me? The only world that may fall apart that day will be social media. Your twitter account overloads, you get so many hits on your facebook page, blog or website that the server can’t sustain it. Your love life soars through the roof, your muse is breathing down your neck, you could be ’re locked into some sort of obsessive/compulsive thing in a relationship where personal power issues surface. In terms if travel, you miss your flight to Madrid, Madagascar,  Monaco. But hey, so what. You write the great American novel while hanging around the airport.

If all these planets were in Aries, the sign of the warrior, or if an eclipse were involved, then maybe we would be talking about potential earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. Yes, Taurus and Capricorn are earth signs, but that doesn’t mean they rule the planet. This May 21 stuff, like the 2012 hype, like Y2K, seems to be mostly about fear. Be afraid, be very afraid…by now, we all recognize this mantra and its purpose.

So, astrologically, it doesn’t look as if the end of the world is imminent. But I can’t speak for the biblical predictions.  Even if the doomsayers are right, what can you do about it? Nothing at all. Sure, we live in weird, uncertain times. But if the planet is about to crack open beneath your feet, if the Atlantic and Pacific oceans are rushing into your state and town, if the sky is falling, the only thing any of us can do is to live our lives moment to moment, doing our best, harming no one, and embracing those we love.

In the end, isn’t that what our journey is about on the third rock from the sun?

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There’s a funny postscript to this story. A group of atheists – who will definitely be left behind in the Christian doomsday scenario – have formed a business: they will rescue the pets of those who ascend in the rapture. They already have 259 clients who paid $135 for the rescue of their animal companions.

Posted in doomsday | 23 Comments

More Trickster Stuff

Posted on May 20, 2011 by Trish and Rob

Trickster billboards & more….Well, some of these might be photo-shopped, but they’re still funny.  If not, there are some good trickster synchros among them.

Thanks to Hillary Hemingway for forwarding and all the others who forwarded behind her.

 

 

 

Posted in trickster | 9 Comments

Bye-bye Newt

Posted on May 19, 2011 by Trish and Rob

Here’s a political synchronicity courtesy of Saturday Night Live, a show that – like Newt Gingrich – survives on its lauded heyday long ago. Except, SNL certainly will outlast Newt’s campaign for the Republican nomination for the U.S. presidency. After a week of foot-in-mouth statements undermining his own party, it appears the Newtster is on his way out less than two weeks after entering the race.

In fact, that matter is at the heart of the synchro. You see, the weekend before Newt formally announced his intention to run for prez, SNL performed a political skit featuring several possible Republican candidates in a debate. They included ‘Newt’ not only because it was apparent he would to step into the race, but he was also an easy target for SNL humor.

The debate host poses this question to him: “Newt Gingrich, you’re never going to be president and I have a feeling you don’t really want to be — would you like to duck out early?”

Newt readily agrees and walks away from the debate. The skit was funny at the time, but now it appears precognitive as well. You can watch it here. Newt’s departure appears three minutes into the skit.

The lesson: if you’re running for president as a Republican, it’s probably not a good idea to call the party’s plan to destroy Medicare as ‘radical right-wing social engineering.’ Nearly every GOP member of the House of Representatives voted in favor of turning Medicare into a voucher program run by insurance companies. The vote has not been received well by seniors, a crucial voting block, and now Newt has given the Democrats more ammunition to use in the races next year against many of those GOP congressmen and women, who are up for re-election.

Rob

Posted in global synchro, politics | 10 Comments

Synchronicity or Deception?

Posted on May 18, 2011 by Trish and Rob

 

Okay, the upper two frames are from Cinderella. Yes, there’s a similarity. The princes in both frames are dressed in a similar way – the red jacket, the sash, the black trousers.

Now look at the lower frames. The women to the left are Fergie’s daughters – the prince’s cousins. The cartoon women in the right are Cinderella’s evil stepsisters. The colors of the dresses in both frames are nearly identical. The weird hats that Fergie’s daughters wore are eerily similar to the odd feather things the stepsisters are wearing.

My first reaction was, Wow, cool synchro. But when I showed the frames to Rob, he shook his head. “I think someone changed the colors of the stepsisters’ dresses.”

Time to Google it.

Here’s the the you tube of what looks like the same scene.

 

Turns out Rob is right. What I learned from this is to check what can be checked before saying it’s a synchro!

 

 

Posted in synchro or deceptions | 6 Comments

When our Stories Come True

Posted on May 17, 2011 by Trish and Rob

 

 

 

 

Nancy Pickard wrote this piece for a writers’ blog, the lipstick chronicles. When I read it, I asked if we could repost it. It illustrates how creativity can tap into the future, how writers sometimes come up with scenariors and characters that are actually precognitive.

We’ve posted several synchros that are similar:   Edgar Allan Poe’s unfinished sea adventure about the cannibalism of a young cabin boy, Richard Parker, that eerily mirrors an actual event that happened 47 years after Poe stopped working on his novel;  Morgan Robertson’s novel Futility, about an unsinkable ship that was written 14 years before the Titanic went down, I also had a similar experience with a novel I  wrote called Storm Surge.

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It’s spooky when scenes from my books come true.

That happened just a couple of weeks ago, in Abilene, Ks., but before I tell you what happened there, I’ll tell you what happens in the book:

In The Virgin of Small Plains, our heroine goes with three women friends to a restaurant in the small town.  As they travel there, they’re aware of severe storm warnings.  At the restaurant, while they’re seated at a round wooden table, one of them looks out the windows and notices that the sky has turned seriously ominous. She tells the others, and they all get up and troop to the windows to look.  At that moment, a tornado warning siren blares.  The women hurry to the restaurant basement with the rest of the customers, except for our heroine who hangs back to stare at the boiling clouds.

In Abilene, our heroine (me) goes with three women to a restaurant in that small town.  (The photo is of the restaurant, “The Kirby House.”)

As we travel there, we’re aware of severe storm warnings.  At the restaurant, while we’re seated at a round wooden table, I look out the windows and noticed that the sky has turned seriously ominous.  I tell the others, and we all get up and troop to the windows to look.  At that moment, a tornado warning siren blares.  We hurry to the restaurant basement with the rest of the customers, except for our foolish heroine who hangs back to stare at the boiling clouds and to exclaim, “Wow, this is just like in my book!”

Years ago, I wrote a book called Dead Crazy that featured–God knows why–a victim who was an old woman who collected porcelain pigs, plastic pigs, pigs made of every craft material.

Her body was found in her bathtub, with pigs floating around her.  (Why in the world did I ever think this was an attractive idea??)  About three years after the book’s publication, I opened the local paper to read of an old woman who had been murdered.  She collected porcelain pigs.  Her body was found in her bathtub.  At least there were no pigs in there with her!

Then there’s the story of the bird who went missing in my book and the one who went missing in real life, and how similar their happy endings are.  Again, this is from The Virgin of Small Plains, which I’m beginning to think I spirited out of the same ether that creates real life.

In the book, a big red parrot escapes during the aforementioned tornado. His current owner, Abby, is heartsick to lose him and puts up signs, etc., all over town.  His original owner was Abby’s teenage love, Mitch.  In the novel, Mitch shows up in town after a 16-year absence.  He goes to his parents’ home.  The big red parrot just happens to fly into the back yard at that moment when Mitch is there.  There just happens to be an old cage in the basement, and Mitch collects the bird, glad (and amazed, as are we all) to be reunited with his old parrot again.

When I wrote that, I thought, “nobody’s ever going to believe this.”

But I left it in, because that’s what happened, dammit.  I can’t help it if it’s the truth!

Now here’s what happened a few months after Virgin came out:

I have Friends With Birds.  Cockatiels.  One day, one of the birds escaped and flew away.  My friends were heartsick, just as Abby was in the book.  We put posters on posts, just as in the book. A week passed, the temperature was dropping, we were sure the bird was a goner in more ways than one.

They got their beloved bird back, just as in the book!  Here’s how. . .

On the day it flew away, it apparently headed straight toward Kansas City, Mo, where it landed in the back yard of people who keep Cockatiels!!

They had an old cage, and they brought the bird in, just as in the book.

The happy ending to this real life story is that the people who found the bird finally saw one of the “lost bird” notices my friends had put in the local papers, and called to say, “We have him.”

And what is the moral of that story to me, as a writer?  It’s that I can trust my instincts about what is “true.”  Just because something is a wild coincidence doesn’t mean it can’t happen.

The uncanniness doesn’t end with stories that come true after we make up our fictional ones.  Sometimes things from our books come true before our books are written:

Since publishing Virgin, two people have told me of murders in their small towns that were nearly identical to what I used in my novel, right down to the cover-up and the same roles that the characters played in the real-life towns. I have no memory of every hearing of those actual murders, and yet I re-created them in my book!  How can that be?

I suspect what happened is not so much uncanny as it is the strong likelihood that I did learn about those cases years ago, they stuck in my subconscious, and then they percolated up as “plots” that I thought I made up.  I’ll never know for sure if that’s what happened in my creative process.  The whole thing gives me the shivers anyway, whatever the explanation.  I’m horrified that my plot actually happened to (at least) two women.

 

Posted in creativity, n pickard, precognition | 28 Comments

The Many Faces Of…

Posted on May 16, 2011 by Trish and Rob

May 16 is an important day around here. It’s Rob’s birthday! So I decided to honor his birthday by sharing some of the many faces of this fascinating guy:

Here’s Rob, the yogi. This photo was part of out book called Astro-Yoga, a combination of yoga and astrology, based on a system of yoga that Rob created.

Rob, windsurfer.  Hood River, Oregon.

Rob, bicyclist. This is one of the bikes he rides like the wind, helmet and all. Those feet belong to Megan!

Rob, teacher, mentor, dad. Aruba. He passed on his love of windsurfing to Megan.

This is Noah, one  of Rob’s major fans,  featured here checking out something in the driveway, and probably trying to figure out how to get to Rob, who was on the other side of the car.

Rob, synchro guy, hubby and buddy.

Rob, writer. This is the cover for Double Heart, which will be out later this year.

I’m sure there are some faces of Rob I have forgotten to include! At any rate, happy birthday, Rob!

Posted in birthdays | 25 Comments

A Stabbing Synchro

Posted on May 15, 2011 by Trish and Rob

When  I saw the little man pictured above with all the knifes stuck in him, I did a double-take. I’d never seen such an unusual and provocative knife holder. But then I was standing next to Jeff Lindsay, creator of Dexter,  in his kitchen. Jeff writes the Dexter novels about one of the most unusual protagonists to appear in print in a mystery series, and on the small screen, where Dexter is Showtime’s top television series.

Dexter is not only a blood splatter analyst for the Miami PD, but also a killer who hunts down other murderers who have escaped justice. He uses knives to eliminate his victims and proceeds to chop them up and dump them into Biscayne Bay. Fortunately, the gruesome stuff is left to the viewer’s imagination.

When I asked about the knife holder, I was reminded of an earlier visit in which Jeff was moving about the kitchen with one of those knifes in hand preparing to chop up some vegetables for a salad. So as Jeff took the blade to a head of lettuce, he complained in a guy-to-guy conversation that no one ever accused Michael C. Hall of being a potential mass murderer because he played the role of Dexter. But people were sometimes suspicious about him, Jeff said, because he wrote the books.

I have to admit I kept my eyes on the knife as he was talking. I was never quite sure  whether he was intentionally telling me the story while he was wielding the knife as a joke or the salad chopping and story just came together coincidentally.

Maybe that wasn’t a synchronicity, but his story about the knife holder turned out to be a good one. He was in Key West walking along Duval Street when he got some interesting news. A check had just arrived. It was the first royalty check he’d received after Dexter had aired on Showtime. It was a surprising amount that instantly took the family out of their tenuous financial state.

“At that moment, I turned and looked into a window and there was this knife holder. It was so symbolical seeing it right then that I had to have it.” He bought three of them, one to keep, one for his agent, and one for his editor.

As Jeff finished the story, Trish walked in from the porch with Hilary. I pointed out the knife holder and related the story. “That’s a great synchro. Take a picture of it.”

And so I did.

 

 

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