Welcome to The Mystical Underground

Today at the dog park, it occurred to me that the reason I write about dog park politics (aside from the human politics!) is that I’m fascinated by  what dogs reveal about human nature.

Here you see Cody, the husky, and Red, the hound, playing king of the mountain. Just moments before, these two dogs and Noah were trying to climb a tree where a squirrel chattered high in the branches. Moments after this picture was taken, Cody and Red were racing across the park with a young puppy, whom Cody subsequently took down, probably in the same way that wolves do in the wild- grab neck,  flip onto back, sever carotid. Except that Cody never bites down hard anything to sever anything. This is how some domesticated dogs play. By then, Noah was chasing a ball that Rob had tossed him. That’s how he plays- balls, Frisbees, toss, fetch, retrieve. But he does it in his own time, at his own pace, he can’t be rushed or pushed.

So I’m watching all this, taking it in,  and talking with Colleen, the official dog whisperer of the park (owns three dogs and usually brings two or three others to the park that she’s dog sitting) about her decision to move back to Michigan, where she’s from. If Colleen were a dog, she would be a younger version of her Belgian Shepherd, Thunder. He’s a big, gentle dog, more bark than bite. Everyone knows him. Every time he sees any dogs in his pack in disputes, he lumbers to his feet and hobbles toward them, his hoarse bark warning them to back off, to just break it up or he will start biting and snapping.

Right. Like Thunder would do that.

While we’re talking, a young border collie – whose name is June Bug -circles through the park, a beautiful little thing looking for something to do, searching  for a task to accomplish, a goal to achieve. Her owner is a young woman with a toddler – a boy – hurrying after the border collie, and a baby in a papoose on her chest.  “June needs a ball or a Frisbee,” I remark.

“She’s our fourth border collie and different from the ones we’ve had before.”

She starts talking about the differences and I’m thinking of Cassie’s border collie, Willow, and Bill’s border collie, Connie. These two dogs are tireless workers. Toss a ball or a Frisbee, and they can outrun a Greyhound, and you’ll have to toss and toss for hours to satisfy these dogs. They are bred for tasks.

In this pic, Willow is the black and white dog behind Noah.

++

Once a week, Connie and Bill take their border collies  to a sheep-herding facility several hours north of here. And this is where their DNA kicks in, where the thing for which they are bred really shines.  I’m glad we don’t have a border collie.  I’m delighted that Nika is a   short fur border collie mixed with a lab, but admit that I am fascinated by border collies. At some level, border collies speak to who I am.

I am happiest when I have a task, a goal, a purpose. If there’s a deadline on top of that, so much the better. If  I were a dog, I would chase that ball, that Frisbee. I would herd those sheep, I would yearn for a goal and purpose.

Tasks, goals, they seem to be key for border collies. Cassie, for instance, leaves Willow at home when she goes to the barn every day to take care of Tami Hoag’s horses. But she makes sure that Willow has tasks. “Every morning, I create a treasure hunt for him. I hide little treats through the apartment, with a big treat promised at the end – a marrow bone or an older marrow bone that I’ve filled with peanut butter and hidden somewhere.”

Wow, I thought. Lucky Willow. Not only does he get to sheep herd once a week, but he has a daily treasure hunt. This is my kind of world.

And so my epiphany was ultimately simple: I am a border collie. Rob is a golden retriever. Our daughter is a cross between the two, a hybrid like a labradoodle – labrador/poodle  mix -that you might call a collie retriever or a golden border. I’m not sure what this insight means in the larger scheme of things. I don’t know how it may work itself into my fiction. Dogs, after all, are not humans and the way we humans actually interact with each other MAY BE  more complex. Note the MAY BE.

Dogs works out their issues in the park. We humans work out our issues in daily life. But it always comes back to the central question:  aren’t we all hybrids of one kind or another? Don’t we somehow make it all work?

In 2009, when I started writing Esperanza, our neighbors’ daughter stopped by one afternoon to say hi to Megan, who was home on a break from college. Madison – Maddie – was four then, a fearless cutie curious about everything. She’s still that way. Show her a bug, a reptile, even a rodent and she’ll figure out a way to pick it up without getting bitten so she can examine it. A biologist in the making.

When I was casting around for names for my Esperanza characters, that name, Maddie, kept pushing up against me. I knew one of my characters had to have that name. My protagonist’s 17-year-old niece got the honor.  My Maddie probably won’t pick up reptiles and snakes, but has an otherwise fearless approach to life, just like  our neighbor Maddie. I must find the answers on my own.

After Maddie’s mom read Esperanza, she asked if the character Madison was named after her daughter. You got it, I said.

“I knew it, I just knew it. Okay, so what happens to her in the sequel? You’ve left us hanging – Dominica just took over Maddie’s body and fled Esperanza.”

“I don’t know what happens yet.” At the time, I was still writing Ghost Key.

Ghost Key, The sequel to Esperanza, was actually two books. The first one took place in Hood River, Oregon, my agent hated it, my editor wasn’t crazy about it. So I rewrote it and set it on Cedar Key, Florida. I had spent only a week in Hood River, on vacation, and should have known it would never work as a location. With just a couple of exceptions, my 35 novels have taken place in Florida or in imaginary places.  If I write about a place, I have to know that place.  I loved Hood River, but I wasn’t there long enough to get to know it. I’ve lived in Florida off and on since 1963. I know Florida. Big difference for a writer.

So I rewrote the novel, which took about seven months,located the story in Florida, primarily on Cedar Key,  and the story worked. It’s about what happens to Maddie after Dominica seizes her and flees Ecuador. When Maddie’s mom finished GK, she stopped by the house, hands on her hips, and grinned. “Okay, in this next book, Trish, you have got to include an inside joke. I mean, you’re already using my daughter’s name. So now use something that only you and I and our families will get.”

Well, I’m happy to report that such a scene worked its way into Apparition.  I ran across it this evening, as I was reading through the revision notes my editor sent.  It involves these guys:

the kitty gargoyles

Copper  – neighbors’ cat – and our Simba cat, look like twins. They came into our and  respective lives within just a week or so of each other. Copper has amber eyes, Simba has green eyes, that’s the quickest way to tell them apart. Some mornings when I wake up with an orange cat meowing at the bathroom window to get out, I think it’s Simba. It turns out to be Copper. In Apparition, Copper is named Cobre, the Spanish equivalent.  So there it is, Maddie’s mom. The end of chapter 3, the inside joke!

And thank you for naming your daughter Maddie.

One day, Rob said to me, “You can spend an entire day writing and never speak to anyone except me and Megan, when she calls.”

Excuse me, I’m a Gemini and those of us born under the sign of the twins talk all the time. Today for instance, I had a long conversation with Nancy Atkinson  through email – about what synchronicity might be.  Nancy is writing a book and you get a sense of where she’s going from this initial email:

Nancy:

I am going in a different direction in the book. I now believe we are talking frequency in brain wave functions as being a huge part of the Shift. There is some very FASCINATING new information on brain mapping that is truly ground breaking. I think it can be interwoven with the coherence info regarding the heart, but I am not quite there yet. I am going to need more time to pull the two subjects together, but I think I am really on to something! It all ties into the frequency changes we are seeing in the Schumann Resonance. I think human beings are evolving through this frequency change. (It may also being driving some people crazy.) But with the new brain mapping you can actually see the changes in the brain through the frequency of thoughts. People will be able to actually learn to program their brains to go in the direction they want it to go.

This new neuroscience may also explain synchronicity. We only have to thoughts that vibrate at a certain frequency for 17 seconds before one of the laws of physics kicks in and our energy begins to attract like energy. By 68 seconds we are in a familiarity mode in our brain. This lightening fast.

We may be able to actually induce synchronicity…

Trish:

Abraham Hicks says something similar about 17 seconds.

I don’t know about inducing synchronicity. I don’t think I’d want to. Part of the magic of the phenomenon is what it means, is it a confirmation or warning etc. If we induce synchros, then what  are they telling us? What’s the message? What would be the point?

Nancy:

Do you know where I can find the Hicks reference to 17 seconds?

Trish:

I just remember it from one of their books, can’t recall which one. And it may not have been 17 seconds. It might be 60. I’ll ask Megan. She’s the Hicks expert

I’ve often thought that if synchronicity could be unraveled, as a phenomenon, it would probably turn out to be the theory of everything that Einstein was looking for.

Physicist David Bohm believed that everything in the universe, even time, unfolded from the implicate order in the universe/reality. My sense is that synchronicity exists along the border between the implicate (enfolded) and explicate (what manifests as reality) orders, that it somehow binds the two together.

Nancy

You may be right. As this new science (which is in its babyhood) unfolds, we may be able to actually “see” it working. The brain is a transponder and how well “trained” it is to receive and comprehend frequencies may actually tie into the implicate and explicate order. We know synchronicity can increase as the person starts to pay attention. What if we can map that process in the brain and then train the brain to tune into the phenomenon? That may be the tie between the seen and the unseen, between the incarnate and the discarnate.

Trish:

Megan said it’s 17 seconds – and it’s referred to in most of the Hicks’  books and CDs. If you hold a thought for 68 seconds – then stuff really begins to manifest. That process can probably be mapped in the brain, but I also think it’s part of something much larger, an expanding consciousness – and consciousness isn’t just located in the brain.  

Nancy:

Exactly! Wow. This new neuroscience has been able to map these things happening in the brain.

17 seconds to start attracting the energy you are putting out, 68 seconds for a “familiarity” neuro pathway to be established (those neuro ruts I’ve often talked about)

In other words – you need to change your thought process within 17 seconds if you don’t want to start attracting unwanted energy. It means not talking about it, not reliving it, not holding on to negativity at all if you don’t want to attract more of what you don’t want. Exactly what Hicks has been saying…

Now I have to find a link between this and the new heart coherence information. It is linked. I know it. Learning to “think” through the heart may actually be a way of creating new pathways in the brain.

Trish:

If you read Michael Talbott’s The Holographic Universe, you may find the link in there. When we talk about thinking through the heart, what we’re really talking about is acknowledging that our emotions are powerful forces, powerful attractors, and aren’t really associated with the heart – the organ – at all, but with our soul selves, our deeper selves. Another good book is Lynn Grabhorn’s Excuse Me, Your Life Is Waiting, also about the power of emotion.

Nancy:

I’ve read Michael’s book. I loved it.

The heart energy is actually the organ. It has its own neural cells! In other words – it thinks! It may be the connection to our creator – however you want to define it. We evolve from a heart, it has a stronger electromagnetic field than does the brain. My heart waves will show up in your brain waves if we are within feet apart. Your heart synchronizes with whomever you are sleeping next to. It is the actual science of the heart that I think is somehow connected to this evolutionary process. And I want to find a link to learning how to use the heart to remap the brain.

One way to think of this is if you are trying to make a decision about something – you would ask yourself – what would my heart say? By doing this over and over you remap your neural pathways in your brain to begin thinking in a higher vibrational frequency. Evolution!!

Trish:

Now I wonder if Abraham got this from a book – about the 17/68 second thing!

Sort of a synchro for me. In the new novel I’m writing, a group of psychics are in such complete attunement with each other that their brains vibrate together in theta waves and that enables them to communicate. Just finished that scene.

Nancy:

Wow. We are somehow on the same wavelength. I read something last night that is a channeled information on Theta being the frequency of evolution… This is the first I’ve heard about the 17/68 second thing. I thought it was new information coming from this research, but I could be wrong. Maybe we’re the psychics, hahahahaha

Your novel isn’t so far off actually. We are being watched constantly. Everything we do, read, say, watch, is monitored. Why is that, do you think?

Not for national security, that’s for sure. It is for a far more nefarious reason, I can assure you. They are always several steps ahead of us. We are evolving, and the powers that be want to squelch whatever they think might be a threat to them. Why do you think the NDAA was passed – drones allowed over our cities – the NSA security data centers? Your novel is not that far off from reality.

You have to wonder just exactly how you came up with the theme for your book. I think we have “helpers” that are working overtime to wake us up. Books like yours, even though fiction, may actually be serving a greater good. And isn’t that what synchronicity really is? Little signposts along the way that lead us in a direction. If we are in tuned, then we benefit. If not, they go unnoticed.

At this point, Rob and I  went to the dog park and then out to dinner and I’ve been thinking about this conversation ever since. Is synchronicity essentially as unknowable as, say, the alien agenda? Is it a perpetual conundrum? How does it actually tie our daily lives to something larger, more comprehensive? Can synchronicity be induced? And if so, does it change the context of the message?

Plenty to think about.

Every so often we hear about cats who have returned home after being lost far from their home. Scientists typically discount such stories saying that it’s probably just a stray that looks like the cat the people had lost. If you’re a cat owner, you know your cat. That explanation doesn’t hold water.

In the case of Holly, a four-year-old tortoise shell, there was no question that this is the same cat that Jacob and Bonnie Richter had lost 200 miles away. Holly has distinctive features and she also has a microchip implanted that proved the emaciated cat actually found its way home from Daytona Beach to West Palm Beach.

Science has very little knowledge about the navigation system that cats use to find their home.  “I really believe these stories, but they’re just hard to explain,” said Marc Bekoff, a behavioral ecologist at the University of Colorado. “Maybe being street-smart, maybe reading animal cues, maybe being able to read cars, maybe being a good hunter. I have no data for this.”

Or maybe cats have a psychic ability – remote viewing or clairvoyance. They can not only see a distant place and its location, but can find their way there. The Richters were camping in their RV near the Daytona Speedway along with 3,000 other RVs when something frightened Holly and she bolted away.

The Richters searched and searched for the cat, notified animal organizations and before leaving literally begged others to return the cat if they found it. Holly made it all the way to West Palm, and was just a mile from home when she staggered into the backyard of Barb Mazzola’s house on New Year’s Eve. She nursed the cat for six days and took it to a vet who found the imbedded chip and contacted the Richters. The name of the helpful vet–Dr. Beg.

Here’s the whole story.

Thanks to Vicki DeLaurentis (mom with wings) for telling us about this superb flashmob!

If you’ve ever wondered what really happened during the global financial meltdown of 2008, then you may want to put the documentary Inside Job on your list of must sees. The film, narrated by Matt Damon, is one of the best explanations of the financial and investment complexities and corruptions that led to this meltdown.

I remember how, in 2008, the presidential campaign here in the U.S. came to standstill when George W Bush stepped before the American people and announced that the financial sky was falling. Lehman Brothers and AIG collapsed. Merrill Lynch was on the verge of bankruptcy. Banks screamed for bailouts. Economies nosedived. Credit ratings went south. The investment banking system was coming apart at the seams. The culprit in this chaotic and complex was derivatives –   specifically with mortgages.

I remember how every other week or so, we received notices from a bank that our mortgage had been sold to this bank or that one.  I remember thinking, Huh? What’s this mean? I recall how the people across the street from us went bankrupt and walked away from their house. Their mortgage was underwater. For months afterward, that house was a revolving door of tenants. We never knew who was living there, but at one point, a couple of the tenants sat all day in their garage, computers  on their laps. We later realized they were using the internet connections of their neighbors.

By 2009, it was obvious that Florida and the rest of the country were in deep trouble. Foreclosed signs appeared on lawns in every neighborhood. We had friends who hadn’t paid their mortgages in months, but because no bank could prove who owned their homes, they  stayed in their homes.

Meanwhile, the story for CEOs for these greedy, corrupt countries was quite a different story. For instance, between 2000-2006, the top five execs at Lehman Brothers made over a billion dollars. When the company went belly up, these execs were allowed to keep their earnings.

Five years after this meltdown, economies are staggering along. Iceland went under. Greece is the brunt of late-night jokes. Spain and Portugal are barely keeping their heads above water. Banks are bigger than ever and the financial sector employs more than 3,000 lobbyists who help to sculpt financial policy in the U.S. Despite assurances that the local and international economies are improving, all you have to do to uncover the truth about your country, your state, your province, is to drive through your neighborhood, your community, or walk into your local bank.

In the U.S., for the first time in history, children are not more educated or prosperous than their parents.

Naomi Klein’s book, Shock and Awe, is probably one of the most lucid ever written about global finances.  John Perkins,  one of the foremost writers on shamanic practices, used to work for the IMF. His book,  Confessions of an Economic Hitman   tells this same story of corruption, from a slightly different perspective.

When Obama won the 2008 election, he appointed Timothy Geitner as the U.S. Secretary of the Treasurer. Geitner was the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York during the meltdown, so this selection bewildered me. During the meltdown, Ben Bernanke was the current chairman of the Federal Reserve, and Obama re-appointed him. Why?

As Matt Damon says at the end of this terrific documentary, the people responsible for this meltdown are still in power.

What’s wrong with this picture?

Hopefully, with Obama’s second term – where he doesn’t have to worry about re-election – this country can begin functioning again as  a democracy. This documentary captures the essence of why it’s so profoundly important.