Update on Paul the Precog Octopus

Posted on July 15, 2010 by Trish and Rob

According to an article on Huffington Post, Paul the Octopus could be worth millions – at least $4.5 million, says a PR specialist who spoke with CNN.

Pretend for a moment that he isn’t an octopus. Given his predictive record, he would make a perfect guest on Oprah, the late night talk shows, even the morning TV and radio shows. Give us your predictions, Paul, on whether BP will successfully cap the oil gusher.Or: Who will win the U.S. presidency in 2012? Or:  What’s your prediction, Paul, about the midterm elections in the U.S.? Will the Dems hold on to Congress? 

Paul apparently made his predictions based on his stomach.”Before each game, the 2 1/2-year-old octopus’ handlers placed two clear boxes in his tank, each containing a mussel snack and the flag for teams slated to faceoff. And he didn’t always favor the home team. Paul sparked a furor in Germany after he predicted the team’s 1-0 loss to Spain, and even received death threats from irate fans in the form of octopus recipes.”

We’ve talked about animals as messengers, so what does Paul tell us about ourselves and the state of the world and sports?  Well, the octopus has a well-developed brain, incredible eyesight, no bones, and its bite is poisonous to prey. Its best protection is the ability to camouflage itself, to instantly change the color and texture of its skin to match its surroundings.

The octopus has three hearts. The color of its blood is light blue. It moves through jet propulsion, temporarily blinds a predator by squirting ink at it. Most of these creatures live only a year or two (don’t like the sound of that!). Once an octopus reaches sexual maturity, it can mate several times a day. Once impregnated, the female lays tens of thousands of eggs, which  she weaves into strings and attaches to the roof of her dwelling. Until the eggs hatch a month later, she doesn’t leave her den, and dies shortly after the eggs hatch. The male also dies shortly afterward, so all these youngsters are left to fend for themselves.

If we take our cues from animal messengers based on their behaviors and lifestyles, then it’s all beginning to remind me of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, not an uplifting omen for the future.

So I think I’ll focus on those three hearts: the first pumps life, the second embraces life, the third loves life.
– Trish

Posted in octopus, world cup | 8 Comments

Synchro at the Apple Store

Posted on July 14, 2010 by Trish and Rob

                                         Manhattan’s Apple Store

We went to the Apple Store at our local mall (not the one in the photo!) to look at the new MacBooks. The man who helped us out seemed well-informed about the products, so while Megan was cruising around the store, I asked him how the iPad compared to a notebook for writing. Ever since the iPad came out, I’ve thought about how light is is compared to my notebook and if it could be a substitute for my notebook while traveling. In the course of the conversation, I explained why I was interested in an iPad. He asked what kinds of books I wrote, so I mentioned the synchronicity book.

“What’s synchronicity?” he asked.
“Meaningful coincidence.”
His eyes widened. “Oh, my life is filled with those. You want to hear a couple?”
“You bet. I’ll post them on our blog, would that be okay with you?”
“Sure.” And he proceeded to share his synchros.

On a September 1 years ago, his mother, who had cancer, slipped into a coma. He flew to New York to be with her and stayed with his brother and sisters near her bed for about a week. Her doctors didn’t have any idea whether she would regain consciousness or simply pass on and he had to return to work. He and his siblings believed their mother would die on September 19, the day of her anniversary. “And at six AM on September 19, I got a call that mom had just passed away. What are the odds?”

“Skip ahead a few years,” he went on. “My dad had slipped into a coma and wasn’t expected to live. It was February 1. My brother and sisters and I believed he would die on February 14, on our mother’s birthday.”

“And he did?”

He nodded. “But that’s not all. I don’t mean to be depressing here, but in 1975, I had an infant son who died suddenly of crib death. On the day my mother died, September 19, it would have been my son’s twenty-first birthday.”

Odds. Wow. And what are the odds of hearing stories like this at an Apple store?

Posted in apple store, deaths, local travel, parents | 14 Comments

Paul, the clairvoyant cephalopod

Posted on July 13, 2010 by Trish and Rob

Before the recently concluded World Cup competition fades to memory, we need to honor the triumph of –not Spain–but Paul, the octopus who correctly predicted the winning team eight times in a row. Paul, who lives in an aquarium in Germany, predicted the winner in Germany’s last seven games, then went on to pick Spain in the World Cup finale. Good job, Paul. You’re the toast of animal oracles worldwide!

Here’s how Wikipedia describes the cephalopod phenom.

Paul (purportedly hatched January 2008) is a common octopus living in a tank at a Sea Life Centre in Oberhausen, Germany, who is an animal oracle and now retired predictor of football matches, usually international matches in which Germany was playing. He came to worldwide attention with his 100% accurate predictions in the 2010 World Cup.
During a divination, Paul was presented with two boxes containing food in the form of a mussel, each marked with the flag of a national football team in an upcoming match. He chose the box with the flag of the winning team in four of Germany’s six Euro 2008 matches, and in all seven of their matches in the 2010 World Cup. He correctly predicted a win for Spain against the Netherlands in the World Cup final on 11 July by eating the mussel in the box with the Spanish flag on it.[1] His predictions were 100% (8/8) correct for the 2010 World Cup and 86% (12/14) correct overall. Paul was retired after the 2010 FIFA World Cup.

Okay, congrats to Spain, too, even though our friends in Aruba were greatly disappointed by the Netherlands’ 1-0 loss.

Posted in Uncategorized | 11 Comments

Samadhi, indeed

Posted on July 13, 2010 by Trish and Rob


In yoga philosophy, Samadhi  is a blissful state of consciousness induced by complete meditation. Like almost everyone else, I find it challenging to reach that state. In fact, I can think of only once where I came close to entering it.

It was at the end of a 4-day hike through Canyon de Chelly in Arizona on the Navajo Rez. I was a on a vision quest with a group of people  led by a shaman named Alberto. So as the others climbed out of the canyon to a waiting bus, I decided to sit on a boulder and meditate awhile as I gazed out over the canyon. Several people were lagging behind so I figured I had time.

Within a few minutes, I moved into a state of consciousness I’d never achieved in meditation. I lost track of time, my thoughts faded to nothingness, and I literally became the canyon. Yet, at the same time, I was aware of myself seated on the rock. I was in bliss and I didn’t want it to end.

Vaguely from a distance I heard a voice calling my name repeatedly. I slowly came out of it, and realized that Alberto was yelling at me from the road above. The bus was full and everyone was waiting to go. He’d been shouting my name off and on for several minutes. So I climbed down from my rock and rejoined the others.

I told this story to my meditation class recently as a I prepared to read a couple of passages about samadhi from an adaptation of Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, written more than 2,000 years ago. It wasn’t until a couple days before the class that I was struck by an ironic synchronicity that I’d overlooked. The book which I had selected was called, Yoga, Power and Spirit: Patanjali the Shaman. I’d picked it up a couple of years ago because I recognized the author, Alberto Villoldo. Yes, Alberto, the same Alberto who had yelled at me from the road to get off the rock, and hence out of samadhi.

Trish didn’t think this was much of a synchronicity–more of a case of awareness– maybe because Alberto hasn’t surfaced in the present in any form unrelated to my meditation class. She has a point, but it still struck me as meaningful since I hadn’t consciously connected my canyon story with the book I was using for the meditation on samadhi.

Here’s a portion of what I read.

Meditating by a lake,
the yogi becomes the lake,
Meditating by a fire,
the yogi becomes 
the flame,
the crackling branch,
the oak,
 the acorn.
She becomes one with the object of her meditation.
She becomes the red-rock canyon wall
or soft and green like the moss.
She smells the rose and there is only the fragrance,
No thought of roses
She achieves samadhi. 

Posted in bliss, books, meditation, writers | 9 Comments

The Numinous Quality of Clusters

Posted on July 12, 2010 by Trish and Rob

from soul  cards

The word “clusters” conjures various images: clusters of stars, grapes, leaves, people, experiences. But synchronicities often occur in clusters – notably in numbers or the repetition of names, phrases, songs, objects. We’ve posted quite a few synchros about number clusters. Another type of cluster is simultaneous discoveries.

Sir Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz, working independently  of each other, discovered calculus. Charles Darwin and Alfred Russell Wallace came up with the theory of evolution at the same  time. Author and physicist F. David Peat, writing in Synchronicity: The Bridge Between Matter and Mind, asks, “Do such concepts and insights exist in some enfolded, symbolic form within the unconscious mind? Or are they approached within nature, not directly but in some hidden way which must be unfolded within the languages of art, literature, music or science?”

Jung also saw synchronicity as the reason independent researchers can come up with the same results or knowledge at the same time. Congealing in the unconscious is the need for answers. Searching for a solution in their own ways, researchers resolve the problem simultaneously. Peat points out that some synchronicities could involve “becoming linked with the environment in a special way, anticipating events or sensing some underlying pattern to the world.”

This special link to the environment that Peat mentions might explain the planetary empath phenomenon or why some of us have such strong connections to animals, certain places. When Jung experienced clustered synchronicities, he described them as having a “numinous quality,” a characteristic many people mention when talking or writing about their synchronicities. It’s as if the hand of the cosmos sweeps into our lives and shakes things up so magically that we no longer see the world or ourselves in the same way. Come to think of it, that’s how I feel every time I stumble across a synchronicity on a blog or website or whenever I experience one myself. A sense of wonder.
– Trish

Posted in clusters, independent discoveries | 21 Comments

The Blog Universe

Posted on July 11, 2010 by Trish and Rob
 

You spend time posting to your blog and creating a blog that attracts visitors. Blogger allows you to back up your blog in the export section of your dashboard. But it’s in xml, a language that is basically useless unless you’re transferring your blog to another server or restoring it. As a result of our experience, detailed here, I spent hours yesterday trying to find a way to convert our backup to a PDF file. Once it’s in PDF, you can open and read it like a book, convert it to word, print it out, whatever.  The problem is that most services that do this charge for it. Blogger has a service where you can pay between $15-25 to have your blog printed as a book. But there’s an even better option.

It’s here. First, go into the blogger dashboard in draft mode. Press the export button and download the xml file. Save it to your hard drive and to a flash drive or external hard drive. Then go to blogbooker and follow the directions. If you have a large blog, you should set the filters for smaller chunks of time. I tried multiple times and it wouldn’t work, so I wrote to blogbooker. The person who wrote back requested my xml file, which I sent. He/she replied that the file was valid, but too large. So by doing it in smaller chunks, I was able to get several pdf files of our blog, photos, images, comments and all. It doesn’t save the template, but you’ve got the important stuff, the content. Blogbooker operates only on donations and it’s worth every euro or dollar that you donate.

This way, if your blog ever vanishes, you’ve got it backed up in PDF. Forever.

Posted in blog, blogbooker | 11 Comments

Darkening of the Sun

Posted on July 11, 2010 by Trish and Rob

Today’s total solar eclipse occurs at 3:33 PM EDT and 6:15 GMT. Most of the eclipse will occur over the Pacific Ocean, so not that many people will be able to see it. Chile’s Easter Island will be epicenter for the eclipse here on earth. About 4,000 indigenous people – the Rapa Nui – live on the island and they’re going to be sharing the island with thousands of scientists who are arriving for the event. This eclipse will be the first total solar eclipse to occur over Easter Island in more than a thousand years. Here’s a terrific article about the eclipse from The Pulse, Chile’s all English newspaper.

Astrologically, there are a a variety of opinions about this eclipse. They can be found here (midway down the page), here, here. You may also want to check here to find out how this eclipse may impact you. Click on your sun sign for a review of the month and for personal info about the eclipse. The thing to remember about all eclipses is that they have lessons to teach us – collectively and personally. If you don’t have any lessons to learn from this eclipse, then you should breeze through the day. The effect of an eclipse isn’t always exact. Events can sometimes radiate outward for as far as six months. Or over the course of a lifetime. Princess Diana was born under an eclipse – and died under one.

Posted in solar eclipse | 13 Comments

Seed Money

Posted on July 10, 2010 by Trish and Rob

 One of my first stops every day in blogland is Mike Perry’s blog on synchronicity. A few weeks ago, he posted a wonderful story that he called Seed Money. It’s an exercise in visualization and belief. And it’s uplifting. I tried it – and it works. But don’t take my word or Mike’s – try it yourself.
 +++

I’ve mentioned previously how I believe that once we start visualising the things we want in life coincidence or synchronicity often follows. So today I though I’d write a little about Seed Money. This is where it’s possible to ‘plant’ money and watch it grow.

Firstly, Seed Money isn’t anything to do with tithing. To tithe is to give one-tenth of an income to a church, charity or some good cause – this is giving, therefore, after we have received.

Seed money is the other way round. Giving first and then receiving a ten fold return – some successful practitioners call it the Law of Tenfold Return.

Over the years I’ve experimented with Seed Money and generally speaking it works.

If you haven’t heard of this process previously it’s simplicity itself. You give an amount of money to an organisation or charity that you feel needs the cash. Or it can be to a needy individual or family.

You give the money with the full belief that it will return to you tenfold i.e. give £10 or $10 and receive back £100 or $100.

This is the full procedure.

Give, and it shall be given unto you; good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over …(1) Plant your Seed Money – by giving it freely, without fear to the person or organisation you choose.

(2) Cultivate your Seed Money by claiming your return. Use your own phrase, something you feel comfortable with, but along the lines of: “I have received £/$ …… (ten times the amount given) in return, to the good of all concerned. Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

(3) Repeat the phrase over and over during the day and especially last thing at night and first thing in the morning.

And that’s it. You simply believe that the money claimed is already yours.

How the money will actually arrive isn’t your problem, just trust that it will. Perhaps a coincidence will happen, maybe you’ll get a completely unexpected bonus from your employer, you might win a prize, who knows … but it will come about.

If you haven’t planted Seed Money previously I would suggest you start small. Perhaps a few pounds or dollars that won’t affect your budget. Working this way is a bit like developing your muscles, do it gradually. Confidence and belief will build until you know 100% that it will work. You can then start lifting those heavier weights or demonstrating larger amounts of money.

Seed Money may sound crazy to some readers but whatever we give out we get back – be that good things or bad.

The truth is, we could just ask and visualise the amount of money we want without giving first – but Seed Money makes the whole process easier and more believable. Plus someone or some organisation will benefit too, which can’t be bad.

Good luck.
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We’d love to hear if/how this works for you!

Posted in beliefs, money, visualization | 15 Comments

The I Ching’s Take on the Gulf Debacle

Posted on July 9, 2010 by Trish and Rob

Carl Jung wrote the introduction to the Richard Wilhelm edition of the I Ching in 1949. It was where he first addressed the concept of synchronicity. The hexagram, the basis of the I Ching, is – according to Jung – “the exponent of the moment in which it was cast…an indicator of the essential situation prevailing in the moment of origin. This assumption involves a curious principle that I have termed synchronicity.”

The premise is simple: you toss 6 coins 6 times, and depending on how they fall, you either end up with a single hexagram or, if you have changing lines, with two hexagrams. The second one is how the situation evolves. But while the process is simple, penetrating ancient Chinese thought is not.

I’ve been using the I Ching since I was 18 (way too many years ago). You would think that when I toss the coins and a particular hexagram comes up, I would take it as the answer. But recently, I tossed hexagram 33,  about a possible business deal. Hexagram 33 is Retreat. In other words, I should have backpedaled quickly. I didn’t. I decided I didn’t like that hexagram, that it couldn’t possibly be true, so I tossed it again.  Big mistake. All the reason I should have retreated ended with the disruption of a friendship. So tonight while we were watching the news, I decided to ask the I Ching about the situation in the gulf, on day 79. My question: Is the gusher going to turn the gulf into a dead zone?

My first hexagram was, well, #33, Retreat. A certain sychro there, for sure. I had three changing lines – the 2nd place, 3rd place, 4th place. The evolving hexagram was #59, Dispersion. So let’s look at the changing lines. In the interest of space, I won’t quote everything. The changing line in the 2nd place, summed up, says: “While the superior men retreat and the inferior press after them,the interior man represented here holds on so firmly and tightly to the superior men that the latter cannot shake him off.” If BP is the inferior man, and perhaps the people of the gulf are the superior men, this doesn’t sound good.

3rd line: This one seems to be addressing why the government continues to allow BP to be in charge of this mess: “When it is time to retreat it is both unpleasant and dangerous to be held back. In such a case, the only expedient is to take into one’s service, so to speak, those who refuse to let one go. But even with this expedient the situation is far from satisfactory – for what can one hope to accomplish with such servants?”.

4th line: I’m not sure what this line is addressing: “Voluntary retreat brings good fortune to the superior man and downfall to the inferior man.”

This brings us to the second hexagram, which addresses how the situation evolves: #59, Dispersion. Since dispersants are being used in the gulf, this one feels like it’s on target. “Through hardness and selfishness the heart grows rigid, and this rigidity leads to separation from all others. Therefore the hearts of men must be seized by a devout emotion.”

Perhaps this hexagram addresses the power of a collective emotion – rage, outrage, horror – to break the hold of the inferior man. When I initially turned to Hexagram 59, the first words I read were: “Wind blowing over water disperses it…” And I immediately thought of a hurricane. So, is it going to take a hurricane dispersing oil and toxic chemicals across the gulf states and the eastern seaboard to break BP’s hold on this situation?

The two hexagrams don’t seem to answer my question about whether the gulf will become a dead zone, but they do appear to address the situation. Any I Ching masters out there who can illuminate this issue for the rest of us?

A tiny PS to this story. As I went to schedule it on the dashboard, I noticed I had started it at 9:11.

Posted in divination, gulf, I Ching | 17 Comments

Crack in the Dam

Posted on July 8, 2010 by Trish and Rob

Logo of Reporters Without Borders in defense of online free expression.

.

A few weeks ago, we received a notice from blogger that one of our posts had been cited for copyright infringement, so our blog was taken down, the supposedly offensive post was put into draft form, and we were told that unless the offensive post was removed, our blog would be deleted. We deleted the post, but were totally mystified about how we had infringed on copyright.

As professional writers, copyright infringement is important to us. The story, from last November, was a seemingly innocuous post of two or three sentences about two of the  deaths in the construction of the Hoover Dam, a father and son, the first and the last to die. We provided links to our sources and, the story is detailed in Wikipedia. On December 20, 1922, J.G. Tierney died while surveying for a site for the dam and thirteen years later to the day, his son, Patrick Tierney, was the last man to die during the dam’s construction.There you have it.

In the aftermath of the removal of the offending post, we noticed that someone from the Department of the Interior, which is in charge of sites like dams,  had been on our blog a number of times, always searching for Hoover Dam. So we wrote to the Interior Department and asked if a copyright infringement complaint had been made by the department. We included blogger’s email to us and a screenshot of sitemeter showing the search words and the Interior Department’s name.  We received a wonderful email from their public affairs specialist, who said she would look into. Quoting from her email:

Hi there, Rob!

I’m not sure who would be asking you to remove these facts since, as you mentioned, they’re well documented in a number of other sources, several of which we use here in our office as research resources.  We even have this information listed on our own official Bureau of Reclamation Hoover Dam website at: https://www.usbr.gov/lc/hooverdam/History/essays/fatal.html , so I’m really not sure why Google or anyone associated with the Department would be making this request. 

Do you have a copy of the request and/or a name as to who initiated this?  I’d be happy to follow up with them to determine why this is being considered.  Just let me know if there’s any way I can help.  Thanks!

Colleen Dwyer, Public Affairs Specialist
Bureau of Reclamation, Boulder City, Nevada

Her followup was extensive. She checked with the Interior Department’s regional security staff and with the Hoover Dam Police Department “just in case they conduct some random security on the web to find any potential info that may impact security of Hoover Dam, but they do not conduct these kinds of actions.”

She went on to say:
“Frankly, I’m surprised that Google would ask for removal of a post based solely on one individual’s comment, and without specific proof of the copyright violation.   I’m not sure of the procedure to contest the infringement claim, but if you can use my e-mails and/or contact information as proof of clearance by the Bureau of Reclamation for you to publish the information regarding the Tierneys, feel free to do so.”

On July 7, someone came onto the blog using the search term, “Hoover Dam crack image download.” They didn’t find anything on our blog because the post had been removed, and besides, we hadn’t written about any crack.  It’s an amusing synchro, however, since we certainly found a crack in the dam with our experience writing about it. 

So we have clearance from the Interior Department, which uses the same story in their materials. We haven’t copied anyone else’s material. The info in Wikipedia is still there. Who knows?

Posted in Uncategorized | 21 Comments