The Stranger and the $20 Bill

Posted on December 28, 2011 by Trish and Rob

This synchro came from Renee Prince, whose stories we’ve used before. This one really underscores how synchronicity connects us to other people.

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My mother and I were  at a Native American (Indian) casino when she called me from somewhere inside the building and asked me to meet her because “something weird” had happened and she couldn’t tell me over the phone. When I got to her, she wore a stunned expression and an amazed smile.

She told me that she had been sitting at a slot machine, feeling really, really bad. She was agonizing over her husband’s Alzheimer’s and worrying over how she would pay for her husband’s nursing home when he had to go, worrying over the possibility of her having another stroke… But she hadn’t been talking to anyone—she was just sitting by herself.

Then a cocktail waitress came up to her and handed her a $20 bill. The waitress said that a man had given her the bill and asked her to give it to my mother “so she would know things weren’t as bad as she thought.” When my mother asked the waitress to point him out, the man had disappeared. She was very touched and awe-stricken—nothing like this had ever happened to her before. She says she will keep the $20 bill and never spend it.

The next day, my mother had just gotten dressed, and came out of her room wearing a “new” necklace and a strange expression. The necklace was a beaded thing with a tiny Native American “medicine pouch”, and it was a used item, something my sister Sonja had given her a few years ago as a stocking stuffer. Sonja often buys bags of jewelry at garage sales, hoping for diamonds or gold in the usually costume stuff, and she had just given my mother the beaded necklace without looking inside the pouch, since it seemed flat and empty. But for some reason my mother had looked inside when she put it on that morning and found—a $20 bill.

 

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The Help

Posted on December 27, 2011 by Trish and Rob

Christmas Eve, we started watching this movie – it’s long, two and a half hours, so we saved the last hour for Christmas day. It’s not a comfortable movie, by any means. It takes place in Mississippi during the early 60s, when wealthy southern white families employed black help – maids – who raised their children, did their laundry, cooked and cleaned and basically took care of the household while the white women lived superficial lives.

Then one white woman,  portrayed by Emma Stone, enters the picture. Emma has aspirations to write, to be a journalist, a novelist, and begins to befriend the black maids, encouraging them to tell them her stories.  And their stories are so profoundly tragic you wonder how they survived long enough to relate them to this young white woman.

At first, only one of the black maids is willing to talk to her  – Aibeleen, portrayed by Viola Davis – and her performance is stunning, genuine, and will probably win her an Oscar nomination. This woman feels what her characters feels, she is there.  Once Aiebeleen begins talking to the Emma Stone character, other black maids gradually come on board, and we see the under currents of what their lives are like, how the KKK burned their children, razed their homes, and terrorized them to the point where they accepted crumbs simply to remain employed, so they could send their children to college.

During this era, I was living in Venezuela, so I never saw this blatant indentured servitude. During the movie, though, Rob remarked that I did see this kind of attitude – I’m better than you – with the way Venezuelans were treated by the Americans who worked for the oil companies.  “You had maids,” he said.

Yes, many American families did have maids – but they usually were from Spain or some other country, immigrants who needed work and were given lodging, food and a salary. Generally, these maids did not raise their employers’ children.  They were not substitute parents. There was a definite difference.

However, when we used to return to the U.S. each year for vacation, I clearly recall the segregated bathrooms at the Florida turnpike rest stops and remember asking my mother what that was about. There are several powerful scenes in The Help about blacks and whites using the same restrooms – they carry diseases, one white woman tells her young daughter –  and it’s really hard to believe that anyone capable of rational thought actually believed any of it. In this sense, white American women are viewed as stupid, clueless, and cold.

But maybe that’s the point of this movie. In that particular era, before blacks even had the right to vote, the hierarchy in society was blatant. Unless you were a white man, you were pretty much invisible and as powerful or as powerless as the white person for whom you worked. Still, it’s difficult to believe that white women were as shallow and mindless as most of the women depicted in this film. Yet, in retrospect, I clearly remember my mother commenting years ago that I should apply to Vassar, where women would meet men who could support them. Good husbands, in other words. And yet, my mother wasn’t a superficial woman. More than anything else, she was a product of her time, her generation, and wasn’t  able to move beyond that.

When The Help first came out, I remember that MSNBC had Melissa Harris Perry, an African American professor at Tulane, review the movie. She tweeted frequently during the film, and her bottom line was that the movie was good, but didn’t provide the full story about that era, that it was a white woman’s story about what was happening to black women.

Or, put another way, it had the same theme as Avatar. In that movie, the Americans move in to study the culture and help them to overthrow the evil corporation that is attempting to mine the planet’s minerals.  Outsider arrives, strives to right the wrongs, leads the people to freedom. That archetype. It’s the greatest  weakness of The Help. And yet, when the disempowered and the helpless find a voice in someone who has the ability and connections to communicate their plight, do color and ideology matter?

Yes, Martin Luther King led the civil rights movement in the sixties. But it wasn’t a movement that pertained only to African-Americans. It spoke to the larger group of disenfranchised individuals, women and men of all color. The greatest strength of this film is that it speaks to all people who have been abandoned, disenfranchised, minimalized, shuffled aside in favor of the few who have it all. In the end, maybe it all boils down to the Occupy movement.

The 99 percent versus the one percent. But maybe even that disparity doesn’t address all of it. The Help will certainly be an Oscar contender.

 

 

Posted in movies, synchronicity | 12 Comments

Words of a leader-sage

Posted on December 26, 2011 by Trish and Rob

Sometimes it seems the world of politics  is filled with corrupt, power hungry leaders looking out for their own interests and those close to them. They may spout religious values, but their actions often belie any sense of true spirituality.

So with the recent passing of Vaclan Havel, playwright and former president of the Czech Republic, it’s worth highlighting the words of a man who saw a greater vision than what we typically see among politicians.

Futurist Marcus Anthony, who calls Havel a ‘leader-sage,’  said this on his blog: “Havel epitomized three vital aspects of the human archetype: conscience, courage and compassion. These are three qualities that are badly needed in today’s world, in today’s leaders.”

Here are Havel’s words from a talk he gave in 1995 that was recently republished in The Futurist.

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What makes the Anthropic Principle and the Gaia Hypothesis so inspiring? One simple thing: Both remind us, in modern language, of what we have long suspected, of what we have long projected into our forgotten myths and what perhaps has always lain dormant within us as archetypes. That is, the awareness of our being anchored in the earth and the universe, the awareness that we are not here alone nor for ourselves alone, but that we are an integral part of higher, mysterious entities against whom it is not advisable to blaspheme. This forgotten awareness is encoded in all religions. All cultures anticipate it in various forms. It is one of the things that form the basis of man’s understanding of himself, of his place in the world, and ultimately of the world as such.

A modern philosopher once said: “Only a God can save us now.”

Yes, the only real hope of people today is probably a renewal of our certainty that we are rooted in the earth and, at the same time, the cosmos. This awareness endows us with the capacity for self-transcendence. Politicians at international forums may reiterate a thousand times that the basis of the new world order must be universal respect for human rights, but it will mean nothing as long as this imperative does not derive from the respect of the miracle of Being, the miracle of the universe, the miracle of nature, the miracle of our own existence. Only someone who submits to the authority of the universal order and of creation, who values the right to be a part of it and a participant in it, can genuinely value himself and his neighbours, and thus honor their rights as well.

It logically follows that, in today’s Is multicultural world, the truly reliable path to coexistence, to peaceful coexistence and creative cooperation, must start from what is at the root of all cultures and what lies infinitely deeper in human hearts and minds than political opinion, convictions, antipathies, or sympathies–it must be rooted in self-transcendence:

Transcendence as a hand reached out to those close to us, to foreigners, to the human community, to all living creatures, to nature, to the universe.

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So where are the leaders of the western world who think like this? Who speak like this? Who believe  this?

Posted in synchronicity | 13 Comments

Ornaments

Posted on December 25, 2011 by Trish and Rob

For me, the Christmas season is about memories, not religion. We have  a Christmas tree because the lights and decorations and the faint scent of pine are beautiful and peaceful. I’ve often thought of growing a Christmas tree  in our back yard and keeping it decorated year around.  Fat chance of that in south Florida.  We have the tree up for about three weeks, longer if the needles are still green.

Every year, I eagerly climb the ladder to the attic for the boxes of Christmas decorations. And in these boxes are some real treasure, ornaments that have been in our family for decades, ornaments with memories attached to them.

This little Santa Claus, in fact, holds some of my earliest memories. The Christmas before my sister was  born, we were living in Maracaibo, in what was then known as an “oil camp,” where employees of Exxon were housed. Mr. Clause, I recall, hung from a low branch and my grandmother – my mother’s mother – moved him to a higher branch. She was visiting from Oklahoma because she was going to help out once my sister was born in January. She was Russian born, in Odessa, I think, and for some reason thought that Mr. Clause belonged higher up on the tree, maybe so our dog couldn’t eat him. Through this ornament, I recall how pregnant and beautiful my mother was, and how sure I felt that the baby was a girl, my sister.

Somewhere on our tree is an ornament bought around the time my dad decided the political situation in Venezuela was deteriorating so fast that it was time to leave. Next to that ornament is a violin – or a fiddle ?- that I inherited from my first editor, Chris Cox,  after he died from AIDS.

It turned out that Chris, like me, collected unusual ornaments in his travels. Shortly after his death in the early 1990s, a package arrived filled with his Christmas ornaments. I’m not sure who sent them – his sister, his fellow editor, Cheryl Woodruff, or his angel of mercy and close friend, Susan Sarandon, who paid for Chris’s private nursing care in his final days.

One ornament is a picture of Jessie, the Golden Retriever who was with us for eleven years, and another is of Megan, when she was three or four. There are a number of frog ornaments given to us by friends or family  who know how much we like frogs or that I bought because they were so irresistible.

Here and there are impersonal ornaments, fillers that aren’t attached to any emotion or memory. Their home is at the back of the tree, so the wall won’t be lonely.

Every year when I open that container with the ornaments and the lights, icicles from the previous year still threaded through the wires, a peaceful nostalgia claims me. I touch the special ornaments, the ones connected to memories of people, and am grateful  those people have graced my life. These ornaments have changed my feelings about that word. Ornaments aren’t just the superficiality of who we are. Sometimes, they are the very core of who we are.

Happy holidays to all! May 2012 bring you health, happiness,  prosperity- and many ornaments that hold important memories.

 

Posted in christmas, synchronicity | 13 Comments

Parking Lot Synchro

Posted on December 24, 2011 by Trish and Rob

Today as I was leaving the grocery store, pushing my cart out into the parking lot, I thought how perfect it would be to experience a synchronicity. It didn’t matter what the synchro was, what it concerned, I just wanted one. That desire, I think was the result of a dream I’d had early that morning.

In the dream, I was driving a VW Bug ( we don’t own one in real life) and backing out of a driveway. Suddenly,  the brakes didn’t work and I kept backsliding. The terrain in the dream, as where we live, was very flat, so it’s not like I was backsliding down a steep incline. I was backsliding along a flat surface but couldn’t stop. Then I jerked the steering wheel to the right and backed into a neighbor’s yard. I may have hit the mailbox. At any rate, the engine died, I stopped.

I’m sure this dream relates to my fear of backsliding professionally, because the publishing industry is changing so fast and dramatically. It unsettled me.  So I felt a synchro would be a nice confirmation or guidance or something to balance out the dream.

En route to my car, I saw a frail, white-haired woman struggling to make a call on her cell phone while restraining a leashed dog hobbling around on three legs, its front right paw curled up close to its body.  Then I recognized the woman, J. She used to attend Rob’s yoga classes and has always impressed me with her lively intellect. She’s a Gemini, like me, and is an enthusiastic reader of our books. The last time I ran into her inside the grocery store, she told me that her husband had recently died and she and her Rottweiler were doing fine in the house, that she was still selling real estate.

Now here she was and nothing looked fine with either her or the Rottweiler.  I hurried over, my cart rattling across the concrete, and asked if I could give her a hand.

“I can’t get a signal here, Trish.”

“Who’re you trying to call?”

“The vet. I need someone to come out and help me carry her inside.” She gestured toward the dog.

The vet’s office is in the shopping center, wasn’t that far from her car, but the Rottweiler obviously knew she was going to the vet’s office and wanted none of it.  I took the leash and said I would coax the dog closer to the vet’s office and J hobbled off toward the office to find someone to help. It was then I realized that J was wearing a boot on her right foot, the kind of boot you wear when your foot is broken. Right foot, right front paw.  There was my synchro.

The Rottweiler is large, muscular, I knew I couldn’t pick her up by myself. So I decided to coax her toward my car, get her inside, then I would drive up to the curb in front of the vet’s and get her out. Nope. The Rottweiler refused to budge. She kept moving back toward J’s car.

Suddenly, I hear someone shouting, “Hey, hey, can I help? You need help?

I glanced around, didn’t see anyone, kept trying to coax the dog to follow me. Then this woman barrels over to me, a woman from a cafe where Rob and I get coffee a couple of times a week. I don’t know her name. But I know she’s a single mom with a twelve-year-old daughter, who lost everything in Hurricane Andrew in 1992, when that monster storm devastated part of South Florida. These are the kinds of details you learn about people as you’re waiting for coffee.

“I can lift her,” she says.

“We can both do it,” I replied.

First, she held out her hand to the dog, talking softly to her, explaining we were going to help her. A dog whisperer. Then the two of us lifted the Rottweiller and carried her over to the curb in front of the vet’s. The dog saw J, standing in the open doorway, calling to her, and hobbled toward her.

We got the dog inside, into the examining room with J.  And then it struck me. The bottom line message of this synchro had zero to do with my dream and professional concerns.

In J, I saw my mother or my father in their advanced years, both of them frail and sick and unable to care for themselves, In J, I saw the patients in the Alzheimer’s unit where my mother spent her last several years, men and women whose  minds and bodies were so far gone they didn’t even know how to use a fork.  In J, right then, I was suddenly reminded of what’s really important in life.

We’re all on a journey, and are at different ports of call. We sometimes get so wrapped up in our own concerns and issues that we fail to see what’s right in front of us. We are blind to other people’s needs, deaf to their whispered pleas. In J, right then, I was reminded of how important it is for strangers to help strangers, for friends to reach out, for doing some small act for a person in need. I was reminded that our humanity is what, ultimately, matters the most.

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There seems to be another layer to this synchro. Two days after this event, I was telling my neighbor about it and she got the strangest look on her face. “Now wait a minute, either I’m having a deja vu or I saw this happen.”

The grocery store closest to our neighborhood is one we both use. But I’ve never run into her there. “What did you see?” I asked.

“These two women trying to carry this big dog across the parking lot to the vet’s. Then they set the dog down in front of the vet’s office and I saw the dog holding its foot in the air. That was you?”

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May Santa bless your Christmas with laughter, joy, and the company of people you love.

 

Posted in synchronicity | 14 Comments

New Moon in Capricorn

Posted on December 23, 2011 by Trish and Rob

from center for touch drawing

 

On December 24, we have the last new moon of the year, in Capricorn, a focused, determined earth sign. Before we even get started about this new moon, check out your natal chart to find out where Capricorn falls. That house will be most impacted by this new moon. Go here to find out what the houses means.

This new moon is at 2 degrees Capricorn, so for me it  lands in my third house of communication, writing, siblings, education, travel, my neighborhood, my conscious mind. I can expect new opportunities in any or all of these areas.

One thing you can count on with the Cappy new moon is heightened ambition, strategy, planning. You’re suddenly a paragon of the efficient. You’re the arrow headed for the target, right into the bull’s eye. Listen to your intuition and then act accordingly.

One of the things this new moon represents for Rob and me is the empty nest again. Megan has been living with us for the last seven months, since her graduation from college. Even though her activities are quite separate from ours, the three of us inhabit the same space, come together as a family when we need each other’s support and unconditional love. Her internship with Disney begins in mid-January, she’ll move  the weekend before it begins. But for you, this new moon could mean a new job, a new career, partnership, creative endeavor. NEW. That’s the operative word.

If you’re an earth or water sign, or have your moon or rising in earth or water, you’ll be as pleased as a pig in mud. But because we all have Capricorn somewhere ,  you will  enjoy something new in whatever house Capricorn falls.

Pluto falls within five degrees of this new moon, so whatever this new opportunity is, it has the power  to transform some area of your life.  Uranus, the planet of sudden, unexpected events, forms a challenging angle to this new moon. It could mean some tension in the air, but it also suggests that the new opportunities come to you out of the blue. Surprise! Here I am.

Then, the really good news: Jupiter in Taurus forms a close, beneficial angle to this new moon and that is certainly cause for celebration. It means the new opportunity expands some area of your life. Even though Jupiter is retrograde on the 24th, it turns direct the next day, so once Jupiter is behaving, you’ll start to see some action.

Happy New Moon!

Posted in astrology, synchronicity | 6 Comments

Who Is This Guy?

Posted on December 22, 2011 by Trish and Rob

He looks like one of the nerdy guys in your high school or college yearbook,  right? You know the type I mean. This is the guy who sits alone in the back of the cafeteria during lunch, thumbing through a fat book on Greek mythology or advanced calculus. But with this particular nerd, the book was probably something along the lines of business or issues management strategy.

Never heard that last term? Well, I hadn’t, either, until I Googled, Who is Grover Norquist?    He refers to himself as an issues management strategist. To me, that’s fancy speak for someone who manipulates how people think about issues. You know, political and social issues that actually impact people’s lives.

Norquist has never been elected to a public office. Yet, he managed to convince 238 house members, 41 senators, 13 governors, and 1,249 state legislators to sign a pledge that they would oppose all tax increases. He was able to do this, apparently, because his organization, Americans for Tax Reform – ATR – has millions of members who – oh shudder, be afraid – might vote you out of office if you disobey the pledge. And he’ll do that by galvanizing, you know, the loyal right wing troops.

When I look at this guy’s photo, when I hear him speak on TV, I cringe. I feel soiled. This is the man, after all, who says that allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire in 2012, as they’re slated to do, is the equivalent of raising taxes. Yet, the $4 trillion that would be raised as a result would help to cut the deficit and save the social programs like Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security from severe cutbacks. Programs that seniors and the poor depend on.

As one author put it in the Huffington Post, “Master Norquist, you see, says that allowing said cuts to expire as promised is raising taxes, and he’s willing to demolish any Republican who says otherwise. The facts apparently have no place in this matter, so it’s a very small step to say — as many are right now — that Master Nordquist and his friends at Koch Industries are deliberately destroying the Republican Party — not to mention the nation…”

When the Super Committee met to discuss how to cut $1.5 trillion from the federal budget, they failed to reach any consensus. As Senator John Kerry, a member of the committee said,  “But unfortunately, this thing about the Bush tax cuts and the pledge to Grover Norquist keeps coming up. Grover Norquist has been the 13th member of this committee without being there. I can’t tell you how many times we hear about ‘the pledge, the pledge.”

What about the pledge all members of Congress take to uphold the constitution? If so many members of Congress are adhering to a pledge they made to a guy who was never elected, then they apparently don’t give a damn about we, the people.  You know, the people who are losing homes and jobs, the 99 percent for whom the so-called American dream is fading. Norquist exemplifies everything that’s wrong with government.

There’s obviously no sychro here. But with the world perched at the edge of some sort of paradigm shift,  it seems important to pinpoint some of the individuals in the dying paradigm who fight to maintain a status quo that serves the few at the expense of the many.

 

 

 

Posted in politics, synchronicity | 10 Comments

Science & Synchros Part 2

Posted on December 21, 2011 by Trish and Rob

 

This post is a follow-up from yesterday’s in which we took a look at the new issue of Psychiatric Annals, which is devoted to synchronicity. We commented on the first two articles. Now we’ll move on the other two.

We’ll start with  Exploration of Anomalous Mind-Matter Correspondences.

This study is interesting, especially since it focuses on the law of attraction and unexpected money. Here’s how it begins.

“The study of unexpected money, conducted as part of a dissertation project,  follows the discussion in the online edition of Psychiatric Annals  of using experimental methods to determine whether participants under controlled conditions can apply intention to attract “unexpected” money.

So the jargon term in this study moves from WCS-2 (Weird Coincidences Scale-2), to the appropriate and clever acronym of SUM (Seeking Unexpected Money).  Here’s how it works.

“The study incorporated methodologies from psi laboratory experiments, prayer studies, and the social sciences to explore whether anomalous mind-matter correspondences (AMMCs) happen more frequently to people who have been instructed to engage in intentional activities. It resembled the psi studies in that it employed a true experimental design: Randomized groups, each blind to the activities of the other groups, received differing instructions to perform a new task. Yet, it differed from these studies in that the new task — to be attentive to receipts of unexpected money — carried a priori meaning for the participants.”

Here’s the definition of unexpected money.

“Money that comes into your hands surprisingly and suddenly (‘out of the blue’), without your earning it, soliciting it, specifically seeking it out, or otherwise expecting it.” Examples of unexpected-money events included finding cash on the street, inheriting money unexpectedly, winning money in a lottery or contest, receiving money through an unexpected credit or class action settlement. Even windfall capital gains, wage increases, new work, or return of monies borrowed were considered valid events if there was some aspect to their receipt that felt highly out of the ordinary.”

(Interestingly, the day I wrote this post, we received two checks totalling $36 from a class action settlement against American Express. It was definitely unexpected money. Too bad is wasn’t more!)

And what were the results of the study? It looks like the ol’ trickster stepped into this one, which involved 64 people.  The control group apparently did better at gaining unexpected money than the ones applying intention.

The article summarized: “The fact that the controls prevailed seems to indicate that the act of paying attention was enough, and that performing any additional intentional activities actually deterred participants from achieving the desired outcome. These findings support those from prayer studies and PK experiments,  which have discovered that the best results often are achieved when participants are not applying rigorous intentionality to the psi task.”

We’re glad that some people got unexpected money. Certainly, the control group did not expect it!

The final study is called  Measurement of Synchronicity in a Clinical Context. It’s about whether or not a synchronicity can be generated under controlled conditions rather than happening unpredictably.

The study made use of divination, specifically, the I Ching, the book of changes. References to Jung and his use of the I Ching  were at the heart of the study.

“Jung considered synchronicity to be the I Ching’s basic mode of operation. In light of his lifelong use of the book and beliefs about its underlying process, researchers such as Lance Storm question why Jung never undertook empirical studies with the instrument. Nevertheless, Jung found the uncanny results he received when consulting the I Ching for his personal questions intriguing, referring to the book’s content as a ‘catalog of archetypal information.'”

The author notes: “This study hypothesized that when the I Ching is employed in a psychotherapy-like context, sufficient contingent conditions will be present to cause the occurrence of a synchronicity.”

While Jung believed that the I Ching and other divination systems are examples of synchronicity, he also thought that synchronicity cannot be “caused,” or at least not caused by the principles of modern science.  That’s why he called it an “acausal connecting principle.”

I might be over simplifying the results, but it appears that the study found that I Ching readings were accurate only about one out of three times. I’m not sure how such a conclusion was made since I Ching readings are highly subjective. One person might find a reading highly accurate while another person in a similar situation might find the same reading questionable or worthless.

As the author noted: “A person’s level of psychological insight is also thought to contribute to his or her recognizing and extracting relevant meaning from a synchronistic occurrence.”

One Jungian scholar  stated, “Jung maintained that to use the I Ching effectively one must possess considerable psychological insight, just as such insight must also be possessed to accurately interpret the full meaning of any synchronistic pattern.”

The study ended, as the others in this issue of Psychiatric Annals, saying that more research was needed. I think that’s a boiler plate ending for most studies. I’ve never read one that concluded by saying no more studies on this subject are needed. 😉

 

Posted in synchronicity | 9 Comments

Coincidence Studies

Posted on December 20, 2011 by Trish and Rob

Psychiatric Annals introduces their December 2011 issue this way:

“Coincidences are common to us all. This issue explores the possibility of a scientific origin for these events and suggests psychiatry has a role to play in the creation of a new field of study: Coincidence Studies.”

The four articles in the issue are entitled:

Synchronicity: Coincidence Detection and Meaningful Life Events

 An Initial Study of Extreme, Measurable Forms of Synchronicity

 Exploration of Anomalous Mind-Matter Correspondences

 Measurement of Synchronicity in a Clinical Context

It’s good to see the scientific community taking a serious look at synchronicity, rather than simply labeling it ‘magical thinking’ – read non-scientific thinking.  Yet, such studies clearly remain outside mainstream science. I can just imagine the skeptic forums puzzling over the topic of coincidence studies.

The first article starts out this way:

“Early therapeutic use of coincidences is described by Carl Jung, who coined the term ‘synchronicity,’ referring to the low-probability co-occurrence of two different events in a narrow window of time, perceived as striking for the individual experiencing it. 1 It is now accepted that, for coincidences to qualify as a synchronicity, they have to be meaningful, and help one’s individuation.”

The last sentence is an important one in therapeutic terms. It suggests that synchronicities are guideposts for healing, a positive factor for mental, emotional and spiritual development.

The scientific jargon that’s used is interesting and a bit humorous. The first article repeatedly refers to WCS-2 in their data analysis. What is it? Weird Coincidence Scale. We wonder what happened to WCS-1!

The first study looks at the relationship between age and synchronicity – something that we had never considered as a factor. But, according to the study, it is. The older you are the more likely you are to accept synchronicity.

“Age and probability/chance were negatively related; as age increases, agreement with the statement, “I believe coincidences can be explained by the laws or probability of chance” tends to decrease. Considering this was the only finding regarding age and coincidence detection, replication studies with larger, more representative samples are needed to clarify the true relationship.”

Interestingly, the second study also uses the Weird Coincidence Scale-2. We assume that was not a synchronicity, but part of a coordinated effort to measure coincidence in a similar manner.

What I like about the second study was that it actually included an example of a synchronicity – a complex one involving two scholars simultaneously pondering the importance of footnotes. The story is followed by a detailed analysis of the synchro. To me, it was a synchronicity that only an academic could fully appreciate. Someone not familiar with synchronicity reading this study would probably scratch his or her head and wonder what it was all about.

That’s the problem with academic studies of meaningful coincidence. They tend to make a mysterious  subject even more complicated and more confusing. But that’s my non-scholarly take. Trish feels about the same.

Yet, it’s interesting to peruse these studies, and it’s potentially important for our advancement if the scientific world accepts synchronicity as a reality. We’ll take a look at the last two studies tomorrow.

 

 

Posted in synchronicity | 25 Comments

The Fire

Posted on December 19, 2011 by Trish and Rob

During the holidays last year, we bought a fire pit at Home Depot that was on sale – half price, $45. It was a perfect fit for an area in the front of our house, a small sheltered three-sided courtyard to the right of the front door. We used it a lot in December, which was particularly cold. On the night of a lunar eclipse last December, in fact, we got up around three that morning, a friend of Megan’s brought over a telescope, we started a fire, and took turns  peering through the telescope, watching the moon turn dark.

This December, the weather has been beautiful – high 70s or in the low 80s during the day,  high 60s at night.  Beautiful, but not cool enough to light fire. Tonight, though, the temp dropped into the low 60s, so Rob started a fire in the pit, and we sat outside warming our feet, the dogs and cats gathering around. Yes, okay, low sixties is a cold front for us (I can hear the laughter now), but there is something wonderfully primal about fire. It brings the muse out of hiding, triggers ideas and conversation. We talked about various ideas that are brewing for books, a game app, and a divination system we’ve been playing around with for several weeks.

We realized that part of this divination system involves the elements – air, water, earth – and fire. But while we were discussing what these elements meant in terms of the divination system, we realized the fifth element in this scheme of things is metal, the alchemist’s tool, turning metal into gold, a symbol for personal transformation.

As we approach 2012, personal transformation seems to be key. Even though we don’t buy into the doomsayer notion that the world will end on December 21, 2012, we do feel that the collective consciousness is shifting, that a new paradigm is being born.  It hasn’t reached a tipping point yet, but when it does, there will be no turning back.

As I peered into the fire, I could see elements of this shift that are already underway. According to NOAA – National  Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration- the combined global land and ocean average surface temperature was the 12th warmest on record. The September – November worldwide land surface temperature was 0.87°C (1.57°F) above the 20th century average, the seventh warmest such period on record.  The January – November worldwide land surface temperature was 0.84°C (1.51°F) above the 20th century average — the seventh warmest such period on record.

Take a look at this  map and it’s obvious the planet is in flux, and not necessarily in a positive way for humanity. And it’s not just the erratic weather. It’s the wars, politics, the haves and the have nots, all the issues the Occupy movement has pinpointed. Tonight on 60 Minutes, for example, we watched a really heartbreaking segment on what’s happened to neighborhoods in Ohio that were hit hard by the housing meltdown.

One Ohio city has so many abandoned homes – where owners have simply walked away because their mortgages were underwater – that the city is now demolishing them. The banks evict the owners, then the properties just sit there, the places falling apart as vandals move in and strip aluminum sidings, pipes, even the kitchen sinks.  And this is happening all over the U.S. In our neighborhood of perhaps 35 homes, there are several that have been abandoned for months, doors hanging by hinges, windows broken, overgrown yards a paradise for rats, and the banks do nothing. The houses and the properties surrender to entropy.

Institutions we took for granted ten years ago are in chaos. Countries are in financial meltdowns that threaten the world economy. Hatred, racism, and religious extremism are on the rise. An entire generation is being shortchanged as unemployment rises. Just recently a study in the U.S. found that one in two Americas are either poor or underpaid. Fifty percent.

And yet.  We each live within our own little worlds and aren’t impacted by this all at once. Here and there, we take hits, we recognize the abrupt and irrevocable changes, and we adapt.  We focus, create the opportunities we need, and move forward. Our daughter, for instance, has been working at a minimum wage job since she graduated from college last June. She has applied for numerous jobs in the field she loves – working with animals – and recently landed an internship at Disney, beating out 600 other applicants.

There are opportunities for personal growth within this paradigm shift. It’s when the law of attraction may work the best. The contrasts are so glaring, so obvious that we know what we don’t want – and do want.

I suspect we’ll be using the fire pit a lot more for brainstorming sessions. No telling what nuggets may emerge.

Posted in law of attraction, synchronicity | 10 Comments