Appreciation

Posted on June 13, 2011 by Trish and Rob

Part of Megan’s graduation present was a virtual Hicks workshop, which she watched in its entirety on May 28, with Rob and I popping in now and then  to catch glimpses of it. Last night and this evening, – May 30-31 – Rob and I watched the entire workshop, which is available for 48 hours after the actual live event.  This was our second virtual workshop and it was enormously powerful.   We wrote about the first one here.

During this workshop, the individuals who were chosen to come forward to the “hot seat,” where they talk one on one with Abraham, were primarily men. This statistic struck me as significant. Two years ago, when I attended my first and only actual live workshop, nearly everyone in the audience was female. These gentlemen ran the gamut in ages, occupations, life experiences, cultures, backgrounds, ethnicities.

The exchange that made the strongest impact on me was between Abraham and a man probably in his thirties who started off by saying that as a result of his work with the Abraham material, his life had improved immeasurably.  He talked about practicing “rampaging appreciation,” and gave a wonderful example. While driving on the Garden State Parkway, he felt enormous appreciation for the road – its smoothness, the speed at which he could drive, the sky above it, the whole nine yards. He was, he said, “in the vortex.”

This vortex is like a spinning cauldron of energy that contains the best of who we are, every desire we have ever had, every thought we have thought, every dream we have or have ever had. When we line up with it vibrationally, our dreams begin to manifest themselves. When we are outside the vortex, we feel discomfort, pain, angst. A few days later, he had to drive the parkway again – and discovered it had been repaved, so now it was even better, there was more to appreciate.  From this, he went into a story about watching sports from inside the vortex, how he was watching some game on TV when suddenly people in the stadium started chanting, USA, USA, USA – and discovered that Bin Laden had been assassinated. He instantly fell out of the vortex and spent the next two days in a funk.

Abraham asked him why he felt that way. “Because this event was huge,” the man said.

No, it wasn’t, Abraham said. It wasn’t huge enough or small enough to knock him out of his feelings of well-being. The people who cheered the death of Bin Laden, a man who hadn’t been a threat to anyone for years,  Abraham said, felt empowered because they basically feel powerless in their own lives. This statement struck me.

The night I heard the news about Bin Laden, I sure wasn’t in any vortex. Megan had broken her foot the night before and we were holed up in a hotel room, hoping to get into to see an orthopedic doc the next day. Listening to Obama that night, hearing the cheers outside the White House, the chants of USA,  depressed me. People were cheering an assassination.

A couple of weeks later, during Megan’s graduation weekend, I was discussing this with my sister’s New Guy. I suspected he was a Republican who upheld the agenda that makes me nuts, but couldn’t resist pushing against that to draw him out into a conversation. I regret doing so. I had even started writing a post about New Guy and our conversation that entailed the Republican agenda to dismantle Medicare, Social Security, and every other “socialist” program – you know, pubic education, fire departments, police departments. In the writing, I realized I was pushing against him and that belief system, and by doing so, was inviting more of the same into my life.

As Abraham pointed out, each of us is coming from a different place. What works for you may not work for me.  My job is to line up vibrationally with my highest good. “You are in the time of awakening,” he said.

So from now on, if I meet people like New Guy (who is now an ex for my sister), I vow to keep my mouth zipped. I won’t invite confrontation. I’ll talk about fluff and stuff, the weather and how was your plane trip. I’ll try to find something to appreciate about the person. I’ll try to understand why I have attracted this person into my life and what I’m supposed to learn. By withdrawing my attention from what I don’t like – like New Guy, like people cheering the assassination of Bin Laden –  such experiences will become non-existent. Or, at any rate, that’s how it’s supposed to work.

The toughest part for me, though, will be keeping my mouth shut. If I’m talking to someone who   glorifies  war, supports the invasion of sovereign countries, the dismantling of social programs that actually help people stay afloat, and no rise in taxes on the wealthiest two percent, my lesser self will be tempted to go for the jugular. C’mon, dude, argue with me, show me your true colors. That lesser self revels in such a discussion with a zealot of any persuasion. But my higher self is getting tired of discourse that doesn’t change minds at either end if the spectrum.

“We’re all in this together,” Abraham said.

Well, yes, we are. Maybe that’s the ticket. The next time I meet a New Guy, I’ll hug him hello, welcome him into the family fold, find something about him to appreciate, and that will be that.

One can dream, right?

Posted in hicks | 28 Comments

Room 619

Posted on June 11, 2011 by Trish and Rob

There’s something about a hair salon that encourages  conversation among women who don’t see each other except for hair cuts, coloring, highlights, and all the other things we have done to our hair. So today, during one of those conversations with a beautician named Angie, I heard a cool ghost story.

Angie mentioned that she and her husband, Patrick, spent a long weekend at the Lakeside Inn in Mount Dora, in the central part of the state, about 30 miles from Disney World.

The inn dates back to 1883 and, as described on the website: “A visit to the Lakeside Inn in Mt. Dora is time travel of the most privileged sort. At first glance, you aren’t sure if it’s real. Perhaps it’s a painting. Or an antebellum fantasy where ladies twirling parasols will soon appear on the wide verandah to sit a spell in the old-fashioned rockers, sip mint juleps and gossip.”

You get the idea. Old South. Very old South. “There’s not a whole lot to do there except eat and relax by the lake,” Angie  explained. Then she leaned in closer and whispered, “But the place is haunted, Trish.”

I instantly was all ears. “Really? You saw something?”

“Patrick did.”

It was their first night at the inn. They had turned in early and apparently Patrick kept hearing a tinkling sound, like wind chimes, that woke up. He sat up in bed and saw a pair of black women in voluminous clothing carrying large silver trays with tea cups on them. The tinkling noise came from the teacups clicking together as the women moved. Patrick sat there, paralyzed, watching the women until they faded into the wall. Then he woke Angie and told her what had happened.

The next afternoon, they were down by the pool and ordered a couple of drinks. When they gave their room number for the charge, the bartender said, “Well, room six-nineteen. Did you see the ghosts, the two black women with the silver tray and teacups?”

Patrick said that he’d seen them. The bartender said numerous guests in room 619 had seen the ghosts, but that they were harmless. That night, Angie and Patrick stayed up late, hoping for a glimpse of them. But the ladies didn’t appear again.

Now Rob and I have a new spot to visit. We’re going to ask for room 619.

 

Posted in ghosts | 10 Comments

Real?

Posted on June 10, 2011 by Trish and Rob

If this footage is genuine, it’s mind-blowing.

 

 

Posted in UFOs | 9 Comments

What’s Happening to the Sun?

Posted on June 8, 2011 by Trish and Rob

 

Thanks to gypsy for the image!

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More and more frequently, I hear people comment about how “weird” things are right now. It’s not just the inexorable march toward December 21, 2012  and all the hoopla surrounding that date. It’s something deeper, intangible, an intuitive sense that we are in the midst of something extraordinary, a paradigm shift, perhaps, or are being swept into a phenomenon for which we don’t yet have a name. Nothing, it seems, can be taken for granted. Change is the operative word, even in the world of science.

But when that change includes fundamental shifts in a scientific law that is supposed to be constant, scientists snap to full attention. Theories are tossed around. The mystery deepens.

The decay rates of radioactive elements are supposed to remain constant, the values are NOT supposed to change. Carbon-14, for example, which is used to accurately date ancient artifacts – a technique known as carbon dating – has a half life of 5,730 years. This dating process rests on the assumption that the decay rate never varies. Well, toss that constant out the window.

Researchers at  Purdue first noticed something was screwy when they were using radioactive samples for random number generation. “When they compared their measurements with other scientists’ work, the values of the published decay rates were not the same,” writes Ian O’Neill in in Discovery News.  “In fact, after further research they found that not only were they not constant, but they’d vary with the seasons. Decay rates would slightly decrease during the summer and increase during the winter.”

In 2006, a nuclear engineer at Purdue, Jere Jenkins, was testing the decay rate of manganese-54 and noted an inexplicable drop in its decay rate.  This drop occurred  just over a day before a large flare erupted on the sun.

As O’Neill writes, the scientists began to theorize that: “The sun may be emitting a preciously unknown particle that is meddling with the decay rates of matter. Or, at the very least, we are seeing some new physics…Did the sun somehow communicate with the manganese-54 sample?”

Peter Sturrock,  a Stanford professor emeritus of applied physics, felt that neutrinos  might hold a key to this mystery. As the article notes, these subatomic particles are born from the nuclear processes in the core of the sun and  pass through the Earth like ghosts. But it turns out that Sturrock was onto something. The decay rates “vary repeatedly every 33 days – a period of time that matches the rotational periods of the core of the sun. The solar core is the source of solar neutrinos.”

Project world awareness goes into this anomalistic mystery in some depth. “If particles interacting with the matter are not the cause – and matter is being affected by a new force of nature – then time itself may be speeding up and there’s no way to stop it.”

How many of us awaken in the morning, blink, have coffee, blink again, and suddenly the sun has set and it’s dark outside? How many of us joke about how, as we get older, time speeds up? Maybe age doesn’t have anything to do with it. Maybe time actually is speeding up.

And if time is speeding up, what does that mean for us down here on the third rock from the sun? Again, I’m not a scientist, but there’s something about this information that resonates intuitively. If the decay rate of matter is speeding up, then it affects all of us. Information is flowing at an ever increasing speed globally, and to be informed is to be empowered. The more we know  and discover, the greater the chance that our consciousness expands. With an expansion of consciousness, we evolve. As we evolve spiritually, intellectually, emotionally, then the self we are today is vastly different than the self we are tomorrow or next month or next year.

As Jenkins says, “What we’re suggesting is that something that doesn’t really interact with anything is changing something that can’t be changed.”

Perhaps this solar fluke – which affects both matter and time – will accelerate  the evolution of human consciousness. Maybe, as a species, we’ll evolve to the point where we recognize that war, greed,  hatred, discrimination, and everything else that divides us as inhabitants of the same planet spell just one thing: a path to intractable destruction. Maybe we’ll reach the point where so many people are awakened to this shift that a tipping point occurs and a new paradigm is born.

The sun, after all, is the giver of life. And if it is changing at fundamental levels that defy the laws of physics,  that turn quantum reality inside out like a dirty sock, and destroy scientific constants, then we, too, are changing, evolving, becoming…well, something else. Right now, in the quantum sense, it’s a wave. Through out intentions, prayers, desires, and evolution as a species, we can collapse that wave  and bring it into reality. And that’s where synchronicity shouts and seizes your attention.

How’s that saying go? Change begins one step at a time, with you and you and you until the you becomes us.

 

 

 

Posted in quantumn physics | 32 Comments

Happy B-Day, Mom!

Posted on June 7, 2011 by Trish and Rob


As an author, Trish MacGregor has had many aliases over the years, Trish Janeshutz, T.J. MacGregor, Alison Drake, but her most famous alias, the one that only I can call her, is Mom. Growing up as an only child in a family of two authors who work at home, my relationship with my parents has always been close. Each night as I was going to bed, my dad would tell me some story, usually his own version of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, and my mom would be by his side, tickling my face with her long nails as I fell asleep. Some nights, I’d lie on a makeshift bed in my mother’s office listening to the melodic rhythm of her typing away at the computer into the early hours of the morning. If I awoke from a bad dream, she was there with open arms to welcome me into her bed.

As a child, my love for animals was expansive; my mother was the only other person I had met who shared my deep obsession and affection for animals. When our neighbors called Animal Control to come capture the ducks by the lake in our backyard, it was my mom and I who herded ten of them into our atrium so they wouldn’t be killed. When a skinny white cat appeared at the library near our home, it was my mom and I who named her Powder and adopted her into the family. When a golden dog failed a test that would have made her a police K9, it was my mom and I who convinced my dad that Jessie needed a home, and ours was perfect.

As a teenager, while dealing with the pressures of friends and school and trying to figure out who I was, it was my mom who stood constant in her knowledge that I was perfect. It was my mom who loved me not for the way I looked or how funny I was, but just because I was me, her daughter. It was my mom who was there to hug me when a guy told me he didn’t like me anymore; she was the one who got me a gym membership when I told her I felt fat, and it was my mom who listened to my story ideas and my rough drafts when I told her that I too wanted to be a writer.

As a college student, I began to witness the sometimes difficult relationships my friends had with their parents, and I started to see how good I had it. My parents had built the kind of relationship with me where we pretty much talked about everything. When I failed a class, they helped me figure out what to do; when my roommates got on my nerves, I vented to them. When I was hung over, we made jokes about it.

During my first year of college, I must have driven across the state at least a dozen times just to spend the weekend with them, and each time I’d get back in the car to head back to school, my mother would embrace me. She’d say she had to get the mail, or find one of our cats: any excuse to walk me out to the car. She’d stand by my window making sure I had everything I needed, and as I backed out, she and my dad would wave goodbye and my mom would break out into a little farewell dance.

Now that I’ve graduated college, I may not be my parent’s little girl anymore, but I will always be my mother’s daughter, a little kooky and a little clumsy (especially with my broken foot) but one hundred percent happy that I have the family that I do.

I’ll never forget two years ago when I was home visiting from school and my mom and I stayed up late one night. We were talking about her current novel and writing in general and she smiled to me and said “you’re dad and I have created many things, many characters and many stories, but you are by far our greatest creation.”

Thanks Mom, for deciding that you wanted to add another critter to your family. I love you. Happy Birthday!

Megan

 

Posted in Uncategorized | 22 Comments

The 11:11 Sunday Service

Posted on June 5, 2011 by Trish and Rob

We’ve done a number of  posts on number cluster synchros and several on 11:11. But this sign outside a church is a first: Sunday service at 11:11. Gypsy woman sent the photo, with some info:

“The King’s Highway Christian church sits on a busy street through Shreveport. It’s been there for years, is on the historical registry. Just thought it’s so interesting that a very large affluent church has scheduled their Sunday morning worship to this particular time AND put up a sign about it.”

Makes me wonder if the church officials are onto the meaning of 11:11!

Of course, they could be referring to scripture…as in Revelations 11:11.

“But after the three and a half days a breath of life from God entered them, and they stood on their feet, and terror struck those who saw them.”

The reference is to two prophets or witnesses with enormous powers. Could they be unfriendly other worldly visitors?

“These witnesses have authority to close the heavens in order to keep rain from falling while they are prophesying. They also have authority to turn bodies of water into blood and to strike the earth with any plague, as often as they desire.”

Revelations 11:6

I prefer Henry Miller’s prophecy.

“If men cease to believe that they will one day become gods then they will surely become worms.” – The Colossus of Maroussi

 

 

 

 

 


Posted in 11:11 | 13 Comments

Star of the Bards

Posted on June 4, 2011 by Trish and Rob

Some interesting material here related to story-telling and mythology, courtesy of Kathy Pagano, a Jungian psychotherapist. It’s a good site to explore whenever you’ve hit a creative block.

In fact, Kathy also refers to  herself as a creativity coach and a mythologist, and she dabbles in astrology.

 

 

 

 

Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments

Underwater Synchro

Posted on June 3, 2011 by Trish and Rob

John Krayeski, pictured above at right, speared a synchro in 90 feet of water off Palm Beach, Florida on Mother’s Day. John was diving on an artificial reef made of a sunken freighter and Rolls Royce (well, it is Palm Beach) when he noticed something sticking up out of the sand.

“I pull it out and it’s a JC Penny credit card,” Krayeski told a Palm Beach Post reporter. “I knew it was an old one because of the design. When he climbed back aboard his boat, he took a closer look and recognized the name of the card holder. It was a man he’d recently worked for in his job as a contractor.

“I said to my friend, ‘We did an addition to this guy’s house.” At his office, he compared signatures on the card with a contract in his files. They looked very much alike, so he called Jack Jacobs. His wife answered and said they didn’t have any J.C. Penny credit cards. But ten minutes later, Jacobs called back and said  he’d lost that card 25 years ago before he was married.

“The befuddling thing is, how did it get a mile offshore on some reef?” Jacobs wonders. And what are the chances that a friend would find his lost card in the vast ocean a quarter of a century later?

“I told John I’m going to drop another card in the ocean and he has 25 years to find it.”

***

This story reminds me of how a man fishing with a net caught my wallet a week after I lost it while windsurfing. He returned it with all the cards and cash. Amazingly, I’d met the man a week before losing the wallet when he came to our house soliciting business for his landscaping company. Here’s that story.

Posted in Uncategorized | 7 Comments

Feed and Plant

Posted on June 2, 2011 by Trish and Rob

Lauren Raine’s blog, Threads of the Spiderwoman, is always a visual feast and a verbal delight. The illustration is an example of her art. She delves into the mythic, the archetypal, the feminine. She certainly uses synchronicity in her work, experiences it in her travels, and writes about it beautifully. When I read this post on her blog, I asked if we could use it. We also used one of her stories in Synchronicity and the Other Side.

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I’ve been having tantrums lately, about feeling isolated and alienated and unsure of where to go or what to do.  I share these feelings, with an increased intensity and frequency, with many others these days.  The river is running very fast now.  The river is running like a torrent now.

I also tend to feel that tantrums, as long as they don’t hurt anyone or become collectively a war or a riot………….can be very useful.  Children have tantrums;  eventually they exhaust themselves, and sometimes the tantrum’s end is about learning new boundaries and maturity.  Tantrums for grownups can also not only vent, but reveal.  We spend so much time in our heads, in the “should be, used to be, would be, could be” realm of experience, which seems real at the time but usually isn’t even mildly useful to the what is…… and meanwhile, as a wise angel who briefly turned up recently to set me straight said – “There’s the NOW, patiently watching, saying ‘well, are you done yet?”

Change is the only certainty.  The NOW is.

So I had something happen magically, that was profound for me.  Sometimes when these things happen, it’s easy to say to yourself, “well, that’s silly”, but as that Angel (“Angelos”, from the Greek, originally meant “messenger”) reminded me, “you listen, so you noticed.”

I was facing a three day weekend at the Renfair in Los Angeles, selling my masks alone now, and early in the morning went to my car to open the door and hit the freeway, costume and lunch in hand.  Tucked into the handle of the door was a piece of dirty white paper.   When I pulled it out, I saw that it was folded into one of those paper airplanes that children make.  And when I unfolded it, I saw that it had two words, block printed in pencil in a childish hand, one on each side of the paper.  On one side it said “FEED”, on the other “PLANT”.

“Wow, that’s really strange” I thought, and tossed it aside.  Why would some kid put it there?  And on I went to the Faire.

As I was setting up in the blissful quiet before the stampede of merrymakers,  a participant, dressed in a nobleman’s costume, with a great burgundy  hat against and a white head of hair, came by and we had one of those brief conversations that can seem divinely channelled.  He affirmed the value of my work,  and the continuity we participate in as creators, whether we remember that or not.   All the people who interact with my masks, all the people who now make masks and wear them.   I needed to hear that.  And   he also reminded me of the inevitability of change, the suffering that comes from not accepting the “what is” of the moment.  Tantrums we can have, or very real grief – but we still have to get up, open up, learn,  grow, and deal.

I have a wrapped quartz crystal – on the first day I gave an extra mask to a man who didn’t have much money and wanted one for his partner.  He came back later and presented me with the crystal, which he had mined himself in Arkansas. What a splendid gift!  My angelic friend (I don’t know his name) immediately noticed my crystal, and said it was to help me.  So the conversation led into the morning’s synchronicity, my little “paper airplane”.  I think, had I not encountered this person, I would have completely forgotten about it.

He commented that it was “Written in the hand of a child learning his or her letters, in pencil.  Basic.  Not like the abstractions we “adults” make.  Like the work of real farmers is basic, the ground that supports us.  Without their labor, without the alchemy and generosity of the land and the farmers, none of this” (he made an expansive gesture indicating the vast urban complex called Los Angeles we were standing more or less in the center of) “none of this would exist.  The farmers and land sustain it all.  All the “higher” sophistication of our civilization falls apart when the land fails to care for us, and the true farmers, not those chemical factories, but true farmers……….aren’t understood.”

I might add that I thought it was Earth Day, and I’d somehow forgotten. I was wrong, but I think that gives further weight to his observation. “Feed and Plant is a profound message for all of us.  Especially now.” And then we shook hands, wished each other a great day, and parted ways.  My energy had completely changed, and I stood there with my mouth open.

“FEED” and “PLANT”.   All of my  alienation, loneliness, lack of purpose, all those grand complexities…… if Angels deliver the occasional message in the form of  grubby paper planes, and then send an occasional human representative just to make sure attention is paid – well. that’s otherwise called Grace.   I may not be a farmer, but we can all be farmers, literally by planting and growing even if it’s a window box, getting our hands in the Earth, connecting with the alchemy and gift of the Earth.  As a universal message, it should be Earth Day everyday.

We all can, and do, “plant”.  As an artist, I can plant beauty, inspiration, I can encourage others to do the same.  I can recognize the “trees” I’m planting, and have planted,  in my life.  Feed yourself and others with what sustains and nourishes.  Plant seeds that will feed the future, plant seeds that will grow into trees.  It doesn’t need to be complicated at all.  Even sparrows do it.

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It sounds like her muse rose up and grasped her hand.

Posted in artists, muse | 9 Comments

The Muse

Posted on June 1, 2011 by Trish and Rob

Back in the mid-1970s, I worked as a librarian and Spanish teacher at a juvenile detention facility – that’s a sanitized phrase for a prison. It was supposed to be a place for male juvenile offenders, but we had a lot of men who were well beyond juvenile. I spent three years there, setting up the library, getting it functional. By my last year, I was beginning to feel like an inmate and was eager to get out.

During the Christmas holidays of what would be my last year there, I went shopping for a special gift for my mother. There was an art store in downtown Vero Beach that sold original Edna Hibel paintings, lithographs and figurines. My mother loved Hibel’s art in every form. She collected the figurines – many of them mother/daughter motifs so perfectly sculpted they captured the essence of that particular relationship. But on a back wall, I found an artist proof of a little Dutch girl that captured me.

It was well beyond what I could afford, so I called my dad and asked if he would split it with me. He did, of course, and on Christmas morning, my mother opened her gift,  her eyes wide with astonishment.  The little Dutch graced the living room wall in my parents’ home for many years. She witnessed disputes and triumphs, a flood, hurricanes, weddings. When Rob and I got married in my parents’ living room, the little Dutch girl gazed down serenely. When our first novels were published, she celebrated with us. She witnessed my mother’s descent into the black hole of Alzheimer’s, my father’s diagnosis of Parkinson’s, and the eventual sale of their home.

When my parents moved into an independent living facility, the Dutch girl hung in their living room, watching over them. When we had to put my mother in an Alzheimer’s facility, my dad and the little Dutch girl moved into our home. Over the years, she not only became the family guardian and historian, but my muse.

While my dad was living with us, a terrific synchro occurred with the Dutch girl. I was asked to speak at an event at the Hibel Museum. So the Dutch girl was removed from the wall and I took her with me and talked about what she had become for me and my family. Edna Hibel was in the audience and came up to me afterward and signed her lovely piece of art.

Not  long after that, my mother died in a nursing home of pneumonia. Two years later, my father’s Parkinson’s had progressed to the point where we couldn’t care for him anymore. We moved him to an assisted living facility in Georgia where my sister was head of nursing. The Dutch girl graced one of the walls and looked after him. Every time I visited, I felt that my mother was peering out through the Dutch girl’s eyes.

Two years after my dad moved into the assisted living facility, he was at lunch one day, appeared to have a stroke, and lapsed into a coma. My sister called me and I flew up to Atlanta the next day. The little Dutch girl, my sister, and I remained with my dad for the next two days. We made sure his favorite music was playing and at one point, I remember, I felt my mother’s presence quite strongly and sensed she and my dad were dancing, something they enjoyed when they were younger. I also knew she had come to be with him as he passed on.

Shortly before 11 that night, the facility called us and said his death was imminent. We drove back and were with him when he died at 11 PM.  The Dutch girl witnessed this, too. By then, she’d been in our family for 27 years.

My sister and I boxed up my father’s belongings the next day and divided everything. She said she felt I should have the Dutch girl, since I had brought her into our lives. She has moved around in our house – from the living room, to my dad’s former room, to our bedroom. She’s been with us 33 years now and more than 50 books. She has watched our daughter grow into a young woman of 21. But she’s just as cute as the day I bought her. Her eyes, though, do seem sadder and, somehow, wiser.

 

 

Posted in creativity, Edna Hibel, muse, parents | Tagged , | 13 Comments