Squirrel?

Posted on May 27, 2013 by Trish and Rob

Nika and Noah, in my messy office, peering out the window at – a squirrel? Well, maybe.  But they could also be drawn to the window by some  dim hope that a squirrel might appear and help itself to our ripening mangos.

Or maybe it’s lizards that attract them? Or birds? That’s the thing with these two: they are so fully ensconced in the moment that everything else is forgotten. I wonder about that, how we humans can be so fully immersed in the now that everything else falls away.

I believe this is what happens during meditation, when we sleep and dream, even when we’re driving some familiar road and enter a dreamlike state. At those moments, we aren’t fretting about bills, schedules, who said what to whom and oh yeah, my feelings are hurt and suppose, what if…?

Then Rob made some noise from the other room, the noise that meant he was headed off to teach a yoga class. The  dogs turned their heads simultaneously, as if checking to see what was going on in the other world, that place where the humans don’t get excited about squirrels.

And they quickly turned their attention back to the window and whatever it was outside that fascinated and riveted them.

So whenever I’m in the midst of some dramatic moment, worrying about this or that, I’m going to utter one word: SQUIRREL. And it will snap me back to this image, this NOW, and hopefully will plop me into the current of NOW.

 

Posted in synchronicity | 9 Comments

San Diego UFO

Posted on May 25, 2013 by Trish and Rob

This video of a UFO captured by a photographer is surprisingly clear. Thanks to Debra Page for alerting us to it!

 

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Wall of Justice

Posted on May 24, 2013 by Trish and Rob

I was driving this morning to an appointment, listening to an interview on National Public Radio of a horror story…with a good ending, and a couple of interesting synchros to boot.

It’s the story about Kirk Noble Bloodsworth, 53, the first American sentenced to death row, who was exonerated by DNA evidence. Bloodsworth spent eight years in prison, two of them on death row after falsely being convicted of sexual assault, rape and premeditated first-degree murder of a nine-year-old girl in 1985. At the time of his arrest, Bloodsworth, a former Marine with an honorable discharge, had never been arrested.

Even though five eyewitnesses had placed him with the victim, he continued to maintain his innocence throughout his trial and subsequent incarceration. In 1992, while in jail, Bloodsworth read an account of how DNA fingerprinting had led to the conviction of Colin Pitchfork in the killings of Dawn Ashworth and Lynda Mann. Hoping to prove his innocence, he pushed to have the evidence against him tested by the then-novel method.

Initially, it was thought that DNA evidence- traces of semen in the victim’s underwear – had been destroyed. However, Bloodsworth kept pursuing the issue and finally the evidence was located in a paper bag in the judge’s chambers. Testing proved that the semen didn’t match Bloodsworth’s DNA. He was released from prison in 1993.

Bloodsworth was on the radio today in the aftermath of the State of Maryland’s decision to abolish the death penalty, the eighth state to do so. Bloodsworth’s case was cited as a major impetus for abolishing the law.

When asked in the NPR interviewer about his thoughts on the justice system, Bloodsworth said that initially he was confident he would be found not guilty because he didn’t do it. He gave his alibi, but five witnesses proceeded to misidentify him as the perpetrator. He also said it was his pursuit of justice that eventually set him free, not the workings of the justice system.

He told a story of his attorney coming to visit him in jail while he was on trial. They sat in chairs facing each other with a glass partition between them. Behind the lawyer was a brick wall. Bloodsworth recalls the lawyer saying: “You’re in a heap of trouble Kirk, but I’ll do all I can to help you.”

The lawyer finished the conversation repeating, “I’ll do all I can to help you.” He then placed his hand on the glass in front of Kirk, in lieu of a handshake. “Then he stood up, turned, and walked right into the brick wall,” Bloodsworth recalls.

That turned out to be a fitting symbol, a synchronicity for the conviction that was to follow. Another synchro is his name. DNA from his blood proved he was innocent and freed him. Bloodsworth, indeed. A book (pictured above) called BLOODSWORTH was written about his case.

Today, Bloodsworth is a program officer for the Justice Project, and he has been an ardent supporter of the Innocence Protection Act (IPA) since its introduction in Congress in February 2000. The IPA establishes the Kirk Bloodsworth Post-Conviction DNA Testing Program, a program that will help states defray the costs of post-conviction DNA testing.

Though released from prison, Bloodsworth was not formally exonerated. In 2003, nearly a decade after his release, prison DNA evidence added to state and federal databases identified the real killer, Kimberly Shay Ruffner. A month after the 1984 murder, Ruffner had been sentenced to 45 years for an unrelated burglary, attempted rape and assault with intent to murder, and ironically had been incarcerated in a cell one floor below Bloodsworth’s own cell. In 2004 Ruffner pled guilty to the 1984 murder.
Posted in synchronicity | 13 Comments

A Synchro Encounter on the Road

Posted on May 23, 2013 by Trish and Rob

 

Traveling is a great time to experience synchronicities.

When you venture forth on a journey, a trek that takes you out of your normal routines and concerns, your consciousness has greater freedom to explore. Your comfort zones are gone, your kitchen, your bed and your pillow are memories. You’re in new, unfamiliar territory and must confront who you are.

Jane Clifford recently returned from a remote valley in Shropshire, Wales, where she has visited for 20 years. Her friend’s cottage is just below Offas dyke path, a Bronze Age construction that meanders for 177 miles. While driving there, still half an hour away, a radio program came on about Offas dyke and its significance. It’s considered an incredible feat of engineering from pre-8th century Britain. The path atop the dyke was called one the ten best wall walks in the world, ranking up there with the Great Wall of China.

When Jane travels, it seems that mysterious things happen and synchronicity flourishes. Her recent trip was no different. She had dinner one night with a family she had visited many times. The man of the house is a self-made multimillionaire, and she has always found him kind, thoughtful and generous. We’ll call him Clifford, since Jane prefers not to use his real name.

“He has had healing with me and a clairvoyant reading, which accurately predicted that he would marry and have two children, which he now has.” Jane notes that she predicted the wife would not be the woman he was dating at the time, and she was right.

“He turned up with a bottle of wine and sat down next to me. Whilst he was actually greeting me, I was wondering if he had remembered the predictions. He leaned toward me, his face close to mine, and asked how I was. To my astonishment, his features shape-shifted and staring at me was the devil, red eyes and horns. The entity bared its teeth, as if guarding some hidden knowledge and denying access, even though I wasn’t seeking such access.

“There were no drugs or alcohol involved. This entity held my gaze quite steadily. I was shocked, taken by surprise, but not afraid. It was shocking to me because I thought the man was a regular nice guy. However, maybe to make so much money so fast, one’s shadow has to be ruthless. Yet, when chatting about business I have known him to be quite kind, so I had not seen this ruthlessness. I remain puzzled by the experience.”

Jane said she wasn’t afraid because she realized it was just a movie, an altered reality, an expression of the man’s shadow. “It was also like a kind of test to see if I would steadily hold the light and not give way to fear. The experience was very strange indeed and I shall keep my psychic protection up whenever I meet him again.”

The synchronicity here is that twice earlier in her life she had demonic-type encounters with two other men, both named ‘Clifford.’ Not only was that a meaningful coincidence for her, but that same name pops up regularly on her cell phone screen and she can’t remove it. “It has been stuck there for years and I never call him and I can’t seem to get the name off the screen. Neither can my technologically savvy children.”

Jane wrote back later and said that after writing the e-mail about ‘Clifford,’ she tried to remove the name again from her phone…and this time, to her amazement, it disappeared. Maybe she just needed to release the energy by writing about it.

Posted in synchronicity, travel | 8 Comments

Oklahoma disaster synchro

Posted on May 21, 2013 by Trish and Rob

A mangled vehicle outside of Moore, Ok

Whenever there is a major catastrophic event that catches our collective attention, synchronicity seems to follow. We’ve reported on such global synchros in the past, the most recent was the Boston bombing in which most victims literally had their legs cut out from underneath them. Among them were brothers and newly weds. Legs, of course, are what power the marathon runners.

So what about this new disaster, which at this writing is still in its early stages. We don’t know yet what the death and injury total will be or the extent of property damage.  But the Moore, Oklahoma storm is already being called the biggest tornado to ever hit the United States.

At this point, the most obvious synchronicity is a political one…an ironic trickster synchro. That’s because both Oklahoma senators – Jim Inhofe and Tom Colburn – are fiscal hawks who have repeatedly railed against federal spending for disasters…in other areas of the country.

Both backed a plan to slash disaster relief to victims of Hurricane Sandy. In a December press release, Colburn complained that the Sandy Relief bill contained “wasteful spending,” and identified a series of items he objected to, including “$12.9 billion for future disaster mitigation activities and studies.”

In 2011, both senators opposed legislation that would have granted necessary funding for FEMA when the agency was set to run out of money. Sending the funds to FEMA would have been “unconscionable,” Coburn said at the time.

Now they are both in an awkward position – as contorted as the vehicle above. But that hasn’t deterred them in the past when both rallied for federal funds for Oklahoma. The Huffington Post notes that in January of 2007, Coburn urged federal officials to speed disaster relief aid after the state faced a major ice storm.

A year later, in 2008, Inhofe praised emergency funds from the Department of Housing and Urban Development would be given to 24 Oklahoma counties. “The impact of severe weather has been truly devastating to many Oklahoma communities across the state. I am pleased that the people whose lives have been affected by disastrous weather are getting much-needed federal assistance,” he said.

So watch these senators call for immediate federal aid to Oklahoma tornado victims – which they deserve – but then add that the aid should be paid for by slashes in the federal budget in other areas. Such as…aid to disaster victims in other parts of the country? And watch how their fellow fiscal hawk Republicans, who voted against aid for Hurricane Sandy victims, react now. Will they hold firm against federal aid when two of the own party call for help?

The trickster strikes again.

 

Posted in synchronicity | 9 Comments

Is This the New Normal?

Posted on May 20, 2013 by Trish and Rob

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EziyEjYseZk&hd=0

 

The massive two-mile wide tornado that tore through Moore, Oklahoma is being called, at the very least, an EF4, with winds between 166 and 200 mph. It devastated  entire neighborhoods, homes, and at least one elementary school, where 75 people had taken refuge in a hallway, most of them third graders.

The geography in the videos resembles a war zone of twisted metal and rubble.

This storm is being compared to the May 3, 1999 tornado that also hit this area and was determined to be the most intense tornado on record. Here and here for other stories on this tragedy.

Here is a comparison between the two tornados, compiled by the National Weather Service.

It’s difficult to imagine this kind of devastation, much less to be in the midst of it.

Posted in synchronicity, tornado | 5 Comments

Extraterrestrial Life…or not

Posted on May 20, 2013 by Trish and Rob

In the old days, the Church torched philosophers who dared to suggest that there was life elsewhere in the universe.  Things changed in the 18th century during the Enlightenment when it seems there was actually a greater belief in life on other planets by scientists than there is now. Today, mainstream scientists gang up on scientists who find micro-biotic life in meteorites.

But I’m getting ahead of myself….

I was reading an article on-line from the Washington Post that cast doubts on the existence of extraterrestrial life anywhere in the universe to say nothing of UFOs and aliens here on Earth. While reading,  Trish arrived home with a copy of the June/July issue of Open Minds Magazine. She laid it on the kitchen table open to an article headlined: “Will Mainstream Science Ever Accept Evidence of Extraterrestrial Life?”

So that was a synchro for me – two ET articles coming together at about the same time, both dealing with the same question from opposite perspectives.

The Post article, entitled “The Fear that Drives our Alien Belief,” asks us: “What is it about UFOs that drive so many people to believe they exist despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary?”

According to a 2012 National Geographic poll, 36 percent of Americans believe aliens have visited earth. Yet, as one scientist wrote in a letter to the late UFO researcher and Harvard prof John Mack, such visitations “contradict virtually all of the basic laws of physics, chemistry and biology on which modern science depends.”

Meanwhile, the Open Minds article starts off in the opposite mode, “Reputable scientists have conducted multiple studies that suggest the existence of extraterrestrial life, but the mainstream scientific community refused to accept those claims….One wonders what it will take for the mainstream scientific community to accept evidence of extraterrestrial life.”

The Post tells us that “a belief in extraterrestrial life answers many of the same questions as a belief in God.” The alternative is a “vast, dark emptiness of the unfeeling universe.”

Psychologist Stephen Diamond is quoted as saying without these UFO stories, “we have to accept the fact that some things mean nothing, and others are totally beyond us—a strange, frightening and ultimately deflating thought.” (I would guess that my ET synchro above would be one of those things that mean nothing in Diamond’s eyes.)

The Post article leads readers to the conclusion that belief in extraterrestrial life of any kind is a simply psychological crutch, something to give us hope. Meanwhile, though, it darkly suggests there isn’t any proof and any rational reason to believe.

The Open Minds article begins with a historical perspective. At least believers today are tolerated, probably because there are so many. But in the 16th century that wasn’t the case. Giordano Filippo Bruno, who has been described as an early spokesman for exo-biology – a branch of the science that deals with the search for ET life – was not treated kindly by the powers-that-be. Bruno boldly said that he believed that life, including intelligent beings, exist on numerous other worlds. As a result of that stance, Bruno was burned at the stake by the Catholic Church. Ouch!

By the time of the Enlightenment, the concept of a plurality of worlds existing with intelligent life was actually becoming accepted. Benjamin Franklin believed the universe is “filled with suns like ours, each with a chorus of worlds.”

But jump to the present and we find a dichotomy – a minority of scientists pointing to evidence of extraterrestrial life and a mainstream that says the verdict is still unknown. Scientists who find evidence of extraterrestrial life – even in the form of fossilized bacteria  in meteorites – are routinely dismissed by other scientists who say that the meteorites have been contaminated or even that they aren’t meteorites.

A paper published in January of this year found ET life in the form of  fossilized algae in a meteorite found in Sri Lanka. The paper was met with harsh criticism from the scientific community. In response, the researchers sent fragments to CardiffUniversity in Wales for further testing.

As explained on www.extremetech.com, “The researchers at Cardiff are now reporting that they’re sure that these fragments come from an extraterrestrial meteorite – and that there is definitely ‘fossilized biological structures.” These new findings were published in the March issue of The Journal of Cosmology. It’s not surprising that the new paper is being criticized just as harshly as the first one, and the publication is being dismissed as a low-grade scientific journal.

And so it goes. I wonder what the aliens think.

Posted in aliens, synchronicity | 9 Comments

I Feel Great!

Posted on May 19, 2013 by Trish and Rob

This video, sent to us by our Canadian friend Judi Hertling, is very cool. If nothing else, it will put a bounce in your Sunday steps!

 

 

 

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Conundrum

Posted on May 18, 2013 by Trish and Rob

from an exhibit at the Norton Museum

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In the three or four years that Rob has been teaching meditation, the course has taken place at our gym or at a local yoga studio.  I attend most of these courses, unless they are held at an obscenely early morning time slot. We’re the typical lark/owl couple. I’m a night person, he’s a day person. While he’s out on the porch meditating at dawn, I am deep in a dreaming world. My day starts around 9 AM.

Rob’s meditation course is once a week for six weeks.  Between weeks four and six, things get very interesting. We go deeper than we’ve gone before. We encounter realms that are not business as usual. In this realm, I’ve seen my parents, who passed over in 2000  and 2005. I’ve seen other entities/spirits that seems to know me but whom I don’t know.  My cheek has been caressed by one of these spirits, I have entered past lives I knew nothing about.

I have also experienced some physical discomfort during these meditations, where we stretch out on a hard floor.  I feel like a total idiot even admitting this, but honestly,  a yoga mat doesn’t do much to mitigate hardness. The hard floor bothers my back and most of the time I have to keep my legs bent to  get into the zone. And there  is  a zone.

This indescribable place, this zone, is where I go after I have moved  beyond my physical discomforts. If I were camping, it would be the point where I separate  from my physical body to travel, well, elsewhere. I drift in the currents of Rob’s voice. One time during this particular meditation, I observed two elderly women who were watching the class, taking notes, as though it were an assignment. When one of them touch my cheek, I felt her touch,  just as real as a human touch. But tonight – nothing. I fell asleep, that’s the long and short of it.

But I was reminded of a dream I’d had when I was 18. I was a freshman in college in upstate New York and was staying at a friend’s place in the countryside. The silence felt huge, infinite; the stars were grand and magnificent.  My bed in the guest room was soft, delicious. And I dreamed that I was waiting in a crowded lobby to talk to someone who would guide me through the next step of a process. At some point, I realized  I had died and was in a holding area, a lobby with several dozen other people, who were also dead and waiting  until someone came along and explained what was going on. Then I woke up.

The next morning, I told my friend what I had dreamed. She got this look on her face – a look I have come to know as that of the gentle skeptic – and said, “It’s just a dream, Trish. It doesn’t mean anything.”

I knew she was wrong. Even then I knew that dreams holds answers and insights, information and guidance. Even then, I knew that sometimes we dream Big Dreams that hold fundamental truths. 

After my mother died and my dad was living with us,  he came out for breakfast one morning and reported that when he’d looked at himself in the mirror, he had seen the face of a black man superimposed over his own. The face was that of a young, handsome  black man, full of life. And my dad, who wasn’t mystically inclined at all, said, “I think I glimpsed myself in my next life.”

Shortly afterward, Rob and  I gave him a book called, Looking for Carroll Beckwith: The True Story of a Detective’s Search for His Past Life, by Robert L. Snow. This book, coupled with Carol Bowman’s Children’s Past Lives, led him toward a realization that we live many lives.

The conundrum initiated by that dream when I was 18 has haunted and pursued me, sculpted my interests and passions, threaded itself through my fiction and nonfiction. It has drawn me to certain people, belief systems, experiences that have brought me new knowledge – and new questions. But the ultimate bottom line question remains the same all these decades later: What is the nature of reality?

 Thanks to research in NDEs, consciousness, OBEs, quantum physics, reincarnation, shamanism, the paranormal, UFO encounters, the unconscious, dreams, synchronicity, and all the rest of it, we have glimpses, hints, pieces of theories. But we don’t know for sure. We are Keenu Reeves in The Matrix, Jim Carey in The Truman Show, Gwyneth Paltrow in Sliding Doors, Emma Thompson in Dead Again. It’s all about the journey toward discovery.

So if someone tells me they have all the answers, I run – fast  – in the opposite direction. The bottom line is that none of us knows for sure. We are the babes in the woods.

 

Posted in meditation, reincarnation, synchronicity | 7 Comments

Nika & Noah, a Continuing Love Story

Posted on May 17, 2013 by Trish and Rob

 Nearly two years ago, our daughter asked us if she could have a dog and we began our search at local animal rescue centers. Megan eventually adopted Nika when she was about eight weeks old and Noah, our golden retriever, was about two. In the photo, Nika is the black and white dog in front of Noah, our golden retriever.

We thought Nika was a border collie mix, but when Megan did a mouth swab for an Internet testing site, the results were, at best, dubious: Pomeranian, and back at least four generations.

Really?

Here’s a Pomeranian.

You’ve already seen  pic of Nika. Any resemblance?

When Megan moved to Orlando for her internship at Sea World to work with dolphins, Nika spent the next seven months with us. During that time, she and Noah bonded. They played together, ate together, slept together on the same quilt. They were like twins conjoined the hip.

After Megan’s internship ended, she moved Nika to Orlando with her. Nika went from a suburban home with a yard to which she had access constantly to the ninth floor of an apartment in downtown Orlando that she shared with Olly, a Dachshund mix, a yapper. During the ensuing months, as Megan established a dogwalking business in Orlando, we got together at least once a month, which was also a reunion for Nika and Noah.

These reunions were not those of two dogs who shook hands and went about their personal business. These reunions were OMG I see you and I’m jumping out the car window to get to you and now we’re going to run around like mad dogs.

When Megan pulled into the driveway last Friday, Noah and I happened to be outside, playing with the Frisbee. He saw her car and started barking, but ran over to it as soon as it stopped because Nika was hanging out the back window. Noah leaped, Nika leaped, and sailed through the window onto Noah’s back.

For the next five or ten minutes, they chased each other around the front yard.

Yes, I have been accused of being anthropomorphic. And if I am, I welcome the label. I suspect the label actually means that you, a human, recognize that animals have emotions. They develop attachments that are just as profound and significant as the attachments of humans. They love, they mourn,  they yearn.  And quite often, they act as vehicles of synchronicity.

On the day that Megan arrived, I had been thinking that I would like to experience a synchro that showed me how love is a force of nature – and then I witnessed Noah leaping up on Megan’s car to greet Nika, and Nika leaping through the window to be with Noah.

Her visit was just for a long weekend. But on Monday morning when Megan prepared to leave, she said, “Maybe I should leave Nika here with you guys until I come back for my friend’s wedding on June first.”

“Let Nika decide,” I said.

Megan whistled for her, invited her into the back seat. She leaped in, then backed out and ran off with Noah. Megan looked at us. “She’s my dog and she’s just visiting you guys, okay?”

“June first,” we replied. “But if you can’t take being without her, we’ll bring her to Orlando next weekend.”

No question that Nika loves Noah and vice versa. But as Megan’s car backed out of the driveway and headed up the road, Nika sat there a moment, then chased it, barking, as if to say, Wait, you’re my human! There’s been a mistake!

 When I called her back, she hesitated, staring longingly after Megan’s car, then trotted back, nose to the ground, pursuing some scent. A squirrel, perhaps?  And she looked at Noah, barked, and they took off beneath the vast blue sky, and chased each other around the yard again.

Now, they’re exhausted- and happy, together once more.

 

Posted in animals, animals as messengers, Nika, synchronicity | 14 Comments