An Ausie in New Zealand

Posted on January 26, 2010 by Trish and Rob

Here’s a story from Marcus Anthony, an Australian therapist-futurist, and author of The Sage of Synchronicity. His previous stories here, Jack the Ripper, and Bright Lights are two of my favorites. Now we learn more about Marcus’ past in this story of a hellish job experience and how he escaped.- R

“It was during a meditation in early 1996, that the image came to me. I saw a woman with dark hair. She was turned away from me, and on the back of her shirt were two letters: “NZ”. Brilliant as I am, I knew it must have something to do with New Zealand. Exactly what, I wasn’t sure, as my knowledge of the Shaky Isles was restricted to knowing that their sheep are uglier than Australia’s, and that they dishonestly tried to claim credit for the Pavlova, a creamy cake, definitely invented in Australia.

“The vision of the NZ woman remained perplexing.

“A few weeks later, I was talking to a colleague of mine over lunch. He mentioned that an international school principal from New Zealand was coming to Australia to recruit teachers, and suggested I apply. I said I would think about it, said goodbye and walked over to buy a snack from the kiosk. When the cashier handed me the change, a coin jumped out at me like a punch in the nose. It was a New Zealand twenty-cent piece, somehow mixed in with the local currency.

“I took the hint. I applied for the job, got an interview and received an offer shortly afterward. Had I known that this synchronicity was an invitation for a joyride to hell, I suspect I would have said “No”. Which is probably why the universe declined to give me that little bit of additional information.

“Still, the fact that my flat mate, Martin, had also received an offer from the same school, and accepted it, encouraged me. His position began three months before mine, so he flew out first.

“On July 8th 1996, I stepped off the plane at Wellington airport. The hellish bit didn’t start right away. It got a bit warmer slowly every day, until a certain point about three months later when the world as I knew it became a furnace of chaos. At work, my department head literally would not acknowledge my existence, not even to say hello to me in the morning. She gossiped about me in staff meetings, conspired to turn other staff members against me, and nailed long lists of demands to my forehead – her preferred way of communicating. What was worse, I was told that she made fun of my clothes behind my back (and if anyone tells you that trousers that are two-inches too short are uncool, they don’t know what they are talking about). My Australian flat mate Martin had already been bullied to such a degree that he resigned not long after I arrived. Australians were an endangered species at the school, and we hadn’t even mentioned the pavlova.

“Then I met a wonderful but intense assemblage of advanced souls who worked as part of a group that drew people from all across New Zealand and the world.. I told them what a bunch of bullies I worked with, and how they had done me wrong. I demanded some sympathy. I didn’t get any. My spiritual teachers took me aside and told me that I had to take complete responsibility for my work and life. I got slapped just hard enough to snap me out of my delusion – and the collective delusion of modern humanity. I was told I had lived my life as a victim, and had not yet healed, nor even addressed, the deep wounds that existed within me. They showed me how to begin. It would require some old fashioned guts and a whole new way of using the body, mind and soul. The worst part was that the journey would go via the road to hell. But rather kindly of them, they said they would help me through the gates of the furnace and back out – if I made it.

“Not content in seeing me being battered about the head and body at my place of employment, my teachers proceeded to see how far I could be pushed before I broke. They threw me into the fire, and looked on to see whether I’d burn alive or if I’d claw my way back out of the embers and construct myself anew.

“Slowly, something special began to happen. I started to draw in the lost pieces of my soul, the light and the darkness within. I connected with the inner child, the part of me that had never been loved. In this emotional bonding, I began to develop acute perception. Soon I was able to draw information from past, present and future, from within and without – in an instant.

“I said it was hell. But it was really just a very, very big test because that was what I needed. It all came back to my Bliss, something I had asked for when I had first begun my spiritual journey. I had asked to be shown what it means to truly love. What I didn’t know at the time of asking is that everything has a price. I didn’t realize that genuine love requires healing the parts of the mind that lie in shadow.

“You never quite know how powerful you are until you have been stretched to the limit. Even as I went through the most challenging period of my life, I was given the most amazing gifts. Besides beginning to stand in my power as a human being, I met the most brilliant, incredible and courageous people.. These people became the inspiration for my doctoral thesis and my first book Integrated Intelligence. Integrated intelligence (INI) is the idea that we human beings have an innate capacity to draw upon knowledge and intelligence which exists beyond the confines of the five senses.

“Given the right environment and support, and with the personal courage and commitment to push personal boundaries, ordinary people can develop extraordinary intelligence – integrated intelligence. This includes the capacity for deep intuition, and to perceive the profound meanings often hidden within life. It also entails the ability to process information from spiritual realms currently not on the map of modern science. Integrated intelligence can make you wise, by deepening your relationship with the world and cosmos. It can help you perceive and understand synchronicities, the numerous fortuitous and deeply meaningful events that come into your life every day. Integrated intelligence can make you a sage of synchronicity.

“Some readers may be interested to know what happened at my school and with the spiritual group I was with.

“It was quite a frightening situation at the school, as the head teacher literally set out to destroy my reputation. What I began to do was gently confront her with every tale I heard about her badmouthing me at meetings or in front of her classes. I asked her if this was true, and she denied it each time. Eventually she realized I wasn’t going to be easily bullied, so she stopped targeting me, and began to have a go at another female teacher on staff, named Paula. However, Paula was rather more tempestuous than I, and the two ended up having screaming matches right there on campus. So the heat eased, at least for me! Then, in what I can only imagine to have been the second immaculate conception, the head teacher got pregnant, and took a year off work. Paula and I stayed at the school, but both resigned when the head teacher returned to work.

“My relationship with the spiritual group is far too complex to detail here. Over a period of about three years I went through many spiritual “tests” with them. Some of them were far to intensive for me to “pass”, and I had to leave the group on several occasions, which was very distressing for me at the time. However, I remained in contact with many of them until the group disbanded. I have not heard from any of them for over a decade. I would love to contact some of them again. Perhaps I will sometime in the future. The group leader, a remarkable woman (whom I refer to as Jessica in my book Sage of Synchronicity), never sought publicity. I have no definitive information about where she is now.”

***
If anyone would like to contact Marcus with personal comments, you can e-mail him at: mindfutures@yahoo.com.

BONUS ALERT!  For the next few days,  Marcus is making Sage of Synchronicity (as an e-book) available to readers of our blog free of charge. If you click the link to the title at the top of the page, you will find the complete text. We were also pleased to find out that Marcus mentions this blog twice in his book, once in the text, and once in the recommended reading section.

Posted in Marcus Anthony, New Zealand, Sage of Synchronicity | 14 Comments

Hunches

Posted on January 25, 2010 by Trish and Rob

This evening (Jan 23), we joined our friends Paul and Susan at a Greek restaurant, then attended a Jesse Cook concert. Before we left the house, I asked for a synchronicity. Anything. From anywhere. My synchro or someone else’s, it didn’t matter. I’m not picky in that regard.

So we had a wonderful Greek dinner – spinach pie, a Greek salad, Greek wine, and headed off to the concert. Fantastic. Stand up and shout and clap, and astanding ovation sort of concert. The energy emanating in the auditorium of a local college was magnificent.

Afterward, Susan pulled out of the parking lot at warp speed and onto a busy road. There were two left-turn lanes. She slipped into the right of the two lanes.  “Not too long ago,” she said, “Paul and I pulled out of here, into this lane, and  I had this sudden feeling that I should get into the left  lane. So I did. Seconds later, this car in the right lane slammed into the car in front of it – where we had been.  Paul looked at me and wanted to know how I knew to get into the left lane. It was just a feeling, you know?”

“Just a feeling” is a hunch. A hunch  is an impulse, a  knowing deep in your gut, your cells, your very blood, that urges you to do something, say something, act in a particular way that defies logic and reason. If you ignore such feelings, you do so at your own peril. Hunches and impulses are the verbs in synchronicity’s lexicon.

https://www.jessecook.com/#/home/

Posted in hunches, impulses, music | 7 Comments

Convincing the Skeptics

Posted on January 24, 2010 by Trish and Rob

 

Sometimes a paranormal experience may prove to be a synchronicity for someone else.  It can be particularly difficult when that someone else is a member of your family and a skeptic. That’s what happened in the following story, sent to us by a woman who sometimes hears or sees spirits or ghosts. She wishes to remain anonymous because she  thinks the story is a bit too “woo-woo” for the business in which she works. So we’ll call her June, her husband will be Max and her brother-in-law, Bob.
+++
Before Christmas, my brother-in-law, Bob, went shopping to find a gift for me. As soon as he entered the shop, the female clerk said, “You’re here to get a gift for your sister.”  He told her no, his sister-in-law.  She said, “No.  She’s more like a sister to you.  Not the traditional sister-in-law relationship.”  This was accurate.

“The woman told Bob that she sensed the eagle around me and brought out a crystal that was called “eagle Head.’ Bob remembered that I had carted an ill eagle around most of Arizona looking for a vet that would treat it.  Another woman who just happened to be in the shop looked around and said,  “Her name is Jenny, but that’s not her real name.  She just prefers it to her real name.  When did Jenny die?”  My brother-in-law told her my name was June and I was still alive. Jenny/June. Close.  Then he continued to talk to the store owner until she went in the back to wrap my crystal.

“The other shopper then said, “No.  It’s Jerry.  That’s what she likes to be called, but it’s not her real name.  And she’s dead.”  Well, Bob’s mother’s name was Jerry, short for Geraldine, which she hated.  And the woman said, “Jerry is all over a situation you’re handling right now.  She wants you to know you don’t have to worry.”

So the situation is weird enough – two random shoppers brought together one day in a store so that  Bob could hear from his dead mother, Jerry, that she was on top of a “situation” – which was probably the fact that Bob’s wife lost her entire family this past year – her dad to cancer, her mother to emphysema, and then her
brother to suicide.

Bob was less of a skeptic when he left the store.  Also, when he told this story to a friend he and his wife had over for dinner, a Christmas ornament fell off the tree as soon as he finished, startling everyone.  It was a metal ornament that belonged to his mother, Jerry.

Then there’s Max, June’s husband. “Jerry was also Max’s mom and she’s the one who kept talking to me in my dream state and almost wrecked my marriage because Max didn’t believe me.  I demanded that she prove herself to me and Max, so I picked a bracelet out and told her to make Max buy it for me.

“We were on vacation and I chose something odd to make it a really good test.  Max had never purchased jewelry for me on a trip, and it was my test so why not make it fun?  I was walking the city without Max, saw these bracelets, liked the purple one and decided that would be the test.  Well, after a few days I went back
 to the store and just bought the bracelet because I knew Jerry would never get through to Max.  We came home from our trip, and low and behold, Max pulls a jewelry bag out of his luggage!  Yes, the same exact bracelet.  And purple.  There was like a dozen colors to choose from.  It took him a few more big ticket
items to realize that I was really connecting with dead people, even if it doesn’t jive with today’s version of science.

“Once I was able to convince Max and his brothers that their  mom was coming to me and talking they started having these kinds of encounters on their own.  So it just took them being open to the possibility that life, or more accurately death, was not exactly as it seems, she could start contacting them on her own without my
 assistance.”

Posted in ghosts | 16 Comments

Back to the basics

Posted on January 23, 2010 by Trish and Rob

Some thoughts on synchronicity, and why we write this blog. Words borrowed, but sentiments familiar, thoughts that resonate.
***

“Everything that happens in our lives, whether positive or negative, can serve to awaken us to the nature of the world. But occasionally, events cluster in particular ways that give us a glimpse of the deeper structures of reality, and suggest that time and linear causality may not be the ultimate way in which the world is ordered.

“There are many possible responses to such happenings, which Jung called synchronicity. Some people give them a highly individualized meaning, finding guidance in a personal decision they are facing or confirmation of a direction they have already chosen. But perhaps the real meaning of synchronicity is more universal than personal, with every instance simply pointing to the possibility of a hidden pattern underlying the events of this world.

“Either way, these events offer us a certain reassurance, and they also have the power to awaken us. A common response to such an acausal happening is a sharpening of attention, a sense of the closeness of something unseen. Startled awake, we may listen for the direction in which the universe is moving, and discover a wish to participate in it.

“Synchronicity is always an experience of the unknown. Events … are simply a reminder to wake up and pay attention, because the mystery at the heart of life can speak to you at any time.” –  Rachel Naomi Remen 

“I am open to the guidance of synchronicity,
and do not let expectations hinder my path.” – Dalai Lama 

“In shamanistic cultures, synchronicities are considered to be teachings as well as sign indicating where one should focus one’s attention, such correspondences demonstrate the usually hidden links between the individual psyche and the larger world. Synchronicities express themselves through chance meetings and natural events as well as in dreams and supernatural episodes.” – 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl, Daniel Pinchbeck 

Posted in basics | 8 Comments

Dad Speaks

Posted on January 22, 2010 by Trish and Rob

Mike Perry posted this story  on his synchronicity blog and kindly allowed us to repost it. It’s another instance of  how our emotions and synchronicities are intimately connected.  His blog features terrific stories and  theories about synchronicity.
+++

This is about a personal coincidence I mentioned in my post The Beginnings Of My Interest In Coincidences.

Thinking about this today perhaps it doesn’t sound such a big deal but, at the time, it affected me greatly and still intrigues me now.

My son had just told us that he had qualified as a Chartered Accountant, which takes quite a few years work here in the UK. I was, of course, chuffed to bits about this and, after talking about it with my wife, I went upstairs to our bedroom.

I wanted to get something or other out of my wardrobe and, for some reason, I was wondering what my father, now deceased, would have thought about my son’s success. As I reached into the wardrobe a small bag fell out.

The bag just happened to be one in which I kept a few of my dad’s possessions. Nothing of value but they all mean something to me: his old watch, cigarette case, penknife, wedding ring, darts, a tie and a few other trinkets all full of memories.

I then looked at the watch. Dad was always one for punctuality and often asked, “Do you know what time it is?” when I was a teenager either arriving home at night or getting up late in the morning. Then I noticed the time where the hands of the watch had stopped and have remained ever since.

The time on the watch was exactly the time that my son had been born (3.20pm).

Perhaps I was in an emotional state but this really hit me. It was as if it was a message from my father saying he knew all about his grandson.

Okay, this may sound very fanciful but what are the odds of the watch stopping exactly at the time of my son’s birth? Plus the bag fell out of the wardrobe ‘by itself’.

Anyway, that was one of the first things that got me paying attention to coincidences and synchronicity. They have fascinated me ever since.

Posted in dad, emotions | 10 Comments

Reverse Mediumship

Posted on January 21, 2010 by Trish and Rob

 Ancient Mayan Crop Circle

For some time, I’ve wondered if crop circles might be a form of reverse mediumship, or attempts of the deceased to contact us. Now it seems that Dutch medium Robbert van den Broeke might be providing some supportive evidence. Robbert has been predicting the appearance and shapes of new crop circles. His visions come to him at the exact time the crop circles are being formed, he says. In the days before the experiences, he feels a nervous tension building within him. Once the circle is formed, the tension dissipates.

When visiting crop circles, Robbert says he sometimes feels tremendous energy of love being emitted. He says the energy is meant to raise our consciousness.

This article by crop circle researcher Colin Andrews provides more details about Robbert and his experiences. Although Andrews doesn’t directly link the formation of crop circles to a coordinated direction of energy from spirit groups, the implication is there. He does make reference to poltergeist energy as one possible source of the energy creating the circles. It’s definitely a complex scenario with numerous possibilities. – Rob

Posted in crop circles, mediumship | 8 Comments

Does Death Come in Threes?

Posted on January 20, 2010 by Trish and Rob

We’ve talked before on this blog about how death among celebrities and the famous seems to come in threes. So here are two deaths we read about today. 

 On Sunday, January 17, author Erich Segal, 72,  died at his home in London, from a heart attack. He is best known for his novel Love Story, published in 1970. It became a bestseller and a hit movie with Ryan O’Neal and Ali McGraw.  Segal was a 32-year-old professor of classics at Harvard when he wrote Love Story. 

 On Monday, January 18, novelist Robert B Parker, 77,  passed away while just sitting at his desk. Parker is best known for his Spenser private eye novels – 37 of them. He was a prolific writer who wrote more than 60 books.

 We hope death doesn’t come in threes this time.

Posted in death, erich segal, robert b parker, writers | 10 Comments

Time Travelers at the Scottish Festival

Posted on January 19, 2010 by Trish and Rob

On January 16, we drove up to Orlando to attend the Scottish festival – a great outdoor event with bands playing bagpipes, men in kilts, and games dating back centuries. Various Scottish clans – like the MacGregors, the clan that was being honored at this year’s event — had tents set up with refreshments and information about the history of the clan.

In addition to the kilts and the Scottish brogue, there were men and women in Renaissance and Goth clothing and plenty of tattoos to go around. As Rob remarked as we were exploring, it was the sort of place where you could be a time traveler and not draw any attention at all.

So as soon as he said this, it struck me that I could easily set a scene here in my current novel. In this one, I’m combining characters from Esperanza, a novel that comes out in September and begins in Ecuador, with characters from two time travel novels – Kill Time and Running Time. While I was toying with the possibilities, we stopped at one tent that was selling historical clothing. Here’s the shirt that caught my eye. Look at the tag.

Time Travelers! And look at the tag above it: Handmade in Ecuador.

My sense is that the synchronicity is a confirmation to continue what I’m doing, combining the two series.
– Trish

Posted in books, Scottish festival, time travelers, travel, writers | 21 Comments

‘My Best Synchronicity Ever’

Posted on January 18, 2010 by Trish and Rob

Gary Bobroff started off the year opening up a synchronicity site on Facebook called Best Synchronicity Ever! So I asked Gary for his own best, and here it is. It’s a good one.

You can visit his site and contribute by clicking here.


* * *
“I was driving through Kindersley, Saskatchewan after having gone off the highway to get gas and was headed back towards it. I noticed ahead of me to the right, walking in the same direction that I was driving, a girl who resembled my first love. As I approached her, I thought ‘Wow that looks like T.’ I got closer and it was her.

“At this time we both lived thousands of miles away in Vancouver, BC but had grown up together years before in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan and dated just after high school and for a few years at university in Vancouver.

“In turns out she was traveling with her sister and brother-in-law, but as we were both headed in the same direction she decided to ride with me until Calgary, AB. As we talked, we realized that it had been ten years ago that we were both on the train together moving from Saskatoon to Vancouver for university. And then we realized that it was TEN YEARS TO THE DAY that we had been traveling together in the same direction.”

***
Gary adds this about the connection between emotions and synchronicity:

This is one more piece of evidence for understanding synchronicity as evidence for our living in a heart-entangled world. Synchronicity never arrives where emotion is not present: “Outside the laboratory, too synchronistic phenomena occur for the most part in emotional situations; for instance, in cases of death, sickness, accident and so on. …We observe them frequently at moments of heightened emotional tension, which need not however be conscious.” (Jung, Letters, vol. 2, pp. 538).
***
Gary is onto something there. In our upcoming book, Seven Secrets of Synchronicity,  the second secret reveals that synchronicities are deeply intertwined with our emotions. And, as Robert Hopcke notes in There are No Accidents, “What if we valued feeling as much as thinking, as synchronistic events invite us to do?”

 

Posted in emotions, relationships, romance | 9 Comments

Avatar, Optical Illusions, and Doggie Synchronicities

Posted on January 16, 2010 by Trish and Rob

We went to see Avatar today (January 9) in 3D. It’s a classic hero epic, but rendered in such dazzling colors and spectacular three dimensional effects that it bombards the senses. At some points, you’re so inside the movie that you flinch when something flies at you.

On the way home, we were talking about the movie, how some of the effects were like optical illusions. Rob said, “Hey, remember that book  we used to have on optical illusions?” I did remember, but neither of us had seen it for awhile.

 We we get into the house where our dog, Noah, has been alone for more than three hours. This sometimes means we find bits and pieces of whatever he has been chewing on – fortunately, none of those pieces include our three cats!  Today, just inside the utility room door, is one of the objects Noah dragged into the front of the house and tried to chew on:

Finding a particular book in our house is not an easy task. We probaby have several thousand. So how did Noah find the one book we were talking about?

Posted in movies, noah, optical illusions | 17 Comments