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A ring cutter

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On Christmas day, I smacked my left ring finger on something and didn’t think anything about it until the next day, when I suddenly realized I couldn’t slide my wedding ring off my finger. The ring, in fact, was so tight against my finger that the area above it to the first knuckle looked malformed.  So I started soaking the finger in ice water, hoping the swelling would go down at least enough for me to slide the ring off.

When the swelling seemed to be subsiding, I coated my finger in all types of slippery stuff – soap and shampoos, olive oil and creams. Nothing worked. I continued to soak it in ice water. Then when it seemed like I might be able to slide the ring off, I was getting out of the car with a bag of groceries and smacked the same finger on the door into the house.

It swelled again. I kept telling myself I should probably go to a jeweler and just get the ring cut off. It wasn’t, after all, my real wedding ring. My wedding band had come off in 2004 or so, when I slipped in our local grocery store  and hit this same finger. That time, though, the swelling wasn’t bad and I was able to slide the ring off. Around this same time, Rob and I found silver rings in a catalog that we really liked; they had southwestern designs on them, like petroglyphs from an Anasazi cave. So we bought a matching pair and ever since, that was the ring I’d been wearing.

After my dad died, his wedding ring was returned to us by the Neptune Society, the organization that had handled his cremation. At the time of his death, his fingers were retaining so much water we couldn’t remove the ring. So when the ring arrived, Rob tried the ring on, it fit perfectly, and he’s been wearing it for the last eight years.

Yesterday, February 21, we were at the dog park, hanging with the regulars. Cassie, who owns border collie, Willow, and I were talking about how her boss – novelist Tami Hoag – has finally figured out who the murderer is in her long overdue new novel. Like many Geminis (she’s June 8, I’m June 7) Cassie’s  hands move a lot when she talks and I happened to notice her ring finger.

It was terribly swollen, the knuckle at least four times the size of mine. When I commented on it, she held her hand out, palm upward, and I could see where the skin on her finger was in serious trouble. Worst trouble than the skin on my finger.

“Look,” I said, and showed her my finger.

Cassie just looked at me. “How weird is that? We need to get these suckers cut off.” Her ring is complex, a family heirloom that is actually three gold rings welded together. Mine is a simple silver ring from a catalog. I was able to turn my ring a little; hers was completely immobile and looked as if it was sinking into the skin and headed for bone.

Early the next morning, Cassie texted me. Karin, who owns the husky Codi, had told Cassie to go to the jeweler she uses. Cassie and I agreed to meet at 11:30 that morning and get our rings cut off. The woman behind the counter  owns the place with her husband. She’s a chirpy little thing, and when we presented our swollen ring fingers, she looked up, her eyes wide. “Wow, both of you? This is weird.”

“Do you get many of these?” Cassie asked.

“Actually, yes, but mostly pregnant women who are retaining fluids.”

“Well, we’re well beyond that,” I told her.

She started to gather together her tools. “Uh, this doesn’t involve a saw, does it?” I asked.

“Nope. No saw. But there’ll be some discomfort.”

“You go first, Trish,” Cassie said quickly.

So I laid my hand flat against the counter, palm upward. The woman picked up a small tool that looked like a miniature can opener. A sort of saw, except that it’s turned manually. It sliced through the ring. Then she took two small pairs of pliers and worked the sliced ends away from each other.  The relief was instantaneous. Blood flowed back through my finger.

Now it was Cassie’s turn. Her finger was badly swollen and the woman had to stop at one point and get a glass of ice water for her to plunge her finger into – numb it. Once she had sliced through the band, she had trouble pulling back the ends and called in the jeweler from the back room. He examined Cassie’s finger with a jeweler’s microscope, then looked up at her and said, “We’ll be talking about you for a long time to come. The skin has started to grow around the band.”

“Just get it off, okay?” Cassie said. “Please?”

“Trust me,” he said. “This is much easier than the emergency room.”

Then, after many winces and groans,  her ring was off. The woman said we could come back in a few weeks, when the swelling had subsided, and have our rings resized. I call Rob and let him know our marriage is being resized. “Cool,” he said.

Cassie and I went to lunch and puzzled over the weird synchro. Two Geminis, two ring fingers. The message? Well, neither Cassie nor I rush to doctors for anything. We’re optimists who figure that ice water soaks and nature will fix the problem. What we learned is: Don’t procrastinate. It sounded sort of silly in this situation, but may be more relevant than we realize.

Whenever our daughter comes home for a visit, we end up watching movies we’ve heard of – but haven’t seen. The first night of her most recent visit, she insisted that we watch Garden State  with Natalie Portman and Zach Graff. “You’ll love it,” Megan insisted.

“Let’s watch Downton Abbey,” Rob said – a TV show to which Megan introduced us.

“No, c’mon, you guys, you’ll love this movie. It’s like Silver Linings Playbook, but better.”

So we watched it. Zach Graff, who plays the protagonist, also wrote the script and directed the film. He is best known for his role on the TV show Scrubs, which we’ve never seen. There are certainly parallels between Garden State and Silver Linings Playbook.  The male protagonists in both movies are damaged goods. In Playbook, Bradley Cooper plays a character who is bipolar. We know this from the beginning of the movie, when we see him in a mental hospital where he has been confined for eight months. Graff plays a man in his late twenties who has apparently gained a bit of fame in Hollywood playing a mentally challenged character in a movie. He returns to New Jersey for the funeral of his mother, whom he hasn’t seen in nine years.  She has drowned in the bathtub.

It’s apparent from the opening scenes that there’s something wrong with this guy. We gradually learn his back story – his father, a shrink – his shrink – has kept him on lithium since he was nine. We don’t know why. We do know he was sent away to boarding school when he was in his mid-teens and hasn’t been home again until now.

He goes to see a neurologist to find out why he has such splitting headaches and this is where some of his back story emerges. The script is written so cleverly that it’s awhile before we find out he was a pissed off little kid who pushed his mother when he was nine. She hit her head on the edge of the kitchen counter and became paralyzed from the neck down. By the time we discover this,  we already love this guy, we feel for him.

We’ve met his emotionally constipated father, some of his buddies from high school, and we’ve been to his mother’s funeral.   We‘ve also met the young  woman, Natalie Portman, who becomes his co-conspirator. She, like the character played by Jennifer Lawrence in Playbook, is also a wounded person. She’s an epileptic, from a strange family, and yes, they fall in love.

If you saw Playbook, then you probably recall that Bradley Cooper used to go running with a garbage bag covering his clothes. Oddly enough, there’s a powerful scene where Zach Graff, Natalie, and Zach’s buddies also wear garbage bags over their clothes. It’s depicted on the cover fro IMDB at the beginning of this post. Maybe wearing a garbage bag is an emerging archetype, who knows?

As similar as the themes are in these two movies, Garden State feels more real, as though it was written from Graff’s life experiences,  from the frozen core of who he was to the  shifting core of who he is becoming.  By the end of the movie, he has known Natalie Portman’s character for four days – and she has changed his life completely.

I immediately went to IMDB to find out if this film had been nominated for anything.  And it was. This Zach Graff guy is a man to watch. He was the star, scriptwriter, director, and many facets of this story are what he lived, I’m sure of it.

I recently read Marcus Anthony’s novel THE MIND READER. As regular visitors here know, Marcus has frequented the blog and we’ve posted some of his synchronicities and other musings. For those unfamiliar with Marcus, he’s an Australian Phd futurist and author who until recently was living in Hong Kong. His blog delves into psychic and spiritual matters as well as a intuitive take on the future that goes beyond the nuts and bolts outlook of many futurists.

I was curious about his novel, especially because he refers to it as semi-autobiographical. THE MIND READER tracks the spiritual initiation of a floundering Australian college student, Greg Marks, who somewhat naively steps into a group – Journey of Light – under the domain of a powerful but imperfect leader. In order to develop psychically, Marks must assume the mantle of other members of the group – invading their emotions, thoughts, and motives– and play out their worst issues, often in front of the person he is depicting. Of course, the same happens to Greg as other members dive into his psyche.

I found the somewhat ruthless and cultish interior workings of this group fascinating, and as a committed non-joiner, it was decidedly unappealing. Working with such a group no doubt can speed one’s spiritual and psychic development, but it’s not without a price. Did it work for Greg? Yes and no.

Within a few months, Greg becomes quite competent in reading minds and connecting with his inner child, a major part of the inner work. But as he develops his abilities and sees into people’s thoughts and motives, his ego gets the better of him. As a result, he opens himself to powerful dark energy, especially after he foolishly confronts a group of skeptics in their own territory.

It took me quite awhile to read the 500-page book, because of other stuff going on. But I kept coming back and looking forward to see what happened next to Greg. It’s a good read for anyone pursuing spiritual development or even thinking about it. Greg is a flawed but sympathetic and believable character. Julie, the leader of JOL, on the other hand, didn’t appeal much to me. Greg, who becomes dependent on the group, gets kicked out not one but twice. I don’t think I would’ve lasted more than one session under Julie’s tough love.

In fact, in reading the book, I was reminded of a personal experience. Years ago, I connected with a group that was meeting in a desert setting in the Southwest. The focus of the group was dream development and, in fact, I was there in the dream state. At the same time, I felt I was there physically. I questioned the leader of the group, who was someone quite famous, and he instantly banished me to ‘fifth-degree kindergarten,’ whatever that is. I bolted upright in my bed, baffled by what I was doing there, then realized it was all a dream. A short time later, the leader of the group had a new book out. It was called The Art of Dreaming.

Don’t let my prejudices against self-proclaimed ‘gurus’ keep you from reading Marcus’s book. The first part is a bit slow, as we follow Greg through some typical college angst. It could’ve been shortened, but the pace quickly picks up once Greg gets involved with the JOL group. It’s a good ride and a good read.

Rob

from Megan’s website

At the recent Abraham/Hicks workshop that Megan and I attended, Abraham suggested several techniques for raising your feelings of well being. “The better you feel, the more you allow.”  So I’ve been trying these techniques for three days now and have enjoyed the results.

Here’s the technique:

Meditate for 15 minutes each day

Go outside in appreciation of the plant life and talk to them. Vocalize your appreciation.  

In a notebook,  write down what you appreciate about five different areas of your life.

Look upward and outward and acknowledge and acknowledge that there are universal forces watching over you, helping and guiding you, inspiring you.  

In a notebook, jot down what you will do today and what you would like the universe to do today. 

Since I have trouble sitting still for longer than five minutes, unless I’m in a meditation class, my meditation consists of moving around our backyard, appreciating the beauty of the plants and trees. I talk to them. Abraham noted that Esther walks through her garden daily, talking to every plants and flower and stone. “You’re my favorite flower, my favorite stone, my favorite tree…”

This morning, Nika followed me.

I then sit for a few minutes and think about what I would like to accomplish today – and what I would like the universe to do for me today. I write it down. And here’s where it’s gotten interesting.  On three consecutive days, under the universe column, I’ve asked for unexpected money to arrive; for positive surprises for Rob, Megan, and I; for strong sales for our books. I don’t know how these requests will unfold, but feel that reality around me, as if it’s already happened.

Here’s what has unfolded: we received unexpected checks, got royalty statements for our e-books that show healthy sales; Aliens in the Backyard continues to show strong sales; and Megan sold her most recent painting, featured in the above photo, for $500! Here’s her website.

As Abraham said during the workshop, Treat every day as a buffet.

We leaped forward an hour in time today, with the start of Daylight Savings. Thanks to Adele for sending!

Tomorrow, we’ll be on the H20 network with Dia, at 1 p.m. EST, to talk about Aliens in the Backyard. Hope you’ll join us!

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Megan and I attended an Abraham/Hicks conference today (March 7), the first I’ve been to since the death of Esther’s husband, Jerry, about a year and a half ago. We arrived an hour early so we could get good seats and ended up in the fourth row. We had a perfect view of the “ hot seat,” where members of the audience sit when Abraham picks them to come forward with their questions.

The workshop started promptly at nine a.m. and the instant Esther strolled out in her stocking feet, the audience gave her a standing ovation and cheered.  She greeted everyone hello, then shut her eyes, bowed her head, altered her breathing, and went into an altered state. When her eyes opened again, Abraham started talking.

At one point, he said that when Esther was on her way to the hotel the day before, she felt Jerry around, felt him appreciating the beauty of the South Florida landscape – the palm trees, the vast blue sky,  the perfect weather.  Esther, he said, began to miss him terribly. Even though she is aware of his spirit’s presence, she missed talking to him, exchanging ideas, interacting with him in the physical universe.

So Esther got checked in at the hotel and went to her room. As she was opening the door, she heard noise inside and wondered if the room was occupied. The door swung open and she saw that the room was empty. But out there on her balcony, perched on the back of a chair, was a large black bird just chattering away. It remained there for fifteen or twenty minutes, staring in at her, and she stood there listening to it, watching it, and knew it was Jerry, talking to her.

Birds often act as messengers between the living and the dead and this story certainly seems to fall into that category.

Abraham explained this as a coincidence, in which the bird picked up Jerry’s impulse to speak to Esther, and was attracted to her desire to speak to him, and found the right chair, on the right balcony. And Esther, Abraham said, was attuned to her need for communication with Jerry. For us, it’s a perfect example of spirit communication through synchronicity. Whatever you call it, whatever label you give it, the end result is the same: Esther recognized what it was.

Here’s an interesting post on synchronicity from Clay Sellers, whose blog is called, Rethinking Complexity: Studying Systems for a Humane and Sustainable World.

Last month, during my sojourn through the amazing beauty of Sedona, Arizona, I decided to do something I have never done in my life nor have I ever really wanted to do: I visited a psychic to receive a spiritual “reading.”  For most of my life, I have moved in the world of rigid organization and technology and that association has never encouraged me to seek the insight of someone who claims to have a finger on the pulse of spiritual ebb and flow of life.

As I sat before this mystic, a Native American surprisingly down to earth and not at all who I would have expected, the following admission came out right at first: “All my life I have really wanted to believe in magic, but I have never trusted Magicians,” I said.

Smiling and nodding, she pointed out that most people are skeptics, some more than others, and that she had no expectations and offered no promises other than to be open, honest, and kind. As the reading progressed—once again, not at all the spooky, mystical session laced with uplifting or ominous predictions—she simply talked about my past, my present, and my future. There were none of the “clarifying questions” I’d seen or heard in so many televised readings, only her declarations about what she felt or believed I’d experienced yesterday, what was around me today, and what I might look forward to tomorrow.

I won’t ramble on about all that I felt or that I took away, but want to relate one aspect of our discussion that rang a bell so distinctly I almost believed I’d actually heard the ringing. As she spoke about my past moving into my present, she declared that I am increasingly touched by synchronicity. I involuntarily smiled, for that word seemed suddenly so appropriate.  Harkening back to Carl Jung’s concepts, I noted that synchronicity describes events that don’t seem to be at all causally related, but when contemplated together, present significance or meaningfulness. Since I’d only the previous week held a conversation with a colleague where we’d also earnestly discussed synchronicity, I smiled at the irony in the close temporal and ideological connection between the two discussions.

As a now out-of-the-closet systems theorist, I am rarely surprised by connections of all sorts. Connections pervade my worldview and help define how I process purpose, and direction, and design in life. I often employ that associative concept that uses the analogy of ever-widening ripples caused by tossing a pebble into a pond to describe how a tiny action can have continuing, significant effects. If I then overlay the idea of synchronicity onto those circles, I arrive at an interesting theory of life and its harmonies: ripples of synchronicity.

Just for a moment, find a quiet spot (even though that’s very difficult to do these days) and consider all of the echoes around you; all the events and even artifacts that hint of harmony. Look at the shapes to which you’re drawn—wine glasses and vases and palm tree trunks. Then, perhaps, listen to the wind and the rhythms that the moving leaves and branches provide. Patterns that recur all about you become apparent. After that, look to the skies and the regularity of the clouds and the joyful flow of day and night. Finally, take joy in thinking of the friends and family whose mannerisms you can easily foretell and who finish your sentences, bringing laughter from both of you. These places and sights and souls embody a reassuring synchronicity that brings to you both comforting patterns and delightful surprises in ever broader loops and swirls that carry you out from that pebble of birth.

And if that isn’t magical, perhaps I’ve been missing the point.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-0Ebn3qrBE

Here’s a video of a speech by Paul Hellyer, former Canadian minister of defense. He has gone from Canadian politics to exo-politics. He’s a strong proponent of governments releasing UFO documents and revealing their involvement in UFO/alien matters.

The synchronicity for us comes at the 5:56 minute mark when Hellyer inadvertently gives our book a plug…and the crowd cheers. We laughed when he heard it and had to play it again.

But a better plug –and a real one–comes to us from Whitley Strieber. Here’s what he had to say:

Trish and Rob MacGregor have written a sobering, engaging and important book about the mysterious subject of alien abduction. When I read it, I was reminded how little we know about this incredible, complex and enigmatic subject, and just how much light this insightful book sheds on it.

If we are going to understand this phenomenon, books such as this are essential. Read it and wonder: what have we missed about our world? Perhaps the most important thing that has ever happened.

Aliens in the Backyard is a treasure.

Whitley Strieber