Huh?

Posted on June 16, 2010 by Trish and Rob

President Obama’s speech tonight about the crisis in the gulf was one of the weakest he has ever given. It is the first time Obama has addressed the people from the oval office.

I was hoping to hear at least a ballpark figure about what he would demand from BP for an escrow fund. No figure. No demands.

I was hoping to hear specifics about what was going to happen next. But other than his assurance that the government would stand by the people of the gulf until it was “better than before,” the speech was sadly lacking in details. He talked about severing our dependence on fossil fuels and transitioning to clean energy. It sounds  good – clean energy, like using mouth wash or brushing your teeth. But other than mentioning solar power and wind turbines, there weren’t specifics.

He mentioned that we send nearly 1 BILLION a day to other countries for their oil.

He mentioned absolutely  nothing about how workers are getting sick – vomiting, nausea, chest pains, dizziness, frequent asthma attacks. He mentioned nothing about how when workers  use safety equipment distributed by local agencies, they are told to remove the gear or be fired. He mentioned nothing about the 1,100,000 gallons of dispersants that have been used in the gulf and its possible impact on the health of workers, residents of the gulf, and the wildlife.

One curious item that Obama did mention is that within a couple of days, 90 percent of the leaking oil will be captured, and all of it will be contained when BP completes drilling of two accessory wells. As Olbermann noted, where did that figure come from? BP? If so, why should he or anyone else believe anything that BP says at this point?

In fact, Obama left out so much that at the end of his speech Rob and I just looked at each other, got up, and went back to work.

Susan Shaw, director of the Marine Environmental  Research Institute, “The deep ocean is what’s at risk.We’re destroying the food web and we’re poisoning what’s left. If we remove the bottom of the food web, then everything else on top is going to crash.”

As Rachel Maddow noted, Obama’s speech tonight may best be remembered for its reference to prayer. The blessing of the fleet is apparently an old tradition on the gulf, where clergy from different religions come together to pray for the safety of the fishermen and the gulf. It was as if Obama was saying that prayer will get us through this. Well, maybe, maybe not. Prayer or not, right action should also be part of the picture. And as long as BP remains in control – of the cleanup, the media coverage, the lack of safety equipment – the gulf will be in jeopardy.

But does the reference to prayer brings us back to Masaru Emoto? 
– Trish

Posted in BP, oil spill | 42 Comments

R.I.P. Billboard Man

Posted on June 15, 2010 by Trish and Rob

The e-mail read: “The reason I am writing you  is because you wrote to me in a cryptic statement and said: “I am surprised he is alive…” and 2 minutes later I learn that he isn’t.“
  +++
That was from Adele Aldridge, who had given us the peculiar Billboard Man tale about a love/hate relationship with a man on a billboard, who she eventually met nine years later and 3,000 miles away. She continued:

“When you posted my experience on your blog I responded saying that was not the right image of him, and sent you the real one….After scanning the picture, my mind naturally drifted back in time and I was startled by the intensity of energy, as if time was telescoping.”

Not long after that, Adele found a message on her answering machine from a friend in Berkeley telling her that Mr. Billboard Man’s obituary was in the San Francisco Chronicle.

Stunned, she immediately called her friend to learn more. Simultaneously, she signed on to her computer and before she could look up the obituary there was an email from another acquaintance with a link to the same obituary.

“Do you think that some synchronicities are a tad perverse? Just asking.”


There was more from Adele, and for the first time she revealed that she had not only met the Billboard Man, but they became lovers and lived together off and on for a year and a half.

“I went to bed last night unable to process this information. The bottom line,  it is impossible to think of him as dead. I never knew anyone who radiated so much much raw energy, so totally alive.

“I wondered at this business of being entangled in a Karass of synchronicites that echo on and on. Now your book has become a new antenna picking up the echos.”

Before falling asleep, I prayed that I would please, please have a dream to help me. I even asked the Billboard Man to talk to me in my dream since he had reached across time and space and dreams before. I would like to know something now. Anything.

“This is what I dreamed:

“I’m talking to a therapist who looks like Anderson Cooper about my issues and upsets with J and that now he is dead.

The therapist indulged me by allowing me to talk for an hour and 30 minutes, extending the time by half an hour. He then suggested we go outside and have some coffee. He handed me a sweater to wear in case I needed it. I went to the ladies room and looking in the mirror saw that I was wearing a beautiful red velvet suit dress with attractive patterns on it. My hair was long and curly, looking more like me 25 years ago.

“Obviously I need to write my book about this experience. I already know its title: ‘Out of Sausalito.’

“So since you included the story in your book, I’m thinking you must be the therapist. I know you don’t look anything like Anderson Cooper but Anderson Cooper is on CNN – world coverage. And your blog attracts readers from around the world. 
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The reason I told Adele that I was surprised he was still alive is because two other Winston men, who appeared on billboards advertising the brand of cigarettes, died of lung cancer. Now a third has joined them. – Rob

Posted in Billboard man | 8 Comments

Synchros That Are Prescient

Posted on June 14, 2010 by Trish and Rob
 

This synchro is one of those stories that spans decades. It has some similarities to two posts  we put up last year, The Friendship Book, and The Girl with the Red Hair, which happened to Ray, who posts here often. This one actually made the Orlando news, probably because it involves Disney World.
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Alex and Donna Voutsinas of Boynton Beach, Florida met at work, fell in love, got married. Nothing too unusual there. But one day while they were still engaged, they were going through old family photo albums – much as Keith did in The Friendship Book, and Donna found an old photo of herself as a kid at Disney World.  She showed it to Alex, who was noticed a man in the background, who was pushing a child in a stroller. He recognized the man as his father.

“Just to be in the same picture with my wife when we were basically toddlers, it’s unbelievable,” Alex said.

But for anyone who undertand the geography of synchronicity, that’s business as usual! The original story is here. 

Thanks to Julie and Gabe for alerting us to the story!

Posted in disney world, love | 10 Comments

Masaru Emoto’s Prayer for the Gulf

Posted on June 13, 2010 by Trish and Rob

On new year’s day 2010, we did a post called Mind Over Matter, about Masaru Emoto’s research into how focused intentions change the energy of water.  If you aren’t familiar with Emoto’s astonishing work, be sure to read the first link first.

Today, a friend sent me a prayer that Emoto had supposedly issued about the oil spill in the gulf. I had to poke around for awhile on the Internet to make sure it was actually from him, and found it. Here’s the prayer:

To whales, dolphins, pelicans, fishes, shellfishes, planktons, corals, algae and all creatures in Gulf of Mexico
I am sorry.
Please forgive me.
Thank you.
I love you.

Posted in emoto, prayer for gulf | 11 Comments

Day 55

Posted on June 13, 2010 by Trish and Rob

We encountered these wind turbines two days ago on Aruba’s northeastern coast where the trade winds hit hard. There are ten of them, huge things visible for miles across this desert geography, giants on the landscape when you are up close and personal. Ten more are being built and once they are functional, they will generate 36% of the island’s electrical needs. Aruba gets it. Wind is their friend – so is solar power, for that matter, but wind seems to be the direction in which they are moving. But we in the U.S. we’re still talking about, unbelievably, more offshore drilling for oil–in spite of the massive spill, in spite of the fact that all the oil in the Gulf would power the U.S. for merely one year, and that is, if it was all used in the U.S. It’s actually sold on the open market.

Oil lobbyists, meanwhile, whisper that those wind turbines are a monstrosity, a blight on our environment. We found them somewhat alien, creatures from the future–possibly. Yet majestic and stoic. Maybe like other technologies they will be replaced by smaller, more powerful versions over time.

There is a synchronicity coming up in this post, but not quite yet. People are puzzled and disgusted with what seems to be happening on the gulf – which is nothing. According to an article in huffingtonpost, BP is still controlling everything, including media access to the damage. The estimate of oil gushing from this disaster has risen from 1000 barrels a day to 40,000 and that’s probably a low ball figure. One expert figured this disaster was the Exxon Valdex happening every 7 to 10 days.

We Americans pride ourselves as being the best and the brightest, a frankly arrogant assessment on where we are right now with the Gulf catastrophe. Even if BP capped the gusher now, this instant, the devastation will extend for decades.  Ways of life are already ruined and those ways of being will pass on into history – or, centuries from now – into myth. Maybe the synchronicity in all of this is that it’s British Petroleum–as if the Brits are finally retaliating against their rebellious colonists for dumping tea in Boston Harbor, spurring revolution and independence. Yet, now, neither country is independent of the addiction to oil, and BP has nothing to gain by their disastrous and criminal lack of preparation for such an accident.

To our readers in the UK, we aren’t blaming you. The blame here lies in greed, in capitalism gone bad, in a system so incestuous that the U.S. is now virtually run by corporations whose bottom line is always profit. It’s the result of eight years of efforts to keep government off the backs of business, and allow self-regulation to do it’s thing…and it has. 

If an island like Aruba, with a population of 100,000, can generate 36% of its electricity from 20 wind turbines, what might we accomplish from  electricity generated from wind, solar, water? Can we change our paradigm? Can corporations act responsibly in the public interest? Can government effectively regulate those corporations that only seek only obscene profits?  Can we become one happy island of sustainability?

Posted in oil spill, wind turbines | 17 Comments

A Planetary Empath in Bangkok

Posted on June 12, 2010 by Trish and Rob

Our March 11 post on Planetary Empaths  was followed by several others on the same topic. Here’s another one, which I found on Healing Mudras’ blog. She’s a Reiki healer and has a unique take on mitigating the symptoms these individuals experience before disasters, natural or manmade, or weather related phenomenon.

I’m beginning to think that planetary empaths may be part of an emerging paradigm connected to climate change. The article she refers to in the Global Coherence Initiative may offer an explanation for why planetary empaths experience what they do. Now, from healing mudras:
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A few days ago, an email from the Global Coherence Initiative landed in my mailbox exactly when I was pondering  events that have unfolded in recently, say in the last  3 weeks. The article, Solar Activity, Volcanic Eruptions, EQ, weather and cycles on Earth,  addresses the connection between the magnetic field, solar activity, heightened needs for healing, weather empathy and other events. In reading it, I felt better. On the spot. This was not because it gave me explanations I did not know, but because it actually gave me explanations I already knew – in a scientific manner, with graphs and figures.

Since the end of April 2010 until about a week ago, the temperatures in Bangkok reached record highs both in degrees and humidity (Explanation: Solar Activity and solar storms can raise Temperatures). On May 5th there was a Solar Storm and weather empathy is something I know affects my blood pressure regardless of the country I am in, the age I am or the diet I am following. Whenever a major storm is occurring, I either feel down and weak, or simply unnecessarily tired. If the event is very significant I may even feel depressed.

As a matter of fact, two days  before the earthquake that struck Haiti on Jan.12th 2010, and in particular the exact day it struck (which in my time zone is 12 hours ahead) I felt sick, depressed, sad and very weak. Moreover I started to cry for no reasons and while dragging myself our of the house to get ‘better,” I called a Reiki Master friend of mine and just cried over the phone for absolutely no reason.

In the streets I walked like a zombie, while repeating to myself that I would  stand up no matter what! Upon my return home, I was feeling better and had enough energy to smile, drink water and even switch on my PC just to read about the disaster that occurred in the Caribbean Island. I made a research on weather empathy and connected it to another research I had made earlier on for my Book – Quantum Togetherness and felt some kind of relief. At the same time, I felt I would have to learn to recognise ‘early warnings’ for the next time.

On Monday 10th May 2010, a similar event occurred to me to the point where I had to cancel a dinner invitation. I told my friend over the phone about being concerned about this because of the tight connection between this depression and other events. ‘ I am a bit worried,” I told her. My right brain, though, was alerted and started to enter in meditation mode, intuitively asking me also to start chanting OM every morning while meditating. So I did.

Every morning I would combine meditation with light yoga and chanting. This eventually cleared up my throat and I lost voice tone for a few days, too! The energies in Bangkok for the past 3 weeks have not been very conducive to peace and calm. A two months old demonstration was being held not far from our location, and pressures were mounting as to how to end such political unrest in the most suitable manner for all. Eventually, a few days after the public transportation systems were cut off, the sky started fill with thick smokes of uneasiness. The schools closed and shopping areas started to close earlier. Indeed something was mounting and energy were flying very low.

While I continued to meditate and chant my daily OM, my daughter started to get far too energetic and restless. Uranus is about to enter Aries as is Jupiter, while Pluto in Capricorn pushes for change and de-rooting of the old structures. Saturn retrograde in the last portion of Virgo is shrinking opportunities.

Another email in my mailbox was indeed explaining about the tough rides we are about to experience between May and September 2010 especially since the Grand Cardinal Cross will form in the sky in early August.

As a Reiki Master Teacher, I dug into all the knowledge and skills available to us to smooth the corners and stay on top of things. I tried to let it all go and relax while while an actual military operation was unfolding at our doors: helicopters in the sky,  grenades attacks and black thick smoke of fire filling the skyline from our windows. Not only the smell, we could also see and hear the action outside. It was a true opportunity to learn to let it go even more! To practice Non-Attentive Alertness. The ability to remain alert and informed without practicing emotional feeds. A true hands-on experience and open classroom!

Then this email landed. The one from the Global Coherence Initiative and I just felt relieved. I was somehow prepared for the shocks and aftershocks  and still my left brain was looking for explanations – or confirmation. When I read the article, I also compared it with the content of another email on the transits of Uranus and Jupiter and the hot summer in front of us [Read more on this on the previous post] and I determined to continue to meditate, chant daily OM, teach my daughter to do so and love the beautiful greenery and protection that we have experienced in the past 2 weeks or so.

Posted in planetary empaths | 11 Comments

The Heat Is On

Posted on June 11, 2010 by Trish and Rob

Natalie lives in Australia, where it’s now winter. As anyone who follows her blog knows, she’s got her hands full with five kids and a new job as a psychic reader. Her synchronicity really drives home the point that’s the fundamental tenet of the Seth Material – we get what we concentrate on. The humorous aspect of this particular synchronicity is that what Natalie got came in an unusual way, and may have a trickster element to it.
 +++
Yesterday, I met up with a friend for a coffee, in order for her to return a book to me that I needed for work. I was late, as is usual lately (Grrrr), and rather flustered too.

I had a broken gas heater (for two winters no less), a broken home phone for a few months, and a broken down car of at least one year, on and off. The car is our van, and we need it for such a large family to get around in. It has been in the driveway for a while after it stalled constantly at busy roundabouts. 

I was VERY cross with my dear hub,who was in charge of these things, and left home rather peeved in HIS work car. When I got to the restaurant, I was ranting to my friend about the bloody heater, and we talked about the value of purchasing a one new, versus repairing mine. As it had been raining, she had put my book in a plastic bag, and I noted there was a yellow slip of paper in the bottom.

It looked to me like a school newsletter so I didn’t worry too much about it and neither did she. So there it stayed. I did some more errands and piled my items in the plastic bag. When I got home, I was still grumpy at my hub and unpacked the bag upstairs. He was downstairs in the office. When I got to the bottom of the bag and grabbed the piece of paper to bin it, I had to laugh.

It was as I suspected, a school notice for one of Michelle’s kids, who was to participate in a performance called:

 
Obviously, the universe was behind me in getting the message across to the reluctant or forgetful hub. Gotta love synchronicity.




Posted in Australia, law of attraction, local travel, travel | 9 Comments

Aruba Synchronicity

Posted on June 10, 2010 by Trish and Rob

 We figured that we would come across a synchronicity here in Aruba, and yes, we certainly have–one connected to an international incident that has received extensive coverage, some would say way too much. You see, we wouldn’t be staying in Aruba if not for the Natalee Holloway case, and that murder story is at the heart of this synchronicity. Here’s our tale.

We were here four years ago, staying at a low-key hotel called the Boardwalk, about a quarter mile from the beach. It’s a comfortable place that caters to windsurfers. At the time, the murder of the young American woman was still fresh on people’s minds, even though the case was a year old. So when Julia, the owner of the Boardwalk, found out that Trish was using the Boardwalk as a setting in her new novel, Kill Time, she became upset. The title disturbed her and Trish changed the name of the Boardwalk.

However, a couple of years after the book was published, we received an e-mail from Julia telling us that she read Kill Time and enjoyed it. She regretted making  such a fuss and said it was related to the international coverage of the infamous murder and its effects on Aruba’s image. By then, she’d realized that the book wasn’t a spin-off murder story playing on that case, but was actually an intriguing time travel story. So, as a way of compensating, Julia invited us to a free week’s stay on the island. 

We accepted, but because of other commitments twice put off travel dates, finally settling on this week. It coincides with the time that the Natalee Holloway story is back in the news following the arrest of  Joran Van der Sloot for the murder of a Peruvian business student, which occurred five years to the day after Natalie Holloway disappeared.

Oddly enough, we didn’t fully comprehend the synchronicity until Julia brought it up to us yesterday after she finished reading The Seven Secrets of Synchronicity, which we’d given to her upon our arrival. She went on to add another synchronicity related to the case.

On Sept. 3, 2005, Van der Sloot and three friends–all suspects in the murder–were released from jail by a judge in spite of the prosecution’s protestations.Their release occurred one day after the collapse of Aruba’s natural bridge, a major tourist attraction. Symbolically, the bridge represented the feared collapse of the island’s image as a highly attractive travel destination. Even now, several people mentioned the murder case to us before we left and asked if we were worried about our daughter’s safety. So, to some extent the island’s image remains tarnished by the case.

There’s one other oddity about our connection with Aruba and this case. When Julia made the offer to us, it wasn’t for a week’s stay at the Boardwalk, but at a cottage she and her husband own, which is  located on the edge of a national park on the north end of the island. For a time, the search for Natalee Holloway’s body was centered here.

This is the front porch of our little cottage. The trade winds blow constantly. It sits  at the edge of a natural preserve that is incredibly peaceful, beautiful in a desert way. The ocean is visible just over a rise to the north. We walked that area today. It’s desolate, strange, silent. There are a hundred places where Natalie Holloway might be buried.

But now, as the wind blows, as the wind chimes sing, as we move into life here, we understand that the Halloway murder is an aberration. A travesty foreign to this place.

Aruba is a peaceful island. The Aruba  license place reads: Aruba- One Happy Island. In fact, today we went shopping in one of the hotels. As  Megan and Trish were at the counter to pay for their purchases, this guy came in with a cup of coffee for the female clerk.

“Hey, hon, delivering your coffee, with sugar,” he said.
 “Thanks,” she replied.

“Wow, what service,” Trish remarked.

“She’s my ex-wife,” he said.
 “Really?” Trish exclaimed.

“Really,” the clerk replied.

“The island’s too small to hold grudges,” he said.

“We work in the same place,” the woman added.
 The man laughed. “Yeah, Aruba, one happy island.”
Megan and Trish just looked at each other, then plunked down a bunch of cash for their purchases.One Happy Island, indeed.  
We love it here.

Posted in aruba, crimes, holloway | 25 Comments

Maui Bound: Message from the Universe

Posted on June 9, 2010 by Trish and Rob

We discovered Nancy Atkinson’s blog, Lover of Life, shortly after we started our blog in 2009. We began to correspond and when we discovered we were going to be in Oregon at the same time last summer, we got together for lunch. I think of this meeting as a synchronicity that blogging and the Internet facilitated.

Nancy travels frequently and I asked her if she had any good travel synchros. She sent this one, which certainly seems like a direct message from the universe!
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While in Hawaii a month or so ago we decided to buy a waterfront condo on the island of Maui. It looks very similar to this picture. The condo buying has not been without some worry, however. 
It is in a unique location but is on a leasehold, whereby the owner can actually take back the property. When we decided to buy the unit, with another couple that we have been friends with forever, before our marriages or children, we talked about having this opportunity to share this with family and friends, and be able to spend several months there each year after retirement. However, at one point we were ready to back out of the deal after reading a disclaimer in the paperwork that said it could be taken back by the owner of the land and they would not owe the condo owners anything.
One of the people involved is a development attorney and he did some research. He talked with a board member of the building and found that it is in negotiation with the owners of the land to buy the property and it would revert to a fee simple transaction. At that point the value of the condos would jump and our investment would probably go up as all the other fee simple buildings run much much higher than our building. Six out of the ten buildings on this stretch have already done this. The state has given these leasehold owners until 2012 to sell their land to the condo owners and reap a tax break. An incentive to get it done as the State wants to do away with leaseholds.

So the synchronicity is that Herrad, who is a blog friend living in Amsterdam,  sent this to me today.  This just after we agreed with our friends to go ahead and take the chance on the condo in Maui just this week. She has no idea that this has been going on. It feels like the Universe is sending me a message to take a chance on the new and be open to the adventure ahead of us. (Which is exactly why our husbands pushed us girls to do this.)
 

It takes a lot of courage to release the familiar and seemingly secure, to embrace the new.
But there is no real security in what is no longer meaningful.
There is more security in the adventurous and exciting,
for in movement there is life, and in change there is power.

~ Alan Cohen

About a week or so after Nancy sent this synchro, she sent an update. She had been jut finished reading two emails regarding the closing on the condo,  and then immediately got an email – again – from her friend Harrad. This one include a quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson: “All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make, the better.”

It certainly seems that Nancy’s decision to buy the condo in Maui is right in line with the universe’s plan. 

Posted in hawaii, travel | 14 Comments

Oh, those 11s

Posted on June 8, 2010 by Trish and Rob

                                         This Paul Klee painting has nothing to do with 11s. But                                      
                                          I like the color.

Last Friday, I was working on a section of our new proposal about travel synchronicities, and was writing  specifically about Hilary Carter’s experiences with 11s. Megan and I took a break and ran to the grocery store. It was supposed to be one of those we just need a few things trips. But we kept plopping things in the cart and when the cashier rang it up – there it was, $111.11.

When it happened, I wasn’t sure what the message was. We’d spent the previous  few days going back and forth with our Internet provider, technicians coming and going, trying to figure out why our connections were slow or non-existent. Then, Thursday evening, the whole system crashed- no phones,  no TV, no Internet. Two more technicians came out Friday and we finally got phones and TV restored, but the wireless connections in our offices were still iffy. So when Megan and I went to the grocery store, I was thinking I’d be coming home to a connection that still wasn’t repaired and I was irritated. Then the grocery tally comes up.

“Mom, look at that,” Megan said, pointing at the register.

By that afternoon, the wireless connections in both our offices work perfectly. We’ve gotten 11s before and 11:11s, but never five of them, 11111. But then we’d never lost the computer connection, the phone, and TV at the same time, either.
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It wasn’t long before more 11s popped up, and they seem to be working their magic. Sunday, we received an email from a woman in New Jersey, who bought 7 Secrets of Synchronicity because of a synchronicity involving 11s. Here’s her note:

Hello MacGregors!

I just finished reading your book “The 7 Secrets of Synchronicity”.  I was surprised when I went online to find you that it just came out a few days ago. I purchased it Friday evening 6/4 at Atlantic Books on the Ocean City NJ boardwalk. It is kind of funny how it happened..

 My daughter walked into the bookstore and I followed, but went to the “new age” section.  I have been having a rough time and needed a spark of inspiration to get out of the funk I got in recently.  I never picked books out easily so recently I began to say a quiet prayer to have the right book come my way.  I picked up your book, showed it to my daughter–who gave it a thumbs up, but I put it back because of the price tag. (My husband is on unemployment and things are tough right now).

My husband walked into the store and I showed him the book and made a few comments  about it and he said “Oh like 11:11…or something like that?” and I said “no”… randomly opened the book to the pages about 11:11…we looked at each other and laughed.  I said, that is my sign, I have to buy it!!  (He was let go for $ reasons  on 3/11…hmmmm…)

I loved it. I feel refreshed and rejuvenated. My daughter (12 yrs) can’t wait to  get her hands on it.

Thank you!
Jane
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Cool story! Good luck.

Posted in 11s, local travel, travel | 23 Comments