Synchronicity and Magical Thinking

Posted on February 24, 2011 by Trish and Rob
light man

 

Synchronicity and magical thinking are close friends. They may even be Siamese twins who share a common heart.
But what is magical thinking?
Elias Howe had an idea about a machine with a needle that would penetrate cloth. He fiddled around with various ideas – a hole through the middle of the needle, for instance – but nothing worked. One night, he dreamed he was taken prisoner by a group of cannibals who danced around him with spears. Howe noticed that the spears all had holes near the tip. When he woke up, he realized the dream had provided the solution to his problem. By locating a hole at the tip of the needle, the thread could be caught after it went through cloth thus making his machine operable. Is that magical thinking? You bet.
A man entered a tanning salon shortly before closing time and asked the female employee if he could use the restroom. She felt intuitively uneasy about the guy and asked several customers if they would check outside. The police found the man, a convicted sex offender,  waiting in the parking lot with a ski mask, handcuffs, a butcher knife, and sex devices. He had opened the spa’s back door before leaving. Instead of dismissing her unease as paranoia, the female employee listened to her intuition. Magical thinking? Absolutely.
One night, Cj bolted out of a sound sleep and in the mirror at the foot of her bed, saw an image play out: a short, bulky man with shoulder-length hair walked up a sidewalk to the porch of a Victorian house that Cj recognized as her friend’s home. The man wore a red plaid shirt and held a gun and Cj had the strong impression that the man intended to kill her friend. She glanced at the clock: it was 3:30 AM. She felt the murder would happen at that time, the next night.
Early the next morning, she called her friend and described the vision. Her friend called the police. Even though they were doubtful about the source of the information – a vision, a hunch – they assigned an officer to the property the next night. At  exactly 3:30 am, a short bulky man with shoulder-length hair, wearing a red plaid shirt, walked onto the sidewalk approaching the porch to the house.  The officer grabbed him. The man, a religious fanatic, believed Cj’s friend was a witch and had intended to kill her. Magical thinking? Yes.  And it saved a woman’s life.
In each of these instances, individuals acted on the basis of their personal perceptions and  emotions. And yet, mainstream science says that if we trust our own perceptions and experiences, if we trust what has not been proven, we’re living in the fool’s paradise of magical thinking. Really?
Magical thinking enables us to think outside the narrow box of consensus reality and creates a fertile environment in which synchronicity is more likely to occur. It enables us to undertake the hero’s journey that Joseph Campbell wrote about so movingly. Magical thinking is precisely what makes life so mysterious, so ultimately unknowable that our lives are changed in unimagined ways simply because we don’t have all the answers.  

Once you acknowledge the validity of your own perceptions and experiences, you discover that magical thinking and synchronicity possess momentum that cuts across cultures, religions, ethnicities. Born within our collective humanity, this momentum sweeps outward, like a force of nature.

Posted in 19 synchros, magical thinking | 27 Comments

UFO in Bolivia?

Posted on February 23, 2011 by Trish and Rob

Here’s what I find interesting about this video. First, it appears on the national news in Bolivia.( I speak Spanish, so what I’m writing here is my rough translation of the video highlights.) Translating what the news guy says, “We’re all skeptics. But I’ll leave it to your imagination whether or not you believe in these mysterious images.”

He goes on to explain that the video was taken by cell phone,  on February 12, at about 3 PM, outside a maternity hospital in La Paz, on the side of the hospital that houses the emergency room. “It floats in the air,” he says, “then vanishes to the east. “

The video takes us through several views of the UFO. At first, it looks like a balloon, the kind that you buy at a carnival and escapes when your kid lets go of the string. But the way it takes off…I’ve never seen a balloon do that. The newscaster goes on to say that points of reference are important in instances like this and explains about the hospital, on which side of the building the OVNI appeared.

He also interviews the young men involved in taking the video. This is where authenticity comes in. Rodrigo Morales and his friend, Juan Carlos are Andean men. Juan Carlos works at a condo. He’s the one who actually filmed the UFO. He hands the newscaster the cell he used to take the video. Rodrigo says he has an interest in UFOs – does that make him suspect of fraud? Doubtful.  It means he’s observant.

Juan Carlos said he saw something odd outside the hospital. At first, he thought it was a balloon or “something.” But Rodrigo said, “No, it’s an OVNI (UFO). So Juan raised his cell and started videotaping the object.  Juan handed his cell to the newscaster, who explains the cell is a Motorala, with a 2 pixel capacity. Then he clicks on the cell to show the original video.

The news guy asks if he showed the video to anyone after he took it. Yes, Juan says, to his wife. “But she doesn’t believe much in that ( in UFOs).” He and Rodrigo have been friends since they were kids.

Years ago when we led travel tours for writers through the Peruvian Amazon, one of the things we learned is that South Americans are much more open-minded about UFOs than Americans. I remember sitting on the deck of the S.S. Amazonas, an old rubber-hauling boat that plied the Amazon between Manaus, Brazil, and Iquitos, Peru, and talking to Hugo, our local guide, about UFOs. He was the son of an Amazonian fisherman, a shaman initiate, and bilingual, so there wasn’t any room for misunderstanding. I mentioned skeptics and UFOs and and he started laughing.

“You gringos,” he said. “Why is it so difficult for you to accept your own perceptions and experiences as real?”

Posted in Bolivia, UFO | 41 Comments

Transformer blows again

Posted on February 22, 2011 by Trish and Rob

On February 16 of 2009, less than two weeks after we started this blog, we posted a synchronicity about an electrical transformer that blew up behind our house. The explosion and bright orange flash knocked out electrical power in the area, but we didn’t think much about it because a personal matter had just erupted. Only later, we saw the synchronicity of explosions. Fortunately, the power was restored in an hour or two and the blow out in our home quickly passed by. 

Move ahead two years and four days. About 9 p.m., a flash of light caught our attention, followed immediately by a loud explosion. The transformer again. This time, though, there was no comparable in-house explosions. There didn’t seem to be any synchronicity related to it.

Yet, the word  ‘transformer’ is intriguing and we wondered if the explosion signaled some sort of transformation on the way. Interestingly, at the moment of the explosion Trish was looking at houses for sale in Asheville, N.C. For years, we’ve considered moving to Asheville and once even put a deposit on a house, only to see the deal fall through. So, if the transformer explosion was a hint of things to come, the verdict is still out.

We probably would’ve  forgotten about the matter, but the following morning an e-mail arrived from Jim Banzholzer, who has sent a few synchros to us. This one, we were surprised to see, was about an exploding electrical transformer that blew in Washington D.C. In this instance, a squirrel apparently had crossed a transformer causing it to blow up. The synchronicity, in this case, was that the transformer was located on Nutley Street. We wondered how the squirrel is doing. Probably not laughing at the trickster synchro it stepped into.

Then there’s the larger picture, an exploding transformer in Washington D.C. Hmm. That could portend a possible shut down of the federal government in less than two weeks, which will happen if there is no budget agreement. That certainly might lead to a transformation of some sort. Considering the stalemate in Congress over the past two years, we have to say that some  transforming of the government is definitely in order.

Posted in signs, transformation, transformers | 13 Comments

Planetary Empaths and the New Zealand Quake

Posted on February 22, 2011 by Trish and Rob

A 6.3 quake struck New Zealand’s South Island today. It’s depth was 5 kilometers, deaths and damage have been reported. The planetary empaths who frequent this blog have been reporting symptoms for at least a week. Take a look at the comments under this post, where they talk about their symptoms.

Posted in planetary empaths, quakes | 28 Comments

The Fate of ATLANTS

Posted on February 21, 2011 by Trish and Rob

Here’s one from Dale Dassel, who is writing a novel based on the Indiana Jones game, Fate of Atlantis.
***

After buying my new VW last year, I wanted to get a vanity tag for it. What better word than ‘Atlantis’ to commemorate my novel and love of my all-time favorite Indy game? The state of Georgia has a 7-letter limit on custom plates. So, I went to the DMV last summer, after I got tht car, and tried ATLNTIS and ATLNTS. Both were taken, and they politely recommended that I hold off until January, when my tag actually needs to be renewed, otherwise I would have to pay the $90 custom tag fee all over again. So I returned on Jan. 19th with a sure-fire spelling which I was guaranteed to get: ATLANTS. Taken. Luckily, I’d prepared a list of Volkswagen-related ideas, and my first choice was available: V DUBBN (yes, I really love my car that much!).

Skip to this morning. It’s a rainy, dreary, overcast day, the kind of day where I want to just stay home and sleep all day. I get up, shower, and drive 8 miles to work. I get out of my car and go inside, where my supervisor says: “What are you doing here? Aren’t you off today?” Confused, I replied, “Um, I don’t think so, unless somebody changed the schedule and didn’t tell me.” See, I always work 8am-5pm, Monday thru Friday, and very seldom work on weekends. Thus, I hardly ever look at the printed schedule. I take a look, and sure enough: off Thursday, work Saturday 8-5. I say bye and gratefully head back to my car, eager to get home and crawl back into bed again. As I am driving down the street, there is a burgundy minivan about 20 feet in front of me. Approaching the traffic light ahead, I get closer to the van. I see that it has a vanity plate, and I am absolutely *astonished*. The tag reads: ATLNTIS

What are the odds that, in the ENTIRE state of Georgia, I see the exact vanity tag message that I tried in vain to secure last year? The odds that the person driving that vehicle lives in my exact city? Positively astronomical. Maybe I should go buy a lottery ticket if my luck is *this* good! 🙂 However, I think that it’s a sign telling me to take advantage of my unexpected free day and finish up the U-boat dive scene in chapter 17 that I’ve been neglecting for the past week or so.
***
Dale’s story reminds me of my ZEN666 synchro.

Posted in atlantis, license plate | 18 Comments

500 Ways to Re-invent Your Life

Posted on February 20, 2011 by Trish and Rob

This story appeared as a comment by Daz under a post a few weeks ago. It’s a good one, a trickster synchro that will make you smile , if not laugh. It worth reading again…or for the first time, if you missed it.

***
Daren (Daz) told us how he had placed an order at a novelty shop for a set of cards called, “500 Things You Have to Do Once in a Lifetime.” The sub-title read “Reinvent Your Life.” Darren thought, Why not? Maybe the cards would give him some goals to set for himself when he was away from his monotonous job. When the deck arrived, he found fifty double-sided cards with five suggestions on each side. The middle suggestion on each side appeared in bold-face type, so you naturally focused on that suggestion when you looked at a card. 
So Darren shuffled the deck and flipped over a card and the first thing his eye saw was the bold-faced words: DRIVE A FORKLIFT TRUCK. Ironically, that was what he does in his job. He’d been driving forklift trucks for 23 years. He thought, “Yeah, I’ll take care of that one tomorrow.”
First of all, how odd that one of the 500 things you had to do once in a lifetime would be drive a forklift. But what are the odds that a forklift driver would select that choice on his first try?  It was as if the universe deadpanned: ‘Here’s one you can do.’ Like attract like.
Darren recognized it as a cosmic joke, a trickster synchronicity with a lesson. Maybe the underlying message arose from his unconscious mind, which symbolically was asking him, ‘Is this what you want to do for the next 23 years, too?’
Posted in daz, trickster | 30 Comments

Brenda’s Missing Wallet Synchro

Posted on February 19, 2011 by Trish and Rob

M.C. Escher

On February 1, we posted a synchro called Lost Wallet Blues, about how Rob’s lost wallet had “returned” to him. The next day, we received a lost wallet story from Brenda Bohannon. It’s another one of those interesting synchros that makes you wonder who or what is actually orchestrating events!
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My friend, Joseph, lost his wallet around December 10, 2010.  Around that date, we went to play golf.  I switched cars, and started driving my backup car because my pickup needed work.  Now, fast forward to Jan 31, 2011. I was in my pickup, which had been repaired, and was looking for my mailbox key. I thought it had slipped between the seat and the console, so I was searching there.
My phone rang  right then and it was Joseph. He asked what I was doing and I told him I was looking for my key. And just then, I found the wallet he’d lost more than a month before.  It was under the passenger seat!  What are the odds that he would call just then, at the moment I find his missing wallet? And then you put up  a wallet synchro! Fascinating! 
Posted in lost wallets | 8 Comments

Synchronicity, Darth Vader, and the Hero’s Journey

Posted on February 18, 2011 by Trish and Rob

Luke Skywalker, DarthVader. The light and the dark, good and evil. The hero and the villain or, in Jungian terms, the shadow. These two characters represent opposing archetypes. When George Lucas wrote the Star Wars script, he was deeply influenced by Joseph Campbell’s book, The Hero with a Thousand  Faces, in which Campbell mapped the essential structure behind myths and religions and illustrated that all stories are composed of the same pattern –  the hero’s journey. There are 17 steps to the hero’s journey and you see them in movies and novels that speak to us in mythic terms.
Synchronicity is part of the hero’s journey.  It fits best with that aspect of the journey that Campbell called “supernatural aid,” and occurs once the hero has committed to the quest. “For those who have not refused the call, the first encounter of the hero’s journey is with a protective figure , who provides the adventurer with amulets against the dragon forces he is about to pass,” wrote  Campbell. “What such a figure represents is the benign, protecting power of destiny… protective power is always and ever present within or just behind the unfamiliar features of the world. One has only to know and trust, and the ageless guardians will appear. Having responded to his own call, and continuing to follow courageously as the consequences unfold, the hero finds all the forces of the unconscious at his side.”
The dark side of this journey occurs through external forces – through the shadow/villain that attempts to trick, thwart, subvert, and harm or kill the hero. This shadow comes in many guises and speaks in many voices. It can be the voice that tries to seduce you into believing that synchronicity is a  malevolent force, evidence of your broken personality. Or it can be the whispers of the troll beneath the bridge, who insists that you must believe as he believes before he’ll let you cross.
The shadow/villain usually has a bleak, ugly view of the world and desperately seeks converts to his way of thinking. Your reality, he says, is hammered together by outside forces over which you have no control, and you and you and you have no idea what’s happening. Only he knows. Only he has the inside scoop. There’s an element of the dark trickster in him, too, a kind of insidious quality, slick and tailored, like a Wall Street conman.  The shadow/villain insists that synchronicity isn’t about any underlying order in the universe, that there’s no such thing as unity, that unity, in fact, is ever so dangerous, that if you believe in it, you’re opening yourself to terrible, malevolent forces. Synchronicity, says the shadow/villain, is just the choked wheeze of a world in its death throes.
Darth Vader, like all shadow/villains, had a powerful, booming voice  that made him the center of attention when he spoke. But beneath that black armor, he was just a broken, pathetic man. So if you meet him on your journey, think of Campbell’s words, “The hero is the champion of things becoming, not of things become, because he is,” and just keep on walking.
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Posted in hero's journey | 32 Comments

UFO Video from the Netherlands

Posted on February 17, 2011 by Trish and Rob

I’ve recently wondered what Jung would think of the Internet, You Tube, Google, the instant access to information. And, specifically, what would he think of all the UFO activity that’s reported daily, somewhere on the internet?

He seemed to regard UFOs as archetypes of the collective unconscious, a search for wholeness. Granted, I haven’t memorized his autobiography, but I  seem to recall that there were many UFO sightings before the outbreak of World War II, which is part of what precipitated his interest in the topic.

First, look @ this photo Nancy Atkinson took at noon, 7,000 feet. That white speck is the moon. Then look at the video.

This video from the Netherland intrigues me. You can just imagine this guy out for a drive with his girlfriend, he sees these weird lights…and, well, let him tell you. I’m sure some skeptics somewhere will jump on this one, just as they did with the various videos of a UFO over Jerusalem, the UFOs that reportedly shut down an airport in China, the Phoenix Lights, and all the rest. Whatever. This video resonates.

Posted in Netherlands, UFOs | 23 Comments

The Alien Jigsaw

Posted on February 17, 2011 by Trish and Rob

We recenltly came across a long, but interesting article on the Internet by UFO author Budd Hopkins. It’s called Deconstructing the Debunkers: A Response. It appeared on a web site called The Alien Jigsaw: True Experiences of Alien Abductions. The article reminded us of the time we spent with Hopkins many years ago.

It was the early 1980s when we were writing for OMNI Magazine’s red pages about UFOs, hauntings and other paranormal activities. We were assigned to a UFO conference in Hollywood, Florida where Hopkins, was one of the speakers. We’d read his book, Intruders, so when we had an opportunity to go along with him on a UFO investigation involving hypnotic regression, we jumped at the chance.

Budd hadn’t rented a car so we drove him up the coast to meet a family with a dramatic story of repeated abductions, involving a woman and her young son. Hopkins hypnotized the mother, Carrie, and she told of being floated out of her bed down the hall and right through the wall to an illuminated ‘tube’ that lifted her and her abductees up to a waiting vessel.

Carrie remembered nothing about what happened to her when she was taken into the vessel, but she did recall details about the trip up the tube. Their house was located less than a mile away from the headquarters of the grocery store tabloid, National Enquirer, which during those years published UFO stories. Each Christmas season the Enquirer would put up a huge Christmas tree, a dazzling display of lights and  kiddie rides. It was a popular attraction. The tree was fully lit and visible during the abduction and Carrie recalled looking down, and pointing it out to the aliens. Hopkins matter-of-factly asked how they reacted, and Carrie, speaking in a hypnotic monotone in the present tense, said, “They aren’t impressed.”

Carrie’s husband, D, was also present, and he was a presence – to say the least. While Carrie and her son were gentle and sweet, her husband was imposing.  He was a big man, older than Carrie, with a mane of silver-gray hair. D wore black clothes, and a gold necklace bearing a thumb-sized gold devil pendant. He said he was a former Baptist minister, who told us that he had ‘changed sides.’

Yeah, that was weird. Trish and I were exchanging glances, wondering what was up with that dude, but Budd seemed to ignore him, as if he didn’t figure into the scenario, and just focused on the wife’s experiences. Budd was staying overnight with the family and when we left, we were glad we weren’t staying there.

In the aftermath, we asked for a follow-up interview and invited the couple to our Fort Lauderdale townhouse. We should have guessed that doing so would attract more high strangeness. Since we didn’t particularly want to be alone with them, we invited a few friends, ones we knew from other stories we’d done for OMNI and other magazines. So it was an eclectic group and among them were a few talented psychics. Carrie and her husband arrived early and again D wore black with his satanist logo visible. Everyone stayed late and seemed to be enjoying themselves, except for D. The ex-minister/satanist seemed out of his element, wary of everyone, and remained stoically silent for the most part. He never moved from one place the entire night.

It was around 1 a.m. and we were talking about MIBs – men in black – when the unexpected happened.
I glanced over at the sliding glass doors, which led from the living room to a small porch and the parking lot. Someone was standing on the porch staring in at us.  By the time I alerted the others, the man had moved away. I hurried to the doors, threw them open,  and could hardly believe what I saw. Instead of simply disappearing into the darkness beyond the parking lot, the man was making a scene of his escape. He crouched low, and moved from car to car, and kept looking back at us. He was hiding in full view.

Trish called the police, and the response was astonishing. Within a few minutes, eight or nine patrol cars arrived, some with dogs. The police spread out and searched the complex. We were baffled…until we found out that a man had been murdered an hour earlier, less than a mile away. As far as we know, they never found the man we reported, and we don’t know if he had anything to do with the murder. But it was a strange ending for an unusual evening, and hey, we never saw that couple again!

Posted in abductions, aliens, budd hopkins | 10 Comments