Join Whitley Strieber, renown author and contactee, in a workshop on Saturday, January 29. When you register, please use code 1125773_w8d6rm9f
You’re definitely in for an eye-opener!
A new episode of The Mystical Underground is live! “Sharon Rawlette: Mysteries Of Consciousness”:
Join Trish and Rob for a conversation with…
Sharon Rawlette, is a writer and philosopher fascinated by coincidences: those strange, enigmatic experiences that are so often personally meaningful and yet push the boundaries of what we consider scientifically possible. Her May 2019 book The Source and Significance of Coincidences presents a wealth of evidence concerning the statistical significance of coincidences, their range of probable causes, and how we can best interpret their implications for our lives. She also writes about coincidences on the Psychology Today blog, Mysteries of Consciousness, and has presented some of my most recent research at the Division of Perceptual Studies (DOPS) at the University of Virginia School of Medicine.
She also came in 3rd place in the Robert Bigelow essay contest to prove that consciousness survives death.
We’ve all heard stories of deceased friends or family members greeting a new arrival to the afterlife. The stories typically come from people who have had near-death experiences and were told it wasn’t their time yet. But apparently deceased loved ones sometimes visit us in our everyday lives and tell us that it’s our time to leave this life.
That’s the case with the following story which appeared in by Sharon Hewitt Rawlette’s 25,000-word essay, Beyond Death: The Best Evidence for Survival of Human Consciousness. The essay was entered into the Bigelow Institute’s contest for proof that life continues after death, and Sharon won $50,000 for her entry. At this writing, we’re looking forward to interviewing Sharon for The Mystical Underground podcast in a few days.
Here’s one of the stories she includes that suggests that our deceased loved ones can cross into our world and let us know we’ll join them soon.
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As we’ve seen, one type of new, verifiable information that can be provided by an apparition is that the person appearing is recently deceased, as well as the manner in which they died. But sometimes the information provided is about someone other than the one doing the appearing. For instance, a widower named Gary confided in researcher Dianne Arcangel that he was starting to have a lot of vivid after-death encounters. He was puzzled in particular by something that had happened while he was washing his car in preparation for trading it in.
He told Arcangel, “I saw my wife standing there as plain as day. She said, ‘Don’t bother. Just enjoy your family and friends because you’ll be with me soon.’” Gary was in great health and actually starting to enjoy life again, so he didn’t know what to make of his wife’s comment. Nevertheless, only hours after Gary told her this story, Arcangel got a call from Gary’s work informing her he’d just been killed in a car accident.
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I thought it was interesting that his wife told him not to bother washing the car, which not only suggests that she knew he would die soon, but also possibly that she knew he would die in a car wreck.
Throughout the years of writing about synchronicity, we’ve heard from a number of people who have experienced what I call anomalistic weirdness. The experience usually changes their idea of what’s possible, often alters the course of their lives, and becomes a memory as indelible as India ink.
One January night in 2019, Joe Killian encountered what he believed to be an alien being in the parking lot of a restaurant.
In 2012, Canadian Charles Fontaine witnessed a UFO in his backyard and experienced a cascade of synchronicities related to that experience that we wrote about in our book Aliens in the Backyard: UFO Encounters, Abductions and Synchronicity. During this strange time in his life, Charles had an encounter while sitting in his car outside a grocery store, as a tall, ant-like creature came right toward him.
Joe says his experience left his questioning everything he thought he knew about the nature of reality. It took Charles nearly six years to recover from his experience.
Several years ago in the Florida Keys, Priscilla of Pembroke Pines drove through a dense fog and moved forward in time.
Her experience was eerily similar to that of Bruce Gernon, who in 1970 was flying his Cessna back to South Florida from Andros Island in the Bahamas and was surrounded by “electronic fog,” and moved forward in time. Bruce and Rob have written two books about the experience – The Fog and Beyond the Bermuda Triangle and Bruce has appeared on dozens of TV shows to talk about what happened that day.
In 1964, John Murphy was stationed aboard a U.S. Coast Guard cutter that docked near Pennos Wharf near St. George Bermuda and experienced the inexplicable – a kind of time travel love story. He believes he walked 300 years into the past with a young woman he had just met. Not only did John and Barbara both feel an uncanny sense that they already knew each other, but during a walk they encountered a small 18th century British village with a church dominating the village square where they felt certain they’d lived before. They even recalled their lives as young married couple with children. Yet, when John returned to this location alone two days later, the village was gone. He later learned the village had been wiped out in a hurricane in the late 18th century.
The important thing about these experiences is that the individuals involved recognized that the seemingly impossible had happened to them and it changed them in a fundamental way. John Murphy, who passed away in 2019, spent years looking for Barbara and finally found her. She remembered much of what had happened that night. We recounted his story in our book Beyond Strange. Bruce’s experience – when he was 24 – shaped the rest of his adult life.
Often, when people experience this anomalistic weirdness, they don’t talk about it with others, usually out of fear that they’ll sound nuts. But when Priscilla read about Joe’s experience, she asked us to give Joe her email and now they’ve had several conversations about their respective experiences. Joe says it has helped him wrap his head around what happened to him. Charles Fontaine offered to communicate with Joe as well.
Synchronicity of one kind or another was involved in all of these experiences. I’ve come to think of these types of synchros as mind-blowing and life-altering precisely because they are so beyond strange and prompt us to question the nature of our personal and collective reality.
Is there a difference between coincidence and synchronicity? I think there is a huge difference, but decided to start with the dictionary.
From an online dictionary, coincidence is defined as: a remarkable concurrence of events or circumstances without apparent causal connection.”They met by coincidence.”
From the same online source, synchronicity is defined as: the simultaneous occurrence of events which appear significantly related but have no discernible causal connection. “Such synchronicity is quite staggering.”
Notice the difference. We go from remarkable concurrence of events or circumstances to the simultaneous occurrence of events which appear significantly related…
The difference between those definitions is subtle and easy to miss. In the definition of synchronicity, the 2 significant words are the simultaneous occurrence… with what? Jung defined it better in the introduction he wrote to Richard Wilhelm’s translation of The I Ching. “Synchronicity takes the coincidence of events in space and time as meaning something more than mere chance, namely, a peculiar interdependence of objective events among themselves as well as with the subjective (psychic) states of the observer or observers.”
In other words, there’s an acausal connection between inner and outer states that is meaningful to you, the person who observes or experiences it.
“Wow, what a coincidence!” The next time you hear that, get the details. It’s likely the person experienced a synchronicity. The fact that they noticed indicates it held personal meaning and probably happened recently enough so they connected the dots.
Coincidence is the tidy word for synchronicity, the more acceptable word even though they don’t mean the same thing. Coincidence has a randomness to it that synchronicity does not.
Jung: Synchronicity is an ever present reality for those who have eyes to see.
David Richo: We do not create our destiny; we participate in its unfolding. Synchronicity works as a catalyst toward the working out of that destiny.
Dalai Lama: I am open to the guidance of synchronicity and do not let expectations hinder my path.
A new episode of The Mystical Underground is live! “Jennifer Hough: The Wide Awakening”:
Join Trish and Rob for a conversation with…
Jennifer Hough is president of The Wide Awakening, founder of the largest integrative nutrition practice in Canada, and the first mentorship program for complementary entrepreneurs over two decades ago. Jennifer’s main focus is the science of flow in everyday life, which she refers to as ‘applied physics.’ She has mentored doctors, executives, and thought leaders globally. Her passion is to make physics practical after working with mystics, scientists and shamans from eight countries to free herself of her own struggle with chronic fatigue and self-sabotage. She has appeared on numerous podcasts, radio and television shows. The topic she would like to talk about today is How to create a viral movement using applied physics.
View of planet Mercury from space. Space, nebula and planet Mercury. This image elements furnished by NASA.
Tomorrow, January 14, at 6:41 a.m., Mercury turns retrograde in Capricorn. It happens when the planet that rules communication appears to be moving backward relative to earth. During these retro periods, there tend to be a lot of communication snafus. Cars and computers and anything else with moving parts develop problems. Travel is riddled with abrupt changes, delays. Any contracts signed during a retro will need to be revisited. It’s best to reconsider, revise, and review.
I once signed a contract during a Mercury retro and regretted it the entire duration of the contract. The book’s publication date was pushed back. The editor quit and some other editor took over in her absence.
Don’t list your home for sale during a retrograde, double check appointments, don’t schedule surgery or air travel. Delays are common. People you haven’t seen in years may suddenly reappear in your life, unresolved issues surface. If you do travel during a retro, it’s likely that you’ll return to that place.
This one will be done on February 3, at 11:13 p.m., when Mercury turns direct in Capricorn. Good luck!
Today at Publix, I was coming up an aisle and nearly rammed into a fireman who was turning into the aisle. I apologized and continued on into the next aisle. I saw him again as I was checking out – he’d just gone through the line – and I went up to the front register to see what scratch-offs they had. I didn’t see what I wanted, so I went over to the machine.
The fireman was there, contemplating the choices of scratch-offs and lottery tickets. He bought three $5 Gold Rush cards. “Are your chances of winning better with the $5 card?” I asked.
“The odds are better.” He turned the card over and indicated the odds:1:3.97. “I just bought three cards, so if you buy one, you’ll probably win.” I usually stick to the $2 cards, but this felt like an evolving synchronicity, so I bought the $5 Gold Rush and my usual $2 Loteria scratch-off.
As soon as I got home, I scratched off the winning numbers – 15, 17, 21, 24 – and went to work. Every single number won! The synchronicity paid off.
After I loaded my groceries into the car, I was pushing my cart to the place where you leave them and the fire truck was just leaving the lot, headed toward me. I was tempted to wave my arms so it would stop and I could thank him.
A new episode of The Mystical Underground is live! “Rob Macgregor: Staff Of Kings: Episode 4”:
Join Rob MacGregor, the author of the Indiana Jones prequel novels and the Mystical Underground, as they present the fourth episode of an audio production of the unpublished novel “Indiana Jones and the Staff of Kings.”
Sometimes called “The Lost Indiana Jones novel,” Staff of Kings will come out in six episodes on The Mystical Underground’s podcast feed, beginning August 22. It will continue as possible each month through early 2022.
These days, it takes time to plan a getaway. Whether your travel is by car or air, you need a destination.
And one by one, our destinations for a road trip appeared last May. Mercury was still retrograde when I started planning this road trip, and now that we’re on the other side of it, I realize I would have planned differently. By my probably terrible calculations, the trip covered nearly 1800 miles. We went from: Wellington – Orlando-Marietta Georgia, Blue Ridge Georgia – Asheville, Seven Devils, Charleston SC, Orlando to Wellington. You begin to feel as if you and the car at joined at the hip.
In each of these places, we intended to visit with family and friends we haven’t seen for awhile. In Orlando, there was Megan. Synchronicities fly around when we’re at her place, and this time it involved the updated agent query for her novel, The Dark Silence. We loved it.
In Marietta at my sister’s place, we got together with my youngest nephew and his girlfriend, prototypes of Bradbury’s Illustrated Man ( and woman). They’re moving into a new tattoo salon and the front room is reserved for a tarot reader. I have an open invitation.
In Blue Ridge, Georgia my sister and I went shopping while the guys played Frisbee Golf. We talked about the various synchronicities that had defined our lives. Both of us bought a carved wooden hand. We liked the symbolism, a life open to receiving.
From Blue Ridge we drove to Asheville, North Carolina, where our friend Cassie manages the horses and stables at the Biltmore Hotel. She’s a sister Gemini and lived with us for a couple of equestrian seasons with her two dogs. Like us, she’s entertaining the idea of moving elsewhere if the repugs sweep the senate and house in 2022, paving the way for another term of trump or one of his clones, like Florida’s governor, deathsantis.
After lunch, we stopped by Cassie’s cool place on the Biltmore property, then drove on to the Boone area to visit Hilary and Jeff, writer friends from Florida who moved to NC several years ago. What I love about these two is the ease. We talk about publishing, the triumphs and travails and weirdness of it all. We talk about our kids, their plans and weddings and dreams, and we talk about the books and stories we have yet to write. Synchronicity is woven into all of this.
In Charleston, we checked into the airbnb I’d reserved. Nancy Pickard showed up minutes later and she was barely out of the car when we threw our arms around each other. It had been at least a decade.
We first met in 1985, when she and her then husband spent winters in Fort Lauderdale and she came to the first signing for my first book, In Shadow. We discovered we’d both read Seth Speaks by Jane Roberts and loved tossing the I Ching, and have been friends ever since.
After spending most of her life in Kansas, Nancy moved to Charleston as the result of synchronicity, and loves living there. She showed us around for dinner and breakfast the next morning, we inadvertently found a great dog park on the beach, and the squirrels were in rare form, tantalizing the dogs. Reconnecting with her was wonderful.
At each of these junctures, my appreciation of reconnection deepened. Yes, we are independent beings. But we’re also interconnected and synchronicity often shows us just how that works.
