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Only a tiny percentage of people who come to our blog ever leave a message. In fact, far more people who never come to our blog attempt to leave messages – ie. SPAM, but we block those off-subject sales pitches.

Occasionally, someone will e-mail us rather than comment on the blog. That was the case recently with an Australian woman of aboriginal descent, who we will call Emily. She wrote us about the post on shamanic meditation that included a story by a woman who had an encounter with her deceased father.

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“I was on your website this morning reading about synchronicity and meditation. I don’t want my identity exposed, but decided to take the chance after reading your article about meditation and the lady who wrote about her meditation experiences with you and seeing her father during meditation. I noted you didn’t use her name, which gave me the courage to contact you.

“Back in 1995, after going home to see my family, my older sister shared some experiences with me. She was into the ‘New Age’ stuff and gave me some Dawn Hill books to read. I won’t go into everything she told me, but after reading Dawn’s books I decided to try meditation, sharing my attempts with my sister.

“Life was hard for me during that time and I found the meditation sessions calming, and became able to get to that state quite easily. I am a First Person of Australia woman and we believe that the old people, the ancestors visit us. I could never see or hear them, but felt their presence. My father told me it was like seeing a live person, and not to be afraid, that it’s the living you should be wary of! I see them now, but that’s another story.”

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Emily later told us a story about her contact, not with an ancestor, but with a mysterious other-worldly being.

“I think meditating opened me up to a bigger universe and someone from ‘out there’ tried to contact me. I was living by myself at the time and the  experience scared me.

“I was contacted one night whilst reading. It was gentle and deliberate, but when I saw it, I freaked out. It tried for many years, but I was too scared! He was beautiful… I called him the Lionman.

“He had hair like a lion’s mane and his face was like a man and a lion, with a body like a man. He was beautiful. He wore a shirt and a vest. The vest looked like dark brown suede, fawn shirt and pants, with boots that came up to his knees. He held his hands in front of his body with his head bowed for a while allowing me to watch him. Then he came closer and he looked up at me and smiled. That’s when I freaked.”

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Emily said that she could not only see the Lionman, but also his otherworldly surroundings. “He was in a dead-end, surrounded with high red rocks and red earth. Maybe he was on Mars!”

Towards the end the Lionman would knock three times at her door, but Emily was too afraid to answer. “He stopped trying in 2002. I now regret my fears.”

She asked us to let her know if we ever hear about the Lionman from anyone else. She wants to know more about him. “It’s been good to share this with you and Trish. I feel like a weight has been lifted off me.”

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Later, she told us one other story, one that possibly offers a clue to the identity of the Lionman.

“With my meditating I became very good at it, but could only stay there for 20 minutes. I also had some wonderful experiences. I could slip in and out of meditation whenever I was stressed. One time I was on a plane going through rough weather and was very stressed so I meditated. I used to go to a special place by the river whilst meditating and believe I met ‘God’ there that day.

“He appeared to me like they depict him in the bible. I was amused and asked him if he really looked like that. He told me, “I have many images,” and swirled around me in beautiful colours. There was a baby crying on the plane so I asked him if he could help the baby, and the baby stopped crying immediately. I believe he was a beautiful spirit, perhaps even god.”

After reading that story, it occurred to me that perhaps Emily’s religious upbringing might be influencing her visions. What came to mind was C.S. Lewis’s novel (and movie), The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe. The Lion, of course, was Lewis’s mythical figure for a deity.

So, Emily, I think the Lionman was a guide, a spirit, an alien, an avatar, an advanced being. One of those or maybe all of those.

If anyone else has had an experience like this, please let us know.

Meditation is basically about relaxing and focusing. There are generally three types of focusing: mindfulness, imagery (or visualization), and inquiry, where you pose a question and look for answers to appear through the senses – a voice, a vision, a smell, however it comes. Sometimes, those answers come in strange ways.

The last form of focusing comes into play during the second half of my 6-week meditation course, and sometimes interesting things happen. That seems to be especially true for the last class, which focuses on shamanic meditation, in which students are guided to the Upper World, Middle World, or Lower World of shamanism where they meet a power animal or guide.

Recently, as I finished the shamanic meditation at Moksha Yoga Studio, I walked out leaving my meditation cushion behind. So the next day I decided to retrieve it, and take a yoga class. As I arrived, I recognized a student from an earlier course and we talked a bit about her son taking some private classes. Later, she wrote me with more details, and then told me about her experience during the shamanic meditation class.

Here’s what she wrote:

“By the way, during the last meditation class of fall last year, we did shamanic meditation and it blew my mind…..didn’t know what happened and was so confused that I didn’t say anything at the time. But you had us pick a guru (mine was an eagle) and we were to ask the guru a question and as I was asking my question, I could smell sawdust, then I realized it was my father (who died 12 years ago) and he was the guru and he answered my question. I felt he was actually in the room.

“The significance of the sawdust was that my dad used to work with wood. He loved making furniture and just experimenting with woodworking, and he always smelt like sawdust. So it was a comforting and familiar smell to me. It’s funny how I could smell the sawdust in the room before I ‘saw’ my father in my meditation.

“I didn’t actually see him, I just knew he was there. I could hear him and smell him, but not see him. The form of the eagle had disappeared and my father was ‘there.’ I don’t know how else to explain it.

I was so taken aback by his presence that I asked him why he was here and I had to go because you were calling us back to the room. It was the most bizarre thing that ever happened to me during meditation. I was crying. I miss my father a lot. We were very close. Didn’t know how to handle all of that. LOL. It’s all good. Just wanted to share that with you.”

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I’ve heard similar stories from other students. I’m always interested in hearing about such experiences, but I don’t push people to tell everyone in class what happened during their meditation. That’s probably because of a memory I have of a meditation teacher who always went around the room asking each student to describe his or her experience. I found it invasive.

I’ve been re-reading sections of  Arthur I Miller’s terrific book, Deciphering the Cosmic Number: The Strange Friendship of Wolfgang Pauli and Carl Jung. In a section called Parallels and Coincidence, Miller talks about how Jung believed that in any discussion about dreams, physics and psychology, we should take a closer look at our notion of time and in particular, a close look at synchronicity.  By this time, Jung had been exploring the concept since his early days in medical school.

As Jung delved further into mythology and alchemy, he developed his idea about “one world,” the unus mundo, in which all people are connected. As Miller wrote, “If there was one world, he reasoned, surely there should also be one mind, which he identified as the collective unconscious of humankind.”

This idea seemed particularly obvious when he consulted the I Ching because the advice the hexagrams provided appeared to be relevant to the moment in which he asked his question. “If he asked the same question a second time – at a different moment – the advice might be quite different.”  So if the Ching’s answers held any significance at all, Jung wondered, how did the link between the psychic and physical sequence of events occur?

In the 1920s, Jung started to seriously explore parallels between out of body experiences – OBEs – and mental states. One day in 1928, Jung drew a mandala that looked to be very Chinese and that same day received Richard Wilhelm’s manuscript of his translation of the Secret of the Golden Flower. “To Jung, that was what synchronicity was all about,” wrote Miller.

“In the Western world, we usually assume that events develop sequentially, one after the other, by a process of cause and effect. But Jung was convinced that as well as a vertical connection, events might also have a horizontal connection – that all the events occurring all over the world at any one moment were linked as a kind of grand network. Thus, when one threw the coins to consult the I Ching, the throwing of the coins coincided with one’s feelings at that precise moment and the answer reflected the truth of that moment.”

Synchronicity is at work in all divination systems- the tarot, astrology, reading leaves in a teacup, even opening a book and pointing at a word on a page.  In the moment the coins are tossed, the cards are drawn, the chart is erected, the answer is intrinsic to that moment.

As a psychologist, Jung was convinced that science couldn’t explain “certain remarkable manifestations of the unconscious.”  He also knew that physicists wouldn’t touch acausality and hoped to find a way of developing his ideas with scientific rigor. And it was at that point that he met Nobel laureate Wolfgang Pauli.  It wasn’t until 1948, though, that Jung and Pauli started exploring the concept of synchronicity more deeply.

Interestingly, because of the time in which they lived, Pauli and Jung kept their collaboration on synchronicity and physics to themselves, out of fear that their colleagues would laugh at them.

In that sense, perhaps, things have changed a little bit – but not enough. With the technology and instant access to information available to us now, I wonder how these two men would fare in the 21st century.

Hans Holzer was a psychic researcher and author. I remember reading his books when I was in my teens, and one in particular stands out in memory. I think it was called Psychic Photography. He wrote more than a 100 books on the paranormal and died in 2009.

This evening, we received an email from David Wilson at Crossroad Press about a dream his wife had about Hans Holzer. It’s a great example of synchronicity and clairvoyance or precognition. Here’s how David’s wife, Trish, described it:

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 So, I’m sitting here at my computer, legs curled up to my side, trying to decide what to do next when I just…go to sleep. Sitting up. And I had this dream and in the dream, we were living in our 100-year-old house. I’m sitting in our old den and David comes home.

 He walks in the room, mail in hand, and tosses a manila envelope in my lap. It has no return address and when I open it, it’s empty. Weird. So, at that moment, a book from the bookshelf immediately behind my right shoulder just slides out and onto the floor. I pick it up. It’s Born Again by Hans Holzer. I have that book and have read it twice.

David and I look at each other and laugh and I tell him how weird that was. And I tell him it wasn’t weird. It would be weird if ALL the books came off the shelf. There’s a noise behind me but I never see what happens because I suddenly start to feel like I’m falling out of the chair and I wake up VERY suddenly, because I’m falling out of the chair.  

 So, I shake it off and start thinking about all the Holzer books I used to have and the ones I could never find. I go to Amazon to look for some of them, hopefully on Kindle…but there are only three.

I called David and told him he needed to get in touch with Mr. Holzer’s estate to see if we can e-pub the rest of the books, especially the older stuff. I really want to read them and all the used copies are beaten up.

One that I bought was missing ten pages from the middle. I cannot be the only person who read those books and learned from them, or who still wants to read them. All the work he did on them, all his brilliant research just can’t die. I’ve been reading Holzer’s books since I was a kid and I can’t believe I never thought to go back and look for the rest until now. If his daughter lets us publish them, I want to proof them all myself so I can read them.

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As a result of his wife’s dream, David got in touch with Holzer’s daughter and will be talking to her today. As I was writing this up, I realized there’s a deeper layer to this synchro. In Trish’s dream, the book that fell off the shelf was Born Again, which is exactly what will happen to Holzer’s books if his daughter allows Crossroad to publish them.

Cassie, the woman who has been living with us since January, is a groom/barn manager who spends 6 days a week working with and taking care of horses. During downtime in the barn – like when she’s waiting for the vet to arrive or for her employer to finish riding- she has her iPod and iPad handy.

Today, she dropped by the house for lunch and said, “Trish, you aren’t going to believe the synchro I had this morning.”

I was all ears.

Cassie was in the barn, scrolling through the Huffington Post while listening to her iPod. She came to a story about the death of Maria Von Trapp. She was the last surviving member of the famous musical family whose escape from Nazi-occupied Austria was the basis for the musical The Sound of Music.  The movie version won an Oscar in 1965.

Cassie has always loved the movie and the music. She traveled in Salzburg as a kid and has skied at the Von Trapp ski resort in Stowe, where the family ended up after they fled Germany.

As she was reading the article, the song that came on her iPod was from the musical, The Morning Hymn Alleluia. Goosebumps spend up her arms.  “I’ve got more than 4,000 songs on my iPod and that song has never come on. I was so shocked I had to check my iPod to make sure I was hearing it right.”

What are the odds?

A blogger on the Huff Post, David Kanegis, also commented on Von Trapp’s death and the death of Alice Herz-Sommer, the world’s oldest known Holocaust survivor. The two women died within a week of each other. His piece opens with this: The universe has a way of communicating with us through seemingly unrelated events. Or are they?

Kanegis is recognizing a synchro, without calling it that.

Here is the NY Times piece about Von Tropp.

I knew that Whitley Strieber and his wife, Anne, were working on a book together that involved her near-death experience in 2004 from a brain bleed. When I received an email the other day that the book was now available as an ebook from Crossroad Press,  I immediately downloaded it.

Miraculous Journey is a miraculous read. There are chapters in this book that brought me to tears, that made me laugh out loud, that prompted me to close down my iPad and take a long walk to simply appreciate my own life and surroundings.

I enjoyed the structure  – alternating chapters by Anne and Whitley. You get both sides of the story –of her illness, their marriage, their creative partnership, of who they are as partners, but also of who they are as individuals. It’s a memoir in the best sense of the word. It tackles the BIG questions – what is the nature of reality? What is death? Does consciousness survive? Are our lives predestined? Where does free will enter the picture?

Honesty and raw emotion run throughout this book. Yet, there is never a point where any of it descends into self-pity or victimization or “Oh poor me.” If anything, it’s the complete opposite, a kind of victory call, a challenge, a gauntlet hurled at our collective feet that asks: Who are we? As a species? A collective? As individuals? Where do we fit in the grander scheme of things?

Anne writes movingly of living  in Whitley’s shadow, of his encounter experiences and their repercussions for her when Communion was published.  And he writes movingly of how he could never have written anything without her. I, as a writer married to a writer, understand this dynamic. Your partner is your first editor, your first reader, your first critic. If he or she dislikes what you have written, you hope they will be honest with you about that, but despair when you hear the words, This doesn’t work. And you are beside yourself with joy when your partner says, Wow, I love it.

As writers who have followed Strieber’s career since we first ran across Communion more than 25 years ago, Rob and I have admired his steadfast belief that he, an ordinary man, experienced something so extraordinary that it altered the trajectory of his life. He was reviled and ridiculed after Communion was published and skeptics had a field day. Ha-ha, this silly man… But he kept moving forward – and so did Anne.

In Miraculous Journey, we find out that Anne had a difficult childhood. Well, difficult may not be the right adjective. Nightmare is better. Her mother committed suicide when she was seven. Her father remarried and she, the stepdaughter, was the handmaid, the servant who was emotionally abused, beaten down, and ultimately driven from the home.

In a sense, when she and Whitley met, destiny seemed to become part of the equation – yet they each had the free will to bow out and look elsewhere. But that isn’t what happened. They got married, had a son, settled in to a creative partnership. 

Now Anne has a brain tumor.

This book works on so many levels- collectively, personally- that I am left almost speechless. In the final chapter, Whitley writes:

A marriage as close and deep and happy as ours is a truly wonderful blessing, but facing being the  one left behind is, I suspect, in many ways as hard as the one who must move on. I do hope that if she is to go to her dying, she finds beyond the veil love even better than what I have been able to give her, an embrace absolute with joy…

This book is one to savor – and remember, always.

All too often, insightful comments are lost in the scroll of information and may not be seen. So we’ve brought forward a conversation with Sheila Joshi, a clinical psychologist who is recovering from severe neurological damage from prescription antidepressants.

“Withdrawing from the medications propelled me into a Kundalini awakening and/or shamanic initiatory illness, which included lots of extreme symptoms and some psychic experiences.”

One of Sheila’s  was about Omega3 increasing the frequency of synchronicity.

“…more and more research comes out about Omega-3 every day, and it’s a very promising thing for a vast array of health problems. Plus, when I increased my dose in the past, I started to have more synchros.

If anyone decides to increase their Omega-3, please let me know what you experience. I’m thinking of doing some research on Omega-3 and psi.

I asked Sheila how Omega 3s increase the incidents of synchronicity. Here was her response:

Well, we know that Omega-3 increases alpha and theta brainwaves, which have been correlated with psi. And my hypothesis is that there are several other mechanisms by which Omega-3 may facilitate psi – improving brain and whole body functioning, increasing quantum entanglement, and — using Sheldrake’s theory — consuming Omega-3 from algae, may connect us physically and through morphic resonance to an ancient, foundational organism and molecule that are pervasive on our planet, and that we are highly dependent on, and which are part of many morphic fields.

I’ve thought about this in relation to synchros – not Omega3 in particular but about how diet and nutrition fit into synchros. There’s anecdotal evidence that certain drugs facilitate synchros; that certain states of mind, attitude, beliefs also facilitate them. But suppose you could consume a certain food or vitamin each day that would increase your chances of experiencing a synchronicity? Pretty cool, right?

So if Sheila is right about omega 3s it’s up to the rest of us to test and discover it. Right now, we eat a lot of salmon – but according to this website  the best are wild Alaskan salmon, Arctic char, Atlantic mackerel, sardines…well, you can click through the website and see what is recommended.

But suppose you’re a vegan, a real vegan who doesn’t even eat fish? Can you take/tolerate the supplement of fish oils? Of Omega3 vitamins? Right now, as of this second, that’s a genuine unknown. We’ll see. I’m upgrading my intake of Omega 3s tonight.

Here’s Sheila’s essay on this intriguing topic.

 I found this on Whitley Strieber’s Unknown Country website. It may be one of the most clever ads yet, and made me laugh. I asked Whitley if we could post it and he said sure.

Here’s the ad:

SINGLE BLACK FEMALE seeks male companionship, ethnicity unimportant. I’m a very good girl who LOVES to play. I love long walks in the woods, riding in your pickup truck, hunting, camping and fishing trips, cozy winter nights lying by the fire. Candlelight dinners will have me eating out of your hand. I’ll be at the front door when you get home from work, wearing only what nature gave me…. Call(404) 875-6420 and ask for Annie, I’ll be waiting…..

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 If you’re a guy, this sounds pretty good, right?

 Well, imagine the astonishment of the more than 150 men who found themselves talking to the Atlanta Humane Society, about this little beauty:

Have you heard of this herb? It’s widely used by men for prostate health. I took it daily for years in the hopes of forestalling the growth of my prostate, a condition faced by more than half of men over 50. Unfortunately, in that battle, the prostate won, and I had to seek other remedies—first, medications to relax the muscles around the prostate and supposedly to shrink it. Again, unfortunately, the prostate won.

Last September, I resorted to surgery, and it was a success. The prostate, which had grown nearly three-times its normal size, was trimmed down and all the annoying symptoms – along with the temporary catheters – vanished. I no longer needed any medications or saw palmetto – though I guess it wouldn’t hurt to continue taking it. But I wasn’t too happy with saw palmetto, and admit that I had bad-mouthed the natural remedy as bogus. Even a scam. I figured I was done with it.

But not so fast. Last week, my friend Don and I went on an early morning off-road bike ride on a trail an hour north of here. I’d only ridden it once and that was years ago. The trail was relatively easy, especially compared to our local technical trail with numerous log piles, criss-crossing root pattern, steep drops and sharp turns along tight trails through heavy woods.

We’d been riding nearly an hour when we crossed a narrow wooden bridge over a creek. Don was ahead of me and had disappeared around a bend as I came off the bridge. I swerved to avoid a mud puddle and paid for the move. I was slammed down into something sharp and prickly. As I slowly got to my feet, I looked back and saw that I’d crashed into a patch of saw palmetto.

I didn’t see the irony, though, until a few days later when a friend, upon hearing the story, replied, “I thought saw palmetto was good for men.” Maybe for some, but not for me. A broken stem about the size of six toothpicks had pierced through the top of my ear. Don, a retired paramedic/fire fighter, pulled it out and I stopped the bleeding with a kerchief. We continued on, but I knew I’d bruised a rib or two and that I would feel it more after we finished.

Back at home, I cleaned the ear and found another splinter, shaped like an arrowhead, wedged into the top of the ear. I couldn’t get it out, neither could Trish, so I ended up at a walk-in clinic. I’d been there before, back when I was realizing the saw palmetto formula wasn’t working for me.

So much for my encounters with this prickly plant. I don’t know if I’ll take any more of the herb, but I will definitely respect it when I encounter it again along the trail.