Search Terms as Oracle

Posted on July 31, 2012 by Trish and Rob

One of the beauties of Statcounter is that it shows you the search terms that people use to find your blog. I sometimes view these search terms as fodder for fiction. Other times, I see them as symbolic of the collective mind. I pay close attention because in the past, the terms have yielded some stunning synchros.

Two years ago, for instance, we noticed that the word phoenix  was prevalent in the search terms and eventually a woman wrote us about an amazing  synchro involving her daughter.  Earlier this year, we noticed a number of searches for Wolfgang Pauli and these searches always came from Toronto. Several weeks later, we got an email from William Shatner’s Weird or What Show and subsequently appeared on it to talk about – Pauli!

In the last month, the most common search terms that have appeared on our blog – other than the terms coincidence or synchronicity are:

Quebec encounter

Desperate housewives logo

Nicholas cage, time traveler

Orange centipede

co-existence bumper sticker

The Quebec encounter posts generated a lot of interest on our blog, including interest from: the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the FBI Criminal Justice Information Systems, the FCC,  Navy Network Information Center (nnic), the Department of Defense Network Information Center, the  Canadian Air Defence, various Air Force Bases, and from Gunter Annex,  the home of the Headquarters 754th Electronic Systems Group (HQ 754th ELSG). The 754th Electronic Systems Group provides and supports secure combat information systems and networks that increase the capabilities of our commanders and leaders of the United States Air Force (USAF), the Department of Defense and other Federal Government Agencies.

And that’s just the tip. My question is simple: why are all these American and Canadian government agencies so interested in anything having to do with UFO encounters, a phenomenon they claim does not exist and has never existed?

The Desperate Housewives logo is kind of funny. It’s an apple. What does the apple represent in certain religions? Well, the apple was the forbidden fruit in Eden, and when Adam and Even partook, they were cast out of paradise. On a synchro note, Apple’s logo is, of course, an apple with a bite taken out of it. Steve Jobs got tempted in paradise!

Cage, the time traveler. This post came about as a result of the similarity between two photos – one of a soldier in some long ago war and the other of Cage today.

Then there’s the orange centipede. The first post we put up that involved an orange centipede came from Renee Prince. Here’s a bit about their life cycle.

The co-existence bumper sticker may be a collective hope.

Now, I can understand the interest in UFO encounters. I can understand the interest in Desperate Housewives, the show, but why the logo??  I can understand the interest in Cage as a possible time traveler. But I mean, really, orange centipedes? If I were using these phrases as a launchpad for a possible idea for a novel, it would go something like this:

Protagonist has encounter with UFO/aliens, possible abduction. He is a religious conservative for whom sin (the apple metaphor)  is real. As a result of his encounter/abduction, he discovers that he can time travel. He travels back in time to the time of his encounter, the parts he can’t remember, and is confronted with aliens who are orange centipedes.  Okay, so it’s not the most original idea.   But maybe it’s a place to start. However, why do the bad guy aliens usually resemble giant insects or worms/snakes with no redeeming qualities?

The larger question is what do these terms tell us, if anything, about the collective mind? You might argue that with 7 billion people on the planet, the terms aren’t that unusual.  All right, I’ll buy that – until the terms show up so often, from so many different geographic locations  that you sense something is going on.

Sometimes it’s personal – and sometimes it isn’t. Not too long ago, we had a number of hits for the term, empath symptoms and shortly afterward, northern Florida experienced some of its worst floods in decades, wildfires in Colorado destroyed homes and hundreds or thousands of acres of land,  and the heat index in northeastern states hit triple digits. Before the Haitian earthquake in 2010, the most common search terms indicated that a massive quake was going to occur somewhere in the Caribbean or in North America.

In fact, an outfit called Half Past Human  supposedly scans the Internet for these linguistic patterns, interprets them, and offers their reports – for a price, of course. Essentially, this company is using the internet as a giant oracle. Their predictions – particularly around the time of the economic meltdown in 2008 – were very accurate. Other times, not so much. You’ll find some interesting predictions here,  where the site owner, George Ure, is connected, in some way, to half past human.

They aren’t the only ones using the Internet as an oracle, a prognosticator of what’s coming up. Bloggers do this daily. They sit down to write something and suddenly find themselves in the synchronicity zone, connecting seeming disparate bits of info into a larger picture. The bloggers listed here are people we’ve been following for quite a while. They each address the changing paradigms in unique ways, according to their talents and interests:

Daz,   Mike Perry,  Adele,  Gypsy, Nancy Atkinson, Sansego,   Marcus Anthony ,  DJan,  Adelita, Mike Clelland,  Lauren Raine, acoustic wave, follow the signs…

These blogs are just a fraction of the ones we follow, where we learn something with every visit about the nature of life in all its permutations and wonders and secrets.  Bloggers may very well be the collective voice of what’s here – and what’s headed our way. I’m sure  I’ve neglected to include some blogs and sites: my  apologies.But the bottom line is this:

Fellow bloggers, what are the most popular search terms that bring people to your blog? Maybe if we put our collective heads together, the picture will get much clearer. And is there an app in here somewhere? Some synchro enthusiasts have already created an app were you can report your synchronicity and find out …well, something.

What can we divine from the search terms that bring people to our blogs?

 


Posted in oracles, synchronicity | 23 Comments

Dying to meet you…

Posted on July 30, 2012 by Trish and Rob

 

The universe works in mysterious ways. Indeed.

The same day that we put up Marcus Anthony’s YouTube video of his talk at the TED conference in Hong Kong, Marcus posted an incredible personal synchronicity on his blog and was about to e-mail us about it when he receive my e-mail alerting him to our post.

As soon as I read his story, I knew we had to spread this story, which is fascinating on a number of levels – from the book itself to Marcus’ own related experience involving multiple synchros.

So we’ll just let Marcus tell his story.

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Last week I was out and about with my wife in the IFC Mall, one of Hong Kong’s more pricey shopping establishments. Walking around on the third floor, I stumbled across a book shop and went in. There, right on top of a pile of books on a table near the front of the bookshop was a certain volume which caught my eye: Dying to be Me, by Anita Moorjani. I picked it up and did what I always do when deciding whether or not to buy a book: I stilled myself, bringing my mind fully present, then felt the book. My intuition told me that the book was for me, so I went straight to the counter and bought it.

I wasn’t disappointed. The author, I found out, is a Hong Kong woman of Indian decent. Several years ago she was diagnosed with cancer. The book details her experience with the disease, and her remarkable visit to death’s door. To cut a long story short, Anita describes how her condition gradually deteriorated, until she was admitted to hospital in a coma. Her doctor’s had basically given up on her, and her organs had begun to shut down. One of the doctor’s wrote down that her family should be informed of her true condition, meaning that he was convinced that she was about to die.

The author then describes the miracle that happened next. She had a classic near death experience where she was able to hear not only what was being said by doctors who were treating her, but she could also see into the minds of her close relatives, including a brother who was on  plane, rushing to see her. She saw her current life in a grand spiritual context, witnessed her past lives, and experienced an expanded state of mind which transcended time and space. This is mental state is what I call a classic experience of Integrated Intelligence (INI), as I outline in my book Discover Your Soul Template, INI is the experience of mind which extends out from the body and interacts with other people, places and even other times.

Anita Moorjani shares her wonderful spiritual insights with the reader. The message is clear. We spend too much of our lives denying our own magnificence, living for some future goal, or just believing that we are inadequate. It is these beliefs and attitudes that the author sees as being central to her becoming sick. Her cancer was an expression of a greater dis-ease in her mind.

I love the book. In fact, as I read it I realised that I had a strong connection with its message. Although I have never had a near death experience, I have experienced many non-ordinary states of consciousness and had many spiritual experiences where I received insights that mirror those of Anita Moorjani.

As I was reading the book, I texted one of my good friends in the consciousnesses movement here in Hong Kong, transpersonal psychologist Doug Seiddon, and told him he should read the book. He texted me back saying that he had met Anita two years previously at the Hong Kong Consciousness Festival. He said she was a very nice woman. I felt rather envious.

What I will relate next is actually true, even though it may seem rather incredulous. I was seriously considering contacting the author, as we live in the same city. A scenario kept popping into my head during the first fe days after I purchased the book.

I am sitting in a public space. Suddenly I realise that Anita Moorjani is sitting right beside me. I walk over to her and say “Are you Anita Moorjani?” I point to her book.

In fact this scenario came to me just yesterday when I was travelling on public transport. It was as if I could feel Anita very close to my physically. There definitely felt like a connection.

So, today, Sunday, I went out in the afternoon to the Pacific Coffee place in Discovery Bay, not far from my apartment. I sat down and began to do a little writing on my computer. Suddenly a woman’s voice caught my attention. I looked up to see three people of Indian heritage sitting just a metre away from me at the next table. The woman, whose back was turned away from me, was talking about her publicist. I realised that she must be a writer. The idea immediately came to me that this woman was Anita Moorjani. I couldn’t see her face clearly, but saw a distinguishing facial feature on her right cheek. So I opened my copy of Dying to Be Me (which I had on the table) and turned to the author page. Sure enough, the woman sitting a metre away from me had the same feature in exactly the same spot on her face. I checked her energy intuitively, and saw that she had a soft and very feminine energy, and was very relaxed in her body. It was a perfect match!

I was just thinking about how I might interrupt their conversation, as I am not a natural extrovert, when suddenly the Indian man chatting to the woman got up and walked over to me. “Is that book any good?” he said. He was smiling.

“Yes! Is this Anita?” I asked indicating to the woman. They were all smiling.

Sure enough it was her. I kindly invited myself over for a chat with them! The man was Danny, Anita’s amiable husband. We chatted for about twenty minutes or so, and I was delighted to discover that Anita was as genuine as her book suggested. But the synchronicity didn’t end there. I discovered that the couple live in Discovery Bay too. But even more incredibly, we found out that we had both lived in the same tiny village of a few hundred people in Hong Kong’s New Territories at the same time (2008) – at opposite ends of the village. They knew several of my friends in the village. The odds of that must be astronomical. I honestly can’t remember seeing Anita or Danny there, but I must have seen them at some time, because the village is quite isolated, with only one mini-bus which takes about 25 minutes to get to the nearest train station.

What a wonderful series of synchronicities!

Even better, if you go to Amazon.com you’ll see Anita’s book has become an instant best seller. I have to be honest and say I have read some spiritual best sellers which I would describe as simply awful, and where I intuitively sensed that the author was not capable of walking the talk. Happily with Dying to be Me, this is not the case. I give it five stars out of five.

Anita & Danny….

Posted in synchronicity | 16 Comments

Jury calls on dead victim

Posted on July 29, 2012 by Trish and Rob

The Ouija Board comes into play in this story – and in an odd way!

This story was referenced in an article in Psychology Today called the Sixth Sense and it undoubtedly  outraged skeptics, lawyers and judges. It involves a jury and how a few of the members investigated the case on their own. We found it hilarious. After all, jurors are given strict guidelines, but apparently no one told these jurors that seances were off-limits.

In  1994, Stephen Young, an insurance broker, went on trial in England for the shootings of Harry and Nicola Fuller at their cottage in Wadhurst, East Sussex, in February of the previous year. Young was deeply in debt and the newlyweds had lots of cash stored in their house.

On the night of the first day of trial, several jurors had drinks together and afterwards four of them created a makeshift Ouija board and attempted to contact one of the victims. To their surprise, Harry Fuller joined their party and told them that Young was the murderer.  “I was crying  by this time, and the other ladies were  upset as well,” one juror later commented. The next morning they reported their findings to the other jurors. When the judge found out about the Ouija session, he ordered a mistrial.

Young was retried later that year and found guilty, this time by evidence only from living witnesses.

 

Posted in synchronicity | 5 Comments

Plasma UFOs

Posted on July 28, 2012 by Trish and Rob

These types of UFOs are called plasma UFOs, and this one is truly strange. I almost get seasick watching the video. The person who took it provides some details about where and when. Check out the comments. Watching this, it seems more like a lifeform of some kind rather than a machine.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=1MNI74oS5pw#!

Posted in synchronicity | 8 Comments

Bermuda Triangle Redux

Posted on July 27, 2012 by Trish and Rob

A torpedo retriever boat

Since Mercury is retrograde until Aug. 8, it’s a good time to review matters from the past, which is preferable to starting something new or signing contracts. So, with that in mind, I decided to work on another chapter of Aliens in the Backyard, our impending UFO abduction tome. But instead of writing something completely new, I turned my focus to a chapter that deals with the Bermuda Triangle and, in part, involves material related to my book, The Fog, which I co-authored with pilot Bruce Gernon.

Part of the chapter deals with AUTEC, the secret navy base on Andros Island, which was the starting point for Gernon’s mysterious time-bending flight through the B.T. We’ve written here about our adventure on the island with the History Channel crew that was filming an episode for UFO Hunters. In fact, we were with Bill Birnes, the lead UFO hunter, and the film crew when they approached the AUTEC gate. Birnes explained to the audience that repeated requests for interviews and a tour had been met with a wall of silence. The powers-that-be at AUTEC didn’t say no; they said nothing.

So, as we approached the gate, the reaction was quite startling. A helicopter lifted from the base and hovered over the gate. Was it an attempt to intimidate the crew, and possibly block out any audio with the noise from the chopper? We kept approaching and then a cop car pulled up to the gate and stopped. It didn’t go inside. It just blocked the gate. At that point, Birnes decided it was time to back off. Whether intentional or not, all the activity seemed to be  clear signs that we were not welcome.

Ironically, and synchronistically, four month later while visiting our daughter in Sarasota, we shared a high-top table in a crowded bar with a couple we didn’t know. But they weren’t strangers for long. The man turned out to be the recently retired commander of AUTEC. A bit tipsy from his raspberry martinis, he talked quite openly about the secret base, but denied there were any UFOs hidden there. We should’ve asked about USOs–unidentified submerged objects. But we were a bit tipsy ourselves and even lost his e-mail address, which Trish had requested.

The same day we were turned away from the gate, Bruce and I were interviewed by the three UFO hunters, though my hour-long interview ended up on the cutting room floor. The reason was that, as a writer, I was playing a secondary role, whereas my co-author was the one who had the first-hand experience. Also, the producers had found a couple of former AUTEC employees who were willing to talk and had flown them to Andros. So their interviews took precedence.

One of the ex-AUTEC engineers, Dave Malcolm, later e-mailed me and told me about a synchronicity that happened to him while he was in his hotel room on Andros waiting to be interviewed. He turned on the television and was surprised that to see a UFO documentary airing. The moderator was describing an area in Scotland called The Falkirk Triangle, and the witness who was interviewed was named Craig Malcolm. “Needless to say I nearly jumped out of my skin,” Dave Malcolm recalled.

I remembered that Dave told an interesting story to the UFO hunters that dated back to the winter of ’72-’73, and I wanted to include it in the chapter.  But I realized I needed more details. I found the episode of ‘The Underwater Area 51’ on You Tube and started watching. The video clip ended less than nine minutes into the program,   right at the point where Dave had just started to describe his sighting.  An annoying little trickster synchronicity. So I decided to get in contact with him again.

We’d been out of touch for a couple of years, but when I e-mailed Dave he was happy to help me out. Apparently, he rarely gets an opportunity to talk about what he saw, and when he does mention it, people usually give him a strange look that tells him it’s not worth continuing the story. (I’m always puzzled about why some people just close down when confronted with a mystery of the unknown. Maybe they don’t want to hear anything that might disrupt their view of what is real.)

At the time of his sighting, Dave was working on a torpedo retriever boat. The one pictured above is TRB-82, which Dave thinks might be the boat he was on that day. At the time of the incident, the boat was stopped and the crew was recovering a torpedo. Dave was standing on the ramp, a platform that extends from the boat and sinks into the water. His feet and lower legs were probably covered in water, he wrote.

That’s when he saw a huge object come up almost directly under the back of the boat. Visibility in that water was good, but the day was a little gray and the water a bit rough. “But I clearly saw what at first appeared to me to be a pipeline and remember thinking: What’s a pipeline doing in the middle of the water? I quickly realized it was not a pipeline as it rose closer to the surface.”

The object never broke the surface and he couldn’t tell how far down it extended or how wide it was. It was much thicker than a torpedo and much more narrow than a submarine, two objects he was quite familiar with seeing in the water. It seemed to hover for a few moments and then slowly retreated, sinking until it was out of sight.

No one else was on the ramp so he was the only one who saw the object. He intentionally avoided mentioning it. “This was during a time when a top secret clearance was taken very seriously and it was hammered into us that we would never discuss what we did or saw. I still have the security manual that describes the term in federal prison for violating the need to know.”

Dave had never seen anything like it and had no idea what it was. He thought at the time that it might be a secret experimental craft, but over the years his doubts have grown. Secret crafts, he noted, usually become public knowledge after a time and after all these years he has not seen or heard about anything similar to what he witnessed that day.

Considering its cylindrical shape, extending perpendicular across the stern of the boat, I can imagine that Dave was looking at the outer edge of a UFO or rather USO, a saucer-shaped vessel that was rising vertically. In other words, most of the craft was below the surface, out of sight.  He only saw the rim. It detected the boat and retreated into the depths.

There’s one more curious little event this story. When I told Dave about how his interview was cut off at the end of the video clip, he sent me a longer version. Then, one day later, he e-mailed me with this: “Rob, the autec show is on the history channel right now.”

Interesting synchro, especially considering the episode was three years old and UFO Hunters has been off the air for two years.

And here’s one more synchro. A couple days after I wrote the above, I was working on the Bermuda Triangle chapter, describing Bruce Gernon’s mysterious flight from Andros, when I got a call from him. I haven’t seen or talked to Bruce for several weeks. He told me that a French film crew was at his house interviewing him for a new Bermuda Triangle  documentary and they thought I was going to be there for an interview. It was news to me, and I told him that I would pass and let him tell the story.

Finally, just last night when I stopped work for the day on the chapter, it was 11:11 PM and then I looked at the word count: 4,444 words.

 

 

 

 

 

Posted in AUTEC, bermuda triangle, synchronicity | 18 Comments

Beauty Is Everywhere

Posted on July 26, 2012 by Trish and Rob

Our friend Carol Bowman sent us these photos, reminders that we are surrounded by beauty, something we often forget in the daily hustle of life.

Posted in synchronicity | 15 Comments

Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day

Posted on July 25, 2012 by Trish and Rob

Fast food magnate Dan Cathy

I usually end up stopping at Home Depot about once a week to pick up something for the house or yard. But for whatever reason, today was the first time this summer that I stopped there for some grass plugs for the lawn. (Male dog urine kills grass; female dog urine makes the grass turn dark green and sprout like a weed. We have a male dog.)

Anyhow, as I arrived at Home Depot, I noticed my usual entrance was closed. So I went around and found that half of the parking lot was now a Chick-fil-A under construction. The brick walls were up and the roof was on and a crew was busy working on the interior. I’ve never eaten at one of the fast food chicken joints, and even when I saw the new one rising I had no interest in dining there. We do get take chicken pot pies from time to time from C.R. Chicks, but that place seems somehow different from the Chick-fil-A.

I found this addition (or rather subtraction of parking spots) somewhat annoying since it’s usually hard to find parking spots outside our Home Depot and now it will be impossible on weekends. So I did not appreciate Chick-fil-A’s intrusion.

A couple of hours later, I took a break from the tedious grass-plug work and settled behind my computer. One of the first things that popped up was an e-mail sharp-eyed writer friend Ed Gorman had sent about Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day.  Huh? I usually keep up on the news, but it turns out that I had completely missed the Chick-fil-A controversy and the far right’s embrace of the fast food emporium for its blatant anti-gay stance. Here’s the article:

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Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas and Fox News host, has had enough of what he called the “vicious hate speech and intolgerant bigotry” aimed at Chick-fil-A.

On his Facebook page, Huckabee announced that Aug. 1 will be “Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day,” a day on which he is encouraging people to patronize the fast food chain.

The former presidential candidate is upset that the fast food chicken chain has been the target of criticism in the wake of Chick-fil-A President Dan Cathy’s saying last week that his company supports “the biblical definition of the family unit.”

The National Organization for Marriage, a group organized to oppose same-sex marriage, called him a “corporatae hero for marriage,” while others were quick to condemn his comments.

Boston Mayor Thomas Menino even went so far as to tell the Boston Herald that “Chick-fil-A doesn’t belong in Boston.”

“You can’t have a business in the city of Boston that discriminates against a population. We’re an open city, we’re a city that’s at the forefront of inclusion.”

And on Friday, the Jim Henson Company, the group behind “The Muppets” and “Fraggle Rock,” released a statment saying it has “notified Chick-fil-A that we do not wish to partner with them on any future endeavors.” Jim Henson’s “Creature Shop” toys are currently available in the company’s kid’s meals.

Huckabee further explained the purpose of his pro-Chick-fil-A campaign on his Facebook page:

The goal is simple: Let’s affirm a business that operates on Christian principles and whose executives are willing to take a stand for the Godly values we espouse by simply showing up and eating at Chick Fil-A on Wednesday, August 1. Too often, those on the left make corporate statements to show support for same sex marriage, abortion, or profanity, but if Christians affirm traditional values, we’re considered homophobic, fundamentalists, hate-mongers, and intolerant.

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Notice how the ones boasting about their intolerance feel as if they are the ones being purged for their so-called ‘Christian beliefs.’ Now I know my initial instinct about Chick-fil A intrusion in the H.D. parking lot was on the mark.

 

Posted in synchronicity | 15 Comments

Number Synchros and Movies

Posted on July 24, 2012 by Trish and Rob

Sharlie West is one of the planetary empaths who drops us an email from time to time about a dream she has had, a synchronicity she has experienced, some gut feeling about something that is about to occur. We have posted some of her stories in the past.

This evening, we received an unusual sequence of synchros from her. I don’t recall ever having heard of anything quite like this before.

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An unusual synchronicity today. While my husband Jim was in the hospital I was watching old movies to distract my mind.

In the first movie, Animal House, I noticed a clock on the wall in the movie said 11:00 am and it was exactly 11:00 am on my clock.

In the second movie, Blessing, the clock in the movie said 1:28 pm and it was 1:28 pm on my clock.

In the third movie, Metamorphosis, a clock in the movie said three minutes to six, a character in the movie said it out loud, and it was three minutes to six (5:57) on my clock.

I’ve never had this happen. I don’t remember synchronicities about time but maybe I can find it in your book. A bit spooky…

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I wrote Sharlie back and asked if we could post this and asked what sort of problem Jim is having.

“They are doing tests on Jim, who is having a heart problem. I’ll know more soon, I hope. Tests are so vague and open to interpretation.”

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My sense is that the movies – and their titles – may be as important as the time synchros. Anyone have any ideas/interpretations?

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted in synchronicity | 13 Comments

50 Shades of Grey

Posted on July 23, 2012 by Trish and Rob

 

50 Shades of Grey.  Do you know what these four words mean? Well, yes, okay, we know about 50. We know about shades. We know that OF is a preposition. We know that grey is a color.

But 50 Shades of Grey is also something else, a phenomenon, en erotic trilogy written by E.L. James, which details the relationship between a billionaire control freak  and a college student. It was originally self-published, had over a million downloads before a traditional publisher took notice and bought the trilogy for 7 figures. The books then sold to Hollywood. As of July 2012, 50 Shades of Grey has sold more than 20 million copies worldwide.

I love these kinds of success stories. They illustrate how technology benefits us, the people, by enabling us to choose what we want to read, and by enabling us to reach for our dreams.  I first heard about the book maybe six or eight months ago, when someone asked if I’d read it. I hadn’t. I thought the title was interesting and asked my friend what the book was about.

“Kinda hard to say,” she replied.

Then I read an article somewhere about how erotic fiction had been banned from some site and 50 Shades was mentioned. A censored book somewhere, some way. I checked it out and  thought about how diarist Anais Nin was censored in her day, particularly when it came to her erotic writing, like Henry and June, which eventually became a movie.  It’s about Henry Miller, his wife June and their sexual relationship with Nin.

“Okay, who has read 50 Shades of Grey?” I asked one afternoon at the dog park. The ladies, who range in age from, oh 25 to 75, suddenly looked collectively guilty. And I knew all of them had read the book and were totally shocked that I, the writer of the group, hadn’t read it yet. So that night I downloaded the novel to my iPad.

50 Shades of Grey is written in a single voice, the I voice, in present tense. It’s not the easiest point of view or tense to write, but in this novel, it works. The protagonist, Anastasia, is a self-effacing college girl with a bossy roommate, a journalist major. The roommate can’t make a particular appointment with Mr. Grey, a young billionaire who is the whiz kid of Wall Street or its equivalent somewhere, so Anastasia goes in the roommate’s place. When Anastatia meets Grey, the physical chemistry is powerful. Their physical attraction to each other is written masterfully.

At the dog park, Colleen asks, “Did you get to the playroom yet?”

“Nope. But she blushes a lot, Colleen. It bugs me.”

Colleen rolls her eyes. “Keep reading. The first book is great. I just sat down and read it. By the third book, I had to stop to take two cold showers.” She rolls her eyes again and laughs. “The instant I saw that playroom, I knew I’d be gone. I don’t do submissive.” And by the end of the trilogy, the protagonist doesn’t do submissive, either, Colleen tells me.

But in the first book, Anastasia – a virgin – is the Submissive and Grey is the Dominant. That’s how it is spelled out in their contract.  The first sex scene happens after her reactions to and their discussion of the contract.

The contract. It was probably conjured when Mercury, which rules contracts, communication, and the conscious mind, was moving retrograde. These scenes are definitely retro in that they hurl women’s rights back to the dark ages, when men and women were locked in social-sanctioned power struggles: the man told the woman to jump and she jumped. Just look at mythology: the top god is Zeus.

So at the dog park, Karin says, “Hey, did you see that article today in the Palm Beach Post about 50 Shades of Green?”

Nope, didn’t see it. Well, the focus of the article was that 50 Shades of Grey has sold 20 million  books since March. The article didn’t say whether these had been actual book sales or downloads, but either way, it doesn’t matter to the author. She is already a millionaire. Add or subtract a few dollars in either direction and her bottom line isn’t an issue.

As of mid-July, Amazon lists nearly 8,500 reviews that bring the book to three stars overall, and some of them are comical. One guy notes that the writing is awful, the plot too simple, and that Anastasia blushes way too much. But women, for the most part, seem to love the book.Why? Do we entertain fantasies of this kind, of billionaire guy, a control freak with major issues? Really? Our psyches are stuck there? Or is this book about female pleasure, dark and light?

The other day I had my cut my hair cut and every woman who works in the salon has read at least the first book and most of the have finished the trilogy. “So what’s the appeal?” I ask Angie.

She laughs. “For real? We all have 50 shades of grey hidden somewhere in our psyches.”

James has tapped into something important with her books. She has provided insights into the female psyche – the old paradigm psyche and the new – and given it a name. Like Nin before her,  James doesn’t hold back. She is far less poetic than Nin, but what she has to say appeals to women  across the board.

When James did her first book signing at Books and Books in Miami, several  hundred women were lined up to have their books signed. Twenty to eighty years of age, the paper said. An  unprecedented number for a book like this. I point this out to our daughter. “I’ve been hearing a lot about this book. I’m going to download it.”

“Me, too.”

And she did. Her take? “Wow, this is a racy book, Mom. But I love the protagonist.”

Yes. So do I. Anastasia feels what you felt in your twenties. She is  the archetype of angst personified, but greatly exaggerated. And Grey, also greatly exaggerated, is the archetypal bad boy. Bring them together, with the author’s ebook background, the 7-figure contract for James, and you’ve got a mega bestseller.

Tipping point. Now there are 50 Shades of Grey vacation packages, flights, cruises. Maybe there will eventually be a 50 shades of grey shamanic retreat.

Colleen assures me that by the end of the third book in the trilogy, we understand why Grey is the way he is,  that Anastasia never signs the contract, and that  she is not the submissive Grey hoped she would be. But you know what? Regardless of what these books are or are not, James hit a big time nerve, a tipping point sort of nerve, a this is your juncture sort of nerve, babe. And from my point of view as a writer, that’s saying something.

 

 

Posted in #23, synchronicity | 35 Comments

Library Angels: Synchro in Cassadaga

Posted on July 22, 2012 by Trish and Rob

Recently, we took a couple of days off to visit our daughter, Megan, and stopped one night, of course, in Cassadaga. We stayed at Cabin on the Lake, the B&B that allows dogs and is located in a tranquil setting, on a lake, a couple of miles from Cassadaga. Honestly, since Megan moved to Orlando in January, we have spent more time in Cassadaga than at any  point in the last 30 years. Such a hardship, right?

I guess this Spiritualist village is the MacGregor equivalent of Disney World, which lies only half an hour or so to the south. Instead of rides and an endless carnival atmosphere that is both crass and carefully constructed, we walk along streets that date back to the late 19th century, where the homes – some of them reminiscent of places on Cape Cod – are usually inhabited by mediums. These folks are the heart and soul of Cassadaga, the ones who communicate with the dead.

In this kind of atmosphere, synchronicities often flourish for us and occur at the strangest moments, unexpected, often out of the blue. That’s what happened during this trip.

I was in the lobby of the Cassadaga Hotel, waiting outside the restroom. Megan and Rob and the dogs were outside on the porch, waiting for our dinners.The hotel is a weird place that we’ve written about before, and  even when you step inside the building, you feel the difference. But since I was just waiting outside the ladies room, I figured it couldn’t get too weird.

Wrong.

I noticed a nearby mantle with a couple of books on it. I glanced at the titles and was delighted to see one of my favorite astrology books of all time, Heaven Knows What, by Grant Lewi. This book is one that every astrologer should read, with descriptions of natal sun/moon combinations that are just stunning in their accuracy. Lewi called himself an astrologer, but this guy read patterns like an I Ching master, like any psychic worth their price.

I realized the book was the same edition that I own, old and weathered, a first edition, and took it down to flip through it. I opened it randomly, scanned the page on my right, and started to shut the book when  I glanced at the page on my left– and it hit me. I had turned to my own sun/moon combo, sun in Gemini and moon in Capricorn. Recognizing the synchro, I read through the description quickly, nodding at the parts that resonated, wondering about the parts that didn’t.  The synchro is this: we’re waiting to hear about whether our Sydney Omarr contract with NAL (New American Library) will be renewed. This contract has been ongoing since 2003.

Personally, I like the odds on this one. Why Lewi’s book, at this time?

When I told Bernard Beitman about the synchro, his response was brief:  Library Angel.

 

 

 

 

Posted in books, Cassadaga, synchronicity | 8 Comments