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Synchronicities often involve names, even clusters of names. You might, for instance, encounter several people over the course of a few days who share the same name. It’s often an unusual name – not John or Jill, not Barb or Bill, but something out of left field –Bella or Selsie or some other weird combination of consonants and syllables.

Sometimes these name synchros involve last names. One of the first novels I wrote in the late 1970s – never published – involved a main character whose last name was McGregor. At the time, my husband, Rob MacGregor, was still years in my future, but that name, the Irish rather than the Scottish version, resonated for this character, resonated for me.

In 1991, I wrote a novel called Death Flats. By then, Rob MacGregor and I had been married for eight years and had a two-year-old daughter. The book has been out of print for a long time and I’ve been going through the formatted ebook version for Crossroad Press and ran across the name Wayne Sheppard.

A kind of shock zipped through me. In 1998, Kensington Books published The Hanged Man, in which a detective named Wayne Sheppard plays a prominent part in a series that spanned four more books. Crossroad has since brought out that book and the others in the Tango Key/ Mira Morales series as  ebooks. A skeptic might say that the name, Wayne Sheppard, was firmly ensconced in my subconscious and I simply drew upon that knowledge and used it in my Mira books. But here’s the thing. I’ve written more than 40 novels and once a book is done and off to my editor, I forget it. I can’t keep all these characters and their names in my head at one time.

So as I was reading through the ebook version of Death Flats and saw Sheppard’s name in a book written seven years before I even wrote the first Mira book, I was tempted to change his name, to make him someone else. In Death Flats, he’s a compromised person, a really nasty dude. In the Tango Key books, he’s a hero, the lover and male counterpart of psychic Mira Morales.

So, now I’m wondering if there’s a Wayne Sheppard somewhere in the universe who resonates to these two very different characters. Am I going to be somewhere tomorrow or the next day and run into some dude named Wayne Sheppard? And if that happened, which Sheppard would it be?

I’ve been teaching private meditation classes to a couple at the local studio where I teach yoga. After our first class I asked them to tell me something about themselves. The man had an interesting answer. He said, “I travel three or four days a week. I’m a psychiatrist and a comedy writer.” He went on to say his busy lifestyle resulted in a lot of stress and that was why he wanted to try meditation.

So the next class I decided to lead a guided meditation called, “Who am I?” It’s about moving beyond your everyday identity of parent, spouse, career/job identity, etc., stripping yourself of all those self-images and identities that others give you. It’s about removing  your mask and connecting with your deeper self…your true self.

You never know what people are going to take from something like that. I didn’t ask. It was their meditation, and it also sometimes helps to allow time for that type of meditation to take hold. If nothing else, the guy might’ve gotten shtick for a new comedy routine!

So this morning the first thing I noticed on Facebook was a post of a quote and illustration from three years ago that Facebook suggested that I re-post. After reading it, I realized it was a synchro for me, fitting with the meditation I’d done the evening before.

Here’s the quote:

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”
Marianne Williamson

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Earlier, the quote was attributed to Nelson Mandela, but it actually appeared in a book by Marianne Williamson. Doesn’t matter. The sentiment remains the same.

When we attended the Tallahassee Writers Conference in late April, we met a lot of wonderful people. One of them was Terry Crowley, who sent us this interesting synchro about an eagle feather.

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St. Augustine Florida has wonderful quirky shops tourists love to browse. A friend and I entered a Native Indian shop with many authentic works of art. A beautiful ‘eagle’ feather caught my eye. (It really was a painted goose feather because it is illegal to own a real eagle feather.) The quill of the feather was wound in turquoise suede strips, ending in a tassel at the bottom. The entire stem was dotted with turquoise paint. I was really compelled to buy it, but it was $25. I had no use for it, so with regret, I passed it by. Of all of the other neat items in the shop, my mind returned to the feather, but I still resisted buying it. I didn’t have the luxury to spend money frivolously.

The Cherokee spiritual woman who owned the shop offered animal totem readings. The animals represent the power or medicine each person carries in their Earth Walk. I was thrilled when my friend treated me to a reading for my birthday. When asked if there was a particular animal I was drawn to throughout my life, I couldn’t really say, except wolf, but that didn’t feel right. I asked the spiritual woman what animal she was and she said eagle. Eagle hit a chord with me, but I wanted to know what my animal really was, not what I hoped it would be.

To begin, she smudged me and animal cards with white sage. With the energy cleared, she asked me to look at and touch all of the cards, and then she instructed me to draw seven cards. The cards drawn would indicate the four directions, North, East, South, and West, and also the directions above, below, and within.

Not understanding exactly what to do, I drew from the top of the deck, but when it came to draw the card within, she finally told me that I could pick any card in the deck and that I didn’t need to be drawing them just from the top of the deck. I could mix them up on the table or fan them out. She told me to really feel for this card, so I fanned the cards out and felt for a card that seemed right or evoked feeling in me. To my surprise, I chose the eagle card!

I decided this was a sign that I was meant to have the “eagle” feather and that’s why I was so drawn to it in the first place. The shop was filling up people. I rushed to the shelf and snatched it up quickly, fearing someone else might purchase it.

As soon as I returned home, I went to the book store and purchased the Medicine Card Set by Jamie and David Carson that the spiritual woman used at her store. I give animal card readings to friends and relatives ever since, and the readings ring surprisingly true of both their personalities, and sometimes, even their appearance or mannerisms. I use the feather for smudging with white sage before each reading. I found a use for the feather after all!

The “eagle” feather called to me in that store and led me to a divining tool that has helped people understand themselves, their strengths and weaknesses, and their connection with animals. The feather is now one of my most treasured possessions. If it wasn’t for the feather synchro, I would have missed out on knowing the animal allies available to us in life and that their medicine is there to aid us in our Earth Walk, if we would just ask.

In 1999, the movie The Matrix hit theaters. To date, the movie has earned more than a billion worldwide –$1,632,989, 142.

And with good reason. It wasn’t just because Keanu Reeves played Neo and because Laurence Fishburne played Morpheus or even because Carrie-Anne Moss played Trinity. The Matrix was a phenomenon because Andy and Lena Wachowski, the brothers who conceived and directed it, had a message: reality is NOT what we perceive it to be.

Now, fast forward to 2015. Our daughter Megan, is always recommending TV shows to us. You guys gotta see this. Usually, her recommendations are good – The Whispers, a spooky show with Spielberg as executive director; Wayward Pines, with M. Night Shyamalan as executive producer; and now, Sense8, with The Matrix boys- – the Wachoski Brothers – as executive producers. These guys also produced Cloud Atlas.

Sense8, an original Netflix production, is about eight individuals in different countries and cultures who suddenly discover they are connected telepathically to strangers – IMDB calls it linked mentally. Thing is, this connection among the eight goes well beyond telepathic. Each of the eight is able, under duress, to connect physically and emotionally with their counterparts and change the outcome of whatever one of the eight is facing.

The connecting thread appears to be Naveen Andrews, a character from Lost, who is able to manipulate his consciousness so that he can appear to the others – a Hindu woman, a Chicago cop, a tortured singer/performer in London, a thief, a van driver in Nairobi, a gay American woman, a young Korean woman, and a closeted gay Spanish actor. Navene  is apparently trying to protect the others from another sensate who is trying to tap into their psychic cluster and capture them. After we watched the third episode this evening, I was struck by a couple of things.

The Wachoski brothers have a vision for this show, just as they did for The Matrix. But it’s not just a storyboard about who does what to whom and when. It’s not just about plot twists and characters. It’s about the nature of reality. While watching tonight’s episode, I felt as though I were watching a visual depiction of how Indra’s Net works,  how each of us is connected in a real, vibrant way and how this connection is strengthening, gaining momentum.

In this episode, that connection happens through music, where each of the eight are singing, What’s Up by Four Non Blondes, the video at the top of the post, a song from 1992. The scene is extraordinary for television, so real and visceral that when it ended, I was on my feet, shouting, Yes, yes, this is it, this is the Wachoski defining moment for the 21^st century!

Okay, so maybe I overreacted. But honestly, it’s so refreshing to see psychic ability and soul connections depicted in such a real, emotional way across such cultural divides, that I would binge on the rest of the episodes if they were available. Netflix didn’t just pound Blockbusters into the ground. With their original programming, they are redefining television – and the nature of what we may be willing to accept as true.

At the very least commit to three episodes of Sense8. I’m pretty sure that’s all it will take for you to be hooked. The Wachoski brothers not only understand synchronicity; they show us how it works and why.

It’s always good to hear from readers who find our books helpful, especially when synchronicities are involved. Here’s an interesting correspondence from Daniel, and it happens to involve a mysterious sighting in his backyard.

“I have enjoyed reading the excellent books you and Trish wrote. I have an interesting story to share. In the summer of 2013, I was reading Whitley Streiber’s The Greys.
In it, he discusses synchronicities, then I listened to the latest Open Minds podcast and Rob and Trish were on discussing Aliens in the Backyard, so I read that and learned quite a bit more about the subject.

“On a clear night in mid July I decided to sit under the stars and listen to a podcast. I chose the latest of Whitley Strieber’s Dreamland.  The guests turned out again to be Rob and Trish.  About ten (eleven?) minutes into the show a bright light flashed in the sky. Fifteen seconds after, it flashed again, in the exact same spot! Chills ran down my spine like electricity . . .”

That was an interesting comment to hear from Daniel. I wanted to know more, so I asked him to expand on his thoughts about UFOs or synchronicity…or both. Which he did.

“There is much we don’t understand about our reality. I believe that synchronicity is a fundamental part of that reality, the order from chaos. And like any other force in the universe, it can be manipulated by technology.

“The powerful synchronicities I experienced that summer were that kind. They were a message that I began to understand intuitively. Like smoke signals. Much more happened in the following year. Stranger things.

“I’ve been seeing things and experiencing things my whole life. I’ve personally researched the subject extensively, searching for answers. Answers to events in my life that I now understand were purposefully obfuscated. When I was seven years old in 1979, I remember seeing a silver disc with multicolored lights spinning right outside the window of our playroom.

“My grandfather was a full bird Air Force colonel who admitted to me when I was 19 that he had seen close up, craft that were “not of this Earth.” That was all he ever said on the subject. He used to work at Norton AFB nearby here in San Bernardino. In 1976, he then moved to Homestead, FL. He had taken a very early retirement and in retrospect, I believe he was still working at Homestead AFB.”

Daniel went on to say that he thinks he is part of a program involving children and grandchildren of high ranking Air Force officers. “There are too many coincidences in my circle of friends and schoolmates. Some of these friends have also recently come to a similar conclusion.”

He added: “I have memory gaps and strange dreams. Unexplained injuries. Now there is a ‘third party’ involved. It might sound crazy, but I believe they have been guiding me to the truth mentally and through synchronicities. They are helping me and my friends.”

There was more, but I’ll stop here. Needless to say, it’s not surprising the Daniel stumbled upon Aliens in the Backyard. We’re glad he found it helpful.

We posted this synchro about Bruce Springsteen when our blog was about a year old. And because it was fun, we’re posting it again!

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On Saturday, March 27, 2010, we posted a synchronicity involving Bruce Springsteen, where Rob was hoping to materialize The Boss in the gym while a Springsteen song was playing. (He does belong to the gym). However, as the song ended, Rob materialized his boss for his yoga classes, the owner of the gym – a bit of a trickster.

Today (three days later) we were at the gym and I noticed a bunch of kids and women congregating in one area. Then a man in workout clothes gathered a couple of kids in front of him while the women whipped out their cell phones and snapped pictures.

It’s The Boss, I thought. Now how do I take a picture without being really tacky?

I paused on the rowing machine and snapped a photo of him working on a bicep machine. I was too far away and the photo just looked like a bunch of machines in a gym.

At the time, Rob had run home to get his pay sheet for his yoga classes for the week and I kept hoping Springsteen wouldn’t leave before he returned. I moved to a different area in the gym, hoping to snap a better photo. But people kept walking between us and I was still too far away.

Rob returned and I said, “You just walked right past Springsteen.”

“What? Where?”

I tilted my head toward him. “I’m going over to ask him if I can take his photo. For the blog.”

“Naw, don’t do that. He’s working out.”

I thought about it for about five seconds, then went over. “Excuse me. May I intrude on your workout for a moment?”

“Sure.”

Soulful eyes, I’m thinking. “You’re the topic of a synchronicity,” I said.

“Synchronicity,” he repeats, looking amused.

“You know, meaningful coincidence?” And then I tell him about Rob’s experience and mention our book, 7 Secrets of Synchronicity. “May I take your photo for our blog?”

“Let me put on my shirt.”

I’m thinking, No, don’t do that. A friend of mine wants pictures of your biceps!And he got up from his machine, shrugged on his shirt, and I snapped the photo with my BlackBerry.

“So now I’m going to be on a synchronicity blog?” he asks.

“You are. Thank you so much. I appreciate it.”

So, three days after Rob’s post on whether he could materialize the boss, The Boss appeared.

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We no longer belong to that gym. Too bad. It was fun seeing him and feeling the energy whenever The Boss stopped by to work out.

What’s the science behind precognition?

In Larry Dossey’s book, The Power of Premontions, he points out that recent research shows that the hippocampus in the brain may be involved in premonitions. It makes sense. The hippocampus is the center of emotion, the autonomic nervous system, and memory.

Researchers at a neuroimaging center at University College London studied five patients with amnesia who had suffered brain infections that had damaged the hippocampus. They could recall the names of relatives, but not past events. When they and a control group were asked to visualize future scenarios, common events like visiting a beach or pub or meeting up with a friend and to describe what it would feel like, they couldn’t do it.

“The hippocampus-damaged subjects could not describe spatial relationships between objects that were part of the future scenario, and they said little about what they felt like, Dossey writes. “The discovery that the hippocampus is involved in visualizing the future may be important in understanding premonitions.”

This element may be key in understanding the science of precognition because people who experience them visualize possible future events. Dossey points out that a major difference is that the individual experiencing the premonition often experiences a certainty that the event will occur while the person who visualizes a future event considers it imaginary. “The brain may not respect this difference. It has a way of responding as if the imagined event is real.”

If, for instance, you’re lying in the dark and you’re the only person in the house and hear a noise that sounds like a door opening, like footsteps, it’s possible that you’re imagining it, but your brain doesn’t know that. It reacts as though the event is real and releases stress hormones that prepare you for the real thing.

Is the hippocampus in precognitives more active and ramped than the hippocampus in people who never feel premonitons?

Eleanor MacGuire, the same researcher who conducted the experiment with the amnesic patients, performed MRIs on sixteen London cab drivers and found that the rear region of their hoppocampuses were uniformly larger than that of the fifty individuals in the control group.

As Dossey explains, becoming a licensed cabbie in London isn’t easy. “Drivers have to learn ‘the knowledge,’ as it’s called, which includes up to twenty-five thousand street names and the locations of all the major tourist attractions. Cabbies must know not only how to get somewhere, but they must know the most direct route possible.” This “knowledge” usually takes three years of training. The longer a cabbie is on the job, the larger that region of the hippocampus became.

When the BBC News featured MacGuire’s discoveries, some cab drivers came forth and said their experiences as cab drivers made them better at everything from business decisions to mathematics. MacGuire is asgainst GPS devices in London cabs. “We believe this area of the brain increased…because of the huge amount of data they have to memorise. If they all start using GPS, that knowledge base will be less and possibly affect the brain changes we’re seeing.”

Dossey points out that GPS devices may not be the only premonition inhibitors in technology. Practically instantaneous information on everything from the weather to stocks to who will win the Super Bowl may inhibit our natural precog ability as well.

So what’s the solution? I, for one, don’t intend to unplug my iPhone, iPad or computer. But perhaps unplugging for brief periods every day and then spending a few minutes envisioning and visualizing the future on my own will help in the development of whatever precognitive ability I have.

HAPPY FOURTH OF JULY TO OUR AMERICAN FRIENDS!

Sometimes, synchronicities occur in pairs or in clusters of more than two and those synchros seem to be addressing some inner thing, at least for me. These pairings or clusters can happen with anything, but for me, perhaps because I’m a writer, they often happen with words.

The other day, I was driving to the hair salon I frequent. I was listening to an Abraham-Hicks CD that was talking about allowing whatever we desired into our lives, about yielding to it. At the exact moment that the word yielding was spoken on the CD, I saw a sign that said yield. And I knew that was the message.

According to dictionary.com,  yield means:

verb (used with object)

to give forth or produce by a natural process or in return for cultivation:

This farm yields enough fruit to meet all our needs.

to produce or furnish (payment, profit, or interest):

a trust fund that yields ten percent interest annually; That investment will yield a handsome return.

to give up, as to superior power or authority:

They yielded the fort to the enemy.

to give up or surrender (oneself):

He yielded himself to temptation.

to give up or over; relinquish or resign:

to yield the floor to the senator from Ohio.

to give as due or required:

to yield obedience to one’s teachers.

to cause; give rise to:

The play yielded only one good la

Notice that in each definition, you yield to something outside the self – your teachers, the senator from Ohio, the farm – or to something lesser than what you are – temptation, obedience.

But with synchros, it seems that we often don’t understand the meaning until the event happens. And sometimes, even when the event happens, we miss it. But a few hours after the synchro happened,  we were hired for a ghostwriting project. We object to some elements of the contract – like how many words have to be written before you see your first payment. But contracts aside, writing is what you do in solitude, unless you work in TV, where you are a cog in the collective wheel called team. Writing is really about yielding what you think you know about the craft and the business to what you don’t know about either one.

It’s about faith that you make the intuitive leap to wherever you need to be to wherever you want to be.

Sounds simple, right?

Yield: to allow.

Okay, universe. Message received!

When Bill Nye, ‘the science guy,’ debated a creationist at a public event, a reporter for the Internet site, Buzzfeed, asked 25 people in the crowd, who considered themselves creationists, to write a question that they would like to ask Bill Nye. Then the reporter took pics of them holding up their questions.

More than 5 million people have viewed that clever report, and the comments of readers mostly take the creationists to task as unscientific-minded individuals in need of re-education. Granted, most of the comments are not ones that would stump Nye. Here’s a short selection:

“Is it completely illogical that the earth was created mature? Ie. trees created with rings, Adam created as an adult.”

“How do you explain a sunset if there is no God?”

“Why have we found only 1 Lucy when we’ve found more than 1 of everything else.”

I love that one, but then there’s this one: “If we came from monkey, then why are there still monkeys?”

My own contribution might be a takeoff of that one: “If we came from monkey, then why are we still monkeys?”

So it’s easy to make fun. Some commenters even got into the grammar, ie. ‘their’ instead of ‘there,’ etc.

Recently, those same pics were reposted on Facebook and the science-oriented commenters took no hostages, so to speak. Several were so adamant in maintaining the factual reality of Darwinian evolution that they sounded, well, sort of like  fundamentalists. And anyone who didn’t agree was stupid or uneducated.

I entered the fray and commented that, hey, Darwinism is 200 years old and represents hardcore scientific materialism. I suggested that physical existence was derived from consciousness, not the other way around. Well, that didn’t go over well.

That made me a ‘creationist’ in the view of the pro-evolution commenters, who of course knew they are right. It seemed that any doubts about Darwin’s natural selection theory as the key mechanism for evolution meant the writer must be a Bible-thumpers.

Science is always evolving, making changes when old theories prove false. For example, medical students don’t spend much time studying the history of mainstream medicine, basically because much of it—like bleeding people with leeches—was just wrong. Nobel Prize winner Kary Mullis put it this way: “The history of science is that we are always wrong.” That’s a humorous way of saying that science—unlike fundamentalist beliefs about creation and evolution—is always evolving.

But wait, it seems there is one area of science that seems less than open to evolving. Yes, ironically, it’s the science of evolution.

Of course, the bottom line here is that the debate is really all about God. There is no God in Darwinism or mainstream science. Atheism rules; God is a myth.

My take is different. God is consciousness. We are all about consciousness. That’s our true essence, our heritage, our true selves. Hence, we are all God.

No doubt such ideas don’t win favor with either side of the controversy, but they do present an alternate view. But enough monkeying around.

Did they have it right all along?

This was their reaction to the Supreme Court’s June 26 ruling on gay marriage:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=31&v=qLTdRqYwzXQ