Why Can’t We?

Posted on February 26, 2010 by Trish and Rob

 Obama rally we attended in Fort Lauderdale, campaign 2008

We recently posted a synchronicity about what often happens as death nears for a loved one.  I think many of us have been or are in similar situations with parents and loved ones. So Keith Olbermann’s special comment on the evening of February 24 on Countdown really hit home for me and seems strangely synchronous in terms of timing.

I realize there are people who dislike Olbermann for political reasons, who think universal health care is a “socialist agenda.” But I’ve been where Olbermann is now – not with just one parent, but both parents. I know what it’s like to stare down that long, dark tunnel where decisions have to be made about end of life care for a parent or other loved one. When that pending death  is staring you in the face, you are utterly and completely powerless. You want to do what is best for the person you love, but what is the best?

Both of my parents had living wills that stipulated no extraordinary measures should be taken to  prolong their lives. It sounds great on paper, but when that point is actually reached, all kinds of doubts pour through you. And at some level, you know you are seeing your own mortality, the end of your time on the planet, so all kinds of issues surface about what you believe about life after death.

We were fortunate.  Both of my parents had Medicare and private insurance. But neither covered the two years that my mother spent in an Alzheimer’s facility or that my father spent in an assisted care facility. That was paid for with money my dad had saved for the 60 plus years of his working life. It wasn’t cheap and the cost became a constant, nagging voice at the backs of our minds: what will we do when the money runs out? My sister and I both had jobs, families, children, and college expenses looming for them in the near future. There was no way we could afford to cover the kinds of expenses that nursing homes and Alzheimer’s units demand. I have no idea what we would have done if my parents had not had Medicare and private insurance. In all likelihood, we would be bankrupt.

So when you watch this emotional video, think about the people in congress who have great federal insurance, paid for by you and me,  the ones who  stand up in front of TV cameras and declare that a public option is off the table. Think about the senators and members of congress with major health problems who don’t have to worry about what if the money runs out or that they might be denied care by their insurance companies.

And think about how we are the only industrialized nation without universal health care. And when your insurance company tells you that oops, so sorry, your daughter’s rape is a pre-existing condition, your wife’s diabetes is a pre-existing condition, that the life-saving drug you need isn’t included in your plan, realize that you have come face to face with the real death panels. 

If you voted for Obama, as I did, think about his campaign mantra about change – yes, we can – and know that he has failed. Perhaps he lacks the courage to take on the insurance industry. Or maybe he, like so many politicians on the left, right and in between simply fell into the trap of expediency once he was in office.But it seems that we, as a people, as a nation, should be able to do better than this.

Yet, when I watched portions of the health care summit on 2/25, I felt sad, discouraged, and then enraged. The arguments were pretty much the same ones that were put forth against social security and Medicare. Only the faces of the obstructionists have changed.

It all seems to boil down to class wars. How ridiculous is that? In the 21st century, we’re still embroiled in the battle of us against them, the rich against the poor, the elitists against everyone else, the corporations against the ordinary American. One Democrat said that the insurance industry owns the Republicans. But the truth is that the insurance companies – entities that produce nothing, that contribute nothing but heartache, that create nothing, that are merely middle men who get rich off the rest of us – own congress. They and all their corporate buddies run the country. There are eight lobbyists for every member of congress. Their message: The government is taking over our lives, taking away personal freedom.  Oh, really.

So when your loved one is staring down that long, black tunnel, I hope that you can make the right choices,  from the heart, and that synchronicity provides guidance along the way.

Posted in end of life, health care, ridiculous politics | 20 Comments

‘She’s a Mystery to Me’

Posted on February 25, 2010 by Trish and Rob
Here’s a music-related synchronicity related to a song written by Bono/U2. Bono came up with the song in a somewhat mysterious manner – literally dreaming it, then he played it for the band. They said it sounded like a Roy Orbison tune. So while they were working on the song, who shows up at the studio but Orbison, who asks Bono if he has a song for him. The two men had never met. 

In the youtube link, Bono and Orbison talk about the creation of the song. Orbison went on to record  the song, “She’s a Mystery to Me,” written by Bono.

Thanks to Marcus Anthony for alerting us to this fascinating synchronicity. Marcus remarked: “The universe is not only stranger than we think, but stranger than we can think. I love this one because it suggests the unconscious–but nonetheless intentional–coming together of minds in an entangled universe.”

Posted in bono, music, roy orbison | 19 Comments

Demystifying the Mystifying

Posted on February 24, 2010 by Trish and Rob

It seems somehow appropriate that a psychologist who names his  book Demystifying Meaningful Coincidences, would be experiencing  ‘coincidences’ that seem, well, somewhat mystifying, related to speaking engagements to promote his book. It seems that Gibbs Williams has the trickster on his trail.

“The other day I received an e-mail inviting me to be part of a panel discussion at Indiana University in a group of scientific psychologists. This has been very much on my mind as I have very much wanted to have speaking engagements and travel.” The timing was very favorable related to the release of his book.

“The next day I went to a copy store to have some class assignments printed up. The woman at the counter who knows me asked about my book. I mentioned in passing that I had been asked to speak at Indiana University. As I was telling her this I noticed a man of about 60 who looked professorial waiting for his reprints. In looking at him closer I saw the name Indiana on his sweatshirt.”

Not only was the sweatshirt from Indiana University, but the man was very familiar with the university’s psychology department. Currently he is a professor in of psychology at City University of New York. Up to that point he had never had any connection with Indiana.

Around that same time, Gibbs was talking with a salesman and mentioned his book. When the man said he was very interested in reading it, Gibbs asked if his group of sales people ever have conventions with guest speakers. He replied that there was one such upcoming convention at Colorado State University this summer. For Gibbs, that was a meaningful response. Colorado State University was where ten years ago, he presented his  first paper on synchronicity: The Psychodynamics of Meaningful Coincidences.

Both examples were geographically meaningful coincidences to him, reinforcing his belief that he is on the right path for promoting his book, “The self-generated message is that the timing both internally and externally is just right for me to go all out to walk this pathway.”

He goes on to say: “Once again this confirms my naturalistic theory of synchronicities. I am not being guided by god, or fate, or master teachers, or angels – I am being guided by myself, clear about my purpose and working hard to attain and sustain it.”

But maybe with a little help from the trickster, who plays in the collective unconscious.

Addendum: Gibbs Williams has a tricky name. When we googled him to find the book cover for this post, we accidentally reversed the two names. Upon clicking William F. Gibbs, up popped a photo of a red-headed musician sipping from a bottle of orange drink with a crazy-looking chicken perched on his shoulder. More trickster stuff!

Posted in authors, books, Gibbs williams | 15 Comments

At the Moment Of

Posted on February 23, 2010 by Trish and Rob

We recently posted a story about Oscar the Cat, who lives in a nursing home in Rhode Island and seems to know which patients are about to die. Mike Perry   commented that his mother had spent her last years in a nursing home. That commented reminded me of the last two years of my mother’s life, which she spent in an Alzheimer’s unit.

I think of that time as the dark years, watching this beautiful woman descend into a place of such blackness, her memories stolen from her, her basic abilities to feed and clothe herself gradually eroded.

There were a number of synchronicities surrounding her death in June 2000, but for some reason Mike’s comment stirred up one synchronicity in particular.

June 2000 was a hot month, the humidity so high it took your breath away. Our home had been on the market for months and we finally got an offer and were due to close and move on June 8, a day after my birthday. My mother had been moved from the Alzheimer’s unit a couple of weeks earlier when her hip disintegrated. Thanks to the Alzheimer’s, she wasn’t a candidate for hip replacement surgery because she didn’t have the mental capacity for rehab. So she was in a nursing home, on a diet of liquid morphine. She was rarely conscious and when she was, didn’t know any of us. 

On June 13, we got a call from the nursing home – my mother had developed pneumonia and how did we want to deal with it? My dad, who had Parkinson’s, was living with us at the time and probably understood better than any of us what it’s like to live as a prisoner within your own body.

“Advil for the fever,” he said. “That’s it.

Rob and I concurred. Comfort measures, that was it. That evening, we all went to the nursing home to see her. In essence, we were saying good-bye and we knew it. I think that at some level, she knew it, too.

The next day, the nursing home called to tell us my mother would be moved into hospice on the 15th. I planned on going to the nursing home that afternoon to make sure the transfer proceeded smoothly. At about 4:45 PM, Rob was in his office and laid his head on his desk and shut his eyes. It had been a stressful few weeks. Suddenly, in his mind’s eye, he saw my mother waving good-bye, then she turned and walked away. A few minutes later, the nursing home called. My mother had just passed away.

These synchronicities surrounding death are common. Clocks stop, as if to say that has run out. Dreams portend death. We have a hunch, feel a certainty. Something internal prepares us. I had dreamed weeks before about her death, as had my dad. We knew it was coming. But at the moment it happened, neither my dad nor I were open to it. But Rob was and my mother reached out to him.

Posted in daughters, death, emotions, love, mothers, son in law | 16 Comments

The Rosetta Stone

Posted on February 22, 2010 by Trish and Rob

British physicist Dr. Thomas Young who, with Jean Francois Campolion, was largely responsible for deciphering the Rosetta stone, the first and major key to our understanding of hieroglyphics. But it was a synchronicity that led the way.

In 1822, Young was studying a manuscript written in hieroglyphics, but except for 3 names written in Greek characters, he couldn’t decipher a word of it. The names were Apollonius, Antigonus, and Antiochus – which he read as Antimachus. He finally put the papyrus away and opened up another shipment that had arrived recently. It contained another papyrus and as he scanned it, he noticed the same names he had just read in the Egyptian manuscript, but in a sightly different form – Portis Apollonii and Antimachus Antigenis.

Young suddenly realized that in front of him was a translation for the hieroglyphics. The document had somehow survived for 2,000 years and had come to him from an entirely different part of the world, at the exact moment when he needed it. He later wrote that in an earlier time, such a conspiracy of events would have been sufficient to convince people that not only had he learned hieroglyphics, but knew the secrets of Egyptian sorcery as well!

At the time, such remarkable luck was called coincidence, and it would take more than a century before Carl Jung would return some of the flavor of sorcery into such ‘co-incidents’  and label them synchronicity.

Posted in artifacts, hieroglyphics, Rosetta stone | 4 Comments

Facebook Magic

Posted on February 21, 2010 by Trish and Rob

We’ve posted before about how blogging and the social networking sites often serve as vehicles for synchronicity. Cynthia from Out of the Blue sent us this story about a synchronistic connection involving facebook, which she recently joined. It’s also a great example of precognition.
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I checked my email earlier this afternoon to learn that an old school friend ” found” me on facebook. Very cool, I think. She has been on my mind for the past 2+ weeks – she and her son, who used to be quite close to me. I haven’t had a day in that length of time that I didn’t find myself wondering about them. We haven’t been in touch at all for a number of years, for who knows what reasons—just grew apart, I guess. And there she was, “finding” me on facebook just as I was in some psychic/cosmic quest to learn about her.

 Now I need to give you a little background before I continue my tale. 34 years ago, I had a ticking little thought  one afternoon.  I thought that my friend ( at that time we were still close and in touch, though  living  80 miles away from each other ) was going to go into the hospital  in labor ( yes, she was pregnant and I knew that, nothing “witchy” in that). But I also thought she was going to be sent home. And indeed, she had been, but I didn’t know those facts at that time. That had been over  a week-end. The following Monday I was off to the big city, taking classes. The day was perfectly ordinary, at least until classes were over.

As I started walking back to the subway I began to feel disoriented, kind of in a fog. I suddenly couldn’t wait to get home, but knew that it was going to take me at least an hour to get back to my car. The whole while I was traveling I kept feeling worse , not really in a physical way. It was definitely a psychic drain or pull. I kept telling myself that as I got closer to home, everything would begin to feel more familiar and this disorientation would dissipate. But it only got worse.

From the end of the subway line, I boarded a bus.When I finally reached my vehicle and headed off to pick up my son at preschool, it  took a lot of effort to concentrate on driving. We made it home safely , but  I continued to feel worse. I stalked through the house like a caged animal. I couldn’t relax, sit or prepare dinner. I was beside myself,  like some part of me wasn’t there. Six o’clock chimed, the phone rang. It was my friend’s mother, calling to tell me that my friend had just delivered a baby boy. She had gone into the hospital on the weekend and had  been discharged with ” false labor”. Just as soon as she told me the news, my restlessness and disorientation – that caged feeling –  simply went away. And that baby boy was the child who I grew so very  fond of, who came to visit me even when his mother did not. He was truly a special
child who was so very close to my heart.

I think that because my friend & I  had grown up together, graduated high school together, and shared so much, I  was somehow attuned this child even before his birth. I think we were meant to enjoy some time together and share some deeper bond in this lifetime for however small amount of time. He’s an adult now, my our lives went in different directions, and communication stopped.

Until the facebook note.

In the brief greeting she sent to me, she told me that her son JUST had a son born to him. Now I wonder if my cosmic quest to learn about my friend was connected to her son becoming a father to a son. As I had experienced many years ago when he was born, did I “know” or at least want to know that something incredible was to repeat itself ? I’m inclined to think so. For me it all suggests that we DO know more than what is on the surface. There is some law of the universe, I call it Magic, that enriches our lives even when it confounds us.
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There’s another facet to Cynthia’s story that I’m including here at the end because it seems so integral to her synchronicity, but in such a strange way. When Cynthia got on the bus in her agitated state, she noticed an impeccably groomed gentleman who looked, well, odd. “This man’s forehead came to a point. He was slightly bald and the point was all too prominent. And it was all too improbable -impossible – that anyone’s head could be that pointed. I remember feeling angry, though he did nothing to provoke it. It seemed that his presence only served to  heighten my psychic discomfort.He was a very prominent feature of that strange afternoon.”

Cynthia says a cranial-sacral therapist suggested the man might be an angel. Rob pointed out that after babies come through the birth canal, their heads are often misshapen, almost pointed, so he might have been some sort of sign about her friend’s delivery.

Posted in facebook, old friends | 8 Comments

MIBs

Posted on February 20, 2010 by Trish and Rob

 

The UFO field is so vast, so complex, that each slice of it seems to have its own kind of synchronicity. Some facets of it seem to belong to certain eras.

For instance,  you don’t hear too much about men in black anymore – MIBs – unless it’s a reference to the movies. In a nutshell, MIBs are men dressed in black who harass or threaten UFO witnesses to keep them quiet about what they have seen or experienced. They usually claim to be government agents.

Years ago, we wrote for the UFO section of OMNI Magazine and were assigned to cover a UFO conference in Hollywood, Florida. Budd Hopkins and Betty Hill were among the speakers. Hopkins was an artist who became involved in the UFO field through a sighting he had in 1964. He went on to write several notable books that helped define certain aspects of UFOlogy – Missing Time and Intruders. Betty Hill and her husband, Barney, were abducted in New Hampshire in 1961. The book about their abduction – The Interrupted Journey – was published in 1966. 

The conference in Hollywood took place during one of the pleasant months in South Florida – nice weather, sunny, but not too hot. We were sitting outside with Hopkins, who was taking about a well-known novelist  who had had repeated abduction experiences and was writing a book about it. That was a few months before Communion was published. So we think he was referring to Whitley Strieber, although he never gave the writer’s name. Betty Hill was sitting there with us and started talking about her and Barney’s experience (but Betty is for another post!). When she finished talking, Hopkins remarked that he had done a radio show that morning and had gotten a call he wanted to check out from a couple in Lake Worth, but he didn’t have a car. We volunteered to drive him up to Lake Worth to talk to them.

The couple lived close to what was then the offices of the National Enquirer. The wife’s abduction happened around Christmas, when the newspaper used to erect a huge Christmas tree on their grounds that could be seen for miles. Under hypnosis, which Hopkins conducted, she described being levitated by two Grays from her bedroom, into the backyard, and up a clear tube to a ship. En route, she saw the Christmas tree from above and pointed at it. Hopkins asked how the Grays reacted to the glowing tree, and she replied, “They don’t seem impressed.”

Skip ahead a few weeks. We got a call from the husband, saying that he and his wife wanted to get together for dinner or drinks. So we invited them and some friends over to our place. Our friends included two psychics. We were curious about what what, if anything, they would pick up about the couple.

The couple from  Lake Worth  – let’s call them Jim and June – arrived a bit late. Jim was dressed entirely in black and wore a necklace with a gold devil’s head dangling from it. He had a gray goatee and looked, we thought, like an undertaker. During the course of the evening, it became apparent that he was a total control freak who recounted is wife’s abduction experience as though it had happened to him. She said almost nothing. He also told us that he was a former Baptist minister, who ‘changed sides,’ hence accounting for the necklace.

During the evening, we were seated on two couches in front of sliding glass doors leading to a parking lot. There was a lot of discussion about various aspects of the UFO phenomenon. Shortly after 1 AM, we started talking about men in black and suddenly, Renie – one of the psychics-  said, “Uh, guys, there’s some creep skulking around outside watching us.”

The other psychic, Tony, shot to his feet. “It’s a guy in black.”

All of us ran to the sliding glass doors and poured into the parking lot. The man in black froze, the proverbial deer in the glare of headlights. He sure didn’t look like Tommy Lee Jones or Will Smith. His face looked waxen in the parking lot lights, and he was definitely dressed in black. He even wore sunglasses. Rob shouted something at him, then he tore away from us. But he ran in an odd fashion, crouched down, moving from car to car.

Rob ran after him, but he raced into the back of the complex. At that point, one of us called 911. This complex was large, but backed up to a canal, so the only way in or out was through the guardhouse at the front. The cops arrived within minutes and searched the complex for a long time, with dogs, and never found the guy. Apparently, a man had been murdered that evening less than a mile away, and they thought our Man in Black might the killer.

We never saw Jim and June again.

So the man’s choices for escape were to enter one of the apartments, dive into the canal, or… well, who knows?

Posted in MIBs, UFOs | 11 Comments

See You on the Moon

Posted on February 19, 2010 by Trish and Rob

This story is from Healing Mudras, whose synchronicities are never ordinary (if there is even such a thing) and often involve travel. This one points  to the law of attraction in a big way.

Shorty before Healing boarded a plane for Hawaii, she was contemplating the  “healing power of the Milky Way.” As she wrote on her blog, “The healing comes from an infinite awareness of Oneness. There is life up there and this life is talking to you, sending sparkling virbant lights to your aura. The Pleiades are the buzz of simmering lights and the dusty white light cloud is just a ray of pure potential. Get a good resolution picture of the Milky Way and dive up in the glow.Or get a ticket to Hawaii and see it with your own eyes in a pure energy island style.” So with that in mind, she boards her flight to Hawaii. And then…

“You also did not sleep during the whole flight” said the Korean man behind me at the immigration queue upon arrival at Honolulu airport. I nodded and responded to him that I saw him enjoying the red wine and reading all the possible newspapers available onthe plane. He smiled and continued ” That is my job!” So when I asked him then what his job was, I got struck by lightening when he said, “I build houses on the Moon!”

We were in the long queue at immigration and the conversation continued as I  wanted to share with him my interest on the project and eventually how, as far from being initiated on civil engineering in the Galalxies, I actually was trasnported into another dimension just by holding this conversation with him. I had always wanted to meet someone who would be able to confirm that what I downloaded from Dailymotion.com, an alternate YouTube video uploading site, is actually closer to reality than a sci-fi movie.

The NASA project is supposed to be concluded in its first phase in 2014. I told him I knew about the Robot
exploring living conditions on Mars. He said, the Moon is easier to live on, we [ humankind] have been there since longer. Mars requires more work but we’ll get there also. Now the focus is on water and oxygen. My flight companion is also supposed to travel to the Moon and Mars, for as long as 548 days in the near future.
“What was his purpose to travel to Hawai’i’s Big island? The volcanic conditions (big island) are exactly similar to the conditions on those 2 planets, except for the vaccum (lack of oxygen) and simply was on a monitoring meeting with fellows experts. Obama had just announced a block on Lockheed funding so the meeting was also to review a few other things.

The conversation was really pleasant as we moved along the queue and continued in its other dimensional reality. When asked about my purpose, I was pleased to see a smile on his face as I explained that my trip to Maui, an island just a short hop down from Oha’u island (Honolulu) is to attend a Reiki Healing Retreat and receive certification as Karuna (R) Reiki Master Teacher.

“He asked: ‘And what do you heal?’

“People. And,  based on quantum [Note: I love it when there is no need to detail quantum] also situations and other reality events”.

It was just so pleasant that upon saying good bye, we both said ” See you on the moon.”

Posted in travel | 11 Comments

Swan & Raven

Posted on February 18, 2010 by Trish and Rob

Here’s a story from Jane Clifford of Wales about the quest for a feather and the synchronistic influence of her power animals.
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My power animals are Swan feminine  side,  (clairvoyance, beauty & grace) and Raven, masculine side  (magic). Two weeks ago I randomly drew both cards–Swan and Raven–from my Indian power animal cards and placed them so they faced each other propped on my mantle.

I have had a swan feather  for some years, it was a gift from a friend. Seven years ago, I started looking for a raven feather. A friend shot down an old abandoned nest, no feather. Another friend said he had a raven’s wing I could have, but it had been eaten away by mites. I decided my raven feather would turn up when I had “earned” it,at the right time and stopped looking.

Last summer while staying with a friend 1,000 ft up a Welsh mountain in a medieval house,we observed ravens flying overhead. My friend said, “Your ravens feather will come to you here one day while you are visiting.”

I replied, “Well I don’t see how unless one flutters to my feet.”

She said, “You’ll see, it will come to you here.”

Months later, she employed a local girl from the village to help out with decorating her house. Last week this girl, Zena, told me she once nursed a raven fledgling back to health and released it into the wild. But she had some raven feathers and brought me one the next day! My friend, who owns the house, also gave me a ceramic swan the same day and I traveled to London with the swan and raven feather in the car.

Just after I thought, “Wow, I have Swan and Raven in the car with me today, my journey to London took some baffling turns. Literally. I quite stupidly took a wrong exit off the motorway on a journey I have known well for thirty years! I ended up going along the Thames past Hampton Court with no idea how to get back on track again. I got even more lost in Kingston on Thames in heavy traffic.

Eventually, I stopped to ask a policeman, who surprisingly didn’t know directions. While speaking to him, a schoolgirl nearly knocked me over. I got back in the car, still lost. Getting anxious, I narrowly avoided knocking over a child, my fault! Eventually, I got it sorted out, but arrived stressed and shocked, feeling everything was out of sync.

Later, at bed time, I picked up a novel left by the last visitor. The  whole novel was set in Kingston on Thames (where I had been horribly lost that day). The next evening, I picked up a different novel, which was set in South End on Sea,where I was going to stay the next day!
I have no idea why having the Swan and Raven in the car made everything seem out of sync like that, although it could be said I avoided knocking down a child, and eventually arrived safely at my destination.I don’t know why I was lost in Kingston and later picked up a novel set there! As Shakespeare wrote in Hamlet: “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
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Could it be that Raven and Swan lose their power when paired? i.e., birds of different feathers don’t flock together.  Just a thought.
Posted in animals as oracles, ravens, swans | 11 Comments

Charlie’s synchronisitic journey

Posted on February 17, 2010 by Trish and Rob

Here’s an incredible tale of a lost dog and synchronicity. But maybe Charlie was never lost. Maybe he knew what he was doing when he managed to hitch a ride from Taos to New Orleans where he was re-united with his master.  Not only did Charlie manage to get to the right city, but the couple who drove him there astonishingly called him Charlie.

Thanks to Christina Georgiou for alerting us to this story.

Here’s a curious ‘side-synchronicity,’ so to speak: the person interviewed for the attached article is named Theresa Gernon. The story we posted yesterday featured Bruce Gernon.

Posted in dogs, pets | 9 Comments