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When I first started studying astrology, I was still in my teens and had never heard the term synchronicity. I was simply curious about the deeper underpinnings of who I was and where I might be headed in my life. In those days, astrology software didn’t exist and I, who am math-challenged, spent hours struggling with the complicated algorithms just to draw up a single chart. Today, the astrology software I have on my phone and iPad do the calculations in seconds.

During my freshman year in college, I ran across Richard Wilhelm’s edition of The I Ching, a Chinese divination system that dates back thousands of years. It uses 64 hexagrams that are derived from the toss of coins. Carl Jung wrote the introduction and used the term synchronicity to explain why the system worked. I suddenly understood that synchronicity was the basis for astrology and every other divination system.

As Jung wrote in the introduction, whoever invented the I Ching believed the hexagram “was the exponent of the moment in which it was cast.” In other words, when you ask your question and toss the coins, the hexagram you receive is like a snapshot in time, making manifest the internal. In much the same way, in the moment when you drew your first breath, the stars and planets were at certain positions in the heavens and that pattern, your birth chart, is a snapshot in time – the blueprint of your potential.

“…synchronicity takes the coincidence of events in space and time as meaning something more than mere chance,” wrote Jung.

I was recently reminded of the connection between astrology and synchronicity when I looked at the calendar for this September. My latest astrology book, Unlocking the Secrets to  Scorpios is due to be published that month, but on September 17, Mercury – the planet that rules communication, writing, books – turns retrograde. Over the years, I’ve learned that a Mercury retro period isn’t a good time to make submissions, sign contracts – or release a book into the world. So I wrote the editor and asked for the exact pub date and explained about the Mercury retro.

He said the pub date is September 8, so we miss the retro by nine days. I erected a chart – essentially a natal chart for the book – for that date, at noon, in Salem, Mass, where the publisher is located. I chose noon because it’s the middle of the day. It’s likely the book will be shipped before then and shelved in bookstores on the 8^th. Now here’s the synchro. The ascendant or rising in a natal chart – the symbol to the left of that horizontal line that cuts the circle in half- is the point where you enter life. That symbol is for Scorpio. So, an astrology book about Scorpio will be entering its “life” when Scorpio is rising!

A skeptic might point out that Scorpio had a one in 12 chance of being on the horizon, so essentially this is simply a random coincidence. But if I had chosen, say, 1:00 p.m. as the time, the rising would be Sagittarius. If I’d chosen 7:00 a.m, the rising would be Virgo. But that isn’t what happened. Like I said, I selected noon because it’s the halfway point in the 24-hour day.

As Richard Tarnas noted in his phenomenal book, Cosmos & Psyche, Jung  didn’t regard the outer world as “merely a neutral background against which the human psyche pursued its isolated intrasubjective quest for meaning and purpose. Rather, all events, inner and outer, whether emanating from the human unconscious or from the larger matrix of the world, were recognized as sources of potential psychological and spiritual significance.” From this perspective, Tarnas said, “…all of nature supported and moved the human psyche towards a larger consciousness of purpose and meaning. Each moment in time possessed a certain tangible characters or quality which pervaded the various events taking place at that moment.”

So, whether you believe in astrology or not, there’s a curious synchronicity about the time I “randomly” chose for the birth time of the book’s release into the world. Scorpio is rising for a book all about Scorpios.

Here’s kind of an eerie synchro from Jane Clifford about a short journey she took through rural Wales, where she resides.

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I visited my dear friend and soul sister Liz, who is in the final stages of cancer and before leaving had a conversation with her son about hospice care. I usually visit Liz for two hours, but found myself leaving after an hour without knowing why.

On the way home through remote mountain country I stopped at the only shop there is on the journey home to buy a lighter. There I bumped into a friend I had not seen for many months, who told me she is turning her mountain property into a hospice!

I told her my friend was dying of cancer and I had just visited her. Bizarrely, she asked if I knew of the “Death cafe” in my local town, a place where those losing someone they love or in grief can meet and share experiences. I then realized if I had not cut short my visit  after an hour I would not have bumped into her and had the conversation.

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Apparently, there is a worldwide network of these death cafes. The one in the image at the top is in Chicago. It makes sense, I guess, since death is a worldwide phenom. They even have a web site.

Sorry, but I don’t care for the name. I find it more ghoulish, than comforting. A place you might visit on Halloween. How about something more transitional and upbeat, like “The Sa Ta Na Ma Cafe”—birth, life, death, rebirth. It’s one of my favorite chants. Of course, they might have to serve Indian food!

When my sister was pregnant with her oldest son, I awakened very early one morning with severe abdominal pain. (And I’m NOT an early riser!) At first, I thought I might have food poisoning or that I’d contracted some sort of virus. Other than the pain, though, I didn’t have any of the usual side effects of intestinal problems. I didn’t leap out of bed and rush into the bathroom! The pain eventually subsided and I fell back asleep.

Later that day, I received a call from my sister in Atlanta. Her son, Ardon, had come into the world early that morning, at around the same time I was experiencing the abdominal pain.

Coincidence? Hardly.

Neurologist Berthold Schwartz called this type of experience a telesomatic event, from words that mean “distant body.” It’s the sort of psychic experience in which emotions and feelings and intimate connections play an integral role.

In Larry Dossey’s 2009 book, The Power of Premonitions: How Knowing the Future Can Save Our Lives, he wrote, “The term is appropriate because the involved individuals behave as if they share a single body, even though separated by great distances and, in some cases, by time.”

This kind of experience is often reported by identical twins.

Dossey’s book includes several intriguing stories about telesomatic events. In one example, a mother was writing a letter to her daughter, who had recently left for college. For no apparent reason, her right hand suddenly started burning so badly she had to put down her pen. Less than an hour later, she received a call informing her that her daughter’s right hand had been severely burned by acid in a laboratory accident – and it had happened at about the same time that her own right had started burning.

Dossey believes these examples aren’t precognitive, but illustrate how emotions and empathy are often interwoven into precognition. He cites a letter he received from Larry Kincheloe, an obstetrician-gynecologist in Oklahoma. He’d been practicing for about four years when, one Saturday afternoon, he got a call from the hospital that one of his patients was in early labor. Since this was her first baby, he figured she wouldn’t deliver for many hours. Yet, while he was sweeping leaves, “he experienced an overwhelming feeling that he had to go to the hospital. He immediately called labor and delivery and was told by the nurse that everything was fine; his patient was only five centimeters dilated and delivery was not expected for several more hours.”

But Kincheloe couldn’t shake the feeling and started feeling an aching pain in the center of his chest. The more he tried to ignore it, the worse the sensation became. He finally leaped into his car and rushed to the hospital. The nurse was just walking out of the patient’s room when he arrived and gave him an odd look, curious about what he was doing there. He admitted he didn’t know. Just then, a cry came from the labor room.

“Anyone who has ever worked in labor and delivery knows there’s a certain tone in a woman’s voice when the baby’s head is on the perineum, nearing delivery. He rushed into the room in time to deliver a healthy infant.”

After this experience, Kincheloe began paying attention to his feelings and these days, he’s usually en route to the hospital before anyone calls. “This is now such a common occurrence among the labor and delivery staff that they tell the new nurses, ‘If you want Dr. Kincheloe, just think it and he will show up.’”

As Dossey points out, Kincheloe’s experiences illustrates “how physical sensations can alert us to something important about to happen – an early warning premonition system. Physical symptoms are like psychic cell phones uniting distant individuals.”

So I started thinking about this in relation to planetary enpaths,  individuals who experience physical symptoms  hours or sometimes days before a natural or man-made disaster.  My hope is that more research can be done on this phenomenon so that perhaps in a not so distant future they are able to fine tune their abilities. They won’t be able to stop quakes or man-made disasters, but perhaps they’ll be able to offer ample warning about the specific area and type of event so that injuries and deaths are prevented.

According to the BBC, the attendance at the summer solstice at Stonehenge this year may  number 40,000 or more. Even though I’m not crazy about crowds, I would love to be there!

According to efestivals in the UK, here’s the scoop:

Access

Access to the stones themselves is expected to be from around 7pm on Saturday 20th June until 8am on Sunday 21st June, with it being a Sunday these hours may be extended. The Stonehenge visitor centre closes at 3pm on Saturday for Summer Solstice. Last admissions will be at 1pm, and will be closed all day Sunday, reopening at 9am on Monday 22 June.

There’s likely to be casual entertainment from samba bands & drummers but no amplified music is allowed. When you visit Stonehenge for the Solstice, please remember it is a Sacred Place to many and should be respected.

Van loads of police have been present in the area in case of any trouble, but generally a jovial mood prevails. Few arrests have been made in previous years, mostly in relation to minor drug offences.

Facilities

Toilets and drinking water are available and welfare is provided by festival welfare services. There are normally one or two food and drink vans with reasonable prices but huge queues, all well away from the stones themselves.

Sunrise is at around 4:45am.

Conditions

Rules include no camping, no dogs, no fires or fireworks, no glass bottles, no large bags or rucksacks, and no climbing onto the stones. Please use the bags given free on arrival and take them out, filled with your litter, to the skips provided. Please respect the rules so that we’re all able to enjoy the solstice morning at Stonehenge for years to come.

Getting there

Where possible, please travel to Stonehenge using public transport. The local bus company, Wilts & Dorset, will be running a service from Salisbury railway and bus stations to Stonehenge over the Solstice period. Access to Stonehenge from the bus drop off point is through the National Trust farmland.

Global synchros are invariably intriguing, mystifying, and always prompt me to wonder about who is orchestrating this stuff. Religious types will say it’s evidence of the hand of God; skeptics says it’s random. I suspect the truth lies somewhere in between.

In 7 Secrets of Synchronicity, the seventh secret is about global synchros, when the universe seems to be addressing us as a collective. I was doing some research today and ran across some of my favorite global synchros. Some are dark tricksters that sneak up on you like monsters that hide in pockets of darkness in your bedroom.   Others are so obvious and in your face they feel offensive. And some, like the synchro that follows, address a societal issue that screams for repair:

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On July 20, 2012, a mass shooting during a midnight screening of The Dark Knight Rises left 12 dead and 58 injured in Aurora, Colorado. A gunman, dressed in tactical clothing, set off tear gas grenades and shot into the movie theater audience with several weapons. The sole suspect was James Eagan Holmes, who was arrested outside the cinema minutes later.

On December 14, 2012, another mass shooting occurred at Sandy Hook Elementary School when 26-year-old Adam Lanza opened fire and killed 20 children and six adults in the village of Sandy Hook in Newtown, Connecticut. Before driving to the school, Lanza had killed his mother at their Newtown home. As first responders arrived, Lanza committed suicide by shooting himself in the head.

Two mass murders five months and 1,800 miles apart attracted widespread media attention and triggered emotional and heated debate about gun control. The synchronicities that link these two tragedies are documented on film. In The Dark Knight Rises, the name Sandy Hook is written on a map in the movie. As it to highlight the connection, the name Aurora also appears in the Batman movie. It can be seen on the top of a skyscraper in the backdrop of another scene.

Most recently, the shootings in Charleston, South Carolina have prompted a movement to remove the confederate flag from government buildings. This flag symbolizes the dark time of slavery in the U.S., when the south wasn’t just racist, but was blinded by hatred.

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The issue that begs repair is gun control. The second amendment to the Constitution dates back to 1791, when George Washington was prez and life in America was pretty much about trial and tribulation.

Google that year. The right to bear arms was undoubtedly necessary for survival. But it’s now more than two centuries later and life is not quite the same thing in the 21^st century as it was in the 18^th century. Yet, according to Pew Research, the number of Americans who own guns falls between 270 and 310 million. That’s a lot of weapons.

But as a gun owner said to me in the gym the other day, “I might give up my guns, but how can I be sure that the rest of the gun owners in this country will do the same?”

Is a fear-based society the best that we can be?

A few weeks back, a neighbor called the animal care and control and the local cops because our dog had barked at his dog. I mean, really? Dogs bark for the same reason that human beings speak. It communicates something. The animal care person was a short, intense woman who asked to see our dog’s rabies tag and said the complaint was that on Christmas Day, our Golden Retriever, Noah,  had run over to our neighbors’ yard and barked at his dog. All dogs must be leashed, even on the short trip from house to car.

“Hey,” Rob said. “That neighbor keeps his German Shepherd on a short leash in his garage, in conditions that are against the rules set by your agency.”

The woman rolled her eyes. “I know. He was just issued a warning. If he gets another complaint, there’s a fine.”

Later that day, Rob drove past the neighbor’s house and pointed at the poor dog, still tethered on a very short leash. An hour later, a cop showed up at our front door. He seemed really uncomfortable as he informed us that a neighbor had reported that Rob had driven by his place and shot him the finger.

At this point, I’m wondering if we’re living in The Matrix and just don’t know it yet. We explain the situation to the cop, about how Animal Care & Control had already stopped by earlier and how this neighbor is really the big crybaby in the neighborhood.

And then I say, “Do you think this guy (our neighbor) is armed?”

The cop looks at me with his big dark eyes. “Ma’am, I assume that everyone is armed.”

That statement, from a cop, pretty much sums up what’s wrong here. I understand that in some ways we are still a society tuned into the Wild West. But it seems to me that the second amendment has wreaked more havoc than it’s worth.

I ran across this video on twitter. See what you think:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Xx-FVgS9eE&feature=youtu.be

Dr. Erlendur Haraldsson, professor emeritus at the University of Iceland in Reykjavik, has examined cases of children who not only seem to recall their past lives, but remember lives as Buddhist monks. In some of these cases, the memories were recorded right after the children recalled them – in other words, without any elapsed time in which the memories could become distorted. These memories seemed to correspond to historical information about real monks who had died.

“What makes these … cases particularly interesting is not only the alleged memories but also the behavioural features that the children display. Each child shows behavior that is considered appropriate and even ideal for monks,” wrote Dr. Haraldsson and Godwin Samarartne in a 1999 paper titled, “Children Who Speak of Memories of a Previous Life as a Buddhist Monk,” published in the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research.

Duminda Bandara Ratnayake

Duminda Bandara Ratnayake was born in 1984 in a mountainous, rural area of Sri Lanka known as Thundeniya. When he was three years old, he began to talk about his past life. He claimed:

• he had been a monk at Asgiriya temple, just 16 miles from where he currently lived
• he had owned a red car
• he felt a pain in his chest, then died. He used the word “apawathwuna,” which is only used for the death of a monk.
• he taught apprentice monks
• had an elephant
• he had friends in the Malvatta Temple he used to visit
• he had a money bag and a radio in Asgiriya he wanted back.

His mother was embarrassed to report this, because these items aren’t considered appropriate for a monk to possess.

Ratnayake exhibited no interest in playing with other kids; he just wanted to be a monk. He recited Buddhist stanzas in the ancient language of Sinhalese Buddhism, only used and learned by monks. He lived his life like a monk, carrying his clothes the way a monk does, attending the temple and placing flowers there in the Buddhist fashion, and displaying similar behaviors.

These behaviors permeated his life. He was calm, serene, detached. He told his mother she shouldn’t touch his hands – women aren’t supposed to touch a monk’s hands.

Haraldsson interviewed a local monk who had observed his behaviors and felt his parents could not have taught him these behaviors. So Haroldsson began to search for the monk the boy may have been.

His research led him to Ven. Mahanayaka Gunnepana, a deceased monk who closely fit the boy’s descriptions. According to the memories of other monks who knew Ven. Gunnepana, he: owned a red or reddish brown car, died of a heart attack,was interested in an elephant that one of his disciples brought to Gunnepana’s village. He didn’t own a radio but had something similar – a gramophone. He was fond of music and was apparently  a virtuous monk who strictly observed the rules

Haraldsson thought it was unlikely that the boy learned any of this from his family or others with whom he came into contact.

You can read about the research and some of their other cases here.

from Deviant Art

Whenever there’s a disaster, natural or man-made, there are always stories about people who missed the doomed flight, left town the day before the quake hit, didn’t board the ship that sank, people who avoided the disaster because of a hunch, dream, or vision. Records indicate that 899 people who had booked passage on the Titanic didn’t show up. Why not? Was it purely random blind luck?

In 1960, Dr. Ian Stevenson, now deceased but then a professor of psychiatry at the University of Virginia Medical School, researched the paranormal experiences connected to the sinking of the Titanic. Writing about it in the Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research, he found 19 documented cases of passengers who had premonitions about the voyage. Some heeded the premonition and survived and others didn’t heed it and drowned.

“When people dream of accidents correctly and do not take the plane or ship, it is not the actual future they were seeing,” wrote David Bohm to author Michael Talbot in a private communication in 1988. “It was merely something in the present which is implicate and moving toward making that future. In fact, the future they saw differed from the actual future because they altered it. Therefore I think it’s more plausible to say that, if these phenomena exist, there’s an anticipation of the future in the implicate order in the present.”

We’ve written before about Bohm’s implicate order. He theorized the existence of a deeper order in reality called the implicate or enfolded order, a kind of primal soup that births everything in the universe. He believed that in the implicate order all time exists simultaneously. The explicate—the external reality we experience—unfolds from the inner order and then time is perceived in a linear way. Could precognition be the phenomenon that occurs when the implicate and the explicate, the inner and the outer, briefly coincide?

As Talbot noted in his book, The Holographic Universe, “Bohm’s assertion that every human consciousness has its source in the implicate implies that we all possess the ability to see the future.”

This idea is echoed by researchers who conduct various types of experiments to prove —or disprove—the existence of psychic phenomena. Lynn McTaggart, writing in The Intention Experiment, said it may be that our future “already exists in some nebulous state that we actualize in the present. This makes sense, since subatomic particles exist in a state of potential until observed or thought about.” If, as Bohm suggested, consciousness rises from the implicate order, if it operates at what McTaggart calls the “quantum frequency level,” then we can impact moments other than the present.

What’s fascinating is that many of these scientific experiments concerning precognition, what author Dean Radin refers to as presentiment experiments, have parallels in New Age beliefs. From Louise Hay to Esther Hicks, Pam Grout, Wayne Dyer, Deepak Chopra and others, the core belief is that you get what you concentrate on. The sheer power of your thoughts, emotions and intentions collapse the quantum wave of potential—the possible future—and it enters physical reality as a particle, the future you desire.

People who avoid a disaster because they heed a premonition have created a new future for themselves. So yes, if we pay attention, the future appears to be malleable. But if we’re dealing with issues other than life or death, how malleable is that future?

I’ve often thought about the Many Worlds Theory of quantum physics – the idea that our world and everything in it is constantly splitting into alternative timelines. Or, put in a more personal sense, it’s like Robert Frost’s poem The Road Not Taken.

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

But suppose you DO travel both – and then some? The Many Worlds Theory suggests that for every decision and choice you make – to live here and not there, to marry this person and not that person, to try this and not that, to be a mathematician instead of an artist – there’s an alternate timeline where what you didn’t choose is lived out. A mind, blower, right?

Yet, I’m sure that some of you have uncovered skills and talents you didn’t know you had, stuff that came so easily to you it’s as if the information was downloaded directly into your brain and soul. Are you tapping into one of your alternative timelines where you possess that talent?

Can you die on one timeline at a particular minute, date, place, but not on an alternative timeline?

When authors write Dystopian novels, are they tapping into one of those alternative timelines? What was the source of DaVinci’s inventions? In live science check out 5 of his inventions that are relevant today.

The tricky thing with precognition – and synchronicity – is that when you experience it, you may be tapping into a multidimensional self, a you that exists in numerous dimensions and alternative timelines. So, which road do you take?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7CIHFwM3Uo

On two different occasions in the last few weeks, an orb-shaped object has been caught on security cams at the U.S Space Walk Hall of Fame Museum on Pine Street in Titusville, Florida. Charlie Mars, the president of the museum, says he and his staff can’t explain it. “Nor can the fellas who put in the system for us.”

Mars says that both times the security cams caught the orb, the lights and air conditioning were turned off, which is why he dismisses the possibility that the orb is the result of glare or a dust ball.

“There are many items in here that were brought in by people who are no longer with us,” said Mars. “They could be coming back to check on it.”

The museum recently moved into a century-old building that used to be the original county records facility, and some people speculate that the structure might be haunted.

“We have had a number of things like that have occurred in the past 10 or 12 years that we didn’t have an explanation for,” said Mars. “We love having something come in unexplainable. It gives us a chance to interchange with each other and talk about what it could possibly be.”

Check here for the original broadcast on an Orlando TV station, and take a look at some of the comments. They’re nearly as interesting as the video!

Whenever we spend time with our daughter, we find out about new TV shows. Most recently, Megan told us about Wayward Pines. We’ve now watched three episodes and are hooked. The premise, from IMDB, sounds fairly simple and straightforward: 

An FBI agent, played by Matt Dillon, is searching for two missing FBI agents. As the result of a car accident, he ends up in Wayward Pines, Idaho, and quickly discovers he may not ever get alive.

By episode three, it’s obvious that Wayward Pines is not your usual reality. But is it the land of the dead, as in Lost? Is it some bizarre sociological experiment perpetrated by one the government spook agencies? Is it the result of some weird time twist? Right now, any of these or something else entirely, seems plausible.

So, here’s the real world weirdness. After watching episode three, Rob went back to his computer to continue researching the prices for our new auto insurance policies. He noticed on the policy that Progressive emailed a note that included an at fault accident on June 2, 2014.

The only time we have filed a claim on either of our cars is after tropical storm Isaac, in 21012 when our neighborhood was so inundated that on my way home from the gym, my Mazda simply died. I finally managed to get the engine to turn over and coasted into our driveway. The engine was shot and was eventually replaced with a much newer engine that had only 4,000 miles on it. I had to pay the $1,000 deductible and the insurance company paid the rest.

So Rob went online with an employee from the insurance company and asked for details about this alleged June 2, 2014 accident that neither of us could recall, where we were at fault. The accident had supposedly been reported through LexisNexis, a company we’d never heard of.

I poked around on that website for awhile and began to feel really creeped out – like Wayward Pines had followed us out of TV land and into the real world. In Wayward Pines, no one can speak freely, your every word is monitored; this LexisNexis outfit feels like that, a Big Brother company.  While I was thinking this, Rob called out from his office: “It feels like we’re in Wayward Pines. In an alternate reality.”

This was occurring right before and right after Mercury went direct at 6:33 p.m. this evening.  The culprit? Well, there were several. The first was a typo. The insurance report should have read: not at fault. The second was just plain weird. The insurance company employee reported that the accident had happened to our daughter’s car, but no driver was present. No driver? How does that work? As he drilled down deeper, he uncovered the truth: the accident involved a dog. No, the dog was not driving.

On June 2, 2014, our daughter’s dog, Nika, was hit by a driver in Orlando, who then turned around and took her to small claims court for the damage to his car.

The only “claim” Megan had made was to call Progressive to find out if her car insurance would cover the damage to the driver’s car. It got recorded as an accident with no driver in the car, for which we were at fault. In the end, it cost $1200 in vet’s bills and an additional small claims court price of $900 to the guy who hit Nika.

But by the time Mercury had gone direct and the typo and actual facts had been uncovered, we saved nearly $700 in car insurance – and realized we weren’t living in Wayward Pines, but were just experiencing the tail end of a Mercury retrograde that began on May 19 this year, and ended tonight, June 11.

Then we went out to dinner to celebrate the end of the retrograde!