Welcome to The Mystical Underground

This photo was taken inside a bookstore in Asheville, North Carolina, one of the dog friendliest cities I’ve ever visited. Noah isn’t quite sure what he’s doing inside a place like this, which is expressly forbidden in bookstores in South Florida, but he eventually relaxes into it.

The Arcade Bookstore has a coffee and wine bar inside, and zillions of amazing books – mostly used. Here, I found autographed first editions by Carl Sandburg and a number of other authors. I realized these books were part of people’s passion for rare first editions. They were pricey, but fascinating to see. I have recently been re-reading William Goldman’s Control, and  in the store found a signed edition of Marathon Man, which I bought for ten bucks.

This is the kind of bookstore where book people love to wander, browse, sample, and sit awhile. There are tables, chairs, and couches everywhere. Here, book people walk around in a kind of stupor, touching, marveling, opening books at random. I could live in here. I often wonder if places like this are found in the afterlife.

Everything in the store is labeled, well-organized, by genres, authors, topics. This is the kind of bookstore where you and your dog arrive, find a book, buy a coffee, and settle in for the day.

The Arcade Bookstore is vastly different from some of the other bookstores in town, more traditional stores that don’t allow dogs. Inside, these stores have a lack of couches and chairs that invite you to sit down and stick around for awhile. Although these stores are independent, they followed the same type of bureaucracy that chain bookstores do.

I checked out the astrology section in this other bookstore, for instance, to see if Unloocking the Secrets to Scorpio was included. It wasn’t, so I approached the clerk at the front desk and handed him a postcard for the book. He gave me the name of the head buyer and suggested that I email her. I did. I never got a reply. In my mind, her silence became synonymous with the fact that they don’t allow dogs in their store- i.e., not too friendly.

When this connection first occurred to me, my  left brain dismissed it as silly, irrelevant. But my right brain knows better. Part of that is because not too long after we left the bookstore, we headed toward the general store, where Rob and I took turns waiting outside with the dogs. While I was out there, an employee came up to me and said the dogs were welcome inside. This general store is larger than the bookstore, has more delicate things that can be broken by unruly dogs. But the dogs behaved just fine.

And that’s how it is with dogs. They’re curious but not naturally destructive. They listen, they understood, they go with the flow regardless of how strange it is to them. They would be more inclined to carry off merchandise from the general store than from the bookstore that won’t allow them inside.

Overall, I was truly impressed by the welcome mat that Asheville has set out for dogs, bowls of water outside most places, treats for the dogs, lots of pats. They ate it up. And so did we.

Here’s a Jungian description of terrorism. Worth reading.

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“Terrorism is a manifestation of the psyche. It is time we recognized the psyche as an autonomous factor in world affairs.

“The psychological root of terrorism is a fanatical resentment – a quasi-psychotic hatred originating in the depths of the archetypal psyche and therefore carried by religious (archetypal) energies. A classic literary example is Melville’s Moby Dick. Captain Ahab, with his fanatical hatred of the White Whale, is a paradigm of the modern terrorist.

“Articulate terrorists generally express themselves in religious (archetypal) terminology. The enemy is seen as the Principle of Objective Evil (Devil) and the terrorist perceives himself as the “heroic” agent of divine or Objective Justice (God). This is an archetypal inflation of demonic proportions which temporarily grants the individual almost superhuman energy and effectiveness. To deal with terrorism effectively we must understand it.

“We need a new category to understand this new phenomenon. These individuals are not criminals and are not madmen although they have some qualities of both. Let’s call them zealots. Zealots are possessed by transpersonal, archetypal dynamisms deriving from the collective unconscious. Their goal is a collective, not a personal one. The criminal seeks his own personal gain; not so the zealot. In the name of a transpersonal, collective value – a religion, an ethnic or national identity, a “patriotic” vision, etc. – they sacrifice their personal life in the service of their “god.” Although idiosyncratic and perverse, this is fundamentally a religious phenomenon that derives from the archetypal, collective unconscious. Sadly, the much-needed knowledge of this level of the psyche is not generally available. For those interested in seeking it, I recommend a serious study of the psychology of C.G. Jung.

– from the Archetype of the Apocalypse (1999), “Editor’s Preface,” p. xvii.

When Carl Jung met with Sigmund Freud in Vienna in 1909, the two men had met before and exchanged numerous letters about their respective views on psychology, the mind, and the unconscious. Even though they were still friends, there was an undercurrent of tension between them that Jung later attributed to the differences in their views about the human psyche. Jung’s research had begun to diverge from Freud’s and was leading him deeper into the world of parapsychology myth, religion, and symbolism.

At this particular meeting, Jung asked Freud about his views on precognition and parapsychology in general. Freud rejected it all as nonsense and did so, as Jung wrote in his autobiography, Memories, Dreams, & Reflections, “in terms of so shallow a positivism that I had difficulty in checking the sharp retort on the tip of my tongue.”

Suddenly, Jung felt a curious sensation, as if his diaphragm was made of iron and was turning scorching hot. Then there was a loud cracking sound in a nearby bookcase and both men bolted to their feet, alarmed that the bookcase was about to topple over on them. Jung exclaimed, “There, that is an example of a so-called catalytic exteriorization phenomenon.”

“This is sheer bosh,” Freud retorted.

Jung said that it wasn’t and predicted that in a moment, it would happen again. “Sure enough, no sooner had I said the words than the same detonation went off in the bookcase. To this day, I do not know what gave me this certainty. But I knew beyond all doubt that the report would come again.”

Freud just stared at him and Jung didn’t have any idea what the look meant. “In any case, this incident aroused his mistrust of me.

What’s fascinating about this instance of precognition is that it happened so quickly after Jung had made the prediction and probably reinforced his belief that synchronicities peak during times when deep unconscious forces are activated.

But we don’t have to wait until life is locked in some sort of crisis before we hook into the future. In our daily lives, we’re surrounded by signs, symbols, and patterns that carry hints about our future. Sometimes the message is obvious, sometimes it requires interpretation.

In The Three Only Things: Tapping the Power of Dreams, Coincidence & Imagination, author and dream researcher Robert Moss recounts an incident that happened to him shortly before the stock market crash in 1987. He was in an airplane restroom when he accidentally dropped a wallet with his credit card and checks from a brokerage account into the toilet. He barely managed to snatch it out before it was flushed away.

“Had this been a dream, I might have written a one-liner like: ‘If you’re not very careful, your stock market investments will go down the toilet.’ Unfortunately, in 1987, I was not yet fully aware that incidents in waking life speak to us exactly like dream symbols. I failed to harvest the message, neglected to take the appropriate action to limit the risk to my brokerage account – and saw a large percentage of my net worth go down the toilet.”

The incident was clearly a hint about the future, a warning specifically about his assets, but Moss didn’t get the message.

I first read this story in 2007 shortly after the book was released, and my first thought was, OMG, how many messages like this have I missed? A lot. But I may have avoided some really critical oversights because I’m a book hound.

When I was a freshman in college, I bought a copy of the Richard Wilhelm edition of the I Ching, in which Jung wrote the introduction and first explained his theory of synchronicity. After reading it several dozen times, and then devouring everything I could find that Jung had written, I finally understood that the universe is alive. We are inundated with signs and symbols, portents and omens, messages both great and small. If you tune in and listen with your heart, this is the stuff that guides, directs, and comforts you. It confirms, warns, laughs at and with you. It offers wisdom, solace, and a real, tangible sense that everything and everyone is connected.

Philip Merry, who has a happy name, sent an e-mail to me and others that combines synchronicity and angels…and he wonders if synchronicity could be about angelic intervention. I’ll let him tell his story.

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“I am currently doing my PhD on ‘Synchronicity and Leadership’ as well as running a global leadership consulting business. I am doing the PhD because I have in my own life come across many examples of out of the blue experiences that lead to synchronistic events. Carl Jung who gave us the term synchronicity said that synchronicity is the coming together of two events which are meaningful to the observer and a-causal in nature, meaning that event A did not cause event B in the logical sense.

“What I am interested in as well as the big synchronistic events which you will read more of once my dissertation is published, are the small supportive events that happen day by day. Small things that support you on your journey and take care of you.

“I call them everyday miracles.

“I hear the skeptics guffaw: ‘What, are you saying that you have a personal guardian angel?’

“Maybe I am saying exactly that. Let me give you an example.

“Yesterday I was traveling home from Guangzhou to Singapore. It had been a demanding two days conducting four long in-depth coaching sessions. On top of this I have hurt my knee, which meant that every step on my right foot sent a shockwave up my leg. Walking was difficult hence I had booked a wheelchair when I arrived at the airport in Guangzhou.

“I was on the return leg to Singapore and at the airport dragging myself the long distance to the gate. I was feeling sorry for myself, feeling unsupported and basically in a victim, “poor me” mode.

“As I arrived at the gate the young Singapore Airlines steward looked at my ticket and said, ‘Mr. Merry I see that you booked a wheelchair yesterday, would you like us to do the same when you arrive in Singapore?’ My first thought was, ‘Wow, their system allows them to track passengers who need additional help. Not only that, but they had a system allowing them to allocate one person to be looking out for me on arrival at the gate, and then book a wheelchair for me at Changi Airport.

“Thankfulness began to flood my body. I felt warm kindness from the young steward, and my victim mentality began to fade away.

“I walked towards the plane comforted, but still feeling raw and weak. I looked to my left at the bag a passenger was carrying. On the side of the bag were these words:

Always remember you’re braver than you believe

Stronger than you seem

Smarter than you think

And twice as beautiful as you’d ever imagined

“I can’t tell you how good reading these words made me feel. I felt strengthened immediately. Imagine the look of surprise in the woman’s eyes as I stopped her and asked if I could take a picture of the words on the side of her bag. Incredulous doesn’t really do justice to the look on her face.

“Could it be that I DO have a guardian angel? Could it be that I have somebody watching the smallest detail in my life and waiting to support me? What I can tell you is that right at that moment it felt that my guardian angel was real and true and I gave a heartfelt prayer to whatever divine force was making me the centre of their attention.

“My synchronicity fieldwork continues and within two years I hope to be finished. But I tell you I am both surprised and heartened by the amazing miracles that seem to be showing up in my life. Miracles both big and small.

“And here’s the thing: I don’t think I am the only one that has things like this happening to them. Maybe there is a guardian angel for all of us. Maybe there is synchronicity supporting and protecting us wherever we are.

“Do you have a guardian angel and mistakenly call them co-incidence?”

Philip Merry, CEO Global Leadership Academy, Singapore. phil@PhilipMerry.com – www.PhilipMerry.com

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Maybe the guardian angels put the ‘meaning’ in coincidences…making them synchronicities.

PARIS, FRANCE – NOVEMBER 13: A medic tends to a man November 13, 2013 in Paris, France. Gunfire and explosions in multiple locations erupted in the French capital with early casualty reports indicating at least 60 dead. (Photo by Thierry Chesnot/Getty Images)

We’re greatly saddened by the events in Paris Friday. It’s a terrible tragedy. At this time Friday evening the situation is still unfolding.

The reason we’re writing now is that we suspected by early Wednesday afternoon that something big was coming. We didn’t know what or where, but one of the planetary empaths we’ve written about contacted us, certain that it was coming soon. Planetary empaths are people who have severe physical symptoms that they can identify as related to upcoming mass tragic events – terrorist attacks or natural disasters.

Here’s what we were told:

“Am wondering if any of the other planetary empaths are reporting in? About forty minutes ago, I began to have really awful symptoms. I feel very “sick” (stomach), feel as if I have a fever….I don’t. Temp is actually low: 97.2 degrees. Also am crying for no reason….feel an intense overwhelming sense of great sadness enveloping me that has no basis in my life. I can’t be still. Am walking, pacing the floor, want to wring my hands (wringing my hands is totally foreign to me)…..extreme nervous energy, and I am the least “nervous energy” person I’ve ever known.

“I’ve checked the usual worldwide geographical sites for any kinds of earth events. So far, whatever it is has apparently not yet happened. Based on the strength of these symptoms, whatever is imminent is huge and probably will be accompanied by untenable grief and/or loss. It may not be a “planetary event.” It may be some type of human-action….massive school shooting or something on that order. God I hope not!! But I do sense many people involved. I hate this. Absolutely hate it. When it manifests, the symptoms will dissipate.”

Wednesday evening, the source wrote by and gave us the number 242. It could be the total deaths. Right now as we are writing Friday evening, we’ve heard the latest estimated number of death put at 153. We hope it doesn’t keep rising.

As a precaution, we’re not using the name of the planetary empath who provided this information. If she would like to  identify herself in a comment and expand on what we’ve said, that’s fine. We may follow up later with a fuller report from other planetary empaths. It’s unfortunate that the empaths undergo these debilitating experiences, but so far are unable to pinpoint the location or specific type of tragedy. Yet, even if the location and type of tragedy was identified and the authorities alerted, it would have been difficult to stop these kind of sneak attacks on civilians.

We hope the bombings and shootings in Paris are over and send our prayers to victims and survivors, and all the French people.

Huffington Post recently featured a short article from The Guardian about a conversation between infamous whistle-blower Edward Snowden and astronomer Neil deGrasse Tyson. The conversation turned to aliens and as the headline of the article puts it:  “Edward Snowden has a Depressing Theory about Aliens.” Basically, he says we’re probably forever doomed to exist as a lonely people, reaching out into the endless cosmic void and finding no response.

He thinks that the aliens probably have a really advanced encryption program on their software that we’ll never be able to break. Yeah, he really said that. As if they’re like us, but with better security for their communication systems. Maybe living in isolation as a wanted American in Moscow for a couple of years has affected his thinking. It seems he is expanding his own scenario out to the cosmos. Metaphorically, it seems Snowden is alienated.

If that was all that was to it, I wouldn’t have bothered with a post. However mysterious, directly below this article, without any transition, are the stories of ten people describing their contact with aliens. At first I thought that maybe the Huff Post was trying to show the other side of the story, that some of us actually are in contact, or have been, with aliens. But then after reading these unedited stories, I decided that no, what they were doing was trying to show that only crazed people communicate with aliens.  That’s my take. What do you think?

Here are a couple of the stories. You can find the rest at the link above.

CYNTHIA

When I was in my thirties, I found out from my father about a government experiment that I was part of in which they were using alien DNA to create me. I also have been on the ships most of my life off and on. I’ve had lots of contacts. … I was being taken. I’ve been taken on ships quite a bit.

I’ve met Salamander beings and I’ve met Greys. I’ve also met the Blue Arcturians which are incredible. They all have their own personalities and their own purposes. … I’ve also met the Cat People that are from Sirius. I’ve actually seen people that can shape shift from human looking to Reptilians.

As far as the abductions, I’ve had numerous of them where they’ve shown me around various ships. … They’ve also explained … why they’re here and how they’re here to help humanity.

Janet

December 1995 I landed on Johnson atoll, an island eight hundred miles southwest in the Pacific Ocean and I was a civilian working for the military and when I landed there a man came over and said, “You’ve landed on a joint US military ET base.” And I said, “Oh really?” So a year later in 1996 I was sleeping in my bed and suddenly I’m being carried by six of the traditional ET’s with the large heads and large eyes. There are there military on either side walking and I’m screaming bloody murder. … And the Grey on the right hand side the one that was carrying my foot said, “Go ahead and scream all you want.You’re in an energy field and no one could hear you.”

Last year when we were visiting our daughter in Orlando, we went by a New Age bookstore to browse and saw a basket of free bumper stickers that read: If anything can go well, it will! In other words, the opposite of Murphy’s law. We took several, put them on the bumpers of our cars, and Megan put one on her bumper.

Since we put them on our cars, we’ve had three experiences connected to the bumper stickers. The first one involved a battery for Rob’s car – which he ended up getting for free, He wrote about it here. The second incident involved a fender bender to the back of my car that didn’t cost us a cent because the guy who ran into us paid cash for it. I wrote about that here.

Today, there was a third incident. Rob was running late for a private yoga class that he teaches and was speeding – doing 60 mph in a 35 mph zone – toward his destination. He got pulled over by a cop, then a second cop arrived. He was detained for about ten minutes while they did the usual stuff – ran his license, looked at his insurance card. He was about to be ticketed for $270 and 3 points on his license, when the main cop walked around to the back of the car, presumably to get his license plate number, and saw the bumper sticker.

Then the cop informed Rob he was letting him off with just a warning.

In my mind, three incidents involving this same bumper sticker forms a cluster. These may not be a synchro cluster, but with each event, the message played out: If anything can go well, it will! And I suspect the point of today’s incident is to remind us of that message.

Over the years, the most common question Rob and I have been asked about fiction writing is: Where do your ideas come from?

 I don’t know how it works for other writers, but for me, ideas are often born when I walk into a particular place, locale, a setting or situation that speaks to something internal. I immediately think, Wow, what if…

This happened to me on a recent family trip we made to visit my sister, Mary, in Georgia. Rob and I and our dog picked up our daughter and her dog in Orlando, then drove to Mary’s place in Roswell. We had a wonderful family reunion with Mary’s three sons, their partners, and dogs and the next day drove to Blue Ridge, Georgia.

It’s in northwest Georgia, in the Chattahoochee National Forest, about 2,500 feet above sea level. Neal, Mary’s partner, owns a cabin there that sits in the middle of nowhere, in six or seven acres of rolling forest with a rushing stream at the foot of the property. We had planned to spend a lot of time hiking, but the weather system that brought terrible flooding to South Carolina – a once in a millennium storm-  had other plans for us.

From the moment we arrived on Friday to the hour we left on Sunday, it rained almost constantly. The rain was never torrential – just a steady downpour that created the most beautiful sound as it danced against the cabin’s tin roof, swept through the woods, and filled the stream.

At dusk that first evening, we hiked with the dogs, down through the trees toward the stream. They tore through this paradise of wet woods and delicious scents, free as the wind, and we scurried after them in our raincoats, caps, and really soggy shoes. Mary and I finally called it quits and headed back to the porch to decide what to do for dinner. Go into town for groceries or snack on cheese and crackers?

As she and I were sitting on the wide, wraparound porch, the sound of the rain lulled me and I suddenly thought, This cabin is the perfect hideout. Isolated but comfortable. Not a neighbor in sight.

Between us and the actual downtown of Blue Ridge lay 10 miles of twisting, muddy, slippery mountain roads walled on either side by dense forest.

“Mary, the bad guys come here to hide out.”

“The aliens?”

I laughed. I hadn’t been thinking of aliens, but sure, why not? “Maybe.”

“Is anyone living in the cabin?”

“A couple with a young child and a dog.”

“What have the bad guys done? Why are they running, hiding out?”

I’m not sure if she asked me that question or if it was a question I asked myself. Probably the latter. My sister doesn’t ever sit still for long. She was probably inside the cabin at this point, checking the fridge, the cabinets, and making a grocery list. But with this question, the vein dried up.

We went into town for groceries, then grabbed a bite to eat at one of the restaurants downtown. As we left the restaurant after a great dinner, we realized we had gotten turned around and come out on the wrong side of the restaurant. A very long train – Blue Ridge Scenic Railway – stood between us and our car.

We walked for awhile along the track. Neal tried a door on the train. It was locked. Rob finally ducked under the train and crawled through to the other side and the rest of us followed him. And when I was under that train, negotiating a white chain link barrier, the vein blew open again. This is how the bad guys escape. They’re clumsy, like me, uneasy about being caught, and in such a big hurry that one of them gets stuck. Uh-oh, now what?

It was like that all weekend, with snippets of the story rushing into my awareness, then retreating again. And the rain kept falling. And falling.

Late Saturday afternoon, we were possessed by cabin fever and drove through the rain to Blue Ridge, to Fighting Town Tavern for dinner. I was pretty sure the bad guys – aliens or human – had eaten here. The menu was cool because of the stuff written along the edges.

The posters in the restroom were worthy of extended conversation and yes, maybe one of the bad guys was an aging hippie who had seen Hendrix or The Doors in concert.

A  football game was on TV and as the bad guys drank and drank (how much alcohol can an alien drink?) they got louder and rowdier and cheered for opposing teams. Was this where they did something BAD and escaped under the train and headed into the mountains and ended up at Neal’s cabin? Who was in the cabin when they broke in?

Late that night, the outside security light blazed on and I bolted upright, my heart pounding. I was sure the serial killers/bad aliens were out there, peering through windows that didn’t have curtains or blinds. I flopped back against the mattress, pulled the covers over my head, and hoped dawn would arrive soon. When I told Mary about it the next morning, she just laughed. “Trish, the security lights are triggered by motion detectors. It was probably a deer.”

I embraced the voice of reason, but still had doubts.

On Sunday morning, the rain stopped, the sun came out, and Megan and Rob did yoga tree postures on a fallen stump while the dogs raced through the woods.

All was well. I’d reached the ending of my story. I had a beginning and an end and didn’t have any idea what had happened in the several hundred pages between those two points.

But someday I’ll know.

This is how ideas for novels are born. At the end of the day, though, at the end of the story, you are left with this:

There’s a synchro here, but you have to keep reading because Rob added it at the end. I used Rachel’s photo because she was really  the star of the 2nd Democratic debate.

What a refreshing difference the 2^nd Democratic debate was from its Republican counterpart. The Republican format – with the silly kid’s table for those candidates whose poll numbers were low and then the real deal with a bunch of guys and one woman shouting at each other – was a carnival. The Dem debate in South Carolina, with Rachel Maddow moderating for MSNBC, was great. Rachel interviewed each candidate one on one for 30 minutes and I actually learned something about each of the three candidates.

Martin O’Malley, the former governor of Maryland, has been a progressive for most of his political career. He’s slick, smooth, smart, savvy, and has a record to prove it.  He can be funny, too. Rachel did an interesting thing where she had each candidate choose an envelope with some questions in it that were intended to reveal a bit more about who they are as people as opposed to who they are as candidates. One of the questions: What’s the most outrageous (or some other adjective) article of clothing you own? The response? A kilt that was given to him. O’Malley’s poll numbers, though, are in the tank and when Rachel pointed that out, O’Malley flashed a big politician’s smile and said he loves a challenge.

Bernie Sanders was the next candidate Rachel interviewed. It’s apparent that Sanders likes Rachel, that he opens up to her. Sanders is trailing Hillary Clinton by a huge margin in South Carolina. But out of the three candidates, he came across as the most genuine. Toward the end of her interview with him, she showed a photo of Sanders when he was in college at the University of Chicago in 1962. He was directing a protest about segregated campus housing. “What was that younger Bernie Sanders thinking at that time?” she asked.

And he told her what that protest was about and how he’d been marching for civil rights with Martin Luther King Jr., and it confirmed the sense I’ve always had about Sanders – he’s the real deal. There’s no super PAC money giving to his campaign. No Wall Street dudes. No corporations. More than 750,000 people have donated an average of $30 to his campaign. This is about as grass roots as you can get in this country. Sanders has drawn larger crowds than his competition wherever he has gone and it’s because his message resonates – that the economy in this country is rigged for the upper 1% and the middle class is basically getting screwed and that he would change that as president.

When Rachel asked Sanders what he would do about ISIS, I loved his answer. No boots on the ground. No war. Muslim countries in the mid-east need to step up to the plate as a coalition and not just depend on the U.S. as the world cop who will take care of it. He voted against the war in Iraq because he felt that Bush and Cheney and the rest of that gang were lying. Clinton voted for the war in Iraq – and has since apologized for that vote, but her apology doesn’t change the repercussions, that the entire region is now in chaos, with refugees pouring into Europe by the millions.

Sanders also talked about climate change – how real it is, that it’s a national security issues, that he doesn’t want to leave his seven grandchildren with a planet that is basically uninhabitable. In Iowa, he said, thirty percent of the power in that state is now generated by windmills. And I’m thinking, why isn’t the same true in Florida of solar power?

Then there was Clinton. Yes, she’s qualified. Yes, she’s smart and has a lot of foreign policy experience and yes, I would love to see a woman as prez. If she’s the nominee for the Democratic party, I’ll vote for her. She was engaging, on target, answered questions with great intelligence and knowledge. But my choice is Sanders and here’s why.

I sense Bernie is genuine, a real person and not a politician who has been subsumed by his public, political personality. Yes, he’s the oldest of the candidates, 74, but that also means he has the longest public voting record in congress and his record shows stunning consistency. This man’s stance against war, for civil rights, for equality across the board, has been unchanged throughout his career in politics. When he talks, I see passion fueled by deep beliefs. When Clinton talks, I see controlled passion deeply colored by ambition. When O’Malley speaks, I see a quick smile, a thoughtful frown, and political verbiage.

I think Sanders beat out the competition tonight. But the real star was Rachel Maddow. This woman holds a PhD from Oxford, is a lesbian and self-avowed flaming liberal, and should be running for president. Her interview format was terrific, her questions for each candidate were spot on, and the time allotted to each candidate actually provided viewers with information.

So let’s see, my ideal ticket would be: Sanders, Rachel or Elizabeth Warren in any combination. What a different country this would be with any of these 3 in charge. What a changed world it would be.

Here’s a good roundup.

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Trish wrote above that there was no synchronicity, but I stumbled on one, of sorts. Just before the candidate forum, we were busy cleaning two closets that we’d ignored for quite awhile. We were appalled by the dirt and dust and who knows what we found hiding behind the boxes on the floor. Yuck! Then, of course, there’s the possible symbol stuff— cleaning up hidden issues that we’ve buried in the closet or unconscious of our minds. I didn’t think about that until later, when I had a dream that night.

As we were finishing and the forum was about to start, Trish said, “I bet Hillary and Bill don’t do stuff like this.” It seemed an odd thought. I guess the idea was that they would have someone else do it. Her comment came into play in my dream.

We watched Rachel interview the three. She’s very good, but I was a bit disappointed that there no debating, just q&a. It was worthwhile, and Sanders came off a winner, as Trish said above, at least a winner on that night. I went to bed early and dreamed of a large dirty house, and there in the dream was, who else but Hillary with a broom cleaning up!

Dreams are usually about ourselves, not other people, but I couldn’t help thinking that Hillary might indeed be working on cleaning things up from the past to sanitize her campaign. After all, who doesn’t have a dirty closet hidden away somewhere waiting to be discovered? So it goes, as Kurt Vonnegut used to write when there was no need to say more.

It’s interesting how similar ideas and concepts come together from diverse sources. For instance, recently within an hour I experienced a collision of concepts about parallel or alternate universes.

First, the hard science part. I read this in Huffington Post.

“Alternate or parallel universes may actually exist, according to the findings of one astrophysicist, but many in the scientific community aren’t convinced.

“Ranga-Ram Chary, U.S. Planck Data Center’s project manager in California, recently discovered a “mysterious glow” by mapping the Cosmic Microwave Background, otherwise known as the light that was left over from a few hundred thousand years after the Big Bang.

“Ordinarily, Chary would have found nothing “except noise.” But the spots of light were 4,500 times  brighter than they should have been.

“Chary concluded that the glow could represent matter from another universe ‘leaking’ or colliding into ours. This would validate the hypothesis that our universe is merely “a region within an eternally inflating super-region,”  said Chary in an Astrophysical Journal study published in September.

“Cosmologists have speculated about multiple universes for years, but have thus far been unable to prove their existence. Chary’s research is therefore significant because it could lend credence to the theory that cosmic inflation—which is the notion that the universe began inflating right after the Big Bang — led to multiple universes.

“However, this type of claim would require a very high burden of proof. Chary admits that there’s a 30 percent chance that the glow is nothing out of the ordinary.”

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So that must mean there’s 70 percent chance that the glow is a window to alternate universes. If that’s the case, then the odds are with the multi-verse. Of course this is from mainstream science so there’s no talk about the role of consciousness, which from the materialistic view places consciousness as an outgrowth of the brain. In other words, intelligence and awareness are manifested from the physical realm.

But when we look into alternate worlds from the point of view of theoretical quantum physics things become far more mystically oriented, with consciousness becoming the defining element of reality, and all physical existence emerging from consciousness, or Source energy.

Just before reading the Huffington Post article, I’d been consuming a chapter from Robert Moss’s book, The Boy Who Died and Came Back: Adventures of a Dream Archaeologist in the Multiverse. This paragraph caught my attention:

“Physics tells us that it is probable that all of us are living in this moment, in one of a possibly infinite number of parallel universes, that every move we make (or fail to make) causes our world to split, through we rarely, if ever, notice. How can we gain experiential knowledge of the Many Worlds? How can we possibly use such knowledge? Through dreaming, and above all by becoming active dreamers.”

Moss began that chapter with a quote from William James. “Our normal waking consciousness, rational consciousness as we call it, is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different. We may go through life without suspecting their existence; but apply the requisite stimulus, and at a touch they are there in all their completeness.”

I wonder how long it will take before mainstream science recognizes the rightful role of consciousness. Science supposedly is not a belief system and explores all options. Yet, when it comes to consciousness and extrasensory perception, scientists vigilantly protect their set of rules about the nature of reality, and often scorn those who suggest that science has become a cult with it’s own beliefs.