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Since the bombing at the Boston Marathon on Monday, the news cycle has been a frenetic madness of twist and turns with dead ends, flawed and erroneous reporting, heroics, tragedies, and synchros.

In a shootout last night in Watertown, Massachusetts, a suburb not far from Boston, suspect number 1, 26-year-old Tamerlan Tsarnaev, was killed. His younger brother, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, apparently escaped but was wounded in the shootout. He was found this evening, April 19, hiding in a boat in someone’s backyard. And here’s the first synchro: he was granted citizenship on on Sept. 11, 2010, the anniversary of the Twin Towers terrorist attack, and will be tried as a terrorist in federal court.

He has been living in the U.S for ten years and he and his Chechen brother were granted asylum in 2002. By all accounts, Dzhokhar was a “nice” guy, fully acclimated into the community where he lived. He attended Dartmouth College, worked out frequently in the Dartmouth gym, hung out with friends, had a Twitter account that he logged in to after the bombings at the marathon. His last tweet was something to the effect that he was a “stress-free kind of guy.”

In fact, if you listen to the accounts of classmates and people he knew him, you have to wonder if the cops got the wrong guy. Yet, he and his brother carjacked a Mercedes SUV shortly before the shootout on the  Thursday night, April 18, and told the driver they were the ones responsible for  the Boston Marathon bombings. They held the driver for half an hour, had him withdraw $800 from three different banks, and finally released him, unharmed,  at a gas station.

Among the brothers’ marathon victims were  Patrick and Jessica Downes, newlyweds who were runners and were on the sidelines watching the marathon when the bombs went off. They both lost a leg below the knee. That’s them in the picture above. In less than two days, more than $500,000 has been raised for them to meet their medical expenses.

Two brothers each lost a leg in the blast. They were both roofers.  So what is it in us, we humans, that creates these parallel experiences? And what was it in these two Chechen brothers, refugees who had been granted asylum, one of whom was immersed in American culture, that caused them to do what they did?

And didn’t they have a backup plan? As young men, how could they not know that in this technological age there are witnesses to everything? Images from  a security camera on top of the Lord & Taylor building are what the FBI released and are what apparently did them in.

The younger brother, in custody this evening, was supposedly seen on the Dartmouth campus on Wednesday, two days after the bombing. Really? You pull off something like these bombings and don’t flee the country? You’re that arrogant, that sure that you haven’t been captured on a security camera somewhere along the 26.2 mile route?

And yes, that’s the other synchro. The 26. The route is 26.2 miles, more than 26,000 runners ran in the race,  there were 26 victims in the Sandy Hook massacre. The dead brother was 26. If this were a dream, what would it be telling us?

We recently opened a page above on our blog that called Planetary Empaths that deals with reports of physical symptoms that seem to foretell major catastrophes and disasters, both natural and man-made. Several people have already posted on the page. Connie Cannon and Debra Page both had e-mailed us days before the Boston Marathon bombings about their symptoms and they were certain something big was coming.

While it’s difficult to pinpoint the nature and location of such events, Nirissa Pillay, a South African woman recorded a dream very close to the time of the Boston tragedy that seems linked to it. She contacted Australian futurist Marcus Anthony with her story and he forwarded it to us after making a short video related to it. So this story has quickly gone around the world.

Here’s Nirissa’s dream.

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“I dreamed, I was at an event, near a stadium, crowds of people were not in the stadium but outside. Then I heard a bomb go off, people started running and screaming, then I heard another bomb go off. I found myself in a hotel asking the person at the reception if he knew what number my room was because I could not recall. He said it’s no 141, repeatedly.

This morning I open my inbox and my husband has forwarded me an email about the Boston Marathon bombing, 2 bombs, 141 (or close) casualties, sporting event, people running into hotels, also one of the bombs went off across from a hotel.

“I am perplexed as to the accuracy of information regarding this event and my dream. I live in South Africa, we are 6 hours ahead of Boston. This event took place while I was asleep last night.

“I have always been skeptical of everything and suddenly the concept of universal intelligence has become a reality. I’m shaken. I felt I needed to reach out and ask someone with knowledge surrounding this for maybe, some guidance on this, please.”

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The 141 figure is about 30 shy of the total number of casualties. But the similarities of her dream and the actual event are remarkable. Marcus’ video offers some interesting thoughts on such clairvoyant and precognitive dreams, and is definitely worth watching.

The bombing may actually have already happened when Nirissa was sleeping. I asked her if she might’ve picked up the information subconsciously, possibly from a TV playing in the background. Here’s what she said:

“We have not had our satellite fixed for over a month now. We chose not to fix it because it didn’t bother us much to not be able to watch TV. So it’s been mainly talking, books and board games for a while. So the answer to that question is, ‘no’- there was no other physical source of information available to me while I was sleeping.”

I also asked Nirissa if she had gone on-line before going to bed Tuesday. She responded that she couldn’t remember, then added this: “I am 100% certain, I didn’t have any knowledge about the actual event, until the email from my husband.”

So it’s more dream clairvoyance or remote viewing than precognition. Either way, it fits as a synchronicity.

Yesterday, we did two radio interviews – one with Anne Strieber, the second with Whitley Strieber. The links to those interviews should be posted in the next few days. Each interview took a distinctly different slant.  Anne,  who read the 200,000 plus letters Strieber received after Communion was published, focused on the abductees in our book. Whitley’s focus was primarily chapter 8 from our book, entitled, What’s Coming, about presidents and UFOs and what the government knows – or not.

Whitley referred a number of times to “social engineering.” The term is synonymous with the massive disinformation campaign that has existed since Roswell – more than fifty years – the deceptions, outright lies, and the ways experiencers are ridiculed, humiliated, and the corrosive ways in which people’s reputations are destroyed.  Fear is a powerful weapon- the Bush administration used it quite effectively. Fear is why many abductees don’t want their real names used when they talk about what they experienced. The fears range from what their families and friends might think, to being harassed or spied upon online, to getting fired from their jobs. Or worse.

That term, social engineering, stuck with me after the interview. It followed me into Rob’s meditation class this evening. And I think Whitley is right, particularly in the era in which we live now. We are constantly “socially engineered.” Our beliefs about what is real  and possible are sculpted by movies, TV shows, radio shows, novels and books, Facebook, Twitter, blogs,  24/7 news… You get the idea. We are constantly bombarded.

After 9-11 happened, for instance, we were bombarded with opinions and news about why we simply had to invade Afghanistan – and then Iraq. We were told that waterboarding isn’t torture. We were told things that many of us, intuitively, knew were wrong.

After Communion was published in 1987, Whitley  was first embraced – and then rejected and reviled by people who claimed the book was fiction, that he had written it to make money.  The accusation reveals a side to human nature that is ugly – envy.  He made a ton of dough, why can’t I?  It also reveals fear – fear that the story is true  and if it’s true, what does it mean about the nature of the world in which we live? He pointed out that on many UFO message boards, he is blasted as a fraud, a liar, and worse.

I went to one of those boards and yes, the comments are scathing. But many of those comments are made by people who never read Communion or any of his other books. If you have actually read Communion – or Strieber’s subsequent books – it’s impossible to miss the thoughtful, questioning intellect that he brings to this topic.  It’s impossible to miss the profound impact his experiences had on his life. His story resonates.

When I read my first Jane Roberts/Seth book back in the 70s, I was a social worker. I mentioned Seth Speaks to one of my co-workers and she burst out laughing. “The book was channeled?”  A shake of the hands. “Woo-woo stuff, Trish. Ridiculous.”

“Have you read the book?” I asked.

“Well, no. I don’t read stuff like that. Jane Roberts is doing it  for money.”

Sound familiar?

Any time that a new, cutting edge idea is put forth into the collective, it threatens the status quo and those people who cling to that status quo,  whose lives are defined by it, are the loudest protestors, the most vociferous critics. Look back through recent history. At one time, it was illegal for a white person and a black person to marry, for blacks and women to vote;  now it’s illegal in most states for gays to marry and the Republicans are trying to rule what women do with their bodies.

In one of the Amazon reviews for our book, the reader took issue with our taking a vial of holy water to a psychic in Cassadaga. With a mere touch of the vial, the psychic is able to spin off astounding detail about the situation of the owner. She provides a detailed analysis which matches almost point by point the scenario that is vexing the “experiencer.” All this is well and good – but it can’t help but make me think – with psychics of such astounding clarity of vision out there – why then can’t they turn their penetrating powers on some of the other UFO mysteries that the authors are concerned about?

Why, for example, can’t these obviously marvelously gifted psychics get to the bottom of the Disclosure issue? Why can’t they ferret out details of what the government knows, or who knows that, and provide at least decent clues to investigative journalists — to help them gain some traction on the government cover-up issue? But they never seem to apply their amazing powers in this way.

This reviewer actually provided his email address with the review, so I wrote him and said that the next time we were in Cassadaga, I would ask this psychic about disclosure and what the government knows or doesn’t. Not surprisingly, the man never responded. I should have told him that the psychic didn’t go in that direction because in my head, those weren’t the questions I brought her. The vial was my focus.

Critics and skeptics abound. It’s much easier to criticize and ridicule whatever terrifies you than it is to embrace it, research it, wade through it and try to figure it out. That’s what Strieber has done for the last thirty years. The idea that he would perpetrate a lie for three decades is patently absurd. On a strictly rational level, what would be the point? He’s a successful novelist, his books have been turned into movies, it’s not like he needs to write about encounters to survive. He writes about this stuff because he needs to understand what the hell happened to him. And really, the bottom line for any writer is exactly that.  Whether it’s fiction or nonfiction, writers write to figure stuff out. They write to figure out their personal lives, their emotional lives, their passions. They write because it’s how they are wired.

Years ago, a PhD cousin asked me why I didn’t write literary fiction. I honestly didn’t know what to say to her. I write about what fascinates me, intrigues me, puzzles me. I write to clarify my own world.

And so does Strieber.

The Boston Marathon has been around for 117 years.  Runners from all over the world congregate to run 26.2 miles. This year, there were more than 26,000 (26,839 to be exact) runners. The marathon is one of Boston’s biggest annual events. It ends near Copley Square, not far from the landmark Prudential Center and the Boston Public Library. It is held on Patriots Day, which commemorates the first battles of the American Revolution, at Concord and Lexington in 1775.

Fours hours into this year’s race,  close to the finish line, a bomb exploded. It apparently contained shrapnel and BBs and was placed low to the ground,  so as the bomb detonated, many people sustained serious leg injuries. The first explosion occurred on the north side of Boylston Street, just before the photo bridge that marks the finish line. A second bomb exploded ten to twenty seconds later, several blocks away along the marathon route.

From an article on the Huffington Post: “Roupen Bastajian, a state trooper from Smithfield, R.I., had just finished the race when he heard the blasts. ‘I started running toward the blast. And there were people all over the floor,’ he said. ‘We started grabbing tourniquets and started tying legs. A lot of people amputated. … At least 25 to 30 people have at least one leg missing, or an ankle missing, or two legs missing.’”

The marathon honored the victims of Newton, Connecticut, with a special mile marker in Monday’s race.

As of tonight, three people are dead, including an 8-year-old boy, and more than a hundred were wounded. Hospitals in the area are reporting injuries predominately to the lower extremities.

One of the oldest and most historic cities in this country was thrown into pandemonium, air space over Boston was closed, and alert levels in other cities were raised. The situation was described repeatedly as “fluid” – i.e, no one really knew what was going on, whether there would be more explosions, whether this was a terrorist attack or the work of a single deranged individual. This tragedy, of course, quickly became a global mass event. And as with any mass event, there are a number of synchronicities:

1) Today is April 15, tax day in the U.S.  The American Revolution started in Boston, with the Boston Tea Party, which protested a tax on tea.  In Massachusetts, it was a holiday – Patriot’s Day, a commemoration of the first battles in that revolution.

2) The marathon route is 26.2 miles. There were 26 victims in the Sandy Hook massacre. There were more than 26,000 runners in today’s marathon.  Boston Athletic Association president Joanne Flaminio apparently noted the connection with the number of victims at Sandy Hook and called it a “special significance.”

3) Then there’re the types of injuries, mostly to lower extremities. Unless you are South Africa’s Blade Runner, you need legs and feet and ankles to run the marathon. Some of the victims have had their legs amputated.

It’s impossible to classify this synchro without integrating the loss of life, suffering, and trauma of the victims and their families and loved ones. It seems to be addressing the accessibility of guns and the raw materials for bomb-making. But perhaps the message is something else entirely.  Sometimes, it takes months or yearsfor the full message to be understood. And sometimes, the message is never grasped.

The Boston Marathon has always been a joyous event, where thousands of spectators line the route and cheer the runners, give them cups of water, and generally act as cheerleaders. It’s a community of runners and their supporters. One news anchor described this tragedy as “plunging a knife into the heart of a joyous event.” One thing is for sure: the Boston Marathon will never be the same again.

Our thoughts go out to all the victims and their loved ones.

We’re all, to one degree or another, fascinated by conspiracy theories. Many of us scoff at some of them, yet nod in agreement at others. Whether your politics tend toward either conservative or liberal, it doesn’t matter. No one, it seems, is immune from belief in some conspiracy theories to one degree or another.

Often times, we don’t even realize that we believe in a conspiracy theory simply because we think of the matter as a fact, not a conspiracy theory. For example, about 90 million Americans, or about 29 percent of the population, believe aliens exist. Some 66 million think aliens landed at Roswell in 1947. If you don’t accept those ideas, then you’re more likely to see them as conspiracy theories. The rest of us, meanwhile, might say: ‘Oh yeah, that’s true.’

The two most popular conspiracy theories deal with presidents. A whopping 51 percent of Americans – 160 million – belief that JFK was killed in a conspiracy rather than by a single crazed shooter. The next most convincing theory, favored by 44 percent or 138 million Americans, is that George W. Bush and cohorts intentionally misled the American public on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction.

These are a few of the conspiracies that Public Policy Polling asked Americans about in the aftermath of the 2012 election. They also asked respondents who they voted for.

Interestingly, Republicans tend to be more conspiracy-prone than Democrats. For example, they are far more prone to favor the idea that the government is populated by lizard people. Five percent of Romney voters gave the thumbs up on that one, while two percent of Obama voters agreed.

So if you’re among the 37 percent of Americans who believe that global warming is a hoax, it’s likely that you voted for Romney. That’s because 61 percent of Republican voters accept that conspiracy theory, compared to 12 percent of Obama supporters.

Only three conspiracies were more commonly believed by Obama supporters: that Bush intentionally misled America about Iraq’s WMDs (a massive 69 percent of his supporters believe that one), that the CIA launched the crack epidemic, and that the moon landing was faked.

There are two theories with equal support among Obama and Romney supporters: that aliens exist and the one about fluoridation. Everything else in the poll was believed more by Romney supporters.

Public Policy Polling, by the way, correctly predicted the presidential election results in all 50 states. But they also have become known for their ‘weird’ polls. During last year’s presidential campaign, for example, they asked: “If God exists, do you approve of its handling of natural disasters?”

Here’s how the Atlantic Wire arranged the findings from most- to least-believed. They also show the actual Americans represented by the percentages.

Here’s PPP’s press release on the  poll, and here’s more on how Democrats and Republicans differ on conspiracies.

We definitely live in interesting times!

And to all our U.S. friends, well, happy income tax day. Might as well embrace it, right?

We haven’t put up one of these in a while!

This strange little synchro comes from Gabe Carlson of Minneapolis. Back when we had first started our blog, he had left a comment about a mind-blowing synchro he experienced involving a teapot.  We used it in 7 Secrets of Synchronicity. It still remains one of the best synchros I’ve ever heard about. Gabe, like Daz and others who visit our blog, seems to be a synchro magnet, for lack of a better term.

I ran across his story on Facebook’s synchronicity group and asked Gabe if we could repost it.

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Yesterday, I had to stop at the bank inside a grocery store, and on a whim decided to buy a plant for the house to help counterbalance the late season snow we’re getting up here.  They had a type of plant I’ve often seen and liked, so we picked it up. In the car afterward, my girlfriend asked what kind of plant it was- there was no label, and I didn’t know.

So she pulled out her smart phone, with the intention if using an application I’d downloaded for her. The app allow you to take a photo of a plant’s leaves to get an ID. When she  entered her unlock password, I heard her exclaim violently   and thought she’d just gotten some kind of crazy news. But nope – her phone had opened up the Leaf Snap app, and it was ready to go.

She’d never used it, it had never opened itself up before, and she wasn’t even sure it was on her phone. Afterward, we tried to see if somehow the phone could have opened the app automatically, based on overhearing a phrase like, “What is this plant?” But nope, nothing would make it open. It was just coincidentally open right when she went to use it.

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Perhaps there’s a category for synchronicities that could be called, Tech Synchs! I admit to being somewhat curious about Leaf Snap’s ID of the plant. And now that I know about this app, I think it’s one I’ll download!

Here’s a peculiar story from Jane Clifford, a healer in Wales, who encountered another healer in a strange location.

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I was in a town across the mountains that I visit often with a dear friend & we had 20 minutes to spare after lunch before her dental appointment. So` I mentioned a second hand furniture place very near where we were parked that is fun to poke around in and where I have been before. Its a real shack, grubby and chaotic, but in amongst the tat there are real finds, the profits support a local church.

Outside it was a blackboard and in wobbly writing it said, ‘Prophecy and healing.’ I had a chat with a man serving in there about furniture and asked him about the healing and prophecy and where it happened, to which he replied, “Here!”

He explained that a guy called Richard did it, so I asked about the prophecy. He said, “If Richard gets a message from the Lord for you whilst he is doing the healing, he passes it on.”

I said I would like to try it, so he called Richard from the back of the shop and to my astonishment it was going to take place right where I was standing in the shop.I asked my companion if she would like to try it but  she was too shy. But she told me to go ahead and sat down nearby.

Richard was a big tall South African guy. He stood facing me and took both of my hands in his. “You are a healer, ” he said immediately. “And the Lord wants to use you as an instrument of his healing.” I confirmed that I am a healer. He continued: “You don’t attend a church, but you have the Lord in your heart.”

I agreed.

He asked what I wanted to heal and I replied lately that my arthritis has been very painful. So he asked if I know that bitterness, anger and the need to forgive are a component of arthritis. I replied that I did know that. (We have also just had the coldest winter for 60 years, which is another component).

So he asked if I had any forgiveness issues and I said that I do, because my sister has stolen hundreds of thousands from my elderly mother without her knowledge and I had been working on the forgiveness for some time and reached compassion for my sister. But then she stole more money, and I am back to zero again. So I understand I have more forgiving to do. I said I also have severe back problem with collapsed discs.

Then he started  talking to the Lord to assist me in forgiveness and to re-align my  spine and ease my pain. I would not have been surprised to hear a few praise the Lords and all that happy-clappy stuff. But I could tell he is a medium and clairaudient, a genuine one.

Then he asked if I minded if the other guy ( who runs the second-hand store) placed his hand over my lower back, and I agreed. As Richard is praying for my spine I definitely felt something going on there. Then it was done! He said the forgiveness issue will be worked on overnight.

The arthritis has eased considerably. My back is more comfortable and I actually fully expect to be in a better place with the sister stuff  by morning.

Well, the Lord sure does work in mysterious ways! Its the last place one would expect to find healing or prophecy, but there it was!

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We wonder how many people go to that second-hand furniture store for healings and prophecy. Not only was the sign amazing, but the healer was actually there…as if waiting for Jane.

I wrote this shortly after The Hanged Man became an e-book, finding a second life in digital form. It was published by Kensington Books in the mid-90s, the first book I did with editor Kate Duffy.  I kept pushing it back and back, and then received an email from David Wilson at Crossroad that on Aprilo 11-12, he would be offering it free. I glanced at the date I had pushed it back to – and there it was, the synchronicity. It was on the dashboard for April 11. So there’s the synchro. And here’s the story:

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As a writer, I’m in awe of novelists who can sustain a character over multiple books and not lose their readers.

J.K. Rowling did it with Harry Potter. Suzanne Collins  did it with Katniss in her Hunger Games trilogy, Sue Grafton has done it with Kinsey – who is now up to – what is it? V? W? – well, most of the alphabet.  George R.R. Martin has done this not with just one character, but with an entire canvas of characters in Game of Thrones. Philip Pullman achieved it in his Dark Materials trilogy. Jeff Lindsay has done it with his Dexter books. Nora Roberts achieves it with any number of her 100 plus books. John D MacDonald did it with Travis McGee. Rob nailed it with his Native American Will Lansa and with his depictions of Indiana Jones. There are many other writers who have done this, too, but these are the ones who come immediately to mind.

There’s some sort of alchemy that happens between the writer and the character in such series. Boundaries between self and character vanish. The writers’ emotions, worldview, and concerns become those of the character – and vice versa. Now, there are writing instructors and pundits, agents and editors who will tell you this isn’t so,  that it’s all about the writers’ talent and dedication and opportunities. While that’s certainly true, it’s not the full story.

Stephen King calls it “dreaming awake.” It’s a  state of consciousness that novelists enter into when they are fully plugged in to what they’re writing. An altered state of consciousness, in other words, a kind of creative meditation that produces the unexpected plot twist, the strangeness of a situation or condition, the emotional resonance that captures the reader, for whatever reason. It’s also how synchronicity comes into play, as it did when Edgar Allan Poe  wrote his unfinished sea adventure novel, The Narrative of Arthur Conan Pym, which described a fictive event that subsequently happened 47 years later.

In my experience, series characters are not easy to sustain. I did ten books on a married couple, Quin and Mike McCleary,  who plied their private eye trade in Miami. By the tenth book, I was so irritated by my agent and editor telling me how the books should be written, that they shouldn’t have any metaphysical stuff at all, that I killed off Mike and intended to bring him back as a ghost.  That didn’t happen. I changed publishers – and agents and there was never an 11th book.

I did four books for Ballantine as Alison Drake in a series that featured a single female cop on the fictional island of Tango Key. I liked Aline, I liked her life, the way she thought. I liked that she loved her partner, Kincaid, even though he was gone for long periods of time because he had a nomadic heart. She and that series gave me Tango Key,  a fictional island 12 miles west of Key West that I have returned to time and again – in my fiction, in my imagination. I think, if I ever retire, it’s where I’ll live. It’s where I put Mira Morales in the four books after The Hanged Man.

Shaped like a cat’s head with very irregular proportions, Tango Key is a mystery even unto itself. Connected to Key West by a 12-mile bridge, an engineering marvel, the island has hills, cliffs, a history, and a mystical undercurrent that fits who I am. Just about anything is possible on Tango Key. Mira Morales, a single mother, owner of a successful bookstore,  a psychic, knows it better than most.

It has  taken me a long time to figure which of my characters I would stick through for 26 books, as Grafton will apparently do. And for me, it won’t be Mira. She lives on in her own alternative universe and the reason she does is because Category Five  there’s a single paragraph that hurt the book’s sales. It was encompassed in a conversation between Sheppard, Mira’s FBI lover, and Nadine her grandmother, about real life, how the George W Bush administration had taken us to unspeakable places. That was in 2005, when the U.S. was as seriously polarized as it is now.

I remember running across an online review by someone who said, Let’s sink this book,  this left-leaning travesty.  Or something to that effect, and cited that particular paragraph/conversation in the book. I thought, Huh?   

So the series ended a book later, with Cold As Death. I’ve written other novels and books since then, but oddly, seven years later, Mira sticks with me.  She steps periodically into my dreams, she crept into Esperanza,  she’s my buddy in crazy times. So the other night  I played around with ideas for a new novel.  I had been proofing The Hanged Man and Black Water, the first two books in the Mira Morales series that Crossroad is bringing out in digital format  with a far better cover than what Kensington had. And  I suddenly thought Mira might be  my Kinsey Milhone, my Harry Potter, my Katniss, my Will Lansa.

And just as suddenly knew I didn’t want to go backward. I love Mira and her world, but s a writer I’ve moved beyond her. Other ideas are simmering. I’ll have to see where it all goes. Even if a novelist lives in complete isolation, he or she is never alone. The characters they have created crowd in, whispering, demanding, cajoling:  C’mon, make me real.