Schrödinger’s Cat

Posted on January 17, 2013 by Trish and Rob

our Schrodinger’s cat, Simba

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I happened to stop by the blog for the Monroe Institute the other day and found a great article on synchronicity and manifestation. They had gotten the article from a site called conscious creation.

The gist of the synchro is  simple and astounding. A couple had lost their cat. They spent six months searching for it, then finally went to their local animal shelter to adopt a new pet. While they were there, another couple brought in a cat they had just found and…yes, you guessed it! – it was the first couple’s lost cat.

Powerful synchro, we can all agree on that, right?  Well, the author of the post doesn’t stop there.

“… there’s also more to learn here about how everything was and wasn’t lining up,” wrote Kristen.  “The article shares that the couple was heartbroken and looked for their cat every day, so just imagine the sad, not connected, not-having vibe that might have been there, perhaps coupled with feelings of guilt as well. And after six months of working through these feelings, they shifted their vibe. Maybe they thought that so much time had passed that it was unlikely they’d see their beloved cat again. Maybe they decided that even if it wasn’t their lost cat, they really wanted to have a cat in their lives again. Maybe they thought that they’d done all they could and perhaps it was just time to move on, knowing other cats in the shelter also needed good homes.

“Vibrationally, they released their ‘struggle to find’, and their resistance to NOT having their cat, and stepped into the vibe of HAVING a cat, even if it wasn’t their previously lost pet, but a cat they wanted, nonetheless. Whatever their motivation, when they were lined up with having a cat again, the perfect cat appeared for them!”

She expanded this thought with some personal examples, then wrote: “Resistance, either to your current circumstances or undesired potential circumstances, splits focus between what you want and what you don’t want, but can also be part of the path of shifting energy from where it is to where you want it to be, like being led along step by step. The feeling of knowing that you’re ready to move forward is an indication that your energy is now freed up from old resistance and attachments (positive or negative) and focused, no matter what all of the circumstances might look like to the rational mind at the time. Shift your energy and probabilities shift around to meet your new choices, often in ways that you wouldn’t have been able to predict from your old perspective!”

This struck me as parallel to the Hicks/Abraham teachings, as well the material in the Seth books by Jane Roberts. The Abraham teachings talk a lot about bringing yourself into alignment with what you want.  Seth’s foundation is you get what you concentrate on.

In both belief systems, when we hold on to old hurts, grievances, grudges, we get more of the same because that’s where our emotional focus lies. When we withdraw our attention from the negative, we are essentially disempowering it and eventually it simply falls out of our experience. This is especially true if we are turning our emotional focus toward what we love and appreciate about our lives.

My problem with this is that it always has sounded too simplistic.  And yet. It also resonates intuitively and has panned out for me at certain times in my life. The simplest example is the manifestation of a parking space when you need one. A more complex application is meeting your soul mate, landing your dream job, living your bliss.

Kary Mullis, Nobel-prize winner in chemistry in 1993, wrote a wonderful memoir,   Dancing Naked in the Mind Field, where he discusses some of these ideas. In one personal story, he talks specifically about Schrödinger’s cat, a thought experiment. Here are the scientific specifics.   The theory is actually posing a question (from Wikipedia): “when does a quantum system stop existing as a superposition of states and become one or the other?”

In practical terms, let’s say you’ve applied to colleges and grad schools. Your top choice is Harvard. One afternoon, you receive a letter from Harvard. In the world of Kerry Mullis  (and Seth and Abraham) until you open that envelope, everything is possible. You are accepted and you aren’t, the cat is both alive and dead. Which path do you want more than anything else in the universe? When you open that envelope, you discover what you desire at the most profound levels of your being.

In 1950, Albert Einstein wrote to Schrödinger about how he “sees that one cannot get around the assumption of reality, if only one is honest. Most of them (other physicists) simply do not see what sort of risky game they are playing with reality—reality as something independent of what is experimentally established. Their interpretation is, however, refuted most elegantly by your system of radioactive atom + amplifier + charge of gunpowder + cat in a box, in which the psi-function of the system contains both the cat alive and blown to bits. Nobody really doubts that the presence or absence of the cat is something independent of the act of observation.”

As Mullis wrote in his book, “things can be immediately and intimately connected to each other even though they are light years apart.”

And isn’t that how synchronicity speaks to us?

It’s not enough for me to set my intentions for the year. It can’t be just  an intellectual exercise. I have to back my intentions with powerful emotions, profound desires, I have to come into alignment vibrationally with what I want. Prosperity, health, and happiness are not abstract concepts. They are vibrational realities. As Jimi Hendrix sang in Purple Haze,  “Excuse me, while I kiss the sky.”

And now, I’m off to kiss that sky.

 

Posted in synchronicity | 17 Comments

Los Roques: A New Bermuda Triangle?

Posted on January 16, 2013 by Trish and Rob

Some years back, I got to return to Venezuela by planning a windsurfing vacation for the family. I don’t windsurf, but Rob and Megan do and I usually love the places where there’s wind. There are shops where I can poke around, plenty of places to just sit back and read, appreciate where I am , whatever. There are  at least two such spots in Venezuela – Margarita Island and Los Roques, an archipelago of 350 islands that cover nearly 41 square miles. The archipelago  lies about 80 miles north of the Caracas airport, Maiquetia.

When I first read about Los Roques on a windsurfing site, it was just a day trip and sounded like a hassle. No hotels, restaurants or shops. Margarita, on the other hand, was tailored for windsurfing tourists. I chose Margarita, which would take us through Caracas, where I was born. Here, Megan and Rob not only got to windsurf,  but Megan and I had an opportunity to swim with dolphins in an outdoor aquarium we had to ourselves.

I was reminded of all this today when I ran across a story about Los Roques – but not in a windsurfing context. On January 4, the plane carrying Italian fashion mogul Vittorio Missoni, his wife, two friends and the pilot, vanished off the coast of Venezuela.  The plane was traveling from Los Roques to Caracas. No debris has been found, nothing to indicate the plane crashed. In fact, Vittorio’s oldest son, Ottavio, told Italian newspaper Corriere Della Sera that, “A plane cannot vanish in this way, on a short route, without leaving any trace. I remain convinced that the least plausible reason is that they crashed into the water.”

According to ABC News,   his opinion is based on a mysterious text message apparently sent from the cellphone of Guido Forsti, who was on the plane, to Forsti’s son more than 48 hours after it disappeared.

Missoni told the newspaper the text message read, “Call now. We are reachable.”

OK, so this is beginning to sound like an episode of Lost. But here’s the intriguing thing. Since the 1990s, 15 aircraft have reported emergencies, crashed, or disappeared in this same area, and that’s according to the The Guardian.  In 2008, 14 people died when a plane making this same trip from Los Roques to Caracas vanished. No wreckage was found, only one body was recovered.

Now there’s speculation that Los Roques is the new Bermuda Triangle. I’m not so sure that the disappearance of 15 planes since the 1990s qualifies this spot as the new Bermuda Triangle. But  I’m open to the possibility. A pattern of some sort seems to be emerging. And that text message received 48 hours after the disappearance of the plane is incredibly strange. It’s also weird that no wreckage has ever been found. But really, with more than two third of the planet covered by ocean, what do we really knows about any of it?

These anomalies may be urging us to look in new places for answers. To think way outside the box. And what do we find there?

More questions.

 

Posted in bermuda triangle, disappearances, synchronicity | 9 Comments

Triangles Over Michigan

Posted on January 15, 2013 by Trish and Rob

This video is fascinating. Lights in the shapes of triangles have been spotted all over the Detroit area. One observer said he was able to see a black triangular-shaped object within the lights. A local Fox channel reported on it and they didn’t snicker and joke about it as they were reporting. In fact, at the end, one of the anchors says, “Well, we know it’s not  weather balloons.”

However, there’s one odd thing about this video – besides the lights. The skeptical point of view comes from a spokesman for MUFON, the Mutual UFO Network. The guy talks about how these lights might be experimental aircrafts and carries on for some time. At no time, does he say that these low-flying, slow-moving silent black triangles have been seen since at least the 1980s over our skies and around the world, and remain a major mystery.

Sometime believers, especially those associated with an organization lie MUFON, will take on a skeptical point of view in an attempt to show that they are legitimate and knowledgeable, and not just gullible believers. That’s fine, but the MUFON spokesman should’ve also brought in the history of black triangular UFOs.

Of course, there’s the possibility that he did, and it was cut. If that’s the case, then it was poor editing by the FOX station.

It’s very doubtful that these black triangles are experimental crafts. If they were, we would know it by now. The Stealth bomber (B-2) is triangular-shaped but flies at high altitudes. It is not soundless, and it doesn’t glide slowly at several hundred feet.

 

 

Posted in synchronicity, UFOs | 11 Comments

Synchronicity and the I Ching

Posted on January 14, 2013 by Trish and Rob

When I was 17, I discovered astrology. When I was 18, I discovered the I Ching. Both of these divination systems are symbolic, require interpretation, and provide a wealth of information about you and your life.  Carl Jung, who coined the term synchronicity, dallied in both systems. But it was the I Ching that provided the basis for his theory of synchronicity.

In 1949, in his introduction to the Richard Wilhelm translation of the I Ching, Jung first expressed his ideas about synchronicity: the coming together of inner and outer events in a way that  can’t be explained by cause and effect and is meaningful to the observer. In other words, when you ask your question and toss the coins, you are snapping a moment in time, freezing it, and the I Ching enables you to explore that moment and all its ramifications. I read those words and I was hooked.

Here’s how it works, for the Western mind: take three pennies, toss 6 times. Heads count 3,  tails count 2. If you pull a 9 on any line -marked like this: ___x____- it changes to a 6. If you pull a 6, a divided line, you mark like this:,___o___.

The problem with the Wilhelm version of the I Ching, at least for me, is that everything is interpreted through daily life in China five thousands years ago.  Yes, the system is chatty. It talks to you. I can make symbolic leaps, but since my initial discovery more than 40 years ago, the I Ching occasinally  irritates me.  I get the symbolism in Hexagram 1, the Creative, in this line: Hidden dragon. Do not act. My intuition says, okay, but…

Over the years, I’ve bought a lot of I Ching books that provide a more Western friendly interpretation to the hexagrams and the changing lines. In other words, the Chinese daily life stuff from 5,000 years ago was reinterpreted. But it wasn’t until I started blogging that I discovered Adele Aldridge’s interpretation of the I Ching  and a light bulb in my head exploded.

Wilhelm: Hidden dragon. Do not act.

Aldridge: I am like a hidden dragon and cannot act. My creative force is still within. I am not yet recognized.  I remain true to myself, uninfluenced by failure or success while I wait for my own ripe time. The evocative image that Adele created for this line

speaks to me at an archetypal level.

This volume covers the first 16 hexagrams and each one of them is a gem, with an illustration that beautifully expresses each line of each hexagram. I suspect Adele realizes she has taken on a lifetime commitment with this project!n Even though the subtitle of the book is ” A Woman’s Book of Changes,” the material is relevant to men as well. The material is good for beginners and also for anyone who has used the Ching. There’s mystery in this ancient divination system, so much mystery that philosopher and writer Terrence McKenna came to believe it was a kind of blueprint for existence, some sort of f Rosetta Stone that contained everything we needed to know about life.

The book is a true labor of love.

Posted in I Ching, synchronicity | 8 Comments

Where the Wild Things Are

Posted on January 13, 2013 by Trish and Rob

 

When our daughter, Megan, was born, our agent at the time sent her a  bundle of children’s book classics. Among them was Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are.  It was always one of my personal favorites and when Megan was old enough to sit up and hold books, she often paged through this one. Even though she couldn’t read then, the visual feast of the illustrations was enough to hold her rapt attention.  We still have the book, tucked away on a shelf in the back bedroom.

The other day, I dropped by DJan’s blog  and found this wonderful You Tube video about Sendak – one of the last radio interviews he did, with Terry Gross of Fresh Air. He died last year at the age of 83, a talented man who, as DJan said, taught her where the wild things are. Taught all of us.

The video is a tribute to Sendak by the New York Times;  artist Christopher Niemann did the drawings you’ll see in the video. It’s a moving interview  and reminds me to do what Sendak suggested:  “Live your life, live your life, live your life…”

 

 

Posted in books, Maurice Sendak, synchronicity | 13 Comments

‘Set your intention’

Posted on January 12, 2013 by Trish and Rob

yoga studio in Costa Rica

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About once a week I take a yoga class at a studio about ten minutes away. It’s a studio where I teach a 6-week meditation course 3 or 4 times a year. Often times, the teacher begins the class by suggesting that we set an intention for the class.

Sometimes my intention is just to make it through the class without too much trouble. I usually take advanced vinyasa flow classes and typically the other students are 20-25 years younger than me. Other times, I focus on a project I’m working on and getting through a block. But on one recent morning–the morning after I’d paid a bunch of holiday bills –I said to myself ‘Bring in money, bring it in soon.’ Not exactly a spiritual intention, by any means, but a practical one.

The class with this particular teacher was as challenging as usual with a lot of tricky arm balance poses and twisting postures that require a flexible spine. When the class was over, I reminded everyone of my upcoming meditation course and headed for the door.

As I put on my shoes, one of the students tapped me on the shoulder and handed me an envelope with my name on it. “What’s this?” I asked.

“Oh, it’s a Christmas card from some of the students. I noticed you hadn’t picked it up.” I thanked her and walked out my car with my mid-January Christmas card. I slid behind the wheel and opened the envelope to find $30 in cash, a total surprise.

Then I remembered the intention I’d set for the class and laughed. That certainly was a quick response from the Universe. Cash handed to me before I’d even left the studio. Not quite the quantity I was thinking of, but I decided  to look at it as symbolic. After all, it had seemingly manifested out of thin air.

Posted in synchronicity | 10 Comments

Carry on, Jim Moseley

Posted on January 11, 2013 by Trish and Rob

One evening in February of 2011, we stood outside Abbondanza, an Italian restaurant on Simonton Street in Key West and watched a tall, elderly man amble slowly across the street. We hadn’t seen Jim Moseley in more than 20 years, but we recognized him immediately. We would soon find that even at age 80 Jim’s wit remained sharp and he still maintained a bit of his New York hipster attitude.

We had kept in touch with him since the late 1980s when we wrote for OMNI and occasionally used Moseley as a background source for UFO-related stories.  He’d been investigating the subject since the early 1950s. We would often receive responses from him on a postcard with CONFIDENTIAL!!! written on the front of the card.

He started a UFO magazine, Saucer New, in 1954 and traveled the country interviewing many of the so-called ‘contactees,’ people who claimed close encounters with aliens. He even managed to interview ex-president Harry Truman, who had been in office during the famous wave of sightings over the capital in 1952. Truman was friendly, but denied knowing anything about UFOs.

Later, Moseley lived in Peru for several years and excavated ancient artifacts as an amateur archaeologist. He continued his pursuit of the UFO enigma over the years and co-authored a satirical tome, Shockingly Close to the Truth, that combined his interests in ‘grave robbing’ and UFOs. From 1981 until the fall of 2012, he published a ‘trade journal’ for ufologists called Saucer Smear.

As the title suggests, Moseley used his wry sense of humor to skew both believers and skeptics who often battled each other on the pages of the journal. Jim never wrote about UFO sightings per se, only about the people investigating them. He considered himself a ‘skeptical believer,’ but questioned many of the major UFO cases, including the Roswell crash in 1947.

The long-time resident of Key West joined us for dinner that evening. After all these years, we wanted to know what he thought about UFOs. Right away, he told us that the ‘nuts and bolts’ explanation didn’t ring true. In other words, UFOs are not crafts flown here from other planets in the same sense that we would fly a spacecraft to the moon or Mars. He shrugged. “Beyond that, it’s all guesswork.”

On abductions: “I can’t say it’s true because I’ve never experienced it. However, something is happening, what it is, who knows.” His comment reminded us of lyrics from the famous Buffalo Springfield song, For What it’s Worth.

Later, Moseley suggested that UFOs and paranormal phenomenon are related. “It’s complicated. I call it the 3 ½ D explanation. It makes the most sense.” When we asked what was the most important thing he had learned about UFOs over the years, he thought about it a moment, then smiled. “You can’t be in a hurry to find answers in a field where there aren’t any.” A classic Moseley comment.

After dinner, he invited us to his home. Years earlier, we had stayed at Rose Lane Gardens, a six-unit guest house Moseley had owned in Old Town. Now, however, he lived in a dingy one-room apartment where he typed Smear on an old Selectric typewriter while sitting on his bed. He didn’t own a computer, didn’t want one. It was sad and depressing to see him living this way. His million dollar inheritance that had allowed him to spend decades investigating UFOs was gone.

Before we departed, Moseley told us there would only be a few more issues of Smear before he gave it up. He mentioned health problems. It was the last time we saw him. Jim Moseley died of cancer Nov. 16, 2012. The last issue of Smear appeared in September. We hope Jim is still exploring the mystery from the other side and finding more answers than he did here.

RIP, amigo. If the truth is out there, you’ll find it.

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The above was a brief excerpt from Aliens in the Backyard, which comes out Feb. 4 as an e-book, and soon after as a trade paperback and audio book.

Posted in synchronicity, UFOs | 12 Comments

Dove Visions

Posted on January 10, 2013 by Trish and Rob

Here’s another synchro tale from Sandy, who has shared her journals with us, writings that are largely about her unusual alien contact experiences. This story deals with her visions related to a white dove. The bird would appear, wings flapping and hovering in front of her face when she closed her eyes to rest or meditate. She described the images as realistic as an actual dove, and their presence was accompanied by an indescribable euphoria.

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“It was an absolutely astounding weekend. On Saturday we went to a small holistic health fair in Wilmington, Delaware.  I rode up with Deb, Gloria, Lauren, and a new friend, Celeste. Robert met us up there later in the evening.

“I was sitting in the very back of Laura’s minivan with Deb. Gloria was in the middle seat and I was telling her about the repeated visions I’ve had of the white dove. The latest one occurred last week during a moment of rapture when  the ET’s were working on me.

“As I spoke, I saw Gloria bend down with a curious look on her face, as if she was looking at something on the van floor. She spoke with Lauren for a moment (who was driving) then she turns to me with a shocked, but pleased look on her face and held her hand out to me.

“She said, “Susan, I believe this is for you…” and she handed me a beautiful golden dove pin with a little diamond in it that she just found on the floor of the van. She’d asked Lauren if it was hers and Lauren said she had no idea where it came from. Gloria swore that the pin wasn’t there when she got into the van. We were all speechless.”

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Susan was wearing the gold dove pin when we met her in person for the first time a few weeks ago.

 

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Bermuda Triangle synchro

Posted on January 9, 2013 by Trish and Rob

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hl18YiC4uOU

 

Without a doubt, one of the most popular subject matters for cable channel mystery shows is the Bermuda Triangle. New shows are created every year and old ones are repeated regularly on the History Channel, Learning Channel,  National Geographic Channel and others. Virtually every show includes an interview with Bruce Gernon, who survived a direct encounter with the BT  phenomenon. Usually, his story is referenced early and then  featured near the end.

One recent episode of The History Channel’s Mystery Quest, however, focused almost entirely on Bruce Gernon’s story and the on-going research he is doing on ‘electronic fog’ with University of Nebraska professor David Pares. Bruce and I wrote about that fog in our Bermuda Triangle book, THE FOG. In the Mystery Quest episode, the narrator mentions speculation that UFOs are related to the Bermuda Triangle phenomenon, but nothing more is said about the matter.

Now, Bruce recently contacted me about an e-mail he received in which a viewer of that program spotted three UFOs passing by at the 36:48 to 36:50 mark in the video when Gernon and Pares were flying into the BT. I watched it and found the objects he mentioned. I continued watching and a couple minutes further into the video Professor Pares is receiving extraordinary readings on his meters that measure  levels of  electronic energy and electromagnetism.  Right at the 38:00 mark, I noticed two more objects dart past the plane, which was being filmed from another plane. Then again, while Pares is still talking about these readings, there’s another UFO passing over at 38:57.

I mentioned these other UFO appearances to Bruce in an e-mail and told him that the last one might be light reflections. Here’s how he responded:

“Yes, they might be light reflections from the windows inside the plane but it seems strange they are there at the same time Pares is picking up the huge electromagnetic readings.  The object at 38:57 looks almost like a semi-invisible UFO is passing right over us.  He was getting those readings twice–each time we passed directly overhead of the famous Bimini Road.  I haven’t talked to Pares yet.  I will let you know if he comes up with anything.”

So even if the objects are light reflections, their appearance is a synchronicity, coming just as the meters bounce nearly off the scale. Something strange was happening.

 

Posted in synchronicity, UFOs | 7 Comments

Dreams & synchros

Posted on January 7, 2013 by Trish and Rob

Sometimes the synchronicities are like dreams. If you don’t write them down immediately, they drift away. For me, that often happens after I’ve said or thought that I’m definitely not going to forget that one.

I wrote the above comment because I had just experienced that very thing. I remember clearly telling Trish about the synchro and Megan, who was visiting, heard it, too. We were all somewhat baffled and impressed at the same time by it. Then we all forgot it.

Possibly, the forgetting was related to what happened next. Megan was watching television and a character in a movie uttered this line: “Who sleeps standing up?”

That caught our attention because less than hour earlier Trish had mentioned how she had come out of the bathroom during the middle of the night and found me standing near the end of the bed facing the wall. I was sound asleep. I had no memory of that, but figured I’d gotten up shortly after Trish and realized she was in the bathroom. So, as I waited, I dozed off. Perhaps, because of my yoga and meditation practice, I’m actually able to sleep standing up.

So Megan answered the guy on TV by saying, “My dad does.”

Several days passed and as we were driving past a restaurant near our house called the Welli Deli, I suddenly remembered the initial synchronicity that set off this post. Here’s what happened.

An Australian man, who Megan had met in Orlando, texted her and told her he was in Greenwich Village with his traveling buddy and they were looking for a good bar. Megan mentioned it to me and I said: “Tell them to go to the White Horse Tavern.” It’s an historical 19th century bar with a lot of character, a place where some famous writers have hung out, including Dylan Thomas, Norman Mailer, and Anais Nin.

Megan asked where it was so I Googled the name. I was stunned to see that the first thing that came up was White Horse Tavern Wellington, FL. That’s here. But I’d never heard of it. Where was it?

I clicked onto it. That’s it in the photo above. I realized that I did know about the restaurant, but not by that name. It’s actually only about a mile from our house as the crow flies, but located on a road that we rarely turn onto, unless we’re going to one of the winter equestrian events, which we don’t do very often since Megan took her chaps and riding boots and moved to Orlando.

Megan and Trish were as surprised as I was that my search had turned up a White Horse Tavern so close to home. I never did hear whether or not the Aussies found the one on Hudson Street in NYC. Because, for some reason, we all promptly forgot about the whole thing. As if it were a dream.

 

Posted in synchronicity | 21 Comments