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Rob and I watched the New Hampshire primary this evening, the first after the Iowa caucus. Bernie Sanders was predicted to win this primary because – as the pundits kept repeating over and over again – his state of Vermont borders New Hampshire.

These same pundits were surprised that the Iowa caucus last week was essentially a tie between Sanders and Clinton. He won 49.6 percent of the vote and 21 delegates and Clinton won 49.9 percent of the vote and 23 delegates. Clinton, however, came out before any of the networks had announced the projected winner and declared herself the winner.

Early on during the New Hampshire primary, MSNBC announced that Sanders was the projected winner. As of 11:22 p.m., Sanders has won 110,953 votes or 59.6 percent of the votes and Clinton has won 72, 231 votes or 38.8 percent. As one pundit put it, this is the largest margin in history. For the first time, we heard moderators and commentators saying for the first time that Sanders was a force to be reckoned with. This was the guy who, nine months ago, was written off by everyone because he’s a Democratic socialist, because Clinton was the presumed candidate.

It’ll never happen: we heard that time and again. But, as some wise person somewhere once said, Never say never. Bernie kept drawing the largest crowds of any candidate wherever he spoke. Young crowds, college kids, the youth vote. His grassroots fundraising – no super PACS, just donations from more than 3 million people who donate an average of 27 bucks – is unprecedented. When he and Clinton essentially tied in Iowa, the pundits really sat up and took notice. Now that he has won New Hampshire by such a huge margin, even Clinton supporters like MSNBC’s Chris Matthews are blown away.

Here’s the Sanders’s message, which has remained basically unchanged for his decades in Congress:

That the system is rigged for the super wealthy – the upper one percent

That corporations should pay their fair share in taxes

That no one should have to go 50 or 60 grand into debt to get a college education- i.e., free tuition at state universities and colleges

That health care should be a right not a privilege – i.e., single payer system, Medicare for all

That Citizens United – the supreme court decision that corporations are people – must be overturned so that corporations can’t buy elections

That the minimum wage must be raised to at least 15 bucks an hour

That the U.S. can’t continue to be the world’s cop – i.e., he voted against the war in Iraq; Clinton voted for it

Combating climate change

Racial justice

And that’s just the tip. Read more about his issues at his site.

But the thing with Sanders is his passion, the consistency of his message, and that fact that his voice comes across as genuine. Clinton, on the other hand, comes across as just another politician who talks about incremental change (sorry, that hasn’t worked) and how she can get things done and take on Wall Street and the banking system and all the rest of it. Never mind that in 2013, she earned more than 9 million bucks for speaking engagements on Wall Street.

One afternoon recently at the dog park, a bunch of us were sitting around on a large pipe that the dogs like to run through. Jamie and I were talking about Clinton and Sanders and she said that either one of them would be fine with her. “But they aren‘t equal,” I said, and enumerated the reasons why I think Sanders is the better candidate.

Jamie said, “Okay, let’s do a little dog park focus group,” and turned to a couple of young guys in their twenties. “Why is Sanders so popular with your age group?”

The bearded guy, a teacher, just laughed. “Well, that’s easy. He’s for the people. For us. When he talks, you know he believes what he’s saying. He’s genuine. When Clinton talks, it’s all about her.”

“She’s the establishment,” the other guy said. “Sanders is the rogue, the rebel, the revolution.”

It’s interesting that a 74-year-old Socialist Democrat has 85 percent support among 18-27 year-olds. When I mentioned this, the teacher nodded. “Yeah, it’s his message. We get it. Clinton’s message is about the perpetuation of the status quo.”

When we left the dog park, Rob and I got a kick out of the fact that the only two cars in the lot with Bernie Sanders stickers were ours and a truck, parked right next to each other. That’s the picture above.

After watching the primary tonight, I realized that one of the reasons I love national politics is because you get a sense of the collective pulse, the collective consciousness. And this pulse has Sanders at the very liberal end of the spectrum and Cruz and Trump at the very conservative end of the spectrum. The headlines at the Huffington Post tonight  

WTF GOP 

A RACIST, SEXIST, XENOPHOBIC DEMAGOGUE JUST WON THE NEW HAMPSHIRE PRIMARY…

But a Democratic Socialist also won the primary.

There’s something extraordinary happening in this country that I haven’t seen since the political scene of the late 1960s. What began with the huge crowds that Sanders drew early in his campaign, in the tens of thousands- dismissed by pundits as flukes – may now be a revolution that will usher in a vastly changed world if he wins the nomination and the election.

Yes, I would love to see a woman as president. But give me Senator Elizabeth Warren, not Clinton. She’s the old guard.

Sanders is the agent of change. And who knows? Wouldn’t it be something if he tapped Elizabeth Warren as his VP?

A starling murmuration

Today, February 8,  I was driving to my favorite salon to get my hair trimmed. When I drive, particularly on this pleasant route, my mind hums along. I was thinking that it was a new moon day in Aquarius, a fellow air sign, and new moons always mean new opportunities. Suddenly, I found myself stuck in a weird, negative train of thought, and when that happens, I try to find something else to think about.

I glanced up at the sky and saw a flock of birds – hundreds of small birds, I’m not sure what kind – flying west. Then they suddenly changed directions. And it hit me as a synchro, a message that I should do an immediate 180 in my thinking. And that’s what I did.

When I got home, I did some research on this curious phenomenon. In 1984, zoologist Wayne Potts published an article in Nature on his research on how flocking birds move. And his work illustrated that birds in flocks don’t just follow a leader. Instead, they anticipate sudden changes in the flock’s direction.

Sounds like precognition, right?

Once a change in direction begins in the flock, Potts said, it “spreads through the flock in a wave.” Potts called it a manoeuvre wave and said that it begins slowly but can reach speeds three times faster than would be possible if birds were simply reacting to their immediate neighbors. Potts called this ability among flocking birds the chorus line hypothesis. That is, he said, birds are like dancers who see an approaching leg kick when it’s still down the line, and anticipate what to do.

“These propagation speeds appear to be achieved in much the same way as they are in a human chorus line: individuals observe the approaching manoeuvre wave and time their own execution to coincide with its arrival.”

So not only did I experience a startling synchro, I apparently was observing precognition in action as well!

Astronaut Edgar Mitchell—one of 12 moonwalkers—died Friday. He lived just a few miles from us in suburban Lake Worth, Florida. We didn’t know Mitchell personally, but saw him speak some years ago in an appearance in Boca Raton.

When I read the Palm Beach Post’s story about his life, I noticed there was no mention of Mitchell’s controversial belief and comments about UFOs and aliens. They did, however, mention that he founded the Institute of Noetic Sciences, which explores paranormal phenomena. Mitchell also performed telepathy experiments on his return trip from the moon—a very cool thing to do, we think!

So to fill in the gap about Mitchell’s interest in UFOs, here’s a portion of an interview from 2013 that Mitchell gave to James M. Clash, author of The Right Stuff: Interviews with Icons of the 1960s.

Clash:  You’re also known for your views on UFOs. What’s your experience regarding the Roswell, New Mexico, incident of 1947?

Mitchell: After my space flight, I was contacted by descendants of the original Roswell observers, including the person who delivered the child-sized coffins to the Air Force to contain alien bodies. Another was one of the children of the deputy sheriff who was patrolling traffic around the site.

There was also a military officer who was a friend of the families not involved in that particular operation, but who did share office space there. They all seemed credible with their stories that the bodies found were alien.

Clash: If that’s the case, why has it been hushed up?

Mitchell: Initially I think there was justification in that leadership officials thought people weren’t ready to handle it. But we are well past that now. Frankly, and this is just personal opinion, remember what (President) Eisenhower said in his final speech: “Beware the military industrial complex.” I suspect that’s what we’re talking about.

But it’s not just military. It’s a cabal of organizations primarily for a profit motive. We invented aircraft at the beginning of the 20th century.

Twenty years later, we had an airline industry. Think of what that could mean in terms of space travel with control of UFO machinery, technology. There’s a lot of money involved.

Clash: Have you ever seen a UFO yourself?

Mitchell: I consider myself fairly well informed, although I have not seen one personally. I’m not out there looking — I’m pretty busy.

Clash: Have you been threatened by anyone about your outspokenness on the subject?

Mitchell: No, but they wouldn’t be very successful with me if they tried.

Clash: Are you disappointed that America last visited the moon back in 1972 and has only sent astronauts into low earth orbit since?

Mitchell: There is no question we have to continue with human space development to other planets. But we also need to get our economy running. Then we have to get the world organized to work on this because it is really too much for any one country.

We need a community of nations capable of space flight because we all have to be off this planet sometime in the future. Our sun is going to burn out eventually, and we are not in a sustainable situation.

P.S. Go find them, Edgar, whatever and whoever they are. And check in periodically  to let us know, okay?

I recently encountered a surprising, and unlikely, synchronicity  related to the chakras.

I was preparing for a meditation workshop that I lead at the yoga studio where I teach. I use a lot of guided meditations, and one of them focuses on the chakras—the invisible energy field that surrounds the body from the tailbone to the crown of the head. Chakras have been part of  yoga theory and Eastern philosophy for a couple of thousand years or more, and have become recognized and studied in the West in recent decades.

Each chakra is related to a bija, or seed sound, which we chant softly while focusing on the chakra in question. Here are a few examples of bijas: YAM, RAM, HAM, AUM. Each chakra is also related to a geometric shape. For example, a crescent shape is the focus of the throat chakra – or ajna chakra.

Finally, each chakra is also associated with a mudra or hand gesture…and that’s where my synchronicity manifested. I was focused on the mudra for the heart chakra because I had two versions of it in my notes. I was trying to remember which one I used in the previous course, and which one was the appropriate one. I finally realized both were correct, but one of them improved the description by providing more detail.

I’d been thoroughly focusing on the mudra for about five minutes when I was interrupted by a buzz from my phone. I’d been playing Words with Friends with David, our publisher at Crossroad Books. He’d just made a move and it was my turn. I clicked onto it and was startled to see that his word was ‘mudra.’

Wow! That really surprised me…and of course when I mentioned it to Trish, she said: “That’s a good one. Write it up for the blog.” And so I did.

Seven years ago, on February 4, 2009, Rob and I published our first post on synchro secrets.

This happened, as so many things do, through another writer, Nancy Pickard. She mentioned back in January of that year that she’d just started a blog and I’d never heard the word and asked her what it was. Wow, I thought, your own writing platform?

When I remarked to Rob that we should start a blog, he looked at me like I was unhinged. “What’re we going to write about?” he asked.

“Synchronicity.”

His expression said, Yeah, sure. He’s a triple earth sign – double Taurus with a Virgo moon. Translated, that means: Prove it. Show me how this could be viable. Show me why I should bother. So I created the blog on blogger and wrote the first post and published it.

Two years later, we had published 7 Secrets of Synchronicity, were working on a second synchronicity book, and were hacked by a computer dude who subscribed to Amazing Randi’s tenets that all facets of the paranormal were bogus BS. We lost three computers, the hacker took over the blog for several hours. When we gained control of the blog again I moved it to WordPress and reported the hack to the FBI, who did nothing.

What I’ve learned in these seven years about how synchronicity functions in our lives is that it isn’t paranormal at all. It’s natural. It’s how the universe functions, how it endows us with those magical, aha! moments that leave us in a state of wonder, awe, and bliss. As author Elizabeth Gilbert says it’s big magic. And it enables us to move forward through this mysterious labyrinth of life with guidelines, sign posts, affirmations, warnings, confirmations.

Sometimes it manifests as the trickster and laughs at us. Other times, it’s as familiar and comforting as the cat that sleeps next to us at night, purring with contentment. There’s no second-guessing synchronicity. You can’t make this stuff happen, but you can create an inner environment that ‘s conducive to it, an openness that whispers, Yes, okay, show me. By acknowledging its reality, you surrender to it.

I’ve lost friends over my beliefs – i.e. skeptical friends. I know people whose marriages have collapsed over this issue of how mankind is interconnected. They won’t say that in court, of course, but that lies at the heart of it. One partner is open, the other partner is closed off. Whether it’s a business or personal partnership, a friendship, a relationship with a sibling, parent, or boss, the impasse is often insurmountable. But for every friend I have lost because of my beliefs, I have gained numerous more. Those who believe are rapidly surpassing the skeptics.

Google synchronicity. Tonight when I did this, I saw nearly 7 million links. Back in 2009 when I did the same thing the total was just a fraction of that amount. Academics like Bernard Beitman,  a visiting professor of psychiatry at the University of Virginia, are writing about it.

Even arch skeptic Michael Shermer experienced synchronicity  when he got married. And honestly, if this guy can admit to the experience, then it’s okay for the rest of you skeptics to do so, too. Come out of the closet. We believers are out here, cheering before you even make your admission.

And so, on our 7^th anniversary, many thanks to all of you whose knowledge and experiences have enhanced and expanded our collective awareness of synchronicity. And thank you, Nancy, for telling me about blogs!

A few weeks ago, we covered the well known story of the breaking point between Jung and Freud that involved two mysterious and startling cracks in the bookcase in Freud’s study. Like the well known scarab dream story, it was a significant point in Jung’s life that affected his future, which ultimately affected many of us who have an interest in signs and symbols and mysteries of the unknown. We posted that story here.

I was reading over the story which we include in our upcoming book, Sensing the Future when it occurred to me how strange Jung’s immediate response was to the incident. He was feeling very angry about Freud’s dismissal of the paranormal and Jung’s interest in pursuing it and holding back his feelings when the first loud explosion erupted from the bookcase.

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.”

Did he really say that? If it happened to me (Rob), I probably would’ve jumped up and shouted, “What the f*ck was that?” But that was another era, and maybe he did exclaim, “Aha, catalytic exteriorization phenomenon, Dr. Freud.” Hm, maybe I’ll try that next something goes bump in the night!

 Amazingly, Jung went on to say that it would happen again…and it did! Was that synchronicity or precognition, psychokinesis? Maybe all three.

 If one of us experienced something like this and wrote about it, it wouldn’t make the impact that it did when Jung related it. What makes it notable is that Freud is considered to be the father of modern psychology and that Jung, whose name is often preceded by the great Swiss psychologist, devoted his career and, ultimately, his entire adult life, to “what Heraclitus called the ‘boundaries of the soul,’” writes Robert Hopcke in There Are No Accidents. “He consistently applied scientific methods to examine so-called ‘irrational’ phenomena and to elucidate the psychological meaning and function of such experiences in human life – paranormal experiences, extrasensory perception, UFOs, psychokinesis and the like.”

I was going to stop there, but it’s worth pointing out that while Freud dissed the paranormal, he certainly thought about what happened that day in his parlor and tried hard to rationalize it. In fact, he wrote Jung a letter in which he attempts to de-mystify the experience. Here it is in part:

“I do not deny that your comments and your experiment made a powerful impression upon me. After your departure I determined to make some observations, and here are the results. In my front room there are continual creaking noises, from where the two heavy Egyptian steles rest on the oak boards of the bookcase, so that’s obvious. In the second room, where we heard the crash, such noises are very rare.

“At first I was inclined to ascribe some meaning to it if the noise we heard so frequently when you were here were never heard again after your departure. But since then it has happened over and over again, yet never in connection with my thoughts and never when I was considering you or your special problem. (Not now, either, I add by way of challenge.) The phenomenon was soon deprived of all significance for me by something else. My credulity, or at least my readiness to believe, vanished along with the spell of your personal presence; once again, for various inner reasons, it seems to me wholly implausible that anything of the sort should occur. The furniture stands before me spiritless and dead, like nature silent and godless before the poet after the passing of the gods of Greece.”

Maybe Freud continued to experience the reverberation of Jung’s pent up anger that exploded on the scene. Maybe that’s what the cracks he heard later were about.  Notice that he didn’t say that these cracking sounds were something he had been familiar with prior to his meeting with Jung. If you would like to read the complete letter from Freud to Jung on the issue, here it is.

With the Iowa caucus still too close to call at 11:43 pm on February 1, I decided to run this post on socialism. As of this time, Hillary Clinton has given her victory speech but not a single network has called her the projected winner. Bernie Sanders, wisely, hasn’t spoken yet. This race is so close that even if he comes in a close second, he has basically won because no one expected outlier Sanders to take on the Clinton machine. Google Bernie’s fundraising just for the onth of January – no corporate sponsors. These donations are all from people like us, 3 bucks here, 50 bucks there. So here’ s the post:

Recently on Facebook, I saw a comment from a young man about socialism. He was responding to a woman’s remark that she liked what Bernie Sanders had to say. I rarely comment on stuff like this on Facebook or anywhere else, but his remarks reflected a common ignorance about what socialism is – and isn’t.

I understand the need to believe in free stuff. However, let’s just take a look at a few current socialist countries who are failing all around the world. Venezuela, Greece, the UK is not doing so well, Switzerland Sweden, it goes on and on and on. At some point in time, socialism fails, because you run out of other people’s money.

Or this, from the same guy:

By the way, we have free education now through high school. Look at Americas outcomes. We fail compared to the rest of the world. Free stuff is not appreciated. You relish what you work for. Socialism makes you work for nothing. That’s why in the end, it’s a failed prospect.

And this:

No one can argue that the top 1% have all the wealth or not. They do. But they would have it anyway. The smartest people always do the best. Trying to equate the finances across various levels of intellectual ability is sheer stupidity. Let the people who can prosper prosper and let the rest of us do the best we can. You can’t make everyone equal. It just can’t work that way.

I think the big problem in America is we can’t appreciate what true poverty is. If any American went to a country where real poverty was on display they would come back and worship the ground we live on. Instead, we have a bunch of whiners, lazy people, and beggars, who think everything should come to them for free. Because “they are so deserving” by virtue of being born in this country. It’s all a bunch of BS. You earn your way in the world. That’s the only way that makes sense. Getting things for free only breeds mediocrity.

He’s missing the point. Socialism isn’t about “free stuff.” It’s about a more equitable system, where corporations and the super wealthy pay their fair share. In a country as rich as the U.S. why should CEOs pay fewer taxes than their secretaries? Why do we have socialism for corporations and the super rich through tax loopholes? When did socialism become a dirty word?

Here are some facts. The top 10 most socialist countries in the world are:

China

Denmark

Finland

Netherlands

Canada

Sweden

Norway

Ireland

New Zealand

Belgium

Let’s take a closer look at some of these countries. From Peer Forum:

“Despite popular myths, there is very little connection between economic performance and welfare expenditure. Many of the countries on this list are proof of that, such as Denmark and Finland. Even though both countries are more socialistic than America, the workforce remains stronger.”

China: The government manages and controls the economy. It is becoming more of a hybrid economy, however, in that it is gearing more toward capitalism. As of 2012, about 95 percent of their population of nearly a billion and a half people have health insurance.

Denmark: It has the highest taxes in the world – about 70 percent. Health care is free to all citizens – nearly 6 million people. Equality is valued. Small businesses thrive.

Finland: It has one of the world’s best education systems,- no tuition, free meals to students. The literacy rate in the country is 100 percent and the country has one of the highest standards of living in the world. Finland has one of the highest standards of living in the world. Like Denmark and other European countries, equality is considered one of the most important values in society.

Canada: Like the Netherlands, Canada also has mostly a free market economy, but has a very extensive welfare system that includes free health and medical care. Canada is ranked as one of the best top five countries to live in by the United Nations and the Human Development Index (HDI) rankings.

The UK: Health care is universal and there are other pension and retirement benefits.Interestingly, it appears that as result of the financial meltdown of 2007-2008, welfare benefits were dispensed to the banks in the UK, not to the people, similar to what happened in the U.S.

In the U.S., the richest one percent hold about 38 percent of all privately held wealth. The bottom ninety percent the bottom hold seventy-three of all debt. According to the New York Times, the “richest 1 percent in the United States now own more wealth than the bottom 90 percent”. This disparity is the one that Bernie Sanders, the only “socialist” in Congress, intends to change is he’s elected president.

In late July 2015, Bernie Sanders spoke in Madison, Wisconsin to a crowd of ten thousand about this inequality. So did filmmaker Michael Moore, who said 400 Americans have more wealth than half of all Americans combined. According to Politifact, which fact checks these statements, it’s true. As of 2010, the net worth of the Forbes 400 — $1.37 trillion — exceeded that of the poorest 60 percent of U.S. households.

“As of 2010, the net worth of the Forbes 400 — $1.37 trillion — exceeded that of the poorest 60 percent of U.S. households.” And that was five years ago. The disparity has only grown greater.

Capitalism isn’t a bad system – until it collapses into unbridled greed.

Facebook dude: In a country as large and abundant as the U.S., why should any child go hungry? Why should any college student graduate with a debt so huge it will take decades to repay? Why should anyone be homeless? If we took all the money we have spent on wars just in the last fifteen years, it would pay for universal health care and all the rest of it.

We talked about seven ‘secrets’ of synchronicity in our first book on the subject.

Robert Moss, in The Three Only Things, meanwhile, came up with nine categories for coincidence:

• There are things that like to happen together (clusters, seriality).
• Thoughts are actions and produce effects.
• Coincidence multiples when we are in motion (physical or metaphorical travel).
• Life rhymes (like clusters that involve similar words or names)
• The world is a forest of symbols.
• Every setback offers an opportunity.
• To find our way we may need to get lost.
• Look for the hidden hand.
• The passions of the soul work magic (similar to engaging the divine).

One of these categories, the hidden hand, particularly caught our attention. It sounded like another secret of synchronicity.  Moss is referring to the nature of coincidences, how they seem to be orchestrated by a hidden order. “…events that manifest at discrete points in space and time…are the result of a single movement on another plane. Coincidences are homing beacons. They are secret handshakes from the universe.”

That’s a bit mysterious sounding, but we love the idea of synchronicity as a secret handshake from the universe!

This story illustrates, I think, the interconnection we often experience even with people we ‘know’ but never meet.

We started this blog nearly seven years ago – in February 2009. Over the course of these years, we have come to know some wonderfully enlightened human beings whom we’ve never met in person. Renee Prince was one of these individuals.

I first connected with her when I found her blog in 2009, I think it was, where she described her experiences working with dolphins at one at one of the big theme parks. She had a Master’s degree in experimental psychology and her dream was to work with dolphins in intraspecies communication. She became so disenchanted with the quality of their lives that she switched careers and became a set designer for movies. One of her greatest animal experiences and friendships was with a hawk she called Tennerin,

Renee was a Scorpio, the most mysterious and psychic sign in the zodiac, and her abilities shone when it came to animals – especially the animals she loved most, like dolphins and that hawk, Tennerin.  She wrote movingly of her relationships with these animals and shared some of the synchronicities she experienced concerning them.

We exchanged emails periodically. Renee felt things profoundly, at every level of her being, and when Tennerin failed to appear one spring, she was anxious and worried that something had happened to him. She also expressed her frustration about her private life – that although she loved working on movies, the hours were long and the conditions were often brutal. Her stepfather developed Alzheimer’s, her mother’s health was failing. She had written a book about her dolphin experiences and I referred her to my agent and later on, to another agent I knew personally. Nothing happened with the book, another frustration.

In late August 2014, I got an alarming email from her. She had discovered that she had a mass in her left lung:

Hi Trish,

The Pet scan showed an 8 centimeter mass in my left lung. They biopsy it tomorrow. Everything I’ve read today on what this means is not good. Not good. I’m beginning to wonder if anything I’ve ever done is going be finished and out there. I was born on 4:42 am in Pasadena, California.(I had asked for her birth data so I could look at her natal chart) I won’t hear the results until sometime next week. I honestly don’t know how I can get through this. Or if I’ll get through this. I need to turn down a TV pilot tomorrow—there goes my income for I don’t know how long—I have to have it removed at the very least and then…???  Without union work I will soon lose my coverage. I can’t even pet my parrot because my fear will translate to her and even with the Ativan they gave me today, I am drowning in near panic.

In September, I received another email from her. She said she had mesothelioma, and was waiting on the results of a CT scan that would tell her if the cancer had metastasized. Her agent had called to let her know her book proposal was being submitted to new editors and she seemed more hopeful.

If the cancer hasn’t metastasized, then I face an operation to cut it out of me and then do chemo to make sure it’s all out. The thoracic surgeon here in Salem has already said it’s too big for him but now the oncologist is referring me to a specialist surgeon in Portland. However, I am writing my affirmations every day and feeling Tennerin as he comes sweeping into my lung and shrinking the thing.

Renee, by her own admission,  had a deeply held belief that she wasn’t good enough, that she couldn’t ever complete something she had started. I  really didn’t understood her belief because, to me,it looked as if she had lived according to her own code. But she felt like this belief had contributed to her health challenge.

My least email from Renee was in April 2015. She was in an airport in San Jose – but I don’t know if that was San Jose, California or Costa Rica or some other San Jose. She was in a holding period, waiting for her insurance company to stop denying her coverage to get two spots of cancer “frozen to death by needle, like my doctor does for all his patients that have survived years past the six months to twenty-two month survival time. I am a great believer (I hope) in the individuality of my own recovery and of not relying on estimates and what has gone before. In choosing the doctor that I did, I think I made the first great decision away from that depressing survival range. Also, every other doctor would have taken the lung out and expected no more than that average survival time range.”

In the email she described her chemo treatment, how awful it was, and how, ultimately, it didn’t work. And then this:

I don’t believe I did anything “wrong” to get this cancer. What happened is that my mother married an alcoholic child-molesting psychopath who was a plasterer and he stored joint compound that contained asbestos and contaminated the entire family. Only 15% of people exposed to asbestos get it, probably because of a gene combination related to—get this—getting certain batches of the polio vaccine which contained simian virus 40, a leftover contaminant from working with monkeys to manufacture it.

If I planned this in some other portion of my existence then what a fucking asshole I was, to cut short my life, which is only now beginning to finally blossom. Thanks, in part, to getting mesothelioma. So maybe I planned to get it, then to get cured. But if I die before I get the things done that I need to do—that I believe I was sent here to do, I’m coming up to the afterlife with a raging anger that they had better watch out for. They don’t want me up there with this kind of seething resentment. They do not.

This evening I was writing up one of Renee’s stories and realized I hadn’t heard from her in months. I Googled her and found this, her obituary.

Renee died at the end of June 2015.

My hope is that she is flying through the skies with Tennerin and diving into the depths with dolphins, and brainstorming with John Lily about intraspecies communication. My hope is that she has found in death what eluded her in life. Peace, my friend. You lived and died according to your own code, and that is a huge triumph. Thank you for sharing the most sacred parts of your life with us and expanding our knowledge and driving home the point that we are all in this together.

Back in the summer of 2009, Rob went trail biking – the kind of biking where you slam over obstacles like fallen trees. It had rained that day, which broke the stifling Florida heat and usually meant the trail was well packed. I reminded him to take his cell phone since we’d had some car issues, but he couldn’t find it.

Around 8 PM, I heard the front door open, shut, which was odd. He usually came in through the garage. I went out into the living room and he was sprawled on the couch, eyes squeezed shut. “I think I sprained my ankle,” he said, and lifted his injured foot onto the edge of the coffee table.

I took one look at his foot and knew this wasn’t a sprain. A bone on the outside of his foot was about the size of an apricot. “Uh, I think this is a fracture or a break. I’ll get some ice.”

So I got a bucket of ice, then headed to the internet to look for information on the bones in the feet. I figured the bone that was fractured or broken was the cuboid, on the forefoot, as it’s called. I wondered if there was a synchronicity connected to any of this.

Later on, I stacked up a bunch of books we’d been using as references and put them on Rob’s desk. A few minutes later, he called out: “You aren’t going to believe this. You know those books you just put on my desk? I picked up Jung’s autobiography, turned to chapter 10, and here’s how it starts: ‘In the beginning of 1944, I broke my foot…’”

Skip ahead seven years. On January 7, 2016, my friend Millie Gemondo and I traded readings, as we frequently do. The exchange really isn’t fair because I simply read the tarot cards and Millie is a psychic who has made a number of correct predictions for us over the year. During the exchange, Millie told me to warn Rob to be careful when he went biking. She saw him falling off the bike and said it could be serious. I remembered the broken foot from 2009, so I passed on her message to Rob.

“A synchro,” he said, and reminded me that six years ago, he had a vivid dream that on January 7 (no year given in the dream), he would fall from his mountain bike and die. A few days after that dream, he’d related it to a friend with intuitive abilities who told him he wouldn’t die, but would be paralyzed, and for him that would be like death.

Needless to say, Rob avoids mountain biking every January 7, even though it’s prime riding time in South Florida. He has continued that tradition ever since he had the dream. Several times, he has remembered his dream date with death at the last hour. His regular riding partner, worried that the dream might have been about him, now also avoids riding on January 7.

That story might sound silly to a non-believer, but why challenge such a dream? Instead, Rob acted on it. As he puts it, “I honor that day for life rather than death.”

This is how precognition works in its purest form, I think. A possible future is glimpsed and we can take action to change it.