Welcome to The Mystical Underground

Animals that cross our paths usually have something to tell us and synchronicity is often involved.

Tonight during dinner Rob related an experience that had happened earlier today when he went biking with a retired fireman and his son, Eric, who had just started using the clips on the bike pedals that hooked on to his biking shoes. He was worried about what he would do if he had to stop suddenly. These hooks keep your shoes on the pedals even if you fall. It’s not exactly my idea of fun – I dislike being trapped under any circumstances – but hey, whatever moves your blood. So as they were biking, Rob thought that if a tortoise crossed their path, he would be the first one to see it.

I wasn’t sure if that meant he would see it because he was staring at the ground as he biked or if it was because he was first in line. I asked him about it and Rob said it was just one of those random thoughts that flitted through his head as they biked. But not too long afterward, a tortoise crossed the bike path and Eric, who was in the lead, was able to stop without falling off his bike. Rob subsequently told Eric that the tortoise was his teacher, showing him to how to stop quickly without falling oss his bike.

“So it was telepathic,” I said.

“Or precognitive,” Rob said.

I immediately went looking for the esoteric meaning of tortoise and the gestation period for its eggs (timing).

The gestation period is 60-90 days – i.e., two to three months. Tortoises carry their homes with them. In some cultures, they are considered to be harbingers of good luck. So, okay, I’m thinking that in two to three months, Rob will experience good luck in some area of his life.

This evening, I was closing the door to our garage – which has developed a few problems lately – and saw a large rat scampering away from the noisy garage door to a deeper part of the garage. Some people are disturbed by cockroaches, but I’m freaked out by snakes and rats. I quickly shut the utility room to the garage, and told Rob we had a rat in the garage.

He insisted I must have seen a possum, but my brain translated it as rat. The possums in our neighborhood usually don’t enter enclosed spaces; they stick to fences, trees, the yard. I left the garage door open slightly so it could leave, thank you very much. After a bit of research on the Internet, I found out that the gestation period for rats is between 21-23 days, about three weeks.

I usually seek out the gestation period first because it provides timing. So here we had the tortoise – two to three months gestation – and the rat, which provided a time frame of about three weeks. But what else could these critters tell us?

I pulled out the book my friend Millie Gemondo and I had written, Animal Totems. Tortoises or turtles, we wrote, are indicative of long life, and to numerous fortunate opportunities that are headed your way. A rat may be symbolic of blocking of holes in your life where corruption can enter. I really didn’t like that interp, and went looking for something else. This is the same thing I do when I draw cards for myself. Or throw an I Ching and don’t like what I get. I figure the future is in flux and still malleable, so I reach for another possibility. And find something I like:

“If Rat has scurried across your path you are being asked to assert yourself in new areas that you have not yet explored. Perhaps it’s time to take up those new hobbies, challenge yourself by learning something new or simply taking the uncertain first steps towards your dreams. Rat is letting you know it’s time for “new beginnings” and change.

Alternatively you are being asked to evaluate the clutter around you. Is it time to purge old baggage and feelings that no longer serve you? Time for a spring cleaning. Sell or giveaway all the physical things that are just filling up the space around you. In doing this you will often symbolically begin to clear old emotional issues and cluttered thinking. Allow yourself to feel as you purge. This cleansing act will make space for the new things to come.

This interp makes sense to me. My purge, I think, will begin in my office!

Let’s say you’re trying to solve a problem and suddenly the answer comes to you while you’re doing something totally unrelated…and you’re not even thinking about the problem. No cause and effect. That’s synchronicity, and such synchros lie at the heart of the creative process…and creativity lies at the heart of synchronicity.

It’s the space between.

“The space between…is the space hat lies between the observer and the observed; it is the space of the creative act that brings a poem or painting to life.” – F. David Peat, Pathways of Change

In our book, The 7 Secrets of Synchronicity, we called Secret 4 The Creative. “Most of us have a creative talent or interest that we would like to nurture and develop. But we find all sorts of reasons to procrastinate…If you fail to nurture your creativity, you’ll close yourself off to synchronicities that could lead you to the right opportunities and people at the right time.”

But watch out. When you open up to creativity, you never know what you might do. Take the case of Archimedes.

The king of Syracuse, in ancient Greece, wanted to find out if a certain crown was made of real gold, and who but his favorite scientist, Archimedes, could determine this without mutilating the crown? It’s said that Archimedes suddenly hit upon the idea for an answer when he set foot in a full bathtub and the tub overflowed.

He was so exalted that he ran naked in the streets of Syracuse shouting “Eureka! Eureka! I found it! I found it!” The solution Archimedes discovered started a new branch of hydrostatics.

Thank you, Amit Goswami, author the Quantum Creativity, for that example…the naked truth!

Ever since I put up a contact form on our blog, we’ve been getting a lot of email. I just wish this widget had existed when we stated the blog nearly 6 years ago. Today, we received an interesting email from a woman named Hannah Liddle, from the UK:

Hi, I have been reading your book ‘The 7 Secrets of Synchronicity and would really like to be able to share some stories with you as I am quite stuck with this stuff but would really like to use it in a positive way. I experience many types of synchronicity but there are some that intrigue me more than others as I have never come across any one else experiencing the same sort of thing. I feel a bit beaten down with it today as I was given an email address of someone currently making a film on the subject and it was though synchronicity i got the email. I was so excited until today when he basically got back to me and told me that what I am experiencing is meaningless. This has really upset me. I don’t know what I was expecting but it certainly was not that. Anyway as I said, I would love to tell you my stories if you are interested. Kind regards Hannah.

Naturally we were interested. Here’s her fascinating number synchro.

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Ok so this started when I was 28 years old and spending a lot of time in Glastonbury and I found out about numerology. One day I was wasting time so I decided to add up my name:

Hannah = 28 = 10 = 1

I then decided to try my middle name:  Marie = 28 = 10 = 1

Then tried my surname:  Liddle = 28 = 10 = 1

Obviously I see a pattern so I tried my date of birth (my birthday is on the Autumn equinox which is significant later)

22/09/1977 = 55 = 10 = 1

My mother kept records from when I was born, my birth time: 10am = 1

I grew up all my life living at house number 1

I also know that i was going to be called Adam if I was a boy, Adam being the so-called 1st man in Christianity. Adam = 10 = 1 (This is the same in both methods of numerology)

I later found out about the Chaldean method of numerology so I was intrigued by then:

Hannah = 22

Marie = 4

Liddle = 2

Added together 22 + 4 + 2 = 28 = 10 = 1

The time of year I was born in Judaism is called Rosh Hashanah (note it has my name in it) This literally means 1st of year or head of year.

Hana in Albania means Moon and e Hane refers to Monday the 1st day of the week.

I was later chatting to a guy in Turkey and when he asked my name he said that means one. I asked what he meant, he said its like Neo in the matrix and has to do with a Korean martial art.  Later I found out he meant Han-mu-do.

The Han philosophy for Han-mu-do means: One or United, Head or Leader, Bright or Optimism and Higher learning.

I later was telling my friend all of this and she had been teaching English in Korea and she said the way you say one is Hana.

The name date for Hannah is 26th July (its St Anne or St Hannah, Jesus’ Grandmother). The 26th July is the 1st day of the Mayan calendar.

In the Coptic Egyptian calendar the month I was born -September – is 1st of Thoth. It also is the beginning of their calendar.

I was quite depressed when all this started and I was looking at it negatively because I thought it was confirming that I really am all alone. Then I looked at the word alone and noticed that really it says all-one so then I started to see it in a positive way and I started to read more about how everything and everyone is connected.

It has helped me learn more than school ever did. Everywhere I go in the world people know my name because it is very old and through it all this came about.

I will be so pleased to hear what you think.

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Our next post will include the filmmaker’s response, and an analysis by an expert numerologist. One…one…one…one….

In this name synchro, there seemed to be some sort of telepathic component to it. See what you think:

On Christmas morning, we were outside with Nika and Noah and our neighbor, Annette, also came out with her kids and dog. While our dogs, Nika and Noah, ran around the front yard chasing her German short-haired pointer, she and I gabbed for a while about what we’d gotten for Christmas. Her cat, Copper, was in our tree, watching the dogs from a safe spot:

“I have a great synchro for you, Trish.”

“Let’s hear it.”

Annette is an identical twin and she and her sister have told us some great synchros that we’ve posted about their telepathic connection. But this one, as it turned out, wasn’t a twin synchro.

On Christmas Eve, she said, a male friend and his girlfriend stopped by her house and were all excited about the new dog they’re getting later this week. It’s a black and white French bulldog, like the pooch in the picture at the top of the post. The friends showed her some photos they had of the dog.

“This dog was adorable,” Annette said. “And as I was looking at the pictures, I commented that her name should be Bella. The guy glanced at me. ‘What’d you just say, Annette?’ So I repeated that the dog looked like a Bella.” She paused, laughing. “So the guy says, ‘That’s what we named her!’”

Telepathic? That was how it struck me and when I told Rob and Megan, they agreed.

Curiously, Annette did something similar when we first brought our golden retriever home in November 2009, but in reverse. At the time, his name was Presley and when Annette initially met him, she said, “He’s not a Presley. He’s a Noah. That’s his soul name.”

And the name felt right for him and that’s who he came.

After Men’s Health Magazine published the article on Coincidence, which we reviewed, they asked readers on their Facebook page to post their best coincidences. Here are a few:

Wayne Hood I worked for Office Movers in 2001. We were hired by The Pentagon to clear out an entire wing for remodeling and installing new office furniture and supplies. Tuesday morning, September 11, we were called off of work around 6:30 a.m for the day. I thought “sweet, day off!” The wing that the plane hit is the one we were working in…

Mike McCarthy In October 2012 I was walking in Boston with my girlfriend. She was stopped by a homeless man looking for change and we felt compelled to give him some cash – she gave a dollar and I gave two. As we walked away he said ‘hey, I’ll get you back’ and we shrugged it off. Later that night I got in a car accident. My Mustang lost traction on a rainy highway and I went off into the woods. Big rocks everywhere and I slid into a soft shrub. Completely unharmed after ‘exiting’ the highway at about 50 mph, I walked a little dazed up the embankment and back up to the breakdown lane. Between exits by a mile in either way, there laying in the breakdown lane were three soggy dollar bills. To this day I believe that homeless man was my guardian angel.

Larry Johnson Lost the cross from my chain during a brain scan (I was heavily sedated). 11 days later during a follow up scan in the same room (lucid this time) one of the techs mentions to another that they found a cross on the floor. Neither tech was talking to me. Neither was in the room the first time. I got my cross back.

Steve Gunther Two friends came to my party in Minneapolis. They had never met but we discovered they had lived in the same house in Skaneateles, NY. One sold it to an Indian couple and the other bought it from the Indian couple.

Robert L. Sanchez I’ve been a Boy Scout leader for many years. When I signed up for their advanced leader training a couple of years ago, the training required a complete physical to participate. Even though my father died from it, an an older brother already had it, I had gotten careless about going in and having a PSA test for prostate cancer. My yearly tests had been negative for many years, and I slacked off. The physical for the leader training came out positive though, and it was determined that I had stage 2 prostate cancer. I went to the training, and 3 weeke later, I had a radical prostatectomy. It’s been 3 years now, and (so far) I’m cancer free. Turns out that the leader of the training class had the same thing, and found it the same way. Getting our physicals for Boy Scout advanced leader training quite possibly saved our lives.

There was one more that I didn’t include because it was kind of complicated about a woman who changed doctors and combined multiple health issues. But I noticed that the writer’s name was Katy Purr, and that she wrote that she had a gyno issue (colloquially, one might say in a men’s magazine forum that she had a ‘pussy’ problem), and, yeah, she had a cat scan. Okay, sorry about that one.

Over the Thanksgiving holidays, we drove north to Jupiter, where there’s a dog beach – and that means NO LEASHES, RUN FREE, DIVE INTO THE SURF.

As we approached a vacant spot on the beach, we all noticed a strange blue structure about thirty feet away.

“What’s that?” Megan asked.

“It looks like a boat,” Rob said.

It looked, I thought, like a disaster. Beach patrol emplyees were clustered around it and the curious, like us, were moving in closer, snapping photos of it. This boat, which felt like it was made of foam, Rob said, had probably dared the rough seas between Cuba and the U.S. with thirty plus people on board.

“What kind of foam?” I asked. “Styrofoam?”

“Not styrofoam. More like foam you might find in a mattress,” Rob said.

I could see this, desperate refugees slicing open their mattresses to extract the stuff inside so that the boat could be created. For years, any fleeing Cuban who reaches the shores of the U.S. has been allowed to stay. Now that quasi-diplomatic ties are being restored, this automatic refugee carte blanche might be rescinded and Cubans are arriving in Florida in droves.

From a January 2015 article in the Washington Post:

Many of those Cubans flew straight into the Miami airport, having boarded flights in Madrid; Nassau, Bahamas; or elsewhere with passports from Spain and other third countries. Upon reaching U.S. Customs, they pull out their Cuban documents and request asylum, or ask to stay under the protections offered by the 1966 Cuban Adjustment Act, which offers permanent residency to Cubans one year after arrival in the United States.

Now, please, take a close look at this “boat.” The rudder is rusted. If you turn it over, the lack of space would be shocking. And really, foam from a mattress? To cross 90 miles of rough seas, some of it in the dark? As one beach patrol employee said, “No one survived this.”

The U.S., as politicians are quick to point out, is a country of refugees. But to the Republicans, these refugees are only cool if they come from Europe or Cuba, and not from any Muslim or predominantly black country like Haiti. And according to Donald Trump, immigrants from Mexico are definitely not welcome and when he becomes prez, a thousand-mile wall is going to make it really difficult for anyone from Mexico to get into the U.S. And nefer mind what he recently said about banning all Muslims.

There’s a common belief that Cuban refugees are predominately conservative because they fled a Communist/Socialist government and that only the children of Cuban refugees are moderately more liberal than their parents. I’m happy to report this isn’t uniformly true. Marina, who was once an emergency room doctor in Cuba, is now living in the U.S., bagging groceries at Publix, and she has a lot to say about American politics.

Marina is in her mid-fifties. Her sister and mother and other members of her family are still living in Cuba. She gets her news from the Spanish TV station, Telemundo, and is proud to tell me that she and her husband believe that Republicans work against their best interests by trying to keep the embargo in place – which makes it more difficult and expensive for her to visit her relatives. Why, she asks, should she have to pay $400 or more for a round trip airfare ticket to her former home, just 90 miles off the Florida coast?

And Marina isn’t alone. Many of her Cuban friends in the same age bracket feel as she does. Marina won a lottery to cone to the U.S., and her husband followed several years later. As she and I walk out to my car, both of us pushing my grocery cart along in front of us, I am reminded of a quote by Che Guevarra: “The revolution is not an apple that falls when it is ripe. You have to make it fall.”

Idealism without action is an empty call.

That abandoned refugee boat still haunts me. Those refugees died trying to get here.

Wow, is there any doubt this youbng woman won the audition or whatever this was?

UPDATE ON ANNE’S CONDITION: This newest entry from Whitley is powerful.

There are people you never meet, but for whom you feel deep affection because of the tremendous impact they have had on your life. Whitley and Anne Strieber are two such individuals for me.

In 1987, Rob and I walked into a B Dalton bookstore (which no longer exists) in the Fort Lauderdale mall, and saw Communion on the new release table. That image of a Gray, that face, is permanently etched into my consciousness. We bought it, our worldview blew wide open, and we’ve been following Strieber’s career and insights ever since. No one writes like he does about the contact experience. Few writers have his grasp of language and nuance.

When our first synchronicity book was released, he invited us on to his Dreamland radio show and we’ve been back half a dozen times over the years. Sometimes he interviewed us, other times Anne did. These shows were always highlights for us, like chatting with old friends. During our interviews with Anne, she invariably brought her particular take on aliens, abductions, and the nature of reality.

When my novel Esperanza was bought by TOR, who has published many of Strieber’s books, my editor at the time sent him the manuscript and he gave the book a wonderful blurb. That editor also bought a mystery Anne had written. He and Anne are incredibly generous souls who have pursued and explored a strange and often difficult path.

This afternoon, our friend, Sandy, who was on one of the Dreamland shows with us, wrote that Anne, who has had brain cancer for several years now, is in ER and seriously ill. Both Whitley and Anne have written movingly of their journey through her first bout with brain cancer in their beautiful book, Miraculous Journey.  Both of them have also written journal entries on their website,  about her current bout during the last several years. One of the most moving was a piece Anne wrote on November 2, 2014. Anne’s wit and courage truly shine in this piece. Another piece that Whitley wrote in 2013 brought me to tears.

Only once before have we written a post like this requesting healing energy for a friend and that was for our blogging buddy Mike Perry, when he underwent surgery for the removal of a kidney. And he came through it just fine! There’s great power in collective thought and prayer. Please send Anne and Whitley Strieber your healing energy, prayers, thoughts, whatever you do in times like this.

Our candle is lit.

A friend of ours, who passed away a couple of years ago, took an interest in synchronicity in his latter years after we sent him one of our books. He was somewhat skeptical by nature, and usually dismissive of anything paranormal. However, when we saw him for the last time on a visit to Key West, where he lived, he confided that synchronicity does exist and that he’d had two such experiences in his eight-plus decades of life.

He proceeded to tell us a complicated story that involved a coincidence that was meaningful to him. What I found most curious, though, was that he was convinced that he’d only had two such experiences in his life. I didn’t say anything about it, but I remember thinking that I’d probably had a couple within the past few days.

Some of us, it seems, are in the flow of synchronicity and experience meaningful coincidences frequently. But do we actually have these experiences more frequently than others ? Or, is it that we are aware of synchronicity and, therefore, notice rather than ignore, dismiss or overlook coincidences? Maybe the answer is yes to both questions.

Fiona Harris is one of those people who has numerous synchros. She takes the time to write and post them on two synchronicity Facebook pages, and we’ve used one of her stories here. Here’s another from Fiona, related to the end of the holiday season.

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I was just putting away my Christmas decorations this morning, and I remembered a neat thing that happened last summer. It actually started last Christmas. I was putting away my Christmas stuff, and somehow, a green glass bird ornament got left behind, stuck to my curtain. I didn’t want to go and dig around in my basement to put it back, so I hung the decoration on a nail on my fireplace and forgot about it.

In the summer, I visited my Aunt in Victoria. I admired a beautiful green glass bird ornament that she had hanging in her kitchen, and asked her about it.

“Oh, that thing? I found it on the floor after Christmas. I’d already put my ornaments away, so I just hung it up!”

So somehow, my Aunt and I, in different cities, both had one ornament accidentally left out, and both were green glass birds (not the exact same, but similar), and both of us, instead of putting them back, or putting them away somewhere, just decided to leave it out as a decoration. When I got back to Calgary, I took a picture of mine and send it to her.

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This is a good synchro, because it involves layers of coincidental events. If it just happened that Fiona had visited her aunt over the holidays and noticed that she and her aunt both had antique glass bird Christmas ornaments on their trees, it wouldn’t be a very impressive synchro. After all, there are no doubt lots of green glass bird ornaments on trees and it’s not too surprising that someone who has one would notice that someone else – a friend or relative – also has a similar bird ornament of the color. Like when you get a new car, you notice all the others like yours on the road that you never really noticed prior to getting one yourself.

However, Fiona’s synchro becomes more interesting, as she pointed out, when we find out that she and her aunt both forgot to put away their similar glass birds, and both displayed them in their homes, rather than putting them away.

The story also reminded me that we always seem to forget to re-pack some little Christmas-related item that remains on a shelf for weeks until I finally go back into the attic and put it away.

Hermes – the messenger dude, Mercury

Yes, I realize that a lot of people think Mercury retrograde is silly, that it doesn’t apply to them, that it’s just some nutty designation astrologers create. Well, it’s not. If you pay attention to what’s going on in your life during the three Mercury retros each year, you’ll find that things don’t run as smoothly as you would like.

Computers go haywire, appliances break down, toilets back up and overflow, creating chaos in your basement. Relationships suffer from miscommunication, travel plans go awry, you get locked out of your house, your manuscript is rejected, your car breaks down on a highway at night, the bank errs and it’s not in your favor. For Geminis and Virgos, which are ruled by Mercury, these periods tend to be really annoying. But everyone experiences Mercury retrograde in a unique way and the first retro of 2016 starts on January 5 in Aquarius at 8:04 a.m., slips back into Capricorn, and turns direct again in that sign on January 25, at 4:50 p.m. eastern time.

To give you an idea of the global scale of a Mercury retro, look back to November 7, 2000. Mercury had been retrograde since mid-October – first in Scorpio, then it slipped back into Libra and at 9:20 p.m., it turned direct in that sign. When Mercury stations – which means it’s about to turn retrograde or direct – the potential for miscommunication is strong. But for that date, the station caused bedlam because it was election day in the U.S.

Astrologers were predicting chaos and, sure enough, at 7:49 p.m., NBC decided they had enough data from exit polls in Florida and Tom Brokaw called the state for Al Gore. With Florida’s 25 electoral votes, it meant he had won the election.

However, shortly after 10 p.m. – less than an hour after Mercury had turned direct – Brokaw backtracked and said that George W. Bush had won the state and the election. We all know what ensued after that – the endless dispute over the chads on Palm Beach County’s ballot and the eventual decision by the Supreme Court that Bush was the 43^rd president of the U.S.

On a personal level, your best way to navigate this period is to follow the rule of the 3 Rs: revise, review, reconsider. Don’t start anything new, don’t sign contracts, don’t move or travel, don’t take anything for granted, don’t assume. In fact, if you can get away with it, just hang out at home for a few weeks, sleep and eat and indulge your fantasies. Yeah, sure. Like any of us can do that without feeling totally guilty and anxious about what we should be doing or must be doing or…well, something.

Our daughter, Megan, is going to be moving and when I was looking at charts for January, I suggested that she be moved into her new place before January 5, when Mercury turns retrograde. As a Virgo, she’s now well-versed enough in this Mercury retro business to know what it means. She readily agreed.

These periods, despite how they seem in the external world, really aren’t negative. They give us a chance to lay low, to mull over, to move within and rearrange the furniture of our inner lives. People we haven’t seen in years often resurface. Old opportunities surface with new faces and possibilities. If we happen to travel during these periods, then our itineraries change without rhyme or reason, but we will undoubtedly revisit our destination in the future.

Mercury is about communication, travel, our conscious mind, how we learn and absorb, the stuff of our daily life. It can be a trickster planet, for sure, but it’s also the messenger, our most immediate and direct conduit to our left brain, our reasoning self, our ego. It’s smart to honor the retro with a gesture, a ritual, an intention: I’m going to quit eating desserts, stop smoking, start a regular exercise regimen. And well, if your toilet backs up and floods, so it goes. Take a deep breath and understand that this, too, shall pass.