First comments on the book!

Posted on May 21, 2010 by Trish and Rob

Even though the official pub date for The 7 Secrets of Synchronicity is  June 1, some readers are already finding copies from both Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble. Robert Larson, who has a story in chapter one, called The Three Roberts, is anxious to get the book, but said he’s determined to wait until it is available from Garrison Keillor’s Common Good Books. (I think it’s already there.)

Meanwhile, here are the first comments we’ve received. One from author Teri Patrick, the other from NYT best-selling novelist Nancy Pickard. Thanks!


A fresh and fascinating expedition into the most provocative and hopeful possibilities of consciousness.  I couldn’t put it down or stop thinking about it.  Written in clear, lucid, and entertaining style, it’s a great companion to take along on the trail where magic morphs into meaning.

– Nancy Pickard

More than Secrets!, May 20, 2010

This review is from: The 7 Secrets of Synchronicity: Your Guide to Finding Meaning in Signs Big and Small (Hardcover)

What is synchronicity?
It can work for you to help you create a life full of wonder and personal power.
Start with:
THE 7 SECRETS OF SYNCHRONICITY
– your guide to finding Meaning in Signs, Big and Small

Trish and Rob MacGregor have collected rich stories from people in all walks of life who pay attention to signs and coincidences that matter to them. The book is informative and personable as it weaves many stories with philosophies and practical steps to enhance synchronicity in our days. To do so makes living life so much more fun and poignant.

What’s awesome about this book is how it includes history, literature, science, technology, nature, and politics with stories of bicycles, t-shirts, jams, pets and TV shows. All these connect through synchronicity to reveal a greater connection in our world that is often unnoticed. This books shows the reader how to notice, and why it truly matters.
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Okay, enough self-promotion. It’s word-of-mouth from here on, guys.

Posted in Uncategorized | 13 Comments

The uncanny 11:11

Posted on May 21, 2010 by Trish and Rob

We thought we’d posted enough 11:11 synchronicities  and wouldn’t be going there for awhile, but then along came a startling story by Jane Clifford of Wales. So here we are taking exit 11 again on The Synchronicity Highway. (That’s the working title of our second synchronicity book, BTW.)
***

When my Dad was dying we met as a family in a cottage on a beach so he could be by the sea for the last time. I spent 3 days there. The morning I was leaving my departure was delayed waiting for my niece so I could say goodbye. Finally I jumped in my car to leave,glanced at the clock as I started the engine and it was 11:11. I stayed with a friend that night to break my journey home,he delayed my departure the next morning,as I started the car it was 11:11.

I was fairly weary when I got home after my journey,in bed that night glanced at the clock,yep 11:11 again! Next morning slept in late,woke with a start looked at the clock & yep 11:11 again!  I have heard among other things that an awareness of 11:11 precedes a shift in consciousness; certainly as Dad approached his death I was  undergoing a shift in my understanding and consciousness.The 11:11 thing has happened intermittently since then. Also,  10:10 and sometimes 01.01.

Just a quick clock story too. I have had a modern battery driven wall clock a fake antique look with a pendulum below which has never worked in the 23 years I have had this clock. Twice a year the clock is removed from the wall for the equinox time change and put back, the pendulum never worked. In March it was lifted down to change the time to GMT, the pendulum has been going ever since! I think it’s my Dad who died last October, he liked things to work properly. Yesterday my son and I were talking about him and the ticking of this clock got so loud we could hear it in the next room! Later we went to a spiritualist meeting and he gave us messages through the medium. He didn’t  say anything about the clock but I have a feeling he might when he gets a chance. The extra loud ticking lasted a couple of hours, but it back to  normal today, and the pendulum is still working.

Does anyone out there have stories of clocks stopping or starting connected with deaths in the family?

Posted in 11s, death | 21 Comments

The Swan and the Cormorant

Posted on May 20, 2010 by Trish and Rob

This story came from Robin Yaklin, who sent it after reading  our post on Nancy Pickard. It’s one of those synchronicities that illustrates the power of a vision that may not come to pass tomorrow or even next month, but perhaps years from now. It also addresses something else we’ve discussed on this blog – birds as messengers.

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 Something went pop in my head and then came the pain like the devil slowly inserted a knife.  Pressing my hands on either side of my head, I rested my forehead on my desk and prayed God would make it stop. And, then it did, suddenly like it had come. 
A note card lay open with half a sentence composed. I kept looking at it, waiting for the pain to resume.  Nothing happened so I began again on the note.  I came to the word ‘and’.  I could not get the correct order of the letters in that simple word.  Then began the dizziness.  Long story shortened, medical referrals were made until I ended up with a neurologist and a prescription for anti-drepressants.  I didn’t like the medication.  No, I hated it.  I complained repeatedly.  No one listened. 
Acupuncture was a last resort.  During a treatment I had two visions.  First a round bubble shape, brilliantly red, with white outlining a swan’s wings.  The wings were stretched out as though the bird would take flight.  Beautiful.  I wanted it to last, but it faded and another image came – this time, the cross section of a brain.  I knew it was my brain.  It was divided crosswise so that it had four quadrants.  The front two were blue as well as the back left.  Only the right back section was red.  The acupuncturist, an internist from China, was troubled and he suggested I follow-up on this since, in Traditional Chinese Medicine, blue means stasis. “Just a hunch,” he said.
I didn’t know what to do.  I had to think these visions over.  A few weeks went by.  Driving home one day from an appointment with the unyielding neurologist, in tears, I resolved to take this into my own hands.  This was hell.  I called a friend who has MS and she listened and came to the same conclusion I had—find a new neurologist.  She offered hers and I pursued getting an appointment. 
The second opinion neurologist was friends with the former neurologist and a bit testy about my questioning her.  He demanded I reveal her diagnosis.  I refused and demanded back that he begin his analysis with a fresh perspective.  We glared at each other.  He wanted to know what tests she had performed.  I said, “None.”  He announced that I needed blood work and other tests to eliminate easily determined diagnoses.  This made sense.  I was willing to do it, but his tone bothered me.  His announcement was like a challenge, like he wanted to see if his long list of to-do’s would discourage me.  Maybe I’d go away, dontchaknow.  Last on his list was an MRI of the brain.
The phone call:  “Put everything down.  Don’t lift even a purse or grocery sack.  I don’t want to hear you went mall walking for four hours.  You can walk your hall to the bathroom and that’s about it.  Your have aneurysms.  Call these surgeons.”  I had five little lethal bubbles.  Pardon the pun, if I say it was breath-taking.
Four surgeries were needed.  In a crazy attempt to make believe life was still normal, my husband and I would go to the grocery store each night before the surgery and stock up for my homecoming.  I think we were making believe there would be a homecoming.  By our house is a lake.  The night before the first surgery, a beautiful swan settled on it.  A few days later, he was gone.  He did this each night before the operations.  Who could help saying, “I get the message, God.”  I bought a silver charm and hung it around me neck. 
During the last surgery, I had a very small stroke, but a stroke, nonetheless.  I’m a writer.  My language skills were affected.  The beautiful Persian carpet on our floor became a towel because that was the only word I could access for it.  There were other problems.  I was still dizzy.  Typing floundered.  Handwriting stopped.  My right side was weaker.  Healing has taken years.  I’m almost fully recovered and, as a reward, I signed up for BONI – Breakout Novel Intensive, a writers’ retreat/workshop.

My hotel room had a view of the river and some rocks on which a cormorant sat.  One sunny windy day, he splashed around in the water, then hopped onto the rocks and spread his wings–glistening, beautiful, powerful wings exactly in the shape of my vision.
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I think the sighting of this cormorant bodes well for Robin’s full recovery. 

Posted in healing, visions | 10 Comments

Blanche Lincoln’s Synchro

Posted on May 19, 2010 by Trish and Rob

This is one of those curious global synchros that so often occur in politics. It concerns the Democratic senator from Arkansas.

Some background on this woman. She’s been a senator since  2003. Before that, she served in the House of Representatives. She is considered a centrist Democrat, but her voting record on issues important to progressives suggests she has the heart of a Republican. Her recent voting record, in fact, may be why she is scrambling tonight in the Arkansas primary.

So today, primary day (May 18) in Arkansas, she goes to her polling station to vote – and has to cast a provisional ballot because she has requested an absentee ballot that she failed to fill out. As soon as I heard this, I felt that the primary wasn’t going to end well for Blanche. Sure enough, she failed to win the majority of votes in the primary and now faces a three-week fight with Lt. Governor Bill Halter for her party’s nomination. The runoff will occur on June 8.

The symbolism spoke clearly:  absentee ballot, provisional ballot, runoff. So I’m going to make a prediction here: unless something major shifts in Lincoln’s psyche – like she actually is transformed into a politician who supports progressive ideals – she’s going to lose the primary. As a politician, in these divisive times, it simply isn’t possible to play both sides anymore and come out on top. You have to take a stance, one side or the other.

Posted in blanche lincoln, global, politics | 13 Comments

Another 6 Degrees of Separation

Posted on May 18, 2010 by Trish and Rob

For the past few weeks, we’ve been taking Noah, our rambunctious Golden Retriever, to doggie training with a wonderful woman named Madison. The training is conducted at her home, usually with two other goldens. Today, it was just Noah and Jake and during doggie play time in Madison’s backyard, the humans stood around talking.

Madison and Jessie, Jake’s owner, were talking about Madison’s hunt for a publisher for her book on dog training. I overheard her mention how so many publishers won’t even look at unagented material and I remarked that finding an agent is often more difficult that finding a publisher.

“Yeah, even when you have a connection,” Madison said, and stabbed her thumb toward Jessie. “His cousin owns one of the biggest literary agencies in New York.”

“Which agency?” I asked Jessie.

“Writers’ House.”

I exclaimed, “You’re kidding. Who’s your cousin?”

“Al Zuckerman,” he replied.

My jaw dropped. Al sold our synchronicity book and has represented me since 1994. What are the odds?

Jessie was as astounded as we were. We tried to trace the six degrees of separation, with Madison as the connector. It goes something like this:

Rob met Madison through yoga.

Jessie got his golden from the same rescue organization where we got Noah, and called Madison out of the blue, inquiring about the cost of dog training.

Madison has one cost for private training and another for class training, done with a group of dogs. Jessie opted for class training, but there wasn’t any class at the time and Madison gave him the class rate. Her husband chided her for not charging what she’s worth.  Her response? “You never know why people enter your life. I just had a feeling. Then it turns out his cousin owns Writers House and I was looking for an agent for my book.” Again, what are the odds?

Another funny layer of synchronicity is found in names. Our previous golden retriever was named Jessie.

Posted in Al Zuckerman, cousins, dogs, writers house | 17 Comments

Six bits of synchronicity

Posted on May 17, 2010 by Trish and Rob

This heart-warming little synchro-tale comes from Mike Clelland, whose hidden experience blog  usually focuses on UFOs and aliens. But the only possible alien connection in this tale are the ones from south of the border. Interestingly, the evening before Mike’s story arrived, I mentioned in passing that we hadn’t heard from Mike Clelland  in a while, and Trish responded: “Watch, now we will.” Right she was.

 (If you’re not familiar with the term ‘six bits’ in the title, it means 75 cents.)

***

I teach winter camping for an outdoor school in the Northern Rockies. After a two-week course, it’s nice to get the stink out of the down sleeping bag. This is no casual undertaking. A negative 40 degree winter bag is huge, and it only fits in the biggest washing machine at the Laundromat, and it takes forever to dry.

I was at the local Laundromat on the main street in my little town. Stuck there with that down bag in the dryer. I would open the door, feel the dampness and add another quarter.

It was a quiet day, and I was sharing the Laundromat with a family of Mexican immigrants. The young couple had a few kids running around, they didn’t seem to speak any English, so all I could do is periodically smile at them.

The set up of these big industrial dryers is a little bit awkwardly, one is on top of the other, and there are two sets of buttons that control the two units unit. I was using the bottom, and the Mexican family had the dryer on top. I added a quarter, and I realized it was the WRONG slot. I had just mistakenly given the family an extra seven minutes of time.

No biggie. But, I somehow manged to do this two more times. I just “gave” the Mexican family 75 cents. Why was I so confused about using a dryer?

I wasn’t interested in asking the family for my money, that seemed silly. At the same time, I went through all kinds of weird liberal guilt about what I had done. I played it out in my head, had I just altruistically helped these poor people? Wasn’t it a nice, that I – the privileged white American – could be so selfless. I immediately recognized how pathetic and useless that avenue of thinking was, and I just dismissed the whole thing.

Not too long later, the sleeping bag was dry, and I left.

From the Laundromat, I went directly to the local Grocery store. I got what I needed and stood in line at the check out with my few items.

As I inched forward in the line, I noticed the checkout girl. The strange thing was, in my head, I immediately announced to myself, “She’s an angel!”

I was awestruck.

She was young and extremely pretty. She had dark hair and dark eyes, and I assumed she was Mexican. As she helped the customers ahead of me in line, she was quiet and smiling. There was something so radiant and pleasant about her, and the silent way she went about her job, that it left me genuinely touched.

I get up to the cash register, she rings up the few things on the conveyor belt, and I pull out my wallet to pay.

But, I didn’t have enough cash. She shows me the total, and I realize I am exactly 75 cents short. I was embarrassed and said I would return an item to the shelf. She didn’t speak, she casually pantomimed to me not to worry. Then she reached under the counter separating us, and she pulled up her purse. She dug through it, pulled out a little change purse, and calmly counted out three quarters and put them in the cash register. She smiled, I thanked her, and walked away.

I have never seen her before or since.

As I review this event from a few years later, the thing that impresses me is the life lesson, that I needed in my life, right then.

I had been through a lot of difficult emotional stuff in the previous years, a lot of isolation and depression. It’s sad to admit but something as normal as people being nice to me would induce anxiety, I felt like I wasn’t “worthy” to receive kindness. Even simple things would be challenging. I wouldn’t let friends buy me lunch, or if someone complimented some job I had done, I would awkwardly find a way to deny their praise.

But, on this day in the grocery store, the very lovely cashier did something nice, and the weird synchronicity seemed to disarm me to the point where I smiled (truly smiled!) said an honest thank you – and moved on.

Since that day, I feel like I’ve been really good at saying thank you. And that was a really important hurdle in my life.

Posted in angels, gratitude | 15 Comments

Kwibi the Gorilla Remembers

Posted on May 16, 2010 by Trish and Rob

The Aspinall Foundation is a charity that promotes wildlife conservation and reintroduces captive gorillas back into the wild in west Africa. Five years ago, John Aspinall, the founder of this organization, released one of these gorillas, Kwibi, back into the wild. This video depicts their reunion. It’s a stunner. Read about their amazing work here.

Posted in gorillas, wildlife | 11 Comments

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, ROB!

Posted on May 16, 2010 by Trish and Rob
Happy Birthday, Rob!
When I think of you, this photo of a grotto in the Dominican Republic is one of many images that comes to mind. Yes, I know, photographically, it lacks people. But symbolically, the depth of the grotto, that incredible blue-green color of the water, the lushness of the trees that surrounded this place, those tantalizing rope vines hanging over there near the rocks: it literally screams exploration.

And that’s how I think of you.

We had gone to the Dominican Republic because it’s a windsurfer’s paradise, what you and Megan love to do. I’m happy to read and shop and watch you two. This was a day away from windsurfing, when you challenged me to do something I ordinarily wouldn’t do. It’s not, as you know, in my lexicon, my bucket list, to rappel down the face of sheer rock, clinging to a rope, hoping the soles of my shoes don’t suddenly peel away, hoping I don’t swing out so far that when I swing back my head hits the rock.

But always, in 27 years of marriage, you have challenged me to reach for the unknown, to delve into the unexplored, to do what I would not ordinarily do. You’re the explorer and I hang back, balking, thinking, oh my god, you’ve got to be kidding, please be kidding. So thank you for all the explorations and may there be many more mysteries and  many, many more birthdays!

Meditating  on turning 62–young compared to this ceiba tree!
.

Posted in birthdays, rob | 27 Comments

Kindness and a Hug

Posted on May 15, 2010 by Trish and Rob

Matisse

On April 29, we put up a post called God’s Eye. As the comments came in, it seemed that most of us had maybe heard this story elsewhere and weren’t convinced it was true. But we all seemed to agree that if it was true, it was powerful.

What I found fascinating about the comments was that several of them contained stories about kindness extended to strangers who were distraught, at the brink, suffering. All too often in today’s world, where so many of us feel constantly pressed for time, kindness takes a back seat. In these stories, synchros – all of them  – a hug, a kind word, exactly the right phrase uttered at the right time – made a significant difference in another person’s life.

We’ve posted the experiences from Sansego and Vicki in this post. In their synchronicities, they are or someone they were with at the time extended that kindness.  The synchronicity from Debra Page at mythic musing will be in a separate post; in her story, someone extended that kindness toward her.

From Sansego:

When a friend and I did a roadtrip to NYC and Boston in 2002, we were in Staten Island and my friend had to use the restroom in a McDonalds. I stayed in the car. He took a long time and there were sketchy people walking around outside. I started getting worried. When he finally came out, he apologized and explained that he had met a guy in the restaurant who looked distraught and talked about wanting to kill himself. My friend engaged him in conversation and bought him a meal. He thought the guy had the intention to shoot up the McDonalds, but the guy’s demeanor changed after talking with him. My friend has an amazing personality and connects with anyone he talks to, so I don’t doubt that he had the ability to affect another person in a positive way.

I guess what we can learn from this is that we can do something when we see someone who looks lonely or sad. Being brave and striking up a conversation just might be the thing they need. For me, its hard to do because I’m so introverted and afraid of being rudely rejected. I envy my friend’s easy ability to connect with everyone…and he always initiates conversations with other people and puts people at ease.

 From Vicki D, responding in part to Sansego’s comment:

I too am shy. But  several years ago at parent night at our HS a woman I don’t know that well seemed very agitated. Several of us were talking and she kept interrupting. I was getting annoyed but then I felt something different and I felt she needed a hug.I said “I think you need a hug.”

I’m not a big hugger unless I know you well so my close friend really looked shocked when I then hugged this woman. At first it was a bit awkward but then she melted into me and began to cry. I have never forgotten that moment.

She came up to me a week later at another meeting and said “I have to thank you. I really needed that hug, it took me by surprise.” It seems several things had just happened to her that had eroded her trust in others and so when I did that it made her realize that not everyone is negative. It also changed me and has made me more open to people and to look more closely at what may be going on with them.

Is the story in your post real? I don’t know, but I think it points out how each one of us can make a difference (my personal motto).
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So perhaps if each of us strives to take the time to be kind or to extend help to a stranger in need, we can becomes agents of change, one person at a time.

Posted in kindness, strangers | 10 Comments

From blog to book to you

Posted on May 14, 2010 by Trish and Rob

Our advanced copies of 7 Secrets arrived yesterday and today we found out that Amazon is releasing the book May 17. Barnes and Noble says it comes out August 18, and the publisher said it’s June 1. Take your pick!
Rob & Trish

Posted in Uncategorized | 30 Comments