Play Ball

Baseball season starts tomorrow and so a foul ball synchronicity from a few days ago is in order here. On March 31, during a spring training game in Tampa against the Yankees, Minnesota Twin lead-off hitter Denard Span hit a line-drive foul into the stands striking a fan in the chest who was wearing a Denard Span jersey. That’s a synchronicity in itself. But who was wearing his jersey? His mother!

In preparing this post on the day of that incident, I looked up Span in Wikipedia, and found this surprising comment. “He bats and throws left-handed and is known for his exceptional speed and his ability to hit relatives with line-drive foul balls.” What? Was that there before he hit his mother? My guess is that some quirky, quick-witted trickster had just added that last bit to the Wiki entry.Or maybe he has a very large extended family that likes going to his games.

There’s more. I first learned of Span’s feat from Keith Olbermann who mentioned it in his Oddball segment that same day. Olbermann noted that his mother had also been hit by a foul ball at a Yankee game by then Yankee second baseman (and former Twin) Chuck Knoblauch. We wrote a post about it on May 17. K.O. also mentioned that Bob Feller threw a pitch in Chicago on Mother’s Day in 1939 that was fouled off and hit his mother. He went on to mention another player from the ’30s who hit his mother with a foul ball, then hit her again with another foul as she was being carried off. I went to the show’s script to get the player’s name, but the story was removed. So maybe that last one never happened.

Finally, oddly enough, earlier that same day, I had bought a ticket on-line for a Minnesota-Tampa game in Minneapolis on July 3. Why did I do that? Because I will be visiting my mother that week. However, I don’t think I’ll take her to the ballpark! – R

Posted in Uncategorized | 4 Comments

Moves and White Feathers


Major transitions often initiate synchronicities – marriage or divorce, the birth of a child, a death, career change, or, as in the next story, a move. This synchronicity is from Julie Ralphs of Nottringham, England.
+++

We have recently moved after many years of my husband being reluctant to move. We put our house on the market and within a week had an offer. It was from a young couple who lived in the next town 30 miles away.

When their contact details came through, my mother-in-law was with me and I asked her if she knew where they lived as she had lived in the town 25 years before. She said  she knew of the road, but what was the number? When I told her, she explained it was across the road from her best friend of 40 years, the only person in that town with whom she has kept in touch.

 We quickly found a house to view and fell in love with it. It was in a better part of the same village, on a road that my husband had always liked. He described the house to his younger brother, even down to the secret cupboards in the bedrooms, and learned that when my husband’s family moved to the village 25 years ago, his brother viewed the property with their parents. They didn’t buy it because it had a steep drive. This meant a lot to my husband, who had lost his father suddenly over a year ago, as he knew that his Dad had seen the house.

A  few months earlier I had visited a medium who said I would move and that the house would have an orchard in the garden. It has an apple tree, but the house is built on farm land that was used as orchards for fruit growing. The day we moved in, I  was talking to my mum in the kitchen and the removals men were bringing boxes into the house. Mum looked at the worktop where we were sitting and said ‘look a white feather’. I didn’t know what this meant then, but she said it signified ‘someone watching over us.’ I’d like to think it was my father-in-law.”
+++
The white feather is intriguing. I first read about this phenomenon on Mike Perry’s blog.


Posted in moves, white feathers | 7 Comments

Until Death Do Us Part?

 Synchronicities tend to occur frequently during major transitions in our lives – a move, a marriage or divorce, the birth of a child, a career change, and death, the biggest transition of all. This next story comes from Joanna.  We posted a similar synchronicity in early January, so I now wonder how many stories like this there may be.
+++

I don’t know that the following is “synchronicity”, but it involves Andy, a  relative I’ve featured on my blog. .  Out of respect for his widow Dotty, a very dear friend and also a follower of  my blog, I can’t post it there, even as an update.

Dotty is  an absolute saint, truly, and twelve years Andy’s junior with two children  by an abusive first husband that she’d finally managed to divorce before they met. Andy and first wife Kate, a total whack job, also had two children – a son and a daughter, but were  already separated when he met Dotty. Naturally, Andy’s kids stayed with  their mother after the divorce and  were thoroughly brainwashed by her that  Dotty was to blame. They wouldn’t even acknowledge Dotty’s presence when they visited Andy.

And so it went for the next 35 years.

Old age set in and Andy’s deteriorating health required him to go to a nursing home. Dotty visited him there every day, all day, only going home for an hour or two between meals, and after tucking him in around 7:30. She never missed a day, even when  the weather was bad. She truly  fulfilled the marriage vow ‘in sickness and in health’.  She also sat in on every meeting with Andy’s doctors and took detailed notes.

First wife Kate had remarried, and for several years she and the second husband had been in a  nursing home 100 miles away, both in “perfect” health except for advanced Alzheimer’s.

Andy and Kate’s son, whom we’ll call George (or perhaps Super Jerk)  was the CEO of his own company in a city 30 miles beyond where Kate was. He was a total control freak, used to people doing whatever he ordered.  Once amonth or so he’d make the trek to see Andy for a couple of hours, always during  Dotty’s breaks.  At one time or another, he vowed to fire Andy’s doctors, which he didn’t have the authority to do.  He also ordered Dotty to sell her and Andy’s  house “right now” and move him to the same nursing home Kate was in.

Dotty, of course, did none of these things. She told George very firmly that she wouldn’t. She got her and Andy’s affairs in order. Together, they  picked out a burial plot and a stone, made their funeral wishes known, and verified that  their wills and her power of attorney were airtight.

Andy was 86 when he entered the home, and doctors were certain he wouldn’t last three months, six at the most.  That was 15 months ago.  We were all sure he wouldn’t make it to 87 let alone 88 (last month), and came to believe he simply willed himself to live despite more than a dozen health issues, any two of which would have  killed a “normal” man.

But there’s another possibility – that he secretly vowed to outlive the hated ex-wife who’d poisoned their children against his beloved Dotty.

In the wee hours of Tuesday morning a week ago, 88-yr-old Kate died in her sleep.  It was a total surprise to everyone  because physically, she was “healthy as a horse”. The second surprise was she and her second husband had made NO funeral or burial arrangements whatsoever.  The son and wife spent the next 3 days scurrying around making arrangements.  On Friday evening, they were on the way to the viewing when
Dotty called to say Andy had died a few hours earlier.

Right after Kate’s funeral, George, the son, was hospitalized with a bleeding ulcer, but got out in time to attend Andy’s viewing Monday evening. The third surprise was on  arriving at the funeral home, he hugged Dotty thy like a long-lost friend and apologized profusely for treating her so badly for 30-some years.

What are the “chances” that a man and woman who hated each other, divorced 35+years years ago and had had no contact in that time, would die 3 days apart? Is this “synchronicity” or a very effective karmic lesson delivered on the son by the  Universe?
+++
These kinds of stories remind me of a Mobius strip, thus the image by M.C. Escher.

Posted in death, divorce, marriage | 8 Comments

Johnny B. Good in my e-mail…Yikes!

 He-e-e-r-r-e-e-‘s Johnny!

You might recall the post on Feb. 4 about Johnny B. Goode, the West Palm Beach fellow who keeps getting arrested for minor public annoyances. We mentioned him again in March when we wrote about Robin Hood, another guy with a famous name who is also in repeated trouble with the law–although we suspected, or hoped, he gave away some of the goods he stole, since who needs three of the same baseball caps.

So, when I received an e-mail from Johnny B. Good, with no ‘e,’ I wondered if Johnny from West Palm got on line and did a Google search for his name. But not the case. In fact, this is another Johnny B. Good, possibly a nom de plume for a young man residing in Lisbon, Portugal. The e-mail led me to a Facebook synchronicity site that I’ve visited.

Johnny B posted a story about how he was stuck in traffic recently and noticed a colorfully painted van nearby. The next day, in another part of the city of two million, he parked his vehicle, got out, and there, parked close by, was the same van. He was amazed and baffled and before walking off jotted down the e-mail address that was on the side of the van. Then he asked readers what it meant and if they thought he should contact the owner of the van.

I told him that maybe the synchronicity was about awareness, reminding him of the hidden magical nature of reality. I added: “But you never know what might happen by contacting the owner of the vehicle. That might lead to yet another synchronicity. Good luck!”

So, Johnny B Good decided to act, and later posted an update. “I contacted the painter by email, got her reply and saw some of her paintings on her blog. Two of her main themes are called: “The Magic of Chance and the Magic of Life :-)”

So, I would say, no, that was no mere coincidence. It was synchronicity, and we have to wonder if there is more to follow between those two.
R

This synchronicity marks a kind of milestone: post #500. We’re grateful to all of you for the synchronicities, insights, and comments you have contributed. We hope that you have learned as much as we have from this sometimes baffling and always illuminating phenomenon.

Posted in cars, Portugal, travel | 14 Comments

The Vortex Workshop, part 2

This image illustrates how Megan and I felt when we left the Abraham/Hicks workshop.  We were soaring.

When Rob and I talked about two posts on the Hicks workshop, he asked, “Where’s the synchronicity?”
As I explained in part 1, the synchronicity is that the entire workshop was about the third secret: The Theory of Everything.

This secret encompasses psychic phenomena, which Jung believed fell under the umbrella of synchronicity. I mean, think about it. Several hundred people pay several hundred bucks to listen to a woman who is channeling a group of souls – i.e., non physical energies.

Why? Because the information conveyed resonates intuitively.

Afternoon Session

This session was intense. The hot seat was occupied by one person after another:
   – a woman who couldn’t decide what kind of car to buy because she “had so many desires”
  – a young man from Ecuador who had lost his brother and discovered that his brother had been “possessed” by some sort of evil and now he was experiencing the same physical symptoms his brother had had
   – a man whose life had collapsed in financial ruin
  – an Italian actress who had moved to Florida after a “15 minute conversation” with her husband, and now didn’t have any idea what they were doing here
These hot seat conversations produced so much valuable information that Megan and I had filled our notepads and had to get more paper from the hotel’s front desk. The highlights:

– There is no bad energy,  no source of evil. There is only an absence of goodness.
– The problem and the solution come into focus at the same time.
– All you can control is your vibrational proximity to who you really are
– Make a list of things you know you don’t have any resistance to and watch these items manifest themselves
– To move into your vortex easily, meditate. It quiets the mind. It’s a state of non-resistance.
Most people do not believe in well being
–  Every negative emotion means you have expanded – but aren’t benefiting (Expanding because of the contrast between what is and what you want)
– Lean in the direction of what you want, otherwise you won’t feel good.
– The first step is understanding what your negative emotion is.
– You have to tune your frequency to what you want
– Make a decision to draw back from negative emotion, feel its diffusion, allow who you to come through  rather than resisting who you are.
– Stop your commentary on what you don’t like, don’t talk about what bothers you. This diffuses the negativity.
– There’s nothing you can’t be or have. Nothing is more important than how you meet.
– Joy is you coming into alignment with you, with the most expanded version of who you are.

One of my personal questions about Abraham was whether Esther was actually channeling this group of souls for the entire time that she stood in front of her audience. By the end of the day, I had my answer. Esther is definitely a medium, the real McCoy. She appeared to be in an altered state of consciousness, particularly when she addressed whoever was in the hot seat.There were many junctures, like when Abraham told stories about Esther and Jerry,  where it would have been easy for her to slip up and refer to “I” rather than they – i.e., Esther and Jerry. But that never happened.

You can argue that it didn’t happen because they’ve been doing these workshops for years, they’ve got it down pat. But I never sensed anything disingenuous and in the end, realized my question was irrelevant. Something powerful happened in that room. Much of the time, I felt I was in the presence of other. And Abraham’s message is one of such hope, joy, and personal empowerment that by the time 300 people leaped to their feet and applauded and cheered, I honestly didn’t care who or what this energy is. It’s real.

They ended with these suggestions. In the course of a day, do this:
-decide that you are going to be in the vortex
-next time you’re in the vortex, ask yourself what it is about this moment that you like so much. Milk the moment of being in the vortex
– as you hang around in this vortex of hope and get evidence of your alignment, appreciate it, talk about it.
– say aloud: I am now finished with this negative emotion, thought, argument, feelings etc.
– I am a beneficial uplifter to all who cross my path
– I’m going to talk, paint, write, make music, live when I’m inside the vortex
– Today it is my dominant intent to see what I want to see!

Posted in abraham, hicks, Seth | 20 Comments

The Boss materializes after all


Last Saturday, March 27, we posted a synchronicity involving Bruce Springsteen, where Rob was hoping to materialize The Boss in the gym while a Springsteen song was playing. (He does belong to the gym). However, as the song ended, Rob materialized his boss for his yoga classes, the owner of the gym.

Today we were at the gym and I noticed a bunch of kids and women congregating in one area. Then a man in workout clothes gathered a couple of kids in front of him while the women whipped out their cell phones and snapped pictures.

It’s The Boss, I thought. Now how do I take a picture without being really tacky? 
I paused on the rowing machine and snapped a photo of him working on a bicep machine. I was too far away and the photo just  looked like a bunch of machines in a gym. 

At the time, Rob had run home to get his pay sheet for his yoga classes for the week and I kept hoping Springsteen wouldn’t leave before he returned. I moved to a different area in the gym, hoping to snap a better photo.But people kept walking between us, I was still too far away.

Rob returned and I said, “You just walked right past Springsteen.” “What? Where?”

I tilted my head toward him. “I’m going over to ask him if I can take his photo. For the blog.”

“Naw, don’t do that. He’s working out.”

I thought about it for about five seconds, then went over. “Excuse me. May I intrude on your workout for a moment?”

“Sure.”

Soulful eyes, I’m thinking. “You’re the topic of a synchronicity,” I said.

 “Synchronicity,” he repeats, looking amused.

“You know, meaningful coincidence?” And then I tell him about Rob’s experience and mention the book. “May I take your photo for the blog?”

“Let me put on my shirt.”

I’m thinking, No, don’t do that. A friend of mine wants pictures of your biceps!And he got up from his machine, shrugged on his shirt, and I snapped the photo with my BlackBerry. 


“So now I’m going to be on a synchronicity blog?” he asks.

“You are. Thank you so much. I appreciate it.”

So, three days after Rob’s post on whether he could materialize the boss, The Boss appeared.

(The Hicks workshop, part 2, will be posted tomorrow)

Posted in Bruce Springsteen, daily synchros | 19 Comments

The Vortex Workshop, Part 1

Once upon a time, I stayed away from books that claimed to be channeled. Too many of them were supposedly channeled by space brothers on Pluto or Zeta Reticuli and were unreadable.

Then in the 1970s, Seth Speaks by Jane Roberts was published and I changed my mind. Seth’s books are intelligent, philosophical and cover every imaginable facet about the nature of reality. The central theme of these books is, in Seth’s words: “You get what you concentrate on.” The problem with the Seth books is that they are lacking in practicalities – how to apply all this marvelous information to your own life.

Enter Esther and Jerry Hicks. Esther channels a group of souls who call themselves Abraham. The message is pretty much the same as Seth’s – that we all create our own reality through our thoughts, beliefs, emotions. But the Hicks take the practicality of this information to a whole new level. The primary tenets of their material  revolve around the law of attraction, that everything and everyone is vibration, and that our emotions are the barometer that signal when we’re in the vortex, “a vibrational state of being that is resistance free.” We enter this vortex during meditation and other altered states, through creativity, during sleep, and in death. It is the place from which we create our realities.

So the other day, Megan and I attended a Hicks workshop – her second, my first. The image above perfectly depicts the energy that infused this workshop from the opening at 9:30 to the closing at 4:00 PM. This energy is palpable and grew to a fever pitch throughout the day. I think the entire workshop falls under the third secret of synchronicity – The Theory of Everything.

Even though Esther told a story that was clearly a synchronicity, I never once heard that word. I never even heard the word coincidence. In contrast with Seth, this is interesting. At one point, Jane channeled the afterlife thoughts of Carl Jung. And Seth certainly knew a thing or two about synchronicity. 

The Morning Session

At the start, both Esther and Jerry greeted the audience of 300. Then Esther said something like, “Are you ready?”The crowd went wild, she smiled, waved good-bye.  Then she bowed her head, shut her eyes, and entered an altered state.  She spoke for 30-45 minutes on a number of topics. Snippets from my opening notes:
     – You choose with your attention to a subject.
     – You are always consciousness
     – By talking about a problem, discussing it endlessly, you focus on it and then the problem expands. But an equivalent solution is also expanding and is available to you in the vortex.  Your non-physical self has the solution.
    – There’s a tipping point, where you’re willing to tune to the solution rather than to the problem. How much discomfort are you willing to endure before the solution presents itself?
     – Negative emotion means you’re deviating from what you want. When you shout NO or insist that you don’t want something, you’re giving attention to the thing you don’t want. Instead, focus on what you DO want. Don’t focus on the absence of what you want. This is how you de-activate all the stuff in your vibration that is unwanted.
  While Abraham was talking, I could feel everyone sifting through their own experiences, finding the times they had focused on what they didn’t want and then didn’t understand why they could attain what they DID want.

After a short break, the group returned and this was where things got really interesting. Abraham said, “Is everyone refreshed?” The crowd shouted that they were and Abraham said, “What now?” Throughout the room, hands shot into the air. I realized that many of the attendees were repeats and knew this meant it was time for the “hot seat,” where Abraham chooses someone to come forward and have a one-on-one conversation with this group of souls.

In every instance, regardless of how personal or broad the individual’s questions were, Abraham always brought it back into a larger context. One young man, a musician, was concerned that the lyricist in his group wrote lyrics that he found troubling. Abraham advised him to focus on his enjoyment of the music they were producing and less on the lyrics. In time, as he withdrew his attention to the lyrics, he would attract a lyricist who wrotes lyrics every bit as beautiful as the music. He pointed out that an audience always resonates with a performer who is in synch with who they are. “Don’t push against the lyrics or the lyricist. Focus on what is satisfying about the music.”

Abraham advised him – and all of us – to get into the vortex (non-resistance) in any way we could. Then, from that place, focus on your desires and “do your affirmations, your visualizations, and speak affirmatively, affirm out loud, be specific. Allowing is the path of least resistance.”

One of the most interesting individuals in the hot seat was a guy who kept asking, “How do you know that? How can you prove that?”  At this point, we were all looking at each other – I mean, this guy was challenging Abraham!The exchange was heated, stern, funny, and again, Abraham put it into a larger context:
    -When you’re in the vortex, you know it. It’s undeniable knowledge, a state of being.
    -Find your vortex through your emotions.Emotion is the response to the direction of your thoughts. Prove this through your life experience.
     – First and foremost, care about how you feel. When you feel down, reach for a better feeling, a better thought, and your mood will shift.

    The afternoon session got intense and produced some of the best nuggets of wisdom I’ve heard in years. I’ll post that tomorrow.
     

Posted in abraham, hicks, Seth | 14 Comments

Strange Magic

Synchronicities, like birthday gifts, come in all shapes and sizes. Not all of them are mind blowers, but even the smaller ones hold a message. Christina G sent us the next two. They involve music and books, areas where synchronicities often manifest themselves. 
+++

About three weeks ago, I was driving home and stopped off at the local Wawa (common  convenience store in Pennsylvania and some other places on the East Coast, if you’re not familiar). I’ve got a CD in the car of a bunch of old ELO tunes and asI turned the car off, it had just gotten through the first few bars of “Strange Magic”.

I can’t describe the feeling I had when just as I entered the store, “Strange Magic” began again at that moment, this time on the canned house music. Very  weird…what are the odds? That tune’s got to be 30 years old, and it’s not exactly popular these days.

Had to laugh at the universe’s sense of humor on the choice of tunes too…Strange  magic indeed!

The second synch happened just yesterday. I awoke to discover that the wifi connection I share with my neighbors had kicked out, and I had work to do on the  ‘net, so I headed over to the local coffeehouse/used book place to hang and make  use of their connection. I can’t go to any bookstore without browsing, and I
usually get sucked into buying something, and yesterday was no exception.

I ended up with two books that are a little out of character for me, but looked interesting. I’d never heard or seen either one, and didn’t know the authors either. The books were “Born in Blood: The Lost Secrets of Freemasonry” by John J. Robinson and “The Disappearance of the Universe” by Gary R. Renard. Well, it was a beautiful almost-spring day here and I decided to take a drive out to a town I used to live in that has a great independent book store–new books in this one. It’s about 40 miles south of the small city I live in now, and I hadn’t been there in at least two years or more.

While I was browsing the shelves, I came across both the books I’d just purchased earlier in the afternoon, used–right next to each other.

I’d say that if there’s any message there, it’s that for some reason, I’m supposed  to read both those books. I’d better get cracking.

Posted in books, local travel, music | 11 Comments

Can I Materialize The Boss?

In an article called, Synchronicity: How We Relate to this Mystical Law, Caroline Myss asks, “Can a person influence acts of synchronicity; that is, are some people more likely to experience synchronistic events, and if so, why?”

I’ve wondered that myself, and just the day before reading Myss’ article I had an opportunity to try influencing an act of synchronicity. Here’s what happened.

For the past several months, I’ve been teaching yoga and working out in a gym that’s about five minutes from home. The most famous member of Ultima Gym is Bruce Springsteen, who lives here during the winter months. For weeks, I had been hearing reports of sightings from friends in the gym, but I’ve never seen him there.It’s odd, because he usually shows up around the same time I’m there. One day, instead of working out, I took a yoga class, only to find out that while I was doing the downward-facing dog, the Boss was working out at the other end of the gym. I’d missed him again.

So, finally, a day came when I had a chance to see if I could create a synchronicity related to this scenario.The radio station at the gym was playing Springsteen’s “Darkness on the Edge Town.” That’s a tiny synchronicity in itself since he lives here on the edge of town. But I wanted a BIG one. I wanted him to show up during the song or as it ended. Yes, a big request, and I only had about three minutes. But I really focused.

“Bring on the Boss,” I said, using his nickname. I said it over and over, imagining him walking into the free weight area. I also wondered if anyone else was thinking the same.I figured I could use some help, but when I looked around everyone ws wearing ear buds, engulfed in their own personal tunes, possibly not even aware of the song playing. Oh, well. Looks like I’m on my own, I thought, and continued focusing.

The song ended. I made one final effort. C’MON BOSS! Center stage is right here!

That’s when it happened. Who should walk by and nod to the people working out? Springsteen? Nope. The boss of the gym – the owner, my yoga boss. Hmm. Wrong Boss. Well, at least, I got a trickster synchronicity out of it. And maybe someday the real Boss will show up…while I’m there.
Rob

Posted in Bruce Springsteen, daily synchros, trickster | 15 Comments

Unconscious Hints

Now and then, I pick Jung’s autobiography, Memories, Dreams and Reflections, and just read from random pages. Even though I’ve read the book several times, I usually find some nugget that I don’t recall reading before. One powerful story that he recounts took place during WWII, when he was returning home from Bollingen, Switzerland. He was on a train, had a book with him, but couldn’t read. “…for the moment the train started to move, I was overpowered by the image of someone drowning.”

During the entire journey, Jung couldn’t get rid of the feeling. “It struck me as uncanny, and I thought, ‘What has happened? Can there have been an accident?'” The feeling was apparently exacerbated by a memory of an accident that had occurred while he was in the military service.

He got off the train at  Erlenbach and walked home, still troubled. His second daughter’s family was living with the Jungs then and as he walked into the garden, her kids were all there, upset. “They told me that Adrian, then the youngest of the boys, had fallen into the water at the boathouse. It is quite deep there, and since he could not really swim, he had almost drowned. This had taken place at exactly the time I had been assailed by that memory on the train.”

This story appears in the chapter on life after death, which has numerous examples of synchronicities like this that Jung experienced.  As he wrote, “The unconscious helps by communicating things to us, or making figurative allusions. It has other ways, too, of informing us of things which by all logic we could not possibly know. Consider synchronistic phenomena, premonitions, and dreams that come true. The unconscious had given me a hint. Why should it not be able to inform us of other things also?”

Posted in Carl Jung, hunches | 5 Comments