Synchronistic Parts Department

Posted on March 18, 2009 by Trish and Rob

Richard Bach, author of Jonathan Livingston Seagull, was barnstorming in the Midwest in 1966 with a rare biplane, a 1929 Detroit-Parks P-2A Speedster, only eight of which were ever built. In Palmyra, Wisconsin, Bach loaned the plane to a friend, who flipped it over upon landing. The damage was minor and the two men were able to fix everything except one strut. That repair looked hopeless because the part was custom-made for this rare plane.

Just then a man approached who owned the hangar near where they were working, and asked if he could help, offering to let them have any of the parts stored in his three hangars. When Bach explained the rare part he needed, the man walked over to a pile of junk and pointed to the exact part.

Bach concluded: “The odds against our breaking the biplane in a little town that happened to be home to a man with the forty-year-old part to repair it; the odds that he would be on the scene when the event happened; the odds that we’d push the plane right next to his hangar, within ten feet of the part we needed–the odds were so high that coincidence was a foolish answer.” (from Bach’s Nothing by Chance)

Posted in travel, writers | Leave a comment

Seven Senses

Posted on March 17, 2009 by Trish and Rob

In researching synchronicity, we’re using Google alerts, so several times a day, we receive a roundup of everything Google finds on synchronicity. Not long ago, one of the alerts led to a blog by writer Elizabeth Miles, where she records her synchronicities. We left her a comment, asking if we could use some of her synchronicities on our blog or in the book or both. The following synchronicity is one of those oddities involving a repetition of a phrase. Check out her blog follow the signs. Here’s Elizabeth’s story:

TJ (Trish) had left a comment on a previous blog post and I discovered that TJ was a writer. I wanted to read one of her books and asked which one she recommended me to start with first (she said “Kill Time”). Well, I read that most of the reviews were positive but one reader said it wasn’t like her ‘typical’ books, so I wanted to find one of those typical books. The first one I clicked on was The Seventh Sense. In the Amazon description, it says that the main character was driving after drinking and gets into a car accident. This past weekend, I just spent 42 hours listening to DUI lectures as a social work intern (no, I did not get a DUI). What an odd coincidence. I bought both books, of course!

It is very unusual for me to have two synchronicities in one day, but now I’ve just had another one related to the ‘Seventh Sense’. I was looking for an astrological forecast booklet that I have on my bookshelf somewhere and I came across another booklet called, “The Reality Behind the Seven Senses” by Carley Dawson. I do not recognize it AT ALL. It’s like it just appeared. I don’t know whether it fell out of another book or what, but it does not look familiar to me. It is weird that I would find it right after my other synchronicity. Guess I should read it too!

Posted in books, writers | Leave a comment

Filming synchronicity

Posted on March 16, 2009 by Trish and Rob

Here’s an article about a film maker taking up the challenge of making a film about synchronicity. Included near the bottom is a link to a YouTube clip from the film in the making.

https://thegazz.com/gblogs/wvfilm/2009/03/16/synchonicity-a-future-film-by-ray-schmitt/

Posted in synchronicity and films | Leave a comment

Bermuda Triangle

Posted on March 15, 2009 by Trish and Rob

Mysterious stories about the Bermuda Triangle abound, and many are speculation about what happened to ships and aircraft that vanished somewhere off the coast of Florida. But here’s one baffling Bermuda Triangle tale that is totally documented.

First, probably the most well known case, the one that initiated the notion of a haunted region of the Atlantic, was the disappearance of Flight 19, five Navy Avenger torpedo bombers that vanished on Dec. 5, 1945 while on a two-hour training mission. It’s a puzzling case because the lead pilot, who had 2,500 hours of flight time, could not locate the continental U.S. and seemed confused about his location after his compass started spinning on a sunny afternoon.

So here’s the synchronicity. In 1991, five Avenger bombers were discovered off the coast of Fort Lauderdale, all within a mile and a half of each other. Their discovery triggered the immediate assumption that the long lost Flight 19 finally had been discovered. But, astonishingly, none of the serial numbers matched. They were other lost Avengers. Hence, adding another layer to the mystery.

A personal note, Trish and I will be going to Andros Island in the Bahamas next month with pilot Bruce Gernon. Bruce and I co-authored THE FOG: A Never Before Published Theory of the Bermuda Triangle Phenomenon, and we’ll be interviewed on Andros by the History Channel for a new episode of UFO Hunter. – Rob

Posted in AUTEC, bermuda triangle, secret gov, travel | Leave a comment

Annette and the Sweat Shirt

Posted on March 14, 2009 by Trish and Rob

Clusters of synchronicities can involve just about anything – even a new sweatshirt, as in the following story.

Ten years ago, our neighbor, Annette, was on her way home from the hospital, where her father had just undergone an amputation of his leg. It was chilly and she stopped to buy a sweatshirt. As she got back onto the interstate, she suddenly witnessed a horrendous car accident – a truck slammed into the rear of a smaller car, which flipped over several times and finally came to rest on its side. Annette pulled to the shoulder, leaped out of her car, and ran over to the car to see if she could help.

The middle-aged man inside was terribly injured but still conscious. Annette shouted at the crowd of gawkers, asking someone to call 911. Then she stayed with the man, talking to him, urging him to remain conscious, assuring him help was on the way. Two days later, she stopped by the hospital to visit him and he told her he would never forget her, that her voice and encouragement forced him to cling to consciousness.

Now, fast forward to 2009. Annette was on the interstate again with a friend and her kids. It was another chilly night and she stopped to buy a sweatshirt. As she did so, she flashed back on the last time she had bought a new sweatshirt while headed somewhere on the interstate. She felt a sort of superstition about it, but shrugged it off. Ten minutes later, an SUV raced past her, weaving all over the road. Annette suspected the driver was drunk and slowed down to put some distance between them.

Then, suddenly, just ahead, she saw the SUV slam into a smaller car. “The moment of impact was like an explosion. That’s how hard the SUV hit the other car.”

She swerved to the shoulder, scrambled out, and ran toward the accident scene, as she had ten years ago. Just like before, gawkers were clustered around and Annette, who had left her cell phone in the car, shouted for someone to call 911. She leaned into the car to see if she could help the driver, but he was unconscious, his legs bent at an awkward angle, his torso slumped over the steering wheel. She didn’t feel a pulse when she touched his wrist, but detected a faint pulse at his carotid.

“Stay with us,” she said. “Help is on the way. Just stay with us.”

But when the paramedics started removing the man from the car, she saw that his face was split open from his skull to his chin and knew he wouldn’t make it. “I told my husband about this, about how in both instances I had just bought a new sweatshirt and what did he think about that? He told me I was looking for meaning where there isn’t any. But I can tell you this. I will never again buy a new sweatshirt if I’m driving on the interstate.”

Despite her husband’s skepticism, Annette recognized the pattern and found it meaningful. Buying the sweatshirt didn’t create the accident, but ultimately it enhanced her awareness.

Posted in car accidents, travel | Tagged , | 5 Comments

Divination

Posted on March 13, 2009 by Trish and Rob

One of the secrets of synchronicity that we are writing about in our book is that the art of divination–ie. the tarot, the I Ching and astrology–is a means of generating synchronicity.

To that end, we recently asked the I Ching to tell us about the importance of synchronicity, and this was the message we received from hexagram 15 (Modesty).

In part, it reads: “It dispenses the blessings of heaven, the clouds and rain that gather around the summit, and there after shines forth radiant with heavenly light.”

That changed to hexagram 45 (Gathering Together), which suggests: “In the time of gathering together we must arm promptly to ward off the unexpected. Human woes usually come as a result of unexpected events against which we are not forearmed. If we are prepared, they can be prevented.”

In other words, the I Ching seemed to say that synchronicities are a blessing from the heavens and that paying attention to those meaningful coincidences is a way of heeding warnings and gathering information to prepare for the future.
Rob

Posted in divination, I Ching | 2 Comments

The Lilac-Breasted Roller

Posted on March 12, 2009 by Trish and Rob

This beautiful bird, a Lilac-Breasted Roller, is the focus of a synchronicity that occurred to photographer Thomas Chamberlin. He was kind enough to allow us post the photo and his story.

This gorgeous bird is native to Africa. When you think of an African safari you don’t really think much about birds(except maybe ostriches), and when you are on safari your day is pretty much dictated by the most impatient person in your vehicle. Once one person has had enough and is ready to move on it feels self-indulgent to belabor the current situation and it is not long before you must move on.

On the day this photograph was made I was alone in the Land Rover with another bird enthusiast and author of several books on birds, Wayne Lynch. The third photographer scheduled to be in our vehicle that day was indisposed with a bad case of Montezuma’s Revenge after having somehow ingested the bacterial milieu that is the water of Africa. I remember Wayne saying how happy he was that we would be able to spend some time on birds that day since there was nobody else in the vehicle to appease. We scoured the river banks for birds in the trees. We stopped and shot flight photographs of vultures as they landed at a carcass. When we came upon this roller, perched so handsomely on his perch in soft light, we were both of the same mind. We would stay with him until he either did a wing stretch or flew away.

At no other time on the trip were we ever in the position to watch a little bird that long. People want to go find a cheetah, a lion, a hyena. It took about twenty minutes of perseverance before he did this wing stretch, waiting, of course, until Wayne turned to say something to the driver. By the time he heard my shutter firing it was over.

On one of our last days in Kenya we all decided on our best photograph of the trip, displayed it on our laptops, and set the laptops on the dining room tables to share with the others and the staff and guides. I displayed this photograph out of the 7,000 photographs I had kept during our stay. The camp staff that had fed us and made our stay a delight all timidly approached at first, then excitedly pointed and laughed and thoroughly enjoyed getting to see the photographs we had been going out morning and evening to capture. Sometimes we forget to include them.

When I got home this was one of the first photographs I optimized in Photoshop and uploaded to my Digital Railroad (now defunct; I’ve moved to Photo Shelter), and personal web sites and to Flickr. Out of the blue I got an e-mail from the photo editor of Birder’s World. He had found my photograph on line and wanted to use it for an article on African birds. It made the cover of the February, 2008 issue. I had published photographs on the Birder’s World on-line site before, but the photo editor for the magazine was not familiar with me.

Happy little coincidences that someone would get sick and I would get a day to work on bird photographs in Africa, in a vehicle shared with another bird enthusiast. That a photo editor would somehow find my image out of the thousands of roller images that come up with a Google search (I looked). I have a hard time with believing in fate, kismet, the Lord’s Will. But there seems to be some kind of energy out there that that can sometimes be tapped into, if only for a brief moment. The Buddhists believe that becoming a spiritual master means being in that energy always. I’m not likely to achieve that in this lifetime, but it’s fun to ride the wave of synchronicity when it happens.

https://chamimage.wordpress.com/

Posted in animals, birds | 1 Comment

Tony and the Trickster

Posted on March 11, 2009 by Trish and Rob

The Trickster is a Jungian archetype. One of the best examples is the sneaky, lurking Gollum character in Lord of the Rings, orginally named Smeagol. He usually had an agenda of one kind or another that prompted him to mislead the hobbits on numerous occasions and to trick them into believing he could be trusted. The Joker in the Batman movies is another example. But when we encounter a trickster synchronicity, it’s as if the universe is playing a joke on us.

When Tony, a retired accountant, was in his late eighties, he moved into an assisted living facility in Georgia, where one of his daughters was director of nursing. A short time later, a high school classmate from Illinois – from more than seventy years earlier – moved in across the hall from him. When his daughter marveled at the synchronicity, Tony remarked, “The universe has a twisted sense of humor. I don’t like her any more now than I did back then.”

But in a sense, the trickster had brought his life full circle.

Posted in c6, trickster | 2 Comments

Kurt Vonnegut and Synchronicity

Posted on March 10, 2009 by Trish and Rob

Levels of synchronicities are often apparent during emotionally charged experiences, evident in a story that Kurt Vonnegut related to writer Alan Vaughn, which he included in his book Patterns of Prophecy.

Anyone who came of age during the 60s understands the unique role that Vonnegut’s books played in the culture of that time. In Cat’s Cradle, he talked about the karass, a group of people who unknowingly work together to achieve some common goal. You knew you were a member of a particular karass when meaningful coincidences happened between you and other members of that group. But in Vonnegut’s world, there was a danger that you might mistake a random coincidence for a meaningful one, which meant you were involved in a Granfaloon or false karass.

Vaughn wrote to Vonnegut and asked him where the idea had come from about people being linked through meaningful coincidences. Vonnegut’s response is included Vaughn’s Patterns of Prophecy. It’s a remarkable example of a synchronicity involving emotions and death—the death of Vonnegut’s sister, who was suffering from cancer, and the death of her husband in a tragic accident – all within twenty-four hours.

One morning Vonnegut apparently felt compelled to call his brother-in-law, whom he never phoned, and who was in a train that minutes earlier had plunged off an open drawbridge in New Jersey. As Vonnegut was calling him, news about a railroad accident came over the radio and Vonnegut knew his brother-in-law was on that train, even though the man never took trains. Within an hour, he was on a plane headed for New Jersey. By the end of that day, Vonnegut and his wife had adopted his sister’s six children. His sister died the next day.

Vonnegut’s experience involves two aspects of synchronicity. Precognition or foreknowledge of an event was evident in his sudden feeling that he should call his brother-in-law. Clairvoyance, also called remote viewing, was evident with Vonnegut’s certainty that his brother-in-law was on the train mentioned in the radio news flash.

The terminal illness and death of his sister, of course, added to the emotional levels of the incidents.

Posted in vonnegut, writers | 1 Comment

Poetry in Motion

Posted on March 9, 2009 by Trish and Rob

Here’s one from Joyce Evans, who long, long ago was my editor on a weekly newspaper.
Rob

On Labor Day weekend in 2001, I was browsing through the poetry section in Schwartz Bookstore and found three collections by a Milwaukee, Wis., poet named Marilyn Taylor. After perusing the table of contents and flipping through the pages, I decided to buy all three collections and spent Saturday, Sunday, and Monday studying the poems. I liked her style and voice. All of this was to prepare me for my poetry course, which started on Tuesday. It was my first class in graduate school, and I didn’t know what to expect from Bill Harrell, the instructor, not to mention the level of difficulty or challenge. Although I had attended undergraduate classes for two years in English and creative writing, nervousness eclipsed the excitement.

On Tuesday morning, I had to take an MRI, which I thought would be over an hour before my 1 p.m. class. That would’ve given me time to drive across town to the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee, but the MRI took longer. I took the interstate, but it was crowded – as usual. My heart was beating down to my feet by the time I entered Room 426 full of anxiety. The professor was a woman, not Bill Harrell, as listed in the class schedule. I thought I could sneak into class without any disruption.

The professor looked across the room and said, “Are you Joyce Evans-Campbell?” I answered affirmatively and took a seat with thoughts running rampantly, wondering who she was, and how she knew my name, chastising myself for being tardy on the first day.

After class I went up to her desk, apologized and gave an explanation for my tardiness, and she said, “That’s fine. I’m Marilyn Taylor; I love your columns in the Journal Sentinel. I read them all the time.” I thanked her, and she proceeded: “I’m substituting for Bill Harrell who died over the summer.”

I told her that I loved her poetry, and had bought three collections. She complimented me for getting prepared for the class, and we briefly discussed her work. This encounter established an extraordinary first impression, and the two years of study under her went well. That meaningful coincidence opened the door to a deeper relationship and helped me to develop confidence.
***
Here’s who Joyce is talking about – Wisconsin’s poet laureate! https://www.mlt-poet.com/

Posted in books, poets, writers | 4 Comments