Lose your way? Ask a Cat

Posted on January 27, 2013 by Trish and Rob

Every so often we hear about cats who have returned home after being lost far from their home. Scientists typically discount such stories saying that it’s probably just a stray that looks like the cat the people had lost. If you’re a cat owner, you know your cat. That explanation doesn’t hold water.

In the case of Holly, a four-year-old tortoise shell, there was no question that this is the same cat that Jacob and Bonnie Richter had lost 200 miles away. Holly has distinctive features and she also has a microchip implanted that proved the emaciated cat actually found its way home from Daytona Beach to West Palm Beach.

Science has very little knowledge about the navigation system that cats use to find their home.  “I really believe these stories, but they’re just hard to explain,” said Marc Bekoff, a behavioral ecologist at the University of Colorado. “Maybe being street-smart, maybe reading animal cues, maybe being able to read cars, maybe being a good hunter. I have no data for this.”

Or maybe cats have a psychic ability – remote viewing or clairvoyance. They can not only see a distant place and its location, but can find their way there. The Richters were camping in their RV near the Daytona Speedway along with 3,000 other RVs when something frightened Holly and she bolted away.

The Richters searched and searched for the cat, notified animal organizations and before leaving literally begged others to return the cat if they found it. Holly made it all the way to West Palm, and was just a mile from home when she staggered into the backyard of Barb Mazzola’s house on New Year’s Eve. She nursed the cat for six days and took it to a vet who found the imbedded chip and contacted the Richters. The name of the helpful vet–Dr. Beg.

Here’s the whole story.

Posted in synchronicity | 10 Comments

Welcome Home Flashmob

Posted on January 26, 2013 by Trish and Rob

Thanks to Vicki DeLaurentis (mom with wings) for telling us about this superb flashmob!

 

Posted in synchronicity | 5 Comments

Writers and Ideas

Posted on January 25, 2013 by Trish and Rob

Synchronicities sometimes surface in the oddest ways. The other night, I was uploading Lagoon, one of my backlist titles, to smashwords, and received a whole bunch of error messages. So I contacted the woman who had formatted the book and she corrected them. Then I successfully uploaded the book.

The next day, I received an email from Susan Berliner, saying that she had downloaded a sample of Lagoon because the novel is in the same genre – horror – as what she writes. She had found an error on page 2. In formatting these books, letters or words sometimes are dropped, so I went back into the formatted version and corrected it. Or thought I did. At any rate, I checked out her website and discovered an interesting story about how she had come up with the idea for her novel, Dust.  I wrote her back and told her a similar incident had triggered my idea for Black Water, which was published by Kensington in 2003 and is being reincarnated as an ebook. We discovered some other things we have in common. But the synchro lies in the similarities of the events that birthed two novels.

The inspiration for her novel came from a something that happened in Maine, where Stephen King lives. “When I found the little article online, I saved it, and, since it happened in Maine, expected Stephen King to use it for a future novel. He didn’t – and so, several years later, I did.”

May 19, 2003:

LEBANON, Maine – A sudden windstorm lifted a roof off an auto body shop, collapsing most of the two-story building and killing the owner.

A meteorologist at the National Weather Service said Vintage Auto Body may have been destroyed by a “dust devil,” explaining that the weather conditions were favorable:  Dust devils – miniature tornados that travel along the ground and suck dust into the air – appear on sunny spring days when temperatures rise quickly in the morning.

“Sometimes the weirdest things happen on clear days,” the meteorologist said.

Here’s a synopsis of her book, Dust:

While unloading groceries in her Rock Haven condo, Karen McKay notices a strange swirl of red, green, and blue dust. The swirl follows her inside, lifts a porcelain ballerina from her wall unit, twirls it in the air, and throws it to the floor, shattering it into pieces.

The following evening, Karen hears her neighbor’s dog barking loudly. Upon investigation, she finds her neighbor, Marion, at the bottom of the stairs—dead. At the top of the stairs, a colorful whirlwind of dust circles ominously.

Now the feisty librarian must consider the unthinkable: Could the dust be responsible for her neighbor’s death and, if so, would it kill again? Karen turns to her ex-husband, Jerry, for help and together they bravely confront the mysterious dust. But will their daring actions cost them their lives?

Here’s where my idea for Black Water originated:

In 2002, while visiting the Florida keys, we heard about a mysterious black water that supposedly was about the size of Lake Okeechobee – 730 square miles.  No one knew what it was or what was causing it. There was speculation that it was caused by runoff from the sugar cane fields, or that that it might be similar to red tide. Marine biologists analyzed it. Fish avoided the area. I wondered if perhaps it was nature’s version of a black hole. From that thought, Black Water, a time travel story:

For years, children have been disappearing without a trace in the Florida Keys. No one, even the FBI, has suspected it could be the work of a single twisted psychopath consumed by a desire to change his past and his future. But when he abducts the daughter  of psychic Mira Morales from a deserted beach where the two have spent the day, Mira pursues him through the darkest passages of the unknown, to a place where every choice has terrifying consequences that no one, not even a psychic,  can possibly foresee.

Other parallels have surfaced, too. Susan and I are both ex-teachers married to writers. She and her husband, like Rob and me, collaborate in their writing. She, like Rob, used to be a newspaper reporter.

So, from an upload that had some errors, synchronicities  were born.

Posted in ideas, synchronicity, writers | 11 Comments

Inside Job

Posted on January 24, 2013 by Trish and Rob

 

 

If you’ve ever wondered what really happened during the global financial meltdown of 2008, then you may want to put the documentary Inside Job on your list of must sees. The film, narrated by Matt Damon, is one of the best explanations of the financial and investment complexities and corruptions that led to this meltdown.

I remember how, in 2008, the presidential campaign here in the U.S. came to standstill when George W Bush stepped before the American people and announced that the financial sky was falling. Lehman Brothers and AIG collapsed. Merrill Lynch was on the verge of bankruptcy. Banks screamed for bailouts. Economies nosedived. Credit ratings went south. The investment banking system was coming apart at the seams. The culprit in this chaotic and complex was derivatives –   specifically with mortgages.

I remember how every other week or so, we received notices from a bank that our mortgage had been sold to this bank or that one.  I remember thinking, Huh? What’s this mean? I recall how the people across the street from us went bankrupt and walked away from their house. Their mortgage was underwater. For months afterward, that house was a revolving door of tenants. We never knew who was living there, but at one point, a couple of the tenants sat all day in their garage, computers  on their laps. We later realized they were using the internet connections of their neighbors.

By 2009, it was obvious that Florida and the rest of the country were in deep trouble. Foreclosed signs appeared on lawns in every neighborhood. We had friends who hadn’t paid their mortgages in months, but because no bank could prove who owned their homes, they  stayed in their homes.

Meanwhile, the story for CEOs for these greedy, corrupt countries was quite a different story. For instance, between 2000-2006, the top five execs at Lehman Brothers made over a billion dollars. When the company went belly up, these execs were allowed to keep their earnings.

Five years after this meltdown, economies are staggering along. Iceland went under. Greece is the brunt of late-night jokes. Spain and Portugal are barely keeping their heads above water. Banks are bigger than ever and the financial sector employs more than 3,000 lobbyists who help to sculpt financial policy in the U.S. Despite assurances that the local and international economies are improving, all you have to do to uncover the truth about your country, your state, your province, is to drive through your neighborhood, your community, or walk into your local bank.

In the U.S., for the first time in history, children are not more educated or prosperous than their parents.

Naomi Klein’s book, Shock and Awe, is probably one of the most lucid ever written about global finances.  John Perkins,  one of the foremost writers on shamanic practices, used to work for the IMF. His book,  Confessions of an Economic Hitman   tells this same story of corruption, from a slightly different perspective.

When Obama won the 2008 election, he appointed Timothy Geitner as the U.S. Secretary of the Treasurer. Geitner was the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York during the meltdown, so this selection bewildered me. During the meltdown, Ben Bernanke was the current chairman of the Federal Reserve, and Obama re-appointed him. Why?

As Matt Damon says at the end of this terrific documentary, the people responsible for this meltdown are still in power.

What’s wrong with this picture?

Hopefully, with Obama’s second term – where he doesn’t have to worry about re-election – this country can begin functioning again as  a democracy. This documentary captures the essence of why it’s so profoundly important.

 

Posted in synchronicity | 7 Comments

SA TA NA MA

Posted on January 23, 2013 by Trish and Rob

Today was rather momentous all the way around. Obama was sworn in for his second term, delivered one of his most progressive speeches,  and made history every inch of the way. At the time the pomp and circumstance started around 10:30 that morning, we were at the gym  and the inaugural festivities were on nearly every TV screen.

I was on a treadmill when the woman next to me suddenly got off her treadmill and went over to the two  treadmills in front of her where the small TVs were tuned to the  inaugural festivities, and turned them off. I thought, Okay, a Republican. She’s in denial that Obama beat out Romney.

At about the same time, Rob found himself standing next to Bruce Springsteen, who lives here in the winter. His daughter is an equestrian who competes in the winter jumping.

Springsteen rode on Air Force One with Obama during the 2012 presidential campaign.

In 2009, we experienced a series of synchros that centered around Springsteen.  The upshot was that minutes after one of these synrhos, I spotted him in the gym. I approached him, told him about the synchro blog, and asked if I could take his picture for the blog.

“Sure. Just let me put my shirt on.”

No, no, I thought. We women want to see your biceps.

So today, Rob hurries over to me and says, “Springsteen’s here. He and I just watched the inaugural address.”

“What? Where?”

Bruce was incognito, wearing a baseball cap pulled down low over his eyes, and hurried past me with his pretty blond daughter. I realized this was a good omen for the beginning of Rob’s new meditation class.

Rob actually has two meditation classes going on now. One is at 8:15 AM, at a local yoga studio, way too early for me. But the second one is at our gym, from 7:30-8:30 PM, a perfect time for me. Tonight, January 21,  the same day of Obama’s inauguration, of the Bruce sighting, was the first class.

I’ve gone to most of Rob’s meditations classes and love them. He has a perfect voice for this kind of teaching, slow, measured quiet. You sort of sink into the tone of his voice and within moments, you’re gone. I was so far gone, I fell into a blissful sleep, the kind of sleep you  enjoy as a kid, unencumbered by issues,  worries, anxieties. Ten minutes of this kind of sleep can energize me for hours.

When I surfaced, everyone else was sitting up and Rob was talking about Sa Ta Na Ma, the primal sound mantra. In Kundalini yoga, it’s considered the most important meditation.

SA is the beginning, infinity, the totally of everything that ever was, is, or will be.

TA is life, existence and creativity, that manifests from infinity.

NA is death, change, and the transformation of consciousness.

MA is rebirth, regeneration, and resurrection, which allows us to consciously experience the joy of the infinite.

What is Bruce Springsteen’s music if not SA TA NA MA? What was this second inauguration of the country’s first Afro-American if not that?

We were to chant SA TA NA MA  for two minutes out loud, as a class, then two minutes in a whisper, then two minutes silently. While chanting, we were to press our thumbs against each of our four fingers. The forefinger represents Jupiter, the planet in astrology associated with expansion, knowledge, luck, being in the right place at the right time. The third finger represents Saturn, the planet that symbolizes structure, commitment, endurance, karma. The fourth singer symbolizes the sun, our egos and personalities, the sum total of who we are, and the little finger symbolizes Mercury, communication and clarity of thought.

The finger exercise was something new that Rob had added to chant. It forced me to pay attention to what I was saying,  to make connections I wouldn’t have made otherwise. And when my thumb touched each of my fingers, I thought  of Springsteen, that Jersey boy, that fireball of an American icon who sang for the Sandy Relief Fund a few months back, that musical wizard who communicates his working class roots, lifting weights incognito,  and watching his candidate sworn into office while Rob stood next to him.

Pretty cool.

 

Posted in Bruce Springsteen, synchronicity | 16 Comments

40 Years Later

Posted on January 22, 2013 by Trish and Rob

Today, January 22, is the 40th anniversary of Roe v Wade, the Supreme Court decision that made abortion legal. This landmark decision in 1973 supposedly meant that a woman could now make her own decisions about a pregnancy. But the law has been under siege ever since.

In 2013, four states have passed laws that effectively end abortions: Mississippi, North and South Dakota, and Arkansas.  In these states, there is either a single clinic that still offers these services – or no clinic. In the states that have a single clinic, the places are like fortresses, the employees take a different route to work each day, in a different car. After different routes to work, in different cars, and some of them carry concealed weapons.

In Wichita, Kansas, the last abortion clinic  closed in 2009,  with the murder of Dr. George Tiller, the only doctor in the state and one of the few in the U.S. who performed late stage abortions. He was shot and killed during a church service where he served as an usher, by Scott Roeder, an anti-abortion activist. Roeder was arrested within three hours of the shooting, and was charged with first-degree murder. Roeder publicly confessed to the killing in November 2009 and told the AP that he had shot Tiller because “preborn children’s lives were in imminent danger.”  On April 1, 2010 (April Fool’s Day) Roeder was sentenced to life imprisonment without any chance for parole for 50 years.

During the presidential campaign of 2012, the assault on women’s health became obvious and horrifying. There was talk about  mandatory vaginal ultrasounds on women who sought abortions, the assault on Planned Parenthood (which provides not only abortion services, but essential health screenings and birth control for women), and of course, assaults on Obama’s mandatory health care plan, which the Supreme Court ruled to be constitutional, much to the chagrin of certain Republican governors.

So the states run by extremists decided to make it nearly impossible for clinics that provided abortions to exist. Which brings us to Mississippi, North and South Dakota, and Arkansas. And brings us to a story I found terrifying, first reported by Amy Goodman on Democracy Now.

The National Advocates for Pregnant Women – yes, there’s actually an advocacy for these women – found that between 1973 and 2005, hundreds of pregnant women have been forced to undergo wanted medical procedures and have been jailed or locked up in psychiatric institutions because they were pregnant. Another 250 more interventions have occurred since 2005. In one case, for instance, a court ordered a critically ill woman in Washington, D.C., to undergo a C-section against her will. Neither she nor the baby survived. In another case, a judge in Ohio kept a woman imprisoned to prevent her from having an abortion.

Lynn Paltrow, founder and executive director of the National Advocates for Pregnant Women, said, “We’ve had cases where lawyers have been appointed for a fetus before the woman herself, who’s been locked up, ever gets a lawyer. And one court said pregnant women of course have a right to religious freedom — unless it interferes with what we believe is best for the fetus or embryo.”

Really? The judicial system knows what’s best for you and your pregnancy? For you and your body? Okay, let’s say you’re a female in your early twenties. Even though you’re college educated, the economy for women in your position, with your major, isn’t good. You get pregnant. You’re not married. You know you can’t afford to raise a child, that you can barely support yourself. Or perhaps you’re a woman in her forties who, for health reasons, can’t carry a child to term without great risk to your own health. Or perhaps you simply don‘t want children and your method of birth control failed. Or, worse,you were raped and got pregnant. Now what?

No woman goes into an abortion without emotional conflict. The decision to seek an abortion is not one you make casually, over breakfast and your morning coffee.  There’s nothing casual about it. But it’s YOU who should make the decision – not a panel of men. It’s YOU who must come to terms with that decision – emotionally, intellectually, spiritually – not a bunch of male politicians. I don’t mean to sound sexist here, but if men were the ones getting pregnant, this wouldn’t be an issue.

I’m old enough to have known women who got abortions in back alleys, who went to the Bahamas or other countries where abortion were legal. And frankly, I can’t believe that after 40 years, legal abortion is still an issue in this country. Abortion, like guns and gay marriage, speaks to our divisiveness as a nation, to the interjection of religious beliefs that claim life begins at conception, that the second amendment means we can all carry assault weapons, and that gays who love each other should be denied the rights that other married couples have.

All of these beliefs are rooted in fear of change. But change is inevitable and it sweeps over us whether we’re ready or not. In the end, these decisions belong to the individual -not the state, not the government, and certainly not to a bunch of overpaid, bloated politicians who are  out of step with the American people.  In the end, these decisions are made in the privacy of our own hearts and spiritual beliefs.

A postscript: President Obama was sworn into office for a second term yesterday. I’m feeling enormously optimistic about the future with this visionary at the helm. He’s the face of the future. And after four years in which he was opposed at every turn, his resolve during his inaugural speech promises that the next four years will be quite different. He has apparently learned that attempted compromise with Republicans is a lost cause. Perhaps this next four years is when he really does become the agent for change.

Posted in Roe v Wade, synchronicity | 10 Comments

A Special Indra’s Net

Posted on January 21, 2013 by Trish and Rob

 

 

Angie, one of the beauticians at the salon where I get my hair cut, told me today about a new year’s eve synchronicity that turned her life around. A little background.

Angie is 49, raised three kids from her first marriage, and has been married to her second husband for several years. He also has three children, from his first marriage. Last fall, one of his kids, a teenage girl, came to live with him and Angie. She now officially had a stepdaughter.

The girl was apparently out of control, tensions mounted, and the marriage started unraveling. Then Angie’s husband told her he wanted to move his other kids to Florida, too. She drew her line in the sand. “I’d already raised three kids. I wasn’t about to raise three more, which would take me somewhere into my sixties.”

So shortly before Thanksgiving, her second husband moved out with his daughter and Angie and her son had to move in with her parents. For weeks, she said she cried daily, she despaired. “Here I was, 49 and living at home with mom and dad, in the same bedroom where I’d grown up. I desperately needed closure to this marriage.”

On new year’s eve, Angie and a female friend went to a local place on the intracoastal to celebrate. Angie arrived early, found two open stools at the bar, and sat down to wait for her friend. She and the man sitting next to her struck up a conversation. He turned out to be a teacher at the same high school her stepdaughter had attended. “What do you teach?” she asked.

“Auto mechanics.”

Her stepdaughter had taken auto mechanics.  Angie suddenly realized this conversation was important. She said her stepdaughter’s name; let’s call her Joann Smith.   “Was she in your class?”

“Sure was. The only female. But she wasn’t there long. Joann said her stepmother was a bitch, drove her and her father out of the house.”

Angie knew her stepdaughter had spread terrible stories about her, and here she was, sitting next to one of the girl’s teachers. What were the odds ?

In the course of the conversation, Angie discovered that  the teacher has been born in the same New Jersey town that she had, had attended the same elementary school, and that his parents lived just around the block from where she had grown up. She also found out  that her stepdaughter had told the teacher that she and her dad were moving back to Texas where her mother and siblings still lived.

“This entire conversation was closure for me, the closure I so desperately needed.” The next day, January 1, 2013, Angie’s soon to be ex called her and begged her for a reconciliation. She told him to forget it and  they are now proceeding with a divorce.

“From that moment forward,” Angie said, “I stopped crying. I started envisioning what I wanted for my life, for myself. All my life, I had been giving to others – first husband, kids, second husband, kids. I kept seeing this perfect apartment for my son and I, a place on the water. I wanted this place, I knew it was out there, waiting for me. I’m not greedy, Trish. I jut want some peace.”

About a week later, the realtor with whom Angie had been working called her and said he had a couple of condos to show her. One of them was older, hadn’t been shown in six months, the owner had been upgrading. He thought it might suit her.

“Where’s it located?” Angie asked.

“On the intracoastal. A water view.”

“I’d like to see that one first.”

When Angie walked into that intracoastal apartment, she was stunned. It was exactly where she had envisioned living with her son.

These events all happened within the first 12 days of the new year. “In the mornings, before I go to work, I sit on my balcony sipping coffee and watching the water out there and I appreciate all of it, over and over again. “

“What happened that night with the teacher?” I asked, sensing another layer of this story.

Angie laughed. “He asked for my number, then suddenly said he didn’t know my name.  I told him I was Joann’s wicked stepmother and my friend and I invited him to spend new year’s with us. At some point in the evening, he disappeared. The point is that he was the messenger, the one who provided closure to my second marriage. I’m so done with it. My life is opening up in new, exciting ways. I’m exactly where I need to be.”

When she finished telling me all this, I sat there for a few moments, absorbing it all. “Angie, this entire thing you’ve just told me is how synchronicity and the law of attraction work together to confirm what we’re doing when.”

She leaned toward me and whispered, “I know. Isn’t it just mind-blowing?”

Uh-huh. Sounds like our old friend, Indra’s Net.

Posted in synchronicity | 15 Comments

Doggies and Socrates

Posted on January 20, 2013 by Trish and Rob

Sometimes, laughter really is the best medicine. The cartoon came from Adele Aldridge.

And the next  piece on Socrates was sent by Nancy McMoneagle:

+++

Keep this in mind the next time you are about to repeat a rumor or spread gossip.

In ancient Greece (469 – 399 BC), Socrates was widely lauded for his wisdom. One day an acquaintance ran up to him excitedly and said, “Socrates, do you know what I just heard about Diogenes?”

“Wait a moment,” Socrates replied, “Before you tell me I’d like you to pass a little test. It’s called the Triple Filter Test.”

“Triple filter?” asked the acquaintance.

“That’s right,” Socrates continued, “Before you talk to me about Diogenes let’s take a moment to filter what you’re going to say. The first filter is Truth. Have you made
absolutely sure that what you are about to tell me is true?”

“No,” the man said, “Actually I just heard about it.”

“All right,” said Socrates, “So you don’t really know if it’s true or not. Now let’s try the second filter, the filter of Goodness. Is what you are about to tell me about Diogenes something good?”

“No, on the contrary…”

“So,” Socrates continued, “You want to tell me something about Diogenes that may be bad, even though you’re not certain it’s true?”

The man shrugged, a little embarrassed. Socrates continued, “You may still pass the test though, because there is a third filter, the filter of Usefulness. Is what you want to tell me about Diogenes going to be useful to me?”

“No, not really.”

“Well,” concluded Socrates, “If what you want to tell me is neither True nor Good nor even Useful, why tell it to me or anyone at all?”

The man was bewildered and ashamed. This is an example of why Socrates was a great philosopher and held in such high esteem.

It also explains why Socrates never found out that Diogenes was banging his wife.

Posted in synchronicity | 6 Comments

Synchronicity, Creativity, and iPad Games

Posted on January 19, 2013 by Trish and Rob

                                                                from realMyst

Ever since I found a game for my iPad called The Room, I’ve been on a search for other games that are comparable. The Room is really a game about synchronicity – where clues and hints guide you toward some new discovery. I’ve found two possible contenders, although neither of these games has the three-dimensional, tactile satisfaction of  The Room

The Lost City – at just 99 cents – isn’t just a bargain, it’s fun. The world you enter is beautifully rendered, deftly layered. The deeper I went into these layers, the more I discovered about myself. It was like an excavation of my own psyche, but within the parameters of the game. I was forced to think outside my comfort zone.

I know this probably sounds silly for an iPad game. But as I was playing around in this world, I was thinking that it’s the same format Dan Brown used in The DaVinci Code, where the main character, played by Tom Hanks in the movie, was forced to solve riddles and puzzles that revealed the next layer of the mystery, and the next and the next until he arrived at the truth: Christ had impregnated Mary Magdalene and that bloodline survived to the present day.

This game lacks the stunning, three dimensional graphics of The Room. But I love the Indiana Jones feel of the game, the length is more satisfying, and I still haven’t solved the last several clues. So, stumped as I am, I looked for other games by the same developers and ran across The Secrets of the Grisly Manor.

This one has so many puzzles and twists and turns that you really have to remain vigilant and take notes. It helps if you have an eidetic memory, which I don’t. I admit to using my iPhone to snap photos of a clue in one frame so that I could use them in another frame. No synchros here, just  one foot in front of the other.

So my brief foray into iPad games has yielded a couple of insights that I can apply to my fiction.  Plant your clues and your puzzles, but don’t over-explain. When you can, cut to the chase. Every story, like every game, is predicated on a quest – for truth, love, revenge, knowledge, spiritual wisdom, or the key ingredient in your grandfather’s invention!

In fact, after I solved Grisly Manor,I embarked on another search for games and found realMyst, the Myst video game from 20 years ago now beautifully rendered for the iPad.  In many ways, it’s better than The Room, visually stunning, complex, and it even has a story.  It’s pricier than other games – $6.99 – but it instills such a spirit of adventure for exploration that it’s worth  the extra few dollars.

In between my searches, I dropped by Whitley Strieber’s Unknown Country   and watched a video from the International Space Station of objects zipping across the continent in what seemed like seconds.  On Strieber’s site, these objects are called Fastwalkers. The word hit me. It’s now the title of my new novel, which doesn’t have anything to do with UFOs. But the world resonates. It fits the story. So,four games, about $10 of entertainment, and new creative insights. A good deal all around for the early part  of 2013.

Posted in synchronicity | 14 Comments

A.D.: After Disclosure

Posted on January 18, 2013 by Trish and Rob

I’ve been reading several UFO-related books and one of them is quite compelling. A.D.: After Disclosure, by Richard M. Dolan and Bryce Zabel. It  uses a what if premise  and takes us through the first hour, day, month, and year after disclosure occurs. How will disclosure change governments? Religions? Cultures? You and me?

The authors speculate that the event which will trigger disclosure  could be a mass sighting. But we’ve had those before – the Phoenix Lights (1997), the Hudson Valley  sightings (1980s), Gulfport, Florida (late 80s, early 90s) Moscow (1990), Mexico City (1991), Belgium, Stephenville, Texas (2008) Norway (1980s). Some of these mass sightings had excellent video and photographs  and received, as the authors note, at least some press coverage.

“In several of the American cases, there were behind-the-scenes pressures to prevent mass panic. Frequently, the Federal Aviation Administration  (FAA) was on-the-spot, charged with stonewalling pubic inquiries with absurd explanations that were intended to prevent further press inquiry.”

However, this is now 2013 and millions of people worldwide have  Smart phones with high definition video and camera capabilities. As the authors point out, the steady growth of technology is “one great inexorable force, relentlessly pushing us all into the future, into the light of truth.”

But when you consider that the secrecy about UFOs and ETs has existed at least since Roswell in 1947, it may take more than thousands of high def videos and photos of UFOs for disclosure to reach a tipping point. Dolan and  Zabel speculate about the existence of a group that is actually in charge of the UFO secrecy. They call this cabal the Breakaway Group. Thanks to worldwide assets, this group isn’t beholden to any political or military authorities. “…it’s likely that the Breakaway Group answers not so much to the president of the United States as it does to private, internationally based individuals and groups.”

Why would these secret-keepers, these UFO/ET power brokers, surrender their silence?  They probably wouldn’t do it willingly, but circumstances may prompt them to do so.

There are sections in the book where the authors speculate about who these aliens are, what they want, how they think and it makes for fascinating reading.  They also mention the possibility that perhaps these beings aren’t aliens at all but are inter-dimensional travelers or perhaps even time travelers – us from the future?

There’s a fascinating section in the book about how both news and entertainment will change after disclosure. In fact, one of the authors, Bryce Zabel, has created five prime time network series, and I wonder if he worked out a possible series in the writing of A.D. this book. “…imagine a new show called Above and Beyond. In this series, almost anything goes, but its stock in trade is an aerial point of view, seeing the world below from a POV of a flying saucer. This series would be a vehicle to take audiences into previously classified labs.”

Reality shows, newscasts, both print and digital newspapers will be scrambling for new programming.  And late-night comedians will have a whole new spectrum of material for jokes.  The authors also explore the impact on art, publishing, the economy, technology, medicine.

It’s a fascinating read.

The second book, Nigel Kerner’s Grey Aliens and the Harvesting of Souls, has a strange but not implausible premise: the Grays are bioengineered, don’t have souls, and are abducting humans to create hybrids that will have souls.  In other words, their mission is, well, spiritual. Sort of.  It parallels what one abductee said: “They don’t grok us.” They don’t understand our emotional attachments to each other, to pets, to anything.

Kerrner’s premise is couched in a dense, complex cosmology he has worked out about the nature of reality, the universe, and a supreme being. I started stumbling with this book when I read this line:

“If abortions are freely available and are carried out, then soon the natural balance of debt-engendered reincarnation will be upset; in time, no soul will be able to come through to the exact conditions required for a particular karma to be expedited.”

Huh? Really? Where’s free will in this picture? This idea felt intuitively wrong to me, so I wrote my friend Carol Bowman and asked her what she thought of that quote. Carol’s written two books on children’s past lives –Children’s Past Lives and Return from Heaven – and has an active past-life regression practice. I figured she could shed some light on this.

Her response:

“It seems that some souls aren’t even that involved with the forming fetus in the early stages of pregnancy.   And it seems that each soul coming in responds to the abortion differently.  If you have a copy of Return From Heaven I have a chapter on that called U-turn in the Womb.  Also, if the mother communicates with the soul of the unborn child and explains why she is aborting, the incoming soul can make other plans:  come later or go somewhere else.

“The whole concept of “debt-engendered” reincarnation is old school, as far as I’m concerned.  It sounds like the old punitive concept of reincarnation.  Who is this guy?”

I didn’t finish Kerner’s book. But I’m off now to finished A.D.: After Disclosure.

 

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