Nika & Noah, a Love Story

Posted on July 14, 2017 by Trish and Rob

Our daugher’s dog, Nika, has been staying with us since early June, when Megan got her cast for a broken ankle. Since she wasn’t allowed to put any weight on her foot, she was using a knee scooter and it just seemed easier to bring Nika to our house, which delighted Noah, of course. This is the longest time they have been together since Megan adopted Nika in 2011, when she lived with us for about six months and Noah presumably taught her everything he knew about being a dog and living with the MacGregors.

They have a distinct language in their barks and what we think of as words seem to be expressed in the tone, texture, speed, and pitch of the barks. For instance, when both dogs get a marrow bone, Nika immediately takes hers elsewhere in the house or outside, where she hides it. There’s deliberate intent about her actions and Noah’s reactions that suggest neither of them live entirely in the moment, as I thought for years. Dogs, cats, and other animals plan, project, remember.

After Nika has hidden her bone, she then trots back into the house and barks at Noah, a certain bark that is the same every time and seems to translate as, Dude, share your bone, okay? Most of the time, Nika ends up working away at two marrow bones because Noah has given her his.

They also have games that are like competitions. This one seemed to be about who could dig the deepest hole and bury the Frisbee under mounds of dirt so the other can’t find it. Each day at the dog park, the hole got deeper.

Then there’s the game about who gets the Frisbee or the ball. Nika looks fierce in this photo, like she’s about to bite Noah’s nose off, but it’s mostly bluster.

Every day around 4 PM, we take the dogs to our dog park. And they know when it’s time. If we’re a few minutes late, both dogs start pacing, barking, run back and forth to the door. They spend a few minutes sniffing butts with other dogs, but generally trot off together to hunt for squirrels, happy to be together.

During many of these afternoons at the park, I follow them around at a distance, curious about what intrigues them – a particular scent, a bird, squirrel, ball, Frisbee, a hole. At these times, they really are completely immersed in the moment – a sensory moment that pulls them in completely.

Their memories of other dogs and people are astounding and it’s not just the smell of either one, but the voice (human or canine), the movement, the presence. The other dog or human may not have been around for months, but the recognition happens regardless. Hey, there, where’ve you been? What’s up? What’s going on?

 They also recognize places. On occasions when we have visited Megan and the car pulls to a stop at her cub, Noah leaps out of the open window to greet Nika before she comes racing out the front door. When Nika visits us after a long hiatus and we pull into the dog park, she whines and barks, her excitement so palpable it’s obvious she knows where she is and can’t wait to get out and run.

On one occasion, after Nika had visited and left, Noah sank into what can only be called a depression; he didn’t eat for 3 days.

It feels like these two have known each other in past lives, that they are soul mates, and perhaps that’s the synchronicity, that they would meet again through us. Both are rescues.  Accuse me of anthropomorphism, but hey, there is great love here. You can feel it when you’re with them. And at the end of the day, Nika and Noah are rarely very far apart.

 

Posted in synchronicity | Tagged , , | 12 Comments

The Nightmare

Posted on July 12, 2017 by Trish and Rob

I feel sorry for Donald Trump Jr. I think he’s getting thrown under the bus to take the fall for his brother-in-law, Jared, for his dad, The Donald, and for everyone else in the administration who has met with the Russians during the campaign and after. He’s collateral damage.

Donald Jr. isn’t part of the administration, but is connected to it by blood. You know he has issues with trump as his dad. He’s supposedly holding the family business interests together while his dad alienates every ally we have on the planet, his sister Ivanka sits in on high security meetings, and his brother-in-law Jared smirks all the way to the bank. Now he, too, has hired his own attorneys. It seems to me that the only people profiting from this administration are the trumps and attorneys. We, the people, certainly aren’t getting much out of this administration.

Congress is fixated on repealing Obamacare – which they’ve tried to repeal how many times now? Are we pushing 70 attempts yet? – but still don’t have a replacement for it that can pass the Senate. These republicans have a lot of legislation on their wish lists, but can’t seem to get to any of it because every day there’s a new scandal, new revelations, new twitter storms from the boss.

One thing the boss did do – make travel to Cuba more difficult again for Americans. Once more, the only way you can get there is through Mexico or by traveling with “an educational group,” that is approved and sanction by the U.S. government, of course. That means the trip will cost you plenty. After all, we can’t have Americans just sipping mojitos on Cuban beaches.

Yet, we Americans can fly to China, North Korea, even Russia without being questioned or placed under suspicion. So why can’t we travel as freely to Cuba? Did Florida senator Marco Rubio make some nefarious deal with trump about this? Seems to me that trump and Rubio are playing to a small bunch of viejecitos – old bitter refugees playing dominoes in Little Havana’s parks – who are living in the past and are part of trump’s alleged base.

Who constitutes this base of trump’s? Who can actually still support this schizoid two-year-old? In West Virginia, a state that went for trump by a huge percentage, there are no new coal jobs. If Medicaid is vastly diminished under the repug’s proposed health care bill, that will toss a whole bunch of West Virginians into the street, with no coverage at all. But West Virginia is just one state out of 50. Google the rest of the 49 states. The picture isn’t pretty.

Bottom line? In a country that considers itself morally superior to most others in the world, we have a repug majority that doesn’t give a crap about the poor, the disabled, the sick, the elderly, or even about kids who depend on school lunches as their only meal of the day. We have a president who pulls out of the G-20 in terms of the Paris accord about climate change, an administration that hopes to rob 24 million or more of their health care, that would love to cut Medicare and privatize Social Security, so that the very wealthy- that one or two percent that Bernie Sanders talks about – can get a tax cut.

For the repugs, you are valuable only as long as you are a fetus; once you’re born, you’re on your own, sorry. For the repugs, if you are poor, elderly, sick, disabled, hungry, or a kid who depends on your school breakfast or lunches, well, sorry, you’re outta luck. For the repugs, the Russian hacking of the 2016 election is “fake news.” For nearly three years now, since the presidential campaign started, the media has given trump so much coverage that I’m tired of seeing his orange hair, tired of listening to his stupidity, tired of his 140 character Twitter feed that instantly becomes news.

Please. May this nightmare end.

 

Posted in synchronicity | Tagged , , | 6 Comments

Frogs!

Posted on July 11, 2017 by Trish and Rob

Frogs.

These guys start their lives as tadpoles, a rather strange life that takes about 12 weeks to make the transition from tadpole to frog. Somewhere between six and nine weeks, the tadpole starts sprouting little legs, the head becomes more distinct, the body elongates. Around nine weeks the tadpole looks like a tiny frog.

Understand, though, that a frog emerges from one of 4,000 eggs laid by the mother in a jellylike substance where it develops into a tadpole. Most tadpoles are consumed by predators before they’ve fully metamorphosed into frogs at 12 to 14 weeks of age. The half-dozen or so of the tadpoles from the original 4,000 eggs that survive to adulthood might live 5 to 8 years in the wild.

Esoterically, frogs – like butterflies – are considered to messengers of transformation. And for us over the years, they have proven to be symbols of dire transformation or of incredibly fortunate transformation, depending on the health of the frog and where it’s found.

In 1997, for instance, we returned from a trip and in our family room, found a dead Cuban tree frog. Our daughter, Megan, who was only eight at the time, saw it, and murmured, “Uh-oh, this can’t be good.”

Dead frog, family room: it was obvious. The next day, Rob’s mother called to tell him his father had died.

In 2003, Trish came across a beautiful Cuban tree frog in the kitchen, caught it, and released it outside. Two days later, she was told her novels, Out of Sight, had been nominated for an Edgar Allan Poe Award from the Mystery Writers of America. Kitchen: sustenance. Good health: excellent prognosis. Several months later, she won the award.

Over the years, many animals have acted as messengers in just this way. We look at their life cycles for hints about timing, where they’re found for hints about their meaning, and their health (or lack of) for a hint about whether the message is positive, negative, or somewhere in between. Although we have a lot of frogs that are drawn to the windows of our offices because the lights are on, which attract insects, it’s been awhile since a frog has been found inside the house.

Around June 12-13 last month, I found a dead frog in the house at the entrance to the family room from the porch. I didn’t mention it to Rob or anyone else. The frog had been dead for awhile, its body as flat as a postage stamp. Two days later, we learned that Rob’s mother had died and shortly afterward, we left for Minnesota to help settle her affairs.

Today, July 1, I was taking a shower and noticed something near the drain. I’m nearsighted and don’t wear contacts, so there I was in the shower, squinting and crouching to find out what this thing was.

It was a Cuban tree frog!

I turned off the shower, found my glasses, and took a closer look. The frog had been enjoying all that water, was mid-size, and in no particular hurry to move. I got dressed, opened the door to the backyard, and shouted for Rob. “Hey, there’s frog in here in really good shape! Come look!”

He came running in, picked up the frog in a towel, and freed it.

Then, late tonight, another encounter. Rob was headed to bed, I was still at my computer, and heard him call, “Hey, a baby Cuban tree frog!”

I ran out into the living room hallway, where this really small tree frog was hopping around close to the front door. Our cat, Simba, was nearby, watching it with great interest. It was tough to catch, but Rob finally nabbed it and let it outside.

So. We have frog in shower (cleansing) and frog at front door (opportunity knocking?). Is a third frog sighting in the house imminent? If so, that will be the telling.

 

Posted in synchronicity | Tagged | 7 Comments

Channeling an alien

Posted on July 9, 2017 by Trish and Rob
 

We recently received some channeled material, supposedly from an alien source. Like many people, I (Rob) am feel some resistance at the idea that some person is  speaking or writing the message of an advanced being from elsewhere. I was getting prepared to tell the sender as much, but then I read the material and found quite a bit that I could resonate with. Yet, to me, it’s a dumbed down version. And done so with the intent of avoiding a message that might generate fear, which could result if we were told the bigger picture of forces in the universe. As above, so below.

As for the source, we don’t know who it is. Or at least there was no attribution. But I would say that it is probably a regular person, not a world leader. And I think that is a good thing. Who wants the pope or Trump or Obama or whoever to have the key to the universe. That’s exactly the problem, which ‘they’ point out. Those in power have had the knowledge and they’ve done everything they can to hide it. Imagine if there is really free energy available – a wonderful thing, except for power brokers in the oil industry and elsewhere, who would see their world collapse.

So such cosmic info is being disseminated to regular folks, which is a good thing. Maybe we’re not quite ready to accept it—as my initial reaction suggested—but we’re on our way. I’ve noticed that local media outlets, particularly local TV stations, are willing to report UFO sightings and related stories. We don’t see that at the national level, unless it’s a debunking report or something in a humorous vein. But there are people in all walks of life who are knowledgeable on these matters, in one degree or another, and they are pushing in their own ways. Who knows when we’ll reach the tipping point.

With that introduction, here is the material. It seems to pick up in mid-thought. I don’t know what came before this part…
+++

“However, we are very pleased to see that more and more humans are holding less and less fear about “off-world/Galactic realities.” In the 1950’s, which were one of the times in which we were ready to land, the Illuminati started a huge fear campaign of “horror movies” of terrifying ETs coming to “take over Earth” or “abduct humans.”

“It is true that the Zetas did abduct humans, as stated in the X File shows, but that activity stopped long ago. Also, they had no desire at all to harm humanity, in fact they greatly educated those that were aboard their Ship to “share their DNA” with the Zeta’s who were in dire need of fresh DNA.

“The Zetas were no longer able to replicate themselves via procreation, and needed to “create new forms” from the DNA they gathered from the humans. This gathering of DNA was done with full permission of the governments who received higher technology in exchange.

“Did these governments share this technology with their people? NO, they kept the technology for themselves so that they could “make money.” What those trapped in the third and lower fourth dimensional consciousness do not realize, is that there is no need for any form of money or bartering in the fourth and fifth dimensions of reality.

“In the fourth dimension, and even more so in the fifth dimension, humans are able to create anything they need with their own thoughts and emotions. You do notice that the above information is not visible in your newspapers or easily found on the Internet.

“The reason for this is that the “power over others” groups are very frightened that their reign of “power over” is coming to a conclusion. They are seeing that more and more of humanity is raising their consciousness into the higher fourth and fifth dimensional frequencies of reality.

“Then, even though humans may still be “wearing an earth vessel” they do not allow that fact to limit them any more than “wearing a sweater” would limit them. Of course, you can easily take off a sweater, whereas you cannot yet easily take off and put back on your earth vessel—YET.

“Of course you may leave your earth vessel safely stored on Earth when you visit the fourth dimension during sleep, dreams, deeply meditate, are under anesthetic, or engaged in deep creativity. In fact, many of you have remembered how to keep enough of your essence within your physical earth vessel, just as you may keep someone on your boat while you go on shore.

“In fact, more and more of you have remembered how to use your “Ship to Shore Communicator” so that you can communicate with your Higher SELF as easily as you would “call a friend on your cell phone.” It is for the above reason that we are sending our “inter-dimensional message” through many of our grounded, but fully awakened, expression of SELF.

“In fact, more and more members of our Galactic Family have sent a representative of our fifth dimensional and beyond SELF down to Gaia to wear a third dimensional earth vessel to create a relay system so that humanity’s fifth dimensional and beyond family could speak with YOU, our brave “away team to Earth.”

“We are here today to thank all of you who have remembered to connect your Inter-Dimensional Communication Systems with your third/fourth dimensional Brain, High Heart, and Third Eye. We suggest that you first connect your High Heart for within your High Heart is your Three Fold Flame of Divine Wisdom, Multidimensional Power and Unconditional Love.

“Also, within the Atma of your High Heart is your multidimensional circuitry, which runs infinitely via the power of your Galactic Wisdom, Multidimensional Power, and Unconditional Love.

“Also, within the Atma of your High Heart are the first 8 cells of your physical form. These first 8 cells go from incarnation to incarnation to connect you to your true, Multidimensional SELF who lives happily on our Starships.

“We, your Galactic Family, want to remind you that you are never alone, and that you are always supported by us. We also wish to remind you that our “Galactic Family” includes your own higher dimensional expression of SELF.

“Blessings to you all! We greatly enjoy touching in with our brave volunteers who took an earth vessel to assist Gaia with Her planetary ascension.

“The Arcturians and your Galactic Family”

Posted in synchronicity | Tagged , , , | 10 Comments

Ordinary People Who Experience Extraordinary Things

Posted on July 7, 2017 by Trish and Rob

Join us tonight at Darkness Radio with Dave Schraeder, 10 PM EDT, 9 PM central

When ordinary people experience something extraordinary that defies what we are told is possible and true, something beyond strange, what’s actually going on? What’s the larger picture?

Take the experience of John Murphy, who in 1964 experienced the inexplicable and believes he walked 300 years into the past with a young woman he had just met. Not only did John and Barbara both feel an uncanny sense that they already knew each other, but during a walk they encountered a small 18th century British village with a church dominating the village square where they felt certain they’d lived before. They even recalled their lives as young married couple with children. Yet, when John returned to this location alone two days later, the village was gone. He later learned the village had been wiped out in a hurricane in the late 18th century.

It’s easy to dismiss this kind of story as factual. Even the person who experiences something like this eventually begins to doubt it when confronted with a consensus reality that insists time travel isn’t possible, except in fiction. We’ve been taught to discount the validity of our own experiences. Rather than face ridicule and derision from family and friends, who roll their eyes or laugh or shake their heads when we recount what happened, we keep the experience to ourselves. And yet, the experience haunts us. For John Murphy and Barbara, the emotional reality of that experience has persisted for decades.

Or take the experience that Priscilla had in the Florida Keys in the 1990s, when she was driving from Big Pine Key to Islamorada. Her car was surrounded by a thick fog through which she traveled for about a mile. As she came over a bridge and saw the hotel on Big Pine where she, her husband, and son were staying, she was terrified. She realized she had traveled the 58 miles between the two keys in less than 15 minutes.   

Fearing ridicule, Priscilla has rarely spoken about this experience outside of her family. And yet, the emotional reality of what happened has remained with her. Who are we to doubt that it happened?

Many facets of the paranormal – spirit communication, alien abduction, telekinesis, telepathy, remote viewing, precognition, hearing voices, take your pick – are viewed with suspicion and skepticism. Yet, the emotional reality of the experiences persist for the people who had them.

Perhaps these things happen to people whose consciousness isn’t as constrained by this consensus view that insists reality is simply what we experience with our five senses. Maybe that’s why synchronicity manifests itself so strongly in these incidents.

Throughout the years of our research into the nature of the phenomenon, we have found that emotions play a powerful role. Was John Murphy feeling a need for confirmation that he had lived before when he met Barbara? After all, what are the odds that he would meet this woman during his four days of leave in Bermuda? What are the odds that she, one of four student nurses in the US Navy Nurse Corps, would also be there? Synchronicities often involve great odds.

And what about Priscilla’s time-traveling episode? Are there some areas on the planet, like the Bermuda Triangle, where the convergence of energies create climates more conducive to this type of experience? And do these “climates” attract certain individuals?

And what about people who communicate with the dead? Or interact with aliens? Or sense the future? Or are telekinetic? Are they all nuts? Nobel prize winner Wolfgang Pauli wouldn’t think so about telekinesis. Equipment broke down so often in his presence that his scientific colleagues started referring to it as “The Pauli Effect,” and some of them forbade him from entering the lab.

Every day, ordinary people from a spectrum of cultures, beliefs, and ethnic backgrounds experience things that are beyond strange. Perhaps they are the true pioneers of the 21st century, the ones who are busting through existing paradigms about the nature of reality. It’s important that we listen to them and try to understand their experiences.

 

Posted in synchronicity | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

Betty Dangers

Posted on July 5, 2017 by Trish and Rob

During our recent trip to Minneapolis, we met up with Rabbit (Rob Larson), one of Rob’s oldest friends, for dinner at a place called Betty Danger’s Country Club. On their website, they tout it as “the country club for the 99%.” It’s definitely not a country club with rolling hills and golf courses, but is smack in the middle of a neighborhood.

When Rob told me there was a Ferris wheel at the place, I envisioned some little Ferris wheel for kids. Well, surprise! This Ferris wheel was shipped in from Italy, is full scale, and is the centerpiece of the restaurant. Most of the outside tables are arranged around it. For six bucks, you get five revolutions on the wheel, can take your dinner and a drink with you, and the view at the top is fantastic.

When you’re at the top of this gigantic thing at sunset, the city in the distance looks like something out of a fairy tale and everything below looks utterly magical. We could see the Mississippi River, one of the unusual bridges that crosses it, and numerous neighborhoods partially shrouded by trees. Those five revolutions take at least 20 or 30 minutes because the wheel moves very slowly, with numerous stops. There was a breeze that evening, and during our stops at the top of the Ferris wheel, our gondola swayed.

We got a kick out of the sign posted in our gondola:

The woman who owns Betty Dangers also owns another restaurant/bar down the street called Psycho Suzi’s Motor Lodge. I suppose it’s a motor lodge for the 99%!

Betty Dangers reminded me of something that might be a place where the world of the living and the dead intersect. So I used it in my new novel, Water Dancers, as exactly that sort of place.

Posted in synchronicity | Tagged , | 3 Comments

Our Trump Prediction – Flopped!

Posted on July 4, 2017 by Trish and Rob

We’ve posted a number of things about trump on this blog and several of them concerned when he would be GONE. Rob predicted June 23. A tarot reading in May seemed to back up that it would be SOON. We were wrong. But I’m hopeful about the prediction from astrologer  Alex Miller.

It’s now July 4, and trump is  still in power, doing his usual twitter storms about CNN as fake news, that an MSNBC host was bleeding from a facelift, that everyone is against him, etc etc. And that’s the whole thing with trump. A huge etc. to be continued in tomorrow’s tweet and the tweet the day after and after and on into who knows when the congress wakes up and even the radical right republicans realize this man is flat-out nuts.

Trump isn’t a president. He’s a joke. A travesty. He’s the ultimate trickster archetype that could turn this country into a dictatorship if he manages to usurp the other branches of government that are supposed to provide checks and balances. But one thing trump does well is to change the narrative by doing or saying something outrageous. I don’t think this happens because he’s particularly intelligent. I think it happens because he has an instinct for media hype.

During the campaign, he didn’t have to spend a dime to get coverage; television obliged him because they didn’t think he could win and hey, he was good for ratings. The Trumpster, doing his silly thing night after night, igniting the pissed off masses. Ha. So silly. But the ratings went up.

And then, gasp, he won, probably because of Russian hacking, but who knows if we’ll ever get the full, true story on any of that. The democrats are not blameless in all this. Once upon a time, they really did represent the people, the conscience of a country. They passed terrific social legislation that actually helped people. But somewhere along the way, they became beholden to their donors, their base, and lost sight of the fact that the 21st century demands a new paradigm.

 For years, I was a registered independent. When Obama ran in 2008, I changed to the Democratic party so I could vote in the primary. Rob and I waited hours to hear him and Biden speak that year. I had watched his speech at the Democratic convention in 2004 and knew he was it, the candidate for 2008. Obama wasn’t perfect. But he was presidential, smart, savvy, and an incredible orator whose words moved me. He governed well for eight years. Our country prospered. Sure, he made mistakes – his health care stuff, for instance,  set the bar too low. He should have gone for Medicare for all. But he was up against an intractable republican congress.

By contrast, when I hear trump speak, I nearly puke.  I can’t stand looking at this orange man with his bulk, his crassness, his corrupt cabinet. This guy belongs in prison. And yet, if he goes and we get Pense, then we may be headed for The Handmaid’s Tale,  based on Margaret Atwood’s brilliant Dystopian novel where a handful of white men in back rooms (SOUND FAMILIAR?) decide the fate of an entire society.

And so, on this 4th of July, symbolic of our country’s independence, I’m left with a weighted heaviness in my heart, that we’re pretty much screwed as a country unless something changes and fast. Where are Will Smith and Bill Pullman and Jeff Goldblum from Independence Day? This invasion of trump and his idiots are as alien as it gets to the concept of democracy and freedom.

Trump’s presidency tests our constitution. Will we survive as a democracy?

Posted in synchronicity | Tagged , , | 10 Comments

Nutshell

Posted on July 3, 2017 by Trish and Rob

 

Every so often, I head over to our local Barnes and Noble and cruise the aisles, checking out new books. If the book has an interesting cover,  I pick it up, read the back cover or the inside flap for a synopsis of the story. If this captures my interest, I turn to the first page and read it. If it seizes me, I buy the book. This is true whether I’m familiar with the author or not.

This is what happened with Ian McEwan’s novel Nutshell, published in 2016. I bought the paperback version, which came out in May. Here’s the first line:

So here I am, upside down in a woman. Okay, that seized me. I knew from the back cover copy that the novel was written from a fetus’s point of view. He goes on: Arms patiently crossed, waiting, waiting, and wondering who I’m in, what I’m in for. My eyes close nostalgically when I remember how I once drifted in my translucent water bag, floated dreamily in the bubble of my thoughts through my private ocean in slow motion somersaults, colliding gently against the transparent bounds of my confinement, the confiding membrane that vibrated with, even as it muffled, the voices of conspirators in a vile enterprise.

I already knew from the back cover copy that the fetus’s mother is planning on murdering his father. And this fetus knows it. Nutshell is one of the most unusual novels I’ve ever read. The premise is brilliant, but what’s really startling, though, is that McEwan’s creativity extends beyond his gender, into what it’s like for a woman to be pregnant and what it may be like for that in vitro soul, crammed into this tiny space of the womb.

One of the most innovative scenes and laugh out loud scenes happens when mom imbibes more than 3 glasses of wine and the fetus lets you in on what he knows about  the types of wine. It’s speculative fiction at its best.

 

Posted in synchronicity | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Exceptional Art

Posted on July 1, 2017 by Trish and Rob

I’m a huge fan of this young woman’s art. She happens to be our daughter, Megan, and over the past four years, Rob and I have witnessed how her talent has expanded, how her palette of color has deepened. The painting above is part of a series of wave paintings she did. I love this one so much I used it for my business card.

Here was my birthday present this year, our beloved dogs, Nika and Noah:

Here’s the painting she did of just Noah:

One of the local restaurants in Orlando invited Megan to set up during a festival. She painted one of the swans on Lake Eola:

Another wave:

On her website, you can see other pet portraits, people portraits, waves, wildlife.

This ability wasn’t inherited from either of us. Our paintings, rendered at her Paint Nite classes, are too pathetic to even post!

 

Posted in synchronicity | Tagged , , | 7 Comments

A Synchro video

Posted on June 30, 2017 by Trish and Rob

Here’s an interesting take on synchronicity, playing with the idea that you can create synchronicities, i.e., such as desiring to meet a new friend and that person appears. But he explains the nature of that relationship will be related to the nature of your mind-set when you send out the request.

It starts out a bit slow, but is well worth watching.

Posted in synchronicity | Tagged | 4 Comments