Welcome to The Mystical Underground

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.

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.

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

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

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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.

                                                                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.

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.

our Schrodinger’s cat, Simba

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I happened to stop by the blog for the Monroe Institute the other day and found a great article on synchronicity and manifestation. They had gotten the article from a site called conscious creation.

The gist of the synchro is  simple and astounding. A couple had lost their cat. They spent six months searching for it, then finally went to their local animal shelter to adopt a new pet. While they were there, another couple brought in a cat they had just found and…yes, you guessed it! – it was the first couple’s lost cat.

Powerful synchro, we can all agree on that, right?  Well, the author of the post doesn’t stop there.

“… there’s also more to learn here about how everything was and wasn’t lining up,” wrote Kristen.  “The article shares that the couple was heartbroken and looked for their cat every day, so just imagine the sad, not connected, not-having vibe that might have been there, perhaps coupled with feelings of guilt as well. And after six months of working through these feelings, they shifted their vibe. Maybe they thought that so much time had passed that it was unlikely they’d see their beloved cat again. Maybe they decided that even if it wasn’t their lost cat, they really wanted to have a cat in their lives again. Maybe they thought that they’d done all they could and perhaps it was just time to move on, knowing other cats in the shelter also needed good homes.

“Vibrationally, they released their ‘struggle to find’, and their resistance to NOT having their cat, and stepped into the vibe of HAVING a cat, even if it wasn’t their previously lost pet, but a cat they wanted, nonetheless. Whatever their motivation, when they were lined up with having a cat again, the perfect cat appeared for them!”

She expanded this thought with some personal examples, then wrote: “Resistance, either to your current circumstances or undesired potential circumstances, splits focus between what you want and what you don’t want, but can also be part of the path of shifting energy from where it is to where you want it to be, like being led along step by step. The feeling of knowing that you’re ready to move forward is an indication that your energy is now freed up from old resistance and attachments (positive or negative) and focused, no matter what all of the circumstances might look like to the rational mind at the time. Shift your energy and probabilities shift around to meet your new choices, often in ways that you wouldn’t have been able to predict from your old perspective!”

This struck me as parallel to the Hicks/Abraham teachings, as well the material in the Seth books by Jane Roberts. The Abraham teachings talk a lot about bringing yourself into alignment with what you want.  Seth’s foundation is you get what you concentrate on.

In both belief systems, when we hold on to old hurts, grievances, grudges, we get more of the same because that’s where our emotional focus lies. When we withdraw our attention from the negative, we are essentially disempowering it and eventually it simply falls out of our experience. This is especially true if we are turning our emotional focus toward what we love and appreciate about our lives.

My problem with this is that it always has sounded too simplistic.  And yet. It also resonates intuitively and has panned out for me at certain times in my life. The simplest example is the manifestation of a parking space when you need one. A more complex application is meeting your soul mate, landing your dream job, living your bliss.

Kary Mullis, Nobel-prize winner in chemistry in 1993, wrote a wonderful memoir,   Dancing Naked in the Mind Field, where he discusses some of these ideas. In one personal story, he talks specifically about Schrödinger’s cat, a thought experiment. Here are the scientific specifics.   The theory is actually posing a question (from Wikipedia): “when does a quantum system stop existing as a superposition of states and become one or the other?”

In practical terms, let’s say you’ve applied to colleges and grad schools. Your top choice is Harvard. One afternoon, you receive a letter from Harvard. In the world of Kerry Mullis  (and Seth and Abraham) until you open that envelope, everything is possible. You are accepted and you aren’t, the cat is both alive and dead. Which path do you want more than anything else in the universe? When you open that envelope, you discover what you desire at the most profound levels of your being.

In 1950, Albert Einstein wrote to Schrödinger about how he “sees that one cannot get around the assumption of reality, if only one is honest. Most of them (other physicists) simply do not see what sort of risky game they are playing with reality—reality as something independent of what is experimentally established. Their interpretation is, however, refuted most elegantly by your system of radioactive atom + amplifier + charge of gunpowder + cat in a box, in which the psi-function of the system contains both the cat alive and blown to bits. Nobody really doubts that the presence or absence of the cat is something independent of the act of observation.^”

As Mullis wrote in his book, “things can be immediately and intimately connected to each other even though they are light years apart.”

And isn’t that how synchronicity speaks to us?

It’s not enough for me to set my intentions for the year. It can’t be just  an intellectual exercise. I have to back my intentions with powerful emotions, profound desires, I have to come into alignment vibrationally with what I want. Prosperity, health, and happiness are not abstract concepts. They are vibrational realities. As Jimi Hendrix sang in Purple Haze,  “Excuse me, while I kiss the sky.”

And now, I’m off to kiss that sky.