A Synchro Encounter on the Road

Posted on May 23, 2013 by Trish and Rob

 

Traveling is a great time to experience synchronicities.

When you venture forth on a journey, a trek that takes you out of your normal routines and concerns, your consciousness has greater freedom to explore. Your comfort zones are gone, your kitchen, your bed and your pillow are memories. You’re in new, unfamiliar territory and must confront who you are.

Jane Clifford recently returned from a remote valley in Shropshire, Wales, where she has visited for 20 years. Her friend’s cottage is just below Offas dyke path, a Bronze Age construction that meanders for 177 miles. While driving there, still half an hour away, a radio program came on about Offas dyke and its significance. It’s considered an incredible feat of engineering from pre-8th century Britain. The path atop the dyke was called one the ten best wall walks in the world, ranking up there with the Great Wall of China.

When Jane travels, it seems that mysterious things happen and synchronicity flourishes. Her recent trip was no different. She had dinner one night with a family she had visited many times. The man of the house is a self-made multimillionaire, and she has always found him kind, thoughtful and generous. We’ll call him Clifford, since Jane prefers not to use his real name.

“He has had healing with me and a clairvoyant reading, which accurately predicted that he would marry and have two children, which he now has.” Jane notes that she predicted the wife would not be the woman he was dating at the time, and she was right.

“He turned up with a bottle of wine and sat down next to me. Whilst he was actually greeting me, I was wondering if he had remembered the predictions. He leaned toward me, his face close to mine, and asked how I was. To my astonishment, his features shape-shifted and staring at me was the devil, red eyes and horns. The entity bared its teeth, as if guarding some hidden knowledge and denying access, even though I wasn’t seeking such access.

“There were no drugs or alcohol involved. This entity held my gaze quite steadily. I was shocked, taken by surprise, but not afraid. It was shocking to me because I thought the man was a regular nice guy. However, maybe to make so much money so fast, one’s shadow has to be ruthless. Yet, when chatting about business I have known him to be quite kind, so I had not seen this ruthlessness. I remain puzzled by the experience.”

Jane said she wasn’t afraid because she realized it was just a movie, an altered reality, an expression of the man’s shadow. “It was also like a kind of test to see if I would steadily hold the light and not give way to fear. The experience was very strange indeed and I shall keep my psychic protection up whenever I meet him again.”

The synchronicity here is that twice earlier in her life she had demonic-type encounters with two other men, both named ‘Clifford.’ Not only was that a meaningful coincidence for her, but that same name pops up regularly on her cell phone screen and she can’t remove it. “It has been stuck there for years and I never call him and I can’t seem to get the name off the screen. Neither can my technologically savvy children.”

Jane wrote back later and said that after writing the e-mail about ‘Clifford,’ she tried to remove the name again from her phone…and this time, to her amazement, it disappeared. Maybe she just needed to release the energy by writing about it.

Posted in synchronicity, travel | 8 Comments

Oklahoma disaster synchro

Posted on May 21, 2013 by Trish and Rob

A mangled vehicle outside of Moore, Ok

Whenever there is a major catastrophic event that catches our collective attention, synchronicity seems to follow. We’ve reported on such global synchros in the past, the most recent was the Boston bombing in which most victims literally had their legs cut out from underneath them. Among them were brothers and newly weds. Legs, of course, are what power the marathon runners.

So what about this new disaster, which at this writing is still in its early stages. We don’t know yet what the death and injury total will be or the extent of property damage.  But the Moore, Oklahoma storm is already being called the biggest tornado to ever hit the United States.

At this point, the most obvious synchronicity is a political one…an ironic trickster synchro. That’s because both Oklahoma senators – Jim Inhofe and Tom Colburn – are fiscal hawks who have repeatedly railed against federal spending for disasters…in other areas of the country.

Both backed a plan to slash disaster relief to victims of Hurricane Sandy. In a December press release, Colburn complained that the Sandy Relief bill contained “wasteful spending,” and identified a series of items he objected to, including “$12.9 billion for future disaster mitigation activities and studies.”

In 2011, both senators opposed legislation that would have granted necessary funding for FEMA when the agency was set to run out of money. Sending the funds to FEMA would have been “unconscionable,” Coburn said at the time.

Now they are both in an awkward position – as contorted as the vehicle above. But that hasn’t deterred them in the past when both rallied for federal funds for Oklahoma. The Huffington Post notes that in January of 2007, Coburn urged federal officials to speed disaster relief aid after the state faced a major ice storm.

A year later, in 2008, Inhofe praised emergency funds from the Department of Housing and Urban Development would be given to 24 Oklahoma counties. “The impact of severe weather has been truly devastating to many Oklahoma communities across the state. I am pleased that the people whose lives have been affected by disastrous weather are getting much-needed federal assistance,” he said.

So watch these senators call for immediate federal aid to Oklahoma tornado victims – which they deserve – but then add that the aid should be paid for by slashes in the federal budget in other areas. Such as…aid to disaster victims in other parts of the country? And watch how their fellow fiscal hawk Republicans, who voted against aid for Hurricane Sandy victims, react now. Will they hold firm against federal aid when two of the own party call for help?

The trickster strikes again.

 

Posted in synchronicity | 9 Comments

Is This the New Normal?

Posted on May 20, 2013 by Trish and Rob

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EziyEjYseZk&hd=0

 

The massive two-mile wide tornado that tore through Moore, Oklahoma is being called, at the very least, an EF4, with winds between 166 and 200 mph. It devastated  entire neighborhoods, homes, and at least one elementary school, where 75 people had taken refuge in a hallway, most of them third graders.

The geography in the videos resembles a war zone of twisted metal and rubble.

This storm is being compared to the May 3, 1999 tornado that also hit this area and was determined to be the most intense tornado on record. Here and here for other stories on this tragedy.

Here is a comparison between the two tornados, compiled by the National Weather Service.

It’s difficult to imagine this kind of devastation, much less to be in the midst of it.

Posted in synchronicity, tornado | 5 Comments

Extraterrestrial Life…or not

Posted on May 20, 2013 by Trish and Rob

In the old days, the Church torched philosophers who dared to suggest that there was life elsewhere in the universe.  Things changed in the 18th century during the Enlightenment when it seems there was actually a greater belief in life on other planets by scientists than there is now. Today, mainstream scientists gang up on scientists who find micro-biotic life in meteorites.

But I’m getting ahead of myself….

I was reading an article on-line from the Washington Post that cast doubts on the existence of extraterrestrial life anywhere in the universe to say nothing of UFOs and aliens here on Earth. While reading,  Trish arrived home with a copy of the June/July issue of Open Minds Magazine. She laid it on the kitchen table open to an article headlined: “Will Mainstream Science Ever Accept Evidence of Extraterrestrial Life?”

So that was a synchro for me – two ET articles coming together at about the same time, both dealing with the same question from opposite perspectives.

The Post article, entitled “The Fear that Drives our Alien Belief,” asks us: “What is it about UFOs that drive so many people to believe they exist despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary?”

According to a 2012 National Geographic poll, 36 percent of Americans believe aliens have visited earth. Yet, as one scientist wrote in a letter to the late UFO researcher and Harvard prof John Mack, such visitations “contradict virtually all of the basic laws of physics, chemistry and biology on which modern science depends.”

Meanwhile, the Open Minds article starts off in the opposite mode, “Reputable scientists have conducted multiple studies that suggest the existence of extraterrestrial life, but the mainstream scientific community refused to accept those claims….One wonders what it will take for the mainstream scientific community to accept evidence of extraterrestrial life.”

The Post tells us that “a belief in extraterrestrial life answers many of the same questions as a belief in God.” The alternative is a “vast, dark emptiness of the unfeeling universe.”

Psychologist Stephen Diamond is quoted as saying without these UFO stories, “we have to accept the fact that some things mean nothing, and others are totally beyond us—a strange, frightening and ultimately deflating thought.” (I would guess that my ET synchro above would be one of those things that mean nothing in Diamond’s eyes.)

The Post article leads readers to the conclusion that belief in extraterrestrial life of any kind is a simply psychological crutch, something to give us hope. Meanwhile, though, it darkly suggests there isn’t any proof and any rational reason to believe.

The Open Minds article begins with a historical perspective. At least believers today are tolerated, probably because there are so many. But in the 16th century that wasn’t the case. Giordano Filippo Bruno, who has been described as an early spokesman for exo-biology – a branch of the science that deals with the search for ET life – was not treated kindly by the powers-that-be. Bruno boldly said that he believed that life, including intelligent beings, exist on numerous other worlds. As a result of that stance, Bruno was burned at the stake by the Catholic Church. Ouch!

By the time of the Enlightenment, the concept of a plurality of worlds existing with intelligent life was actually becoming accepted. Benjamin Franklin believed the universe is “filled with suns like ours, each with a chorus of worlds.”

But jump to the present and we find a dichotomy – a minority of scientists pointing to evidence of extraterrestrial life and a mainstream that says the verdict is still unknown. Scientists who find evidence of extraterrestrial life – even in the form of fossilized bacteria  in meteorites – are routinely dismissed by other scientists who say that the meteorites have been contaminated or even that they aren’t meteorites.

A paper published in January of this year found ET life in the form of  fossilized algae in a meteorite found in Sri Lanka. The paper was met with harsh criticism from the scientific community. In response, the researchers sent fragments to CardiffUniversity in Wales for further testing.

As explained on www.extremetech.com, “The researchers at Cardiff are now reporting that they’re sure that these fragments come from an extraterrestrial meteorite – and that there is definitely ‘fossilized biological structures.” These new findings were published in the March issue of The Journal of Cosmology. It’s not surprising that the new paper is being criticized just as harshly as the first one, and the publication is being dismissed as a low-grade scientific journal.

And so it goes. I wonder what the aliens think.

Posted in aliens, synchronicity | 9 Comments

I Feel Great!

Posted on May 19, 2013 by Trish and Rob

This video, sent to us by our Canadian friend Judi Hertling, is very cool. If nothing else, it will put a bounce in your Sunday steps!

 

 

 

Posted in synchronicity | 9 Comments

Conundrum

Posted on May 18, 2013 by Trish and Rob

from an exhibit at the Norton Museum

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In the three or four years that Rob has been teaching meditation, the course has taken place at our gym or at a local yoga studio.  I attend most of these courses, unless they are held at an obscenely early morning time slot. We’re the typical lark/owl couple. I’m a night person, he’s a day person. While he’s out on the porch meditating at dawn, I am deep in a dreaming world. My day starts around 9 AM.

Rob’s meditation course is once a week for six weeks.  Between weeks four and six, things get very interesting. We go deeper than we’ve gone before. We encounter realms that are not business as usual. In this realm, I’ve seen my parents, who passed over in 2000  and 2005. I’ve seen other entities/spirits that seems to know me but whom I don’t know.  My cheek has been caressed by one of these spirits, I have entered past lives I knew nothing about.

I have also experienced some physical discomfort during these meditations, where we stretch out on a hard floor.  I feel like a total idiot even admitting this, but honestly,  a yoga mat doesn’t do much to mitigate hardness. The hard floor bothers my back and most of the time I have to keep my legs bent to  get into the zone. And there  is  a zone.

This indescribable place, this zone, is where I go after I have moved  beyond my physical discomforts. If I were camping, it would be the point where I separate  from my physical body to travel, well, elsewhere. I drift in the currents of Rob’s voice. One time during this particular meditation, I observed two elderly women who were watching the class, taking notes, as though it were an assignment. When one of them touch my cheek, I felt her touch,  just as real as a human touch. But tonight – nothing. I fell asleep, that’s the long and short of it.

But I was reminded of a dream I’d had when I was 18. I was a freshman in college in upstate New York and was staying at a friend’s place in the countryside. The silence felt huge, infinite; the stars were grand and magnificent.  My bed in the guest room was soft, delicious. And I dreamed that I was waiting in a crowded lobby to talk to someone who would guide me through the next step of a process. At some point, I realized  I had died and was in a holding area, a lobby with several dozen other people, who were also dead and waiting  until someone came along and explained what was going on. Then I woke up.

The next morning, I told my friend what I had dreamed. She got this look on her face – a look I have come to know as that of the gentle skeptic – and said, “It’s just a dream, Trish. It doesn’t mean anything.”

I knew she was wrong. Even then I knew that dreams holds answers and insights, information and guidance. Even then, I knew that sometimes we dream Big Dreams that hold fundamental truths. 

After my mother died and my dad was living with us,  he came out for breakfast one morning and reported that when he’d looked at himself in the mirror, he had seen the face of a black man superimposed over his own. The face was that of a young, handsome  black man, full of life. And my dad, who wasn’t mystically inclined at all, said, “I think I glimpsed myself in my next life.”

Shortly afterward, Rob and  I gave him a book called, Looking for Carroll Beckwith: The True Story of a Detective’s Search for His Past Life, by Robert L. Snow. This book, coupled with Carol Bowman’s Children’s Past Lives, led him toward a realization that we live many lives.

The conundrum initiated by that dream when I was 18 has haunted and pursued me, sculpted my interests and passions, threaded itself through my fiction and nonfiction. It has drawn me to certain people, belief systems, experiences that have brought me new knowledge – and new questions. But the ultimate bottom line question remains the same all these decades later: What is the nature of reality?

 Thanks to research in NDEs, consciousness, OBEs, quantum physics, reincarnation, shamanism, the paranormal, UFO encounters, the unconscious, dreams, synchronicity, and all the rest of it, we have glimpses, hints, pieces of theories. But we don’t know for sure. We are Keenu Reeves in The Matrix, Jim Carey in The Truman Show, Gwyneth Paltrow in Sliding Doors, Emma Thompson in Dead Again. It’s all about the journey toward discovery.

So if someone tells me they have all the answers, I run – fast  – in the opposite direction. The bottom line is that none of us knows for sure. We are the babes in the woods.

 

Posted in meditation, reincarnation, synchronicity | 7 Comments

Nika & Noah, a Continuing Love Story

Posted on May 17, 2013 by Trish and Rob

 Nearly two years ago, our daughter asked us if she could have a dog and we began our search at local animal rescue centers. Megan eventually adopted Nika when she was about eight weeks old and Noah, our golden retriever, was about two. In the photo, Nika is the black and white dog in front of Noah, our golden retriever.

We thought Nika was a border collie mix, but when Megan did a mouth swab for an Internet testing site, the results were, at best, dubious: Pomeranian, and back at least four generations.

Really?

Here’s a Pomeranian.

You’ve already seen  pic of Nika. Any resemblance?

When Megan moved to Orlando for her internship at Sea World to work with dolphins, Nika spent the next seven months with us. During that time, she and Noah bonded. They played together, ate together, slept together on the same quilt. They were like twins conjoined the hip.

After Megan’s internship ended, she moved Nika to Orlando with her. Nika went from a suburban home with a yard to which she had access constantly to the ninth floor of an apartment in downtown Orlando that she shared with Olly, a Dachshund mix, a yapper. During the ensuing months, as Megan established a dogwalking business in Orlando, we got together at least once a month, which was also a reunion for Nika and Noah.

These reunions were not those of two dogs who shook hands and went about their personal business. These reunions were OMG I see you and I’m jumping out the car window to get to you and now we’re going to run around like mad dogs.

When Megan pulled into the driveway last Friday, Noah and I happened to be outside, playing with the Frisbee. He saw her car and started barking, but ran over to it as soon as it stopped because Nika was hanging out the back window. Noah leaped, Nika leaped, and sailed through the window onto Noah’s back.

For the next five or ten minutes, they chased each other around the front yard.

Yes, I have been accused of being anthropomorphic. And if I am, I welcome the label. I suspect the label actually means that you, a human, recognize that animals have emotions. They develop attachments that are just as profound and significant as the attachments of humans. They love, they mourn,  they yearn.  And quite often, they act as vehicles of synchronicity.

On the day that Megan arrived, I had been thinking that I would like to experience a synchro that showed me how love is a force of nature – and then I witnessed Noah leaping up on Megan’s car to greet Nika, and Nika leaping through the window to be with Noah.

Her visit was just for a long weekend. But on Monday morning when Megan prepared to leave, she said, “Maybe I should leave Nika here with you guys until I come back for my friend’s wedding on June first.”

“Let Nika decide,” I said.

Megan whistled for her, invited her into the back seat. She leaped in, then backed out and ran off with Noah. Megan looked at us. “She’s my dog and she’s just visiting you guys, okay?”

“June first,” we replied. “But if you can’t take being without her, we’ll bring her to Orlando next weekend.”

No question that Nika loves Noah and vice versa. But as Megan’s car backed out of the driveway and headed up the road, Nika sat there a moment, then chased it, barking, as if to say, Wait, you’re my human! There’s been a mistake!

 When I called her back, she hesitated, staring longingly after Megan’s car, then trotted back, nose to the ground, pursuing some scent. A squirrel, perhaps?  And she looked at Noah, barked, and they took off beneath the vast blue sky, and chased each other around the yard again.

Now, they’re exhausted- and happy, together once more.

 

Posted in animals, animals as messengers, Nika, synchronicity | 14 Comments

The Synchro Highway

Posted on May 16, 2013 by Trish and Rob

Sometimes we drift a bit from synchronicity on the blog. So it’s good to re-focus on the subject at hand from time to time. We’ve done so here with a primer of sorts, about synchronicity. These paragraphs come from the introduction of our next synchro book, THE SYNCHRONICITY HIGHWAY: Navigating the Signs and Symbols of Life’s Journey.

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Synchronicity or meaningful coincidence can be one of those delightful little surprises the universe springs on you just to keep you on your toes, aware and mindful. Other times, it slams into you out of the blue, a coincidence so startling that you marvel at the odds. It can be a trickster or an ally, clarify and confirm, guide or warn, laugh at you or with you.

Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung, who coined the term, first wrote about synchronicity in the introduction to Richard Wilhelm’s translation of the I Ching: The Chinese Book of Changes, published in 1949. In that introduction, he talked about how tossing three coins six times, could yield one or two of 64 hexagrams that provide a response to a question that enlightens or guides the questioner. He defined the phenomenon as the coming together of similar inner and outer events in a way that can’t be explained by cause and effect and is meaningful to the observer. In the case of a divination tool, such as the I Ching, the inner event is the question, the outer event is the toss of the coins and resulting hexagram.

But of course synchronicity typically unfolds naturally without any tools. A simple example: you’ve been thinking about a former friend, roommate, lover, someone you haven’t heard from in years. You log onto Facebook and find a friend request from that individual. Or you’re digging a grave for your cat that died, have the car radio on in the background, and Peter Gabriel’s song, Digging in the Dirt, comes on. Or you dream about a stranger and the next day, that person enters your life.

Jung lumped extra sensory perception under the broad umbrella of synchronicity. This stance is sometimes controversial. Some people feel that calling ESP an aspect of synchronicity suggests that accurate psychically obtained information is merely coincidental. But Jung was simply saying that telepathy, precognition, mediumship, clairvoyance and other psychic abilities work outside of cause or effect. In other words, if a psychic predicts that someone will receive a surprise sum of money and two days later, an unexpected check arrives in the mail, that’s an example of precognition. But it also fits under synchronicity because cause and effect weren’t involved. The psychic didn’t tell anyone to send a check to the client. So an inner experience – the psychic’s premonition– and an outer event – the receipt of a check – came together outside of cause and effect and no doubt it would be meaningful to the client who received the check.

Synchronicity is an equal opportunity experience.  Anyone, anywhere, at any time, can experience a meaningful coincidence. Your awareness and receptivity to the phenomenon creates an atmosphere in which you recognize synchronicities when they occur. It’s likely that more occur when you’re aware and accepting of these occurrences.

There are also situations and environments where synchronicities flourish. They are threaded throughout mass events like natural and man-made disasters. They occur in travel and creative endeavors, in social movements and popular culture, and they even might proliferate during and after UFO encounters. When our lives are in transition and during intensely emotional periods, synchronicity is usually right there with us.

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Happy Birthday, Rob!

Posted in synchronicity | 16 Comments

The Origami Medicine Wheel

Posted on May 15, 2013 by Trish and Rob

 Several months ago, Adele Aldridge sent us a box of beautiful Origami Peace Cranes. These cranes came into being because of Sasaki Sadako, who was just two years old when  the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan on August 6, 1945.  In November of 1954, Sadako caught a cold and lumps developed in her neck. It wasn’t long before she was diagnosed with leukemia, which people in Japan called “the atom bomb” disease. In February of 1955, she entered the Hiroshima Red Cross Hospital.

While she was there, she was told an old Japanese legend: anyone who folds a thousand paper cranes will be granted a wish. Sadako hoped  that by folding the paper cranes, she would get well again. So she began making them and complete more than a thousand of them before she died on October 25, 1955, at the age of 12. While making the cranes, she also wished for world peace and vowed: I will write peace on your wings and you will fly all over the world.

 Her classmates built a monument to Sadako and all the children killed by the bomb. They collected money for it and in 1958, a statue of Sadako holding a golden crane was unveiled in Hiroshima Peace Park. The children also made a wish that’s inscribed at the bottom of the statue: This is our cry. This is our prayer. Peace in the world.

 Since then, people all over the world fold paper cranes and send them to Sadako’s monument in Hiroshima, in memory of all the children who died. The crane is an interesting symbol for this peace effort. The Red-crowned Crane on which the origami crane and the Japanese legend are based is seriously threatened. Health of the crane population is often a good indicator about the health of the whole wetland ecosystem.

So this evening, Rob opened his final meditation class – shamanic meditation – by building a medicine wheel that included these beautiful origamis. The objects that create the outer border of the wheel are stones, bits of pottery, odds and ends we’ve collected in our travels. Then we meditated on each of the four directions.

The journey begins in the South, home of the archetypal serpent, where we learn to shed the past and begin to detach from our wounds and personal stories. We learn to released heavy energy accumulated in our bodies.

In the West, we learn about the Jaguar, who teaches us about life, death and rebirth. We face fears and family shadows, and step across the bridge to learn to walk as warriors, without enemies.

 In the North, we meet the archetype Hummingbird and learn to taste knowledge directly, to manifest the impossible, and to receive ancestral knowledge.

In the final gathering we explore the East and the archetype of the Eagle, who demonstrates how to experience vision, destiny and the possibilities of becoming. We develop our vision of peace.

At the end of the class, Rob invited everyone to take one of the origami cranes with them.  It was a powerful final class.

 

Posted in synchronicity | 12 Comments

Celebrant

Posted on May 13, 2013 by Trish and Rob

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6OASdiqH1o

Indiegogo.com allows anyone, anywhere, to raise money for a project – video, art, movie, TV show, book, any venue. This evening, Daz sent me a couple of links to one particular project by Rae Dawn Chong who is attempting to raise money for a TV show called Celebrant.  That clip above is about death and dying, love and life and synchronicity.

I’d love to see a show like this on TV.

And here’s Rae talking about the show:

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/the-celebrant

Posted in synchronicity | 4 Comments