The Vortex Workshop, Part 1

Once upon a time, I stayed away from books that claimed to be channeled. Too many of them were supposedly channeled by space brothers on Pluto or Zeta Reticuli and were unreadable.

Then in the 1970s, Seth Speaks by Jane Roberts was published and I changed my mind. Seth’s books are intelligent, philosophical and cover every imaginable facet about the nature of reality. The central theme of these books is, in Seth’s words: “You get what you concentrate on.” The problem with the Seth books is that they are lacking in practicalities – how to apply all this marvelous information to your own life.

Enter Esther and Jerry Hicks. Esther channels a group of souls who call themselves Abraham. The message is pretty much the same as Seth’s – that we all create our own reality through our thoughts, beliefs, emotions. But the Hicks take the practicality of this information to a whole new level. The primary tenets of their material  revolve around the law of attraction, that everything and everyone is vibration, and that our emotions are the barometer that signal when we’re in the vortex, “a vibrational state of being that is resistance free.” We enter this vortex during meditation and other altered states, through creativity, during sleep, and in death. It is the place from which we create our realities.

So the other day, Megan and I attended a Hicks workshop – her second, my first. The image above perfectly depicts the energy that infused this workshop from the opening at 9:30 to the closing at 4:00 PM. This energy is palpable and grew to a fever pitch throughout the day. I think the entire workshop falls under the third secret of synchronicity – The Theory of Everything.

Even though Esther told a story that was clearly a synchronicity, I never once heard that word. I never even heard the word coincidence. In contrast with Seth, this is interesting. At one point, Jane channeled the afterlife thoughts of Carl Jung. And Seth certainly knew a thing or two about synchronicity. 

The Morning Session

At the start, both Esther and Jerry greeted the audience of 300. Then Esther said something like, “Are you ready?”The crowd went wild, she smiled, waved good-bye.  Then she bowed her head, shut her eyes, and entered an altered state.  She spoke for 30-45 minutes on a number of topics. Snippets from my opening notes:
     – You choose with your attention to a subject.
     – You are always consciousness
     – By talking about a problem, discussing it endlessly, you focus on it and then the problem expands. But an equivalent solution is also expanding and is available to you in the vortex.  Your non-physical self has the solution.
    – There’s a tipping point, where you’re willing to tune to the solution rather than to the problem. How much discomfort are you willing to endure before the solution presents itself?
     – Negative emotion means you’re deviating from what you want. When you shout NO or insist that you don’t want something, you’re giving attention to the thing you don’t want. Instead, focus on what you DO want. Don’t focus on the absence of what you want. This is how you de-activate all the stuff in your vibration that is unwanted.
  While Abraham was talking, I could feel everyone sifting through their own experiences, finding the times they had focused on what they didn’t want and then didn’t understand why they could attain what they DID want.

After a short break, the group returned and this was where things got really interesting. Abraham said, “Is everyone refreshed?” The crowd shouted that they were and Abraham said, “What now?” Throughout the room, hands shot into the air. I realized that many of the attendees were repeats and knew this meant it was time for the “hot seat,” where Abraham chooses someone to come forward and have a one-on-one conversation with this group of souls.

In every instance, regardless of how personal or broad the individual’s questions were, Abraham always brought it back into a larger context. One young man, a musician, was concerned that the lyricist in his group wrote lyrics that he found troubling. Abraham advised him to focus on his enjoyment of the music they were producing and less on the lyrics. In time, as he withdrew his attention to the lyrics, he would attract a lyricist who wrotes lyrics every bit as beautiful as the music. He pointed out that an audience always resonates with a performer who is in synch with who they are. “Don’t push against the lyrics or the lyricist. Focus on what is satisfying about the music.”

Abraham advised him – and all of us – to get into the vortex (non-resistance) in any way we could. Then, from that place, focus on your desires and “do your affirmations, your visualizations, and speak affirmatively, affirm out loud, be specific. Allowing is the path of least resistance.”

One of the most interesting individuals in the hot seat was a guy who kept asking, “How do you know that? How can you prove that?”  At this point, we were all looking at each other – I mean, this guy was challenging Abraham!The exchange was heated, stern, funny, and again, Abraham put it into a larger context:
    -When you’re in the vortex, you know it. It’s undeniable knowledge, a state of being.
    -Find your vortex through your emotions.Emotion is the response to the direction of your thoughts. Prove this through your life experience.
     – First and foremost, care about how you feel. When you feel down, reach for a better feeling, a better thought, and your mood will shift.

    The afternoon session got intense and produced some of the best nuggets of wisdom I’ve heard in years. I’ll post that tomorrow.
     

Posted in abraham, hicks, Seth | 14 Comments

Strange Magic

Synchronicities, like birthday gifts, come in all shapes and sizes. Not all of them are mind blowers, but even the smaller ones hold a message. Christina G sent us the next two. They involve music and books, areas where synchronicities often manifest themselves. 
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About three weeks ago, I was driving home and stopped off at the local Wawa (common  convenience store in Pennsylvania and some other places on the East Coast, if you’re not familiar). I’ve got a CD in the car of a bunch of old ELO tunes and asI turned the car off, it had just gotten through the first few bars of “Strange Magic”.

I can’t describe the feeling I had when just as I entered the store, “Strange Magic” began again at that moment, this time on the canned house music. Very  weird…what are the odds? That tune’s got to be 30 years old, and it’s not exactly popular these days.

Had to laugh at the universe’s sense of humor on the choice of tunes too…Strange  magic indeed!

The second synch happened just yesterday. I awoke to discover that the wifi connection I share with my neighbors had kicked out, and I had work to do on the  ‘net, so I headed over to the local coffeehouse/used book place to hang and make  use of their connection. I can’t go to any bookstore without browsing, and I
usually get sucked into buying something, and yesterday was no exception.

I ended up with two books that are a little out of character for me, but looked interesting. I’d never heard or seen either one, and didn’t know the authors either. The books were “Born in Blood: The Lost Secrets of Freemasonry” by John J. Robinson and “The Disappearance of the Universe” by Gary R. Renard. Well, it was a beautiful almost-spring day here and I decided to take a drive out to a town I used to live in that has a great independent book store–new books in this one. It’s about 40 miles south of the small city I live in now, and I hadn’t been there in at least two years or more.

While I was browsing the shelves, I came across both the books I’d just purchased earlier in the afternoon, used–right next to each other.

I’d say that if there’s any message there, it’s that for some reason, I’m supposed  to read both those books. I’d better get cracking.

Posted in books, local travel, music | 11 Comments

Can I Materialize The Boss?

In an article called, Synchronicity: How We Relate to this Mystical Law, Caroline Myss asks, “Can a person influence acts of synchronicity; that is, are some people more likely to experience synchronistic events, and if so, why?”

I’ve wondered that myself, and just the day before reading Myss’ article I had an opportunity to try influencing an act of synchronicity. Here’s what happened.

For the past several months, I’ve been teaching yoga and working out in a gym that’s about five minutes from home. The most famous member of Ultima Gym is Bruce Springsteen, who lives here during the winter months. For weeks, I had been hearing reports of sightings from friends in the gym, but I’ve never seen him there.It’s odd, because he usually shows up around the same time I’m there. One day, instead of working out, I took a yoga class, only to find out that while I was doing the downward-facing dog, the Boss was working out at the other end of the gym. I’d missed him again.

So, finally, a day came when I had a chance to see if I could create a synchronicity related to this scenario.The radio station at the gym was playing Springsteen’s “Darkness on the Edge Town.” That’s a tiny synchronicity in itself since he lives here on the edge of town. But I wanted a BIG one. I wanted him to show up during the song or as it ended. Yes, a big request, and I only had about three minutes. But I really focused.

“Bring on the Boss,” I said, using his nickname. I said it over and over, imagining him walking into the free weight area. I also wondered if anyone else was thinking the same.I figured I could use some help, but when I looked around everyone ws wearing ear buds, engulfed in their own personal tunes, possibly not even aware of the song playing. Oh, well. Looks like I’m on my own, I thought, and continued focusing.

The song ended. I made one final effort. C’MON BOSS! Center stage is right here!

That’s when it happened. Who should walk by and nod to the people working out? Springsteen? Nope. The boss of the gym – the owner, my yoga boss. Hmm. Wrong Boss. Well, at least, I got a trickster synchronicity out of it. And maybe someday the real Boss will show up…while I’m there.
Rob

Posted in Bruce Springsteen, daily synchros, trickster | 15 Comments

Unconscious Hints

Now and then, I pick Jung’s autobiography, Memories, Dreams and Reflections, and just read from random pages. Even though I’ve read the book several times, I usually find some nugget that I don’t recall reading before. One powerful story that he recounts took place during WWII, when he was returning home from Bollingen, Switzerland. He was on a train, had a book with him, but couldn’t read. “…for the moment the train started to move, I was overpowered by the image of someone drowning.”

During the entire journey, Jung couldn’t get rid of the feeling. “It struck me as uncanny, and I thought, ‘What has happened? Can there have been an accident?'” The feeling was apparently exacerbated by a memory of an accident that had occurred while he was in the military service.

He got off the train at  Erlenbach and walked home, still troubled. His second daughter’s family was living with the Jungs then and as he walked into the garden, her kids were all there, upset. “They told me that Adrian, then the youngest of the boys, had fallen into the water at the boathouse. It is quite deep there, and since he could not really swim, he had almost drowned. This had taken place at exactly the time I had been assailed by that memory on the train.”

This story appears in the chapter on life after death, which has numerous examples of synchronicities like this that Jung experienced.  As he wrote, “The unconscious helps by communicating things to us, or making figurative allusions. It has other ways, too, of informing us of things which by all logic we could not possibly know. Consider synchronistic phenomena, premonitions, and dreams that come true. The unconscious had given me a hint. Why should it not be able to inform us of other things also?”

Posted in Carl Jung, hunches | 5 Comments

The Foxes: A Play on Words

Aleksandar Malecic of Serbia has commented frequently on our blog, offering  his insights. In this story, which he emailed us, a couple of foxes are the stars!
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I don’t know whether this event counts as synchronicity, but here it is: A few minutes ago, I visited a friend’s page on my space, whose highest ranking online friend is Ilenia Volpe. A few hours ago I received an  SMS message from my cousin-in-law containing his e-mail address – vulpes@…  I somehow “knew” that volpe and vulpes are the same thing, without actually knowing that these words mean anything. Indeed, volpe is fox in Italian and vulpes  is red fox in Latin.”

Shortly after Aleksandar sent us the email, he turned to his Dictionary of Symbols (Hans Bierdermann), which connects the fox with the trickster, Loki. Then he came to our blog, and found our post on  Loki, where he left this comment: “I almost dropped the book on the floor when I read “Loki.”
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So that’s three foxes, which qualifies this sequence of synchronicities as a cluster, one of the 7 secrets. But it’s also a trickster synchronicity. So, what’s the message? I looked up fox in Ted Andrews’s book Animal Speak. Here’s what he says: “It is a totem that speaks of the need to develop or the awakening of camouflage, invisibility, and shape-shifting.” Foxes are family creatures, nocturnal, and, of course, cunning. So perhaps this cluster synchronicity is addressing some of these qualities in Aleksandar’s life.

Addendum:
This gets a little stranger. Trish put together this post from an e-mail. I hadn’t read it until this evening (Wednesday). But earlier in the day, I had responded to Aleksandar, asking if there were two Aleksandars,  with slightly different spellings to their last names. You can see in the comments Wednesday that one is spelled Malecic, the other Maircic, and Malecic said he is not Maircic. Very confusing.

So, for some reason, I started thinking about an old Saturday Night Live skit involving Steve Martin and Dan Ackroyd in which they played two Eastern European guys on the make in NYC. In the skit, they would slink into nightclubs in their disco outfits and introduce themselves as “two wild and crazy guys,” and–for those of you who remember that skit–what were they always looking for? “Foxes!” (American slang for good looking women, though outdated even at that time.)

So I was telling this to Trish and said…”foxes” loudly, mimicking Martin and Ackroyd. But Trish thought I was making reference to Aleksandar’s story,  which I hadn’t read. So Aleksandar was stunned when he read the Loki post, which I wrote, and I was stunned in return when I read his foxes post.

Wild and crazy stuff! Foxes!

Posted in clusters, foxes, secret 5, trickster | 9 Comments

Butterfly

 

I just love it when our Google alert delivers synchronicity alerts. That’s how I found Lauren’s blog.

Her terrific synchro about a butterfly started with a story about a black butterfly, so I used her photo. I’ve never seen a black butterfly, didn’t even know they existed until I read her story.
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 Perhaps the most dramatic “butterfly experience” I had occurred 10 years ago. Since this experience had to do with both dream and synchronicity, I don’t know if I can tell it very cohesively, but I’ll try.

It began with a disturbing dream. I was on a ship, and on the deck many people sat in deck chairs, all of them playing with masks, taking them on and off. I seemed, in the dream, to be two people at once. I knew that there was, down in the lower decks of the boat, a demon. One of the women that I was was a kind of priestess or missionary – she was about to descend into the depths of the boat, where the demon below would torture and kill her. She thought that if she did so, offering herself as sacrificial victim, she could save the people above.

The other “me” was a cynical observer who thought she was a ridiculous martyr, and knew everyone, especially her, was doomed. I woke up as the “martyr self” began her descent.

Without going into the many circumstantial and psychological meanings of this important dream, I’ll skip ahead in real time. About 6 months after having this dream, I actually found myself, with a lot of actors, and a few masks, on an old decommissioned ocean liner (the “art ship”), which was anchored in the industrial harbor of Oakland. I was acting in a movie, and the writer and director of the film, Antero Alli, had decided to do his filming in the very bottom of this 5 level boat; the old, cold, dark, dank, cargo bay.

Descending into the bottom of the boat brought my dream back vividly, and every superstitious notion of prophetic dreams I ever had came right to the fore. I didn’t like it there! Between shoots, the cast hung out in what must have once been the crew’s cafeteria – located in a middle deck, it had round portholes, all of which were closed because it was a cold day in March. As we waited, the Director offered everyone a card from his own fascinating deck of oracular cards (with his artist wife, Sylvie Alli), and there was lively interest as each person contemplated his or her card.

I took a card from Antero with trepidation, and sure enough, damn if it wasn’t the “DEATH” card.

Not five minutes later, as I stood with the card of doom in hand, a small orange butterfly landed on my shoulder.

There was absolutely no explanation for how that butterfly could have gotten into that closed room. I had lots of witnesses – and after the miracle revealed itself, several of them helped to catch the butterfly and get it upstairs where it could be released.
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Pretty cool. In many esoteric traditions, butterflies represent transformation. I suspect, then, that this butterfly experience portended an important transformation in Lauren’s life.

Posted in butterflies, transformation | 17 Comments

Here I Am

This story comes from Gypsy. We’ve posted a number of her synchronicities, which are always richly textured and detailed.  This one is startling.
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The MacGregors’ post on March 15 regarding
 “untimely” deaths finds me remembering even more than usual the very unusual and  especially untimely death of an old friend in Shreveport, Louisiana. I first met Graves Thomas through a dear friend many moons ago, back in the early 80s. My friend and Graves  were both local attorneys known as “those renegade/maverick lawyers” because they took cases that no other attorney would take – those  involving civil rights violations, reputed crime figures, drug smugglers, white collar criminals. You name it. If  a wrong had been done, an injustice imposed,  my friend and Graves were there.

In a court room they were  poetry in motion. In real life outside the court room, they were just as
 beautiful – both in their early 40’s, their charisma and charm were surpassed only  by their passions. And they were passionate about everything around them – the law, their clients, seeking justice no matter the personal or financial cost,  their friends and family, for good food and drink and good times and fast cars. Then there was their renegade/mavericks good looks – both long haired, gorgeous men, suntanned, dressed in pin striped suits of the day.  They both  participated in all the extreme sports. They were the golden  boys.

The memorial day weekend of 1987 was to be another weekend at Lake Bistineau, a weekend of fun and sun, boats and skiing. swimming and good food. Graves  had a new ski boat to take out, so off they went. Then, when the weather went from good  to not so good, they brought the boat in. During the process, as talk was made of the thunderstorm overhead while they were docking, Graves – being Graves, stood up, threw both arms into the air and shouted to the heavens, “HERE  I AM!”

At that very moment,  a lightning bolt struck him in the head, killing him instantly. To make this story even more interesting, at the time of his death on Lake Bistineau, Graves  was representing a Lake Bistineau man accused of recklessness in a boating accident that killed three people on that very lake that same month.
At the time of his death, he had also just been hired by the family of a man accused of child rape whose criminal  trial had not yet taken place. Ultimately, this accused man was convicted of the crime and went to jail where he stayed for 22 years. He was exonerated when the paralegal who had been working for Graves at the time of his death years later  persevered to have the man’s DNA  submitted and it was found not to match any DNA associated with the crime.

So there you have the many curious but not surprising facets of one man’s life and  legacy.

Posted in crimes, death, gypsy, lightning | 10 Comments

Nature’s Synchronicities

 Nature, it seems, propagates its share of synchronicities. But this story is one of the strangest, for sure.

According to Buddhist legend, this oddly beautiful and rare flower – known as the Youtan Poluo or Udumbara flower – only blooms every 3,000 years. It was found in the home of a Chinese nun, under her washing machine!

The nun initially thought the little stems were worm eggs, but the following morning, she discovered that 18 tiny white flowers had sprouted from the stems. It’s believe that these mini blossoms are specimens of the Udumbara or Udambara flower. In Sanskrit, it means “auspicious flower from heaven.” Found under a nun’s washing machine!

Maybe the trickster is at work here.

Posted in Buddhism, flowers, nature | 11 Comments

Manifesting a Car

 Manifestation  is something you hear a lot about these days. You know the mantra – back your desires with powerful emotion, visualize, believe that what you want is on its way to you. But for many of us, the desires manifestation often gets tackled in its opposite – lack! So when we received an email from Trevor Simpson about how he manifested a car… well, let him tell the story.
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 I woke up on Monday following the completion of the Olympics with the realization that my vehicle had not yet appeared and now the Olympics was over, perhaps it was time to resort to more traditional methods of buying a car. The idea of the car coming to me rather than me going to the car seemed to have been less than successful. I had decided that what I wanted was a used Suburu Outback. So what if they were hard to find and over-priced, I felt I wanted one and perhaps it was time to do something tangible to acquire it. How long could I continue to affirm, “Let my vehicle appear” and have nothing concrete manifest? That was all well and good while I was in Mexico and even right through the Olympics but now my confidence was beginning to wane. Perhaps I was in a delusionary state about this; my friend Lorne had already tried to show me how easy it could be to locate one through Craig’s List but at the time I was in no mood to listen, preferring to try my own strange and different method of finding my car.

Feeling a little sad about having to give up what I was hoping would be an amazing example of synchronicity and manifestation, I went to check my e-mail and to my astonishment there was a comment on the blog I had written back on February where I had described the process of trying to buy a car through meaningful coincidence. At that time I had been given a tentative offer of a Sebring Convertible but at the time it seemed too nebulous, uncertain and not really what I was looking for. The comment read “Buy the Sebring ! Buy the Sebring ! I have one and I love it ! I too, went from a 20 year old VW Van, I love my baby and still have it, to a used 2002 Sebring Convertible. Feel the love even more!” I sat back feeling a little bemused “Was this the sign I had been waiting for?”

It seemed like an astonishing coincidence to get this e-mail on this particular day. I decided to send the e-mail to my friend who owned the Sebring. The response I got back practically knocked me out of my chair. “I may have a “manifestation compromise” option for you to consider.  I leave for South Africa on March 22 and won’t return until May 11.  My car will sit in the garage for that whole time so you are more than welcome to “try it out” and use while I am away.” What an amazing and generous offer, I had absolutely nothing to lose. Who knows if I will buy the Sebring or not but this evidence of the universe responding to my intention could not be ignored. I decided to accept.

While out on my bike later that day, I found my usual route blocked by road works so I detoured to an alternative street. Then the thought crossed my mind that I should continue with my affirmation “Let my vehicle appear”. For some reason, in that same moment, I glanced to my right and there right beside me was – yes you guessed it – a Sebring Convertible. The universe is a wondrous place to play.

Posted in manifestation | 11 Comments

The Infinite and the Beyond

Here’s a curious podcast on Coincidence and Synchronicity. Hosted by Christopher Orapello, The Infinite and Beyond is called an esoteric podcast for the introspective pagan mind. The part about synchronicity begins at about minute 11 and goes through minute 18 in the program.

I say it’s a curious one because it combines wicca, the Cabala, Jung and synchronicity, and evolution in a mind-twisting swirl of rapid-speak. See if you can follow it. It’s interesting to hear the Cabala linked to synchronicity, because Jung never mentioned it in any of his writing.

Posted in Carl Jung, podcast | 7 Comments