Imaginary Friends?

Posted on September 9, 2009 by Trish and Rob

photo from www.ghost-mysteries.com

Any parent with an imaginative child has probably gone through the “imaginary friend” period.

This one was actually a comment under one of our posts. It comes from Intuitive Girl. We asked her if we could use it and she said sure.
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When I was about five years old, I had what I thought was an imaginary friend, named Bobby. I would stop and wait for Bobby, hold conversations with Bobby. I outgrew this behavior and several years later, a woman came by the house and told my mother that she and her husband were the house’s first owners. She asked if she could come in and my mom said yes. She told my mom that she and her husband had moved after their five-year-old son, Bobby, had drowned in the bathtub. I don’t remember the Bobby encounters now, but this story is at least a synchronicity, maybe more.
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Our daughter had an imaginary friend named Darla.
Now we wonder!

Posted in children, ghosts, imaginary friends | 6 Comments

The Sounds of Synchronicity

Posted on September 8, 2009 by Trish and Rob


Here is a very interesting synchronicity that relates to sound that come from Isabelle Rajotte of Montreal. She speaks very little English so I have edited her words. But to get the direct experience of her sound work, you can click onto the attached videos.
Rob
***

I work with sounds…some would say I am a sound healer. I began experimenting with wordless vocals when I was only three years old. This work has evolved over the years and sometimes it has become quite particular.

One day I was in a bookstore in Orlean, Massachusetts, because the owner had asked me to sing for her and her niece. I asked them if they where ready for the energetical work, because I channel a powerful healing archetype.

I started a frequencies chant and my voice went into an Asian vocal melody. So while I’m chanting in the bookstore, the door opens and a little Asian girl–Chinese or Vietnamese–walks in. She is an angel with red lips and cheeks and long black hair, a rare beauty, 9 or 10 years old. Her parents follow and they are white Americans, who adopted the girl.

Afterwards, when I was talking to Elaine, the owner of the store, I told her that I know it sounds crazy, but one of the archetypes I channel is Shiva, the Hindu god. She responded that it didn’t sound crazy to her at all. Then, about thirty minutes later, a couple walked into the store and I noticed a strange thing hanging on the neck of the man. It seemed too big and gaudy. Elaine immediately asked the man what was on his neck, and the man answered that he got it in India, that it was a Shiva amulet.
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Synchronicity.

Isabella’s sound waves

Isabella’s impro

Posted in archetypes, healing, musicians, shiva, sound frequencies | 11 Comments

Wink in the Cosmos

Posted on September 7, 2009 by Trish and Rob

Here are a couple of humorous trickster-type synchronicities that appeared in an article called, “A Wink from the Cosmos,” that was published in the May 1996 edition of Intuition Magazine.

Earl was trying to track down an out-of-print book called The Adventures of Marco Polo. He scoured two used book stores in New York City, had no success, and caught a taxi to a third. The cab driver was unusually chatty, and during their conversation, Earl glanced at his license on the dashboard. His name? Marco Polo!

Art was sitting at his computer typing an e-mail missive when his cat Coal jumped from his lap onto the keyboard. Before Art’s startled eyes, as the cat shifted from key to key, its paws tapped out the word emerson on the screen. “To make it even weirder, I’ve been studying Ralph Waldo Emerson intently for the past year, and the study has taken on a very symbolic meaning to me,” he says, still in shock. “My wife was sitting next to me at the computer, and if I’m sent away for being crazy, she has to go, too!”

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UPDATE: Here’s another little wink. Apparently, when this post came up this morning, the type was black, so a black screen appeared – a black out. We didn’t know that because before we were able to go on-line and check the blog, well, we had a black out. The electricity went out for an hour or so.

Posted in animals, cats, Emerson | 18 Comments

Babalu

Posted on September 6, 2009 by Trish and Rob


Here’s a synchronicity story from Dave Malcolm, the former AUTEC engineer who has previously contributed. He notes that sometimes he’s disturbed by synchronicities because they tend to occur whenever he’s worried about a loved one. But fortunately his worst fears have never manifested after the synchronicity. “I’ve always been wrong I am happy to say.”

In any case here’s his story.
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As a network engineer I am frequently on global conference calls as I was at 4AM on a recent Saturday. While we talk on the conference many of us send instant text messages making comments about participants and have nicknames for lots of our colleagues.

Our man from Cuba got on and while I recognized him, some didn’t. So I texted that it’s Babalu, a reference to Ricky Ricardo from the “I Love Lucy show”.

Later that night, my grandchildren and I watched The Cable Guy, a movie we have all seen. No one really wanted to see it again, but there was nothing else on. At the end of the movie when an injured Jim Carey was asked his name, he replied, Babalu.

Now if I could just see those Mega Million numbers the morning of the next drawing.
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Ricky Ricardo sang a song called Babalu, a name that refers to the Afro-Cuban orisha (or god) Babalu Aye, also known in Brazil as Obalu Aye. He is known as the deity associated with illness, disease, insanity, aging and death, but is also the deity that cures same. He is appeased on the earth, and cool water is one of the mainstays of his appeasement.
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Although I don’t know the circumstances of Dave’s concerns, his worries about a family member could be reflected not only in the synchronicity itself, but also in the particular deity within the synchronicity.

Posted in babalu Aye, orishas, santeria | 14 Comments

Robert Rabbit

Posted on September 5, 2009 by Trish and Rob

When Trish attended a writer’s conference in Kentucky, she gave a talk one evening to the writers on synchronicity. In doing so, she told the story of the three Roberts. Briefly, last winter we stayed for awhile at a house in the Florida keys and were visited by two friends, both named Robert. That made three Roberts. One morning I opened the refrigerator and noticed a jar of grape jelly labeled: Robert is Here. That’s the name of a large fruit and vegetable standing in Homestead, and Robert apparently makes jelly.

So Trish mentioned that to keep everyone’s name straight, we referred to one of the Roberts as Tacayo (Spanish for brethren), and we called the other Robert Rabbit. As soon as she made the comment, a hand shot up in the audience and a woman said: “Sorry for interrupting, but one of the characters in my novel is named Robert Rabbit.”

Interestingly, of the 25 people in the audience, all but one easily grasped the idea of synchronicity.

On Saturday, September 12, Trish and I will give our first joint talk on synchronicity at the Heritage Book Festival in St. Augustine, Florida. You’re all invited!
Rob
P.S. I’m also going to be talking to a group of high school seniors in St. Augustine about writing and synchronicity. We’ll report back.

Posted in names, rabbit | 12 Comments

Merlin’s Magic

Posted on September 5, 2009 by Trish and Rob


This story comes from Judi Hertling of British Colombia. It’s a zinger!


For the past few months, Judi and her best friend, Chris, have been watching a British TV series entitled Merlin. The 13-part drama tells the story of the sorcerer of Arthurian legend. Both women are avid readers. In a phone call a few days after the series aired, Chris mentioned she would be interested in reading a few books about Camelot, King Arthur and Merlin. “This is not her usual genre, so when I was browsing our bookstore aisles recently, I thought I’d check out the science fiction and fantasy section to see if I could find titles that might interest her.”


Only a few titles caught Judi’s eye. One was The Sorcerer, another was UTHER, two books in a series about Camelot and the early years of Merlin, written by Jack Whyte. Judi had never heard of the author, but he had so many titles on the shelf, she figured he must be a successful historical fiction novelist.She passed the information on to Chris in their next telephone conversation and forgot about it until yesterday afternoon, when she was reorganizing her bookshelves.


“Having recently moved into our new house, I had taken hundreds of books out of packing boxes and shoved them onto shelves in a haphazard fashion. Being an organized Virgo, this went completely against my book sensibilities. So I set to pulling books off shelves and began rearranging them. As I was doing this, I started flipping through pages of books that I hadn’t gotten around to reading yet.One of the books was a novel that I remembered having picked up a few years earlier in a used bookstore in Kelowna, British Columbia. It was an advanced reading copy of a novel by Frank M. Robinson, Waiting. Curious as to why I hadn’t read it yet, since I enjoy suspense with a paranormal twist, I began flipping through the pages.


“In the middle of the book was a small piece of lightweight card, which I assumed was the previous owner’s bookmark – until I looked closer. It was, in fact, the torn off half of an airline boarding pass issued by Alaska Airlines departing from Seattle going to Kelowna. The name on the ticket?”


You guessed it. Jack Whyte.



Posted in authors, books, Jack Whyte, Merlin | 8 Comments

Written in the Wind

Posted on September 4, 2009 by Trish and Rob


Camille Flammarion (1842-1925) was a renown 19th century astronomer who also had a deep interest in psychic phenomenon. In his book The Unknown, published in 1900, he recorded a personal experience with synchronicity – although he didn’t call it that.

While writing the chapter on the wind in his major scientific work on the atmosphere, a gale blew open his window, lifted the loose pages he’d just written, and whisked them away. Several days later, he was bewildered when he received proofs of the vanished chapter from his publisher. It turns out that the wind had carried the pages into the street, where the publisher’s porter often walked. The porter found them and picked them up and took them to the publisher’s office.
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Here’s a link about Flammarion’s psychic/Spiritualist interests. It seems he had a great interest in the survival of the soul, ghosts, and “coincidences” surrounding death.

Posted in astronomer, Flammarion, writers | 13 Comments

Puzzling Dean Koontz Quote

Posted on September 3, 2009 by Trish and Rob

Every so often, friends who know about our interest in synchronicity send quotes or stories from other sources about the topic. Chip Carson, a reverend in Atlanta, Georgia, sent us this quote referencing synchronicity from a novel by Dean Koontz:

“The more rational the culture, the more likely that synchronicity would arise as a means of correcting what few errors the culture committed.” Dean Koontz from Frankenstein: Dead and Alive page 328. Isbn 975-0-553-58790-6
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Koontz is one of the storytelling masters, the writer that other writers read to hone their craft. We’re fans. Since we used to have a Golden Retriever and Koontz wrote one of the best books ever that revolved around that breed – Watchers – we love the fact that he works with an organization that trains Golden Retrievers as guides for the handicapped. Like Stephen King, he delves into the weird and the strange, into the worlds that exist in the spaces between our external realities and those hidden places we sense but can’t touch – i.e., the stuff that interests us.

But this quote is puzzling. Anyone have insights?

Posted in Dean Koontz, quotes, writers | 20 Comments

Snow Leopard

Posted on September 2, 2009 by Trish and Rob

Some companies go to great length to hype their new products, but the following must be synchronicity. Even Apple couldn’t arrange this scheme of events.

August 28 was the official publication of Apple’s latest operating system, OS10.6, known better by its nickname, Snow Leopard. Meanwhile, Dot Earth, a NYTimes environmental blog, showed a photo of a rare snow leopard, taken in Afghanistan. The story’s publication date is, yes, August 28.

Thanks to John Ehrenfeld for noting the synchronicity on his blog that otherwise sticks with rational thinking about future trends.

Snow leopards are designated as an endangered species by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. We’ll see which snow leopard survives longer.

Outdated computer operating systems, along with their accompanying hardware, disappear from use quickly, and are filling our landfills. It’s estimated that 160,000 computers are discarded every day in the U.S. Many end up in the Third World creating serious environmental hazards.

Posted in animals, computers, snow leopard | 10 Comments

What a gas!

Posted on September 1, 2009 by Trish and Rob


Max Action brought this story to our attention. It’s another case of simultaneous and independent discoveries, in other words, scientific synchronicities. In 1868, French astronomer Pierre Jules Janssen spotted an unknown element in the spectrum of the sun during a total eclipse.

A few weeks later, an English scientist Joseph Norman Lockyer succeeded in seeing the same element in regular daylight. Both wrote papers on this unknown element, and in a stunning synchronicity, both papers arrived at the French Academy of Sciences on the same day. Both men were attributed with first sighting of what became known as helium.

You can read the details here: https://www.wired.com/thisdayintech/2009/08/dayintech_0818/

Simultaneous scientific discoveries are more common that we might imagine. According to the technium:

Newton and Leibniz both discovered calculus

Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace both discovered evolution

Three mathematicians “invented” decimal fractions

Oxygen was discovered by Joseph Priestley, in Wiltshire, in 1774, and by Carl Wilhelm Scheele, in Uppsala, a year earlier

Color photography was invented at the same time by Charles Cros and by Louis Ducos du Hauron, in France

Logarithms were invented by John Napier and Henry Briggs in Britain, and by Joost Bürgi in Switzerland.

“There were four independent discoveries of sunspots, all in 1611; namely, by Galileo in Italy, Scheiner in Germany, Fabricius in Holland and Harriott in England.

As fiction writers, we’ve experienced this same sort of phenomenon. In the mid 1990s, we started a novel about Amelia Earhart’s last flight, but never finished the book, which was probably a good thing. In 1996, Jane Mendelsohn’s I Was Amelia Earhart was published.

We suspect we all have the ability to tap into his primal soup of ideas – and it doesn’t matter if it’s logarithms or Amelia Earhart!

Posted in helium, science synchronicity, simultaneous scientific discoveries | 10 Comments