Welcome to The Mystical Underground

Many of us who have devoured the Seth books or the Abraham-Hicks material, The Secret, or other sources of higher knowledge are convinced that we create our realities. Okay, fair enough, but then the question arises: Do we also create our illnesses as part of our realities? I began thinking about that question after receiving an e-mail recently from someone who I’ve always associated with ‘New Age’ beliefs, who said that she rejected the idea. She told me that she would never consciously or unconsciously create her debilitating condition.

That led me to thinking about my own condition. I agree with her that of course we don’t consciously create illnesses, but illnesses can and probably do develop out of our unresolved inner issues.

In my case, I would never consciously create circumstances leading to my being catheterized over and over again, as happened to me this year when I developed urinary retention from an enlarged prostate and could no longer empty my bladder. In fact, ever since I was young, just the idea of getting catheterized made me shiver. That was a reality I definitely did not want to create. Yet, it happened.

Over the months, while dealing with this issue, I tried to avoid surgery. Instead, I took prescribed medications and worked with two healers – one in Wales, one in Scotland. The urologist who prescribed the medications told me I needed the surgery. The healers, meanwhile, told me that I needed to find the core issue involved, and they both independently said it was related to ancestors. That was interesting, especially since I had been led to Eugenie, the healer in Scotland, the home of my ancestors.

Jane Clifford, the healer in Wales, thought the core issue might be fear, guilt, and shame. But that didn’t feel right, except for the fear part that I related to our financial downturn as the publishing industry underwent a digital revolution, ending the way things used to be—that being nice advances to write books.

In spite of working with the two healers and even undergoing a healing session with a Q’ero Indian shaman from Peru, nothing seemed to improve. So finally, on Aug. 28, I conceded the urologist was right and had prostate surgery. End of story, right?

Wrong.

Usually after such surgery, the healing occurs within 2-3 days and after that it’s like you never had the problem. But not for me. Five days after the surgery, the post-surgery catheter was removed and that night I ended up in the emergency room with the exact same symptoms, and a week later it only got worse. I came down with a severe urinary tract infection that was causing me to double over in pain any time I even attempted to pee. So back to the doctor and another catheter and antibiotics.

Then, three weeks after the surgery, I had another appointment with the urologist to remove the catheter again. This time, if it didn’t work, I was facing the possibility of a second surgery.

One hour before the appointment, I noticed an e-mail from Jane from earlier in the week that I hadn’t read. In it, she suggested the problem might continue, in spite of the surgery, until I worked out whatever was at the heart of the matter. She also said that healing could come to me in a flash if I was able to resolve the issue.

Within minutes of reading that comment, it hit me. I knew exactly what it was – anger from the past. From time to time, I’ve had spells of inner rage about matters from long ago in which I felt an injustice had been perpetrated against me. These incidents happened spontaneously, out of the blue, one of them occurring when Trish and I were in Orlando last week visiting daughter Megan. Trish was telling some story as the three of us were driving across town, and suddenly I was immersed in inner rage about something totally different that occurred 20 some years ago. Of course, neither Trish nor Megan knew what was going on with me and I said nothing about it.

As soon as I had that realization on the morning of the appointment, I began sending out forgiveness to everyone who ever offended me and asking forgiveness to those I offended, repeating the Ho’oponopono mantra over and over. ‘I’m sorry, please forgive me, I love, thank you.’ I said it all the way to the doctor’s office.

A short time later, the catheter came out and – synchronicity – I was normal again, a great blessing. It’s strange to rejoice about such a thing that most of us take for granted, but when you’ve been through what I’ve experienced, it’s the only way to react. I’ve also thought about my ancestors and their role.

The MacGregor clan had tough times in the 17^th  and 18^th centuries. They were  driven from the Highlands, some became slaves in Jamaica. The clan was banned and for 150 years, no one could use the name MacGregor and many of my ancestors apparently took their anger to the grave. According to Jane – I was the one who absorbed it, and I was the one who could resolve it.

Incredibly, while all this was being played out, someone from my past, who I haven’t seen in more that 40 years, put a photo on my Facebook page of the gravestone of Rob Roy MacGregor, my Scottish namesake. I looked closely and noticed the epitaph: ‘Despite them.’ That’s not as harsh as ‘Despise them,’ but it does invoke a sense of anger. So it was my anger and theirs that I was supposedly dealing with – a complicated scenario – and hopefully things now are being resolved for all who are or were involved. Meanwhile, I have to say it: I’m just going with the flow.

Last week, we wrote here about our sighting of seven or eight bright red orbs that appeared in the night sky between 25-60 degrees above the horizon. The sighting took place Sept. 21 in Jupiter, Florida, and the objects seemed to hover, then as they slowly faded, they turned white and disappeared. Our post about it appeared on Whitley Strieber’s Unknown Country and elsewhere on the Internet, and as a result we’ve heard from a Jupiter resident, named Reese, who also had a sighting.

Interestingly, her sighting took place on Sept. 25 and the object she saw was bluish green. She made a video of it from her porch that we’ve posted above.

Here’s what she said after reading our post: “Very interesting! I’ve been seeing things all over the sky here in Jupiter. This is a glowing orb filmed off my front porch in Mallory Creek on 9/25/2013.”

Our daughter, Megan, is in the midst of her first art exhibit, Fragmented Perspectives.  It opened on September 18 and will run until October 11 at Bart’s in downtown Orlando.

Bart’s is a funky bar with a unique slant – each month, they feature the works of a local artist.  We went up a few days earlier to help hang the art, which took more than four hours.  Her watercolor paintings are done on lightweight poster boards and secured in place with straight pins. She paints the larger ones in panels; the above painting is a smaller, one-panel. All the paintings are from underwater photos she took when she interned at Dolphins Plus in Key Largo and when she worked at Epcot.

The opening night was great – more than 50 people showed up and she sold the largest painting, a six-panel piece, and has been commissioned for two smaller paintings.  She’s been working with the activities from Pam Grout’s book, E-Squared: 9 Do-It-Yourself Energy Experiments That Prove Your Thoughts Create Your Reality, and the other day asked the universe for an unexpected surprise. Within 24 hours, she received a call from the owner of Bart’s, telling her that the local Fox affiliate was going to be filming a segment at Bart’s and since she was the featured artist, could she attend?

“The universe answered!” she said, so she was at Bart’s the next morning at 7:30.

We’re having trouble getting the video up, but if you have Facebook just put Meg MacGreg in the search box and you can see it on her page.

 In Ingo Swann’s book Your Nostradamus Factor, there’s a fascinating section on what he calls “communal foreseeing.”

He contends that future seeing (precognition) rests on two simple premises. First, the future always foreshadows itself and second, this foreshadowing leaks into human awareness not only through the individual, but also through communal experiences. He first experienced this communal foreseeing when he was a kid, growing up in Telluride, Colorado.

“Our school was a large brick building, standing quite near the mouth of a deep, narrow canyon in whose depths was a beautiful waterfall a thousand feet high and whose water source was a large basin between several peaks that rose behind it. The entire school – grades one through twelve – had only about fifty students, so the absence of a few students was definitely noticed.”

So, one day when several students didn’t show up at school, the  teachers called their homes to find out why. They were told by several mothers that there was going to be  cloudburst that day and that all the kids should be sent home. The teachers went to the principal and told him about this “motherly collective foreseeing,” and everyone was sent home.

Around noon, the entire town noticed that a huge dark cloud had formed in the peaks above the canyon behind the school. It wasn’t raining in town, but everyone knew what the dark clouds portended. “Shortly, a wall of water, rocks, and mud some twenty feet high roared out of the canyon’s mouth. In seconds, it had crashed through the basement windows of the school, where the first and second graders would have been.”

This same kind of collective foreseeing was certainly present before 9-11, the sinking of the Titanic, the assassinations of Lincoln and JFK, and other mass events.  Swann says this “resource of indwelling within ourselves” if properly understood and implemented, could change the directions of future events.

Please note the announcement at the end of the post – about a TV show on reincarnation today on Katie Couric.

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Should anyone ever tell you that dogs don’t understand human language, show them this picture. At the moment I snapped this photo in the dog park, Rob and I were standing nearby,  shouting, “Squirrel, squirrel!”

We weren’t trying to drive them nuts; we just wanted to draw them away from another area of the park where there were some cranky dogs. There actually may have been a squirrel in the tree on the other side of this seven-foot tall fence because Noah really tried to jump over it. To our knowledge, neither of them has ever caught a squirrel. The closest they’ve gotten to catching anything was a cornered possum in our backyard who hissed so fiercely that Nika backed away and we grabbed her collar and pulled her onto the porch.

We aren’t sure what either of them would do if they actually caught a squirrel. Maybe they would try to make friends with it. Or maybe their natural instincts would kick in and that would be it for the squirrel. What is certainly true, though, is that for these two dogs – for many dogs we encounter at the park –  squirrel is at the top of the list of human words that they understand.  The second word in that lineup is treat. The third word in the lineup is park – as in dog park.

We aren’t sure of the rest of the words. Perhaps our next experiment with human language will involve the word, synchro!

We’ll report when we know!

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Today at 3 PM eastern time, Kate Couric’s show is on reincarnation. Authors and past life researchers Carol Bowman, Brian Weiss, and Robert Snow will be among the guests. Carol is the author of two classic books on reincarnation – Children’s Past Lives and Return from Heaven; Brian Weiss wrote Many Lives, Many Masters; and Robert Snow wrote Looking for Carroll Beckwith, one of the most compelling personal stories about reincarnation. Also present will be the Leniengers, whose son’s story may be the best evidence for reincarnation in the western world. 

 Adelita Chirino has a great blog about dreams and dreaming.  She recently posted a powerful story about spirit communication through a luna moth that she’s allowing us to repost.

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My husband’s younger brother, Charlie, died unexpectedly last week. While  Jim was down south taking care of the funeral arrangements with his sisters, he was standing outside the hotel and saw a luna moth on the tree.  Luna moths are pretty rare sightings, as far as I can tell.  They are the most lovely creatures of the night.   

When he called and told me about the luna moth, he also sent me the picture he took of it.  We talked about how maybe it was Charlie visiting.

 During  a dream workshop I was leading recently,  one of the participants told me a story of how her grandmother always said she wanted to transform to a butterfly when she died.  This makes good sense as butterfly is a classic symbol of the transformation of the soul in death because of the caterpillar, chrysalis, butterfly existence they have.  The Greek word we chose as the name of our video production company, Psyche, means soul and butterfly.  Well, at her grandmother’s funeral, at the gravesite, her sister nudged her and pointed out a beautiful butterfly flying near the grave and said, “Here’s Gram.”

 Today walking on the beach, trying to be present and open to the beauty around me and not stuck in the jabberwocky of thoughts in my head, I caught snatches of a conversation between a couple headed the other way.  As they approached me, I heard the woman “funeral” and “ladybug.” Then as we intersected, I heard her say, “How does a lady bug show up in the car when we’re driving down 95?”  He says: “Do you think it’s symbolic…?”

I felt that thrill of recognition, three’s a charm.  Three times in a row, someone is comforted by the appearance of a beautiful butterfly or insect at the very moment when it counts, after experiencing the loss of a dear loved one.  Maybe because insects have such short little life spans, the departed get to speak their comfort through them and then move on, leaving that beautiful image for their loved ones to share forevermore.

Within the ghost-hunting community, there has been a debate during the past decade about what kind of cameras should be used to document a ghost – a single-lens reflex camera using film vs. digital cameras. Digital cameras supposedly pick up orbs better than film cameras, but is that because the digital cameras are more likely to pick up dust particles? Likewise, ghost photos taken with digital cameras could be enhanced, whereas film negatives document a photo.

The website ghoststudy.com notes such issues, but recognizes that all kinds of cameras can be used to take ghost photos – from throwaway film cameras to cell phones as well as SLR cameras. But how about the camera that was used in the following – a sonogram camera that seemingly picked up the image of a deceased relative superimposed over the head of the fetus!?

Here’s the story, as presented on ghost study.com.

“My name is Charity. In March 2011, I lost my father. We had many discussions about the paranormal and I always thought it was crazy. He proceeded to tell me that after he dies, he will appear to me, somehow, someway. Before he died, my son and his wife had their first child. My dad went to the hospital a couple times to see the baby. She was born in February 2011. Not a month later, he passed.

“She was with her mother at the time of the sonogram and didn’t see anything strange or out of the ordinary. They got in their car to leave and her mother wanted to see the printed out pictures of the new baby. As she took a glance at the picture, she noticed there was a man in the picture. After my daughter-in-law started looking at it, she recognized the man in the photo and said it looked like her husband’s grandfather that passed away.

“After she had called me and told me about this picture, she sent me a copy on my phone. Sure enough, it looks just like my father. I went to their home and seen the original picture, and it is in 3 or 4 of them! I am now a believer.

“I am enclosing one of the sonogram pictures and a picture of my father. Could you please get back with me and tell me I am not crazy. Thank you.”

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I was a bit confused when I first looked at the top image. It’s like one of those ink blot images. You can see it one way, or another. But then when I looked at the image below and compared it with the one above, it became much clearer and, yes, it does look somewhat like the deceased grandfather. Strange, but fascinating.

On September 11, 1973, Augusto Pinochet seized control of the Chilean government  and banned every political party that had supported democratically elected Salvador Allende. For the next 17 years, Pinochet’s military dictatorship was responsible for more than 3,000 deaths and 38,000 cases of arrests and tortures that included a large number of “desaparecidos,” people who were disappeared. The date and the number of deaths attributed to Pinochet has an eerie, synchronistic parallel to September 11, 2001 and the WTC attack.

Forty years ago this week, Chilean folk singer Victor Jara became one of the early victims of Pinochet’s brutality. He was arrested, tortured, and shot to death with 44 bullets. Bruce Springsteen  paid tribute to Jara during his first concert ever in Chile.

 “If you are a politically inclined musician, Victor Jara continues to be a great expression of that,” Springsteen said in Spanish Thursday night at a packed concert in Santiago. “It is an honor to be here.”

He noted that in 1988, he had a concert in neighboring Mendoza, Argentina, when Pinochet was still in power. He met a lot of people with missing relatives in Chile and was shown photos of them. “It is a moment that has stayed with me ever since,” Springsteen said.

As a tribute to Jara, Springsteen played one of his best known songs, Manifiesto, which is emblematic of a social and cultural movement that arose in Chile in the 1960s and early 70s. And yes, he sang it in Spanish.Pretty cool.