Welcome to The Mystical Underground

(We added those glasses!)

A few months ago, we e-mailed a query letter to the editor of Psychology Today suggesting an article about synchronicity.  We would explore some of the leading edge research on the subject, including the studies of Bernard Beitman, MD, who has suggested a new interdisciplinary field called Coincidence Studies. A couple of hours later, we noticed that we’d received a visit  from Psychology Today. (The visitor’s ISP was linked to a media company which owns the magazine.)  After that, nothing.  No response, favorable or otherwise.  Not even a form letter rejection.

So it was interesting when, barely into July, we happened to spy the August issue of Psychology Today on the newsstand with the cover story SIXTH SENSE: Premonitions, Deja Vu, Coincidences, Near-Death Experiences. As we perused the article, the author quickly assured us that all of these ‘anomalous experiences’ were simply tricks of the mind.

“We often explain such experiences using concepts related to spirits, luck, witchcraft, psychic powers, life energy, or more terrestrial (and extra terrestrial) entities. Such explanations are often more appealing, or at least more intuitive, than blaming an odd experience on a trick of the mind.”

We were also told that these experiences “may be associated with stressful circumstances, personal pathologies, or cognitive deficits.” In other words, if you experience something psychic, you might be stressed, mentally ill or just dumb!

Author Matthew Hutson, a former editor of Psychology Today, makes it clear in the first  few paragraphs that this mainstream science journal was not going to dabble in any unorthodox explanations of such ‘outlier phenomena’ as synchronicity. In fact, the article avoids the term.  What we call synchros, Hutson  refers to as apophenia – the ability to recognize patterns.  Even though he says this ability is helpful for our survival, he warns that sometimes it gets away from us.

He uses the example of Mark David Chapman who, before killing John Lennon, noted 50 connections between Holden Caulfield’s time in New York City in The Catcher in the Rye and his own life.  Hutson suggests that overactive dopamine transmissions help us find meaningful coincidences in things. It’s also called schizophrenia.

Thankfully, he concedes that these experiences also might be ‘healthy inventions’ of the brain, which is often busy searching for patterns. What sends some people into mental illness can lead others to be creative and insightful.

But he quickly returns to mental dysfunction when he notes there is a significant correlation between belief in the paranormal and in conspiracies.  “A key trait that predicts a belief in conspiracy theories is paranoia.”

The article continues with a lot of  generalizing about ‘magical thinking’ and the usual attempts by mainstream science to explain away telepathy, precognition, and remote viewing, as well as near-death experiences, and spirit contact. It’s nothing new, just more of the same rigid thinking on these subjects that mainstream science has generated decade after decade while ignoring hundreds of studies to the contrary by so-called ‘fringe’ scientists. If there’s any crack in the dam here, it’s a grudging recognition that noticing patterns, i.e. synchros, might be a healthy pre-occupation.

Hutson, though, seems most comfortable writing about pathologies related to paranormal beliefs and struggles a bit in presenting the concept that exploring psychic experiences has a healthy psychological benefit for many people.

“People high in sensation-seeking–those who search for novelty and exciting stimuli–also report more paranormal beliefs and experiences. Perhaps they’re drawn to the idea of a world inhabited by mysterious forces. So, being a pattern-finding sensation-seeker means you’re more likely to experience odd coincidences in the first place, and then more likely to entertain unconventional explanations for them. A one-two punch.”

When he refers to coincidence, Hutson turns a bit cynical.  “Research shows that we find coincidences involving ourselves much more surprising than identical coincidences involving others, because we feel we’re somehow special. (Yes, I know, you really are special.)”

Bottom line: when it comes to dealing with anomalous experiences, Hutson assures us it’s all in our heads, tricks of the brain. Think you’ve seen a ghost? Think again. “Once you have it in your head that you might see or hear something, your brain is often happy to oblige by presenting a hallucination, especially when you’re tired or scared.” That may be true, but is that always the case, 100% of the time? Hutson implies over and over that it is, which places him squarely in the rear guard of psychic exploration. It’s hard to investigate a subject fairly if you don’t believe it exists.

While pursuing these experiences might be healthy in small doses, Hutson concludes that two thirds of the population is either misguided or mentally challenged when it comes to understanding the source of such phenomena, and some of us are downright crazy.

We probably would’ve reviewed this article even if we hadn’t queried the journal on the same subject with a different approach.  But that gave us an added incentive. We saw a pattern, a connection, one that even extended to Hutson’s own work. He  published a book this year about coincidence and the paranormal, and called it:  The 7 Laws of Magical Thinking. Hmm,  sounds like the mainstream science response to The 7 Secrets of Synchronicity.

Or maybe we’re just seeing things.

There’s something deeply joyful about these flash mob dances. This one takes place in the Denver, Colorado airport.

Happy July 4!

a normal birthday cake

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Okay, so the story goes something like this.  An elderly gentleman is about to celebrate his 85^th birthday.  His four daughters plan the party at a local restaurant and one of the husbands is supposed to order the cake from the local grocery store. The cake is supposed to read: Happy 85^th birthday, Dad.

But when the guy arrives at the store, the little Asian woman who decorated the cake informs him that all those words won’t fit across the top.

“Well, can you write it on the plate or something?” he asks.

The Asian woman says that should work and tells him to return in 30 minutes.  He does some shopping,  but is becoming increasingly anxious about time. He’s due at the restaurant shortly, where the festivities are being held. So when he picks up the cake, now boxed, he doesn’t check it.

He sets the cake in the passenger seat and speeds toward the restaurant. His wife and the other three sisters were worried that he was going to be late. They set the cake on the table and  the man’s wife removes it from the box and sets it on the table.  Uh-oh. The greeting is messed up.

“What should we do?” one of the sisters asks anxiously.

“Nothing,” says another sister. “It’s too late to change it.”

And just then, the birthday guy appears, sees the cake and its inscription, and explodes with laughter. Here’s what the cake said:

Sounds like the work of the trickster, doesn’t it?

You hear the oddest stories at the dog park.

Now that you’ve survived Venus’ retrograde (May 15- June 27),  and we’ve hit July,  here are some highlights:

July 3 features a full moon in earth sign Capricorn. Full moons tend to  bring about culmination, harvest, and can also bring news related to the sign and house in which they fall.  This full moon in Capricorn can help to ground us, keep us focused. Powerhouse Pluto forms a close conjunction with this full moon, suggesting that any news you hear is likely to be transformative. It occurs at 8 degrees and 9 minutes of Capricorn, so if you have planets at or near that degree, you may feel the effects of this full moon more than other people. (Click here  for your free natal chart and here  for the house meanings).

Uranus, the planet of sudden, unexpected change, forms a challenging angle to this full moon, suggesting an element of irritability, impatience, even anger.  If you feel like stepping outside to bay at the moon, by all means do so!  Even if it annoys your partner or your neighbors, you’ll feel better afterward.

On July 19, there’s a new moon in water sign Cancer. New moons generally usher in new opportunities according to the sign and house in which they appear. Cancer rules home and hearth, your domestic environment, the more nurturing parent,  and is connected to intuition, your inner world. So new opportunities may arrive in any of those areas. Check your natal chart to see where Cancer falls. This moon occurs at 26 degrees and 55 minutes of Cancer.

On July 15, the second Mercury retrograde of the year begins, in fire sign Leo, and it’s in place until August 8, when it turns direct again. Mercury rules both Gemini and Virgo, communication, travel, the conscious mind, contracts. The best rule of thumb for a Mercury retro is what I call the three Rs: revise, review, rethink. For a writer, this is the perfect revision time. For people in other professions it’s smart to tie up  loose ends, work on projects you’ve already begun, and avoid starting anything new.  And be sure you communicate succinctly and clearly to avoid miscommunication.

Travel can be a challenge during a Mercury retrograde. Your carefully planned itinerary suddenly goes haywire, your flight is rerouted or cancelled, you have a flat on the Interstate…well, you get the idea. That said, if you do travel, then at some point in the near future, you may revisit that destination again.

It’s fine to enter into a verbal agreement with someone, but don’t sign any contracts when Mercury is out of synch.  We did that once, mainly because it couldn’t be avoided, and everything about the contract was messed up.  Another area to avoid? Try not to schedule a move during a Mercury retro period. We did that once, too, and it was disastrous – the moving van was late, the people buying our house had last minute demands, and we were late for the closing on the house into which we were moving.

The good news is that Venus (love, romance, money), Jupiter (expansion,  luck), Mars (physical energy, sexuality, your booster rocket) and Saturn (structure) travel fairly close together in air signs for most of July. Their camaraderie helps to mitigate some of Mercury’s shenanigans.

July is a mixed bag astrologically, but there is always some small gold nugget to mine.

Kevin Moss dreamed of this image, or something close to it and asked what it might mean. I told him it looked like Indra’s Net. He’d never heard of it and was amazed by what he found out about it, since he very interested in the interconnections among people, as he’d written about here.

“Internet…Intranet…Indra’s Net. What a coincidence?!” he commented.

We’ve written about Indra’s Net in the past, but combined with Kevin’s dream image, it seemed worthwhile to bring it up again. Here’s a quote that nicely illuminates the net.

“The Net of Indra is a profound and subtle metaphor for the structure of reality. Imagine a vast net; at each crossing point there is a jewel; each jewel is perfectly clear and reflects all the other jewels in the net, the way two mirrors placed opposite each other will reflect an image ad infinitum. The jewel in this metaphor stands for an individual being, or an individual consciousness, or a cell or an atom. Every jewel is intimately connected with all other jewels in the universe, and a change in one jewel means a change, however slight, in every other jewel.”

–Stephen Mitchell, The Enlightened Mind

how health care should make you feel!

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As you have probably heard by now, the Supreme Court decided today, in a 5-4 vote, that President Obama’s  Affordable Care Act (health insurance) is constitutional. The individual mandate part of the ACA is about semantics – if you don’t buy into this insurance, are you taxed or penalized?

As self-employed individuals, our health care would have cost us from $12,000-$14,000 a year each for basic care,–about $25k– so we haven’t had insurance for the last 22 years. When we were first married, we bought basic coverage, then when I got pregnant we learned the insurance didn’t cover maternity expenses. We paid more than $8,000 for Megan’s birth – and that was in 1989 – and there was nothing wrong with her, it wasn’t a C-section, and I spent just one night in the hospital. Yes, that was with health care.

Around this time, my friend Nancy Pickard and I had a rather in depth discussion about the Seth material. She said she didn’t have health insurance because she had realized long before that her challenges in this life weren’t about health issues.  She adhered to Seth’s tenets that physical ailments/diseases are about internal disconnects. A light went on in my head; I realized that my  challenges in this life weren’t about health, either. Neither are Rob’s.  After that, we dropped our insurance.

This no  insurance thing isn’t something we’ve talked about with most people.  When we do, the often subsequent silence is uncomfortable, the other person changes the subject, their stance is clear. The Macs are cuckoo.

Fortunately, we’ve been healthy and have been in ER maybe three times. We paid out of pocket. We never expected to be treated for free. While our daughter was growing up, she had fantastic health care through Florida’s healthy kids  program. $5 co-pay. When she broke her wrist when she was nine or so, the entire cost was $20. When Rob broke his foot in a biking accident and went to a walk-in clinic and then an orthopedic surgeon, the bill was $3,000.  After Megan’s healthy kids insurance expired, she broke her foot in a sailing accident. The bill eventually came to $2,500 and that’s without any surgery, just a cast, the doctor’s visits, the X rays.

When Obama proposed the Affordable Care Act, he didn’t even bother proposing Medicare for all. In fact, he set the bar way too low, using what was a Republican agenda that basically turned 33 million people over to the insurance companies in return for: you can’t be denied insurance based on pre-existing conditions (excellent); kids can stay on their parents’ policies to the age of 26 (great, if your parents have insurance); no cap on care (fantastic). But Obama ‘s program doesn’t remove profit from health care.

The irony is that Obama’s program is fashioned after the template that Romney set up in Massachusetts when he was governor. Romney, of course, would prefer to have amnesia about that and even made a statement today that as president, he would make sure the Affordable Care Act was repealed.

While the ACA is a fine step in the right direction it is NOT true universal health care; that would be Medicare for all.  So when you hear liberal pundits talking about how we now have universal health care, it simply isn’t true.

A couple years ago, Nancy turned 65 and went on Medicare. I asked her if she was going to the doctor more often. In typical Nancy form, she laughed. “Naw. I realized I needed more internal clarity, so I’ve been going to a Jungian dream analyst.”

Wow, I thought. What a great way to use Medicare. In June, I became eligible for Medicare and my little card arrived in the mail. I looked at this  sucker that I’ve been paying for my entire working life, and started laughing. Insurance, I have medical insurance. And I immediately wondered if that meant I was supposed to get sick. So I’ve decided to go Nancy’s route and find a Jungian for dream analysis.

In the meantime, I scheduled an appointment  with my eye doctor. If you pay cash, he charges $60 for an exam. And he’s good. So for years, once a year, that’s what we have paid  him. The other day I called his office to make an appointment.

“Are you still private pay?” the receptionist asked.

“Nope. Medicare.” I felt almost smug saying it.

“Supplemental insurance?”

“None.”

“Do you, uh, know about the twenty percent that Medicare doesn’t pay?”

“Yes.” I mean, please. For this appointment, if the doc charges his usual $60, the exam will cost me all of twelve bucks.

“Very good. We’ll see you in July.”

The big question mark here is if the eye doc jacks up his prices for Medicare. I’ll know the answer is about two weeks.

Medicare is as close to universal health care as this country will ever see. It costs me a hundred bucks a month, no questions asked. That’s how it should be for every U.S. citizen. Yet, a friend who lived for a time on Hilo, in Hawaii, said that no one on the island accepted Medicare. So even with this program, there are prejudices.

My Canadian friend, Judi, emailed me today asking about the decision by the Supremes. “As a Canadian I don’t understand why a lot of Americans don’t want health care for everyone. Isn’t it a good thing that children with preexisting conditions are now covered, and that health care premiums cannot just be jacked up for no reason? I’m already reading that some of those opposed to the ruling and socialism, are thinking of moving to Canada – and yet we have universal health care. Isn’t that what they are trying to get away from? What am I missing here?”

Well, what she’s missing is that piece of the American soul that shrieks, Don’t mandate what I have to buy. Don’t you dare tell me I have to eat broccoli. Just make it universal, please, but don’t call it socialism.

So this is where we are. Romney vows to repeal the ruling. The Obama administration considers the ruling a victory. Personally, I think we’ve got a long way to go. But right now, hey, I’ve got my Medicare card. Thank you, Lyndon Johnson, who got this program approved in 1965, in just eleven months.

Throughout your life, there are people you never meet who nonetheless mold what you think and feel and believe. They are the authors of the books that change your life, the directors whose visions  ignite your imagination, the photographers and artists whose perceptions  influence how you see the world. These are the visionaries whose creative works somehow become landmarks in your own life. Nora Ephron was one of those visionaries.

Do you remember the scene in When Harry Meets Sally where Sally (Meg Ryan) creates the sounds of a woman in the full throes of orgasm? Or what about those words uttered in Sleepless in Seattle: “Destiny is something we’ve invented because we can’t stand the fact that everything that happens is accidental.”

Nora Ephron’s vision was timeless and immortal. This woman didn’t just write and direct movies. She wrote novels. She wrote essays. She was a powerhouse that influenced the way women think of themselves. She wasn’t just some hack in a basement sniffing cocaine and hoping for a big break. She was the big break. Her thumb was always on the pulse of what women feel and think. From Sleepless in Seattle to Julie and Julia, Nora Ephron left her mark, her footprint, and  I hope she’s out there in the universe enjoying herself and planning for the next phase of her existence.

Thanks, Nora, for all the laughs and insights.