Welcome to The Mystical Underground

When your immediate family consists of just three people, as ours does, there are few secrets, particularly once your son or daughter is an adult. And in our small clan, one of the pressing questions, at least for me, is about the life where the three of us have been together before that is connected most closely to this life. 

I think I have written part of this story before on the blog, but can’t seem to find it! To recap: when I was pregnant with Megan, I asked for a dream that would answer the question about our last life together that was most relevant to this current life.

I dreamed that I was standing in a large, empty warehouse, very pregnant, and that my water had broken. I was alone. Megan was born, I cut the umbilical cord somehow, and picked her up. She opened her eyes and said, “Iceland.”

I bolted out of the dream, Iceland on the tip of my tongue, and thought, Huh? It’s not as if Iceland was ever on any of my bucket lists. During the 1960s, you could get cheap flights to Europe by flying through Iceland. But that was the extent of my knowledge about the country. I filed this tidbit away.

When Megan was in college she became friends with a woman who was training to become a medium. She read for Megan on several occasions and, at the end of her junior year, Rob and I decided to have readings with her. I felt she hit some salient points in the reading, but when I told her about the dream I’d had and asked for specifics, things really got interesting. 

Her trance instantly deepened. Her eyes flicked rapidly back and forth beneath her lids, suggesting she was in an altered dreaming state. And then she started talking: the Iceland reference meant northern Europe, that was what she was seeing.

In that life, Rob and I were brother and sister, our parents had perished, and Megan, an aunt, adopted us. That life was difficult, there was never enough food, but Megan provided for us to the best of her ability. The medium continued with details about what we ate, how we looked, the clothes we wore, and most of it resonated for me.  It actually explained some things. 

I have been thin all of my life, can’t stand the sight of a nearly empty fridge, and eat constantly. I’m a grazer, always munching on something. If I have to go without food for a couple of hours, I start feeling this incessant gnawing in my stomach, a kind of panic that I absolutely must eat. So I keep almonds and peanut butter crackers in the glove compartment of my car. Three meals a day just don’t do it for me. Six or eight small meals are satisfying.

The medium mentioned that the three of us being together in this life, with Rob and I as Megan’s parents, presented many creative opportunities for her that weren’t available in that life in northern Europe. In this life she would realize those talents, use them, and that certainly seems to be happening.

After reading Flipside: A Tourist’s Guide on How to Navigate the Afterlife,  I thought back to the regressions I’ve had. The second was with a woman who was recently certified as a hypnotherapist. Her technique was good, her voice was smooth. But during the countdown into deep relaxation, she said, “When I say six, you won’t be able to raise your right arm.” It brought me right out of the state of mind needed for a regression. Never tell me what I can’t do. 

 My third attempt was with Carol Bowman. She had successfully regressed Rob to a life that impacted him emotionally, but I had a bad sinus infection and our attempt at a regression didn’t go anywhere.  But she also did a group regression at our house and during that regression, I found myself on a spaceship and quickly bolted out of it.

The early attempts were with Rob, who had been certified as a hypnotherapist. This happened a few months after we’d met  and I went under fast, easily, and was fully there in Paris in the 1920s with Hemingway and Fitzgerald. Now, granted, I knew a lot about this period, about the writers of this period, and even as I was reliving these experiences, a part of me was thinking, You’re a novelist, you’re making this stuff up.

 But was I? In 1975, I made my first and only trip to Europe. Scotland was high on my list. As soon as I set foot in the city of Edinburgh, I knew my way around. I knew which street was coming up, I knew where I was going, I knew that city the way you can’t know a city from a travel guide. When I set eyes on Edinburgh Castle for the first time, I broke down in tears. I knew I was home. 

Years later, Rob and I figured out that he was traveling Edinburgh the same week that I was there.  What are the odds of this? During that reading with Megan’s medium friend, she mentioned that Rob and I had, before we’d been born, allowed ourselves three possible times for meeting: in the mid-seventies, in the early 80s when we did meet, and later, in the 21^st century. Megan’s soul agenda was what made the difference for when we met.

Some years ago when I read a book by physician Judith Orloff, she talked about the family she visited between lives. Her true family, she said, her soul family. This is similar to what Richard Martini talks about in his book, Flipside: A Tourist’s Guide on How to Navigate the Afterlife.  

 I finished Flipside recently and so did one of my friends to whom I recommended the book. She has already booked a past life regression with a Michael Newton-trained therapist. When I told Megan about the book, I described what Martini says about energy – that some portion of our personal energy, of who we are – remains in the nonphysical even after we incarnate.

“Mom,” Megan said. “That’s what Abraham talks about. It’s the vortex. It’s what we fill with our desires and intentions.”

It’s also very “Sethian,” from the Jane Roberts books that she channeled with an entity no longer focused in physical reality. So, in all these books, in all these various metaphysical systems, there seem to be truths that we can take away and apply to our own lives.

In essence, it seems we are multidimensional beings who live many lives and who, between lives, plan the specifics: who, what, where, when, and how.  And free will is our tool. As Martini states toward the end of his book:

There are no coincidences. What appears to be a matter of amazing coincidence, upon examination, turns out to be an incredible planned sequence, like a complex 3D chess or “second life” game being played on multiple planes where each move affects the other players.  As a butterfly’s wings in a rain forest may cause a hurricane in Asia, everything can be linked in cause and effect if one looks long and hard enough. And that, by the way, is the reason you’ve picked up this book.

…and just in time for Halloween. I love this cat. Thanks to spiderwoman for posting this on her blog. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have known about Henry, part 4.

 The Synchronicity Highway : Exploring Coincidence, the Paranormal, & Alien Contact has been published! It’s available as an e-book, and will be available before Christmas as a hardcover, trade paperback, and audio.

We knew from the start that we wanted to call this book The Synchronicity Highway. But the subtitle proved to be tricky. At one point, it was Navigating the Signs and Symbols of Life’s Journey. But this didn’t quite capture the essence of what we wanted to write.

Finally, Rob came up with the ideal part headings:  The Highway, the Inner Way, and the Skyway. For the subtitle of the book, this translated as Exploring Coincidence, the Paranormal, & Alien Contact. Once we had the right title and part headings, we  started going through all the material we’d gathered and came up with the chapters.  As we started writing the book, getting into the flow of it, the synchros started happening, new material came our way, and the chapters morphed and changed.

Thanks to some striking synchros, we ended up with three great interviews that we’ve included in the book – with remote viewer Joe McMoneagle, Xperiencer Jim O’Connell (now associated with the John E Mack Institute), and Whitley Strieber. Right now, only the e-book version is available. But a hardcover, trade paperback, and audio book will follow in November.  We’ll be doing radio shows in November, too, after the Mercury retrograde (October 21 – November 11) is over. The first will be on November 14 with Pat and Carol Daniels at KTKK AM630, a talk show out of  Utah. Stay tuned!

Click here for the table of contents.

Available at Amazon, $4.99

 On September 18, our daughter, Megan, had her first art exhibit. It was held at Bart’s, this rather funky bar that once a month features art by local artists, for an exhibit that runs for about three weeks.  We wrote about the opening night and her subsequent appearance on a local TV station here.

Her closing night is tonight, October 11, and we’re here for it. She’s holding a raffle and the winner will go home with the painting shown at the top of the post. The proceeds will go to dolphin research. She painted this dolphin for closing night and also used it as an illustration of her art for a talk she gave at a community college in West Palm Beach a couple of weeks back.

When I mentioned to Rob that I was writing this post, he said, Where’s the synchro? Well, there probably isn’t one. But it’s fascinating to me, as a parent, to trace the genesis of a creative passion.  I think Megan’s love affair with dolphins began with a swim when she was ten or eleven. The three of us drove down to Key Largo, to Dolphins Plus  to experience these mammals in their own environment.  

This facility is one of the best in terms of captive dolphins. It’s entirely outdoors, ocean water washes through the metal grate dividers between the facility and the Atlantic, sunlight pours over the facility, the dolphins breathe fresh air.  There is something indescribably magical about swimming alongside a dolphin in this kind of environment. You feel their sonar as it scans you. You feel their particular kind of joy, their delight in being alive.

This environment is radically different from Sea World, where everything in the indoor aquarium is carefully regulated – the amount of saline in the water, the temperature of the air, even the light. As Disney’s Epcot Center, the natural light is sparse and comes from a few skylights. When we visited that aquarium years after that first swim at Dolphins Plus, the place depressed me.

A few years after that initial swim at Dolphins Plus, we were traveling in Venezuela, on the island of Margarita, and Megan and I swam in a huge outdoor facility with several dolphins. Like Dolphins Plus, this facility had actual ocean water, sunlight, fresh air, and it was huge. Megan and I were the only people in the water with the dolphins. It was thrilling, invigorating, and indescribably spiritual. The only way I can describe the spiritual aspect of this experience is that a kind of telepathic bond developed between us and the dolphins who chose to swim with us.

During Megan’s second year of college, she applied for – and won – a month-long internship at Dolphins Plus that became her independent study project as an art major. It was as if that first swim had come full circle. During this internship, she met her friend Erin, who now lives in Orlando and has the same dolphin interests that Megan does.

In late November 2011, five months after Megan had graduated from college, she was living at home and heard that she’d been accepted into an internship at Disney’s Epcot Center, working with dolphins. In January 2012, she moved to Orlando for the internship.

Considering the revenue that Disney pulls in annually from Epcot, the pay was bad and the interns were basically the ones who cleaned up dolphin poop. But…and it’s a biggie…she was able to take more than 600 underwater photos of dolphins and these pictures have formed the foundation of her art.

Her theme, fragmented perspectives, is intended to prompt us to question our concepts about dolphins, about wildlife in captivity, about the way these mammal see us – and the erroneous ways we see them.

The week of her opening night, the three of us went to see Blackfish,  a documentary that will probably be nominated for an Oscar. It concerns Sea World’s captive whales.  It’s a heartbreaking documentary. And here’s where the synchro may come in.

Three or four days after we saw that documentary, in which Megan and I left the theater in tears, she had an interview at Sea World for working with dolphins, a job her friend Erin also has. How perfect would that be? She and Erin could be working together and could, perhaps, even live together at some point. Megan got there at 5 AM, passed the swim test, had her interview, knew she was clearly overqualified for the job. She had, in fact, been hired for this job months earlier, but was eliminated because the job entailed driving a electric cart and she had some speeding tickets on her record. So this was her second try.

She didn’t get the job. Yes, it was initially a blow. But in the grander scheme of things, maybe it’s that silver lining.  In the parts of our lives that we can’t see from our perspective in the physical, synchronicity suggests a plan, a design, a venue. Not long after the Sea World rejection she ran across an interesting spot on Craig’s list and applied as an instructor for Paint Nites. She teaches her first workshop on November 1o.

She would like to expand her palette to other mammals – dogs, cats, elephants, tigers… Uh, is this going to involve a photo safari in Africa? If so, can your parents tag along?!

Here’s her website.

Here’s a somewhat bizarre story of a neighborhood in Havana harboring an abundance of twins. It’s not a government scheme or a  fertility drug experiment. Just a coincidence, meaningful or random, depending on your perspective. For the locals, there’s a sacred tree involved, one that sprouts miracles.

Twelve sets of twins reside in a two-block area in on 68-A Street in western Havana. That’s about four times above what would be average for those two blocks where about 225 people reside in 70 houses.

The twins range in age from newborns to senior citizens. “We were the first ones,” Fe Fernandez, 65, told Associated Press reporter Peter Orsi, who took interest in the seemingly coincidental allocation of twins. “It’s incredible!” said her identical sister, Esperanza.

Ten of the twin sets here are identical, and the other two fraternal. None of the mothers interviewed by the AP  said they had received fertility treatments. None of the families are related to each other.

All but one of the sets were born into these homes, and the lone newcomers moved into a house that was vacated by twins who moved to Spain. Others have died or moved away over the years.

The AP report notes that scientists say a variety of factors play into twin births, such as race, the mother’s age and diet. Western Africa, from where many Afro-Cubans can trace their ancestry, has significantly elevated rates of twinning.

While there’s been no scholarly study of the twins on 68-A Street, the residents consider themselves part of a special community. And many relate the unique character of their neighborhood to a tree, hence, finding meaning in the abundance of coincidental twins.

“Many say it’s the Siguaraya tree, which people ask for things,” Fe Fernandez said. “The people believe in it strongly.”

Leafy and embellished with delicate white blossoms, the Siguaraya is considered sacred in the syncretic Afro-Cuban Santeria faith and is associated with a powerful “orisha,” or spirit.

A little background for those not familiar with Santeria…

In Cuba, the Yoruba of West Africa are known as Lucumí. The Yoruba were brought as slaves to Cuba in the nineteenth century. They are the descendants of diviners and herbalists who deal with mysteries intrinsic in nature. For them, herbs and plants are more than mere sources of food and medicine. The Lucumí revere and respect their flora from a spiritual perspective as well.

Certain plants and trees, like the Siguaraya (trichilia havanenses), which they believe embodies an orisha, a force of nature and the Ceiba tree (ceiba pentandra), have powers for healing the body but more so, for healing the spirit and soul as well. (We’ve written about a Ceiba tree in Key West, which people also visit for healing and blessings.)

In the spiritual folklore and mythology of Cuba, permission is asked of sacred plants and trees before they are cut or felled. The great Cuban singer and band leader of the 1940s,50s and 60s, Beny Moré, sang a beautiful song  written by the outstanding pianist and composer Lino Frías, dedicated to the Siguaraya, a plant considered medicinal and magical by the Lucumí. Lino made this evident when he wrote Mata Siguaraya; he says:

En mi cuba nace una mata, que sin permiso no se
puede tumba eh. No se puede tumba eh, porque son
Orisa. Esa mata nace en el monte, esa mata tiene
poder. Esa mata es Siguaraya!

In my Cuba grows a plant, without permission you may
not cut it down. You may not cut it down because it is an Oricha.
That plant grows in the forest, that plant has powers, that plant is Siguaraya!

Here’s the tree in question in Havana’s neighborhood of twins…

On national news, you hear a lot these days about raising the debt ceiling. Since Reagan entered office in 1980, the debt ceiling – the amount the U.S. government is permitted to borrow to pay off its debts – has been raised 39 times. It was raised 17 times under Reagan, four times under Clinton’s administration, and  seven times under Bush’s watch.

In ten days, the ceiling must be raised again or the U.S. government defaults on what it owes to its creditors. Obama has said that if this happens, Social Security and Medicare payments will STOP.

Really?

Baby Boomers are defined as though who were born between 1946 and 1964. Those boomers who are 62 years of age and older are allowed to collect social security. So that means people born between 1946-1951, may be drawing SS. That’s a lot of boomers.  In the sixties, war was the primary focus that galvanized the boomers.  Mixed into this revolution was music, pot, sex, and a profound dissatisfaction with the status quo.

But watch what will happen if Social Security checks stop. If Medicare payments stop. You think the Sixties were revolutionary? It’s going to look like child’s play if Boomers take to the streets to protest the end of Social Security and Medicare. Many of these Boomers now own guns. Many of them are accustomed to a particular lifestyle that includes that SS check, that Medicare payment. Many of them understand how to manipulate and navigate the system. They vote, they are vocal, they will be deeply frustrated as the woman in the photo above, and somewhere in their memories the sixties continues to whisper to them, prompting them to take action, to get involved.

Perhaps the economic collapse of the U.S. – and, therefore, of the rest of the world, as the pundits predict  – is how the new paradigm is ushered in. I remember a passage from one of Whitley Strieber’s books about a vision he experienced in which he and his wife, Anne, were plucking walnuts from a bush or tree so they would have something to eat.

Will it come to that? Must it come to people going hungry, desperate for food and shelter, for the paradigm to shift? It might.

All this political theater boils down to this: the Republicans do not want you and I to have affordable health care. They don’t want this because it’s the signature of Obama’s administration. It really has nothing to do with us, the people. If they can force Obamacare – the Affordable Health Care Act – to fail, then Obama fails as a president and that supposedly raises their status in the eyes of voters.

John Boehner, the speaker of the house, is the most ineffective leader ever, in the history of Congress. He claims he doesn’t have the votes to bring this issue to the floor of the house. How do we know that? C’mon, Boehner, bring the vote to the floor. Let’s see where things really stand. You don’t have anything to lose – even if you’re voted out as speaker or as a congressman, you’ll still have your pension, your status as an ex-speaker, and oh yes, your health care.

Ten days and counting…tick tock, tick tock.

painting by Megan MacGregor

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An e-mail Sunday night from a friend mentioned a synchro about wine. That startled me because a few hours earlier I had also experienced a meaningful coincidence related to wine.

My friend, Kevin, wrote:

“Weird synchro last night. I popped a movie in the DVD player. Went to the kitchen to pour a glass of wine and my wife was opening a bottle, a Carmenere from Chile. It had a reference to the grape being from the Jurassic period on the label. Guess what movie I put in just before that? Uh huh, Jurassic Park. Pretty weird. This a bottle we’ve been saving for some time so neither of us remembered the Jurassic reference. No idea what it is supposed to mean.”

I wrote back, “Wow! I had a wine synchro today. I was watching the Dolphin-Ravens game, and when Trish came home from the grocery story the score was tied 6-6. I walked into the kitchen and saw that she had bought a bottle of cab labeled, Ravens. I knew right then that the Dolphins were going to lose. Sure enough. Final score: Ravens 26, Dolphins 23. Trish has no interest in football and had no idea the Dolphins were playing the Ravens.”

I wouldn’t have written a post about a wine synchro if it had only been my story or only Kevin’s. But when we both had wine synchros, well, that’s a double synchro. I guess somehow he and I are on the same wave length.

  We saw this poem on Mike Perry’s blog.  It’s powerful.

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When an old man died in the geriatric ward of a nursing home in an Australian country town, it was believed that he had nothing left of any value.

Later, when the nurses were going through his meager possessions, they found this poem. Its quality and content so impressed the staff that copies were made and distributed to every nurse in the hospital.

And this old man, with nothing left to give to the world, is now the author of this ‘anonymous’ poem winging across the Internet.

Cranky Old Man

What do you see nurses? . . .What do you see?
What are you thinking …when you’re looking at me?
A cranky old man . . .not very wise,
Uncertain of habit . . .with faraway eyes?
Who dribbles his food … and makes no reply.
When you say in a loud voice . .’.I do wish you’d try!’
Who seems not to notice . . .the things that you do.
And forever is losing . . . A sock or shoe?
Who, resisting or not . . . lets you do as you will,
With bathing and feeding . . . The long day to fill?
Is that what you’re thinking?. .. Is that what you see?
Then open your eyes, nurse …you’re not looking at me.
I’ll tell you who I am . . . As I sit here so still,
As I do at your bidding . . . as I eat at your will.
I’m a small child of Ten…with a father and mother,
Brothers and sisters … who love one another
A young boy of Sixteen . . .with wings on his feet
Dreaming that soon now . . .a lover he’ll meet.
A groom soon at Twenty . . . my heart gives a leap.
Remembering, the vows …that I promised to keep.
At Twenty-Five, now . . . I have young of my own.
Who need me to guide . . . And a secure happy home.
A man of Thirty . ..My young now grown fast,
Bound to each other …With ties that should last.
At Forty, my young sons …have grown and are gone,
But my woman is beside me . . .to see I don’t mourn.
At Fifty, once more…Babies play ’round my knee,
Again, we know children . . . My loved one and me.
Dark days are upon me . . . My wife is now dead.
I look at the future . . . I shudder with dread.
For my young are all rearing …young of their own.
And I think of the years . . . And the love that I’ve known.
I’m now an old man . . .  and nature is cruel.
It’s jest to make old age . . . look like a fool.
The body, it crumbles … grace and vigor, depart.
There is now a stone . . . where I once had a heart.
But inside this old carcass …A young man still dwells,
And now and again . . .  my battered heart swells
I remember the joys . . .  I remember the pain.
And I’m loving and living . . . life over again.
I think of the years, all too few . .. gone too fast.
And accept the stark fact . . . that nothing can last.
So open your eyes, people …open and see.
Not a cranky old man.
Look closer . . . see… ME!!

 Whether you call it global warming or climate change, there’s no question that the planet’s climate is changing.  The Arctic Sea ice is melting and heat records seem to be set with shocking regularity. According to NASA, 2012 was the ninth warmest year on record since 1880 and  eight of those years have occurred since 2000.

As the Arctic melts, sea levels rise and since most of South Florida is about three feet above sea level, it’s no surprise that our beaches are rapidly eroding. But what about cities disappearing in Florida?

This evening, I ran across an article in Huffington Post entitled: 14 Cities That Could Disappear Over the Next Century, Thanks to Global Warming.  The first two cities on the list are Miami and Fort Lauderdale. These are followed by: Boston, New York, Atlantic City, Honolulu, New Orleans, Sacramento, San Diego, Los Angeles, Charleston, Virginia Beach, Seattle, and Savannah. Here, in a Rolling Stone article, is one author’s depiction of a future Miami. It’s set in 2030, when our daughter will be just 41 years old.  In the online article, there are links to an overview of other U.S. cities, which is equally startling.

Usually when I read articles about climate change, I remember the predictions of Edgar Cayce and the information that author and researcher Helen Wambaugh gathered for her book Mass Dreams of the Future.

But when I read the Huffington Post article today, I was reminded of something far more personal. Decades ago, when I was between jobs and living back at home, I dreamed that I was on a small boat, rowing frantically toward what I hoped was the Bahamas. Tucked into the space behind me was a waterproof bag of some kind that contained food, supplies, a few belongings.

In the dream, I knew that the South Florida peninsula had been inundated by rising oceans and that my only hope of survival lay in getting to the Bahamas. In real life, the idea is absurd; many of the Bahamian islands are maybe a foot above sea level and would be inundated before South Florida.

But dreams have their own sort of logic, and this one made such an impact that I remember it all these years later. I remember the taste of desperation, the salt spray on my face, how it stung my eyes, how it tasted on my lips. I remember how the muscles in my arms ached. I remember my profound fear. I remember that I was completely alone, that none of my loved ones had survived.

In the years since I had that dream, it seems that the consciousness of humanity has both risen – and plunged in terms of our concept of the impact our presence has on the planet. When our awareness has risen, we have bought ourselves a bit more time, or perhaps nudged the time line closer to an alternative. When the collective consciousness has plunged in awareness, then pendulum has swung in the opposite direction. I believe in the Many Worlds theory of quantum physics, that for every choice we make, there are perhaps an infinite number of alternatives that are created, and some part of us – our souls- is on every single one of those paths. Our focus, intent, beliefs and desires determine which of those paths we follow in the here and now.

Back then, I told a friend about this dream and she laughed and said it was just a reflection of my current situation. I was unemployed, forced to move home when I lost my job as a children’s librarian, and the economic climate sure didn’t favor landing a job in my profession – as a librarian or teacher. But intuitively, I felt I was being shown a possible alternative for something larger than just me or my situation. And the message was clear:  sink or swim. Accept it – or do something about it.

So when I saw this list, I was struck by the sight of Miami and Fort Lauderdale as the top two names. We used to live in Lauderdale, we’ve spent a lot of time over the years on Miami’s South Beach. We now live 15 miles inland, but this isn’t much of a consolation if these predictions come to pass.  In one novel I started and couldn’t finish, the Florida Keys and South Florida were little more spits of land connected by bridges. Life was a struggle under a repressive government. This novel freaked me out and I think that’s why I haven’t gotten any farther with it than I have.

I’m not sure what the answer is or if there’s even an answer at all. Every day, I experience weird weather anomalies for this area– mango trees that bloom too soon, and produce  so much fruit that a lot of it just dies on the branches; extreme heat; an excess of rain; too many frogs at the wrong time of the year. Many of the signs are subtle, and some of them are so blatant and in my face that it’s staggering.

I think of the Blade Runner world in the movie based on a Philip K Dick novel. I think of that strange and disturbing movie, Soylent Green, or The Hunger Games. These Dystopian depictions of the future may actually serve a purpose in that when we see the movies, read the books, we are so horrified that our consciousness somehow shifts. And when the consciousness of one person shifts, there’s a ripple effect; I feel what you feel, we feel what others feel.

So maybe that young woman rowing toward the Bahamas wasn‘t just about me; perhaps she symbolized us, humanity, moving toward something better, more sustainable, and ultimately more egalitarian. I sure hope so. I hope that we and our daughter and subsequent generations choose alternatives that are progressively more sustainable. Otherwise, we’re all going to be in these stupid boats, hoping to get somewhere fast.