Synchronicity, Darth Vader, and the Hero’s Journey

Posted on February 18, 2011 by Trish and Rob

Luke Skywalker, DarthVader. The light and the dark, good and evil. The hero and the villain or, in Jungian terms, the shadow. These two characters represent opposing archetypes. When George Lucas wrote the Star Wars script, he was deeply influenced by Joseph Campbell’s book, The Hero with a Thousand  Faces, in which Campbell mapped the essential structure behind myths and religions and illustrated that all stories are composed of the same pattern –  the hero’s journey. There are 17 steps to the hero’s journey and you see them in movies and novels that speak to us in mythic terms.
Synchronicity is part of the hero’s journey.  It fits best with that aspect of the journey that Campbell called “supernatural aid,” and occurs once the hero has committed to the quest. “For those who have not refused the call, the first encounter of the hero’s journey is with a protective figure , who provides the adventurer with amulets against the dragon forces he is about to pass,” wrote  Campbell. “What such a figure represents is the benign, protecting power of destiny… protective power is always and ever present within or just behind the unfamiliar features of the world. One has only to know and trust, and the ageless guardians will appear. Having responded to his own call, and continuing to follow courageously as the consequences unfold, the hero finds all the forces of the unconscious at his side.”
The dark side of this journey occurs through external forces – through the shadow/villain that attempts to trick, thwart, subvert, and harm or kill the hero. This shadow comes in many guises and speaks in many voices. It can be the voice that tries to seduce you into believing that synchronicity is a  malevolent force, evidence of your broken personality. Or it can be the whispers of the troll beneath the bridge, who insists that you must believe as he believes before he’ll let you cross.
The shadow/villain usually has a bleak, ugly view of the world and desperately seeks converts to his way of thinking. Your reality, he says, is hammered together by outside forces over which you have no control, and you and you and you have no idea what’s happening. Only he knows. Only he has the inside scoop. There’s an element of the dark trickster in him, too, a kind of insidious quality, slick and tailored, like a Wall Street conman.  The shadow/villain insists that synchronicity isn’t about any underlying order in the universe, that there’s no such thing as unity, that unity, in fact, is ever so dangerous, that if you believe in it, you’re opening yourself to terrible, malevolent forces. Synchronicity, says the shadow/villain, is just the choked wheeze of a world in its death throes.
Darth Vader, like all shadow/villains, had a powerful, booming voice  that made him the center of attention when he spoke. But beneath that black armor, he was just a broken, pathetic man. So if you meet him on your journey, think of Campbell’s words, “The hero is the champion of things becoming, not of things become, because he is,” and just keep on walking.
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Posted in hero's journey | 32 Comments

UFO Video from the Netherlands

Posted on February 17, 2011 by Trish and Rob

I’ve recently wondered what Jung would think of the Internet, You Tube, Google, the instant access to information. And, specifically, what would he think of all the UFO activity that’s reported daily, somewhere on the internet?

He seemed to regard UFOs as archetypes of the collective unconscious, a search for wholeness. Granted, I haven’t memorized his autobiography, but I  seem to recall that there were many UFO sightings before the outbreak of World War II, which is part of what precipitated his interest in the topic.

First, look @ this photo Nancy Atkinson took at noon, 7,000 feet. That white speck is the moon. Then look at the video.

This video from the Netherland intrigues me. You can just imagine this guy out for a drive with his girlfriend, he sees these weird lights…and, well, let him tell you. I’m sure some skeptics somewhere will jump on this one, just as they did with the various videos of a UFO over Jerusalem, the UFOs that reportedly shut down an airport in China, the Phoenix Lights, and all the rest. Whatever. This video resonates.

Posted in Netherlands, UFOs | 23 Comments

The Alien Jigsaw

Posted on February 17, 2011 by Trish and Rob

We recenltly came across a long, but interesting article on the Internet by UFO author Budd Hopkins. It’s called Deconstructing the Debunkers: A Response. It appeared on a web site called The Alien Jigsaw: True Experiences of Alien Abductions. The article reminded us of the time we spent with Hopkins many years ago.

It was the early 1980s when we were writing for OMNI Magazine’s red pages about UFOs, hauntings and other paranormal activities. We were assigned to a UFO conference in Hollywood, Florida where Hopkins, was one of the speakers. We’d read his book, Intruders, so when we had an opportunity to go along with him on a UFO investigation involving hypnotic regression, we jumped at the chance.

Budd hadn’t rented a car so we drove him up the coast to meet a family with a dramatic story of repeated abductions, involving a woman and her young son. Hopkins hypnotized the mother, Carrie, and she told of being floated out of her bed down the hall and right through the wall to an illuminated ‘tube’ that lifted her and her abductees up to a waiting vessel.

Carrie remembered nothing about what happened to her when she was taken into the vessel, but she did recall details about the trip up the tube. Their house was located less than a mile away from the headquarters of the grocery store tabloid, National Enquirer, which during those years published UFO stories. Each Christmas season the Enquirer would put up a huge Christmas tree, a dazzling display of lights and  kiddie rides. It was a popular attraction. The tree was fully lit and visible during the abduction and Carrie recalled looking down, and pointing it out to the aliens. Hopkins matter-of-factly asked how they reacted, and Carrie, speaking in a hypnotic monotone in the present tense, said, “They aren’t impressed.”

Carrie’s husband, D, was also present, and he was a presence – to say the least. While Carrie and her son were gentle and sweet, her husband was imposing.  He was a big man, older than Carrie, with a mane of silver-gray hair. D wore black clothes, and a gold necklace bearing a thumb-sized gold devil pendant. He said he was a former Baptist minister, who told us that he had ‘changed sides.’

Yeah, that was weird. Trish and I were exchanging glances, wondering what was up with that dude, but Budd seemed to ignore him, as if he didn’t figure into the scenario, and just focused on the wife’s experiences. Budd was staying overnight with the family and when we left, we were glad we weren’t staying there.

In the aftermath, we asked for a follow-up interview and invited the couple to our Fort Lauderdale townhouse. We should have guessed that doing so would attract more high strangeness. Since we didn’t particularly want to be alone with them, we invited a few friends, ones we knew from other stories we’d done for OMNI and other magazines. So it was an eclectic group and among them were a few talented psychics. Carrie and her husband arrived early and again D wore black with his satanist logo visible. Everyone stayed late and seemed to be enjoying themselves, except for D. The ex-minister/satanist seemed out of his element, wary of everyone, and remained stoically silent for the most part. He never moved from one place the entire night.

It was around 1 a.m. and we were talking about MIBs – men in black – when the unexpected happened.
I glanced over at the sliding glass doors, which led from the living room to a small porch and the parking lot. Someone was standing on the porch staring in at us.  By the time I alerted the others, the man had moved away. I hurried to the doors, threw them open,  and could hardly believe what I saw. Instead of simply disappearing into the darkness beyond the parking lot, the man was making a scene of his escape. He crouched low, and moved from car to car, and kept looking back at us. He was hiding in full view.

Trish called the police, and the response was astonishing. Within a few minutes, eight or nine patrol cars arrived, some with dogs. The police spread out and searched the complex. We were baffled…until we found out that a man had been murdered an hour earlier, less than a mile away. As far as we know, they never found the man we reported, and we don’t know if he had anything to do with the murder. But it was a strange ending for an unusual evening, and hey, we never saw that couple again!

Posted in abductions, aliens, budd hopkins | 10 Comments

Paradigm Lost and Changed

Posted on February 16, 2011 by Trish and Rob
In Ghost Key, the sequel to Esperanza, there’s a character named Sanchez, a Cuban American, who is a remote viewer for a government agency. Whenever he comes up against something challenging, he asks himself, If this were a dream, how would I interpret it? Sanchez and I have found this to be a useful tool that encourages synchronicity.
So I looked at recent events in Egypt and tried to interpret them as I might a dream. To fix the country in time, I started with the pyramids. How old are they? The general consensus seems to be they’re about 5,000 years old. There are some disagreements – that they may actually be older, but whatever. They’re old. Egypt is old. After the assassination of Anwar al-Sadat in 1981, his VP, Husni Mubarak assumed control. And we now know how that ended, 30 years later. So now Egypt is liberated from despotic rule, as a result of a genuine grassroots revolution that used text messaging, Facebook and Twitter to get out the word and keep protesters organized during their 18-day occupation of Tahrir Square.
In other words, the Internet and social media, as well as the galvanization of youth in Egypt –  those in their 20s and 30s, college educated, often bilingual, tech savvy, with powerful aspirations and dreams – got rid of a dictator the U.S. had supported to the tune of $1.5. billion dollars a year. Right there, I’ve got plenty to work with in this dream interp. But there’s more.
The political party that professes to be defenders of democracy is in meltdown. Just watch five minutes of Glenn Beck to find out what page they’re on. Rob and I did that tonight – and then just looked at each with a big, Huh?And this clown is still on television? Beck and his boys seem to equate this regime change in Egypt with some sort of new world order, an Islamic takeover, and say it’s all part of Obama’s agenda. Obama, of course is, in their worldview, seen as a Muslim whose birth certificate is in question. Hawaii, boys, not Indonesia. It’s the 50th state. They conveniently forget that their candidate, McCain, was born in Panama.
Ok. So that’s the dream. How to interpret it?
Perhaps Egypt and what evolves there in terms of a government is what we’re going to see more frequently worldwide in the next few years. It seems to put all despots on notice. You’re living in a palace and I’m living in a hut? Why? You’re a zillionaire and aren’t paying any taxes and I’m middle class and paying 33 percent? You’re not paying taxes and eating caviar and traveling by private jet and I’m eating dirt and can’t even walk?
 Greater disparity between rich and poor, the haves and the have nots, the employed and the unemployed. Expect more of that. Expect more rebellion about it. Watch Wall Street crumble faster than it did in 2008. Watch more revered institutions fall apart – churches, educational facilities, the U.S. health care and insurance industries, the publishing industry, banking….In short, anything you thought was stable and predictable will probably unravel at the seams, as things did in Egypt. The situation will be fluid, as it was in Egypt. One moment Mubarak was leaving, then he wasn’t, then he did.
Some sort of ancient, collective thrust for freedom prevailed in Egypt. A tipping point was reached. We can expect more of that, too. Maybe Saudi Arabia is next. Or maybe China, hopefully with more than a heroic incident in Tiananmen Square. Or maybe it will be another South Africa, another Poland, or here in the U.S., where democracy is still redefining itself.

If this paradigm shift comes to the U.S. and Europe, perhaps part of what it will include is  free internet for everyone, a project undertaken by a charity group, A Human Right, to buy a satellite that will beam free internet to developing countries around the world. Nearly 5 billion people out of the world’s 6.9 billion don’t have access to the internet, which we now know was a vital tool in Egypt’s liberation.

Paradigm lost, then chaos, adjustment, and the birth of a new paradigm. Maybe. Our eyes are still on Egypt for the unfoldment of that part of the dream. Sanchez and I are looking for synchros.
And Rob and I are watching the birth pangs of an ancient country reborn, just like the phoenix.
Posted in Egypt, ghost key, paradigms | 17 Comments

Apophenia anyone?

Posted on February 15, 2011 by Trish and Rob

Recently, I wandered into the skeptic’s dictionary out of curiosity to see what they had to say about synchronicity. Basically, folks, they’re telling those of us who accept and pursue meaningful coincidences in our lives that we’re deluded or crazy. Let me quote from the dictionary.

“What reasons are there for accepting synchronicity as an explanation for anything in the real world? What it explains is more simply and elegantly explained by the ability of the human mind to find meaning and significance where there is none (apophenia).

“Jung’s defense of acausal connections is so inane I hesitate to repeat it. He argues that “acausal phenomena must exist…since statistics are only possible anyway if there are also exceptions” (1973, Letters, 2:426).

“He asserts that “…improbable facts exist–otherwise there would be no statistical mean…”  (ibid.: 2:374). Finally, he claims that “the premise of probability simultaneously postulates the existence of the improbable” (ibid. : 2:540). However, if you think of all the pairs of things that can happen in a person’s lifetime, and add to that our very versatile ability of finding meaningful connections between things, it then seems likely that most of us will experience many meaningful coincidences. The coincidences are predictable but we are the ones who give them meaning.”
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I love that last line. Should someone else apply meaning or no meaning to our coincidences? Are we not worthy of making decisions about our own experiences? The message is that we should not trust our own thoughts or perceptions if we find meaning in coincidental or mysterious happenings in our lives. In other words, the proper and scientific thing to do is to ignore and dismiss coincidences.  The inverse, of course, is that it’s okay to apply no meaning.

The writer continues:

“Even if there were a synchronicity between the mind and the world such that certain coincidences resonate with transcendental truth, there would still be the problem of figuring out those truths. What guide could one possibly use to determine the correctness of an interpretation? There is none except intuition and insight, the same guides that led Jung’s teacher, Sigmund Freud, in his interpretation of dreams. The concept of synchronicity is but an expression of apophenia.”

The Skeptic’s  Dictionary concludes with a comment that Jung went through a period of mental illness when he was exploring these concepts. The implication: he was crazy and so are we!

Posted in Jung, skeptics | 52 Comments

A Heart with Wings

Posted on February 14, 2011 by Trish and Rob

Here’s an interesting synchro tale about a symbol of spiritual ascension. It was written by Patricia Gibson, director of the Epilepsy Information Service at Wake Forest School of Medicine. It appeared as a guest column in the Winston-Salem Journal of North Carolina on January 13.
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Synchronicity has been described as the coincidence of a thought with an outside event. Many of us have had these moments that surprise us and make us wonder. Some of these moments we forget, while others keep resurfacing, causing us to ponder on the mysteries of life.

Last August, I was leaving a local restaurant with my sister when we decided to stop by a craft store next door to look around. We passed some beautiful molded art squares hanging on the wall; one depicted a heart with wings.

“I have always loved that symbol — a heart with wings,” my sister said, almost to herself. “Do you remember that pillow you made me one Christmas when I was 14?”

“Oh, yeah, the purple heart with the red wings,” I said, surprised that it was that same symbol. She had seen a picture of the pillow in a teen magazine and thought it was so cool. I later cut it out and went to a fabric shop looking for purple and red satin. Pretty tacky, I had thought, but then surprised myself by coming up with a fairly good replica of the pillow. I smiled, remembering how excited she had been when she opened the present.

“What does that symbol mean?” I asked.

“It means a spiritual ascension, evolving to a higher level,” she said, “To me it just means hope.” I made a mental note to return to the store later and buy that art square for her next birthday.

Two years ago, my sister was diagnosed with ovarian cancer, a deadly sneaky cancer with a high mortality rate. She has won that battle so far, but not without the price of severe nerve damage from the chemotherapy.

As I recently passed the craft store on my way to work, I again thought of the heart with wings and said to myself, “Don’t forget to go get that art piece,” trying to underline this in my brain, forgetful person that I am. I pulled up to the stoplight at Five Points and sat idling behind a truck, waiting for the light to change. As I sat staring absentmindedly ahead, it suddenly hit me that there in front of my eyes, hanging on the back of the truck, was a beautifully hand-carved heart with wings. I could not believe it.

The light changed and the truck turned right and so did I. The truck turned right into a lot and parked. A man got out and headed toward the building. I jumped out, running behind him.

“Sir, excuse me, sir,” I called. He turned and I explained that I had seen his sign and wondered where he bought it. “It is so beautiful, and I want one for my sister, that symbol means so much to her.”

He explained that he had carved it himself, but he was having some medical problems now and couldn’t do that work at this time. I gave him my card and asked, should he ever be interested in selling the heart with wings, to please let me know.

I never heard from him, though I would think of him from time to time and wonder if he might have lost my card, something I would likely do. I regretted that I had not gotten his name and number.

On Dec. 21, a particularly discouraging day, I unlocked my office door, tossed my coat on the nearby chair, looked at my overflowing desk with a sigh, and then did a double take. To my utter amazement, there amid the stacks of paper lay the beautiful hand-carved heart with wings. Attached was a note that said, “Happy Holidays — May your spirit soar and that of your loved ones always soar,” and just below that, “free.”

I ran to my coworkers, but they could offer no information. I went to the security guard at the front desk.

“Mary, tell me, there was something left in my office.” Her eyes told me she knew something.

“I can’t say,” she said, and looked away. “I promised not to tell anything.”

“You don’t understand,” I said, “this is just a miracle.” But she wasn’t budging.

The power of a simple act of kindness is impressive. I wanted so to thank that man for his generosity and kindness. And I so hoped and prayed that whatever medical problem he was having was better. So, sir, all I can do is write this to say thank you and to say that people like you give me hope for our world. May your spirit also soar.

Posted in heart with wings | 11 Comments

Antarctica – The 170th ‘country’ to visit our blog!

Posted on February 13, 2011 by Trish and Rob

Our flag counter says Antarctica is the latest country to visit our blog. Well, it’s a continent, if not really a country. (Show me your passport Antarcticans!)

If you’re reading this from Antarctica, greetings and welcome from Florida!  Are there synchronicities in Antarctica? If there are people, there must be synchronicities. Here’s a bit of info from way down under.
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Speculation over the existence of a “southern land” was not confirmed until the early 1820s when British and American commercial operators and British and Russian national expeditions began exploring the Antarctic Peninsula region and other areas south of the Antarctic Circle. Not until 1840 was it established that Antarctica was indeed a continent and not just a group of islands. Several exploration “firsts” were achieved in the early 20th century. Following World War II, there was an upsurge in scientific research on the continent. A number of countries have set up a range of year-round and seasonal stations, camps, and refuges to support scientific research in Antarctica. Seven have made territorial claims, but not all countries recognize these claims. In order to form a legal framework for the activities of nations on the continent, an Antarctic Treaty was negotiated that neither denies nor gives recognition to existing territorial claims; signed in 1959, it entered into force in 1961.

Synchro penquins…what a coincidence meeting you here.

 


Posted in Uncategorized | 7 Comments

On the Road with Gypsy

Posted on February 13, 2011 by Trish and Rob
Travel often creates an atmosphere that’s fertile for synchronicity – and for sightings. This story comes from Gypsy, who recently drove from Louisiana to Delaware.
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Since leaving Louisiana, I’d been “asking” to see something, anything unusual. On the first day,at two different times, I saw a white object in the sky that disappeared within a minute or so. I remember thinking it was weird because I could see planes in the sky far away and they hadn’t disappeared when the sun shone on them in certain ways. What had initially caught my eye both times with these two things was the fact that, unlike the contrails and planes which I could tell were moving, these objects didn’t seem to move. Just one instant they were there, the next instant I couldn’t see them anywhere in the sky. I dismissed them as just flukes of the sunlight.
On the second day of my trip, the weather was bright and sunny, just like the day before. Not a cloud in the sky. I was on Interstate 40E around  Whytheville, Virginia, when out of nowhere a white ball appeared in the sky. I didn’t see it approach from any direction, didn’t see it moving across the sky like a plane would. It just appeared in the sky overhead,  low enough so I could see the dimensional shape of it – circular, pure white, the color of fresh snow. It wasn’t shiny, just a pure white.
The dimensional aspect was the most interesting. It seemed to be  covered in pyramid shapes. I’ve looked and looked for something online that might be similar, but the closest image I found was that of an origami ball. If you went from point to point on this image, in a circular line, connecting the points, so to speak, this is what the object looked like, except that it was solid white and there were no appendages extending in any direction other than those of the pyramid shaped things.
I was so taken aback with watching it, I weaved into the other lane of traffic. In the meantime, I had a sandwich in one hand, was holding onto the steering wheel with my other hand, and was trying to figure out how to take a photo of the object with my broken cell phone. When I say broken, I mean that the two halves of the phone are literally broken apart and have to be held together for the phone to work.  So I dropped my sandwich and reached down for my phone and was trying to open it without hitting another car or getting hit.
As I look up from grabbing my phone, the ball just disappears. It didn’t fade, didn’t speed away, or anything else. It just disappeared, evaporated.  I could still a plane on the far horizon and its contrails, but the white ball was just gone. I looked around and up through my sun roof, but never saw the object again.
The size of this thing was difficult to determine. It was certainly close enough and/or large enough that I could see these pyramid-shaped protrusions on it. But from my visual perspective it didn’t seem to be nearly as large as the other UFOs I’ve seen.
Posted in gypsy, local travel, sightings | 13 Comments

Cop catches same speeder in two countries

Posted on February 12, 2011 by Trish and Rob

This one comes from a blog appropriately named confused.com. It’s a story that was originally in the New Zealand Herald.

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A former London traffic police officer has caught a man speeding in the UK, then after he moved to New Zealand caught the same man speeding again – two years later.

Andy Flitton is now with the New Zealand traffic police and said he had forgotten about the first speeding ticket until the man brought it up.

A speeding offense in two hemispheres may see the driver’s car insurance premiums rise. Mr. Flitton said: “He asked if I used live in London and operate the laser gun on the A5 in North London. When Fltton said yes, the man replied: “I thought it was you. You gave me my last speeding ticket there, the only two tickets I’ve ever gotten.”

The motorist had moved to New Zealand just two weeks before the latest speeding offense.”We must have some sort of connection,” Flitton said. “Both times he broke the law I was the one to give him a ticket.
“It just shows what a small world it really is.”
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Love the line, “We must have some sort of connection.” Yes, the guy speeds and Flitton gives him tickets halfway around the world. Sounds like the traveling trickster! What are the chances?

Posted in dark trickster | 12 Comments

Egypt, Global Events, and Synchros

Posted on February 11, 2011 by Trish and Rob
As the peaceful, grassroots revolution has unfolded in Egypt, we’ve been looking for synchronicities. Every global event seems to have its share. So today when we heard that Mubarak had fled Cairo and the VP had turned power over to the military, we rushed home to watch the news coverage.
During President Obama’s statement concerning the events in Egypt, he mentioned that Tahrir, the name of the square the protesters have occupied for the last 18 days, means freedom. Throughout the  media coverage, reporters have referred to it as Liberation Square. Either way, this synchro is certainly fitting.

Update: 21 years ago today, Nelson Mandela was freed from prison in South Africa. And we all know what unfolded after that!

Posted in Egypt, global synchro | 7 Comments