OM Mani Padme Hum

Posted on June 7, 2018 by Trish and Rob

As you might’ve guessed from the title of this post, the Sanskrit lettering above, located on a mountainside in Central Asia, spells out OM Mani Padme Hum, one of the best known Buddhist and yoga mantras or chants. The image can be found near the city Kyzyl, which is the capital of the Tuva Republic in Russia. Kyzyl, which is 6,240 miles from South Florida where we reside, is considered the exact center of Asia and the city even has a monument boasting about its central locale.

If you translate the mantra—OM Mani Padme Hum—OM is the imperishable sound of the universe at creation. (People chant OM to resonate with the universe.) Mani means jewel. Padme means lotus and Hum is the sound of triumph when all beings become enlightened. So translated literally OM Mani Padme Hum means A Jewel in a Lotus. So why would people go around saying A Jewel in a Lotus, A Jewel in a Lotus…over and over again?

That translation is accurate, but it doesn’t really explain the meaning, especially to Western minds. It’s about transformation to a higher state of being. It’s the Big Bang of self-development.  The jewel within the lotus represents a secret truth about the mystery of life. It’s a prayer for all sentient beings to become enlightened.

So what is the world’s largest mantra doing on the side of a barren hill in Siberia? Apparently a sect of Buddhists in southern Russia at some time in the past sent out the message to the world.

Actually, it’s quite common in India, Nepal and Tibet to see the mantra carved on rocks, known as mani stones. The mantra is also written on paper and inserted into prayer wheels.  It’s said that by doing so, the effect is the same as reciting the chant numerous times as it spins about in the prayer wheel.

If you want to try chanting the mantra, you can have an fun and trance-like experience by chanting along with MC Yogi on his song, Prayer Wheel, in which he repeats the mantra over and over.  See if you can keep up to him when the rapper/yogi picks up the pace.

 

The Jewel in the Lotus is also the title of my meditation book. I can’t forget to say that!

 

 

 

 

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When Fiction and Reality Collide

Posted on June 5, 2018 by Trish and Rob

1974, California, USA — A photograph released by the FBI shows Patricia Hearst, granddaughter of newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst, with a machine gun, standing in front of a symbol of the Symbionese Liberation Army. She was kidnapped and brainwashed by the Symbionese group, and, calling herself Tania, she participated in robbery and extortion under duress. — Image by © Bettmann/CORBIS

In 1972, Regency Press published a novel, Black Abductor, by Harrison James, pseudonym for James Rusk Jr. It’s about a terrorist group led by a black man who kidnapped a college student, Patricia. Her wealthy father was well known and had right-wing sympathies.

In the novel, Patricia was kidnapped near campus while she was with her boyfriend, and was badly beaten by the abductors. For a while, he was a suspect in the case. The fictional Patricia initially resisted her captors but eventually subscribed to their ideology and became a champion of their cause. The terrorists sent Polaroid photos to her father and described the abduction as America’s “first political kidnapping.” They predicted they eventually would be surrounded by police, tear-gassed, and wiped out.

Two years after the book was published, in 1974, Patricia Hearst – daughter of newspaper baron Randolph Hearst and then a college student – was abducted from her apartment near campus. The kidnappers were members of the Symbionese Liberation Army, a terrorist group led by a black man. Her boyfriend, Steven Weed, was with her at the time and was badly beaten and became a suspect in the case. Patricia Hearst, like the fictional Patricia, became a sympathizer of her abductors’ cause. She ended up robbing a bank with her kidnappers and was photographed carrying an MI carbine.

The FBI was either familiar with the novel or had read it and the author became a suspect in the case. The real abductors were eventually surrounded by the police, tea-gassed, and killed, just as the fictional kidnappers predicted they would be. All of this begs the question: had the terrorists read the novel? Or was this an instance where a creative edge enabled an author to sense the future so deeply that he uncovered stunning details identical to those that came about two years later?

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The Man Who Could Fly

Posted on June 3, 2018 by Trish and Rob

His name was Joseph Desa and he was born in Copertino, Italy in 1603. At age 9, Joseph fell ill and developed gangrene. He was crippled and bed-ridden for five years. Trapped in his body, he began experiencing vivid ecstatic visions. He entered trances easily, especially when listening to church music, when his head fell back and his mouth fell open. The townsfolk considered him to be a half-wit. After failing at his apprenticeship as a shoe maker,  he decided to enter a monastery. The Franciscans rejected him for his lack of education, but was accepted by the Capuchin friars as a lay brother in 1620. However, he was dismissed by the Capuchins when his ecstatic experiences continued.

He scorned by his family for his odd behavior and angry outbursts, he pleaded to the Franciscans Copertino to allow him to work in their stables. He did so for several years and so impressed the friars with his devotion and simplistic lifestyle that they allowed him into the order in 1625 and three years later he was ordained as a priest. He was then sent to the Madonna delle Grazie, Gravina in Puglia where he spent the next 15 years.

It was during this period when Joseph began to fly as his ecstatic experiences multiplied. He would levitate during mass and at other church events. He gained a reputation as a holy man from the people in the region. But he was considered a disruptive force by his superiors and church authorities. After all, people who could fly were considered witches by the Inquisition and Joseph was denounced and isolated in a small cell where he would have no contact with the populace.

At the orders of the Inquisition, he was transferred  to Assisi (1639–1653), then briefly to Pietrarubbia and finally to Fossombrone, where he lived with  the Capuchin friars (1653–57). He practiced a severe asceticism throughout his life, usually eating solid food only twice a week, and adding bitter powders to his meals.

He died in 1657, Joseph was beatified in 1753 and canonized in 176 as St. Joseph of Copertino. He is considered the patron saint of air travelers, aviators, astronauts, people with a mental handicap, and test takers.

Over the years, thousands of people witnessed Joseph levitating. Skeptics, however, Don’t believe it because they are convinced that no human can levitate. So they contend that the witnesses were exaggerating, that they made the claim years after Joseph had died. That he was an agile gymnast that leaped in the air…and finally that he ate poison bread that caused him to hallucinate and believe he was flying. Apparently, a lot of others were eating from that same loaf!

The 19th century psychologist William James once penned: “If you wish to upset the law that all crows are black, you mustn’t seek to show that no crows are; it is enough if you prove one single crow to be white.” Joseph is the ‘white crow’ of levitation. To paraphrase James: To upset the law that no human can levitate, it is enough if prove that one person can levitate.

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A Global Synchro about Racism

Posted on June 1, 2018 by Trish and Rob

A global synchro, as we defined it in 7 Secrets of Synchronicity, is something most of us understand. “When synchronicities manifest themselves through global events, the universe seems to be addressing us as a collective.” Here’s an example.

On January 15, 2009 at 8:00 p.m., the president (Bush) gave his final speech to the nation. In a presidency defined by the repercussions of planes slamming into the WTC, it was intriguing that just five hours earlier, U.S. Airways flight 1549 crashed into the Hudson River, a short distance from the site of 9-11. Yet, the landing was near perfect, and all 135 passengers survived.

The first rescue boat to reach the scene was named after Thomas Jefferson, the principal author of the Declaration of Independence. He was a staunch supporter of the separation between church and state, a man consistently ranked as one of our best presidents. After 8 years of flagrant abuse of power, a disastrous war of choice, torture, rendition flights, & the erosion of civil rights, it was as if the “miracle on the Hudson” was an assurance from the universe that we would all come through intact. It’s no small irony that 5 days later, the day after Martin Luther King Day, the first Afro-American president was sworn into office.

Now, given the egregious nature of the trump presidency, a beast far worse than anything in the Bush years, these global synchros have a more weighted significance.

On May 29, Roseanne Barr sent a racist tweet: “Muslim brotherhood & planet of the apes had a baby=vj.” Her show was quickly cancelled by ABC.

The initials refer to Valerie Jarrett, a former senior aide to Obama. On this same day, MSNBC’s Chris Hayes and Joy Reid hosted a special called Racism in America, and Valerie Jarrett’s appearance on the show had been planned long before Roseanne’s tweet. What are the odds that the MSNBC show on racism just happened to be scheduled on the same day at Roseanne’s racist tweet?

Are global synchros increasing? It seems so. Part of it may be due to 24/7 social media coverage. But perhaps in culturally divisive times these synchros crop up more frequently to remind us of an underlying order in the universe that physicist David Bohm called the implicate or enfolded order. It’s a kind of primal soup that births everything in the universe, even space and time. Our daily reality is the explicate or unfolded order. Synchronicity, then, is where the implicate and the explicate – the inner and outer – coincide.

At any rate, 12 hours after her racist tweet, Roseanne apologized: guys I did something unforgiveable so do not defend me. It was 2 in the morning and I was ambien tweeting-it was memorial day too-i went 2 far & do not want it defended-it was egregious. Indefensible. I made a mistake I wish I hadn’t but…don’t defend it please. Ty

 Trump, who applauded Roseann’s show for its more than 18 million viewers – It’s about us! – took more than a day to react. His tweet? He demanded a personal apology from ABC.

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Just a Coincidence?

Posted on May 30, 2018 by Trish and Rob

It’s either an amazing coincidence or another sign that Donald Trump is making great deals—deals benefiting his business conglomerate, known as the Trump Organization—at the expense of the American people.

Here’s the deal. Trump recently tweeted a head-scratching statement that we can’t let the Chinese telecommunications company, ZTE, go out of business at a cost of thousands of jobs for Chinese workers. It was as if he was saying: Let’s make China Great again. The company is under U.S. sanctions for violating its agreement with U.S. companies that supply it with American-made components. Trump’s tweet is totally counter to his repeated claim that China “is raping us” through unfair trade practices, and stealing American jobs.

So what’s up? Just days before that tweet, the Chinese government decided to spend $500 million on an Indonesian project that would benefit the Trump Organization’s plan to build hotels. In addition, the Chinese government that same week gave Ivanka Trump five new trademarks for her business. Not only is Ivanka the president’s daughter, but also a White House aide. (Click to  read about this deal.)

So it’s quite a coincidence that these favorable events are taking place for the Trump Organization just before Trump decides to act to save a major Chinese telecommunications company. No quid pro quo has been documented, but the implications are obvious. Trump seems to think that what’s good for him and his company is what’s good for the country. It’s the kind of thinking that is the very fabric of authoritarian regimes.

Even if we ignore the ZTE issue and it’s bad actions regarding U.S. and international laws, Trump is clearly ignoring the Emoluments Clause that prevents a sitting president from profiting from business deals. It would also violate his own agreement, struck at the beginning of his presidency, not to make any new foreign deals for the Trump Organization. Ivanka is also in violation of conflict of interest rules.

Bottom line: the guy who said he would drain the swamp is polluting it as never before.

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Irma, Insurance, & Synchronicity

Posted on May 28, 2018 by Trish and Rob

On September 10 -11, 2017, Hurricane Irma hit Florida. It was the strongest storm on record to exist in the open Atlantic regions, with maximum sustained winds of 185 mph for 36 hours. Because its exact path was uncertain, it prompted evacuation orders of more than 6.3 million people. It became the largest evacuation in Florida history.

We were going to evacuate on Wednesday, September 6, and head to my sister’s house in Georgia. But the idea of running out of gas on the turnpike, I-95 or I-75 with two dogs and two cats was more daunting than staying. We later learned that friends who had left for Georgia were on the highway for 12-18 hours. It took 8 hours just to get to Orlando, a drive that normally takes us about 3 hours.

So we stuck it out.

What saved the east coast of the state was that Irma stayed along the northern coast of Cuba longer than anticipated before it made a northern turn. It hit here at night, always the scariest time for a hurricane to bear down. It ultimately did $64.76 billion worth of damage, making it the 5th costliest hurricane on record.

Here’s Noah surveying the damage in the aftermath:

We lost power for only 36 hours; by comparison, after Wilma, we were without power for 10 days. We thought our house and property had come through with just minor damage – trees and fences down, the porch roof with a few more leaks, screens blown out, roof tiles broken. But during the first thunderstorm after Irma, we found leaks in 4 rooms, the coil in the AC system died from saturation, one of the skylights had leaks around it. We called the insurance company and they sent someone out to inspect the property.

The company eventually issued a check for $3,800 – which didn’t even cover the cost of a new AC unit. A friend who works for an attorney advised me to do what her boss had done – hire a public adjuster. It took awhile to find someone; business for these people was booming in the wake or Irma. But in mid-November, a public adjuster came out to the house and did a thorough inspection. The verdict?

The dry wall was saturated in the rooms where there were leaks, we needed a new roof, and that was just for starters. His estimate ran into the 6 figures. Once he filed his estimate with the insurance company, the company had 60 days to respond. They missed the deadline. The next step was a threat to sue them and they had to respond by May 15. They missed that deadline, too. Then, on May 18, the public adjuster emailed with GOOD NEWS. The claim was settled for about the same amount as the adjuster’s estimate.

Now the hunt is on for a roofing contractor. And here’s where the synchronicity comes in. In 1994, our house was built by roofer John Dobson. He and his family lived here for several years, then sold the house to a family with 5 kids, from whom we bought it in 2000. On the day we got our first estimate – which was way too high – I ran up to the drug store and pulled into a parking spot next to a van. Across the side was: Dobson Roofing Company.

A synchro! I immediately called Rob, told him what had happened, and suggested we try Dobson Roofing. Dobson’s wife answered the phone, remembered the house, and when Rob related the synchro, she said, “A sign! I believe in signs, too.”

The next day in the mail, there was a letter addressed to John Dobson. This one may shape up to be a cluster.

They’ll be out to do their inspection for a free estimate in a week. I suspect we’ve found our roofer!

 

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Precognition Through Art

Posted on May 26, 2018 by Trish and Rob

Jessie the golden after Hurricane Wilma, 2005, wondering what had happened to the mailbox.

+++

When our daughter was in third grade, her class was given an assignment connected to Thanksgiving. The kids were supposed to create a sculpture from clay that expressed their gratitude for something in their lives. Parents were invited to the class presentation the day before the Thanksgiving holidays began.

The day of the show and tell, Megan stood in front of her class and presented her little sculpture. “I’m grateful for the golden retriever I’m going to get,” she announced. “And this is the dog.”

Her sculpture certainly looked like a golden – right down to the ears, the tail, the body stance, the shape of its head.   Rob and I looked at each other: Huh? We had three cats and no intention of getting a golden retriever or any dog.

“We’re getting a dog?” we asked her later.

“I think so,” she replied.

A couple of weeks later, a friend of Megan’s asked if we would like a dog. The friend’s father was a school cop who trained dogs to sniff out drugs in lockers and one of their dogs, a golden retriever, had washed out of the program. No dog, nope, nope, we said.

And then we saw her, a beautiful reddish gold retriever about two years old, who had been given up by her original family when the son developed asthma. Now she had washed out of the drug-sniffing program, and was going to end up at the pound unless someone adopted her.

“We’ll try her for a few days,” we said. “See how she and the cats get along.”

Well, Jessie came into the house, the three cats came over, sniffing, checking her out, and Jessie’s tail wagged and wagged, and then she plopped down in front of Rob’s desk and then in Megan’s doorway, and that was that. She stayed for eleven wonderful years.

When Trish’s mother went into an Alzheimer’s unit, Jessie accompanied us each night for a visit – Rob, Trish, Megan, and Trish’s dad, whom we called Buddy. The residents all knew her – by name – even though they didn’t have a clue who we were. There were three women who were always on their way into Manhattan for dinner and a play, two of them dressed to kill, the third in her pajamas and big Barney the Dinosaur slippers, who Jessie always accompanied to the locked front door, where they believed their taxi awaited them, the magical Cinderella coach that would take them into NY.

“Where’s the cab, Jess?” Lillian would ask.

Jessie’s tail wagged, she barked, the women waited at the locked door, in the locked ward. For Jessie, all humans were worthy of love and affection.

When Megan and her friends played music and sang for the residents of the unit, Jessie waited patiently, listening, her paws seeming to tap to the music, her tail swishing rhythmically, to and fro.

When we moved to the house where we live now, we had to put the cats at the vet for a night. The day we brought all three into the new house, Jessie was at the door, greeting each of them, nose to nose, her tail wagging, and we realized these cats were as much her family as we were. When our dusky conure joined the menagerie, she used to ride on Jessie’s back and engage in this complicated ritual with doggie treats. Rob would pluck out a treat, hand it to Kali, and the bird would drop it directly into Jessie’s mouth, a mouth that could just as easily have eaten the bird.

We took Jessie everywhere – to the gym, the grocery store, vacations. She captured the hearts of everyone with whom she came into contact. Her love was always unconditional. She taught us about love. Family. Community. Every afternoon, Rob took her down to the park in our neighborhood to play Frisbee. Kids would gather around, get into the Frisbee groove, and pretty soon, we’d have teams. Jessie had her own fan club. Everyone in the neighborhood knew her – and she knew them.

At the end of Megan’s freshman year at college, Jessie made the trip across the state with us, but she wasn’t feeling well. It was hideously hot that day, mid-90s, no breeze, and she was suffering. One of us remained in the car with her, air conditioning blasting, while Megan’s stuff was loaded into the car. On the way back across the state, we stopped to let Jessie out and she could barely stand. That night, one of our cats stood vigil next to her, and we knew the end was near.

We took her to the vet the next morning, early, fast, and discovered she had some sort of throat problem – she couldn’t swallow, the prognosis sucked. Surgery that might not work, drugs that would cripple her. We opted for euthanasia. At the moment the vet injected her, her eyes flicked to each of us. She was aware, cognizant, she knew. She had gone the extra mile to wait until Megan was home again before she left. She had arrived when Megan was 8. She departed when Megan was 19.

Eleven years. In the grand scheme of things, it’s not that long. But her impact on our lives was profound.

That third grade sculpture presentation is a great example of precognition, an aspect of synchronicity. Megan not only knew we were going to get a dog, she got the breed right!

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How it feels to be black in America

Posted on May 24, 2018 by Trish and Rob

This video is powerful. It got 13 million hits in 24 hours and 50 million hits in 4 days .

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Spirits Speak

Posted on May 22, 2018 by Trish and Rob

 

These photos taken behind a home near the Monroe Institute

At your next family gathering, bring up the topic of spirit communication. The reaction of the group will tell you quite a bit about how people generally regard the whole subject of ghost/spirits and contact with the dead. There are likely to be three types of reactions: snickers and rolling of the eyes, intrigue and fascination, and family members or relatives who eagerly relate their own experiences with spirits and spirit contact.

The most recent statistics on people who believe in spirits and ghosts come from 2012, in a Huffington Post/Yougov survey. It indicates that 64 percent of Americans believe in life after death and 45 percent believe that ghosts or the spirits of the dead can interact with the living. These statistic are startling different from a 1978 survey that indicated only 11 percent of people believe in ghosts and spirits. What caused the dramatic increase?

The most obvious cause is the dramatic changes that have occurred culturally and globally in 40 years. In 1978, for instance, the Internet as we know it and social media didn’t exist. The most popular TV shows were Laverne & Shirley, Three’s Company, Mork & Mindy, and Happy Days. Compare these to the top three shows in 2018: Game of Thrones, Stranger Things, The Walking Dead. In 1978, paranormal reality shows like Ghost Hunters didn’t exist, cable TV didn’t exist, and streaming hadn’t even been conceived. In 2018, according to The Hollywood Reporter, more than 500 scripted series are ready to air and many of them will be streaming.

In 1978, people got their news from newspapers and the evening news. 40 years later, news is instantaneous and we have access to it 24/7 through a vast number of venues – websites, blogs, online newspapers and magazines. Also, scientists and writers like Dean Radin, Rupert Sheldrake, Bernard Beitman, M.D. and others are undertaking serious research about the nature of human consciousness.

Another question to consider: as more people become aware that spirit contact is possible, does it happens more frequently? We believe so and that’s why we’ve written Secrets of Spirit Communication.

 

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Hello, Torture

Posted on May 20, 2018 by Trish and Rob

Every day, we receive emails from Senator Bill Nelson, a Democrat running for re-election this year. He asks for money, support, and every email is more urgent than the last because trump is backing our awful governor, Republican Rick Scott, for that senate seat.

I can’t stand Scott, who should be in prison for Medicare fraud. But I have grown to dislike Nelson for a number of reasons. He apparently fears trump and his repug base and sides with them even when it‘s obvious that the decision is terrible for, you know, the people he supposedly represents.

His most recent vote was for Gina Haspel. Remember the Bush years? Remember the black ops torture sites that were established at Gitmo and remote areas around the world where alleged terrorists wee taken and tortured? The Bushies gave it a sanitized name – enhanced interrogation – but its real name was torture. Sleep deprivation while standing naked, arms tied above your head, water boarding, and who the hell knows what other atrocities were committed. Well, Haspel oversaw these sites.

And during her confirmation hearing, she refused to comment on whether she believed the torture program was immoral. Instead, she lauded her CIA comrades for a job well done. Only later, in a letter to the committee, did she say she felt the program was immoral. Read her letter to Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, where she clarified her position on the CIA’s torture program.

It’s a total snow job. Her confirmation announces to the rest of the world that the U.S. is now in the business of torture again.

So I wrote to Senator Nelson that I wouldn’t be voting for him because he had backed a woman who oversaw torture for the CIA. You would think that when a constituent emails you something like this, you would be removed from the send me money list. Not with Nelson. I’m still getting those emails and waiting for a response.

What I won’t do is vote for Rick Scott because I dislike Nelson – which is part of the reason why trump is prez. Too many people voted for the trumpster because they hated Clinton. The spot on my ballot for senate will remain blank.

Then again, if that spot is blank and the election is rigged, will that blank spot magically register a Scott vote? I don’t say this glibly. In 2004, when we had Diebold voting machines in Palm Beach County, I voted three times for John Kerry – and Bush’s name came up. Finally, on the 4th try, my vote registered for Kerry.

With trump as prez, Scott Pruit as corrupt EPA dude, Gina as head of the CIA, Handmaid’s Tale Pense as VP, Paul Ryan as speaker of the house, I think it’s safe to say that the dissolution of democracy is underway. The only obstacle to that dissolution is Robert Mueller and his investigation – 21 indictments so far. But the trumpioes are working hard to discredit Mueller and the FBI and now we have Guilliani out there telling everyone that a sitting president can’t be indicted.

Really? Even Nixon discovered he wasn’t above the law.

We may be approaching a constitution crisis because a batshit president has violated every ethical, moral, and legal boundary.

 

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