Synchronicity for the Day: Words No. 2

Here's a quick one: I'm listening to the radio while a look through my unread emails at work. At the very moment that someone on the radio says the word "trio", my eyes moved to the next email in my in-box, whose subject line began with "trio." Simultaneous. I took this word in through my ear (just the one ear, I was listening to the radio with one ear bud in), and my eyes at the exact same time through two completely unrelated avenues. Perception via two different senses, via two different origins, of the same word at the same time. The trio on the radio referred to a group of TV personalities, and the trio in the email was from a news article about a team of criminals. I've been seeing these type of simultaneous synchronicities a lot more frequently lately.

Synchronicity for the Day: Words No. 1

Saturday morning I enjoyed an obvious and immediate synchronicity. I opened up my web browser, and as I glanced around one of the things I saw was a news article headline about a raccoon that was rescued from a storm drain in Michigan. I did not click on the link to the article, but went to check out my Facebook messages. In my in-box I was treated to a detailed account from my mother about how she discovered a raccoon at her front door during the night, and how its complete lack of fear of humans forced her to almost close the door in its face because it would have sauntered right into the house. 

These two "raccoon" mentions were within less than a minute of each other. This is a good example of how I use event timing to judge whether I will count an occurrence as a synchronicity. Raccoon is not a word that I necessarily hear every day, but it's not that uncommon. But because I saw the word in two places only a few seconds apart, I'm choosing to record this instance. If the two occurrences were a day or more apart, I would probably not count them. I'm kind of using the question, "What are the odds?" as my personal yardstick. At this time I have no assessment of the meaning behind this particular instance.

Synchronicity for the Day: Numbers No. 2

Hexakosioihexekontahexaphobia.

That’s right people. Try to wrap your tongue around that bad boy. And try not to giggle like a thirteen year old at the innuendo in that last sentence. That’s the name of the fear of the number 666. Revelation 13:18 says, “Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number [is] Six hundred threescore [and] six.” It is this biblical reference that links this number to the Anti-Christ, and an assortment of superstitions and fears within the Christian faith have developed and persisted even today.

I don’t personally have this fear, as I am not a Christian, and have not been convinced that the entire contents of the Bible are true, either in a historical or moral sense. And since I am not burdened with this particular fear, when I have happened to meet people who have it, I find it hilarious. I once had a coworker who was telling a story in the office of a time that she was on vacation and the hotel room they assigned her was number 666. She demanded to have it changed because she was genuinely uncertain, despite the humorous way that she relayed the incident, as to whether it mightn’t bring her bad luck, or be a bad omen. I personally found this to be ridiculous. I don’t believe that any one number is particularly good or bad in and of itself. I acknowledge that I may take note of numerical coincidences and patterns that I see play out (this very post is about the same subject), but I’m not moving hotel rooms or demanding that a building rename the 13^th floor for me.

So for whatever reason, I one day got a bee in my bonnet to whip out my phone and take a picture every time I was out and about and saw someone with a car license plate that had the 666 in it. You know, for teh lulz. And I created a photo album on my Facebook page where I add these photos as they come up. At first it was just a dumb thing to do (OK, it still is), but now when I see one I get all excited. I frantically try to get my phone out and get the camera function working in time to capture the plate before the driver takes off. Sounds safe while on the freeway, right? Right??

That Dodge Dakota is the Devil!!!

Since I post these on Facebook, other people know about it and I encourage them to send me any plates if they come across them, but no one had sent me any yet. This morning my aunt calls me to fill me in on some family news, and she also mentions that she saw a 666 plate when she was out on her motorcycle and she wanted to send me a picture, but the driver turned before she could get a shot.

Then, later in the day, another Facebook friend, a former coworker, posted a picture on my wall of a 666 plate that he captured while he was driving. Nice! Two in one day!  I mean, I didn’t actually get a picture from my aunt, but her mentioning it was enough. I commented on my friend’s photo, telling him about my aunt and the plate she saw. He joked back that “these things come in threes; be on the lookout for another one!” to which I was able (I realized suddenly), to reply, “Trifecta complete!” because just last night I had snagged a pic of one of these plates just after leaving the bank.

Now I don’t impart any special meaning on incidents happening in threes especially. I just liked this dual synchronicity where not only did I have two different people think of me when they saw the plates on the same day, and I had just seen one myself, AND one of the people brought up the three factor when in fact his picture rounded out the three.

What does this one mean for me? Well, I did learn last night about a death in my family, albeit of a person whom I did not know extremely well. I can’t say that this incident, or the musical coincidence from yesterday really pertained to the passing of this person, but I think I would like to consult the Collective on the board and ask, mainly for my own record-keeping purposes. If I can begin to see patterns in this occurrences I am documenting, this may lead me to be able to interpret these synchronicities more easily on the future.

Synchronicity for The Day: Music No. 2

Last Sunday I was invited to see a relative's metal band play at a bar. I happily agreed to go, as I was excited to see him playing at some different venues. He told me on the phone that the band would be playing a couple of their own songs, and a couple of covers. One was a Judas Priest song, and another was a Blue Öyster Cult song called Godzilla, which he assured me I would recognize once I heard it. While I like me some metal, in the interest of full disclosure, I was a little kid in the 80s, so to be fair, I'm not intimately familiar with every song that was popular on rock radio at the time, unless it was by one of my favorite bands.

So I get to the bar, whose name suggests that it is a "Bar & Grill," although the "grill" portion consists of about five obligatory booths off to one side of the bar near the bathrooms where no one wants to hang out anyway, so let's just call it a bar, and I find a table near the stage. I have time to kill before his band is up, so I enjoy people-watching and playing a game I like to call, "How close am I to crossing that line?" This is a game I play with myself wherein I observe women who are way too old to be dressed like they are 18 and/or like it's 1986 they're trying to get the attention of a roadie at a Warrant concert. My hope is that I'll have the good sense to know my limits and somehow be aware of when I've reached the you're-too-old-to-be-wearing-that limit and just not do it. My I-don't-care-what-people-think-of-me attitude competes with this level of self-awareness, however, so I think it will be a challenge for me to know when I'm crossing the line.

His band takes the stage, and they make their way through their set to Godzilla. I was embarrassed to admit that I cannot say I remember ever hearing this song before. OK. I can live with that. The band was good and I'm glad I went.

This morning as I'm driving to work and listening to the radio, they were playing an old clip of a live version of Godzilla that was performed in the studio of this radio show some years prior. Now here is a song that I heard live last Sunday, and despite being told that it was a popular song and that I would know it, I didn't know it and was hearing it for the first time as far as I can remember. And then three days later, I'm hearing it again, and another live version to boot. I made it 30 years without hearing this song once, a song that apparently was a major hit, and now I hear it twice in a few days.

I've thought about what this particular synchronicity might be pointing out, and so far I haven't arrived at any conclusions, but I've committed to logging these as they happen, so here it is. If it turns out to mean anything later, which these things sometimes do, I'll update the post.

Little Fish in a Big Pond?

This jolting dose of perspective may make some of us feel insignificant, helpless, or even apathetic about their role in the grand scheme of things. Not me. It reminds me that I am a part of something universal, profound, beautiful, and infinite. It doesn't matter how big or small of a part I am. Some people sigh that they are only a tiny fish in a big pond, only one of myriad others. But each one is essential, and important. Because if you are not important, then nobody is important. And if no one matters, then it would be just the same if none of us were here at all, right? Wrong. Everyone matters. Everyone and everything is connected, and no chain holds together with broken links.

Once in a great while I manage to stumble upon a conscious awareness of this infinite connection. It has only happened maybe two or three times in my life thus far, but on those occasions it brought a lump to my throat because the feeling was so immense, the connection so far-reaching. That is what I wish everyone could really have a chance to feel, at least one time. I'm hoping that my path leads to a better understanding of how to experience this awareness intentionally, rather than by happy accident as I have so far.

Talking Boards: Part 2

So I've already covered some of the basics of talking boards, but WAIT! There's more! For just five easy payments of $19.95, you, too can have -

Nevermind. 

Very Superstitious

Let me just jump right in and pontificate on a subject that is the basis for much bitching and moaning on my part: Ghosts. Demons, evil spirits. You name it, there's a bullshit movie about it. Think of almost any haunting movie: The Exorcist, Poltergeist, The Amityville Horror, Paranormal Activity... What are your standard plot elements? Sweet innocent family moves into a creepy house with a horrible past and a GHOST who wants them out. Or, the ever-popular someone-is-doing-something-dumb-with-some-sort-of-stereotypical-ritual-or-occult-accoutrements (Ouija board, spell casting, ancient burial grounds, the Necronomicon) and they UNLEASH THE KRAKEN!!  

Sorry, I don't have the ability to say the word 'unleash' and not mentally follow it up with 'the Kraken.' Anyway, they unwittingly unleash some demon or ghost or evil entity who wants to do BAD THINGS to everyone involved. I would like to be on record as saying to all of these plot devices: Why don't you go outside and play hide-and-go-f**k-yourself?

From my experience, and from questioning The Collective on this matter, there seems to be infinitesimally small grounds for the reality of any such occurrences happening in real life. I'm not saying there aren't locations in this wide world that have a greater amount of spiritual "activity" than normal, I'm just saying that there are no spirits trying to maliciously levitate your baby for no apparent reason, no matter how much cyan tint you put on your security cam footage. No one dead is trying to "possess" anyone alive, or steal your soul for any so-called demonic ends. So let's everybody just calm down with the superstitious nonsense, OK?

The bulk of the Collective is actually out there trying to help us, and I would say most of those that aren't actively helping with the affairs of the living are just on their own, indifferent and possibly wanting to be left alone for a time.  So please rest assured that no one is going to "come through" your talking board and start haunting your house or trying to harm you. Probably the worst you're going to get is some gibberish series of letters that doesn't make sense or maybe some swear words. And if you were offended by a few profanities you would have stopped reading this post a long time ago.

I ain't afraid of no ghost.

Party Foul

I have learned that talking boards seem to get a lot of use at parties and events. Everyone gets slightly tipsy and wants to see if they can summon the ghost of a celebrity and ask them stupid questions. All my personal derision for other people's ideas about the dead aside, I would like to explain why this is not the most productive idea.

You can do it, of course. As long as you have at least two people, preferably a Speaker and a Battery. The leaf will start moving around and coherent words may or may not be spelled out.  You can start asking questions of your friendly neighborhood dead person, and they should begin to try to answer you. 

Here's where it gets tricky: remember how I talked about the Collective? And how a lot of them are involved in our affairs? Well wrap your head around this, my spiritually curious friends: each one of us living, fleshy beings has, on average, two to three "invisible" buddies hanging around us at any given time. Some people have more. During one board session my inquiries about this revealed that one of my relatives had a whopping thirty-two souls gathered 'round her at all times, mostly due to her very receptive nature. They're trying to help us keep our lives on track and in line with the Great Plan. Hoping to nudge us into making decisions that will benefit us on our path to spiritual growth. They're the movers and shakers, working to make circumstances unfold properly so that we can continue down the right path for each of us. That little voice in your head that sometimes warns, "I wouldn't do that if I were you," when you're about to do something dangerous? Yeah, that's probably not you. It's more likely someone else trying to help you out. More on that in a future post. 

The point is this: if each of us is walking around with an entourage of at least a couple disembodied spirits, think of the crowded spiritual party scene that ensues when even a modest group of eight or ten living people is in the same place at one time. Now imagine getting on a talking board and trying to ask questions. I know that the vast majority of my personal board sessions are done with only two people (me and my husband), and with even a quorum of participants, there are always specific messages for each of us, and usually more than one apiece. Once you start adding additional participants to the mix, the number of messages in total that the other side of the Collective would like to relay increases exponentially. Now there is, essentially, a cacophony of voices trying to be heard. 

"WHAT? I'M GONNA HAFTA CALL YOU BACK!"

Imagine you're on the phone with someone, and that person is at a noisy party. They're trying to talk to you, but you can barely hear them because of all the noise that other people are making. Maybe you even mistake someone else's voice for your friend because so many people are speaking at once. Or maybe you have a few friends at this party, and several of them are jostling to get on the phone and have their turn to talk to you. This is the type of confusion you can have when you try to use a talking board at a crowded event. There are a lot of crossed lines and mixed messages, and chaos ensues. This has happened to me a few times, where we thought a particular message was for one person, and later we discovered that it was meant for someone else entirely, but because there were too many spirits competing for a chance to get their message across, information got muddled and was directed at the wrong recipient. This is not only confusing for the people asking the questions, but it also does a disservice to the reputation of talking boards in general, making the whole affair seem like none of the information delivered was worthwhile or relevant.

Because of this phenomenon of too many voices, I have found that my most productive sessions are those that have anywhere from two to four live participants. Other than the two-person minimum needed to operate the board, this is not a hard and fast rule, just an idea of what seems to be the most useful from personal experience. It is also worth noting, that if you can, it's a good idea to have an equal portion of Speakers versus Batteries with their hands on the leaf. I recently had a session with three Speakers and only one Battery, and the poor Battery person was pretty drained and tired by the end of it, because they were providing the bulk of the energy fuel for four people's worth of questions.

Silent Oracle

It's also worth noting that there are some questions that They won't answer for you at all. Even when we ask questions that They will answer, the responses run the gamut from the pretty cut-and-dried yes or no variety all the way to vague, enigmatic responses consisting of initials or clue-like buzzwords on which They won't elaborate any further as to the meaning. So while even normal questions can elicit sometimes frustratingly confusing answers that no amount of disambiguation seems to clarify (I've found myself many a session pulling my hair going, "What the hell are you telling me? That doesn't make any sense!"), there are in fact some types of inquiries that will cause your spiritual messenger to clam up altogether. Let have some examples, shall we?

Q: When/how/am I going to die?

A: Listen, cubby, they're not going to tell you that, so don't bother asking. This is probably the poster-child for the types of questions, the answers to which provide you with information that would cause you to make a bunch of bad decisions and/or stray from the path that you're supposed to be on in life. How would you change your way of life if you knew you were going to die next week? Next year? Not until you were 97 years old? This is information that will cause you to act in a way that would be out of character for yourself, as it were, and this is not The Plan.  And consider this: what if They're wrong?  It's happened. Events don't always unfold in the most likely manner. You may ask questions about your future when you're on the board, but the answers they give you usually are based on your life taking the path that looks like the strongest probability at the moment for The Collective. But things change, so They are not going to burden you with information about death (your own or that of others), especially when that information might not be 100% guaranteed - not a good basis for decision making, to say the least.

Q: What are the winning lottery numbers?

"Woohoo! Live-in pizza chef, here I come!"

A: The Collective is not going to allow itself to be used for purely selfish material gains. Read up on some of the history of the original Ouija board marketing from the early 1900s if you would like to see how They deal with people trying to make money from this gift of communication. The gentlemen attempting to run a business selling talking boards found themselves in not-so-fortunate circumstances before too long. Yes, They will answer questions you have about your search for a better job, or help you make decisions on buying a house, starting a business, or having a baby. All of these are factors that contribute to your quality of life, and while they are not the sole keys to happiness, they are perfectly reasonable topics of inquiry. I mean, even if you get a better job, it's still you that's earning your living. The Collective is not simply going to hand you sudden, independent wealth - if it was part of the plan for your personal spiritual growth for you to experience a sudden windfall and then deal with the aftermath of such an event, this would occur regardless. So don't be silly and ask for the keys to the mansion when you are only a weekend guest, OK?

Q:  Is my boss sleeping with his admin?

A: This is just one example of an entire category of questions that you probably won't get an answer to - not necessarily because the information is sacred, but because They believe that if you had the information, you would likely do something destructive with it. A participant in a board session once asked if the company they worked for was preparing to let them go. They were told that this was not the case, and to stop worrying about it. Shortly thereafter, however, they were let go, just as they had originally suspected. Now why did the spirit answering questions that day basically lie to this person? They knew that this person would be let go, but they proceeded to give reassurances that this was not the case. My suspicions were confirmed when we consulted Them a few days after the event, and They admitted that although They knew that events were about to take a turn for the worse, They did not give the querent the heads-up this time, because They knew that given this information, the employee would have probably taken some sort or rash, preemptive "revenge" action against their employer, for even daring to terminate them. The Collective knew that such an impulsive and likely bout of temper would have consequences that would probably hurt this person's chances at future employment, which they would be needing post haste in light of the upcoming break with their employer. As you can see from this example, an honest answer from The Collective would have probably cost this person dearly, if only due to an inability to overcome human emotions in such a heated situation. And much as they will not give you information that they think will cause you to do harm to your own chances for success, they will also not tell you things that they think you will use, intentionally or not, to do harm to others or their circumstances.

To sum up: the other side of the Collective is here to help us, not to harm us. They are eager to talk and are pleased when we can both hear them, and are willing to listen. If you are polite and respectful, as you would be when asking advice from any person you look up to, they will provide you with the information that you can use to steer yourself along the most spiritually beneficial path for you, without harming anyone else in the process.

Synchronicity for The Day: Music No. 1

First thing this morning, which seems to be a common time for me to experience synchronicities, I was treated to a musical "coincidence." I was lying in bed with a serious headache, an ice pack on my temple, silently cursing every noise in the house at the time. Because it was the normal getting-up time, my oldest (and fattest) cat initiated his usual routine of walking all over me and stepping in my hair on the pillow, pulling it (which is great when you have a headache) and generally using the annoyance of his bulky presence to encourage me to get the hell out of bed and put some kibble in his dish. Despite my annoyance, one of my go-to personal song parodies came into my head: a play on Ram Jam's Black Betty - Fat Kitty. Whoa Fat Kitty, blam-a-lam, Whoa Fat Kitty, blam-a-lam...  I know, that's dumb, but what can I say? I thought of it once, and now with my ever present fatty catty, it comes up all the time. So once I admitted defeat and accepted that the thumping of blood in my left temple wasn't going away, and I got up and moving, I ended up in front of the mirror to put on makeup. Sometimes I like to have some music while I get ready for work in the morning, and today was one of those days. First song up when I put my iPod on shuffle? You guessed it.

What do I take this synchronicity to mean? Well, I am rarely certain what these mean, but I think this morning as I was wallowing in bed, bemoaning my headache, I remembered the Mars transit I'm having right now (let's just leave it at that, and have some mercy on non-astrologers) and I decided that I needed to use that burst of energy I am enjoying thanks to the red planet to muscle through this bullcrap. That I needed to conquer this pain and not let it get in the way of the things I needed to get done. I'd like to think the synchronicity was an affirmation that this was the correct tactic to take. Maybe it meant something else, but it was enough that I noticed Their message if nothing else.