Sometimes, things really do happen in threes. And my rule is that when something happens three times, I should have a serious look at whatever the issue is.
Yesterday, I had three people call me about their divorces. One is just beginning a divorce, another is in the middle, while the third is just finishing up. (And actually, a fourth person called because she’s starting a new relationship, which is bringing up unresolved issues from a very long term relationship that ended a couple of years ago.)
They all had a few issues in common — grief, trust, letting go of attachments, and renegotiation. Grief is basically an intense feeling of loss. When any relationship ends, it’s normal to feel loss (you did lose something), and if it’s a marriage or another primary, long term relationship, it’s normal to grieve.
Usually, though, we associate grief with death, especially of a loved one, which makes sense, because it’s a serious, permanent (at least in this lifetime) loss. But there is a big difference between grieving a death and grieving the end of a relationship. When a loved one dies, your family and friends surround you, and support you. Everyone understands death, right? That person who was just there, in a body, walking and talking and hugging you, isn’t any more. And part of the ritual of death is that of family and friends speaking well of the deceased, remembering all of his or her good qualities, helpful actions, achievements, etc.
It’s different with a divorce. First, there is an interpersonal reason for the divorce, as opposed to death, which is more of a personal issue to the deceased. You loved the person you married — you thought this was the best person for you in the world, or you wouldn’t have married him/her. So something changed. Perhaps it’s the other person. People do change, not always for the better (having affairs, or alcohol or other addictions, for example). Or perhaps it’s you -- you may have changed. You may have grown and now be unwilling to put up with things you’d put up with in the past. Or perhaps the rose-colored glasses of love fell from your eyes, and you now see clearly something you successfully ignored or excused for a long time. Or both. (Perhaps you are the one with the addiction issue, but if so, you probably aren’t calling me, so I’ll leave that for others to discuss.)
That means there are huge issues of forgiveness around a divorce (which there often aren’t around a death). First, for your own well-being, you eventually have to forgive your ex for whatever he or she did or didn’t do or say — often over a long period of time. I’m not saying it’s easy, but remembering that people are doing the best they can all the time helps. Now, it may not be a very good best, but it is the best they can do, given who they are at the time.
The more difficult task is to forgive yourself for whatever you did or didn’t do or say — and most especially for what you didn’t see. Forgiving yourself for ignoring what is now patently obvious to you may be the hardest job of all, harder than moving forward each day, constructing a new life for yourself, (and your kids, if you have them). What makes it so difficult to forgive yourself is that you question your own judgment. How did I not see this (irresponsibility, addictive tendency, cruel streak, whatever)? If I didn’t see this, then what else am I not seeing? How can I ever trust my judgment enough to get into a relationship again? Trusting yourself going forward is critically important. You were doing the best you could at the time, too, and you learned from the experience, so next time, you’ll see more, right?
Another task is to let go of emotional/energetic attachment to the other person. While most people think that this is some huge process that takes a lot of energy over a long period of time, much of it can actually be done in just a few minutes with a simple visualization or two. I did this with a client yesterday, and at the end, she said, “That’s it? That was so easy! And I feel so much better.” Stuff happens — suffering is optional. (It’s different for each person, or I’d describe how.)
Divorce differs from death in another way, too. Your friends and family may, or may not, surround you and support you. Perhaps some of them disappear, either because they don’t know what to do or say, or because they “side with” your ex, or because they believe divorce in wrong in principle. And those who do stick with you will often begin to express the reservations about your ex they had all along, but felt it was wrong to voice. Perhaps they only know you as part of a couple, so knowing you as a single person is a completely new relationship. In any case, the important thing here is to recognize that you are recreating, or renegotiating, all your relationships, not just the one with your ex. When you do this consciously, it goes more quickly and easily than if you’re not aware of what you’re doing.
Monday, October 08, 2007
Monday, September 24, 2007
So in another universe, I never got CFIDS?
Parallel universes exist - study
Sep 23 11:33 PM US/Eastern
Parallel universes really do exist, according to a mathematical discovery by Oxford scientists described by one expert as "one of the most important developments in the history of science".
The parallel universe theory, first proposed in 1950 by the US physicist Hugh Everett, helps explain mysteries of quantum mechanics that have baffled scientists for decades, it is claimed.
In Everett's "many worlds" universe, every time a new physical possibility is explored, the universe splits. Given a number of possible alternative outcomes, each one is played out - in its own universe.
A motorist who has a near miss, for instance, might feel relieved at his lucky escape. But in a parallel universe, another version of the same driver will have been killed. Yet another universe will see the motorist recover after treatment in hospital. The number of alternative scenarios is endless.
It is a bizarre idea which has been dismissed as fanciful by many experts. But the new research from Oxford shows that it offers a mathematical answer to quantum conundrums that cannot be dismissed lightly - and suggests that Dr Everett, who was a Phd student at Princeton University when he came up with the theory, was on the right track.
Commenting in New Scientist magazine, Dr Andy Albrecht, a physicist at the University of California at Davis, said: "This work will go down as one of the most important developments in the history of science."
According to quantum mechanics, nothing at the subatomic scale can really be said to exist until it is observed. Until then, particles occupy nebulous "superposition" states, in which they can have simultaneous "up" and "down" spins, or appear to be in different places at the same time.
Observation appears to "nail down" a particular state of reality, in the same way as a spinning coin can only be said to be in a "heads" or "tails" state once it is caught.
According to quantum mechanics, unobserved particles are described by "wave functions" representing a set of multiple "probable" states. When an observer makes a measurement, the particle then settles down into one of these multiple options.
The Oxford team, led by Dr David Deutsch, showed mathematically that the bush-like branching structure created by the universe splitting into parallel versions of itself can explain the probabilistic nature of quantum outcomes.
from Breitbart.com -- http://www.intelways.com/
Sep 23 11:33 PM US/Eastern
Parallel universes really do exist, according to a mathematical discovery by Oxford scientists described by one expert as "one of the most important developments in the history of science".
The parallel universe theory, first proposed in 1950 by the US physicist Hugh Everett, helps explain mysteries of quantum mechanics that have baffled scientists for decades, it is claimed.
In Everett's "many worlds" universe, every time a new physical possibility is explored, the universe splits. Given a number of possible alternative outcomes, each one is played out - in its own universe.
A motorist who has a near miss, for instance, might feel relieved at his lucky escape. But in a parallel universe, another version of the same driver will have been killed. Yet another universe will see the motorist recover after treatment in hospital. The number of alternative scenarios is endless.
It is a bizarre idea which has been dismissed as fanciful by many experts. But the new research from Oxford shows that it offers a mathematical answer to quantum conundrums that cannot be dismissed lightly - and suggests that Dr Everett, who was a Phd student at Princeton University when he came up with the theory, was on the right track.
Commenting in New Scientist magazine, Dr Andy Albrecht, a physicist at the University of California at Davis, said: "This work will go down as one of the most important developments in the history of science."
According to quantum mechanics, nothing at the subatomic scale can really be said to exist until it is observed. Until then, particles occupy nebulous "superposition" states, in which they can have simultaneous "up" and "down" spins, or appear to be in different places at the same time.
Observation appears to "nail down" a particular state of reality, in the same way as a spinning coin can only be said to be in a "heads" or "tails" state once it is caught.
According to quantum mechanics, unobserved particles are described by "wave functions" representing a set of multiple "probable" states. When an observer makes a measurement, the particle then settles down into one of these multiple options.
The Oxford team, led by Dr David Deutsch, showed mathematically that the bush-like branching structure created by the universe splitting into parallel versions of itself can explain the probabilistic nature of quantum outcomes.
from Breitbart.com -- http://www.intelways.com/
Thursday, September 13, 2007
The Multiplier Effect (Part II)
After the orbs in the Bay Area (see “How Psychics Have Fun (Part II) below), and the enhanced photo, I was pretty excited to see what would happen at Mt. Shasta, which is renowned for its spiritual activity, with a bigger group, and a respected contactor of ETs.
Many anomalous things happened:
** Lights appeared in the sky, that could not possibly have been airplanes (wrong shape, no lights on wingtips, moving way too fast, etc.), and were not on the satellite charts. They blinked on and off, stood still and changed direction, which satellites can’t do. What looked to my naked eye like a craft sending out an energy streamer was apparently (to those with high power binoculars) was apparently one banking hard left into space, away from Earth.
** The temperature inside a circle of 60+ people (i.e. A BIG circle) sitting in a field was often warmer than the temperature outside the circle (and one circle of 60 people sitting father apart than shoulder to shoulder is much too big for this to be body heat). In fact, one night, sitting out on the mountain from 8:30PM to 1AM, someone used a thermometer to check the ‘inside’ temperature repeatedly. It went from 67F to 64F in about twenty minutes, then back to 67F in another 20 minutes, then to 65F, where it held for a long time before beginning to descend permanently. I could feel the temperature varying, as well. There was no wind, and the cloud cover never changed.
** Another night, we were meditating in a huge meadow, with a densely overcast sky. The air was completely calm — not a pine needle stirred. When we finished meditating, most people had felt raindrops (I didn’t feel them; I was either deep in meditation or asleep. However, rain will normally rouse me, and there were no wet spots on my clothes, so maybe it rained around me!) and the sky above us was completely clear in probably a quarter mile diameter circle! The surrounding sky, however, was still thickly overcast. Then, as we watched, the clouds formed an unmistakable heart shape in the center of the clearing directly above us, ringed by open space and then the original clouds. That was magical.
** One afternoon, we sat at the edge of a clearing in the woods, doing a long guided meditation. That is, everyone but me was doing it. There were hordes of yellowjackets in the area, and I’m very allergic to them. Sitting in the circle, I always seemed to have 4 to 6 of them around me, and was constantly swatting them away. I left the circle to stand away, where there seemed to be fewer yellowjackets and I could move quickly away from the occasional one that found me without disturbing everyone else. Of course, I had to stand, and stay alert, which meant I couldn’t get deeply into the meditation. However, I did what I do whenever I’m standing around doing nothing, which is to see what I can see clairvoyantly. What I saw with my external clairvoyance (my eyes, I guess) was that most everyone’s crown chakra was open, while they all followed the meditation, parts of which asked them to all think the same powerful mantra at the same time.
We had the multiplier effect again, that is, all those minds broadcasting a powerful mantra at the same time out into the universe attracted a lot of attention. After a while, probably after half an hour or so, I began to notice (with my internal clairvoyance) that the clearing was filling up with all sorts of beings, from nature spirits (or devas) to spirits who guarded the place (probably Native Americans who’d lived there) to ETs to angels. It was unbelievably beautiful! And as the meditation ended, they told me they’d be back that night. (And yes, they came back.)
I think the reason that we attracted so much attention was that our minds were sending out coherent thought. Not only was each mind coherent (which is probably pretty rare for a human being), but on top of that, 50+ minds were coherent with each other. This is similar to the multiplier effect I was talking about last week, though in that case, tens or hundreds of millions of minds had the same thought occasionally.
Imagine what we could do if a lot of us were coherent about something!
(Actually, I think this is what happened with the “Fire the Grid” meditation. ( In case you missed it, the email went around certain communities on the web like wildfire — and apparently 30 – 40 million people participated. We were asked to send love to planet Earth, in a meditative state, for one specific hour in August.) That hour happened to be from 3:11 AM to 4:11 AM Pacific time, which meant that I meditated, and fell asleep, and meditated and fell asleep, etc. When I got up around 6:30 AM, I checked in with Earth, and it felt different, more alive somehow!)
Many anomalous things happened:
** Lights appeared in the sky, that could not possibly have been airplanes (wrong shape, no lights on wingtips, moving way too fast, etc.), and were not on the satellite charts. They blinked on and off, stood still and changed direction, which satellites can’t do. What looked to my naked eye like a craft sending out an energy streamer was apparently (to those with high power binoculars) was apparently one banking hard left into space, away from Earth.
** The temperature inside a circle of 60+ people (i.e. A BIG circle) sitting in a field was often warmer than the temperature outside the circle (and one circle of 60 people sitting father apart than shoulder to shoulder is much too big for this to be body heat). In fact, one night, sitting out on the mountain from 8:30PM to 1AM, someone used a thermometer to check the ‘inside’ temperature repeatedly. It went from 67F to 64F in about twenty minutes, then back to 67F in another 20 minutes, then to 65F, where it held for a long time before beginning to descend permanently. I could feel the temperature varying, as well. There was no wind, and the cloud cover never changed.
** Another night, we were meditating in a huge meadow, with a densely overcast sky. The air was completely calm — not a pine needle stirred. When we finished meditating, most people had felt raindrops (I didn’t feel them; I was either deep in meditation or asleep. However, rain will normally rouse me, and there were no wet spots on my clothes, so maybe it rained around me!) and the sky above us was completely clear in probably a quarter mile diameter circle! The surrounding sky, however, was still thickly overcast. Then, as we watched, the clouds formed an unmistakable heart shape in the center of the clearing directly above us, ringed by open space and then the original clouds. That was magical.
** One afternoon, we sat at the edge of a clearing in the woods, doing a long guided meditation. That is, everyone but me was doing it. There were hordes of yellowjackets in the area, and I’m very allergic to them. Sitting in the circle, I always seemed to have 4 to 6 of them around me, and was constantly swatting them away. I left the circle to stand away, where there seemed to be fewer yellowjackets and I could move quickly away from the occasional one that found me without disturbing everyone else. Of course, I had to stand, and stay alert, which meant I couldn’t get deeply into the meditation. However, I did what I do whenever I’m standing around doing nothing, which is to see what I can see clairvoyantly. What I saw with my external clairvoyance (my eyes, I guess) was that most everyone’s crown chakra was open, while they all followed the meditation, parts of which asked them to all think the same powerful mantra at the same time.
We had the multiplier effect again, that is, all those minds broadcasting a powerful mantra at the same time out into the universe attracted a lot of attention. After a while, probably after half an hour or so, I began to notice (with my internal clairvoyance) that the clearing was filling up with all sorts of beings, from nature spirits (or devas) to spirits who guarded the place (probably Native Americans who’d lived there) to ETs to angels. It was unbelievably beautiful! And as the meditation ended, they told me they’d be back that night. (And yes, they came back.)
I think the reason that we attracted so much attention was that our minds were sending out coherent thought. Not only was each mind coherent (which is probably pretty rare for a human being), but on top of that, 50+ minds were coherent with each other. This is similar to the multiplier effect I was talking about last week, though in that case, tens or hundreds of millions of minds had the same thought occasionally.
Imagine what we could do if a lot of us were coherent about something!
(Actually, I think this is what happened with the “Fire the Grid” meditation. ( In case you missed it, the email went around certain communities on the web like wildfire — and apparently 30 – 40 million people participated. We were asked to send love to planet Earth, in a meditative state, for one specific hour in August.) That hour happened to be from 3:11 AM to 4:11 AM Pacific time, which meant that I meditated, and fell asleep, and meditated and fell asleep, etc. When I got up around 6:30 AM, I checked in with Earth, and it felt different, more alive somehow!)
Wednesday, September 05, 2007
The Multiplier Effect, Part I
I’m a roadie for 2 days a year (which is about all I can stand) as a volunteer for the Sausalito Arts Festival. I work the stage crew, which in general is hauling equipment, food and ice for the performers, and being additional security for the gates to the backstage areas. (BTW, the performers’ dressing room area is right next to the garbage — so much for glamour.) This year, though, my job was to sell merchandise, which is about as good a gig as you could want, because you sit at the right front corner of the stage, and can climb up backstage or walk in the protected area in front of the stage to take photos. Yeah, you do have to hear all the music and then people shove money in your face for CDs and t-shirts (btw, there’s a lot more money to be made in the shirts than the music, which really says something). Hard job, huh? Plus they fed us.
This year is the 40th anniversary of the “Summer of Love”, so that was the theme for the music this year, and Jefferson Starship was there, along with Quicksilver Messenger Service, It’s a Beautiful Day (now known as David LaFlamme and friends), the only living keyboardist from the Dead, New Riders of the Purple Sage and Marshall Tucker Band. It was a lot of fun to hear the great music (the guitar work is wonderful) and see lots of 60-somethings shaking it (I had a front row seat to that, too).
Anyway, the merchandise job went like this. The band’s manager (or someone) would bring you whatever they were selling, and tell you how much it cost. You wrote down the prices, took inventory, taped the t-shirts up to a high fence so people could see them, sold the merchandise, took inventory again, and settled up the money, taking the festival’s cut. It’s amazing how disorganized most of these folks are: no price list, no count of the merchandise to begin, no information about the CDs, no bank (you do need change, unless everything you’re selling is priced at $20). Jefferson Starship didn’t even bring me all the inventory, and lost sales because I was out of sizes that they had but hadn’t bothered to bring me, or even mention they had.
When David LaFlamme (I don’t know if you remember his song, “White Bird”, but it’s one of my favorites) came out to settle up (and btw, he was the only organized one), he was singing ”Everybody’s Talkin’”, the theme from the movie, “Midnight Cowboy”:
“Everybody's talkin' at me
Can't hear a word they're sayin'
Only the echoes of my mind
People stoppin', starin'
I can't see their faces
Only the shadows of their eyes
Goin' where the sun keeps shinin'
In the pouring rain
Goin' where the weather suits my clothes
Banking off a northeast wind
Sailin' on a summer's breeze
Skipping over the ocean
Like a stone”
LaFlamme told me that when he was a young man, he wanted to be Fred Neil, the author of that song. He said, I didn’t want to be like him, I wanted to be him. Then he said that Neil was the guy Bob Dylan and Phil Ochs looked up to, as well. He told me that at some point, Neil bought a sailboat, and took off for parts unknown, never to be professionally heard from again.
Now, I don’t know about you, but I was always puzzled by what that song had to do with a male prostitute in New York City. Good song, good movie, but to me, they didn’t go together. Okay, the weather in NYC sucks a lot, and in the movie, the main characters are in a pretty desperate situation, alienated from much of society, so a little escapism could be expected — but that song is about sailing! And there is definitely no sailing in the movie.
And about a day later it hit me — Fred Neil was putting his dream out there, in a way that probably hundreds of millions of people heard hundreds or thousands of times (it was a top 40 hit). Perhaps that song made him the money that bought him the sailboat that made his dream come true. Maybe all those minds focused on his dream, even a little, made it come true.
Imagine all those minds focused, even a little, on your dream.
This year is the 40th anniversary of the “Summer of Love”, so that was the theme for the music this year, and Jefferson Starship was there, along with Quicksilver Messenger Service, It’s a Beautiful Day (now known as David LaFlamme and friends), the only living keyboardist from the Dead, New Riders of the Purple Sage and Marshall Tucker Band. It was a lot of fun to hear the great music (the guitar work is wonderful) and see lots of 60-somethings shaking it (I had a front row seat to that, too).
Anyway, the merchandise job went like this. The band’s manager (or someone) would bring you whatever they were selling, and tell you how much it cost. You wrote down the prices, took inventory, taped the t-shirts up to a high fence so people could see them, sold the merchandise, took inventory again, and settled up the money, taking the festival’s cut. It’s amazing how disorganized most of these folks are: no price list, no count of the merchandise to begin, no information about the CDs, no bank (you do need change, unless everything you’re selling is priced at $20). Jefferson Starship didn’t even bring me all the inventory, and lost sales because I was out of sizes that they had but hadn’t bothered to bring me, or even mention they had.
When David LaFlamme (I don’t know if you remember his song, “White Bird”, but it’s one of my favorites) came out to settle up (and btw, he was the only organized one), he was singing ”Everybody’s Talkin’”, the theme from the movie, “Midnight Cowboy”:
“Everybody's talkin' at me
Can't hear a word they're sayin'
Only the echoes of my mind
People stoppin', starin'
I can't see their faces
Only the shadows of their eyes
Goin' where the sun keeps shinin'
In the pouring rain
Goin' where the weather suits my clothes
Banking off a northeast wind
Sailin' on a summer's breeze
Skipping over the ocean
Like a stone”
LaFlamme told me that when he was a young man, he wanted to be Fred Neil, the author of that song. He said, I didn’t want to be like him, I wanted to be him. Then he said that Neil was the guy Bob Dylan and Phil Ochs looked up to, as well. He told me that at some point, Neil bought a sailboat, and took off for parts unknown, never to be professionally heard from again.
Now, I don’t know about you, but I was always puzzled by what that song had to do with a male prostitute in New York City. Good song, good movie, but to me, they didn’t go together. Okay, the weather in NYC sucks a lot, and in the movie, the main characters are in a pretty desperate situation, alienated from much of society, so a little escapism could be expected — but that song is about sailing! And there is definitely no sailing in the movie.
And about a day later it hit me — Fred Neil was putting his dream out there, in a way that probably hundreds of millions of people heard hundreds or thousands of times (it was a top 40 hit). Perhaps that song made him the money that bought him the sailboat that made his dream come true. Maybe all those minds focused on his dream, even a little, made it come true.
Imagine all those minds focused, even a little, on your dream.
Tuesday, August 14, 2007
Friday, August 10, 2007
Two great books!
"The Tao of Equus", by Linda Kohanov , which is the psychic side of horses and the horse/human interaction. Amazing and wonderful! If you ever had any question that animals are smart, and conscious, this should answer it.
The last Harry Potter -- J.K. Rowling apparently understands our political situation quite well. I only wonder if she always had this in mind (as I've read that she had the plot outlined for all 7 books before she wrote even one)?
The last Harry Potter -- J.K. Rowling apparently understands our political situation quite well. I only wonder if she always had this in mind (as I've read that she had the plot outlined for all 7 books before she wrote even one)?
Thursday, August 09, 2007
Are you having relationship issues now?
Are you having relationship Issues right now? Do they seem worse than usual?
Last week, in 2 days, I had FOUR separate people complain to me that they were having relationship problems so severe that three of them couldn’t get out of bed, and the fourth was doing so because she really had no other choice. Three of these people were having problems with life partners (fiancé, husband, and ex) and one with a child.
My rule is that if something happens once around me, it just happens, and I’m an observer. Twice, perhaps it’s a coincidence. But three times, there is definitely something to which I should pay attention, perhaps about me. And four? Wow. But I don’t seem to be having any relationship problems at the moment, at least nothing I’m aware of. So I called a friend, another psychic with whom I trade readings, and she said she couldn’t see anything personal to me in this.
My next thought was that perhaps there was something astrological going on. While I believe that people mostly create their own realities, I do see the validity of astrology in affecting people and situations. So I called my friend, Robin, an astrologer, and — bingo! Venus (the planet of love and relationships) is retrograde. This is asking you to go inward and examine relationships, or to get closure on unresolved issues. Venus goes direct again on Sept. 8.
Last week, in 2 days, I had FOUR separate people complain to me that they were having relationship problems so severe that three of them couldn’t get out of bed, and the fourth was doing so because she really had no other choice. Three of these people were having problems with life partners (fiancé, husband, and ex) and one with a child.
My rule is that if something happens once around me, it just happens, and I’m an observer. Twice, perhaps it’s a coincidence. But three times, there is definitely something to which I should pay attention, perhaps about me. And four? Wow. But I don’t seem to be having any relationship problems at the moment, at least nothing I’m aware of. So I called a friend, another psychic with whom I trade readings, and she said she couldn’t see anything personal to me in this.
My next thought was that perhaps there was something astrological going on. While I believe that people mostly create their own realities, I do see the validity of astrology in affecting people and situations. So I called my friend, Robin, an astrologer, and — bingo! Venus (the planet of love and relationships) is retrograde. This is asking you to go inward and examine relationships, or to get closure on unresolved issues. Venus goes direct again on Sept. 8.
Thursday, August 02, 2007
Enhanced orb photo
One of the readers of this blog sent me an enhanced orb photo, with the following comments:
I hope the changes I made come over in the
email, but I used a free program called Picasa to add
some light to your photo. It doesn't do anything to
alter it, it just makes things that are dark brighter.
There are tons of orbs all around you guys. I
couldn't really see until I added the light. If it
was snowing, they would make sense. But from your
email it doesn't sound like it was.
This is way cool!
Wednesday, August 01, 2007
How Psychics Have Fun (Part II)
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
William Shakespeare
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
William Shakespeare
If you had told me 3 years ago that I’d be spending a summer Saturday night sitting out in a cold, empty field, in the dark, with a few people who were barely acquaintances (and my husband) with the intention of seeing some star visitors (aka ETs), I’d have told you you were crazy. (This from a woman who regularly talks to discarnate beings, and can communicate with animals and plants, at least sometimes!) But there I was nonetheless.
I mean, just because you can’t see it with your two eyes, doesn’t mean it isn’t there, right? Before microscopes, we couldn’t see cells. And before the Hubble telescope, there were lots of celestial bodies that we couldn’t see, even if we knew they were there. Which is where Mr. Shakespeare comes in... I mean, why wouldn’t there be beings who exist at frequencies outside our usual visual spectrum?
With that openness in mind, we gathered at a restaurant near the field we’d be sitting in later. Over dinner we chatted about other experiences with star visitors, or at least the others did. I was mostly just curious.
There are still places in the heavily urban Bay Area that are quite dark at night, and we went to one of them. Though I’m a newbie, some of these folks have apparently been going for years, so they led us down windy back roads right to the spot. I’m told it has a view, but it was so foggy, not to mention dark, that I really can’t say if it’s true.
There are two kinds of clairvoyance, internal (e.g. remote viewing) and external, which is seeing subtle energies, like the human energy field (aka aura) and chakras (energy centers which relate to different bodily organs and emotional/psychological issues). While my internal clairvoyance is decent, I’m still working on the external. The cool thing about the dark is that you can see subtle energies much more easily. I could very clearly see the aura and crown chakra of the woman across the circle from me! The layers of her aura looked kind of like the layers of an onion, but not as even. But I’ve seen that before, even seen colors occasionally, so no huge deal. The big surprise was seeing her crown chakra, which comes up from the crown of the head, kind of like a small fountain, but with a constantly changing cross between streaks and bubbles, all of which had very faint colors. I’ve seen line drawings of this before, but they really don’t do it justice, because drawings can’t capture the movement, change and color, in the same way that a black and white photograph can’t capture what a color video can.
Then there were the beings. What I saw with my eyes was sparkly things, little (or occasionally not so little) points of light, that came, sometimes moved, and went. What I saw internally were two odd-looking beings. The first was really tall, probably at least 8 feet, with a very long neck, kind of whitish. The second was a human-looking body, with the head of an eagle, and the feeling of guarding or protecting something, maybe us, maybe the land. It told me that similar beings had existed around western North America for millenia, and had appeared to the aboriginal peoples here, which is why some Native American tribes have thunderbird dances, and others have totems like that. Nobody else present saw these beings, though they did see the sparklies. They did tell me that a well-respected clairvoyant had told them of the bird people, who are apparently guardians of the earth.
I did feel what I often feel, which is a warm, loving presence. I have always assumed that these beings are guides or angels, which is to say, higher intelligence. But you know, maybe higher intelligence comes in a myriad of forms, and maybe, rather than being angelic, it’s intergalactic. Or maybe both. What do I know?
Here’s the cool thing — we have pictures! I’m excited by them because it’s the first time I’ve seen visual evidence of what I feel. I’m attaching one to this email (that’s me on the left, with the striped sweater and white scarf, the top clothing layers of about 15 total — did I say it was cold?). Now you could say that these lights are... out there in physical reality? Reflections off the fog? NO. There were no lights at all, not even any in the distance in any sight line. We were sitting in the dark — well, actually, we did seem to be illuminated by some sort of diffuse glow — but either that was our own auras, or something more supernatural. And I was standing diagonally from the line between the photographer and subject a couple of times, so I could see the reflection of the flash on the fog, and it was, tiny sparkles of light, much smaller than what is in the photos. No, there is no “normal” explanation of these orbs.
Monday, July 30, 2007
Nursing home cat can sense death?| Oddly Enough| Reuters
We can all sense more than we know... And Oscar is a good example
Nursing home cat can sense death?
| Oddly Enough
| Reuters
Nursing home cat can sense death?
| Oddly Enough
| Reuters
Friday, July 27, 2007
Re: 6 degrees of separation
This came from a friend, and I like it so much that i'll post it here:
i think there is another answer. It lies in the resonant structures that form things out of empty energy in a closed system where waves rebound from the boundaries and create patterns. Since the ocean is swimable (that's why we can get to the other shore) resonant structures attract each other.
Then again we could approach it from comparing the dream state in sleep to the dream state we call waking.
I think this happens a lot to people with a wide world. I once went to work as a headhunter. a few weeks later a new employee was placed at a desk opposite me. Turned out we had met in India in a few places 10 years before that. Went to a party at his home and his wife grew up a block from me and her sister was a classmate. He also met her in India. and i knew on other person there from Hawaii 12 years previous.
i think there is another answer. It lies in the resonant structures that form things out of empty energy in a closed system where waves rebound from the boundaries and create patterns. Since the ocean is swimable (that's why we can get to the other shore) resonant structures attract each other.
Then again we could approach it from comparing the dream state in sleep to the dream state we call waking.
I think this happens a lot to people with a wide world. I once went to work as a headhunter. a few weeks later a new employee was placed at a desk opposite me. Turned out we had met in India in a few places 10 years before that. Went to a party at his home and his wife grew up a block from me and her sister was a classmate. He also met her in India. and i knew on other person there from Hawaii 12 years previous.
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
Six Degrees of Separation? Really?
We’ve all heard that saying, “Six Degrees of Separation”, meaning that everyone on earth is connected by a maximum of 6 person to person links. What most people don’t know, though, is where this notion came from, and that it’s not exactly true.
“Six degrees of separation” came from an experiment done by Stanley Milgram, the psychologist, in the 1930s. It is said that he gave 300 random Nebraskans an envelope and told them to send that to someone they knew on a first name basis, who they thought could get it to a particular stockbroker in Boston, with instructions for them to do the same, and that the envelopes got there in an average of 6 steps. That’s not entirely true. The average of all 300 envelopes was 6 mailing legs to get to the target — but Milgram gave 100 of those envelopes to people in Boston, 100 of them to blue chip investors, and only 100 to random Nebraskans. And of the 100 given to the random Nebraskans, only 18 got to the target! But Milgram was on to something.
Or perhaps you’ve heard of the game, Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, where players try to tie a given actor to Kevin Bacon in as few steps as possible, based on the movies they’ve acted in together. So if an actor has worked in a movie with Mr. Bacon, he has a Bacon number of 1, if an actor has worked with an actor who has worked with Mr. Bacon, she has a Bacon number of 2, and so on. As you can see in the table below, using data from the internet movie data base, www.imdb.com, which has over 500,000 actors, the vast majority of actors are within 3 degrees of separation from Bacon, and virtually all are within 4 degrees:
Cumulative
Bacon Percentage
Number of Actors
1 .3
2 24.1
3 84.9
4 98.8
The book, “Six Degrees”, by Duncan Watts, from which the above data is abstracted, is all about “small world” networks, looking at networks as different as movie actors and the power grid from a mulitdisciplinary approach. After considering several models and research from the 1930’s onward, he concludes that “As long as individuals are more likely to know other people like them, and — crucially — as long as they measure similarity along more than one social dimension, then not only will short paths exist between almost anyone almost anywhere, but also individuals... will be able to find them.” And other research suggests that the two most powerful dimensions to explore are geographical connections and professional ones.
So it’s reasonable that you’ll be connected to anyone, anywhere in very few steps, and that you’re most likely to find them by asking where they’re from and/or what they do for a living. But I’m still not sure that explains what’s happening to me.
- Item: My friend, Sasha, a musician in London, knows three (3!) people I know on a first name basis: an economist in Boulder, CO, a research engineer in Princeton, NJ, and a German psychologist (though she may actually live in London — but London and its environs have 12 – 14 million residents). To my knowledge, none of these people knows each other. What’s going on?
“Six degrees of separation” came from an experiment done by Stanley Milgram, the psychologist, in the 1930s. It is said that he gave 300 random Nebraskans an envelope and told them to send that to someone they knew on a first name basis, who they thought could get it to a particular stockbroker in Boston, with instructions for them to do the same, and that the envelopes got there in an average of 6 steps. That’s not entirely true. The average of all 300 envelopes was 6 mailing legs to get to the target — but Milgram gave 100 of those envelopes to people in Boston, 100 of them to blue chip investors, and only 100 to random Nebraskans. And of the 100 given to the random Nebraskans, only 18 got to the target! But Milgram was on to something.
- Item: Last weekend, I went to a hypnotherapy class in Oakland, CA, which had 5 participants besides me. At lunch, I discovered that one of them, an attorney in Sydney, Australia, is a good friend of, and sometime attorney for, the my one friend in all of Australia. What’s going on?
Or perhaps you’ve heard of the game, Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, where players try to tie a given actor to Kevin Bacon in as few steps as possible, based on the movies they’ve acted in together. So if an actor has worked in a movie with Mr. Bacon, he has a Bacon number of 1, if an actor has worked with an actor who has worked with Mr. Bacon, she has a Bacon number of 2, and so on. As you can see in the table below, using data from the internet movie data base, www.imdb.com, which has over 500,000 actors, the vast majority of actors are within 3 degrees of separation from Bacon, and virtually all are within 4 degrees:
Cumulative
Bacon Percentage
Number of Actors
1 .3
2 24.1
3 84.9
4 98.8
The book, “Six Degrees”, by Duncan Watts, from which the above data is abstracted, is all about “small world” networks, looking at networks as different as movie actors and the power grid from a mulitdisciplinary approach. After considering several models and research from the 1930’s onward, he concludes that “As long as individuals are more likely to know other people like them, and — crucially — as long as they measure similarity along more than one social dimension, then not only will short paths exist between almost anyone almost anywhere, but also individuals... will be able to find them.” And other research suggests that the two most powerful dimensions to explore are geographical connections and professional ones.
- Item: A few weeks ago, I went to an NLP training in Novato, CA. The trainer, from NJ, turned out to have grown up a few blocks from me, and to have been a patient of my (MD) father’s. What’s going on?
So it’s reasonable that you’ll be connected to anyone, anywhere in very few steps, and that you’re most likely to find them by asking where they’re from and/or what they do for a living. But I’m still not sure that explains what’s happening to me.
Thursday, July 19, 2007
How to Really Connect on the Phone
Many years ago, I was the head of customer service (and a few other things, too!) for a small business that sold proprietary products to the fire service. One of my duties was to answer questions from any fire captain or chief who called in to ask about the products, or to get the information they needed to them. Another thing I did was to help staff our booth at 3 - 5 fire service trade shows each year, which meant that I eventually got to meet many of the people to whom I had spoken on the phone.
I began to notice that, when I met them, I already knew what these men (and they were almost exclusively men) looked like! Now, it wasn’t that they looked exactly as I had imagined them, had I even been aware that I was imagining them. Rather, if I described the impression I had, that description would have exactly matched the person. So while it wasn’t like seeing an exact photo of a particular chief, I would have described him, say, as being slightly overweight, with shaggy brown hair, smallish light eyes, a regular nose and a mustache — and that description would have fit!
And then I began to wonder how I did that.
What I realized was that as I heard a voice, I was unconsciously flipping through my internal data base of all the people I’d ever met and their voices, and making a picture of the person I was talking with based on that. I’m sure you do it, too. Think about it — you can usually tell a woman’s voice from a man’s, or hear someone’s approximate age (though I can’t say how), or native language, or which region of the US he or she is from, and sometimes their ethnicity. A more resonant voice is generally a larger person, though not always. How do I ‘see’ eye color, or hair color, or facial hair? Avoiding the obvious blond jokes here, I can’t put my finger on it — but again, flipping through that data base in my mind gives me clues.
Then there’s the emotional stuff. You can hear tension in someone’s voice — happiness, sadness and anger, too. You can hear uncertainty in “uptalk”, the way someone raises their pitch at the end of a sentence. Or certainty and confidence in the opposite — a lowered pitch at the end of a sentence. Yes, you can hear a smile — or else why would all those sales training folks tell you to smile when you call a prospect? Or maybe what happens is that the smile changes someone’s internal state, and you can hear that. If you pay close attention, you can even hear people’s emotions when they’re trying to hide them. Maybe it’s in the length of the vowels, or the breathing.
You can do this! Part one of connecting to people on the phone is to listen to how people talk, and not just what they say. Pay attention to how fast they’re speaking (can’t you just see certain people gesticulating wildly?), whether they speak with a more even pitch, or whether it has lots of peaks and valleys, how loud they are, which words they emphasize, where and when they hesitate. And notice what impressions come to you from this, however they come. You may not be “seeing” the person on the other end of the line, but you may learn a lot about him or her.
In fact, you are probably already doing this beneath the level of your conscious awareness — maybe you’ve already decided you don’t like someone you just “met” on the phone, for example. But making it conscious for a while will help you improve the skills you already have.
And when this noticing becomes automatic, phase two of “how to connect on the phone” is to begin to match the other person’s speech. Maybe you slow down a bit if you’re talking to someone in the South — or speed up a bit if you’re speaking to a New Yorker. Maybe you have more peaks and valleys than you normally have, or maybe your tone of voice is more level than usual. Or perhaps you just address the feelings implicit in someone’s tone of voice — if (s)he sounds hesitant, ask what that hesitation is. This may feel uncomfortable in the beginning, but keep at it, and eventually, you’ll connect with people just as well on the phone as in person.
I began to notice that, when I met them, I already knew what these men (and they were almost exclusively men) looked like! Now, it wasn’t that they looked exactly as I had imagined them, had I even been aware that I was imagining them. Rather, if I described the impression I had, that description would have exactly matched the person. So while it wasn’t like seeing an exact photo of a particular chief, I would have described him, say, as being slightly overweight, with shaggy brown hair, smallish light eyes, a regular nose and a mustache — and that description would have fit!
And then I began to wonder how I did that.
What I realized was that as I heard a voice, I was unconsciously flipping through my internal data base of all the people I’d ever met and their voices, and making a picture of the person I was talking with based on that. I’m sure you do it, too. Think about it — you can usually tell a woman’s voice from a man’s, or hear someone’s approximate age (though I can’t say how), or native language, or which region of the US he or she is from, and sometimes their ethnicity. A more resonant voice is generally a larger person, though not always. How do I ‘see’ eye color, or hair color, or facial hair? Avoiding the obvious blond jokes here, I can’t put my finger on it — but again, flipping through that data base in my mind gives me clues.
Then there’s the emotional stuff. You can hear tension in someone’s voice — happiness, sadness and anger, too. You can hear uncertainty in “uptalk”, the way someone raises their pitch at the end of a sentence. Or certainty and confidence in the opposite — a lowered pitch at the end of a sentence. Yes, you can hear a smile — or else why would all those sales training folks tell you to smile when you call a prospect? Or maybe what happens is that the smile changes someone’s internal state, and you can hear that. If you pay close attention, you can even hear people’s emotions when they’re trying to hide them. Maybe it’s in the length of the vowels, or the breathing.
You can do this! Part one of connecting to people on the phone is to listen to how people talk, and not just what they say. Pay attention to how fast they’re speaking (can’t you just see certain people gesticulating wildly?), whether they speak with a more even pitch, or whether it has lots of peaks and valleys, how loud they are, which words they emphasize, where and when they hesitate. And notice what impressions come to you from this, however they come. You may not be “seeing” the person on the other end of the line, but you may learn a lot about him or her.
In fact, you are probably already doing this beneath the level of your conscious awareness — maybe you’ve already decided you don’t like someone you just “met” on the phone, for example. But making it conscious for a while will help you improve the skills you already have.
And when this noticing becomes automatic, phase two of “how to connect on the phone” is to begin to match the other person’s speech. Maybe you slow down a bit if you’re talking to someone in the South — or speed up a bit if you’re speaking to a New Yorker. Maybe you have more peaks and valleys than you normally have, or maybe your tone of voice is more level than usual. Or perhaps you just address the feelings implicit in someone’s tone of voice — if (s)he sounds hesitant, ask what that hesitation is. This may feel uncomfortable in the beginning, but keep at it, and eventually, you’ll connect with people just as well on the phone as in person.
Thursday, July 12, 2007
Birthday Rats!
This is so cool, I just had to share!
One thing I did for my birthday was to go for a long walk on the beach. When I came home, I found a HUGE rat right in the middle of the “Welcome” on the door mat! My cat, Beast, who is a great hunter, but hadn’t brought me any ‘gifts’ for quite some time, brought me a birthday present!
My husband, whose birthday follows mine by 6 days, and I had a birthday party on the Saturday in between our two birthdays. Nothing fancy, just inviting lots of people for a pot luck, since no one seems to RSVP any more. The morning of the party, we were frantically cleaning, but had yet to put out any of the food or the utensils. We do clean occasionally, so this should not have set off alarm bells for Beast. Nevertheless, he showed up with yet another rat — his contribution to the pot luck!
After the party ended, Beast showed up with yet another rat, and headed for my husband’s favorite chair. Perhaps it was his gift to my husband?
Do you have a good animal story, a time when one of your pets “knew” something they couldn’t really have known?
In case you’re interested, there’s a great book, “Dogs That Know When Their Owners Are Coming Home: And Other Unexplained Powers of Animals” by Rupert Sheldrake. I read it a long time ago, but if I remember correctly, he shows many instances of dogs (and birds?) who know psychically when their humans are returning.
One thing I did for my birthday was to go for a long walk on the beach. When I came home, I found a HUGE rat right in the middle of the “Welcome” on the door mat! My cat, Beast, who is a great hunter, but hadn’t brought me any ‘gifts’ for quite some time, brought me a birthday present!
My husband, whose birthday follows mine by 6 days, and I had a birthday party on the Saturday in between our two birthdays. Nothing fancy, just inviting lots of people for a pot luck, since no one seems to RSVP any more. The morning of the party, we were frantically cleaning, but had yet to put out any of the food or the utensils. We do clean occasionally, so this should not have set off alarm bells for Beast. Nevertheless, he showed up with yet another rat — his contribution to the pot luck!
After the party ended, Beast showed up with yet another rat, and headed for my husband’s favorite chair. Perhaps it was his gift to my husband?
Do you have a good animal story, a time when one of your pets “knew” something they couldn’t really have known?
In case you’re interested, there’s a great book, “Dogs That Know When Their Owners Are Coming Home: And Other Unexplained Powers of Animals” by Rupert Sheldrake. I read it a long time ago, but if I remember correctly, he shows many instances of dogs (and birds?) who know psychically when their humans are returning.
Everything Happens for a Reason, Doesn't It?
You hear it a lot, don’t you? “Everything happens for a reason” -- but doesn’t it often seem like random things are happening to you? Here’s another way to think about that. It feels a little like a shaggy dog story, but there is a point, or even two.
My official business address is a post office box in a town I used to live in, about 45 minutes from where I live today. One afternoon a few months ago, when I checked it, I found several items for “Debbie Smith” (obviously not her real name, which is much more unusual). A couple of these looked like they might be checks and a couple more looked like W-2s. The address was P.O. Box 265, and then a street address, and then the town. I guess Debbie has my box number at a private mailbox place, but somehow these said P.O.B. instead of P.M.B. By law, the post office must deliver anything that says P.O.B. to a post office box, even if it has an address following that, so they ended up in my box.
As it happens, Debbie used to work for me, many years ago, when she was in high school; her mother, “Karen” is a good friend of mine. So I did what any friend would do, and called Karen, and left a message saying that these items were in my mail, and should I drop them at her house before I went home (as I don’t know where Debbie lives)? I did a few other errands, and since I hadn’t heard back, I gave the items back to the post office, explaining what had probably happened, and asking them to deliver them correctly. Shortly thereafter, I heard back from Karen, who said she’d call Debbie, who had recently moved back to town, to let her know about the mail. Then Karen said she’d be meeting a mutual friend of ours shortly for an early dinner, and did I want to come? Sure! I changed my plans and met Karen and my other friend for dinner at a Chinese restaurant a few doors from the post office.
While we were eating, Debbie walked into the restaurant and joined us, having just picked up her mail. Sure enough, there were 2 checks and 2 W-2s, and she was thrilled to have gotten them. Then she said, “You know, just today I was visualizing money coming in the mail to me. I was clear that I wanted it, and that I wanted it today!”
So here are the points of the story:
Everything happens for a reason, but it may not be your reason. Everyone else out there has their own intentions. So enjoy being part of someone else’s synchronicity.
Be clear what you want — and others will be enlisted, perhaps without your or their conscious awareness, to help you get it.
My official business address is a post office box in a town I used to live in, about 45 minutes from where I live today. One afternoon a few months ago, when I checked it, I found several items for “Debbie Smith” (obviously not her real name, which is much more unusual). A couple of these looked like they might be checks and a couple more looked like W-2s. The address was P.O. Box 265, and then a street address, and then the town. I guess Debbie has my box number at a private mailbox place, but somehow these said P.O.B. instead of P.M.B. By law, the post office must deliver anything that says P.O.B. to a post office box, even if it has an address following that, so they ended up in my box.
As it happens, Debbie used to work for me, many years ago, when she was in high school; her mother, “Karen” is a good friend of mine. So I did what any friend would do, and called Karen, and left a message saying that these items were in my mail, and should I drop them at her house before I went home (as I don’t know where Debbie lives)? I did a few other errands, and since I hadn’t heard back, I gave the items back to the post office, explaining what had probably happened, and asking them to deliver them correctly. Shortly thereafter, I heard back from Karen, who said she’d call Debbie, who had recently moved back to town, to let her know about the mail. Then Karen said she’d be meeting a mutual friend of ours shortly for an early dinner, and did I want to come? Sure! I changed my plans and met Karen and my other friend for dinner at a Chinese restaurant a few doors from the post office.
While we were eating, Debbie walked into the restaurant and joined us, having just picked up her mail. Sure enough, there were 2 checks and 2 W-2s, and she was thrilled to have gotten them. Then she said, “You know, just today I was visualizing money coming in the mail to me. I was clear that I wanted it, and that I wanted it today!”
So here are the points of the story:
Everything happens for a reason, but it may not be your reason. Everyone else out there has their own intentions. So enjoy being part of someone else’s synchronicity.
Be clear what you want — and others will be enlisted, perhaps without your or their conscious awareness, to help you get it.
Thursday, July 05, 2007
Context is everything!
Sometimes, context is everything. It’s how you understand the meaning of a given word, right? When I was a kid, we played a game where the words “coffee pot” were substituted for two versions of a homonym, and you had to guess what the words were. So my mom would say, “I coffee pot the ball” and “I drove coffee pot the tunnel” and I had to guess the words “threw” and through”.
And sometimes it’s how you recognize people. Bear with me, here.
My office is very private. It’s pretty separate from the house; it’s downstairs, behind the garage, with its own door to a private patio. The patio is accessible only by a gate to the front yard and stairs up to the main deck and yard, which I can see from both my desk and the sofa where I sit to “read”. No one ever comes in unless I invite them. Even my husband checks the phone line to see if I’m busy before he comes down, and he comes from the inside; there’s never anyone except the cable guy or the phone guy on the patio, and that’s because I’ve called them. When I work, the only other creature there, besides me, is my cat, Creature. That is, my office is very private, and very safe -- which is important, because I need to be completely secure in the outer world so that I can focus on the inner world for/with my clients.
Last Wednesday morning, I was in my office, doing a reading/NLP session for a client. I had my eyes closed, paying close attention to the inner landscape, and was therefore not particularly aware of what was going on in my office. All was well. We had gotten to a place where my client was touching one of his big issues, which, frankly, he would rather have avoided. (This is how many issues get to be big issues — when they’re little issues, we avoid them because it’s easier or more comfortable to avoid them than to deal with them. That lets them grow unchecked, attracting other experiences like the one that caused the issue in the first place. But I digress.)
BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM! Went the back of the patio door.
Oh, my God! I practically screamed into the telephone, and then apologized to my client for blistering his ear as I rushed to the back door. There was a man standing there! And all the possibilities of who this could be flashed through my mind (PG&E? PacBell? The cable company? But I haven’t called any of them. A new neighbor? But why would a new neighbor come to this obscure, protected door?)
“Who are you?”, I asked the stranger.
“Steve”, he answered, with a slightly shocked look, as if to say, “you idiot!” — and immediately his very ordinary features morphed into the unique ones of one of my best friends from decades ago, as if all my experience of him suddenly populated his face. (Actually, we’ve known each other since we were teenagers and have stayed in touch all these years. No, I haven’t seen him in 5 years, but he really doesn’t look different from how he looked then.) It’s just that I talked to him the evening before, on his home phone, in NC, to say “thank you” for the birthday present he sent, so I “knew” he was home in NC. Since I didn’t expect him, I didn’t “see” him. I explained that I was really “out there” from doing the reading, and he readily forgave me.
How do you prevent this from happening? How do you ensure you recognize someone? I’m not 100% sure you can, but I have a couple of ideas.
The first one comes from my late father, who was a doctor in a small town in NJ, with a huge practice which spanned the state. Almost everywhere we went, someone would say, “Hi, Doc!” and he’d look momentarily blank, and then greet whomever by their name, and ask them something relevant to their lives. Once I asked him about that blank look, and how he remembered everyone, and here’s what he said: “When someone says, “Hi, Doc!, I know it’s someone from my practice, so I “see” them in the office — and then I know just who they are, their name, what they do for a living, kids names, all that stuff.”
So the first trick is to widen the visual frame of your memory, to see someone in the context in which you met.
The second trick is from “memory experts” who tell us to envision someone’s name stamped across his or her forehead.
Put the two together, so you see the person’s name, stamped on his or her forehead, in the context in which you know each other, and you’ll be all set!
And sometimes it’s how you recognize people. Bear with me, here.
My office is very private. It’s pretty separate from the house; it’s downstairs, behind the garage, with its own door to a private patio. The patio is accessible only by a gate to the front yard and stairs up to the main deck and yard, which I can see from both my desk and the sofa where I sit to “read”. No one ever comes in unless I invite them. Even my husband checks the phone line to see if I’m busy before he comes down, and he comes from the inside; there’s never anyone except the cable guy or the phone guy on the patio, and that’s because I’ve called them. When I work, the only other creature there, besides me, is my cat, Creature. That is, my office is very private, and very safe -- which is important, because I need to be completely secure in the outer world so that I can focus on the inner world for/with my clients.
Last Wednesday morning, I was in my office, doing a reading/NLP session for a client. I had my eyes closed, paying close attention to the inner landscape, and was therefore not particularly aware of what was going on in my office. All was well. We had gotten to a place where my client was touching one of his big issues, which, frankly, he would rather have avoided. (This is how many issues get to be big issues — when they’re little issues, we avoid them because it’s easier or more comfortable to avoid them than to deal with them. That lets them grow unchecked, attracting other experiences like the one that caused the issue in the first place. But I digress.)
BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM! Went the back of the patio door.
Oh, my God! I practically screamed into the telephone, and then apologized to my client for blistering his ear as I rushed to the back door. There was a man standing there! And all the possibilities of who this could be flashed through my mind (PG&E? PacBell? The cable company? But I haven’t called any of them. A new neighbor? But why would a new neighbor come to this obscure, protected door?)
“Who are you?”, I asked the stranger.
“Steve”, he answered, with a slightly shocked look, as if to say, “you idiot!” — and immediately his very ordinary features morphed into the unique ones of one of my best friends from decades ago, as if all my experience of him suddenly populated his face. (Actually, we’ve known each other since we were teenagers and have stayed in touch all these years. No, I haven’t seen him in 5 years, but he really doesn’t look different from how he looked then.) It’s just that I talked to him the evening before, on his home phone, in NC, to say “thank you” for the birthday present he sent, so I “knew” he was home in NC. Since I didn’t expect him, I didn’t “see” him. I explained that I was really “out there” from doing the reading, and he readily forgave me.
How do you prevent this from happening? How do you ensure you recognize someone? I’m not 100% sure you can, but I have a couple of ideas.
The first one comes from my late father, who was a doctor in a small town in NJ, with a huge practice which spanned the state. Almost everywhere we went, someone would say, “Hi, Doc!” and he’d look momentarily blank, and then greet whomever by their name, and ask them something relevant to their lives. Once I asked him about that blank look, and how he remembered everyone, and here’s what he said: “When someone says, “Hi, Doc!, I know it’s someone from my practice, so I “see” them in the office — and then I know just who they are, their name, what they do for a living, kids names, all that stuff.”
So the first trick is to widen the visual frame of your memory, to see someone in the context in which you met.
The second trick is from “memory experts” who tell us to envision someone’s name stamped across his or her forehead.
Put the two together, so you see the person’s name, stamped on his or her forehead, in the context in which you know each other, and you’ll be all set!
Wednesday, July 04, 2007
As American as cherry pie
Made from my photos of cherries, red peppers, night sky, roses, narcisus, and squash.
Wednesday, June 20, 2007
Mirror Neurons and Social Contagion
On Saturday, I had the distinct pleasure of helping a group of aspiring hypnotherapists develop their (already pretty advanced) intuitions. Before we started, several members of the group told me they’d been looking forward to this session, and afterwards, I perhaps understood why: they were natural psychics, and needed a little help understanding, and, in at least one case, coping with, what they were already doing.
After my usual explanation of intuition, we began the practice exercises. One exercise is designed to increase the students’ awareness of others’ emotions at an energy/intuitive level. It requires that one member of a small group fully experience some emotion, by recalling an instance of it, as in method acting, so that the others can notice how that emotion manifests, and what it brings up for them. This is critical to healers, because sensing what is going on for your client and managing your own emotions around that is necessary to your client’s healing.
As I told the students that the next emotion they were to experience was anger, one woman standing quite close to me jumped the gun, and remembered her anger immediately. I caught a glint of it in her eye, and before I was aware of what had happened, part of me thought, “Oh, s**t, she’s mad at me!” And this happened even though I knew I had just asked the students to “run anger”.
At another point, I asked the group to run fear, which they gamely did. While I was not part of the exercise, just managing it, I found myself nauseated and desperate to leave the room, in the classic “freeze or flee” mechanism.
What was going on?
What was going on was that my neurology was working perfectly! Our brains apparently have certain neurons, called mirror neurons, which “reflect back an action we observe in someone else, making us have that emotion, or have the impulse to do so”, according to Daniel Goleman in his book, “Social Intelligence”. These mirror neurons are the mechanism of our understanding what someone else is experiencing. They create a sort of emotional contagion between people (and even among crowds), especially when they interact face to face, and particularly when they look each other in the eye. This happens completely outside our conscious awareness.
So when I caught the eye of the woman who was “angry”, I experienced her anger, and when several members of the group were “afraid”, I became afraid.
So if you are someone who “catches” others’ negative emotions quickly and easily, what do you do?
The first step to solving a problem is to recognize it. If you regularly have emotions that seem to come out of nowhere, for no reason, your mirror neurons are probably very sensitive (or you have more of them, or they’re working overtime, or something). So the first thing is to ask yourself, “is this my emotion?” If the answer is no, then find a neutral or positive thought which will bring you back to your own decoupled physiology. A few good neutral thoughts are:
I am balanced, centered and grounded. (And really feel your connection to the earth.)
I have a protective bubble around me (or my aura). (Again, take a moment to notice the protection.)
I’m me; you’re you; we’re different (or separate).
Not only will you feel better, but then, in a more resourceful state, you have the ability to shape the interaction, so that the other person “catches” your more positive state.
After my usual explanation of intuition, we began the practice exercises. One exercise is designed to increase the students’ awareness of others’ emotions at an energy/intuitive level. It requires that one member of a small group fully experience some emotion, by recalling an instance of it, as in method acting, so that the others can notice how that emotion manifests, and what it brings up for them. This is critical to healers, because sensing what is going on for your client and managing your own emotions around that is necessary to your client’s healing.
As I told the students that the next emotion they were to experience was anger, one woman standing quite close to me jumped the gun, and remembered her anger immediately. I caught a glint of it in her eye, and before I was aware of what had happened, part of me thought, “Oh, s**t, she’s mad at me!” And this happened even though I knew I had just asked the students to “run anger”.
At another point, I asked the group to run fear, which they gamely did. While I was not part of the exercise, just managing it, I found myself nauseated and desperate to leave the room, in the classic “freeze or flee” mechanism.
What was going on?
What was going on was that my neurology was working perfectly! Our brains apparently have certain neurons, called mirror neurons, which “reflect back an action we observe in someone else, making us have that emotion, or have the impulse to do so”, according to Daniel Goleman in his book, “Social Intelligence”. These mirror neurons are the mechanism of our understanding what someone else is experiencing. They create a sort of emotional contagion between people (and even among crowds), especially when they interact face to face, and particularly when they look each other in the eye. This happens completely outside our conscious awareness.
So when I caught the eye of the woman who was “angry”, I experienced her anger, and when several members of the group were “afraid”, I became afraid.
So if you are someone who “catches” others’ negative emotions quickly and easily, what do you do?
The first step to solving a problem is to recognize it. If you regularly have emotions that seem to come out of nowhere, for no reason, your mirror neurons are probably very sensitive (or you have more of them, or they’re working overtime, or something). So the first thing is to ask yourself, “is this my emotion?” If the answer is no, then find a neutral or positive thought which will bring you back to your own decoupled physiology. A few good neutral thoughts are:
I am balanced, centered and grounded. (And really feel your connection to the earth.)
I have a protective bubble around me (or my aura). (Again, take a moment to notice the protection.)
I’m me; you’re you; we’re different (or separate).
Not only will you feel better, but then, in a more resourceful state, you have the ability to shape the interaction, so that the other person “catches” your more positive state.
Thursday, June 14, 2007
Does synchronicity have a structure?
The American Heritage Dictionary defines Synchronicity as “Coincidence of events that seem to be meaningfully related, conceived in Jungian theory as an explanatory principle on the same order as causality.” Here’s an amazing example, that just happened to me:
A few weeks ago, I decided on the spur of the moment to launch a 5 week teleclass on the practice of happiness, based in current research into meditation, emotional intelligence, luck, and positive psychology (the psychology of happiness). I picked weekly Wednesday evening “meetings” from 6 – 7 PM California time for a few reasons. I chose the 6PM time because it would be accessible to anyone in the US. I chose Wednesday because mid-week sessions are likely to be better attended, I sometimes go to meditations on Tuesday nights, and people tend to go out on Thursdays. That left Wednesdays. I did it really quickly, without considering what else was going on in my life, and without looking at my calendar.
What was I thinking?
After I sent out the email, I noticed that my favorite yoga class runs from 7 – 8 PM on Wednesdays. Bummer! I was going to have to be late to class for 5 weeks. Oh, well.
And then I noticed that I had a dental hygiene appointment, about 45 minutes away from my office, from 4:30 – 5:30 PM on the day of the first class (yesterday), which meant that I couldn’t get home in time for the class. It is almost impossible to reschedule an appointment, as they are made 6 months in advance. And I had already tried to reschedule this appointment to accommodate the schedule of the hypnotherapy school where I teach, to no avail (had to change the teaching schedule instead — luckily another teacher was willing to trade). I was going to have to do the first class on my cell phone, with probably poor reception, from the discomfort of my car in a parking lot on a hot day. Major bummer!
And here’s what happened:
Last Wednesday night, the yoga teacher announced that for the next 6 weeks, Wednesday night class would be moved to Thursday night! And in fact, this exactly matches my need, because one of the Wednesdays is July 4th, and so my 5 classes are spread over 6 weeks.
Yesterday morning, the dentist’s office called, very apologetically, to say that the hygienist with whom I was scheduled couldn’t do my session! And that I would go to the top of the cancellation list for another appointment. In fact, they called me back the same day with a new date.
Here’s another thing: a couple of weeks after I announced the class, Neale Donald Walsch, author of the “Conversations with God” series, announced that he was holding a one hour teleclass on “Happiness with God” -- from 6 – 7 PM PDT on the night of my first class. How weird is that?
I’d like to believe that it was my clear intention to do this class — for free, and the universe supporting that choice, that led to the synchronicities, but I truly don’t know. Or maybe all this other stuff was set up in advance, and I picked that time because I subconsciously knew about everyone else’s plans. And the question for me is, is there a structure to synchronicity, like there’s a structure to luck (See Richard Wiseman’s “The Luck Factor”)? Because if I understood that, life would be a LOT easier!
Where or when in your life do synchronicities happen? Have you noticed anything that seems to trigger them? Please let me know. If enough people write back, maybe we can figure out a pattern... I’ll share (anonymously) anything useful that I get (unless I’m asked not to).
A few weeks ago, I decided on the spur of the moment to launch a 5 week teleclass on the practice of happiness, based in current research into meditation, emotional intelligence, luck, and positive psychology (the psychology of happiness). I picked weekly Wednesday evening “meetings” from 6 – 7 PM California time for a few reasons. I chose the 6PM time because it would be accessible to anyone in the US. I chose Wednesday because mid-week sessions are likely to be better attended, I sometimes go to meditations on Tuesday nights, and people tend to go out on Thursdays. That left Wednesdays. I did it really quickly, without considering what else was going on in my life, and without looking at my calendar.
What was I thinking?
After I sent out the email, I noticed that my favorite yoga class runs from 7 – 8 PM on Wednesdays. Bummer! I was going to have to be late to class for 5 weeks. Oh, well.
And then I noticed that I had a dental hygiene appointment, about 45 minutes away from my office, from 4:30 – 5:30 PM on the day of the first class (yesterday), which meant that I couldn’t get home in time for the class. It is almost impossible to reschedule an appointment, as they are made 6 months in advance. And I had already tried to reschedule this appointment to accommodate the schedule of the hypnotherapy school where I teach, to no avail (had to change the teaching schedule instead — luckily another teacher was willing to trade). I was going to have to do the first class on my cell phone, with probably poor reception, from the discomfort of my car in a parking lot on a hot day. Major bummer!
And here’s what happened:
Last Wednesday night, the yoga teacher announced that for the next 6 weeks, Wednesday night class would be moved to Thursday night! And in fact, this exactly matches my need, because one of the Wednesdays is July 4th, and so my 5 classes are spread over 6 weeks.
Yesterday morning, the dentist’s office called, very apologetically, to say that the hygienist with whom I was scheduled couldn’t do my session! And that I would go to the top of the cancellation list for another appointment. In fact, they called me back the same day with a new date.
Here’s another thing: a couple of weeks after I announced the class, Neale Donald Walsch, author of the “Conversations with God” series, announced that he was holding a one hour teleclass on “Happiness with God” -- from 6 – 7 PM PDT on the night of my first class. How weird is that?
I’d like to believe that it was my clear intention to do this class — for free, and the universe supporting that choice, that led to the synchronicities, but I truly don’t know. Or maybe all this other stuff was set up in advance, and I picked that time because I subconsciously knew about everyone else’s plans. And the question for me is, is there a structure to synchronicity, like there’s a structure to luck (See Richard Wiseman’s “The Luck Factor”)? Because if I understood that, life would be a LOT easier!
Where or when in your life do synchronicities happen? Have you noticed anything that seems to trigger them? Please let me know. If enough people write back, maybe we can figure out a pattern... I’ll share (anonymously) anything useful that I get (unless I’m asked not to).
Thursday, June 07, 2007
Can you go home again? Hope... and Acceptance
Last week was quite a whirlwind — NJ for a class, visiting family and friends, and a college reunion, back to SF, only to go to Sacramento on business. But I’m finally home, thank goodness! And because there was such a whirlwind, I have a few impressions I’d like to share with you:
Can you go home again?
It’s very odd to walk around a college campus where you spent almost all of 4 years (I worked as a research assistant in the summers, and stayed for a month or so after graduation, so it really was almost all of 4 years). There is this time travel experience — you know you are you, and it’s 2007, but then, you hit a part of campus that hasn’t changed since you lived there, and... you’ve traveled back in time. I walked by a dorm I lived in one summer, and the window of “my” room had a window fan in it, just like I had. It literally stopped me in my tracks. When am I? It’s as if the present is layered onto the past in the physical place. (Read “Time and Again” by Jack Finney for a terrific novel based on this premise — and no, the movie just isn’t as good).
But then there is also this sense of the place growing and evolving as the community grows and evolves, as everything evolves. Some buildings are the same; others have only been changed on the inside. There are new buildings, housing new scholarly departments and new students. Some trees have gotten bigger, some have died and been replaced by smaller ones. The black squirrels seem to have been replaced by gray ones. The faces, of course, have changed, but the feel remains the same. Engineering students are still working their butts off -- I commiserated with a current engineering student, and one who’d been out 5 years, about how hard we all worked as undergrads. And everyone still feels connected.
So if you can accept that everything changes, then you can go home again.
Hope
I had the good fortune to get a ride (thanks, Julie & Rich!) out to the Plasma Physics Lab, which is 4 miles from the main Princeton campus, for the first time ever, so I could take a tour of the facilities. The PPL is one of the few experimental locations in the world for the development of nuclear fusion energy. Currently used nuclear energy is produced by fission, splitting atoms, and it leaves nasty by-products. By contrast, fusing types of hydrogen atoms to make helium, which is an inert gas, also frees up vast amounts of energy, and leaves only the helium as a byproduct.
Here’s the good news: according to the tour director, who is a physicist (although the communications director of the lab and not an experimenter), commercially viable fusion energy is pretty much inevitable. Certainly many things remain to be worked out, but apparently the question is not if, but when. His view is definitely by 2050. The (slightly) bad news is that the PPL would like to be doing experiments 25 weeks a year on the test reactors they have, and are only funded by the Dept. of Energy for 12 weeks a year. How much sooner could this happen if the lab were fully funded? Can we afford to wait until 2050?
A further question is which nation will commercialize fusion energy, and thereby gain the business for putting these small reactors everywhere. Other research institutions are in Russia, China, the EU, and Japan. While the research is apparently a joint endeavor of these countries with India at this point, commercializing it may not be.
All in all, from the Earth’s point of view, this is the most hopeful thing I’ve heard in years.
Acceptance
10 years ago, when I told people at my reunion that I did clairvoyant readings and coaching (which wasn’t called that then), most people who didn’t know me well, and a few who did, looked at me like I was crazy. It wasn’t much better 5 years ago.
But this time, the reaction I got from most people was “Cool!” I had pretty deep conversations, where I was passing on psychic information, with a couple of people who I’m sure wouldn’t have given my information any credence back then. And this is a pretty mainstream group of professionals. Is it because the culture has changed? Or because we’re older? Or because I speak about it in a way that’s easier to relate to? I don’t know, but I sure hope it’s the first of these. Anyway, my sense is that it’s safe to come out of the closet with your abilities (for those of you who have been in one).
Can you go home again?
It’s very odd to walk around a college campus where you spent almost all of 4 years (I worked as a research assistant in the summers, and stayed for a month or so after graduation, so it really was almost all of 4 years). There is this time travel experience — you know you are you, and it’s 2007, but then, you hit a part of campus that hasn’t changed since you lived there, and... you’ve traveled back in time. I walked by a dorm I lived in one summer, and the window of “my” room had a window fan in it, just like I had. It literally stopped me in my tracks. When am I? It’s as if the present is layered onto the past in the physical place. (Read “Time and Again” by Jack Finney for a terrific novel based on this premise — and no, the movie just isn’t as good).
But then there is also this sense of the place growing and evolving as the community grows and evolves, as everything evolves. Some buildings are the same; others have only been changed on the inside. There are new buildings, housing new scholarly departments and new students. Some trees have gotten bigger, some have died and been replaced by smaller ones. The black squirrels seem to have been replaced by gray ones. The faces, of course, have changed, but the feel remains the same. Engineering students are still working their butts off -- I commiserated with a current engineering student, and one who’d been out 5 years, about how hard we all worked as undergrads. And everyone still feels connected.
So if you can accept that everything changes, then you can go home again.
Hope
I had the good fortune to get a ride (thanks, Julie & Rich!) out to the Plasma Physics Lab, which is 4 miles from the main Princeton campus, for the first time ever, so I could take a tour of the facilities. The PPL is one of the few experimental locations in the world for the development of nuclear fusion energy. Currently used nuclear energy is produced by fission, splitting atoms, and it leaves nasty by-products. By contrast, fusing types of hydrogen atoms to make helium, which is an inert gas, also frees up vast amounts of energy, and leaves only the helium as a byproduct.
Here’s the good news: according to the tour director, who is a physicist (although the communications director of the lab and not an experimenter), commercially viable fusion energy is pretty much inevitable. Certainly many things remain to be worked out, but apparently the question is not if, but when. His view is definitely by 2050. The (slightly) bad news is that the PPL would like to be doing experiments 25 weeks a year on the test reactors they have, and are only funded by the Dept. of Energy for 12 weeks a year. How much sooner could this happen if the lab were fully funded? Can we afford to wait until 2050?
A further question is which nation will commercialize fusion energy, and thereby gain the business for putting these small reactors everywhere. Other research institutions are in Russia, China, the EU, and Japan. While the research is apparently a joint endeavor of these countries with India at this point, commercializing it may not be.
All in all, from the Earth’s point of view, this is the most hopeful thing I’ve heard in years.
Acceptance
10 years ago, when I told people at my reunion that I did clairvoyant readings and coaching (which wasn’t called that then), most people who didn’t know me well, and a few who did, looked at me like I was crazy. It wasn’t much better 5 years ago.
But this time, the reaction I got from most people was “Cool!” I had pretty deep conversations, where I was passing on psychic information, with a couple of people who I’m sure wouldn’t have given my information any credence back then. And this is a pretty mainstream group of professionals. Is it because the culture has changed? Or because we’re older? Or because I speak about it in a way that’s easier to relate to? I don’t know, but I sure hope it’s the first of these. Anyway, my sense is that it’s safe to come out of the closet with your abilities (for those of you who have been in one).
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