Beige cars, evening stars and orange butterflies

I have been conducting a little experiment over the last few days. I have been working with the book E-Squared, Nine do-it-yourself experiments to prove thoughts create reality, written by Pamela Grout ( I will just call it E^2 for short). The book has a number of little experiential exercises, experiments in intention in which you place a simple request out to the universe, to God, or to who/whatever you choose to call the Higher Power. The time period is over forty eight hours, and during that time, your job is to notice the response. I am now on experiment #2, and so far the results have been very interesting.

The first experiment in E^2 is to ask God to show you that He's really there (Sorry feminists, I still use the masculine term I grew up with). The experiment is to ask for an unambiguous sign, something clear and undeniable. And what I got back was really interesting.

At the same time as this experiment, including for the last day or so, the weather had been particularly nice - and last night during early evening, the sky was crystal clear. The planet Venus was high in the west and as a result, we had been expecting at least one "night-light" sighting report to come through the MUFON reporting system. Sure enough, the universe obliged - a report came through of a light seen over south Minneapolis. Whatever the result of the subsequent investigation, the lesson here is that I had asked for a nocturnal light sighting report and sure enough - one appeared.

The next thing that happened was the following morning. After I had put out the intention to God to do something I would notice, I found the hood release on my car opened. My car had been in the closed garage all night. I had not pulled the hood release at any time in recent memory. Furthermore, had I driven with the hood release open, I would have darn sure noticed it. So some time during the night, the release under the dashboard of my car apparently had been pulled.Was this some kind of paranormal event? Probably not - I'm sure there's a rational explanation, something I just haven't thought of. However, it was a fascinating little mystery, a little bit of weirdness at just the right time.

The next day, I received a couple of calls for help. One was from an experiencer in another part of the USA who had just had a rather terrifying encounter. I helped her to find the local MUFON chapter, as well as a hypnotherapist in his area. It simply felt great to be able to help someone find the resources she needed to cope with these unexplained influence in her life.

The second was from a person who walked in to my office at The Circle of Healing Arts. The person was under considerable personal stress and for that moment, had nowhere to go and no one to turn to for help. He was not a client, and probably would not become one. Yet here was a man who desperately needed help. And I was fortunate enough to know the right people and have the right information to connect him with the resources he needed. Some times the chips just fall the right way - but to me, this was a (relatively) unambiguous sign that God is present and listening. In this case, I was able to do something positive, specifically by being in the right place at the right time.

More interesting stuff happened over the last week or so (see my other article, Who rang the bell?). A lot of synchronicities, a lot of 11:11's staring me in the face. A good skeptic would say that of course they do - that number occurs on the clock twice per day.  The key is not that it occurred, but that I happened to notice it. Circumstances somehow prompted me to look up and see that number.

While not extraordinary in itself, a number synchronicity is something like seeing a mile marker along the road of life. It has little meaning on its own. Its significance is in its location and the context in which you notice it - telling you where along the highway you are. Similarly, the number synchronicity happened to occur as I was reading a book on paranormal and metaphysical mysteries - including number synchronicities.

The second experiment, which I am just now concluding, involves putting out a request to observe a particular class of object, color, etc. In this case, during the first twenty four hours, the request is to see beige cars. The second twenty four hours, the request is for orange butterflies. Both requests are relatively simple - the universe doesn't have to bend over backwards for you to see a beige car or an orange insect. Again, the intent is for you to notice the event, rather than for the event itself.

In the subsequent twenty four hours, I think I saw at least twenty beige cars. I never knew there were so many beige cars in the world. I compared the number of cars of that color with cars of other colors and found them to be about the same. Again, the key is merely what the eye is attuned to see at that moment. And for me, that was beige cars - the universe is still throwing beige cars at me.

The second half of this experiment is to ask for orange butterflies. So far, I have not seen any, although I notice that on the wall of my office are several native American paintings that include both an orange background and a butterfly pattern. I've noticed lots of other orange objects as well - Post-It notes, a stone made of Carnelian (an orange-ish mineral), even an orange bumper sticker on a beige car. But as yet, no butterflies - it's probably still too early in the season. Still, I wonder, did I accidentally include a comma or an 'and/or' in my request for orange butterflies? God definitely has a sense of humor..

In the next few days, especially if the sky is clear, I expect we will get a few more sighting reports. And in the mean time, I expect I will see a lot more 11:11's, beige cars, evening stars and perhaps even some orange butterflies.

Who rang the bell?

The universe is not only stranger than we imagine, but stranger than we CAN imagine
 - J.B.S. Haldane


Intriguing anomalies are everywhere. If you keep your eyes open, you can notice them every day. Synchronicities, events that seem to defy explanation, dreams that come true - these are a few of the little (or sometimes not so little) events that remind us there is more to reality than we understand.

A few days ago during a meditation circle, we noticed an interesting little mystery. The circle was led by a friend of mine, a psychologist who also teaches meditation, mindfulness, etc. Prior to the start of the circle, she had a background music CD playing. Then, during the meditation itself, she played a guided imagery recording of a lake with a sunset, waves on the shore, etc. - with trance music in the background. She began the meditation by ringing a small pair of finger bells before starting the CD. At that point, she set them down on the table, started the CD and we began the meditation.

After a few minutes the guided imagery was concluded and she turned off the CD. I found the moment to be one of unusually deep meditation, but soon it was time to come back to the physical world. We heard the "ding" of the bell once again as our eyes opened. Everything was great except there was one little mystery - she wasn't holding the bells. They were still sitting on the table, motionless and silent.

Curious, we checked a number of possibilities. The CD player was indeed off. I don't think anyone else had their cell phones on, or had ring tones that sounded like these particular bells (I do have a meditation timer on my cell phone with a chime that sounds somewhat similar, but not identical). Furthermore, the second dinging sound definitely came from the same location as the first. So it remains an open question - where did the bell sound come from? Who rang the bell?

I love these little anomalies - not quite miracles, not quite magic, not quite explainable within our rational understanding of the world. Yet they happen. To me, they suggest that there is simply more to the fabric of reality than we understand.

Some time ago, when I was interviewing an experiencer (I will call her Sarah), she told me the story of when she and a friend/coworker (whom I will call Nancy) were staying in a hotel during a business trip. The hotel was reputed to be haunted and the "extra resident" had a reputation of being protective of female guests. But he was also a bit of a prankster.

While Sarah was in the shower, her roommate stepped out to take care of some errands. A few moments later, as Sarah was stepping out of the shower, she heard movement just outside the bathroom door. She assumed Nancy had returned, and said something through the bathroom door. There was no response. A short time afterward, when she emerged from the bathroom, she found no one else present. For a moment, she assumed Nancy had simply stopped back to pick up something she had forgotten. But then she noticed the door - the chain lock had been set.

A few moments of thought will clarify that this is truly an anomaly. While no one else was present, and Sarah was in the shower, Nancy had left. Yet one cannot lock a chain lock from the outside. It can only be locked from the inside. So - who locked the chain lock?

Other anomalies abound, and I suspect many of us have our own stories. As I interview experiencers and their families, I often ask if they have had any other unusual events in their lives, or their family history. I am often rewarded with accounts of fascinating synchronicities, precognitions, or other anomalies. In The Cosmic Bridge, I talk about some of these reality anomalies and include a story of how "Evelyn," during the return stages of one abduction event, watched the UFO depart from in front of her home. She distinctly recalled the window being open slightly as she watched the object rise out of sight. Yet, when I looked at the window, I found it did not open or close. It was a solid pane of glass.

What do events like these tell us about the reality we live in? Assuming there is not some as-yet-overlooked explanation short of the extraordinary, they suggest our world has aspects to it that somehow defy logical explanation. Who rang the bell in our meditation circle? Was there some reality overlay in which the bell was both rung and not rung? Was there some interaction between the physical and metaphysical world that allowed a dream-like event (or sound) to occur? What allowed a window to be both opened and fixed shut, or a chain lock to be both put into place and not put into place?

In the theories of Carl Jung, there is a continuity between the purely physical and the purely mental world - what he called a psychoidal reality. In quantum physics, when a measurement occurs a choice is made between different possible quantum states. Thus one or another potential path through space-time is chosen while others are not. The paths not chosen are known as the counterfactuals.

In the Many-Worlds interpretation of quantum physics, when a choice is made, the universe actually divides into separate and distinct timelines, one in which the particular choice is made and other worlds we do not perceive in which a different choice occurred. And thus we can ask, could there be some interaction between these worlds? Could some form of meta-reality still be connecting the possible universes? These all suggest deeper, intriguing layers to the fabric of reality.

Little mysteries are one of the truly fun aspects of anomaly research. Beyond dealing with the sometimes-frightening accounts of alien abduction and their attendant post-traumatic effects, I find it both fascinating and pleasant to notice these little anomalies. They stretch and tear at our reality. They prompt us to question our standard (post)Newtonian view of the world and our belief in rational cause and effect. They make us ask whether there is more to our universe than we do (or even can) understand - and they force us to ask ultimate questions like....

"Who rang the bell?"