Shared Experience

I think there is so much to be gained from both our shared experience and sharing our individual experiences. With that in mind, I'd like to point to the amazing work being done on The Mask of God right now, which really ties directly into a lot of what we've been looking at here. Also, after our last post, we received a comment from the insanely talented Justin Morgan, that really deserves to be read by more people.

What follows is his story:

"On 2/12/11, a Saturday, I went camping with some friends and my partner Mali. We camped on a beach just south of Half Moon bay. Mali and I were still excited from the night before, 2/11/11, because while out on a capricious walk through San Francisco we ran into Ghostface Killah, U-God, Killah Priest and several other members of the Wutang clan in a tea shop in Chinatown. We were the only other people in the shop and ended up drinking tea and talking to Killah Priest for a while after he approached us and asked us about my 108 prayer beads. He was very excited from drinking the tea. The shop owner exclaimed, "These guys are sooooo high!" Mali asked him "how do you know?", I assumed it was because they had been smoking weed all day in San Francisco, he replied emphatically "Cause of my Teeeeaaaaa!!!!!!" We were drinking the same tea as Killah Priest, an Ginseng Oolong called "Blue People" The Name Blue People brings to mind the blue Hindu deities Krishna and Shiva as well as Dr. Manhattan and the Indigo Children all representing a next stage in human evolution. I must say if you haven’t tried the tea it is fantastic and does in fact get you high, without making you crash afterwards. Later we stumbled into a gallery full of Erte and Dali paintings and a few other notable events. Considering we were now isolated on a remote beach we jokingly lamented there was far less of a chance of encountering such powerful and meaningful synchronicities.

Shortly after midnight we saw 3 flashlights descending the steep cliff to the beach. Our visitors were 3 grad students from Stanford. One of them was a young man named AJ. AJ and I went to NC State at the same time in Raleigh North Carolina, and even lived less than a quarter mile from each other. I found this to be incredible considering we halfway around the globe on a remote beach in California. One of the girls had her arm in a sling due to a dislocated shoulder from being hit by an exceptionally powerful wave. We all joked that it was "fucked up how the moon song", waves, "broke her arm". This lead to discussion about how waves were moon songs. AJ is an engineering student and told us how each wave is part of a continuous wave pattern that has a corresponding wave on the opposite side of the ocean or body of water. The example he gave was "this wave crashing here" pointing to a wave as it crashed on the beach, "probably has a corresponding wave somewhere on a shore in Japan." (An amazing comment considering the events of 3/11/11). The night peaked as we discussed the mechanics of the campfire. As electrons vibrate higher they decay and emit light. My interpretation of this is "as we begin to vibrate at higher frequencies the old structures that impede the flow of light into this world will decay as we move into a world of light and love" Shortly afterwards we watched as the moon turned blood red and set into the ocean, a sight none of us had ever seen before.

We returned home the next day and went to bed early, as we were tired from staying up the night before. In the early morning hours of Valentines Day I had a dream about a Tsunami. Mali and I were standing on a hill between Grace Cathedral and The Masonic Temple at 1111 California Street in San Francisco. An interesting symbolic dreamscape considering the juxtaposition of the masculine Masonic Temple and the feminine Grace Cathedral.

The word Grace means God's favor or help from the Latin Gratia. Gratia comes from the Greek mythological terms a Charis, one of several Charites, Greek for Graces. The graces are goddesses of charm, beauty, nature, human creativity and fertility. The three Graces are Aglaea - Splendor, Euphrosyne - Merriment and Thalia - Comedy. I believe this may be the inspiration for the 3 sirens in the Sirens of Titan. Cathedral comes from the Latin cathedra, a chair principally used by women. Derive from the Greek kathedra, from kata "down" + hedra, a face of a geometric solid it could be interpreted as the descending geometry of the body of the Goddess. Through our work exploring syncs we are navigating this complex geometric web through which the Goddess is revealing herself.

Grace Cathedral is home to 2 labyrinths based on the labyrinth at Chartres Cathedral. The labyrinth is symbolic of the sacred feminine with the Flower of life at the center. The flower of life is a symbol of generation and in its construction mirrors our cellular development as the ovum divides. It is significant that there is a labyrinth inside and outside the cathedral. Considering the word root and the relation to the sacred feminine the labyrinths could be view as the inner and outer labia on both sides of the vulva like Vesica Pieces entrance to the cathedral. Humorously Jesus who often sits inside a smaller Vesica Pisces high in the Vulva shaped cathedral could be seen as the so called "little man in the Canoe" or the Clitoris. More on men in Canoes later.



While standing in-between these two iconic buildings symbolizing the unified polarities we watched in amazement as a giant wall of water was heading towards us. We realized we were not going to be able to escape it so we held each other watching as it raced towards us. A vision much like the scene in the Watchmen when the lover embrace as they are hit with the wave of light from the Nuclear Blast. The water hit us with tremendous force and we were thrown backwards. Seconds later we were back standing in the same place as before. I exclaimed, "What happened? How are we not hurt?" The dream zoomed out and said to me your father cast out his Phoenix to protect you. I saw my parents standing behind us and a huge flaming Phoenix shot out of my father’s chest protecting us and others from the water. When we woke up the next day I told Mali about the dream. We lay in bed for a while looking at a book of old Alchemy illustrations and were stunned to see a picture of the Alchemical twins with a flaming Phoenix rising behind them. We were both stunned. (The book is also full of William Blake illustrations, tying back to Depp's character in Deadman) The description of the Illustration reads "The cold and moist matter, woman (moon) and the hot and dry man (Sun) when unified become an androgynous being that is all four qualities at once.

This refers back to your first ring of fire post where you note the combination of the 4 triangular elemental signs forms the Hexagram also called the Sexagram in Latin, a symbol of sexual union. The four elements when brought into harmony form the 5th element, Heart. (Humorously while we were camping my friends joked about how amongst the Captain Planet team the kid whose power was heart was the weakest of all) In alchemy the 4 elements refer to the 4 vibratory states of matter. Earth is the lowest, then Water, Air, and Fire. An interesting thing happens as fire burns the vibrations increase to a point of where they vibrate into a realm of light or spirit.

To activate the heart within each of us, we can to 2 things both of which relate to the Hexagram.

First as individuals we can harness the healing powers of the elements. Good food (earth), Clean water, clean air and good breathing, and the warmth of fire and also exercise to stoke the internal flames. These also have healing properties when combined both for internal and external use. Fire + Water can be healing though bathing or through ingesting Teas or soups. Fire + Air could be to take a Sauna which interestingly cleanses the body through releasing water. All of these healing techniques are pleasurable and help to take us higher without any crash afterward.

The second is through the unification of opposites through Sex. When making love in a meditative way we become a unified being and unite the polarities. The hexagram depicts the unity of the upright triangle symbolizing Man's penis and testicles interlocking with Woman's vagina through the Vulva and Ovaries.

Interestingly this symbols is also a 2D symbol of the Merkabah, the chariot of ascension. Mer" means Light. "Ka" means Spirit. "Ba" means Body. Through the harmonization of the 4 elements through the heal aspects of each and through loving conscious sex we activate the Chariot of ascension and can move into the realm of love and light.

A tie into Johnny Depp is at the end of Deadman. The incomplete man (Edward Scissor hands) becomes complete through love of a woman. With the pierced heart of the Man in love, he travels into the next world or world of light while in the Vesica Pisces shaped Canoe. This is a classic motif in Christian art are showing Jesus, another man with a pierced heart floating to heaven in The Vesica Pisces. As William Blake, Depp’s character in Deadman, says through out the movie,

Some are born to sweet delight,
Some are born to endless night.

As we are transported to the next world in the womb like Vesica Pisces we have a choice to make. The choice is Love or Fear. One will lead to sweet delight. One will lead to endless night.

To come full circle back to the ring of fire ring of fire, as another dead man known as The Man in Black once sang:

Love Is A Burning Thing
And It Makes A Fiery Ring
Bound By Wild Desire
I Fell Into A Ring Of Fire

I Fell Into A Burning Ring Of Fire
I Went Down, Down, Down
And The Flames Went Higher

And It Burns, Burns, Burns
The Ring Of Fire
The Ring Of Fire

Since the ring of fire is activating we are in a heightened vibratory state as we move up to the frequency of love or heart on our way up into light. Who knows, maybe once we learn the true power of love we may summon up Captain Planet and heal this world? If a wave of destruction can affect to opposite side of the ocean who is to say a wave of love cant do the same thing. <3 "

The Muppet Show's Magic Mushrooms of Osiris

In Chris Knowles' "Alien Dreaming and the Widening Gyre" he lays out a pattern in which X-Files episodes featuring Alien contact often come directly after episodes featuring entheogen or hallucinogenic motifs.

This is a pattern I later noticed within the Darkwing Duck series, as laid out alongside the idea of the UFO/other being an aspect of sound.

After the 10/13 whatever you want to call it, he writes:

I'm not surprised by this turn of events, which is why I put up the Alien Dreaming post. If you want mystery and wonder in your life, you don't need the skies to open with barbaric gods or saucers- you need to do the hard work of retrofitting this crazy neural software locked inside our skulls and finally solving some of the mysteries those ancient visitors left in their wake.

It just so happens that I had edited a video about a week earlier that revisits this idea, however YouTube has been scrambling the audio on every video I've posted in the last month or two. Now, I just tried uploading to Vimeo and that seems to work like a peach. So here you go:

I have a bunch more to add to this post, but I'll have to come back to it another time.

Much love.

Talking the Sun & Illuminated Eye with Gordon Gano

Violent Femmes bassist Brian Ritchie sporting an Illuminated Eye at a London concert in 1984

A lot of people have worked themselves into a tizzy and have devoted endless hours to spotting eyes in pyramids in music videos and the like. If one were to type "Illuminati Music" as a search into YouTube, they'd have enough exposés and quote-unquote documentaries to last a lifetime. Most of this can be attributed to uneducated or narrow-minded freaking out on behalf of people who have been conditioned to live in a state of fear. This fear can be sold to them by snake-oil salesmen like Alex Jones or by the very same music industry insiders that are part of the "conspiracy" as a form of contrived controversy to sell records. (I highly recommend you read a Chris Knowles post called "Which Means it's a Trap")

Fear mongers are a dime a dozen and come in all shapes and sizes - and with good reason: Fear sells.

Checkerboards. Symbol of.....Masonry? Duality? Who says there's one meaning?

That's not to say there aren't real conspiracies or that there may not be people who believe incorporating certain symbols or performing certain rituals will somehow benefit them.

I met someone about a year ago who was shopping for fluoride-free toothpaste. We stood in the aisle of a store and talked for a while about eliminating fluoride from our bodies. That of course turned to conspiracy talk. They were hip to many of the conspiracies I was and we continued to chat for a while. Then they asked me if I wanted to go to their music show that night (I'm being intentionally vague so as to not screw with anyone's career without their permission to post specifics). Turns out they play a particular instrument and perform with Jay-Z and Rhianna. I toss out, "Hey, what do you think of Jay-Z using these quote-unquote masonic hand-signs and symbols?" They reply, "Well, I don't like going to the rituals, but that's the price of being in the industry. You don't get out there unless you play along. And it's not just music, it's everywhere. It's all part of the New World Order. But, I believe we can overcome that by spreading a message of love."

Now, that's what I'm talking about! Real conspiracy or not, fear is what will get us in the end. Love is what allows us to escape the fear and empower ourselves. Again, I must acknowledge that there are a million cons going on all about us: con jobs, conspiracies, perhaps even conjurers. But, once we are self-empowered, even the real conspiracies cannot harm us.

I'd even go a step further and add that, if we are manifesting reality - the conspiracies may even be of our own making. But, that's a conversation for another time.

So, what are we to think of rituals and symbols? Well, for one, everything is a ritual. Brushing your teeth, with fluoride or not, is a ritual. Thanking Jesus after a field goal or praying to "Lucifer" before taking the stage at a concert is a ritual (and essentially the same thing). As for the symbols, I've come to consider that they may have their own story to tell - and perhaps are very often using artists as the medium for their message. The more I notice it in my own artwork, the more I understand the unconscious nature of these archetypes and that there are multiple interpretations of every symbol, along with multiple layers of meaning.

But, just to put things down on the record, I thought I should ask Gordon Gano, former front-man of the Violent Femmes and current front of Gordon Gano & The Ryans, why the Sun kept popping up in his music. The first song of the Violet Femmes' first album, and perhaps their biggest commercial hit, is Blister in The Sun. Now scope the latest album art:

If you want to hear what Gordon had to say, just click to listen to our 9th podcast - a short one that came out to exactly 9 minutes and 11 seconds. And yes, again for the record, that was unplanned.

While I was watching Gano & The Ryans play, a man comes and asks if the chair next to me is free. I say yes and he starts talking about synchronicity. What are the odds? So, we get to talking during the pauses between songs. For some reason I start to tell him about a time that I got in trouble for playing a Violent Femmes song when I did college radio. I ask him if he knows the obscure tune that I'm talking about. It's called "Country Death Song." Just then, the band begins to play....what else?

These are the things that, to me, are a sign that I'm living very much in the flow of the universe.

If you're a long time reader of this blog, you know that we watch symbols. Gordon Gano may not put much weight on them, but I do. I don't judge them as being "good or evil"- I try not to judge them at all. But, I do make the connections, because doing so has led me in wonderful directions. So, for those of you who make up the choir I'm preaching to, allow me to present some dot connecting, as a sync log if nothing else.

The cover to New Times, features two hexagons, resonating two of our favorite patterns, Bees and Saturn. This is of course, an acorn-shaped nut and bolt, giving us the Egyptian sky goddess Nut and a bolt, like a bolt of Jupiter lighting. Nut was the mother of Osiris, who is the equivalent of Saturn, or Father Time. See how much "time" is integrated into this cover - and should be, since both words of the title convey an essence of time - but we have to ask, how much of this was the concept the artist was going for? The gear-like progression in the middle is clock-like, but even those SAW blades, become WAS.

Gordon Gano is a double-G. We recently found this combination of double-G and Jupiter along with an Osiris-resonant death spiral (which itself looks a LOT like the Norway Spiral).

And what would be a better title to tie it all together than "Add It Up?" Here we have the Ouroboros snake, in a death/rebirth cycle - or spiral. He's surrounded by 3 heads and 3 phalluses, themselves surrounded by interwoven pyramids (some with "eyes") and in the corners we get the 3 pillars of the Masonic first-degree tracing board - which itself was connected to the Norway Spiral in our Birds and Bees Pt 4.

Still doubt what I'm saying? Since we're talking about time loops and Father Time - I'd be remiss if I didn't bring up Time Travel.

Gordon Gano has two links under his Wikipedia heading "In Popular Culture"

Gano is mentioned in the novel The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger.^[9]

Gano appears as a fictional version of himself, under a love spell, in the 1997 Sabrina, the Teenage Witch episode Hilda and Zelda: the Teenage Years

Time Traveler's Wife is pretty obvious. But that Sabrina, the Teenage Witch episode? It features her mother figures reversing their ages to become teenagers so they can go see Gano and the Violent Femmes.

Smoke Signals of the Fire Bird

When I had first connected Smoke Signals to communication, I had done so in a mostly one-sided fashion. I saw smoke as something that obscured - and contemplated that it may be a harbinger of an internet shutdown. In that sense, at least on a micro-scale, I was correct. You may recall that I ended up losing my own internet connection for a while. However, there is that flip-side that I only touched on briefly: though smoke itself clouds our eyes, when it is harnessed, it can facilitate communication. A Smoke Signal is just that.

There's a ton of fire symbolism flying about lately, not the least of which was the manufactured Terry Jones 9/11 Koran-burning fiasco.

So let us peer into the smoke and try to read what it's telling us, eh?

Back in July we traveled through South Dakota, and stopped at the Crazy Horse Memorial. I had a dream the night before that I befriended and was playing with a wolf. I didn't know that I would end up on the land of the Dances with Wolves Lakota the next morning.

Alongside artwork featuring men communicating via smoke signals, there were images of peyote ceremonies. Not only did I see our old friend the Blue Bird, but he was there as a very literal representation of the smoke itself talking to us.

Since we're now looking at plant consciousness that is talking to us from the smoke, we see that these two patterns have a lot of overlap. And, just a few weeks ago, the peyote bird came back into my sights again. Melissa received a wedding gift via the mail from a friend that could not attend. I just thought it was a very pretty necklace and nothing more. But a few days ago, she asked me to help her put it on and the clasp caught my eye.

The bird shape, with the bird's head being used for the loop, gets cut down into the shape of a mushroom, does it not?

That reminds me, I looked into the etymology of the word "Ombudsman" the other day, for unrelated reasons. This bit struck me:

"The origin of the word is found in Old Norse umbuðsmann (accusative) and the word umbuds man, meaning representative (with the word umbud/ombud meaning proxy, that is someone who is authorized to act for someone else)"

Ask any hippie what they would consider to be "the Om-Bud," and I'm pretty sure I know what their answer would be. I'll give you a hint, it starts with 4 and ends in 20.

Now, cannabis and mushrooms are two different creatures and I don't want to over simplify the issue at hand, but "proxy, that is someone who is authorized to act for someone else," sure sounds a lot like words spoken by Terence McKenna and others. I used this quote once before but it bears repeating:

I couldn’t figure out whether the mushroom is the alien or the mushroom is some kind of technological artifact allowing me to hear the alien when the alien is actually light-years away, using some kind of Bell nonlocality principle to communicate. The mushroom states its own position very clearly. It says, ‘I require the nervous system of a mammal. Do you have one handy?’

-Terence McKenna

My own theories take "alien" to be the same as "other." That is not to say that alien intelligences may not exist off-world, simply that they are still a component of the universe (or myself) which I associate as being separate. It is no different if I speak of a man living down the block, or a lifeform living across the galaxy, or a mushroom spore or you the reader of this text right now. There is me AND there is you.

Our commonly recognized ampersand character is a typographic ligature - the combination of two very loaded letters.

ET is the other. This AND That.

"ET phone Om"

We have spent much time looking over the fire-in-the mind pentecost symbolism, but these images remind us that is just as important that we talk of a fire in the heart, as well as a fire in the mind.

"Paranoia happens when you start getting messages via the third eye chakra

with out opening the heart first."

-A Few Shots to Shaman, May 25th

Of course we want our synapses to FIRE....

But what of other elements? WATER on the brain is something we are told we surely do not want. And no one likes being called an AIRhead.

But, EARTH is also seen as positive. While "Healing The Divide," Tom Waits and the Saturnian Kronos Quartet tell us we should always keep a diamond in our mind:

In another song, Get Behind The Mule, he mentions the importance of keeping "a Sapphire in your mind." The sapphire is something I've been collecting notes on for months, but I'm not ready to say what it means yet. I'm thinking it goes back to this image from the first time I wrote about the blue bird:

Another thing that hit me the other day was that the flaming tongues sprouting from the heads of those in the Pentecost images...

...sure look like they've got an idea as to what's going on.

Is the lightbulb, as symbol of our modern flame, a hint to a new sort of divine light, aided by our technological advancements? The internet and computer intelligences have helped me get to the point where I am now. How about you?

Maybe it's a little bit of everything. All of the others. Maybe we're being aided by plant intelligence, and computer intelligence, and extra-terrestrial intelligence, and animal intelligence - even insect.

"Holy Spirit, Batman, my cosmic awareness is tingling."

Now, if you ask me, I'd say we basically have two possibilities. One, is that we're all one infinite consciousness and all these seemingly different entities are an illusion (as are you and I). The other option, is that we are all intertwined, yet separate - and that we need to start looking at ways to coexist in symbiotic relationships.

Spider-Man, the comic character who should know better since he's got those flaming tongues sprouting from his head, put a dangerous spin on the term "symbiotic" for a whole generation if not more.

In the third movie, the black costume just basically lands in Spider-Man's lap with no explanation. It was an alien lifeform that was carried here on a falling meteorite, just like mushrooms may actually have been. (This also syncs nicely with the Flaming Hare, Fiery Birth, iCrator and Step-Ember posts as well as a powerful dream I had two nights ago).

The original comic version of the "symbiotic costume" is a little different. He gets the new alien costume during Marvel's "Secret War"

Interesting that we should be having this conversation while we are currently in the midst of our own Secret War, as narrated by Christopher Knowles.

An interesting factoid from the comic run, the symbiotes were harmed by two things, Fire and Sonics, both of which have become increasingly important symbols in my work.

Click here if you really need a fix of super-geeky symbiote history, but suffice it to say that Spider-Man comics make symbiotic relationships seem evil. Parasitic even.

We've all been in relationships that were one-sided, we've all been taken advantage of. But we should never confuse that with a symbiotic relationship. True symbiotic relationships are founded on trust and love, they provide us with the opportunity to live in harmony.

Whether we are one single universal awareness, or an intricately connected web of individuals who then make up something larger, or a seemingly paradoxical combination of the two - is not something we need to argue over at the moment, since the moral is really the same either way.

"Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."

StarCup: A Hare in the Grail is Ni in the Bush

A bit back, the Sync Whole did a series on the Star Cup, which overlapped with a lunar eclipse and dealt mainly in the idea of a merging of two perceived opposites - you know, Union.

A few days before Melissa and I got married - celebrated our Union - we needed to unwind from the stress of planning and preparing for the big day. We chilled and watched Monty Python and the Holy Grail for what must be the buzzillionth time. This image from the inside booklet struck me as if I had never seen it before.

Putting the rabbit in the holy grail adds a whole other spin to the image. We saw how the rabbit and the moon already go together in the Flaming Hare post, but note the quote that reads "Inspired Lunacy!" Luna, of course, meaning the moon. So here we have a quite literal representation of the StarCup with two big nods to the lunar eclipse.

But perhaps I should go into the idea of the StarCup a little further. It was explained as being the union of This and That, Male and Female, Yin and Yang, Ego and Id, etc. etc. etc.

This obviously plays into questions of Individuality and Oneness.

While many will debate the finer points of these two seemingly opposing ideals, the StarCup was meant as a metaphor to teach us that both are true at once. We are both Separate and Whole. (And if you're ready for a bigger mindfu3k, realize that we are also creator, created, creating [and destroyer, I might add] all at once as well. See Toure's iCreator post for more on that beautiful truth).

How much of our dualistic thinking is a product of Hegelian constructs? What is the fate for succumbing to duality?

In the same Python movie, there is a famous scene with "The Knights who say Ni." These knights shout the word "Ni" as a sort of verbal weapon. We had just examined the fact that "Ni" in Japanese is "Two." So, perhaps the reason Arthur and his round table were so flustered by the word "Ni" is because they were being shouted at in Hegelian terms of duality. While they were seeking union with the holy grail (StarCup) others sought to divert them from their path with thoughts of "Two." Bear in mind, the last obstacle/distraction the Knights who say Ni throw before Arthur is a red herring.

So, if we are seeking to find balance (or Union) between our seemingly opposed halves - we should learn to integrate all that they have to teach us.

I just covered some of the Eco/ECCO/Echo syncs I'd encountered in the last post. I am now thinking that this may be a product of and/or a representation of the Id and the collective unconscious.

I just saw a bus ad for a show that looks like a rehashed Dharma and Greg, but that would also seem to confirm my hunch.

Ego meets Eco.

Ego meets Id.

See how the "Ego" and "Id" resonators each hold a cup?

This synopsis of the show describes the "Ego" character as a "Playboy"

Playboy=Bunny

Everything begins to (e)merge in Union

I don't often write about politics anymore - much of that conversation just seems like noise and an unnecessary aspect of human existence. But, I understand that the interest I had in political affairs a few years ago was something I needed to experience or I never would have met my wife. So allow me a brief-as-possible backstory, then we'll dive into the synchro-goodies:

The journey

Though no one in my family ever discussed politics or paid it much attention, I grew up drawing cartoons of a character named Umpa, a monkey that was forced into slave labor for a television studio that oppressed the masses via tv programming. Umpa spearheaded a rebellion. I had no politics, sans seeking freedom and opposing authoritarianism. Probably a normal emotion for a child to express - though perhaps an unusual way to express it.

Immediately after 9/11, when I saw my skyline altered and the place I had my HS prom demolished, I was not angry but a bit saddened. However, over the next few days and weeks the propaganda was turned on full force and I was admittedly swayed into the camp of blindly angry Americans.

In 2005, I had my first psychedelic experience and all the programming flew out the window. And I mean all of it - not just the post-9/11 fear-mongering, but all the stuff that had been put into my head throughout my life. This is something that can only be fully understood by someone who has had an ego-death experience.

I existed for a short while with a great inner peace and felt as if I was at one with creation. But, slowly, my ego began to rebuild itself - albeit with new parameters. I felt as if I had to atone for my role in supporting Bush's attack on Iraq and worked to hold him accountable. I attended a lecture on the Impeachment process at a church up in Harlem. That was it - I attended a lecture. I was now considered a terrorist. Over the next few days, I was repeatedly visited by federal agents in black suits who wanted to intimidate me. They broke into my house and searched through my belongings (which, according to the Patriot Act, I cannot tell you about or I am committing another "crime"). It was at this point that I realized what these guys would do to hold onto their imagined power structure, and I was driven to do more research and spent a good deal of time in the depths of conspiracy literature.

When the 2008 election-cycle came about, I supported Ron Paul's candidacy and worked on what I thought was a campaign against tyranny. By February 2008, Ron Paul's run was essentially over and I had to catch up on all my personal responsibilities that I had let slide during the campaign. Realizing that campaign politics were a product of the very system I opposed, I looked for an outlet that better suited me. I began to write about Umpa again, after oh so many years, in a book that would become Look At All The Happy Creatures.

Months passed, and I received a phone call asking if I wanted to go with some of the Ron Paul supporters from NYC out to an event he was holding in Minnesota. It was being held next to, and in opposition of, the RNC. Something told me I had to go - a feeling deep inside, that I had not heard in a long time, told me to say yes and make the trip.

Very often, this is how synchronicity works. We have to travel the long road to get to the right place at the right time.

On September 2nd 2008, in a crowd of 10,000 people, I spotted her. An intense wave of - what can I call it but destiny or a guiding light - drew me to her. Melissa had a glow about her and I knew that she was my future. I tapped her on the elbow and said, "excuse me miss." Two years later, to the day, we married.

Union

There has been much talk lately, both on the national political spectrum and on a personal synchromystic spectrum, of gay marriage. California's Prop 8 was featured on the Sync Whole and is still resonating over on Michael's blog, where he has connected it to the now-familiar 88.

I guess this is a product of my own journey, but what amazes me is that people are still looking to be recognized by The State. Why seek a license (essentially permission) from anyone? I don't care if you are gay or straight, if you find love in this world, you'd better embrace it - and screw what anybody else thinks.

There have been many family members and friends that have offered their advice over the last few months - telling us that we should register for a marriage license, that it would make life easier. But, that's something that doesn't even pop onto my radar anymore, and, if I am forced to think of it, I am repelled by it. What does a third-party bureaucracy have to do with love? What does it have to do with anything?

Though I categorize the political philosophy of Happy Creatures as Libertarian, that's really because it is a less loaded word than anarchy. My biggest issue with Libertarians is that, try as they might to oppose the system, they are still playing somebody else's game. I'm done opposing anybody's system - be that governmental or conspiratorial shadows. I'm not going to fight anybody or anything. I just disregard the noise. I embrace the love.

Kurt Vonnegut, while very often espousing poor political advice, inadvertently gives an amazing metaphor for this way of thinking in the prologue to Timequake. He's talking about a method for writing. I'm talking about a method for living.

"Ernest Hemingway in 1952 published in Life magazine a long short story called The Old Man and the Sea. It was about a Cuban fisherman who hadn't caught anything for eighty-four days. The Cuban hooked an enormous marlin. He killed it and lashed it alongside his boat. Before he could get it to shore, though, sharks bit off all the meat on the skeleton.

I was living in Barnstable Village on Cape Cod when the story appeared. I asked a neighboring commercial fisherman what he thought of it. He said the hero was an idiot. He should have hacked off the best chunks of meat and put them in the bottom of the boat, and left the rest of the carcass for the sharks.

It could be that the sharks Hemingway had in mind were critics who hadn't much liked his first novel in ten years, Across the River and into the Trees, published two years earlier. As far as I know, he never said so. But the marlin could have been that novel.

And then I found myself in the winter of 1996 the creator of a novel which did not work, which had no point, which had never wanted to be written in the first place. Merde! I had spent nearly a decade on that ungrateful fish, if you will. It wasn't even fit for shark chum.

I had recently turned seventy-three. My mother made it to fifty-two, my father to seventy-two. Hemingway almost made it to sixty-two. I had lived too long! What was I to do?

Answer: Filet the fish. Throw the rest away."

This is also good advice on how to write a blog post, so let me assume I've made my point and give you what you really came here for...

In our last post, we overlapped heavily with the Fiery Birth post from the Sync Whole. The US Open logo I wanted to write about looked exactly like the meteor impact placard they found near a Canadian lake. They later added more content to that post, and made it even more in sync. They went into tennis syncs as well and then wrote about two weddings that started a conversation on Union. All this, days before our wedding!

Here is the US Open poster I had stared at in the subway. It makes the logo look even more like a meteor by the way it flies over the city. See the Sync Whole's follow-up to the Fiery Birth, a post about a meteor crashing in Columbia on September 5th, for a record of just how strong the flow is these days. The hits just keep on coming!

And, speaking of great balls of fire, I would be remiss if I did not point out that the US Open is held at the Arthur Ashe stadium!

By passing through the center of the tennis racket, the ball becomes even more resonant of a sun by creating a circumpunct. It also reminds me of a bullseye. Kinda like the Martian impact crater (formed by more falling celestial bodies) we were shown on August 4th of all days.

Perhaps, telling us to find our center, this bullseye is found again on the cover for the Pink Floyd collection, Echoes.

Note how much of this current study stems out of a look at the symbolism of the fires of the Pentecost, and the man who has just passed the bullseye (emerged from his center) is on fire.

Echoes

The word "echoes" is another familiar sign these days. Just as I was typing "echoes" into google search to find that album art, the auto-fill gave me "Echoes of the Rainbow," a movie with a poster that brings us back to the August 4th double-rainbow and features a cross (X-marks the spot).

But I can't think of "Echo" without thinking of John Lilly's ECCO, you know, those beyond-our-perception buggers who control coincidences here on earth. While I can't attest for the things Lilly believes he discovered while exploring the human limits of psychedelic intake - I do not entirely dismiss them either. Lord knows I learned a lot from my experiences.

I like how the artwork done for Lilly's ECCO from the futurehi website features dolphins. Which brings us to Ecco the dolphin - a game brought to us by Genesis. I never knew this, but that game also involved time-travel and space beings.

Dolphins crossed paths with meteors and comets again recently in this NosisTV video:

After watching that video, what's funny to me is that, with so much talk of Panspermia lately, I had used the Peach tree as an analogy for the possible propagation of plant consciousness. I said that a peach tree gives you delicious fruit for you to eat so you'll crap it out at a distance with your own fertilizer. Would not the Mushroom spore or Cannabis plant invite you to cultivate it so that it can continue on and use your nervous system when necessary?

That's an explanation for "the green movement" I haven't heard yet.

That reminds me, you may have noticed the name change over on the side there. When I realized that it may be the cause for all the Osiris-syncs I was experiencing, I had briefly mentioned that I would be changing my last name to Green in an older post. In one of our first phone conversations, Melissa and I spoke about favorite colors. We both adore the color green. I said, super early on in that first or second conversation, that if we ever got married we could change our last name to Green. And so we have.

We passed through the center...merged...

...and emerged green.

Oh, and we passed through the marriage stargate at exactly 4:02:32 PM.

My initials change from (AJA)111 to (AJG)117, which is Melissa's birthday, so that's pretty cool. That also means that I'm now AG which is 17 in numerology terms and the element silver.

Green is the color of the heart chakra, and therefore quite appropriate for a celebration of love.

But green has its modern connection to Echo/Ecco as well, since we often see the pairing of "green" and "eco."

gotta love that green sun there, eh?

We held our wedding at Bear Mountain, which encodes the B&M combo that is always familiar around here, but that wasn't the only interesting sync. There are four cabins at Bear Mountain (Beaver, Spring, Echo, and Summit) and we were going to rent one out. The closest one to the wedding site was Beaver, but I didn't want to tell people I was getting married at the Beaver lodge - just gives off the wrong vibe. I didn't like Summit, so we had to decide between Spring and Echo. "Spring" sounds nice, but a bit plain. I wondered if "Echo" was a bit too loaded.

Then, as we're making this choice, a guy on the street randomly hands me this book:

Suffice it to say, we chose "Echo"

And, there is another explanation to "Echo" besides that provided by Lilly. I recall that I had made a connection between The Green Man and reverberating sound. We had about 50 people at our wedding. Knowing us, it was probably 51.

I know this post is a little all over the place, but that's how it is. Our wedding was a wonderful celebration from the heart - and it overlapped with all these other intellectual pursuits. I don't wish to give the impression that I believe our day was controlled by John Lilly's ECCO or mushroom spores floating through space or anything else. Instead, I think that following a non-judgmental path of synchronicity we were able to recognize patterns even within our most special day. Honestly, there's just too many to recount here. But, that's the way Melissa and I have travelled together since we met. Never judging, always flowing, always loving.

On September 11th (boy is it cheap to fly that day) we leave for our HONEY-MOON in the fire-resonant land of Kali-Fornia.

re: Individuation vs. the Mass Mind

Chris Knowles began a much-needed conversation in his post, The Exegesis: Individuation vs. the Mass Mind. My response just got way too long, so I'm bringing it over here.

Chris,

I'm with you on being anti-statist. It's a major theme within my novel - and a serious threat in our every day. I stopped getting as hung up on the individual vs collective thing - and focus on Voluntarism over Authoritarianism. I support anyone doing whatever they want, as long as they don't impose their will on me.

I believe we need to cherish the individual (both ego and personal id).

Now, as to that thing often referred to as the collective unconscious - it's such a tough call. I know we can tap into something very very real, but, I am unsure of its nature. Is it a collective unconscious or an alien conscious or what?

I've had verifiable/quantifiable Ecco/Valis moments (like getting winning lottery numbers real). But that one was immediately followed by meeting a random 33rd degree, who told me he "could get me in" and "I know you should join." Frats just aren't my style. I declined and the specific data stream stopped.

I've instead focused on honing the knowledge & skill to tap into it on a personal level. That's individualism in one respect, but, like anything, it comes with a lot of info from a lot of others (yourself included). Does that sharing of info create or feed the collective unconscious?

Lately I've had incredible shared/convergent syncs and it seems quite beautiful. But the concept of a hive-mind is not something I find appealing either.

I think the issue is well stated in the Futurama movie The Beast With a Billion Backs. Fun fact: The movie came out on June 24th (Midsummer/St John's Day).

This question is one I have thought a lot about lately. The answer I found was the one I seem to always come back to. It's about balance.

Like musicians - we can harmonize our voices AND play our respective instruments as individual artists to create a new thing that is more than the sum of its parts.

Whatever that otherness/oneness is - we don't have to be assimilated by it - but we should live in harmony with it.

UFO - Unveiled Frequency Object

Back when I wrote the X-51 post (about Boeing's hyper-sonic vehicle and alien consciousness coming into this dimension via the 2001 Stargate), Michael from Gosporn's comments got me thinking more and more about the nature of Sonics, as they relate to the make-up of time/space.

While this was stewing in my mind, Michael wrote another post displaying some of the examples of heavenly spinning. Since I have been thinking a lot about time-travel, my thoughts immediately jumped to an old episode of Darkwing Duck that featured a time-machine made out of a spinning top. Bonus sync hit: while looking for the ep on YouTube, I found a guy with tons of Darkwing Duck episodes that uses the name BoeingInABox.

This episode is great, in that it not only gives me more semiotic proof of a pet theory - but that it also happens to show the thin line between hero and villain. Human beings are often turned into monsters by their own tragedies, heartbreaks or good intentions. I watched this cartoon tale of a tragedy-fueled Police State just a day or two before Charlie Veitch of The Love Police beautifully explained our modern dilemma at the G20.

While looking for old Darkwing Duck episodes, I noticed another interesting detail. You may be familiar with Chris Knowles and his Alien Dreaming & Widening Gyre study, where he's pointed out that X-Files episodes with alien contact are almost always preceded by episodes dealing with hallucinogens or hallucinogenic consciousness. Well, here we have a Darkwing Duck episode guide from Wiki. First, a character becoming infused with an intelligent plant consciousness, has vivid waking-dream hallucinations in the next episode (while looking for "The Fountain of Knowledge" to boot), and the very next episode features UFO contact.

Incredible.

As all this is coming to my attention, and alien sonics are on my brain, I begin to install a new audio editing program on my computer. While reading the PDF manual I come across this amazing shot of what looks like a classic UFO shot. But, it's just a visual of sound.

Here's a close-up:

So, my friends, if people see these things in altered states - and I can attest to the time I saw music coming out of a speaker - are they witnessing objects that exist in a parallel vibrational state? Are these objects, wether alien in the traditional sense or not, merely outside our normal sensory detection?

From out of the Monolith: X-51

There's been so much in the way of wild deep-space news lately that it might be hard to keep up. Amid Japan's return trip from an asteroid and their success in unfurling their solar sail, the speculation of life on Saturn's moon Titan, and the SpaceX Falcon9 creating another crazy spiral in the skies over OZ and on and on, you may have missed this one:

Boeing Phantom Works breaks sound records with their X-51

(Watch a video of the flight here)

Now, as soon, as I saw that, I was reminded of a Marvel comics character of the same name - and he brings all of the themes we've been looking at lately back together for a family reunion.

X-51 was originally introduced as double-M Mister Machine, but his name was later changed to double-M Machine Man. His first appearance was in issue #8 of the 2001 adaptation/spin-off comic done by Chris Knowles' muse Jack Kirby in July of '77 (777).

"From out of the Monolith"

Notice the broken egg - a favorite symbol of the Sync Whole

This character really brings together so much of what I have written about, but also the material that I have been reading others write about. His mythos has so many beheadings that I'm left wondering about John the Baptist and other archetypes. He meets his arch-villain, the double-M Madame Menace in issue #17 of his own book. His most recent appearance has him fighting Zombies and tripods from the flipped-double-M, War of the Worlds.

Nice spiral in the logo, eh?

Michael just recently wrote about Zombies and they have been on my mind since Steve Wilner's 3rd "Cracks in the Wall" (the explanation of why I thought about zombies after that will have to be its own post). And the SyncWhole boys have been doing wonders with their "War of World Cup" study.

So this character connects a lot of dots, but before I give you the money shot, let's consider the Boeing X-51 is meant to be a hyper-sonic weapon and this is the photo comicvine.com uses to summarize his origin:

Plus, Boeing's X-51 gets paired with everyone's favorite, the Trident missile....

You may remember that a lot of what started me looking at all this stargate symbolism in comparison to my research was finding a lot of syncs with Jake Kotze's 9/11 Stargate thesis. Well, two of my favorites in that series are the Why2K vids, connecting Xanadu and Kublai Khan to the Monolith.

Jake, this one is for you my brother:

"Kublai Khan commands: 'Bring me the body of Aaron Stack (X-51)!"