Steve and Erin Pavlina have just recorded the first podcast that they’ve done together. It’s called Being Psychic, and it focuses on Erin’s explanation of what being a psychic is all about. After falling off a kitchen barstool and splitting her head open at the age of 4, she started running around telling everyone she had ESP. Today she’s a professional psychic, in high demand and charging $295 for a 30-minute reading.

The podcast covers topics such as lucid dreaming, astral projection, spirit guides, what happens when you die, psychic impressions vs. emotions and imagination, what happens during a reading, how to develop your own psychic skills, and skepticism.

I don’t think it’s necessary to be a believer in order to enjoy it. If you’re at least somewhat open to the possibility of psychic phenomena, you’ll probably find it very appealing. It’s pretty long at 96 minutes, and the sound quality isn’t as good as Steve’s other podcasts, but it’s good enough.

I thought it was very interesting and entertaining, and I learned some things about Erin’s psychic journey that I didn’t know before. She seriously rocks, and now I’m even more appreciative that she picked my How To Be A Woman post as her third favorite of 52 submissions (and her #1 favorite by a guy).

Has anyone here ever gotten a reading from Erin?

Photo by aturkus

In The Matrix, Neo experiences some synchronicities, coincidences that are just so weird, so ironic, so impeccably timed, that despite his best efforts he can’t pass them off as being purely random.

A black cat walks by him, and then in a deja vu, another cat walks by, making movements that are absolutely identical to the first one. He gets an anonymous message on his computer saying “follow the white rabbit,” and then a few minutes later someone is standing at his door with a tattoo of a white rabbit on her shoulder.

Neo has a feeling that these synchronicities mean something, but he can’t put his finger on it. To the people who have already been enlightened, it’s perfectly obvious that they mean something. They’re signs from the universe guiding him, showing him the path he’s meant to follow according to the grand design.

Sometimes I can’t shake the feeling that the real world works the same way.

Have you ever been thinking about someone, when suddenly the phone rang and you just knew it was them? Or have you ever had a song stuck in your head, when suddenly you heard it on the radio?

To be sure, a good number of strange coincidences are bound to happen just by chance. There are only a finite number of people, places, and things out there, so every once in a while two things will just randomly be in sync.

But sometimes so many unlikely things all happen at the same time, that it seems to be beyond chance. Let me tell you about a few recent examples in my life.

Bracelets for a Complaint Free World

On February 19th, my boss called me into his office, closed the door, and asked me “What do you think this is about?”

The answer was that I thought I was being fired for my attitude problem (long story short: I hate my job). But of course I wasn’t going to say that. Like when a cop asks you if you know why they pulled you over, you don’t say “Oh, that’s because I’m wanted in 48 states. You must have found the gun I threw into the river behind Fat Tony’s safe house two miles down the road.”

It’s a good thing I didn’t say anything, because it turned out that I was getting a bonus because of my “attitude and enthusiasm.” I have no idea where that came from, but it was so out of place I could barely contain my laughter. I took it as a sign that I got lucky this time, but I really needed to do something to fix my attitude ASAP, before it caught up with me.

I had heard about these purple complaint bracelets that Rev. Will Bowen was using to get people to go for 21 days without complaining. I had ordered some bracelets five months before, but I was still waiting. I knew they were really backed up, but were my bracelets eventually going to arrive, or had my order been lost?

On March 2nd, Pick The Brain announced that they were giving away 15 copies of Will Bowen’s book A Complaint Free World. All you had to do was leave a comment on their site that week, and you were entered into the competition. Hmmm, was I supposed to win?

On March 5th, I discovered Clay Collins at The Growing Life. Click on that link–do you notice something about his picture? Yup, he’s wearing one of those purple bracelets. So I left a comment asking him how long he had to wait to get them. To my surprise, he emailed me and offered to send me one of his extra bracelets! Are you kidding me?

On March 9th, I learned that I had won a copy of the book from Pick The Brain.

The message was clear: I really need to stop complaining. I can’t just ignore it anymore.

It Don’t Come Easy for Ringo Starr

On March 24, I wrote a post that briefly mentioned Ringo Starr as an example of someone who is mistakenly believed to have had an easy life.

The next morning, Catherine Lawson left a comment saying she didn’t realize that Ringo had a tough time on his way to the top.

A couple of hours later, as I was coming back from lunch, the last song on the radio was Ringo’s “It Don’t Come Easy.”

That evening, I watched an episode of The Simpsons. It just happened to be the one featuring that song, where Marge paints a portrait of Ringo.

The next morning, the radio had an interview with photographer Nancy Lee Andrews, Ringo’s former fiance.

That’s an awful lot of Ringo! But I don’t know what it means yet. I guess if I see him in real life, I have to follow him. Barring that, I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.

Kill Bill and Japan

On April 5th, my friend in Japan called me because I’m going to visit him soon. It was just by chance that he called on that particular day, because we hadn’t spoken in months. One of the things we talked about was whether we were going to make a trip to Tokyo. I had said that I wanted to go, but I didn’t realize it was going to cost $400 to get there. I didn’t mind paying that, but I didn’t want to obligate him and his wife to spend $800 if they didn’t really want to. After some discussion of the pros and cons, we decided that we’re probably going to go to Tokyo.

Right after our call, I went to Blockbuster to rent a movie. It was just by chance, because I don’t rent a lot of movies, and I wasn’t even supposed to be home that weekend.

I went through the new releases and didn’t see anything that seemed especially good. Then I considered action vs. drama, and decided to look through the action section, starting with the As. I got up to the Ks before I found something that caught my eye–Kill Bill. I didn’t know anything about it, other than it being a Quentin Tarantino movie, but I decided on it instantly.

I had no idea that half the movie was set in Japan! And I don’t think I’ve ever seen a movie set in Japan before. Even the version of Godzilla I saw was set in New York.

In the movie, Uma Thurman travels from the U.S. to Okinawa, and stays there for a month. Then, she goes off to kill Lucy Liu, the head of the Japanese crime world, who just happens to be located in…come on, you know this…Tokyo.

That settled it. I’m definitely going to Tokyo. I just don’t know why…yet.

The Karate Kid and Moving from New Jersey

Now that I think about it, I experienced another location-related synchronicity from a movie years ago. I was living in New Jersey, and I liked the area OK, but I didn’t like the career options that were available there, especially during the dot bomb days. My sister was trying to convince me to move to L.A. (where she lived) so I could do something more creative.

When we went to the beach that summer, she brought a movie for us to watch, The Karate Kid. Unbeknownst to her at the time, Daniel moves from New Jersey to L.A. before learning the secrets of karate from Mr. Miyagi. Yeah universe, real subtle. I didn’t move to L.A., but I did move to Virginia (which is where I got my black belt many years ago). Still working on doing something more creative, though.

Is This For Real?

Bear in mind that I’m not trying to convince you that any of this is more than coincidence. I’m just sharing some things that have happened to me, and suggesting that this might be worth thinking about. I do experience a lot of synchronicities, and they seem to happen more often the more I accept that they might mean something.

Could it all be in my head? Of course. But the more I think about it, the more I find it possible or even likely that some force is out there saying “Take the hint, moron” every time a sign appears. I really wouldn’t be surprised if I suddenly realized that life is just a dream, and everything happens because it’s supposed to happen.

What about you? Do you find that things happen to you that seem like they could be not just coincidence, but signs from the universe?

Image from The Matrix (1999).

“Have you ever had a dream, Neo, that you were so sure was real? What if you were unable to wake from that dream? How would you know the difference between the dream world and the real world?”

- Morpheus, The Matrix

For the last few months, I’ve been getting by on much less sleep than I used to. A nap in the early evening makes all the difference. However, I’m finding that I need at least 3 hours of sleep at night, or bad things happen. Bad things like barely being able to function in the morning, or oversleeping by 4 hours.

This morning was a new experience though. After getting 2 hours of sleep the night before, I lay down yesterday at 6:40 PM to take a 20 minute power nap. When I woke up, the clock said 5:30 AM. I was drawing a blank on what the heck was going on.

After a minute I remembered that I was supposed to wake up at 7 PM, so either I slept waaaaaaaaaay too long, or the clock was wrong. As I moved closer to check the clock, I noticed something very strange. When I moved my head, the clock of course stayed in place, but the numbers on the clock moved with me. They actually came off the clock! That’s when I thought that maybe this was my first lucid dream.

Ideally I would have written about lucid dreaming before, as there’s a lot to say about it. But for now, a short explanation will suffice. A lucid dream is a dream in which you’re aware that you’re dreaming. While technically asleep, you’re fully conscious, you have more or less complete control over your dream, and everything seems as real as it does when you’re awake. And don’t bother being skeptical, because scientific experiments have verified lucid dreaming.

I’ve heard that a good way to have a lucid dream is simply to intend to have one, or even to think about it. And since we had just been discussing lucid dreaming on Catherine Lawson’s blog, I thought maybe that had done it.

The numbers on my clock didn’t look right, but maybe that was just because I was groggy. I needed a bigger sign, so I got up and started looking for a “glitch in the matrix,” an imperfection in this fantastic simulation that would prove it was just a dream. But if you can’t wake from your dream, how would you know the difference between the dream world and the real world?

• Pinching yourself doesn’t work, because you can feel pain in dreams.
• First I tried to fly (not by jumping out the window, just from where I was). It didn’t work. If I could fly, then I’d know it was a dream. But not being able to fly doesn’t prove anything.
• Then I tried turning on the lights. Light switches rarely work in dreams. If they’re on, they stay on, and if they’re off, they stay off. The lights were off, and I flipped the switch. Nothing. But that didn’t mean anything, because I was just flipping the wall switch, and maybe the lamp itself was off. I tried another switch and a light came on. But that didn’t necessarily mean I wasn’t dreaming.
• Mirrors are my favorite reality check. Reflections in dreams often don’t look like they’re supposed to, and I often check mirrors when awake to make sure everything’s OK. But it looked right in this case. I was becoming more convinced that I was awake.
• Next, I tried reading things, looking away, and then reading them again. Very often, text will change in dreams. But it didn’t here. Darn. I was going to have to go to work in a couple of hours.
• Finally, I turned on my computer and starting checking email. Surely my subconscious mind wasn’t capable of emailing me or leaving comments on my blog, so I must have been awake.

All this just to find out that I had simply overslept and waken up disoriented. It was a bit disappointing, but also good practice for next time. In the meantime, I’ll have to start getting more sleep.