Speculative Fiction (New Weird) Author
Hey, read this article today. It just goes to show ya: don’t believe everything you read in the media.
But, you already knew that, didn’t you.
Here’s a little game to play: try to substitute any positive word or thought for a negative one. If you’re thinking about how many bills you have to pay, immediately change it around to “I have an abundance of wealth!” If you’re thinking you’re not going to get that promotion or your project isn’t going to win at the Science Fair, instead change it around to “I have an abundance of success!” And don’t be looking for immediate results, what we’re doing, here, is neural rewiring! We’re changing patterns of behavior–not looking for immediate “pots of gold.”
So, see how long you can do it! If you falter…start over again!
Think it’s easy? Maybe even a waste of your time?
If our thoughts drive our actions, I think you can make the connection. But it’s also interesting to note how your thoughts, actions, and words come out of you. Think you’re really an optimist? A happy, positive person? Examining your thoughts and actions in this way can be quite eye-opening. And as we’ve all heard from psychologists and all the other great thinkers, if you think one way, it carries over into your actions. If you don’t initially believe something, yet pretend to believe that something, eventually you do come to believe it (now, sometimes the body and/or mind can “revolt” or take issue, say, perhaps with sneezing or any other bodily function, but ask yourself if this is related to some innate “push back” because of a fear of success, or change, or any other internal issue you may have–everything’s related…).
After all, if you had a choice to go through life as a happy and positive individual, wouldn’t you prefer that over being dark, dank, and depressed? Personally (and we all have our “moments,” me included), I prefer to go through life with a smile and a good word than the alternative. Greeting “Hi, how ya doin?” to all I meet, and trying to get them to smile. It’s just the way I am.
I got this “game” from a book, called The Way Toward Health, by Jane Roberts, Seth, and Robert Butts. It’s been in other forms in other books by these three, but I most recently completed rereading it and have been earnestly playing the game the past week (I’ve actually been doing this most of my life, but revitalized it recently). It’s most enlightening. But it’s also important to keep it fun, and “like” a game. Don’t get pissy or down on yourself…just observe and substitute. It’s important to remain playful!
The Way Toward Health, like all their books, is a fascinating read, the last one worked on by Jane, literally days before she passed on, on Sept 9, 1984. It may be a stretch for many (the whole Seth and channeling aspect might leave some cold…but whether or not you agree with the delivery mechanics…is the information at all useful to you?), but if you give it a chance, it might give you some different perspectives on how to “be healthy” in mind, body, and spirit.
So…what are you thinking right this moment?
Okay, so my wife and I watched two movies about France over the weekend (Midnight in Paris and Hugo), and I just read a blog post involving France (see Cara Black).
Then there’s the tragic French shootings, and its aftermath. It’s nothing to laugh at and is heinous, but it involves France, that is my point.
Then there’s THIS French article. And another one I can no longer find.
It’s just weird I tell you.
All of a sudden…all-things France are entering my life. It’s another synchronicity issue I’m pointing out, here.
I keep waiting for the Coneheads to show up at our door.
Over the weekend, my wife and I watched a romantic comedy I hadn’t heard anything about (I’d had two back-to-back biz trips when it came out, my wife said): Midnight in Paris, by Woody Allen.
I’m a sucker for alternate reality stories!
Much of what I write about messes around with reality in one way or the other. And if this mechanic is well-handled and brought into a mainstream medium, all the better! I wish I could remember another one I really liked, but it was years ago and about something as similar, like people passing by in a supermarket, wondering “what-ifs,” or something. Dang it! Anyway, this is about an engaged couple who are tagging along some wealthy-cum-snobby parents on a business trip to Paris. Owen Wilson’s character, Gil, is in love with Paris and doesn’t want to leave…his fiancée, Rachel McAdams’s, Inez, not so much.
Oooh, conflict–the great must-have in all good storytelling!
If you’re at all perceptive, you can see it all coming a mile away, but that’s not the important part for me–what I loved was the whole back-in-time travel, the period and location ambiance, meeting all the Greats du History…Hemingway (“Who wants to fight!“), Gertrude Stein, Dali, the Fitzgeralds. The carrying on of two, parallel lives, and how they interacted with each other, even across time (the diary of Marion Cotillard’s character, Adriana…). I loved the mechanism of travel to the past. There’s so much I want to say about this movie, but I don’t want to give away anything else about it, including the realization Gil has at the end of the movie, obvious or not. It is such an enjoyable film, and always fun to watch Owen Wilson. But I love the “peeking behind the curtain” aspects, here, the personal epiphanies…and Woody Allen did an excellent job with its creation!
Synchronicity. The coincidental occurrence of events that seem related, but are not explained by conventional mechanisms of causality.
We all experience this, don’t we? Many times in our lives? Many of us might just brush it off as “coincidence” (events that occur at the same time by “accident,” but seem to have some connection)…but should we? I’m a firm believer that nothing is wasted in nature and life, nothing is “by accident.” Life is too precious and important to be chaotically accidental in any way.
Really, something as important as life is accidental?
Just happened to happen?
That might suit scientists, but not me. And I’m not going to get into all I feel is going on in the background, here, because this is the stuff of books…but I did want to focus instead on the cool occurrence of synchronicity and coincidence. How we experience events in our lives and should give them more attention. At least acknowledge them. I feel such events show the inherent interconnectedness of life. That all things are related. It actually seems to be a form of quantum entanglement, to use a more officially acceptable term:
Whatever happened to one particle would thus immediately affect the other particle, wherever in the universe it may be. Einstein called this “Spooky action at a distance.”
Amir D. Aczel, Entanglement, The Greatest Mystery In Physics.
In fact, as I wrote this, and scrolled down the page that is hyperlinked above, I literally set my eyes on FIgure 5.2, at the bottom, just as the words “a little fuzzy” came from the TV in the next room. There was an other “Mayhem” commercial on, with Mayhem sitting on a roof as a new satellite dish that then fell off the roof and onto the home owner’s car.
This is what I’m talking about. This stuff happens to me–us–all the time. In fact, as I started work on this post yesterday I found an old webpage I had years ago where I tracked a bunch of synchroncities. I’ve added back to my website. Check it out.
Perhaps it shows that there is a “river of themes” that runs throughout our lives (as I write this, a commercial for a rescue swimmer is on TV…). That there is energy in the background of our lives that attracts related events…or causes them. I don’t feel this is a useless nothing, but just one more method to show us all that we are all connected to this river. We all have our own rivers, and they cross and merge with each other. So, if this does happen…if all things are related…must that also mean that all our acts affect all other acts? In other words, everything affects everything?
What we think affects what others think? What we do (and this we do know) affects what others do?
Okay, so, maybe you’re not exactly onboard with the “what we think affects what others think,” but surely you can see the second part? That how we act out in the world affects others? That if we treat someone with respect, that might make another feel good about themselves, and how they, in turn, might behave in a more positive way than if we dismissed them or dumped on them? How if we picked up a piece of trash in our way, it bettered the world–and another might have seen this, and do the same thing themselves?
At the very least, synchronistic and coincidental events are fascinating. Even if we can’t explain them, they get us to thinking–dare I say, exercise our imagination?
So, if you take anything away from this post, take away to try to be more mindful of your day and these little instances of curious synchronicity. If anything, it might make your day a little more fun…looking for stuff peeking out from behind the curtain of life….
I don’t want this site to just be about me.
I really don’t.
I want others to visit and leave a personal “Just Plain Weird” or otherwise “esoteric” story or two about yourselves! For YOU to share weird things that have happened to you. Things that just didn’t “traditionally add up” in your lives. It can be large or small, doesn’t matter–but it has to be true. I’m not looking to pass judgement, may not even comment (unless asked!)…but I’d really like to bring up the “daily weird” into a more open forum in our lives. I believe we all have at least one or two things that have happened to us during the course of our existence that “just didn’t make sense” in the more traditionally viewed mindset most of us have been brought up in, or work in. I’d also prefer these stories to be more fun or curious.
That’s what ‘d like to see!
NOTE: I’m not looking to focus on the dark and negative, nor am I a “go-to” person to fix any such dark and negative experiences. I have no experience there and there are plenty of others out there who do have that experience. That is not the purpose of this site, so please respect that. The purpose of this site is to focus on the positive and constructive.
And–in the realm of the esoteric–I’m not considered any “great shakes.” I don’t speak, hunt, nor work with ghosts (though I have seen ghosts of two of my dead dogs…and some I know have actually heard a “ghost” of me!). I don’t channel (uh, that I know of…). Don’t interpret dreams (see my post and views on dream interpretation). Don’t paranormally consult. I don’t even make any claims that I’m more advanced than any of you out there. My only real claim is that I’m just like many of you out there…except I may be more aware of some of the weird that “happens” to us…am more open about it. I openly allow the “paranormal” to manifest in my life–but in constructive and positive ways, and I’m a proponent for others to be the same. Sure, many of you are like this too–so this might be more like preaching to the converted for those like you–but I really hope that each of us can be more open to the so-called “paranormal” in all our lives, to not fear it, even laugh at the humoursly strange things that sometimes happen to us (see The Grape)….
So, please, feel free to stop on by and conversate–even if it doesn’t necessarily match the current post. I’m really looking forward to seeing what kinds of cool things have happened to others out there, allowing each of you to acknowledge the esoterica in your lives, since we really don’t get a chance to do so in our so-called “normal society.” I would like this site to be a “safe place” to allow each of you to come and talk about things you might not otherwise be able to…without anyone passing judgement.
Looking forward to hearing from all of you!