The Safety Secret

This critical incident was the first of a special kind of 'coincidence' because when it happened, I recognized one factor immediately that in the past I'd not noticed in other somewhat similar event, even  months or years after the event happened.  I recognized, 'right now', that I could not have created this event, or any event in the 'flow' of experiences that I'd begun, just barely begun to really 'see'.

Something was happening TO me, that was not planned or created BY me.

 It  happened in 1987. I can be exact about the date  because it happened at work, when my group held our monthly safety meeting. It's on my work record, and it's proof, reliable and factual to me, who at that point was feeling very, very confused. I’d been working for Boeing  Commercial Airplane Company in the Fabrication Division in Auburn, Washington for about 2 years when this incident happened.  

I had begun to carry a book with me everywhere I went in the early 1980's.  This was to keep my self occupied because I felt very isolated and remote from ‘normal for me’  at that point. One morning in 1987 I rushed out the door, a bit late for work then  realized I’d no book to read. I don't remember exactly how it happened that I picked up one paper back book,  then almost put it back because I realized I’d tried to read it several times in the past but had not been able to get interested in it.  Then potential corrective action for being late too many times drove me to not be concerned about WHAT the book was, just take it along. It was better than going through the 'corrective action' process again. 

This book was a tattered, worn paperback and it had a history that is important to know about so I will relate it:  I couldn’t get interested in it because I didn’t understand what the story was about so I’d never been able to read further than a few pages. I remember trying to get interested in it several times but I remembered also not throwing it away several times. I had thrown away many books when we moved (twice) but I never threw this worn, torn paperback away, when I happened to notice it for some reason.

During first break I began reading from the beginning,  perplexed again as I had been in the past, about the relationship between two very strange characters in the book. Yet for some reason I read almost 40 pages this time without the impatience that had caused me to put it aside in the past. The relationship between the two characters began to ‘dawn’ on me somewhat I began also to get hints about the unusual relationship between each of these two characters to other characters in the book.

 It was interesting..... finally! So I took the book along to our safety meeting which  would end in the Plaza Cafeteria where I had lunch 

It was a different kind of safety film,  not the dry presentation of facts and figures we usually get. It began with a scene in which a  man wakes up late, unprepared for his day and in getting to work narrowly avoids a couple of accidents.  At work he decided to make a cup of coffee and skip the safety meeting so he could work on a project he was supposed to have completed already but had not. As he plugged in the coffee pot he walked into a puddle of water on the floor, so the next scene shows him ‘at the Pearly Gates’, protesting that he can’t die now, he has a family, he’s too young, etc, etc, etc.  

The Guardian  at the Gate is sympathetic and suggests that perhaps he can return the man to his life if  he can learn the secret of safety. The unfortunate newly dead man agrees to go back, and the Guardian goes with him. Immediately they stand in an office where a young woman is at work. They talk about her lack of concern for safety and she doesn't hear them.  She opens a bottom file drawer, then walks away leaving it open. The ‘Newly Dead Man’ says to his companion: “She might trip over that drawer. She should close the drawer.” The Guardian says: “Tell her to close the drawer.” “But she can’t hear us.”. Nevertheless  he says to the woman: “Close the drawer, you might trip over it.”

To his surprise the woman pauses in her work, appears to ‘consider’ something and then walks over to close the drawer. It became apparent to the 'dead' man that what he had said to the woman was experienced as a thought of her own, in her head. Somehow she's heard what he said, although she obviously has not heard other things the two men said until the newly dead man directed his attention directly to her. She experienced what he said as a 'thought' of her own.

I know that I made some kind of  somewhat hysterical sound because people turned to look at me.

At that point it has occurred to me that I had just begun to grasp that the two characters in the book I was reading were ‘dead’. They were spirits who were invisible to everyone else.  And I had begun to understand that each of them were ‘guardians’ of a few people, different people who were scattered widely apart in Time, each living completely different lives, yet these two 'spirits' were constantly in touch with them.

The two characters in the film were the same kind of  'observers'  as the characters in the book! They were invisible, they were experienced as a 'thought'  in the same way  the secretary, 'thought' she ought to close the file drawer herself. She acted on that thought which was not her own thought.  I had begun to understand one character in the book  was a teacher that was experienced as a' thought' by those he 'guarded' but he was a student himself too. The 'other character' was his  'teacher'.  These two characters seemed to be able to move freely through time, because other characters in the book  were under their guardianship. But they were alive in different times! Somehow there was always a link between these characters and their 'guardian' and to each other.  When one of the characters was at a crisis point, his or her 'guardian helper' came to them instantly  and was experienced as a thought of their own.   Their job was to be present in each life when they were needed, so at points of great need the individuals  they were guarding seemed to send out some ‘signal’. The two spirits, wherever they were ‘felt’ the need and appeared instantly but in a very spare way to counsel them at crisis points., as a kind of Guardian..

I was reading a book that just happened to be handy that day and  was seeing a safety film that had exactly the same idea in it: that 'thought' in a persons head really came from 'spirits' they could not see!  

I know that I made some strange laugh and slapped the table when  the history of the book came clearly into my mind and simultaneously  recognized the plot in the safety film was identical to the plot in the book. The  utterly precise timing of these two events and the history of the book made a distinct impact on me. At first it was hilarious.  That book just happened to be the one I chose on this morning...a book that had  a virtually identical plot to a safety film I could not have 'foreseen' would be shown? There was no way I could  have known I was going to see that film on just that day, but it ‘looked  like’, 'seemed as if',  some part of me  not only knew but had known years ago, by preserving the book!

There were no other people  involved in this, excepting those who selected the film to be shown that day.  The safety film was unusual because it was the first time 'information' was given in a form  more like a story. It was not the dry presentation of information we usually were required to look at. 

It was the history of the book, the many times I'd handled it, noticed how tattered and worn it looked but had kept it that nobody but me could know about. Yet it seemed to have been 'known' by some 'other', that had not permitted me to decide to throw the book away. That background was certainly significant proof that I had no part if planning it. In 1987, it was just a whiff of something that I could not name.

The book  was The Education of Oversoul Seven who  is a student, because he has a  teacher of his own, a spirit female named, Cyprus.  But Oversoul Seven is a teacher to those people widely scattered in Time that he somehow sensed when he was needed. The author is Jane Roberts, of whom I had no knowledge at that point, or that she was a ‘channeller’ or even what 'channeling; meant.

Later I read about her and realized she had believed she was a kind of transceiver, who transcribed a ‘voice’ she received and experienced as Seth. She was quite well known, but not by me.  

This incident created a strange feeling in me, just a whiff of what I later became certain about:  that what I was doing in my actual physical world was 'repeated back to me' by the plot of the safety film, that what I was doing actually was being 'described' to me.

The word 'echo' did not occur to me then, that word had to be discovered later. That happened when I chanced to watch a Thinking Allowed documentary, From Here To Alternity in which John Lilly said something about ECCO which meant 'Earth Coincidence Control Office' Hearing that 'word' ECCO and what it meant  utterly stunned me when I heard him laughingly describe his experience with that agency. I thought: "HE KNOWS ABOUT IT TOO!"

 I had barely begun to recognize within my own mind, a certain 'effect' that was causing me to wonder about it, an effect that was not easy to notice, not easy to be certain about, until in the same year another incident happened in which this 'effect' was quite distinct, impossible to not 'see'.

The points of ‘convergence’ in the book with what was going on in my life were quite a few;  many more 'attributes' that matched became evident later. All of which I will be able to name now, although at that point I could not have done so. The word ‘coincidence’ is  not the appropriate word to use to define this incident.

I was certainly aware of the history of this book, nobody but me would know how many times I'd thought about throwing it away, partly because the jacket was so worn and torn. But also I'd tried to read it and been unable to get beyond the first 10 or so pages. The history of the book flooded my mind, and this  made me feel utterly astonished that on this day, a safety film I could not have known  was to be shown would have the same plot. And there were other attributes that were identical. The identical relationship was obvious in more than one category. It was  a fact that I knew, but  nobody else could possibly know about.

How very, very difficult to believe this could be an accident or a choice of mine! Why would such a situation happen even once? How could precise timing like that be organized, by me? If I didn't know that an event in the future required me to have that book available on just that day, who or what did know how to preserve it and make it 'just happen to be laying around' that day. Later this exact pattern generated several other incidents in which it was obvious that some kind of apparent foreknowledge of the future was creating 'impulsive activity', in my body.

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It was at that point that several other incidents that had happened in the past two years came to mind. One in particular that I had not even thought about immediately after it happened came back vividly into my memory. It was the event that happened when my husband and I were on a trip in 1981, in the fall.   I'd said something I'd not thought about before. I heard myself blurt out that I was going to change my name because I didn't feel like myself any more. "I'm not Betty any more, I'm Ju-Anna." (Ju as in Judy, Anna). This ought to have surprised me, but I heard myself without surprise or curiosity. Then a white van drove up on the passenger side of our van, veering dangerously close in front of me, then  to the driver side lane  and sped away.

But as it passed I noticed the first vanity license tab I'd seen, DJWANNA. Instantly the letters were translated into "Do You Want To?". But then the second meaning occurred, and I realized  that the letters exactly matched what I'd just said! At this point I can use the word 'echo' but it certainly didn't occur to me then that what I had said was 'echoed back' . The second context was mine but the original context was not mine, it was a play, or actually a 're-use' of  the letters!  That word 'echo' or that way of describing the incident would not have occurred to me then.

(A movie came out fairly recently, JWANNA MANN which I consider as a personal reminder event.) Two cars had passed  on a busy freeway at precise moments, as though scheduled to do so, each converging to that spot on the planet from different points, from different lives, but how could such precise timing happen 'for no reason'?

The timing of being in the only specific place where it could have happened  was identical in this event to the viewing of The Safety Secret and beginning to 'get' the meaning of a book on the same day . The plots were nearly identical. The book that I would normally have thrown away long ago had somehow been handily nearby on just that day, by chance? I don't remember anything about how it got to be where I would see it that morning.

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There was another activity in my mind, quite subtle and barely there, which I recognized later after several similar events happened: The fact that the safety film and the book had the same plot line was an important detail, but it was more important to recognize that a 'thought' that was not generated by the character was experienced without awareness, as their own.

 That  was made explicit to me, the viewer of the film as well as the one that 'saw' the history of the book,  because the idea was connected somewhat to the situations I had experienced in which I'd begun to notice a different kind of thought in my mind.

 I had  wondered to myself if I was 'thinking' it. This 'new thought' had begun (so I believed then) when I noticed 'new kind of thought', that addressed me as though I was another person speaking to me, using plural pronouns. "We could...".; "We should...."; "let's ... (let us); there was a change  as though another was speaking to me: "you should,..." ; " you could,....": "you ought to..."; "why don't you?" . And then still later an extremely noticeable form began, one that seemed old fashioned and peculiar, it was far from typical for me. An example is that we were walking through the mall one day, when  my husband had asked me one day what I wanted to eat, and I'd thought to myself: " What do I want to eat?" then a thought that surprised me occurred: "Eat not the pain of animals." This amused me and startled me but then a thought-response formed which I did not articulate: "Then what can I eat?"  "Eat not what walks the Earth, nor swims the Earth, nor flies. Eat the fruit but not the seed." A rather large 'batch' of information seemed to come into my mind, although it was certainly not recognized at that point, about what I could eat. The word 'influx' came to me eventually, a Swedenborgian term.

Other incidents that I'd experienced as 'odd', were retrieved from the past at that point so somehow I began to think in a slightly different way about these events and how I felt. I'd been  hearing myself say things I'd not thought about,  I was not curious about them  when I'd experienced them and my loss of 'volition' over my speech began to plague me. There was a body response that I can only name now as 'no compute', I felt literally dizzy, unbalanced. when some 'event' happened that for some reason affected my body. I felt 'unbalanced', literally at times, without any reason I could see. Some 'thing' was affecting my body and my mind, but as events accumulated, I had a vague sense that I 'knew' something new, but it was not distinct. I remember that a kind of 'self evaluation' emerged in my thought: "I'm better now than I was three months ago." 

There was nothing in my past similar to these 'new' events, no memory from the past could be retrieved that was 'similar as a reference point', and at that point in Time, my use of language was such that I  had no way to describe them when they happened.

It is critical to understanding what I'd writing on this site, that if there is nothing in the past that is similar to retrieve as a memory, from which 'understanding and interpretation' arises, the mind does have a 'no compute' blankness that is felt in the body! It took a few years for me to learn about why certain memories from my past plagued me and why other memories vanished and then returned suddenly along with a sense that I'd been 'asleep' because I'd not noticed some unusual attribute, like precise timing, or hearing myself say something I'd not thought about previously.

I had been curious about the new thought content in my own mind, and had wondered to myself whether I was 'thinking it'. But that was just one of many new kinds of activities that had begun to cause me to pay attention to what was going on in my mind.

This incident clearly 'echoed' back to me a detail about what I was physically doing on the Earth. It was not just a coincidence, something was being 'said to me', told to me, repeated in this strange 'reflection'. The word 'echo' had begun to emerge in a way that linked up with this incident, relating to a function of mind that was made into a story in Ancient Greece, in which a  man could not discern his own reflection. A lonely female sat nearby and repeated the last words of what he said to his reflection.

This lonely female,  was Echo in a myth but she seemed to me to be about a psychological fact, one that was old in Ancient Greece.