The Safety Secret
I’d been working for Boeing Commercial Airplane Company in the Fabrication Division in Auburn, Washington for about 2 years when this incident happened in 1987. I can be exact about the date because it happened at work when my group held our monthly safety meeting so it's on my work record.
I had begun to carry a book with me everywhere I went sometime in the early 1980's mostly to make my self seem to be occupied and not so alone. I felt alone but didn't want to look alone. I read during breaks in our almost nightly lessons of square dances rather than joining the other women. But I was also reading almost constantly then anyway but although I've always been a voracious reader, this was an extreme to feel compelled to have a book with me. I'd had an unusual change of many habits and this was only one radical change. That 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 the book nearest was a paperback book that I'd owned for several years. I remembered that I'd attempted to read it several times in the past but had not been able to get interested in it. Rather than being late to work I took the worn paperback book and it's history with me.
It occurred to me that it was unusual that I'd not thrown it away. I had thrown away many books when we moved (twice) but I'd kept this shabby paperback. I don't know how it happened to be the nearest book that morning.
During first break I began reading, puzzled again as I had been in the past about the relationship between two very strange characters in the book. But for some reason I read almost 40 pages this time without the impatience that had caused me to put it aside in the past. I was beginning to get a whiff of understanding about the relationship between the two characters and what kind of strange beings they were. It was interesting..... finally!
So I took the book along to our safety meeting in the Plaza Cafeteria where I would eat my lunch.
It was a different kind of safety film than usual. It was a story somewhat like a movie that began with a scene in which a man wakes up late and in hurrying to work he narrowly avoids a couple of accidents trying to make up lost time. At work, he decides to skip the office safety meeting so he can work on a project he was supposed to have completed already. But he decides to make some coffee. As he plugs in the coffee pot he walks into a puddle of water on the floor so the next scene shows him ‘at the Pearly Gates’. He's very upset, 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 after he hears such desperate pleading. He suggests that perhaps its possible to 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 are standing in an office where a young woman is at work. Obviously she doesn't see them.
They talk about her lack of concern for safety as she moves about doing her work, but obviously 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. She 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 occurring in her head. Somehow she's responded to what he said, although she obviously has not heard other things the two men said. She heard him only when 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 at that point because people turned to look at me. I'd felt a real shock because it has occurred to me that I had just begun to grasp that the two characters in the book I was reading were ‘dead’ like the two people in our safety program. I had come to understand they were spirits who were invisible to everyone else. And I had begun to understand that each of them were guardians of a few real live people. Each was something akin to being a kind of counselor to different individuals who were scattered widely apart in Time, yet somehow these two 'spirits' were constantly in touch with them.
The two invisible characters in the film were the same kind of invisible 'observers' as the characters in the book! They were not only invisible like the characters in the film but they were also experienced as a 'thought' in the same way the secretary 'thought' she ought to close the file drawer. She acted on a thought which was not her own thought because the words had been inserted 'thought' from a source she could not have suspected. She didn't know she was being watched, talked to and instructed to do something.
I had begun to understand that one character in the book was a teacher but he was a student too. He was experienced as a' thought' by those he counseled but he was a student himself too. The other character was his 'teacher'. The important thing was that these two characters seemed to be able to move freely through time. (That detail reminded me of Isaac Asimov's book, The End of Eternity in which Harlan Ellison, a programmer travels upwhen, downwhen to make the changes that are necessary, he arranges the future.) Other characters in the book were under their guardianship and each lived in different times and different locations but none of the characters realized they were 'attended to' by an invisible counselor. 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. Somehow there was always a link between these characters to their 'guardian' and the guardians to each other.
It was their job was to be present in each individuals' 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 and in a very spare way gave counsel to them . But they were experienced as 'thought' that could not be discerned to have been 'given' to them from a kind of internal Guardian.
All this and more than I can relate and keep to the topic came to my mind in an instant. but the history of the book was part of what amazed me. I realized I was reading a book that had a long history behind it and it just happened to be handy that day when I was to see a safety film that had exactly the same ideas in it: but one idea that was especially surprising to me because it was such a new idea was very clearly highlighted: that 'thought' occurring in the head of the main characters really came from 'spirits' they could not see! When this event happened, I had already become extremely curious about unusual new-to-me 'kinds of thought' in my own mind. I had (for several years by 1987) wondered if "I" thought it.
I know that I made some strange laugh and slapped the table when the history of the book came clearly into my mind the moment I recognized that the plot in the safety film was identical to the plot in the book. What was most stunning was that I'd owned the book so long. And tried to read it several times but had never read further than 15 pages.
The book was The Education of Oversoul Seven. Seven is a student his teacher is a spirit female (sometimes) named, Cyprus. But Oversoul Seven is a teacher to other individuals widely scattered in Time. The author is Jane Roberts an author I'd not read or heard of. I didn't know she was a well known ‘channeller’ or even what 'channeling' meant. Later I read about her and realized she had believed she was a kind of transceiver. She transcribed a ‘voice’ she received and experienced as Seth. She was quite well known, but not by me.
This was a first of it's kind event because the 'unusualness' made an immediate impression me right away, when the event happened. I've had strange things happen that didn't seem unusual for a decade or a few decades when a kind of 'prompting' in my body caused me think about particular events that had happened in the past. Then and only then I realized the 'strangeness' but by 1987 I recognized this one right on the spot! The utterly precise timing of these two events made a distinct impact on me now, not later. At first it was hilarious. Then I thought quite a lot about other events, that had happened in the few years before this day, many of which came into my mind at that point. My mind was full and I was puzzled, extremely puzzled.
How could that book just happen to be the one I chose on this morning...a book that had a virtually identical plot to a safety film? I couldn't remember putting the book where it was that morning. After years of owning the book could I have 'foreseen' today was the day that safety film would be shown and had the book laying ready? I decided 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! And had managed to have it laying so conveniently near when I rushed out the door.
What was different about this event was that there were no other people involved in it, just me and an object in my life. What brought back the history of the book and other books like The End Of Eternity and its somewhat similar plot, as well as the fact that Isaac Asimov and I have the same birthdate, January 2? What reminded me of the many times I'd handled the book, noticed how tattered and worn it looked but had kept it? Who knew in such detail what was going to happened that day, involving a book and its history that nobody but me could know about? This kind of specificity was impossible! Yet every detail about the book and the safety film seemed to have been 'known' by some 'other', there was distinct foresight behind this. I had not been able to throw the book away, something had not permitted me to decide to throw the book away.
That was certainly significant proof that I had no part of planning it. In 1987 my understanding that some purpose was behind this kind of event was just a whiff of something that I could not name, barely there but somehow 'purpose' other than my own was emerging. . How very, very difficult to believe this could be an accident or a choice of mine! Why would such a situation happen even once? That's when it occurred to me that I'd had a string of precisely timed events happen before this one, but I had barely thought about them afterwards. Now those events were on assembled on a string in my memory and one fact was distinct: they all required perfect timing from many aspects beyond my personal knowledge.
After this happened, I couldn't stop wondering about how precise timing like that could be organized by me or anyone else. 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?.
Another event happened soon afterwards at Boeing that caused me to see something at work in my mind that altered 'thought' that had occurred into my mind as I went about my job. After that event it was possible to realize this exact pattern had 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. I had noticed them but not with curiosity enough to think about them later. I had done things and said things that I had no will to do. I had heard myself say things that I had no reason to say without noticing the lack of personal volition in those events and not even being curious about them until later, sometimes years later!
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 and it did not occur to me then or later.
What bothered me most at that point was the privacy of such experiences. One amazingly precisely timed event had already happened when someone else was present, but that person hadn't thought it unusual, so neither did I.
I became extremely concerned that in this incident nobody but me would know how many times I'd thought about throwing that book away, partly because the jacket was so worn and torn. But what could explain that I'd tried to read it and been unable to get beyond the first 15 or so pages until today? That was very unusual. That involved my body! The history of the book and it's plot flooded my mind the moment I realized the woman responded to a 'thought' that was really inserted from an invisible witness in the room. That display of inner content made me feel utterly astonished but interested. I recognized there were other attributes that were identical, several different aspects were identical. It was a fact that I knew, but nobody else could possibly know about.
This incident created a strange feeling in me, just a whiff of a sense that I later became certain about: that what I was doing in my actual physical world was being described to me in this peculiar form. That idea was not given to me in specific words I had to recognize it. There were several incidents, one of which was part of a 'mindquake', it forced me, actually TOLD me, to 'think about the implications of the whole thing', and gradually I had to recognize that as a fact. I was being told what I was doing physically by some thing that was not physical; this involved my private world of thought and decisions, my understanding! What I was doing at the moment in this event was 'repeated back to me' by the plot of the safety film. After one other event happened soon afterwards there was a distinct sense in my mind that what I was doing actually was being 'described' to me in these incidents.
This happened also in 1987, soon after seeing the Safety Secret
In 1987 I had barely begun to recognize within my own mind a certain 'effect' that seemed to happen when I listened to someone or 'thought' anything. Whatever it was it happened rapidly, extremely rapidly. Also in 1987 everything I looked at was subtly different than normal. This 'effect' had seemed to be there, but I couldn't be sure about it even after I noticed it enough to wonder about it. That was a period of at least a couple years, between 1984 and 1986. By 1987 there was a sense that some purpose other than my own was at work in my life. There was an 'effect' in my mind that was not easy to be certain about and more difficult to try to find a name to describe. But in the same year the safety secret event happened this incident happened in which this 'effect' was quite distinct. This incident made the 'effect' impossible to not see clearly and I began to understand what this effect was accomplishing.
I was assigned to a new location in the building when it happened. The tank line is about the size of a few basketball courts. It had several vats embedded in a metal grid work floor like the floor on bridges. The vats are about 12 feet deep but only 4 feet extends above the metal grid floor. There are passages between each vat. Airplane parts are conveyed over them and lowered into different solutions for treatments. The paperwork for the parts that are being treated is put on a ledge of the vat and I had to walk for the first time onto the grid work floor to change the priorities on them. I had taken several steps when I suddenly felt very dizzy because the floor seemed suddenly to have vanished because a bright light was turned on in the room beneath the grid floor. That made it suddenly seem to be invisible. Many memories from my past came to mind of when I was very young and I'd walked (against my will) over a bridge near my grandmother's home. The water flowing beneath my feet was more visible than the metal grid work. It was not easy to get me to walk across that bridge!
A thought came into my mind: "It's just like standing on an invisible floor. I can see what's going on around me but I can see what's going on below me too." That's not a very profound thought for such a monumentally important event, but that's the thought that came to mind. I recognized clearly a rapid bundle that replayed that thought, no space between the words, although I 're-heard' each word in the 'replay' that occurred! This happened in a flash of time, when the thought words occurred into my mind and then 're-occurred' in a package. I literally heard each of the words again without space between the words! The words in the thought clearly repeated, bundled into a single unit, a flash of time so short obviously, yet each word was distinct in the bundle.
But something was added to the content that replayed: I also saw very clearly that the repetition had the effect of being spoken to me the way person would speak to me. That was unmistakable. The words in the re-occurrence were directed to me, the way a person would speak to me.
The words were generated by what I was doing actually, but the repetition was a re-use of the same words, using them to say something to me. What it said was information that described not only what I was actually physically doing, but it conveyed to me the beginnings, just barely the beginnings of a recognition that these events were somehow coming to me for a reason. This reflection of my own object generated thought that now only 'described to me' what was happening at the moment but there was a broader context. But the mechanism of mind was very distinct finally. It created basically a kind of 'voice' saying something through these events. I had to try to understand some reason to account for them and recognize the mechanisms that created them. Later when I thought about this situation, the words of my thought haunted me until I began to consider some things I'd been doing recently.
"It's just like standing on an invisible floor. I can see what's going on around me but I can see what's going on below me too." The words made me begin, just barely begin to think about a mental 'floor', in my own mind, where I was able to see what was going on 'below' and what was going on around me. I can't describe how slowly I became aware of such an inner content, or how some events that were really, really strange and new experiences to me happened without my paying attention to them. I remembered them when I was reminded of them, and only then wondered how such a strange event could happen to me and I noticed it only enough to remember it then. Some happened prior to 1984, they were the really important ones as I found out later.
Between 1984 and 1988, such events happened almost constantly but each being so different in content, it took me a long time to see the 'common denominators'.
The word 'echo' did not occur to me then; that word had to be discovered later. It came at me from several different sources over a period of a couple of years, 1986-1988. A Phil Donahue interview with the mother of a schizophrenic daughter gave me a valuable clew. She's formed a support group for parents of schizophrenic children. Phil asked the girl what it was like to be schizophrenic. The girl replied: "It's hard. It's so hard. Schizophrenia is so hard."
" She repeats herself." I thought. "She repeats herself." Then I chanced to read a book about a version of a myth that I'd not heard about, they Roman version of the myth of Narcissus and Echo. The addition of a lonely female that repeated the last words she heard Narcissus repeat to his reflection in a pool more than surprised me. I had been repeating the last words someone I knew very well said to me, puzzled that he seemed to relating to my thought, unspoken to anyone at that point.
Also at about that time I remembered some words I'd often heard from the 'beat' generation: "Man, I can relate to that." and "Man, I can identify with THAT!
Currently (in 2010) the word 'resonate' is often used. The word 'resonate' is a way of saying 're-sounds'.
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The first event that gave me the right word , 'echo' was very startling and amazing to me. It happened when I chanced to watch a Thinking Allowed documentary, From Here To Alternity, an interview with John Lilly. He and Jeffery Mishlove described some very unusual situations in their lives. They had out of body journeys and talked to whales. Then John Lilly mentioned something about ECCO which he said meant 'Earth Coincidence Control Office'!!! Hearing that 'word' ECCO and his definition of 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 begun to think about some 'thing' that I thought of as a 'Larger Domain' from which these unusual situations emerged in my life. I had never heard or read about 'ECCO' and I had no memory then of having ever read anything about 'meaningful coincidence' or 'synchronicity'.
He also mentioned the 'dark night of the soul' in the interview. A few days later I was in a bookstore where Swedenborgian services were held, and I'd begun to attend them. As I walked out I noticed The Dark Night Of The Soul by St. John of The Cross. I paused to riffle through it, remembering I'd heard John Lilly mention the book, reading a few lines here and there in the book then put it back and left the store. It was a strange book, all about a short poem.
It began: "An explanation of the stanzas describing a soul's conduct along the spiritual road that leads to the perfect union with God through love, insofar as it is attainable in this life. "
After walking a couple of blocks I turned back and bought the book. Reading it was not an enjoyable experience, I'd never read anything like it. I did notice a mention of a term I'd begun to come across often enough to notice it: participation mystique. "So that kind of 'bond' is nothing new." I thought, "because that book was written when psychiatric ideas had not been written down."
I had watched the John Lilly interview because his name was familiar to me. There was a memory of a documentary he'd made in my mind, it had been a strangely re-occurring memory throughout my life after I'd watched it. It had been one of the first television shows I'd seen and it was on a snowy black and white television. The program was about his work with language and dolphins. A thought had come into my mind as I watched a dolphin respond to John's words: "I wonder what it must feel like to be taught a language by some creature so strange as a man must be to a dolphin?" That scene and the thought that had come spontaneously into my mind flashed into my mind later, for more than two decades, for no reason I could ever see. It happened often enough for me to be curious about it, to wonder why it happened.
At this point I know that memory and a few others were installed earlier in my life, they were stored away then they each were selected to be replayed, so I would become curious eventually and wonder about them. How could a person be instructed to pay attention to what's going on in the mind? A very complex interaction between my thought and thought that was not my own generation is now very obvious to me.
I believe P. D. Ouspensky experienced 'recurring memories' also, he mentioned them in the first paragraph of the introduction to A New Model Of The Universe. Emanuel Swedenborg seems to me to have written about such memories, he named them 'remains', in his short doctrine of remains. I could write about mine now, they were simple events that happened once, only once but the complete memory was regenerated usually afterwards. A few events were very simple words, but the context in which the event had happened always flashed into my thought with the words: common denominator was one, the missing link was another. They were trivial events that happened only once, but some of them had complete content of the moment: thought, how I felt, what I was doing, and what I was looking at, as though the most complete snapshot of a moment from my life had been preserved. My first memory was that kind complete snapshot, it was one re-occurring memory. I was a bit more than 2 years old.
The words, 'common denominator' had emerged in my mind at times, and after I noticed it, there was no association for the term other than the mathematical use. I did notice it happened when I listened to someone or read something, just the two words flashed into my thought. The Missing Link was more a more complex event. I'd seen a movie serial when I was about 9 years old with that name. It was about a woman scientist looking for the missing link between man and ape in a jungle. The words 'the missing link' as well as the plot of the movie and the way I waited anxiously for the next chapter occurred into my thought often enough that I became curious about it also. These are only two examples of what I later realized were what Emanuel Swedenborg seems to me to have described as 'remains' in his short Doctrine Of Remains. I recognized the same attribute in the first paragraph of the introduction to A New Model Of The Universe by an author named Peter D. Ouspensky. But I didn't recognize that attribute, of 're-occurence' the first time I read that book. It came to my attention a couple of years later, when I was looking through the book to find a mention I believed was in the book, about a conversation with George I. Gurdjieff in which the two men talked about what causes wars. I found the citation but noticed the paragraph then and wondered why I'd not been able to recognize the theme of 'recurrence' when I read it the first time. The answer was simple, I'd not had enough experience when I read the book the first time.
The word 'recurrence' is another way to write 're-occurrence', in my opinion. It's also another way to say 'echo', or 'regeneration'. A memory is a regeneration. Ouspensky sensed 're-occurrence' in his life, but it seemed to me at that point that what he really 'saw' was the operation of a mechanism of mind at work, creating 'second underlying/under'lying' contexts'. He believed that people lie about themselves, and I had become aware that a kind of lying is almost more than normal by then.
The 'second underlying/under 'lying' context was the term I made up when I realized that content generated by every day situations was being 'reflected back' in my mind, and the 'reflection' created automatically a 're-hearing' of the content but a completely different context occurred spontaneously in my mind.
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This is an example, one of the first in which I recognized the 'effect' of the reflecting mechanism of mind:
In 1987 I had barely begun to recognize within my own mind a certain 'effect' that seemed to happen when I listened to someone or 'thought' anything. And everything I looked at was subtly different than normal. This 'effect' had seemed to be there, but I couldn't be sure about it even after I noticed it enough to wonder about it. That was a period of at least a couple years, between 1984 and 1986. By 1987 there was a sense that some purpose other than my own was at work in my life. There was an 'effect' in my mind that was not easy to be certain about and more difficult to try to find a name to describe. But in the same year the safety secret event happened another incident happened in which this 'effect' was quite distinct. This incident made the 'effect' impossible to not see clearly and I began to understand what this effect was accomplishing.
I was assigned to a new location in the building when it happened. The tank line is about the size of a few basketball courts. It had several vats embedded in a metal grid work floor like the floor on bridges. The vats are about 12 feet deep but only 4 feet extends above the metal grid floor. There are passages between each vat. Airplane parts are conveyed over them and lowered into different solutions for treatments. The paperwork for the parts that are being treated is put on a ledge of the vat and I had to walk for the first time, onto the grid work floor to change the priorities on them. I had taken three or four steps when I suddenly felt very dizzy because the floor seemed suddenly to have vanished because a bright light was on in the room beneath the grid floor. That made it suddenly seem to be invisible. Many memories from my past came to mind of when I was very young and I'd walked (against my will) over a bridge near my grandmother's home. The water flowing beneath my feet was more visible than the metal grid work. It was not easy to get me to walk across that bridge!
"It's just like standing on an invisible floor. I can see what's going on around me but I can see what's going on below me too." That's not a very profound thought for such a monumentally important event, but that's the thought that came to mind. I recognized clearly a rapid bundle that replayed that thought, no space between the words, although I 're-heard' each word in the 'replay' that occurred. This happened in a flash of time, when the thought words occurred into my mind and then 're-occurred' in a package. I literally heard the words again, without space between the words. The words in the thought clearly repeated, bundled into a single unit, a flash of time so short obviously, yet each word was distinct in the bundle. But something was added to the content that replayed: I also saw very clearly that the repetition had the effect of being spoken to me the way person would speak to me. That was unmistakable. The words in the re-occurrence were directed to me, the way a person would speak to me. The words were generated by what I was doing actually, but the repetition was a re-use of the same words, saying something to me. What it said was information that described not only what I was actually doing, but it conveyed to me the beginnings, just barely the beginnings of a recognition that these events were somehow coming to me, this reflection of my own object generated thought 'described to me' what was happening at the moment but there was a broader context, the mechanism of mind was very distinct finally. It created basically a kind of 'voice' saying something through these events. I had to try to understand some reason to account for them and recognize the mechanisms that created them.
Between 1984 and 1988, such events happened almost constantly but each being so different in content, it took me a long time to see the 'common denominators'.
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It was at that point that several other incidents that had happened in the past few 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 because I'd not thought about my changing my name. 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 in my mind into "Do You Want To?". But then the second meaning occurred and I realized that the letters exactly matched what I'd just said!
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'?
(A movie came out fairly recently, JWANNA MANN which I consider was a personal reminder but it was also a point that marked another phase of a kind of repetition of patterns that had become somewhat familiar to me by then. ) 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 and it repeated what I'd just said. The original context was not mine, my personal context was actually a 're-use' of the letters, a transformation that I had never experienced even once in my life at that point.
(That word 'echo' or that way of describing the incident as being 'said to me', as a repetition of what I had just said would not have occurred to me then. I gave no thought to that incident and never mentioned it later, for reasons I would not have suspected.
I was watching everything in a new way, from a location in my 'thought world' that was literally speechless at that point . A strange new way of seeing my self included in the scene, seeing my facial content, sensing my body as a very uncomfortable shell that was heavy, nearly inert at times was part of it. I heard sounds that I'd heard for years without noticing them and suddenly could not not hear them. I had never noticed so many trains passed in the valley below or that their whistles were so sad, so sad, even though they were diesels. I especially noticed 'road kill'. I saw animals laying by the road and I felt a terrible grief. )
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 my 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. This was different 'thought' than I was noticing and was so curious about in the 'non-stop thought' that began after the dream, late in 1981. This was a different kind of thought that used plural pronouns: "We could...".; "We should...."; "let's ... (let us); This was a change, this new thought, I'd not experienced it before and I was also curious about it because there seemed to be an other person 'within' my own mind, I experienced it as though another was speaking to me: "you should,..." ; " you could,....": "you ought to..."; "why don't you...?" .
And then still later only a few months 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 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 from me: "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. I became a vegetarian for some time.
The word 'influx' came to me eventually, a Swedenborgian term. The sudden 'batch of information' was probably 'influx' from that other, that seemed to know the future.
Other incidents that I'd experienced as 'odd', were retrieved from the past at some 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 but I remembered that I was not curious about them when I'd experienced, actually heard myself say them. That memory came later, sometimes a decade later But now my loss of 'volition' over my speech and my body began to plague me. I felt dizzy, literally many times when we were at square dances and I was aware of what was going on in my mind 24 hours a day by that point in Time. I was literally 'sleepless' in Seattle before the movie came out.
There was a body response that I can only name now as 'no compute' almost constantly for a few years, after 1984. I felt literally dizzy, unbalanced. when some 'event' happened that for some reason affected my body. I felt 'unbalanced', literally many times when we were in square dance lessons or dances 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."
I believe the 'no compute' state was experienced when there was no experience 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. I believe the location where these events were experienced was in the most remote depths of a memory that is similar to a galaxy in the cosmos that isn't the Milky Way. There was great distant between the place where I was mentally and being able to bring even one word out of my mouth to describe any event.
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! There was an attempt by some part of me that was not under my conscious intents to find something similar in my past but that took a long time to identify, and many events happened that had to be experienced physically it seems, for them to make any context. The night in 1982 when I waited for a square dance lesson to begin, memories from my past occurred to me, that I did not suspect were symbolically 'telling' me what was happening at the moment. One memory of myself when I was entering a new school because we'd moved was retrieved complete in every way. I had not thought about that incident after it happened, it was really nothing special. A new classmate had come over to introduce herself, she made me feel less lonely and angry because I wasn't going to the school I'd expected to attend. It was not until 1989 after the second mindquake that I understood what that retrieved memory was 'saying' to me and that it described where I was in a new world even in 1982.
It took a few years for me to learn about why certain memories from my past plagued me, memories of events that happened when I was a young girl. Other memories vanished and then returned suddenly along with a sense that I'd been 'asleep' when the event had happened, because I'd not noticed some unusual attribute that ought to have been obvious, such as 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. And to notice that my body was not under my own authority at times, then more frequently.
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 god-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, the woman that's writing this material was really living the life of Echo in a myth in my modern life. But to me that 'echo' now seemed to represent in a story a mechanism of mind. The Echo in the myth seemed to me to be about a psychological fact one that was old in Ancient Greece. When I read that 'If a bull could create a god, God would look like a bull." it seemed to me this was about the mechanism of a certain phase of one kind of 'projection'.
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 events, the perfect timing. It was so obvious in this event that I could not fail to 'get the message' it conveyed to me. It seems a simple thing that I recognized the meaning of the event, 'right now', at the moment it happened: That was a great change, to notice 'now' and be able to understand 'now'.
I realized for certain that I could not have created this event or any of the others emerging from the 'flow' of experiences that I'd begun, just barely begun to really 'see' and be curious about. .
Something was happening TO me, I was receiving experiences that were not planned or created BY me. Something was being brought to my attention. by some other than my own self.
It was an almost unthinkable thought, that my own mind was talking to me. That 'object generated thought' was being 're-used' was just part of the flow of events.