A friend who is from India sent me this piece, and I must pass it on. It is a Grand Conversation between Twins in Mother’s Womb:
Baby 1: And you, you believe in life after birth?
Baby 2: Absolutely. It’s obvious that life after birth exists. We are here to become stronger and to get ready for whatever awaits us next.
Baby 1: This is absurd. There is nothing after birth! What would life look like outside the womb!
Baby 2: Well, there are many stories about the other side. I’ve heard there is a blaze of light there, an intense and profound feeling of joy with deep emotions, thousands of things to live for… For example, I’ve heard that we’ll eat with our mouth there.
Baby 1: That’s silly. We have an umbilical cord and that is how we eat. Everyone knows that we don’t use our mouth to eat! And, on top of that, no one has ever come back from the other world. Those stories are all coming from naive people. Life just ends at birth. Period. That’s the way it is and we must accept it.
Baby 2: Alright, then allow me to think differently. That’s for sure, I have no idea what life after birth looks like, and I can’t prove anything to you. But I like to believe that in the next world, we’ll be able to see our mother and that she will take care of us.
Baby 1: “Mother”? You mean that you believe in “Mother”? Oh! So where is she?
Baby 2: Everywhere, don’t you see it! She is everywhere, all around us. We are part of her and it’s thanks to her that we are living right now. Without her, we wouldn’t be here.
Baby 1: This is ridiculous! I’ve never seen any mother so it’s obvious that she doesn’t exist.
Baby 2: I don’t agree. That’s your way of seeing things. Because sometimes when everything quiets down a little bit, we can hear her sing. We can feel her hugging our world! I’m pretty sure that our life will start after birth.
The boundary between worlds is actually very fragile, delicate, and permeable. When we were inside our mother, we had an ear to the door, listening to the vibrations in the air world. Now, living in the air world, once again we approach the door while watching the world of thoughts and light. Our thoughts begin to synchronize with what is on the other side of the door. Synchronicities. Omens.
Last year at this time, Nina and I were at the Fisherman’s Forum in Rockland, and we had spent the day talking to people who came by the seaweed booth. After the Forum, we were scheduled to be in New Hampshire the following day to give a talk on seaweeds to a group of organic farmers and gardeners. On the way to New Hampshire we stopped at Whole Foods in Portland. It was dark as we walked through the parking lot. I looked up at the night sky and thought, “Karen, send me a sign.”
I had once taken care of Karen for a year and a half while she had breast cancer. She lived in Portland. During the time I knew her, she rediscovered writing and dancing, and I put her on the massage table in the evenings and helped her to relax all tensions. She wrote poetry, seeing herself as a shooting star, a blaze of energy traveling across the universe. One night we had stood on a bridge over water and watched a meteor shower. A shooting star had streaked low over the tree tops. When I thought, “Send me a sign,” it wouldn’t have surprised me if a shooting star had streaked over Whole Foods. You see, I am Baby 2 in that conversation. For me, the boundary between worlds is very permeable.
I walked into the produce section. Carl, Karen’s brother, walked up to me and gave me the most recent family news. Synchronicity.
I said to Nina, “It’s Shamou’s birthday. I’m going to get him a birthday cake, and we can drop it off at his house.”
Shamou is a 6’7″ tall Persian percussionist who is our friend.
“Do you know his house number?” Nina asked.
“We’ll get it,” I replied.
The pastry chef asked me, “What would you like me to write on the cake?”
I said, “Happy Birthday Shamou!”
She wrote the words in frosting, and she popped a plastic dome over the cake. Going through the cashier’s line, the clerk looked at me and said, “I used to be a drummer in Shamou’s band. Have him call me.”
“Right,” I replied. “What’s his house number?”
She gave it to me, and we delivered the cake.
The next day at the conference in New Hampshire, I talked to the people who came to hear me about synchronicities and how it works in my life. I told them about the year I opened up to my father’s spirit and asked him to guide me.
That year, six people who all had my mother’s birthday came into my life, and I discovered that May 4th, my mother’s birthday, is called The Day of Nourishing Support. The astrologers said, “Your father has given you a mega-dose of the original mix that you are. Enjoy the ride!” One thing led to another, and finally a medical intuitive channeled my father to me to let me know that he was always available for a consult. He had his own path of evolution, but he was always available nevertheless. He said that the alaria I was harvesting would have helped to heal his cancer. One of the May 4th people that year was a cancer researcher who verified that alaria is useful for strengthening the immune systems of cancer patients.
Then I told the group that yesterday after the Fisherman’s Forum, I had an experience in synchronicity. I talked about Karen and Carl and Shamou without mentioning any last names.
After the talk and the video presentation was over, a woman approached me. She said, “I want to give you a hug.” I smiled and opened my arms, “OK…..” She approached me with the equipoise of a dancer, and she gave me a heartful hug. Suddenly I felt the presence of Karen.
I wanted to know who this person was. Her scarf was covering her name tag. I moved her scarf aside to see her name, and her last name was the same as Karen’s family of origin’s last name. I explained it to her and said, “This is a synchronicity.” She beamed and laughed as Karen and said to me, “Well! There you ARE!”
It had taken less than 24 hours between my request for a sign, beamed to the heavens, and the delivery, in person.
This is a ledge encrusted with barnacles on Eastern Island. This is taken at high tide. At low tide, there’s actually a large tide pool, just beyond the ledge. One day when I was working in the tide pool with my sons, a helicopter landed right where my wet-suit jacket is in the photo, and a man got out and said to me, “I film Maine from the air. Do you mind?” I said, “Go ahead!” The ‘copter swooped low over us a couple of times and was gone. Another time, I took a tai chi master with me to Eastern Island, and he danced graceful tai chi while I worked in the pool. Another time, local WABI-TV in a rubber raft interviewed me while I worked in the pool, and I ended up on the 5 o’clock newscast. Another time, I discovered a lobster trap that had washed into the pool during a storm, and there was a live codfish inside the trap. That day, as I released the fish, I was the benevolent jailer. Another time, a lump fish slowly approached me like a large slow-moving orange and white carp, and I gently scooped it up in my harvest basket, keeping it in the water, and we gazed at each other for awhile. The fish remained calm, and I let it go back into the depths of the pool. A lump fish has a sucker plate on its belly, and it can cling to kelp.
I tell you all this so that you will know the richness of memories of place that are in my mind when I go back to the water each year. A visitor sees the barnacle-encrusted ledge, but I remember helicopter, graceful tai chi master, WABI-TV, codfish, lump fish, and a little girl discovering her first baby seal.
One fall my mother died. I took care of her estate like the dutiful son, and because I was the only heir, it all fell on me. I hadn’t started to grieve yet, and I had a conversation with a friend who is a Unitarian minister. She said, “My mother asked me to preach her funeral, and I replied, ‘Mom, I can’t do that. I’m your daughter, and I think of you as my mother. I don’t know your adult values. I would have to have many conversations with you about that.’ Mom replied, ‘OK, let’s talk.’ We talked for several years. I learned who she was, as an adult. She died, and I preached her funeral. Like you, I was the dutiful child, and because I shouldered all that responsibility, I didn’t start to grieve, as her child. But I had two sisters. One of them used to talk to Mom on the phone, and one of them liked to write letters to Mom. They would say things to me like, ‘I wish I could talk to Mom today. It feels like she’s close.’ or ‘I wish I could write to Mom today. It feels like she’s close.’ And on those days, I would grieve. So don’t worry about it. Grief will kick in, and you will go through it.”
After my Mom died that fall, my friend J.D. died. The following spring, the weather was gray and melancholy, and when I would be on the water, I would feel grief about my mother and J.D. I actually heard J.D.’s voice, and he was frustrated about not being able to reach out to his son. His voice inside me was saying, “Larch, I’m so goddamned depressed, I don’t know what to do.”
J.D. had worked many years on the water with my friend, David. I went to David and I said, “Do you sense J.D.’s spirit is kinda hanging around in a low orbit? I’ve been getting his voice inside my head, and he hasn’t made a smooth transition to the light world yet.” David replied, “Well, you know, J.D.’s not too subtle. There’s been a moose that’s walked up to his house and looked in through the windows, three days in a row.”
Next day, I went back on the water. It was gray, and once again, I was grieving Mom and getting J.D.’s voice. I decided to land on Eastern Island, and I walked to the tide pool. There beside the pool was a baby seal. It wasn’t afraid of me. Sometimes they are so young that the teeth marks from the mother are still on the umbilical cord. This one was young enough to simply gaze at me with its dark liquid eyes, and so I settled down beside it and had a conversation, sometimes in its language, sometimes in my own. You see, I’m bilingual. Finally I said, “Your mother is right out there in the water, and she will come back as soon as I leave. And my mother is right up there…..” I was pointing toward the sky. Suddenly I realized that J.D. had sent me an animal for my comfort. In a flash, I clapped my hands and said, “Hey! J.D.! Thank you! I’m all right! Go to the Light!” I clapped again. Then I said, “Mother! I’m all right! You don’t have to worry about me! Go to the Light!”
That day, grieving stopped. Later on, my mother was channeled to me, and she is blue light. Now she occasionally appears as a fleck of blue light in my left retina, and when that happens, I just watch my thoughts, and there she is, showing delight.
By the way: One night when I was typing the story of Karen to a friend, I got a streak of white light across my left retinal field. That one amazed me because it felt so internal. But what is external/internal? All of us have the clarity of a crystal ball rolling across a colored table cloth, and while we roll, the colors of the table cloth appear to be inside us. There really is no inside/outside….and yet there is. That’s one of the paradoxes of this world. Or perhaps I should say, “That illusion of separateness is one of the great hallucinations of this world.”
So here’s my question: What moved the moose? What brought the seal? What streaked across my retina when I wrote about Karen? What moved Carl to be there at the right time? What moved that woman to give me a hug from Karen? Baby 2 might say, “The Beloved, and we are all immersed in and surrounded by The Great Presence. Relax into the Great Perfection that you already are. Relax all tensions. Stay open.”
Most of you are to the south of me, and it’s warmer where you are. Spring hasn’t arrived here yet. This Wednesday I’m going to be testifying to a group of legislators on the Marine Resources Committee, and they need to hear that the seaweed you have received from me is good food and medicine for your life. Send me a short email on that topic to hanson.larch@gmail.com. I’ll present them with a pile of letters, and then I’ll launch the boats and begin the harvest season. Usually I look for an omen, and I have a hunch that this year, you all will be the encouraging omen. My apprentices look promising. If you place an order at www.theseaweedman.com that will help me make their payroll.
7 thoughts on “Synchronicities”
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Hello! Every once in a while I come across your emails and website, delight! Thank you so much. Synchronicities and then some and then not and then some more. Tonight it is 3:17 as I write this, woke at 2 am to an unusually hungry nursing child, felt energy and picked up my pc and found this writing, how beautiful is this human life!
Thanks for the beautiful writing.
Hi Larch, Your writing is beautiful and deeply comforting for me in more ways than I can even describe. Thank you so much.
Hi Larch! My girlfriend in the Philippines and I are customers of yours and we both deeply appreciate what you and Dawn do for all of us! I live on the other coast in NW Washington State in the small unincorporated zone called Point Roberts- see “Almost Heaven- Almost Canada” http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0408/feature7/ I wear many hats and have worked as a commercial diver here. Sadly, the entire Pacific ocean has been massively impacted by Fukushima radiation.
I no longer harvest kelp or other seaweed here like I used to, not even to put on my garden due to the radiation. I appreciate you all the more and hope nothing like what has happened here ever happens to the Maine coast. I lived along the Maine coast for 7 years when I was a young man, and will never forget the place or its wonderful people. I hope to meet you and Dawn some day, for me, returning to Maine would be a trip down memory lane, to the best place I ever lived.
So many memories, so many great experiences! You are truly blessed to live along that storied coast! When I used to live in Eastport, where I graduated from Washington County Vocational Technial Institute and studied wooden boatbuilding, for a time I lived rent free in an abandoned cabin right on the Bay of Fundy and it was my castle.
I harvested lobsters right off my beach, picked wild apples and blueberries, and hauled water from a spring. I had an outhouse with a great view of the Bay, and the best story teller in the whole state used to come into the breakwater, tie up his lobsterboat, and start spinning a yarn while a huge crowd would gather to listen to him. His name was Avery Kelly, and he was from Beals Island.
I’ll never forget Avery, or his stories! He would come to our school to work with the commercial fishing students, and he was a tremendous person with an unparalleled gift for story telling. He loved the State Fair, and what I remember about him is that in a state with so MANY amazing story tellers, he was widely acknowledged to be the BEST of the BEST, but I am not sure if he is still with us today, so many years have gone by, TOO many, since I was last there. I remember working on the crew of the schooner Mattie out of Camden, we took tourists on vacations in the Gulf of Maine,and I remember milling cedar on Arrowsic island in the Kennebec, and building boats in several locations along the coast. For a while I was an intern at the Maine Maratime Museum in Bath, but wasn’t chosen to be an Apprentice there which was why I went to Eastport instead. In between I was in Damariscotta/Newcastle where I milled boat lumber for Peter Throckmorton. Almost lost a finger to an antique square head jointer plane, still have the scar tissue.
I need to come back and hope I can this coming summer. I would love to just spend some time there helping you harvest seaweed. What wetsuit should I bring?
Kind Regards,
John Hammell
1-800-333-2553 H&W
International Advocates for Health Freedom/
Sulfur for Health
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Beautiful.
Thank You – for your wonderful intelligence in writing, and at the sea-coast!
We will undoubtedly visit some day.
Bought some kelp & alaria mix in Kent OH from the KNF Co-OP. It is dried, in small “shards”. I was looking for a recipe and, well, you have the only site around that offers anything! I really like your blog. I am from Maine, spent 15 or so years in Pennsylvania and am now a tiny farmer on the florida panhandle. I just quit my job because of ethical conflict. Thank you for a wonderful blog and site.
Diana, come for a visit when the spirit moves you. We have friends on the Florida panhandle,
and they come here in the summertime to cool off, camping near the ocean.