Last night was a reminder to trust the universe. During the afternoon, I co-working at OPA’s with Z. We took some photos of a kitten there.
Kitten at OPA’s Coffee and Wine, August 27, 2021, Austin, TX
After Z left, I ran into my friends D&B, then ventured to silent disco on Congress and saw V and her daughter X, decided to stroll down Congress solo and caught the end of the The Blues Specialists’ set at the Continental Club. As I was leaving, D&B were there looking for some live music.
The Blues Specialists at the Continental Club, August 27, 2021, Austin, TX
We parted ways, walking different sides of Congress. I took the long way and made it into Guero’s Oak Garden just before D&B walked in.
The Jon Blondell Project, Guero’s Taco Bar, August 27, 2021, Austin, TX
I noticed a woman at Guero’s Taco Bar. She was there with her dog. We ended up sitting at the same table and started talking. Mandy & I closed down Guero’s and then also June’s afterwards. The entire evening, including meeting Mandy, would definitely fit into the category of unexpected events. If the hypothesis that events have equal amounts of connectedness to past and future holds, then the events last night are strongly connected to the future. So for both of us, in our own timelines, the events of last night will likely have significance when viewed backwards in time from our own futures. Our drink toast at June’s was to Mandy’s hopefully successful closing on her condo. It felt to me like we were toasting a future that had already occurred.
Yesterday, I also randomly noticed (via social media) that my friend Cindy, who I had met in Santa Cruz a few years, was in town. I messaged her and we may meet up today. I’m noticing that universes in which Yana and I are still together are nearby. My friend Katie told me earlier today that she had left a sweet message with Yana yesterday inviting her to move in with her. It’s a just over 3 months since Yana and I have spoken and I miss her dearly.
I wasn’t planning to write today. Something seems to be bubbling up and I’m not sure what it is. I hope that by writing my thoughts down now, whatever it is will reveal itself.
I just got off the phone with my beloved. We had a somewhat heated discussion about white privilege due to my not accepting my beloved’s belief in the importance that white privilege has played in benefiting me throughout my life. We found common ground in agreeing that racism exists in the world and the world would be better if it did not. We also agreed that many white people have benefited from white privilege. We also agreed that I have also benefited from white privilege. However, we disagreed as to the extent that white privilege played a role. I believe that the vast majority of my personal achievements would have been possible regardless of my race or skin color. I even believe that there’s a chance I may have benefited additionally as a minority due to affirmative action programs in existence during my education and early career. As I type this however, I’m becoming aware of certain times in which I felt “blessed”, or lucky, and I’m wondering now if my luck was due to the color of my skin, or my race, or being male, or some other discriminatory factor. I have to admit that there were times in my life that I have received large benefits and have not really been able to logically explain or understand from where these benefits came. I can accept the possibility that white privilege, male privilege, religious privilege, or some other privilege was a larger factor than I have previously believed.
Before my heated discussion, I watched a few videos – a press briefing from the new white house administration, and a couple videos on financial bubbles forming due to the easy money flowing through the system in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. I was pleased to hear Dr. Fauci present a reality that felt in alignment with the reality I believe to be true. I especially liked when he answered a question by saying he didn’t know the answer and that the Biden administration was adopting a policy of only answering questions for which there is a known answer – not making something up on the spot just to have an answer. For the financial videos, I was glad to see Dr. Ron Paul doing well on Kitco news and still promoting liberty, reduced government and sound monetary policy. I’m attracted to him because he does not pledge allegiance to either political party and has a consistent set of beliefs. I don’t agree with all of his beliefs, but at least I can follow his logic when he explains why he holds them. One of the other videos was an interview by Bloomberg news of an individual who seemed to be reading a prepared statement warning Robinhoodlers and Stonks purchasers that one day the FED will not come to their rescue.
Also, today, like every day this year, I had a conversation with my Aunt who is on the board of directors of my condo HOA. At the end of 2020, like a final kick in the ass, our HOA found out that our management company had been stealing our money for the last 5 years and that we were broke with over $30K in debt. I’m now in a universe in which I’m working full-time helping our HOA get back on it’s feet. I hope to use this full-time effort I’m putting forth to tunnel to a universe in which I’m putting in similar effort towards something meaningful AND also getting paid for it.
What are the chances? I just checked to see what was happening on Nov 1, 2016, the day that $25K was moved from the HOA money market to checking. The next day another $25K was moved and then all $50K was moved out of our control to another HOA. This was Election Day 2016! The same time period when most people around the world felt a huge shift from the normal time line to a very unexpected time line. The conclusion of this fraudulent activity ended about the same time that Trump left office. What are the chances? Synchronicity.
Michael Schaupp, also known by his musician name Jackson Danny, was born in Carmel County on May 4th, 1977.
He was riding his 1996 Honda motorcycle northbound on Highway 17 around 1:25 pm, Dec 10th, 2013, when a woman driving a black 1994 Ford Explorer SUV made an illegal turn onto the highway and drove into his path. Schaupp hit the SUV and was thrown 20 feet across the roadway. He was taken to the hospital where he died of his injuries. The woman left the scene of the accident and abandoned the vehicle. Three months later, she turned herself in and was charged with a felony count of hit-and-run causing injury or death. The following song was played at her trial. It had been performed by Mike a few months before his death. The name of the song and the woman – Joline.
In the song, Mike changed the lyrics a bit. It is interesting to see the changes he made. Here are the lyrics as best I can reconstruct them – some changes of interest in bold from the original song by Dolly Parton. The “To never love again” change is in a stanza that is a mixture of two different stanzas.
Jolene … Jolene … Jolene … Jolene
I’m beggin you don’t take my man
Jolene … Jolene … Jolene … Jolene
Please don’t you take him can
Please don’t take him cuz you can
<Instrumental>
Your beauty is beyond compare
Flamin’ locks of auburn hair
Skin of ivory … eyes emerald green
Smile is like a breath of spring
Voice is like a summer rain
I cannot compete … Jolene
Jolene … Jolene … Jolene … Jolene
Beggin’ you, don’t take my man
Jolene … Jolene … Jolene … Jolene
Please don’t take him cuz you can
Please just take him cuz you can
<Instrumental>
And you could have your choice of men To never love again
You don’t know what it means to me, Jolene
I had to have this talk with you now
My happiness depends on you
Whatever you decide, Jolene
Jolene … Jolene … Jolene … Jolene
I’m beggin’ you don’t take my man
Jolene … Jolene … Jolene … Jolene
Please don’t take him cuz you can
Please just take him cuz you can
Mike’s fatal accident was part of a story written by Jennifer Wadsworth for the July 8-15, 2015 edition of Metro, a local newspaper in San Jose, CA. The story was about Lupin Lodge, where Joline worked and/or lived at the time. For some reason, the original link for the story goes nowhere and there is a shorter version of the story. Here is an excerpt of the original story:
Michael Schaupp left Santa Cruz around midday Dec. 10, 2013, for a 2pm class at Ex’pression College in Emeryville. The 36-year-old father and design student had driven the same northward Highway 17 route countless times on his 1996 Honda VLX motorcycle. Drivers who shared the winding mountain road with him that day said he looked at ease, like an experienced rider. And he was.
But about a half-hour into his commute, a 1994 Ford Explorer shot out onto Highway 17 from Idylwild Drive in a southbound arc that cut off Schaupp and sent him hurtling to the shoulder, according to detailed reports by California Highway Patrol officers. A trail of blood plotted his trajectory. The Explorer’s 47-year-old driver, Joline Fay Cohen, scrambled out of the SUV just as another car pulled up to the scene.
“Oh my God, I just killed that guy,” she told the witness, per the CHP. “Did you see him hit my car? What should I do?” Without waiting for an answer, she hopped back in the driver’s seat and drove away. A second witness pulled onto the shoulder and put a blanket on Schaupp, protecting him from the winter chill until help arrived.
A short distance north, Cohen, in a long black coat and dry dirty- blonde hair, left her car at Bear Creek Road and began walking along the shoulder, the collision report continues. Campbell resident Brandon Rohzen told police that he picked her up in his minivan, thinking she’d just got into a fender- bender and could use a lift. From the passenger seat, he said he remembers her calling Lupin’s office landline. “I hit somebody,” she shouted hysterically. “I think they might be dead.” Horrified, Rohzen slammed on the brakes and told her to get out of his car.
Schaupp died two days later at Stanford Hospital. Yet three full months passed before Cohen surrendered herself to authorities on hit-and-run charges that landed her in a Central Valley women’s prison.
Lupin residents claim Lori Kay harbored a fugitive during that time, leaving them no choice, they said, but to tip off CHP investigators to Cohen’s whereabouts. As a live-in assistant for several years to Lori Kay, Cohen ran errands, oversaw the main office and, according to CHP tipsters, had a reputation for smoking meth and driving erratically. Lupin management tried to distance itself from the damage, announcing online that the club had fired her as office employee before the crash. “She was allowed to stay because there are such thing as tenancy laws,” Lori Kay explained.
But the tragedy raised more questions about Lupin’s hiring practices. In an ongoing wrongful death lawsuit against Cohen, Schaupp’s mother, Denise, and 19-year-old son, Caleb, also name Lupin as a defendant. The Schaupp family attorneys claim that Cohen was acting “within the scope of her employment” while driving the
SUV and that Lupin is vicariously liable because it employed her “with knowledge of her history of reckless driving, erratic behavior and substance use.”
Obituary of Michael Carl Schaupp
Born in Carmel, CA Mikey: heart of lion, strength and steadfastness of a bull, playfulness of a laughing monkey, sensitivity and wisdom of an elephant, protective and nurturing as a mother bear, connected and ethereal as a spirit bird, and humble as a man. Born with big dark eyes and a deep gaze, Mikey often surprised others with his level of attentive observation as a baby. As a lil’ one, he loved the outdoors, preferring to sleep outside under the stars and up in his treehouse. A smile, soulful kind eyes, enduring loyalty and readiness to help were his tokens of friendship. His voice rang clear with passion, touching the core of life’s beauty, pain and mystery. With each song he wrote, he invited the possibility for a better world. Deeply embodied, he was a model for connection to one’s integrity and truth. His quick wit & easy sense of humor were medicine to our hearts. He understood that life, love, and friendship were a fragile and important gift, and if nurtured and protected, could all be eternal. Your love Dana Schlick, mother, Denise Schaupp, and beloved son will together forever embody your energy. May your journey to the next life be filled with adventurous trails, beautiful music, freedom and so much love. You radiated in this world and you’ll shine as a star in the next. All who knew you were so blessed to have you for 13,373 days. Your embrace of love, friendship, and generosity will live on in our hearts, memories and in everything that we do. He lived the lyrics from his song To Live, may we do the same: To love my world, To give myself, To live and live and live. Memorial will be on the Winter Solstice, Saturday, December 21st, from noon to sunset, at Seymour Marine Discovery Center. Please bring your favorite dish to share, and something that withstands the elements that reminds you of him (rock, stone, wood- creativity welcomed!) for a collaborative memorial sculpture.
Santa Cruz, CA: I did something this morning that I haven’t done in a while – I got up early to watch the sunrise. I drove to the lighthouse where I first learned to universe surf six years ago. Even though seven million people are sheltering in place around me, you wouldn’t know it by walking along West Cliff right now. It feels very much like the old universe I still remember where people are doing their same daily tasks and getting ready for the day. I see a couple with a baby in a stroller. The church bells are ringing. The surf is crashing against the shore. Runners are getting in their morning run before they go over the hill to work – except they most likely won’t be going to work today.
I’m amused at how the Universe is such a trickster. Yesterday, I went to top off my car with gas. The cash price was cheaper, and so I asked my partner if she had cash. She gave me $12.25 for a $12.04 bill. I asked her if she had a nickel. She looked and looked in her purse and didn’t have any more change – only the quarter. So I went to the cash register with the feeling of wanting to hold on to the quarter. When I offered the $12, the attendant said that was good as he reached his hand into an empty penny-saver tray and pulled out 4 imaginary pennies. I kept the quarter in my hand and returned to my car. There were a few used disinfecting wipes to throw away, so I grabbed those and put those in the garbage. I noticed I was about to throw my quarter away! As I pulled it out, I noticed it was now a nickel!! I showed it to my partner and asked “Did you give me a quarter or a nickel?”.
“I gave you a quarter”, she replied as she quickly took the nickel and threw it back into her purse after noticing it was a nickel.
“Wait, let me see that again”, I requested. She dug threw her purse and finally found the coin. It was now a quarter again – although it looked like a different quarter to me with lots of crumbs on it.
I meant to go through her purse when we returned home, but forgot. I actually don’t have an explanation for what happened. My only clue is when I returned home, I felt in my pocket and pulled out a quarter. It was like the Universe knew it had flubbed up and needed to give me a reason to be able to rationalize what had happened.
The synchronistic part of this story is how a day earlier I was telling my new housemates about my grandfather’s experience during the Great Depression. My grandfather told me that when he lost a nickel, he would get physically sick because money was that precious. I wonder if the Universe was letting me feel that yesterday – which I definitely did.
We now live in a world that operates on a currency that is no longer backed by gold. Dollars are not worth an ounce of Silver anymore. They are only worth another paper dollar. And, if toilet paper continues to be in short supply, you may not even be able to get paper dollars soon – only digital.
Of course the financial news didn’t pick up on my surfing move and they blamed the drop of Alphabet on a 125nm diameter coronavirus. I mentioned a risking to stocks 30 days ago in 2020 Day 25: Wuhan Coronavirus in the Year of the Rat:
I’m feeling now a universe where the stock market is negatively affected by the Wuhan coronavirus.
The feeling I remember having then was more negative than the drop in prices today. which was the worst day in two years. I’m currently invested in a superposition of two universes – one where I’m fully invested in the market and one where I’m fully out of the market.
Last night I participated in a meditation group. We listed to a meditation by Joe Dispenza. I do resonate with a lot of what he preaches. I also understand why there are people like Morten Tolboll who have their doubts. One of the reasons I keep my universe surfing philosophy close to my chest is that I have my own doubts about it. In the six years now that I have been practicing universe surfing, I have come to understand both the limits and power of it. The main value I see in it now is as a model of reality that helps me to understand common psychological phenomena, such as why habits are so hard to break and make. In the meditation group I learned that 21 days is one of the milestones for forming a new habit or removing an old habit. It was a bit synchronistic to me that I learned this on the 21st day of me posting on this blog. Also synchronistic to me was that my 21st blog post on 60 needs of healers somehow received a much larger number of views.
From a universe surfing model point of view, habits are things we do that we also do in most of the parallel universe that are dimensionally surrounding the universe we are in. Living life on autopilot is like randomly moving through nearby parallel universes. By “nearby” or “surrounding”, it is easiest to understand by considering only a single characteristic at a time – say universes where I write a daily blog post and universes where I don’t. Before writing the first blog post of 2020, I was in and surrounded by a vast majority of universes where I did not write daily blog posts. However, there was apparently one where I did and I found it! Once finding myself in that universe of daily blog posts, I “did some universe surfing magic” to bring closer to me other universes where I also wrote daily blog posts. I continued to do this for 21 days until today where I am not surrounded by a vast majority of universes where I DO write daily blog posts. This is an example of how I use universe surfing concepts to understand psychological behavior, in this case habit forming.
Regarding “did some universe surfing magic”, I’m not entirely sure how to explain this and it is definitely a topic for a future post. I’ve heard from other teachers that if you want more Love in your life, then resonate with the energy of Love. The idea of resonating with the energy of something does work as a mental model for bringing desired universes closer to you. The goal is to get every cell in your body resonating with the same energy. If you have a yoga, meditation, Qi Gong, or other practice that has taught you how to focus energy in your body, then you are ready for universe surfing. If you have such a practice, and it’s a habit, then you are surrounded by other universes where you also have such a practice. If you also then understand how to resonate each cell in your body with a certain energy of Love, or Compassion, or even Daily Blog Writing (or the feeling that this habit gives you), then this will likely also be true in the universes that surround you – if not immediately then over time.
So habits tell us about our surrounding universes. If we want to break a bad habit, we need to surf to a nearby universe in which we don’t have that bad habit (by either using universe surfing magic or luck). We then need to focus ourselves – every cell in our body – to bring near us other universes where we have also broken that habit. For long-time habits, this focusing will be extremely difficult. And for all habits, regardless of how hard you focus, you will find yourself in one of the ‘bad habit’ universes from time to time. Often these bad habit universes are surrounded by other bad habit universes, so it’s a good time to put some extra focusing power into bringing in universes without the bad habit.
I’m going to now try this technique on a couple of bad habits that I’m trying to remove from my life. One is daily checking the stock market. The other is picking my fingernails.
This morning I thought it would be interesting to use this blog as a way to experiment with quantum feeling parallel worlds. My hypothesis is that parallel worlds can be sensed, and that the feeling of sensing a parallel world is correlated with the feeling of a synchronicity, and furthermore that the synchronicity is related to an event that ties the parallel worlds together. For example, eight days ago I sensed a parallel world in which the Wuhan Coronavirus was a bigger event than it was in this world. I believe this sensing caused me to write a blog post about coronaviruses in quite a detailed manner. Since then, the Wuhan Coronavirus (it’s slightly interesting that I called it this above as I now see that wikipedia calls it the same – not that unexpected though) has resulted in two deaths in Wuhan, two cases in Thailand, and one case in Japan.
This story is still not widely reported, but has made it to The Economist. I hope to surf to a universe where this is not a big story, but the synchronicities that found me posting this make me worry that the odds are against me.
Wuhan is the capital of Hubei province in central China. I stopped in Wuhan a year ago instead of Hong Kong on a flight between Austin and Bangkok. The flight on China Southern was half the price of flying other airlines, like Cathay Pacific. The problem I noticed was that the weather in Wuhan was much colder than in Austin or Thailand, and so I needed to pack warmer clothes just for the layover – not ideal. Also, on the return flight through China, even though my ticket showed a single stop, the airlines ended up making a second stop and everyone had to get off the plane and wait for a couple hours to go through a customs-like search. I remember one passenger shouting during this time how annoyed he was for this surprise experience. While I was also annoyed, I also found amusement in seeing another example of the multiverse working it’s magic. I could feel the universe where we didn’t have the unexpected stop, and also the universe where the ticket displayed correctly the extra stop. I saw the universe I was experience as one created by the interference pattern of these two other universes.
Today it is being reported that the Wuhan pneumonia outbreak “mystery illness” that has infected 60 people in the last 2 weeks is caused by a new coronavirus. Coronaviruses are a species of viruses blamed for such deadly illnesses as severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS). Coronaviruses are enveloped viruses (HIV-1 is also an enveloped virus), which means they have an outer phospholipid bilayer membrane that includes some viral glycoproteins. The viral glycoproteins act as Trojan horse to gain entry into a host cell and also help the virus hide from the host immune system. Coronaviruses have a single-stranded, positive-sense, non-segmented, RNA genome which is the largest of all RNA viruses at around 30,000 bases. Because it is positive-sense and also contains a 5’ cap structure and 3’ poly (A) tail, it can mimic mRNA and be directly translated by the host of the replicase polyproteins, which are encoded by the approximately 20,000 base replicase gene. The replicase polyproteins assemble to form a viral replicase complex that, as you may guess, makes copies of the virus. The remaining 10,000 or so bases encode structural and accessory proteins. The four main structural proteins (all encoded within the 3’ end of the viral genome) are the spike, membrane, envelope, and nucelocapsid proteins. The spike protein has an N-terminal signal sequence that allows it to gain access to the host cell endoplasmic reticulum where it is heavily N-linked glycosylated. Three spike proteins join together to form a club-shape spike projection. These virion projections give the virus the appearance of a solar corona, from which their name derives. For a size perspective, the diameter of the coronaviruse virion is about 125 nm, so a meter long thin straw of diameter 125 nm filled with the virions would contain 8 million virions. For comparison, a single nucleotide is 0.33 nm long and so 30,000 bases has a length of 10,000 nm! Imagine fitting that into a 125 nm diameter virion.
Four identified coronaviruses (HCoV-229E, HCoV-NL63, HCoV-OC43, and HCoV-HKU1) are endemic in humans and cause up to 30% of respiratory tract infections worldwide each year. HCoV-NL63 has been associated with acute laryngotracheitis (croup). Coronoviruses have different tolerances to genetic variability with some (i.e. HCoV-229E) having little genetic variability worldwide and primarily isolated in humans and others (i.e. HCoV-OC43) showing high genetic variability across time and location. Most cases of coronavirus infection are self-limiting and will naturally run its course.
I’ve been sick with a respiratory infection for about two weeks. A few days ago I tried out my video-doctor health plan and got a prescription for Amoxicillin antibiotics. I also went to Accupuncture and purchased some Chinese herbs. I didn’t pick up the antibiotics prescription and I tried the herbs instead. That night I didn’t sleep well and I felt my body releasing a lot of toxins. My throat was still feeling scratching in the morning with nasal drip collecting in the back of my throat. Once I spit the thick yellow mucus out each morning, I felt fine. I decided to treat myself with water and rest over the next couple of days. I felt the universe where I was taking the antibiotics. I felt the universe where I had continued taking the herbs. I felt the universe where I was drinking more water and resting (and taking a zinc lounge now and then for good luck). Right now I still feel like I have a swollen throat, but it isn’t sore. I didn’t have much mucus this morning. My nasal passages are mostly clear. I expect the three universes to merge together tomorrow and I will feel infection free. Now if I could just find a way to clear the cedar pollen out of the air!
REFERENCE: Methods Mol Biol. 2015; Pehr and Perlman, Coronaviruses: An Overview of Their Replication and Pathogenesis
surfing the universe 