The view of Alki Point in West Seattle, from 57th Ave. S. W. It's a triangle jutting into Puget Sound that was a cow pasture a hundred years ago. There's a small version of the Statue of Liberty on the beach at 61st Ave. S. W.
Does some part of our mind know the future? There have been a few incidents in my past
when it looked as though some part of my mind knew the future. That's what convinced me that at times in every day life there's an appearance of foresight on my part and that I chose to do what I've done but actually a pure impulse was 'willing' the act, through my body. That kind of event doesn't happen every day. It took a long time to even notice them then notice not only my loss of will but that I couldn't 'see' what my body was doing until something happens that causes me to 'see' into my blind spot. There is an intention at work that's obvious but not mine. This is an example:
I remember getting up early, dressing without a plan to go anywhere but I drove to West Seattle where we used to live, just across from Alki Beach. I spent the day sitting on the bench near Little Miss Liberty, a book in my hand but I know I didn't read it. My usually thought filled mind must have been strangely quiet because I didn't feel the restlessness that has made it difficult for me to'just sit quietly and feel content the way I used to do while my children and neighborhood kids played on the beach. We'd spent a lot of time there and I had loved just being there.
I sat on the bench near the model of the Statue of Liberty for hours, walked up and down the promenade several times but I don't remember thinking about anything. I remember the day as a blank except that I left the beach to have lunch then walked around the 'point'. Alki is a triangle of land, it has a lighthouse and of course that's why it's named Alki Point. I took pictures during the day, the last ones were after sundown. I had the film developed and was surprised to see the pictures I'd taken of the miniature Statue Of Liberty and the pictures I took a week later.
The top picture was taken in the evening a week before 9-11-2001. The bottom picture was taken the evening of 9-11-2001, when I got of work, I went there, and joined a crowd of mourners who had left their prayers in paper bags and draped her with our flag.
I had spent an entire day 9-06-2001 at Alki Beach in West Seattle, near Little Miss Liberty ( miniature of the Statue of Liberty) quietly, without any anxiety or the restlessness that's been my 'normal' for quarter of a century. I lived that day but basically forgot it until a week later
I was at work in the 'kitting area' of Boeing, Final Assembly where I've worked since being suddenly transferred there in 1993, when a co-worker told us an airplane had crashed into a building in New York. We tuned our radios to the news and then soon heard the report that another airplane had struck the second twin tower. I remember looking around and noticed a co-worker clenching and unclenching his hands, his face registering outrage. This was obviously an attack, these were not accidents. He was ready to go to war right at the moment. He wasn't alone.
Men grouped around a small television someone found but the man I worked with went back to work after a few minutes so I went back to doing normal work myself. It wasn't long before I felt that it was absurd to just keep working. I said something to him about how inappropriate it seemed to just keep working. He told me there wasn't anything we could do except keep focused on doing our job, mechanics (and their supervisors and their generals) were waiting for our products.
I'm embarrassed that I was not familiar with the Twin Towers or it's history. I know that's because I've been so self absorbed with my life's events for 20+ years, my inner life has been where my primary attention was fixed. I had noticed points when my thoughts and events in the world outside of my body synchronized, and experienced this as a very disorienting point of conjunction. Unexplainable perfecct timing at times seemed impossible to happen even once. So when 9-11 happened I didn't know what to feel. I had no attitude, not a clue about what to think except that doing work as usual didn't make sense. I didn't feel the outrage that the men seemed to feel so immediately.
It wasn't too long before there were news reports that we should not let this event affect us, not create fear that would keep us away from the malls, from doing what we normally did.
As soon as the shift ended I drove to Alki Beach and saw that I wasn't the only person that associated our Little Miss Liberty with the New York tragedy. There were brown paper bags along the promenade, each bag having a note inside, a prayer for those people in New York whose life had suddenly changed forever. Little Miss Liberty was surrounded by flowers, teddy bears, balloons and draped with an American flag. People wept, hugged each other, grieving as though every person that was important in their life was in New York in those two buildings or trying to get to those inside.
I took the pictures without any memory of what I'd done the week before.
I didn't remember that a week before I'd spent a day almost like a thought-less automaton sitting near Little Miss Liberty, taking pictures during the day and leaving only when the sun went down. The memory was retrieved when I had the pictures developed and saw the pictures on the same roll. Then I remembered (or was prompted to remember) that I hadn't made a decision to go to the Point. My body just went there and spent the day quietly doing it's own living.
I've not changed dentists so every six months I go to West Seattle for a dental appointment then go to the Point to have fish and chips at the wonderful Sunfish. It's owned by some Greek brothers and they know how to do seafood.
It was only when I saw the pictures I'd taken during the day that I 'felt' how strange that day had been, how I'd no memory of anything except a certain quietness and patience that was unusual for me the way I am now. Restlessness is me now.
After I thought about that 'lost day' and how it seemed that a part of my mind 'knew' what was going to happen a week later, other similar events came to mind. Now I could describe several, but this is one that had a great impact on my thinking in a new way about a three letter word:
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I remembered the day in 1996 when I'd got up, dressed and went to work only to be told it was Saturday and I wasn't scheduled to work! It was a gorgeous spring day so that wasn't bad news although my co-workers razzed me about my approaching senility. I left and headed towards my favorite breakfast place feeling the sparkle of the first really nice spring Saturday. It usually rains or is dark on weekends in our area.
I passed a big Yard Sale sign and paused briefly trying to decide whether to waste the day doing yard sales, then the decision was made for me. I pulled into the yard sale.The first thing I saw was a blue carton, which I picked up and then realized was an audio book, The Goal by Eliyahu Goldratt! What a surprise! I had recently noticed the book on my lead's desk and asked him what it was about. "It's about how nobody goes into business except to make money. All the supers are reading it." He looked at me in a particular way he had and said: "Maybe you should read it too." So I called the company library and asked about it only to be told there was a very long waiting list.
It wasn't that important to me so I forgot about The Goal. Until a few days later when I 'forgot' it was Saturday and got ready for Friday, went to work then drove right to a copy. It was even an audio book copy which I much prefer. One detail that I thought was quite a 'coincidence' because I wouldn't have thought of it the way I did later, was that the box had the names of thousands of large corporations on it that had been influenced by the book. I thought it odd when I noticed the book had been published in 1984. The information in the book took 12 years to reach where I was working, and that happened, precisely timed, just when a new airplane body was advancing to Final Assembly.
I listened to the book, curious to know how one book could 'capture' so many giant corporations and why my lead had said it was about how 'nobody goes into business except to make money'. It's about a man who was told his factory wasn't making money so it's going to be closed unless he can turn it around in three months. He is supposed to take his son's Boy Scout troop for a hike which he reluctantly does because his wife pressures him. His marriage is in trouble too, because he's so absorbed in his work. He has to lead the troop to a certain place and be there at a certain time but he notices that some of the hikers are slower, they are a 'bottleneck' so to speak. He has to solve the problem of getting everyone where they should be at the same time.
He thinks and thinks and comes up with a plan. Then a miracle happens, he has a thought about how to prevent the kids that were slow from holding the troop to their speed. The hike provides a hint, a clew that may help solve the problems in his factory. He has a genius economics consultant that he calls when he needs help and that's what I thought made a difference. He didn't have to do all the thinking himself. I thought that might be a problem to those who were using the ideas in the book but were not able to get genius level input. But I also thought it interesting to read of how the inspiration in a book that had been written in 1984, 12 years before the idea matured at where I worked, was triggering so many corporate motivational seminars, that all used the same buzz words. And the birth of the ideas arose from just taking some boys on a hike.
Little details in the book made me notice, then think about how my mind operates so automatically. I saw my own 'impressons' arise in my thought, defining certain words in new meanings and doing that instantly. Somewhat as though the impressions were given to me, not produced by me. That was a change that had happened very, very gradually but by 1996 when our motivational seminars were peaking, my thoughts and understanding had become visible, like 'objects' to study.
I began to think about the word 'goal' in a way I'd not thought about it; I realized it means 'end', like the 'end zone' in football. That definition hadn't come immediately into my mind but after listening to The Goal it began to come to mind often. There was a lot of talk about the end of 1999 and a problem that had recently been recognized in computers. What was going to happen when computers rolled 1999 over to 2000? Would it be the end of time? The uncertainty of what was going to happen was widespread, some actually feared, others only wondered if that would be the end of time?
I began to think of the 'goal' of Time, defining 'goal' as having a purpose and aiming towards it. But there's a lot of information behind what caused the word 'goal' to replace the word 'end' whenever I heard or read 'the end of time'. Another unusual change happened; the number 911 was so fixed in my understanding as the number to call for help that the date 9-11-brought to mind other ideas about how it's been assumed that God doesn't need our help, but in reality that is not true. 9-11 was a call for help from a place in reality that I had named the Larger Domain. How that idea developed is another post.
So the experience that I'd had when I 'lost time', got up on Saturday, without doing what I normally do, then drove right to a copy of the book that all the 'supers' were reading was similar to how the book was conceived, a kind of accident but perfectly timed.
But my sense of not having been in charge of my body in both events was bothersome. It looked like a planned event, but who planned it? I have never forgotten the day of the week that way. These events and many others prodded me to consider whether my 'unconscious mind' is totally unconscious of everything, I'm the one that has a very limited understanding of 'events' until it uses it's toolbox. Contact between upper levels and lower very deep levels of mind requires that I notice and learn from some subtle interactions between levels in my mind.
( I was in my 60's when that day scrolled through Time. But I didn't start work until I was 52. I was in a state of mind that was different than normal for me in 1985, when I drove through the security gates at Boeing in Auburn, Washington. That's when I saw the pi model that was their awards program logo then. I was transferred to Final Assembly in 1993 a stream of events began then that shifted my personal life's events into another stream, as though everything that had already happened was just a foundation for further 'work'. 1996 was a calm year but a hurricane of change was already moving towards Final Assembly where a new airplane was going to be 'finished'. It was YA001 when it entered, the first 737 that has a vowel in it's nameber. When it left it was known as YAHOO1. The 'yahoo's in Gulliver's Travels loved filth but Norman O. Brown had recognized that Jonathan Swift's fictional story was a storied version about the birth in history of 'anal retentiveness', a real pattern in life itself.)
