Synchronistic Sunday Surprizes

This story of synchronicity may sound too incredible to be true to some people who may be reading this blog
(The name ...

 ... springs to mind for some reason;-)
”But Dylan’s Not Dead” ”Oh ... Isn’t He”?

 ... but I will give links to sites mentioned in this post, so the skeptics out there can do their own inquiries, if they would like to contact those establishments to verify goods sold, music played there etc, etc ... or for those who may just want to know more about these places visited by your's truly.

The books that I'm currently reading

Two books that I am currently reading are  
Toward 2012-Perspectives on the Next Age and 
The Intuitive Way by Penney Peirce. 
I started reading The Intuitive Way after coming across this 
ad pictured below in Vanity Fair Magazine.

Click on photo image to make bigger

Skull and cross-bones tattoo?

I've had it sitting in my "To read" pile, but soon as I saw the

white feather behind a watch with Roman numerals, I just knew this was a sign to start reading The Intuitive Way mostly because of the white feather, but also because the introduction in the 

The Intuitive Way is numbered with Roman numerals (see below)

So, I started reading Penney Perice's book on Sunday morning before I left for Byron Bay.
Now, I don't usually read Vanity Fair, but because it had

Johnny Depp on the front cover showing his

skull and cross-bone tattoo, and I myself have collected some

skull and cross-bone items, including my cell phone cover

(see below),

My cell phone/camera cover plus pewter skull.

because I like the hidden meanings associated with the symbol, as well as my love researching everything of a conspiratorial nature, so I just knew that I had to buy the magazine.
I had been reading my way through it (I still haven't read the Johnny Depp interview, though) and came across the ad for the watch, which is when I started reading the The Intuitive Way ... last Sunday morning, before I started out with my brother for

Byron Bay.

Alex Grey's "Skull Fetus"

I must say though, I came across this Alex Grey artwork called "Skull Fetus" and I think this is a much better symbol than the "Skull and Bones" symbols above.
It's almost a Yin/Yang type symbol for life and death/death and re-birth.
A very psychologically powerful work of art indeed.
It also reminds me of the 'Star-child' out of 2001: A Space Odyssey.

There is also an essay in Toward 2012-Perspectives on the Next Age called "The Kubrick Gaze", which is worth a read.
You can read it here;
http://www.realitysandwich.com/kubrick_gaze

There is even a section of the essay titled "From Alex to Alice"
And don't forget Johnny Depp played the role  of 'The Mad Hatter' in Alice in Wonderland

 Talking of Alex Grey, there is an interview in 
Toward 2012-Perspectives on the Next Age  with him called  
"Paint into Words: Alex Grey Interview" by Michael Robinson, where he is asked "what is your personal mantra?", and he talks about the Buddhist mantra "Ah", which one visualizes as a white letter in your heart and identifies with as primordial awareness outside of time and boundless in expanse.
Penney also relates a dream she had about the angel of healing telling her to make the long sound of the universe "AHHHHHHH" while he slips a now-perfect heart back down to it's rightful place.

In the intro Penney says,

"The Intuitive way will give you the simple truths I have gleaned from my own zigzagging path toward becoming a clear lens.

It will empower you to know what you need to know, just when you need to know it.
It will help you become one of the voices of love and truth in the world and give you the advantage of extended perception, heightened clarity, and a renewed sense of  magic about life.
With intuition, as you will see, miracles are not only possible, they're probable."

Here's where it starts getting strange.
Penney says;

"The path first led me to become a graphic designer and corporate art director, using intuition to create advertising - sensing what symbolic image might capture the essence of a product or company"
Which is what captured my attention

(the white feather in the watch ad), which led me to pick up her book and start reading.
In the the intro she also says, "I began to travel internationally, and a long term involvement with  the Japanese turned me inside out.
They gave me a profound understanding of an ingenious way of ordering reality that was diametrically opposed to our Western way of thinking in almost every detail"
Oddly enough, I had just read this post by a lady by the name of

Alex Robinson (Alex Grey + Michael Robinson = Alex Robinson??? 
Now we are entering into some grey areas;-)
https://toolonginthisplace.wordpress.com/ 
about Japan, the day before I started reading Penney's book.
Here's a quote from Alex's post to remember later "Japan was probably the toughest egg that the West had to crack… but then egg crackin’ was their specialty." (see the very top photo for a hint).
Weirdly enough, Alex starts off her post with a Japanese poem about a frog;

“The old pond;
A frog jumps in -
The sound of water”

 And I had to laugh when I relate this question to my life,"... suffered from Stockholm Syndrome?"  
If I told you who I worked for you would see the joke there;-) (although it's really not that hard to figure out).
"Stockholm syndrome is a term used to describe a real paradoxical psychological phenomenon wherein hostages express empathy and have positive feelings towards their captors; sometimes to the point of defending them." LOL

The Sea-horse from the Kathmandu shop, Byron Bay

And after reading about the seahorse, what should I find at one of my favourite stores in Byron Bay?
Penney then goes on to say that she had a powerful dream about riding on the back of a sea-serpent that looked a little like,"Falkor,the Luck Dragon" out of the movie  
The Never Ending Story, and thought "this must be the symbol for my trip" (her trip to Santa Fe)

Penney says, "since then the dragon image has followed me everywhere.
A friend sent me an illustration of the Chinese goddess Kwan Yin standing on a sky dragon..."
What should I find later on that day at The Crystal Castle, (the same shop I would find the green frog with the red eyes)?

A holographic image of Kwan Yin

A dragon cracking through "The Cosmic Egg "?

Free shark  tooth with every purchase. What the???

The football team I have been a member of for 23 years, now.

Penney then says, "In Asia, the dragon is represented holding

the pearl of fertility and enlightenment in it's claws. With it's rippling, undulating movement, the dragon seems to represent the need to equally embrace both the highs and lows of life."
She goes on to say that she mentions this image of the dragon, because it might speak as an image of intuition to the reader's life also.

Since I was born in '64 (the year of the dragon) and the I Ching has 64 hexagrams, I thought that maybe she is right?

The Chinese dragon, as a symbol, has always held some appeal to me.

Maybe it was just because of the TV series Kung Fu I used to love as a kid.

"No pessimist ever discovered the secrets of the stars, or sailed to an uncharted land, or opened a new heaven to the human spirit."   
Helen Keller

Anyway, enough background story, it's time to start the trip to Byron Bay. 

First stop, Brunswick Heads.

The pedestrian bridge that I took the photos from

The pedestrian bridge is the bridge on your left

We parked the car in a backstreet and set off on foot to look for a nice coffee shop, but saw that the pub was open, and since we have always visited Brunswick Heads before 10 o'clock, the pub had always been closed, but today we had arrived at about 11, so we thought we would try their coffee shop (that's right ... coffee, not beer, like most of you were probably thinking:-).
It's a lovely old pub right across from the river.
Hotel Brunswick

I couldn't believe my ears, as we walked in I Feel Love was piping out from the speakers.
Not the Blue Man Group version, but the original version, which I hadn't heard in years.
This is also the Hotel where I bought the green chocolate frog, that I blogged about here;
The Green Frog With The Red Eyes

Chocolate frog at Brunswick Heads Hotel

The green frog that I seem to connect to, is in this essay from
Toward 2012-Perspectives on the Next Age

The Shaman and the DMT toad of Izapa

called "Maya Shamanism and 2012: A Psychedelic Cosmology"
 I had bought a little ceramic frog with a painted dragonfly on its belly, from my local post office a few weeks ago, mainly because I liked the dragonfly, but also because of the unusual pose of the frog.
To me it was as though the frog was praying to, or contemplating the heavens.
I hadn't seen the DMT frog of the Mayan's, or read about it until a few weeks after I had already bought the frog.

The frog I bought from the post office

 So, I guess the trip really started for me when I ingested the

green chocolate frog;-)
 After the coffee, I went for a walk over the pedestrian bridge that crosses the river and takes you through to the beach.
Oddly enough, the first chapter of The Intuitive Way is about creating a clear lens, recognizing the intuitive process, and choosing the intuitive world view (as well as talking about rivers).

And the first photo I took produced this rainbow in the lens.

Taken from pedestrian bridge, Brunswick Heads

The other side of the pedestrian bridge

Byron Bay Lighthouse straight ahead

The next photo I took after crossing the bridge was when I aligned my lens to the Byron Bay lighthouse's lens.
That's the lighthouse in the far distance of the above photo.

I wrote a post about it here;
Guiding Higher Light

Cape Byron Lighthouse

That's the most easterly point on the Australian main land. 
 Seeing that photo (above) reminded me of another essay from 
 Toward 2012-Perspectives on the Next Age called  
"The Testicular Age". 
Which you can read here ;
http://www.realitysandwich.com/testicular_age

 I love how the essay ends saying;

"During this birthing, humanity will experience a life-and-death journey just to survive. 

When we are born into that new world, we will realize that our species is just in its infancy. This process is beginning in earnest in our lifetimes, and it may take centuries to complete. 
I do not know the specifics, but in my heart I sense the coming of a more beautiful world. 
I hope in my lifetime to see its outlines coming into focus. 
Sometimes I think I even see its light beckoning. 
Do you?"

There is even a little symbol in the book under the author's name (Charles Eisenstein) that looks like the lighthouse lens.

The symbol that looks a bit like the lighthouse lens.

The lens of the Byron Bay Lighthouse

 After walking around Brunswick Heads for a while, we returned to my brother's car only to find a doppelganger for my own car parked a space away from us.
It was the same make and colour of my own car, but it had NSW plates instead of Queensland ones ... and it was a little bit more worse for wear than my car.

That's the same colour, make and model of my own car

Next stop, the Fig Tree Restaurant.
I had been meaning to go here for ages, but because they cater for weddings here most weekends, it's quite hard to get a booking when you want one.
Luckily for me I could get one this Sunday, which just happens to be the weekend the movie  The Tree

Great Movie!

The Tree (Trailer for Movie) 
which is also about a huge fig, roughly the same size as the one at the restaurant (as it turns out) is released in Australia on DVD.

I wrote a post about my synchros with The Tree when it was released in October last year;
The Tree

View from underneath the fig tree.

The fig tree from the Restaurant.

Inside the Fig Tree Restaurant.

Looking out window towards Byron Bay.

I had the feeling that I should snap this picture (below) that was hanging on the wall.
My wife had done a bit of ballet when she was younger, but I didn't think she would be that fussed to see it, so I don't really know why I took the shot at the time.

Picture hanging on wall in the Fig Tree Restaurant

When I got home from my trip and started reading 
 The Intuitive Way from where I had left off. 
I turned the page and read, "A ballerina once told me that if she falls at a critical moment in her performance, though humiliated  and shocked, she has no time for self-indulgent behavior. The only relevant question to ask is 
"What's next?"
Even this painting on the wall 

Painting of the Divine Feminine?

triggered my thoughts to this essay from
Toward 2012-Perspectives on the Next Age  called  
"Transforming Repression of the Divine Feminine

And the old chapel under the fig tree (which is no longer in use as a chapel), reminded me of this essay called  
Gnosis:The Not-so-secret History of Jesus

The old chapel under the fig tree.

Two of my favourite books

I had found out about the Fig Tree Restaurant through an offer in the Entertainment Book (pictured above), and the first place that I can ever remember eating at in Byron was a cafe called the

Why Not Cafe after I had just read The Why Cafe.
The Why Not Cafe happens to be the sister restaurant  of the

Fig Tree Restaurant .

I felt like having the fish meal, which on the menu just read  
"Catch of the Day".
When I asked what type of fish it was, I was told King-fish.
 I had flashbacks to the Sacred Kingfisher slamming into my window
The Bird that Flew into the Window
and started thinking, surely that won't happen here?

The Sacred Kingfisher after being KO'd

Don't worry, it didn't.
I'm not that big of a synchro magnet ... yet;-)
After lunch was finished, we drove into Byron Bay and I went to buy some hemp socks and a hemp long sleeve t-shirt from Kathmandu, which is where I also purchased the blue seahorse, that I mentioned early on.
I also purchased these drink coasters.

It says on the back of the box  -
"This artwork depicts the culture and dreamings of the Aboriginal people over the last 40 000 years.
These stories or "dreamings" feature numerous artwork styles, each influenced by geographic tribal location and Aboriginal beliefs, passed down by elders over many generations."

Alex Grey

More Dream-time Artwork

"Shpongled" by Alex Grey

Bob at Byron Bay Bluesfest. I can see clearly now;-)

Now it's off to The Crystal Castle at Mullumbimby.

At the Entrance to the Crystal Castle.

Fish pond with water bearer/Aquarius?

Goldfish swimming in the flow at the Crystal Castle?

When you enter the Crystal Castle grounds, just through the main entrance, there is a unique sculpture with crystals, blue dolphins, angels and hearts on it.
People leave coins on it, for good luck ... I guess.
If you look at the point of the crystals, most will have a coin balancing on top of its point.
There is also a giant pond filled with goldfish, and a statue of a figure pouring water out of a jar continuously.
To me it speaks of the Aquarian Age that we are entering at present and the need to go with the flow.
So to me, it is appropriate to have this pond at the entrance.
Another essay from Toward 2012-Perspectives on the Next Age called 
"Reality  2.0" says, "If print is solid and concrete, new media is liquid. 
Like it or not, Aquarius,with knowledge flowing out of his jar, is an apt figure for our times."

A little further down from the pond I came across this  
"Serpent Tree"

The Serpent Tree.

and then this labyrinth

Go inwards?

 It reminded me of this picture that I had saved off the internet;

And what should I find in their shop???

Unicorn with butterfly that I bought for my wife

and then I come across this mural;

and a floating round stone rotating on top of a water fountain

Go with the flow?

I think that I'm finally on the right path;

Although, it's clear that others who have walked through here aren't.

Why would you do this???

My old mate, the Garuda.

A Penney for your thoughts?-)

I feel like the Tin Man, I found a heart on the path;-)

And just when I thought I was out of puff;-)

I've finally reached the calm centre of the park?

I think I found the power source;-)

Time for a coffee, then back to Brisbane.

  What a Trip!!!