I resume my former life post-trip. Or do I?

May 20, 2025

For about 20 years, starting in my mid-50s, I traveled extensively, visiting numerous European, Asian and Aouth American countries. But then, suddenly, in 2019, I stopped. Just didn’t want to get on a plane anymore. That is weird for a double Sagittarian whose unrealized dream, when young, was to travel the world reporting on my experiences. (Instead I got married, had two kids, and felt tied down.)

So why now, do I no longer desire to travel to the far corners of the world?

Well, if my experience on the week-long car trip with Joan (see last two posts) is any indication, it’s because either I’m tending to immerse myself far more into whatever environment I’m inside of, or: — and this is weird, this is the opposite . . . — I can no longer sensorily pick up and translate audible “data” from outside myself the way I used to.

I suspect both are true, actually. At 82, my own individual consciousness feels far more permeable than it used to, thus fuller immersion; and, my ears no longer work as precisely as before. BTW: I am not talking about “hearing loss.”

Case in point: while listening to various speakers at the Rebels of Disclosure conference, I found myself often unable to instantly translate the sounds that were coming into my ears into meaningful words, sentences. Instead, garbled. Or as if in  a foreign language.

At first I assumed that my problem was the “fault” of the microphone; that the organizers had not vetted the audio well enough, had not somehow blanketed the place so that there wouldn’t be weird echoes, reverberations. But: I noticed that other people in the audience did not have the same problem that I was having. They would all laugh at the same time, for example, at something I hadn’t even been able to pick up on.

I repeat: It’s not that my hearing is going; it’s that the sounds themselves that I pick up from a microphone tend to be garbled. Very weird.

I’ve never heard of others having this particular hearing problem before; maybe because I find it difficult to articulate, so they would too?

 

On another topic, or is it? My speaking of fading abilities is akin to noticing I’m marching towards death . . .

I notice that Scott Adams is now saying that he expects to be dead by sometime this summer; that he has the same kind of cancer that they now claim Biden has, prostate cancer that has metastasized to the bones.

I admire Scott Adams as one of the very few public figures who, after being decidedly pro-vax, then actually admitted that he was wrong and the anti-vaxxers correct.

 

Frankly, ever since the covid catastrophe the world has seemed out of sorts. What went down during those four years has simply not been processed, either individually, or relationally, or culturally. And yet, how much of this “out of sortness” is due to deterioration in my own perceptual capacities, and how much is due to “reality?” I’m reminded of this meme. Not sure why . . .

 

Please don’t read too much into this apparently morbid post. Instead, note it as part and parcel of the “humbling” that I underwent at the conference. Because I do seem to be aging at a much slower rate than most people my age (thanks to staying in motion, intermittent fasting, and continuing to challenge myself), I also tend to think of myself as relatively invincible. Clearly, I am not!

The day after our return I walked by a pond that has ducks. Wanted to see how the ducklings were doing. Eleven of them from one mother, and two from another mother who had abandoned them!

How do I know these duckling specifics? I happened to come upon a man in a wheelchair. I’ve seen him before from afar. He apparently goes to the pond often to watch.

Since my own son is now in a wheelchair (paralyzed, nerve-damaged: see https://www.caringbridge.org/visit/colincudmorehealing) I have found myself much bolder. Rather than a polite hello, I walked right up and asked: “Why are you in a wheelchair?”

I have a sense that very few people bother to ask this question of wheelchair-bound people. Because it was as if he suddenly had permission: to tell me that for the last nine years the entire right side of his body has been not only paralyzed, but nerve damaged. That he has bone growths in his neck and at the bottom of his spine. That it takes him two full hours each morning, on waking, to gradually work his neck so that it will be flexible enough to turn, with the entire experience painful . . . on and on. His story endlessly fascinating and horrible. And yet, during this entire soliloquy, his face was beaming, refulgent.

And, on another note, right in the middle of it, sudden ruckus in the pond below: a giant crane had just picked up one of the ducklings, flew to the other side of the pond, and ate it. The mother duck furious, squawking like mad.

WOW!

At some point, I asked the man, given the horror show he endures 24×7, “Why do you remain alive?”

“Because I love life. And I love people.”

And he meant it. It was truly obvious that he meant it.

I asked him if I could give him a hug. He eagerly accepted, and thanked me, over and over.

How often does he even touch another person?

Then I told him he might think about doing some tic toc videos. To let people know what it’s like to be him.

“Really? I didn’t think my story is that interesting.”

“Oh, it is. And inspiring.”

Again, him: “thank you thank you.”

 

So that was yesterday. What will today bring?

Notes from a week-long adventure in consciousness

May 19, 2025

My old friend Joan Bird and I  got back home late Saturday from a very eventful car trip. (See last post.) Here we are sitting on the patio out back yesterday about an hour before I had to deliver her to the bus that took her to the Indy airport and her return to Arizona.

It turns out we had three destinations on our week long adventure, not two. I include some notes from each.

Rebels of Disclosure

This conference was, as Joan said, a “next level event.” By this she meant that it didn’t just focus on UFO and ET contact, like the other UFO conferences the two of us had attended for many years, starting in 1999. No, this one focused even more on the latent possibilities within human beings, some of which, in some people, are actually active and utilized routinely in daily life. For example, telepathy. This was true of  not just the four presenters each day, speaking for one hour with 30 minute Q & A, but those in the audience as well. And, frankly, I have never been to a conference where the frequency was so uniformly beyond ego. Really astonishing. A near-paradisiacal immersion. Fifth Dimensional, as we say.

By the way, the conference seemed evenly composed of young, middle-aged and old. And the young people present were of such quality that I am heretofore assured that our sorry world will be redeemed.

And you know what? In that group of about 150 people, I felt like a “normie.” Me! Felt like just a regular person, not at all gifted or weird compared to those around me. (When I mentioned this back home to others here in Bloomington, that “I felt like a normie,” they all guffawed. Hmmm . . . I guess they don’t think so.)

Oh yes, I’m clairaudient at times, at those rare times when my higher self insists that I wake up in the present moment, or die. And yes, I do regularly rely on both synchronicities and intuition.

But that’s about it!

Go to this website, and scroll down to “Meet the Speakers.” Jaysan and Patrick Riley especially, fascinated me. Oh, and Susan Menawich, and Ed Spina . . . on and on. A really remarkable lineup, some of whom had never faced an audience before.

https://www.journeytotruth.online/about-1

I came away from this conference feeling humbled. And grateful for the enlarged perspective — on myself!

 

Cahokia

cahokiamounds.org

We had planned to visit Cahokia, and it turned out that just about everybody at the conference also wanted to go. So about 125 of us drove two hours south on Friday to meet up for ceremony with singing bowls, drums and chanting on top Cahokia’s largest mound, which rivals the main Giza pyramid in its footprint, and rises ten stories from the ground.

After our ceremony, on the way down, I noticed weird clouds beginning to waft in from the south west. What’s that? Unexpected. They kept rolling in, as Joan and I sat in a near-by park, eating lunch. Oops! “We need to get on the road. NOW.” I finally announced. Something about those clouds. They felt like they could harbor not only storms but tornadoes. Which, it turns out, they did. But not there. Up here in Bloomington! Where one tornado touched down, took out a post office, killed two horses, put one person in the hospital and did lots of property damage.

 

New Harmony

Ok. Our third and final stop, New Harmony, Indiana, a bit more than two hours from Cahokia. While we were rocked by wind and a few raindrops, we managed to stay ahead of the clouds on our way over. Once we got to our hotel however, sirens came on. And stayed on, for many long minutes. Tornado watch. But not a warning; no tornadoes actually touched down in New Harmony.

I have been to New Harmony before, once, many years ago, and had always wanted to return. Why? Because New Harmony was the site of not one, but two efforts to create utopia in the 19th century, the Harmonists from 1814 through 1824 and the Owenites from 1825 through 1827. The first community was spiritual, a rogue German Lutheran sect with its leader, and the the second secular, begun by a philanthropic industrialist. The first brought one thousand people who built 165 houses and barns, and orchards, and gardens, and became nearly self-sufficient over ten years while awaiting the return of the redeemer. But then, they left to return to Pennsylvania! (Why? I asked myself, and purchased two books that might help me to find out.) The founder then sold the entire 20,000 acres, plus all the structures, to an industrialist, who wanted to bring in artists and intellectuals, and make it possible for young men and women to learn various trades.

But that second social experiment, unlike the other, only lasted two years, likely due to the founder not being there much, but instead out on the road, prosteletyzing, and the governing structure did not really get established.

Both were experiments in socialism. Given that individualism, its opposite, runs rampant throughout western society  socialist experiments are always welcome, as efforts to create, at least for a short while, a dynamic balance between the two.

And, what’s really interesting, is that those who live on in New Harmony, during the 20th (and now 21st) century, truly appreciate what their ancestors had attempted, and have made great efforts to both preserve both the old structures as well as the philosophies that inspired them.

So, the old town still lives on, as does the sweet, utopian vibration that we felt immersed in, as the two of us walked around the tiny town, and then “took the tour” which left from “the Atheneum,” a gorgeous white modernist building designed by the architect Richard Meier, near the banks of the Wabash.