Read on for his kind.

As It Happened:
On a bicycle, my favorite park near our place is two minute’s leisurely ride away on a residential street. I warm-up a little on the way there. When I reach the park’s entrance, I usually take a narrow paved pedestrian/bike path, adjacent to the park’s road. Then I ride for a few minutes into a steady, gentle and sometimes very steep uphill. Sage and other plants line the path and road, sending lovely, heady scents into the warm air. This is one of only two entrances to the park. The other’s at the opposite end of the long, paved footpath. All the imaginary boundaries of the park are surrounded by California foothills and chaparral, and a beautiful seasonal creek runs through it. There’s a human dam for a waterfowl pond, in which turtles and carp glide.

This time when I rode into the park’s entrance, I told myself I’d rather take the smoother road than have the distraction of the bike path’s bumps. It was late afternoon and thus likely there’d be fewer motorists on the narrow road than in the early evening. As I noticed a petite pedestrian walking on the paved path, I was glad not to have gone that way. People don’t usually sense a quiet bicyclist riding up behind them. When they do, they’re usually surprised and don’t understand that steady bicyclists won’t threaten their safety. Usually their eyes widen, and they overcompensate for one’s presence by pressing their backs to the side of the path.

In her 50s, the walker wore black sunglasses beneath a white tennis visor, over which flowed neck-length red hair. She wore a lightweight, short-sleeved cotton girly top, lightweight cotton pants rolled up past her calves to beneath her knees. Athletic shoes, chick socks. She walked purposefully but without hurry.

Thick chaparral adorns both sides of the road. On the otherwise empty road and path, I first rode past her, then the childrens’ splash pad and playgrounds where a flock of young dabbled as their mothers watched. Just beyond the entrance to the playground’s parking lot, I rode past a four-foot snake crossing the road in the afternoon heat, in the vague direction of the playground. That really got my blood moving, because I love snakes. I’ve held Mojave sidewinders. I was hoping he wasn’t a rattlesnake because then I might have to make excuses to someone for protecting him.

Quickly I turned around, dismounted and stood behind him (in my Rush “Snakes and Arrows” t-shirt ;). That way he could cross in safety, without a motorist flattening his head from fear or inattention. He regarded me as would any wild animal, warily. Snakes always prefer to avoid people, so he was looking for cover. But he was only mildly concerned as I walked slowly behind him while he took 60 seconds to finish crossing the road. I had the feeling he was enjoying the road’s heat. I kept my bike’s front tire about a foot behind his tail, walking my bike from amidships. I thought about photographing him with my phone, and opted not to because I didn’t want to mess with extracting it from my seat bag. I’ve had the privilege of seeing others like him.

He was beautiful. Colors complementing his home, his skin shone slightly in the sun, sinuous and healthy in all respects. But he was accepting what I doing because I didn’t threaten him. He didn’t haul butt, but instead moved methodically. Snakes don’t have butts. Me, the snake, and the woman were the only obvious animals nearby. From behind me to my left I felt and heard the woman crossing the road from the pedestrian/bike path, quietly coming closer as I paced his progress. I liked that she was quiet, but she was hurrying and I didn’t want to talk to anyone.

As the snake neared the curb, she stood closer to him than I was, and asked pleasantly, “Is that a rattlesnake?”

I answered,“No, it’s a garter snake. If he was a rattlesnake it wouldn’t be wise for either of us to be this close.”

The snake reached the sidewalk, and slithered off into the brush. She said as we both turned to walk away, “He’s beautiful.” I agreed, “Yeah. The rule of thumb for rattlesnakes is to get no closer than their length.”

She asked, “What kind of snake was he? Gardener?”

I replied to her back since she was now walking away, “A garter snake; like a woman’s garter.”

She answered, “Oh.”

We continued on our separate ways.

The Kind of Snake He Really Is:
A gopher snake. It has been quite some time since I was a child who was more accustomed to seeing them. At least I got the beginning consonant correct. Derp ;)

Russell Targ, Ingo Swann, Stephan A. Schwartz and Hal Puthoff at the 2002 IRVA conference. Photo © Paola Davis.

Having been acquainted with one of International Remote Viewing Association’s (IRVA) founders, Stephan A. Schwartz, for a long time, I was especially interested in attending their 2011 convention. Above are four among IRVA’s original guiding lights. I’d also been to IRVA’s 2007 gathering, and both were particularly important for my friendships with certain souls striving in consciousness. At both conventions I attended as an IRVA member. It was at the 2007 IRVA gathering that I allowed myself the privilege of meeting George McMullen.

You can find plenty of biographical information about the people who founded IRVA. Since I’ve just met Russ Targ, you might find what I wrote about his biography, “Do You See What I See?” interesting. Although I didn’t know them, I was honored to talk briefly to Jim Channon and Glenn Wheaton, who are two key figures behind the characters in the excellent comedy movie The Men Who Stare at Goats. As with any organization, one can find people with whom you feel an affinity. IRVA is one of the few formal associations of people who have real consciousness in mind.

If you like real cloak and dagger stuff, you’ll find that reflected in the experiences of many IRVA members who were part of the government’s long-running Stargate projects. If you also want a wide variety of people of clear Heart who appreciate that consciousness never stopped at the boundaries of anyone’s skin, you’ll find them here, too.

This was assembled from footage taken at the European Southern Observatory, by NikoBustos on YouTube. My thanks to Phil Plait of Bad Astronomy for posting it, and to Pulse news aggregator for picking up the story.

teacher and psychic Antonia Lau

Here’s the audio from the first and second hours of Antonia Lau’s 10-16-10 show, Beyond the Here & Now. Her excellent show can be heard regularly on 92.5 FM – KYHY at the station’s Website – Saturdays and Sundays 12-3 PM, Wednesdays 2-5 PM and Friday 3-5 PM.

During the first hour Antonia discusses continuing soul growth and education – including some very cool experiences with her teacher during class, Lina De Souza. CLICK HERE for Beyond the Here and Now, 10-16-10, hour one, Soul Growth, featuring Antonia Lau with Mike Austin.

During the second hour, Antonia suggests how you can individualize your soul’s growth by opening to your own glimmerings of insight – managing your own destiny, avoiding the destructive influence of virtual corporate states, including your diet, health and longevity – as well as your spirituality.

Embedded in this discussion are concepts in sustainability, James Lovelock’s Gaia concept, Project TriStar, what the year 2012 might mean and things related. CLICK HERE for Beyond the Here and Now, 10-16-10, hour two, Managing Soul Growth, featuring Antonia Lau with Mike Austin.

Antonia’s Website is at In the Secret Garden, and you could definitely benefit from taking a look at it ;)

And if I was asked to pick one thing which enables you to live in the moment, I’d say regular meditation. Take a look at this new study synopsis on the ancient topic of wandering mind from Harvard. For the record, it’s not a good idea to buy the negative spin that your mind’s not happy when it’s wandering. Why deny or denigrate our nature? Instead, work with it.

Jake Gyllenhaal and Danny Trejo from "Bubble Boy." Click to enlarge slightly.

CLICK HERE for Antonia Lau’s 8-29-10 show with Mike Austin.

Antonia’s Website is at In the Secret Garden. For new radio shows, you can tune into 92.5 FM – KYHY from the Burbank area, or listen at the station’s Website during her usual air times. Her show times are Saturdays and Sundays 12-3 PM, Wednesdays 2-5 PM and Friday 3-5 PM.

Dean Radin's Entangled Minds

There’s a simple psychological concept with a deluxe scientific name mentioned in Dean Radin’s Entangled Minds: Extrasensory Experiences in a Quantum Reality – “latent inhibition.” The book’s truly fabulous and if you’re reading this, I’d highly recommend you read it. Basically, latent inhibition means that each of us has a certain threshold level of awareness, above which something must pass before it gets your attention and you notice it.

When anyone makes a decision to either become intuitive or stay that way, you lower your threshold filters to notice information others have chosen not to notice. If you opt to not be intuitive, you usually have to raise your threshold to block information which you find extraneous or confusing. These decisions are always your choice, and are neither bad or good. It’s what you do with the information and what it does to you which exercises your free will. And that’s why we’re here; to have free will and experiences only possible while you’re in a body.

Here’s an example of latent inhibition in point: one of my friends who was among my Fun Loving Intuitives (and Psychics) gathering, a.k.a. F.L.I.P., dropped me an e-note about three Websites I might find interesting. Because she knows something about my interests, two sites were absolute hits for me; I found them fascinating enough to consider using one my radio show. Since everyone’s got different opinions about things, I found the third Website fearful enough to suggest she avoid it and the people who created it. I thanked her for all three.

In looking at one site, I liked everything its publisher was about. It seemed she was endeavoring to do many things in a similar fashion. I got the distinct feeling we’d get along well. As often happens in my circle of close friends, I had the feeling I’ve known her all along. And then I did something which was unlike me. I sent the site’s proprietress an e-mail note inviting her for a cup’pa, to talk about each other’s work and dharma. She responded that she might enjoy that, and asked for a phone call.

teacher and psychic Antonia Lau

Next, something pleasantly unexpected happened. She called me instead. Antonia Lau’s her name, and her Website is at In the Secret Garden. In expanding her teaching, Antonia has a radio show at 92.5 FM – KYHY in Burbank. Beyond the Here & Now is the show’s name, and with her mellifluous tones she invited me to guest on her show.

I’m told our conversation will air as early as this coming Sunday at 12 PM Los Angeles time. If you tune into 92.5 FM – KYHY from the Burbank area, or listen at the station’s Website during her usual air times, you’ll hear us then. Her usual show times are Saturdays and Sundays, 12-3 PM, Wednesdays 2-5 PM and Friday 3-5 PM.

So, what are we going to discuss? I offered that I find sustainability and consciousness to be two inextricably intertwined topics. Antonia asked if it was O.K. to have suggestions from Spirit guide our conversation in the moment. I assented because I like surprises ;)

'Boot laces' ;) were our dog's toy from 12 feet.

As I fiddled with its batteries and puzzled over why my digital voice recorder wasn’t working, I walked from my garage, through my dining and living areas, toward my upstairs. From 40 feet away, I noticed what seemed to be a brown heap resembling boot laces lying on the floor. Maybe from my dog’s playtime? Grinning about our impish, 12 lb. Terrier-Chihuahua mix, thinking he was involved, I walked toward it to see what it was.

As I got closer, the pile of “boot laces” instead resolved into this 2 1/2 inch spider. Would you think I was surprised? I’d been up for around three hours; the house had been closed for the night with the AC on. The only door open was to the garage, 50 feet from where she sat. We regarded each other.

She waited patiently for me while I walked past her, upstairs, and got my camera. Then I walked past her again as she remained immobile and I snapped four flash shots. Still, unmoving and composed. When I nudged her gently with a paper plate into a deep, glass casserole dish so my son could later see her, she accepted suggestions easily.

Our visitor's ready for her close-up.

As a kid I hosted all sort’a wildling visitors, from snakes and field mice to a Barn owl and Kestrel. I’ve had the pleasure to hold Mojave sidewinders, Reticulated pythons, Red Racer snakes, a Pickering’s garter snake, Boas and crayfish. I kept Mallard ducks, doves, miniature poodles, moths, butterflies, beetles, wasps, honeybees, garden spiders, Black Widows, Alligator lizards, Western Fence lizards, a Western grebe, horned toads, frogs, a Blue-Lined skink, a guinea pig and tropical fish. I consider myself especially lucky to have one day seen a male Valley Carpenter bee, which shone like bright gold in the morning sun:

Valley Carpenter bee, photo attributed to Matthew Field

Except for the domesticated animals, they all visited a while and then I’d release ‘em. But, this was my first tarantula visitor. I get the feeling it’s a girl. But I’m so surprised at the moment I couldn’t say for sure. She’s very gentle, but of course I wouldn’t put my hands near her fangs. I later released her into the ivy near our dry creekbed.

;)

A good psychic friend offered this about my furry, fanged visitor: “This is so wild! I also had a tarantula in my bedroom two weeks ago. He was crawling out of my closet… so beautiful and a wonderful listener. I told him he went in the wrong door, saying, ‘Let me open the door for you.’ He hesitated to go out, but did.

Tarantulas mean transformation through heightened psychism and feelings. Trust what you feel, not what you see, Mike. Your gut feeling/intuition is right on. Congrats! This is reaffirming my visitation; I’ve got to trust my feelings on some situations now.  Thanks for that, Mike.

I look forward to meeting you in person. It may be a long lunch; schedule for that. Take care. Hugs, Jen.”

Willow Springs Raceway's 2.4 mile Big Track, from 4,300 feet up. Click to enlarge.

This is something I wrote for a client some time ago. Now, a different one needs to see it.

“As I awoke too early this morning in momentary, transfixed panic about one of the bigger mistakes I believe I’ve made in this life, I acknowledged what I did to get myself here. This is important because in order to solve anything I first have to have a realistic understanding of what I did to create my scenario. Saintly teachers might not call them mistakes, but instead something like, “opportunities for choice and growth.” This is done in order to allow you to change – if you create so much of a charge on something difficult that you stay stuck in it, no one benefits. But in order to wend my way out of where I am and where I want to be, it’s certain that I must call a spade what it is ~ a spade. Or, as one of my favorite jokes explains, I might instead call the spade a “fu*&^%# shovel.”

And then, after I calmed down by remembering everything I’ve learned about how God and the Universe work – flashed to mind my many friends who mean the world to me. They’re important in so many ways it would be impossible to count them. Like counting how many of my angelic friends can dance on the head of a pin.

In this long moment, all my friends are important, but two in particular held my attention. Both embody limitless success because I asked to know someone like them and they appeared magically. One, Stacy, Knows how important she is to me, and it feels like we’ve been friends since forever and we’ll stay that way with a little gentle attention. We have surprisingly similar philosophies and attitudes about many things. The other friend, Tania, has an understanding what she represents to me, although we’re not as close. But we entrust confidences with each other which we’ve shared with few because regard ourselves as a soul-sister and soul-brother. Around both Stacy and Tania I feel vibrantly alive, and that’s why I love them. Yeah, I find both irresistibly cute and that’s worth noting objectively.

As I write this, my stomach’s urging me to have breakfast and go back to sleep so I can triumph over what’s concerning me. Maybe I’ll just go back to “sleep.” One of the curiosities about my intuition, kinesthesia and precognitive senses is that I when I’m transfixed by something – either good or uncomfortable – I often have clear dream experiences about my options. But, like Neal Peart might say, “Did I have the dream, or did the dream have me?” And although many souls would find my options to solve what I’m concerned about limited, it’s my experience which has time and again shown me that’s exactly untrue.

There are an astounding, wonderful array of options for me available at any time, and all I have to do to experience them is pay attention and take action. Walk toward my options consciously by paying close attention to possibilities via intuition and experience. I suppose I Knew this but have created a game for myself where I pretend I’ve forgotten.

The entrance to Turn 6 (at the purple spot in the aerial view above) seen from the apex of 5.

A consistent theme in this life seems to be coming to grips with the notion I’m vastly more intuitive than I would have ever wanted. Although I’ve often been uncomfortable with it, that has changed over time. I’m supposed to learn from all my experiences and teach from them. In this moment, it’s like I’m exiting turn five on Willow Springs’ big track, dancing into the left/right transition and blind hill of turn six, a.k.a., “Monroe Ridge.” I have the feeling it’s gonna be O.K. although I’m quite scared and don’t know for sure what’s next. I just that I need to trust it’s O.K. to keep my foot on the gas. With your eyes you can’t see where you’re going into turn six, but in an acquaintance’s terms, “they didn’t move turn six overnight without telling you. Remember where the racing line is, put your foot into it and go.”

My university professor acquaintance wasn’t trying to teach mysticism, but that’s the result. Those of us interested in apparent coincidences will notice that Google maps shows the Willow Springs complex exact location as Turn Six, with the grey, cross-figured map-pin in the photo with this post. Four tracks, garages and concessions. Googles’ virtual, grey map-pin “locates” the track at the apex of turn six. Hhmmm. I removed the text to better show the track’s curve. I’ve put a purple ellipse over it in the aerial photo.

For road racers, a turn’s apex represents the instant when the path of your exit is committed. An apex is similar to a moment of decision, but in this instance is also a moment in physics. With a clean road racing apex, you have a fast exit. And speed’s the goal at a racetrack. But, for those of us also interested in symbology, appreciating the darkness before the illumination and insight of the sixth chakra is also pleasant to consider.

So, God and us designed things this way. Now, in the twinkling of Stacy’s and Tania’s lovely eyes, I’m gonna grab a figurative up-shift into third gear as I mash the throttle against the floor. Smooth, flawless corner exits have their place. But I must admit I love catching the slight twitch as the back end of my car breaks free when a little too much power is applied. Then I plant the rears again for traction.

This is a corner which, on the street, most people would take between 5 M.P.H and 8 M.P.H. But racing’s a different thing. As my speed climbs quickly from about 30 M.P.H. to surpass 80 M.P.H., I crest the hill and the car literally leaps out of the turn. Too fast and you’d be literally airborne. I gleefully accept the light-headed rush and negative Gs.

That’s why I love going to the track. The rush. In turn six, I can’t see where my car’s gonna end up as it speed escalates. But I can see where it’s going, and I’ve done this before ;) “