Star Trek

The Tapestry of Ordinary Life

So I’m on my third, fourth, or maybe fifth time watching the entire seven-season run of Star Trek: The Next Generation.

(I live alone…Amazon Prime and I are good friends.)

The fifteenth episode of season six is called “Tapestry.” And here’s a quick synopsis because it’s important to understand the essence of this episode for all that I have to say about my life right now.

Picard’s Regrets

Main character Captain Picard is rushed to the Enterprise’s operating table where he dies because his artificial heart has stopped. He’s given a second chance at life by an omnipotent character named Q.

In their conversation, Picard admits he regrets much of his younger life because he was arrogant and cocky. This intrigues the omnipotent Q, who allows Picard to “pull on this thread” of his life to see what happens.

So Picard ‘pulls’ on a very specific thread in his life: the events that led him to have an artificial heart. He returns to his early 20s, and we see him attempting to date multiple women on one day.

More importantly, we see the events that led up to him starting a bar fight which led to his knifing, which led to the artificial heart, which has caused his ‘death.’

Picard’s Boring Life

And while it’s funny to see an aging Picard playing out that incident with his youthful friends, the part of the ‘tapestry’ I’m most interested in is when Picard is placed back onto the Enterprise. This is the fleet’s flagship, and of which he is captain – but not in this ‘new’ reality.

Instead, someone else is captain and Picard is a Lieutenant Junior Grade Astrophysics Administrator – or some goofy title like that.

He goes to the starship’s bar, Ten Forward, and asks for an employee review.

It doesn’t go well.

I Am That Picard

Picard is so very, very wrong about that quiet life. It was not dull and tedious – it only seemed that way through his eyes.

It really bothers me (and bothers plenty of other people) that this normal life is portrayed as if it’s horrible.

What the heck is wrong with a “normal” life? I am that Picard. My day-to-day life is pretty darn dreary and repetitive.

I wake up.
I have some tea.
I go to work.
I come home.
I feed the cats.
I read a book.
I watch yet another episode of Star Trek.
I have dinner with a friend.
I clean the litter boxes.
I plant some flowers.
I buy cute clothes at thrift stores.
I meditate a little here and there.

And that’s it, folks, there’s very little excitement in my normal, everyday, ordinary life.

Or is there?

Ordinary Extraordinary

My blogging friend Beth Ann Chiles writes nearly every day at It’s Just Life: Finding the Extraordinary in the Ordinary. As the title suggests, the blog covers many aspects of Beth Ann’s everyday life: family, friends, devotionals, teapots, travel, and more.

In chronicling her life, Beth Ann elevates the everyday into something that approaches art.

Or maybe it is art, I don’t know.

But I do know that she’s created a cozy spot on the internet where I always feel welcome, and where there’s probably a pot of tea nearby.

I also envy her many trips around the world – and the fact that she’s at the beach again this week.

But the thing that gets me about Beth Ann’s blog is that her “ordinary” life is not Picard’s dreaded “dull and dreary.” It’s magical.

There Are No Dull and Dreary Lives

More to the point, my life isn’t dull and dreary. There are these amazing high points:

Living in London just after college.
My first apartment in Toledo and the writing and modeling friends.
Life in Athens with more writing and meditation friends.
Living and working at the Omega Institute for Holistic Studies.
That amazing trip to Peru a few years ago with magical waterfall experience.

All I have to do is start making a list, and I’ve had a lot of amazing experiences.

To be sure, there have been lows, too.

Filing for both bankruptcy and divorce in the same year was horrible.
Getting fired from a job wasn’t fun either, but retrospect shows me the journey from that point to now.

We all know life isn’t about the high or the low points. Life is a sum of all of those points and finding that middle road where all is well for us.

Getting Busy

It would be easy to argue that Picard’s view of that “dull dreary” life is flawed. Through the magic of storytelling, he’s thrown into that life without the benefit of the experiences that led him to the ‘end’ of the journey. Surely there have been wonderful things happen in that Picard’s life.

Unlike that Picard, though, you and I have the ability to stop and look back and the various twists and turns that led us to here and now. Having done this recently, I am at a still point with being the “dull and dreary” Picard.

Not long ago, I wrote about how I thought that if I “that if I just put up a pretty website and got busy with business-like things, my life would change.”

Unpacking The Story

Unpacking that sentence and the story behind that “still point” for you a little more, I was obsessed and enamored with the idea of having a business.

The idea of one – not the reality. I had grandiose ideas about what running a business by myself meant and had convinced myself that being busy = business.

In my mind, I needed to be as busy as possible because surely that would make my business succeed, right?

But the more I observed this desire to have a business, the less it felt real. It didn’t have meaning and purpose and felt terribly hollow.

So I let go of that desire. It really was that easy.

In writing one morning, I asked what I really needed to do. And the answer had nothing at all to do with running a business.

Stop Forcing Success

If you want coaching, I can do that. If you want writing, I can do that. But I’m not going to run around and try to force success to happen anymore.

One other thing I’ve realized is that all of the amazing things in my life came relatively easily.

Yes, I had to work at them.

But those things came together in a way that I can only describe as magic or happenstance or fate. The less I fight with life, the more it flows. And I know that miracles of all sizes happen every day when you least expect them.

So now my life is back to a normal, ordinary, gentle hum.

Does your life hum? Do you see the magic?

Illusion, the Q Phenomenon, and We the Good People of Earth

The “Q” phenomenon is sweeping the internet. And if you’re haven’t heard about it, I’m going to do my best to explain it.

In doing so, I hope to keep it fairly simple, and offer plenty of bright shining rays of light. Because where there is light, there is hope.

This is a long post, it’s complicated, and this is deep territory. You may need to take a break, or go for a walk outside for a bit. Then come back and read some more. Just breathe.

Elephants In The Room

When thinking about the whole Q phenomenon, I’m reminded of the parable about the blind men and the elephant.

This group of blind me come upon and elephant and try to form a concept of what an elephant is. Each in turn describes a different part of an elephant.

“An elephant is big and firm,” says the man feeling a leg of the elephant.

“No, no,” says the man feeling the trunk of the elephant, “it is like a thick snake, bending too and fro.”

You get the idea, right? That no one person has the whole picture of the elephant. And that, my friends, is an apt analogy for understanding Q, conspiracy theories, and consensual reality.

Conspiracy Theories

Let’s start with trying to understand what conspiracy theories actually are. Merriam-Webster makes conspiracy easy to understand; it’s the act of conspiring together. And the act of conspiring is, “To join in a secret agreement to do an unlawful or wrongful act or an act which becomes unlawful as a result of the secret agreement. To act in harmony toward a common end.”

So think about a group of people getting together to make (most likely) unsavory things happen.

A theory is, “a supposition or a system of ideas intended to explain something, especially one based on general principles independent of the thing to be explained.” In other words, a theory is a possibility or alternative.

Think about this in terms of love. Yes, love. Could you put love through rigorous scientific tests and prove that love exists? Of course not. Love is something you “just know” exists. It’s something you experience, something you live. I think love is kind of like a theory, an alternative to hate.

Both love and energy have distinct energy. As I wrote in Remember the Loosh and Love, “How something FEELS – matters more than what it’s called... Energy is a hunch. It’s a tickle. It’s feeling and beyond feeling. It’s material instinct, gut instinct, just knowing. Click To Tweet… Energy is that which informs you to trust or not trust the person you just met, to know if a situation is safe or not.”

You know the difference between love and hate because you’ve experienced both. Keep that in mind as you read through this post. Experience and feelings matter.

But conspiracy theory Julie? Yes. Conspiracy theories offer alternatives, possibilities that disagree with consensual reality – with what ‘everyone’ believes is true.

Sometimes conspiracy theories are wrong, and sometimes they’re right. There is debate on when the term ‘conspiracy theory’ started to infer crazy people with tin foil hats waiting for aliens to come and save or destroy the earth.

Illusion and Misdirection

Switching gears now, do you like magic shows? I enjoy them, and even dated a magician years ago. Magicians make you believe in magic by using illusion and misdirection.

The greatest magicians are absolute masters of intentionally direction your attention to something they want you to see. This causes you to not see what is really going on.

There’s a famous magic trick called the Metamorphosis. In this trick, the magician’s assistant is put into a bag, then locked into a box.

A curtain is pulled up over the box, raised and lowered a couple of times. Sometimes the magician stands on top of the box holding the curtain.

Regardless. the final time the curtain drops, the magician has ‘disappeared,’ and the assistant stands in front of you. The assistant opens the box to reveal the magician restrained just like the assistant had been previously.

The truth of this trick is that it’s done with illusion and misdirection. You are deliberately deceived. The box has a false top, a false back, and the bag has a secret opening.

Watch this video and learn. You’ll never be able to see this trick again and not know the secret. Or, at least part of the secret; every magician adds their own special twist to the trick.

Conspiracy theorists posit that aspects of our world are a deliberate ruse – as well planned and elaborately executed as this magic trick. And if that’s the case – if conspiracy theorists are correct even in the slightest bit – then this kind of ‘magic trick’ manipulation has potentially existed for a very, very long time.

The Internet Connection

I imagine you’d agree that the internet changed the world. Perhaps most importantly, the internet connected people. That connection is local, global, and instantaneous.

The connectivity makes it easy to see and detect patterns and symbols like The Mandela Effect, and various so-called Illuminati symbols like upside down pentagrams, all seeing eyes, owls, obelisks, and eternal flames.

The internet connectivity makes detecting ‘fake’ news easy. Comparing notes and reading multiple websites, people quickly noticed that mainstream media (MSM) behaves like a mockingbird. It copies and repeats, changing the song just a little bit, yet the message remains the same: trust the illusion, believe in the magic.

To push the analogy a little further, the connectivity of the internet enabled people to see through the mockingbird illusions at who or what is “behind the curtain.” Basically, the internet is Toto in the Wizard of Oz, pulling the curtain away for all to see what’s really going on.

And Then Came Trump

Say what you will about Trump, but hear me out.

The build-up to the 2016 presidential election was relentless. No matter where you turned, someone was talking about politics. There was no joy in anyone’s eyes; we just wanted it over with already.

Trump won, Hillary lost, and the nation was in shock. One side appalled, one side elated, and most everyone thinking, “what just happened?”

I don’t know about you, but I had a gut feeling that Trump’s victory had a deeper meaning that I just couldn’t see – or wasn’t allowed to see. If our world is designed as an illusion, the election may have just been smoke and mirrors anyway. And the ‘wrong’ guy won…the guy who no one in the mainstream media thought could win did win.

But since the election, a curious thing has happened online. People who might never talk in real life started to talk online.

They started to come together and discuss everything – all the ‘weirdo’ conspiracy theories like how the deep state runs everything, how 9-11 was an inside job, how there was more than one JFK shooter, how the PizzaGate scam was actually real but deliberately covered up, and whole lot more.

And slowly, our doors of perception started to be cleansed. The curtain started to move aside as that pesky little dog, Toto, sunk his teeth in.

The All-Knowing All-Seeing Omnipotent Q

In October 2017 a mysterious voice began posting anonymously on boards. The voice identified itself only as “Q.”

We’re not talking about Q on Star Trek: The Next Generation, although they seem to share some similar characteristics:

There are many theories about who Q really is, but for this story, you don’t have to know the answer to that question. You DO have to understand that Q started to drop clues – also known as breadcrumbs.

Or in Q-speak, “think Hansel and Gretel.”

Hansel and Gretel is a simple story of two children who follow a path of bread crumbs to a candy cottage. They are captured by a cannibalistic witch who keeps Hansel in a cage and makes Gretel her slave. The children escape by outwitting the witch. The Q phenomenon alludes to the idea that, with the internet, we the people are now capable of outwitting the witch AND sinking our teeth into the curtain to reveal the truth.

Regardless, “Anons” – regular folks like you and me – rapidly followed the initial breadcrumbs and began to use their collective knowledge to piece together the parts of an intriguing picture…and one that fit with many conspiracy theories.

The theories seemed to tie everything together: government, entertainment, commerce, military, medical, science. And they tie into things that you and I (the relatively good and normal people of the world) really wish weren’t true like pedophilia, human trafficking, cannibalism, human sacrifice, and more.

Here’s a simple example. Do you find it kind of odd that ten companies own so many brands?

On the other hand, when you start looking at the various breadcrumbs dropped by this Q, that simple image transforms into something more like this:

The map is by Dylan Louis Monroe. Read more about it here.

Crazy, right? And it ain’t just corporations: It’s everything.

For more information on the Q phenomenon, you’ve got to follow Q (aka Follow The White Rabbit, a Matrix reference,) and search and read. Here are some people I like; they have a good way of interpreting the Q posts:

First, for reference, a website with Q posts collected
Fulcrum News (Twitter)
Praying Medic (Twitter)
Sarah Ruth Ashcraft (Twitter) and Christopher Cronsell (Twitter)
Lisa Mei Crowley (Twitter)
Try a simple search of Twitter for Qanon, also.
There are plenty of others, just go looking.

I think the coming of Trump didn’t portend a civil war. Instead it brought a secret, silent war that is (apparently) focused on ending decades of rule by a small percentage of people.

It’s a war you can glimpse at if you follow Q’s breadcrumbs. It’s a war played out behind the curtain, with Q allowing you glimpses along the way.

Start A (Personal) Revolution

For a completely different perspective, astrologers have noticed that stars are aligned at the same positions as they were in The American and French Revolutions. If you have been waiting for changes, they are coming. And you, me, and everyone else will design the results of these changes.

Dana Mrkich’s 2018 report, which I’ve written about before, covers the various star transitions in detail. Regarding the American Revolutionary War, she asks:

What was that war about? What did the Founding Fathers fight for and intend? What did they do right? What did they do wrong? Where can we do better? Where are we aspiring for freedom and independence on one hand, but causing repression, hurt, or injustice on the other?

The first event she talks about is 1773 Pluto in Capricorn at 21 degrees: that’s the Boston Tea Party, the ‘culmination of a resistance movement” against the taxation of tea.

That exact degree isn’t repeated until 2019, yet we are starting to feel the effects already as tensions are building. Frankly, if you’re not already feeling tense just reading this post, I’d be surprised.

Mrkich further suggests that the Boston Tea Party (and any other event that happens in this long Pluto Transit) was then and will be going forward about power: “getting rid of old power structures or dynamics that no longer serve, so that a more authentic power can emerge.”

Further, she writes that there is, “…destruction, demolition, and dissolution, before the new can be born.” She writes, “Pluto also reveals things that have been hidden and going on behind closed doors…”

That’s what the Q phenomenon is about: revealing hidden stuff. Lots of it. And starting a conversation about what to put in place once the hidden stuff is out in the open.

The Pluto in Capricorn transit continues through to 2036-2037. Frankly, the transformation of our world is only just getting started, and WE get to make it happen.

Good People of the World Unite and Shine Your Lights

These things I’ve talked about are all tiny cracks in consensual reality. They shine a light on a collective Pandora’s Box that holds some might ugly things.

Don’t look away. Don’t stick your head in the sand and say, “oh no not me.” We are all in this together. And by and large, we are good people.

We love our families, neighbors, communities, children, and have dreams about the future. We love our pets, your pets, and all of nature. We have many differences, yet we strive to listen and respect those differences. We care deeply.

As the years move forward, remember these things. Remember love and free will, and kindness and caring. Act on forgiveness. Reach out.

Q often uses the phrase, “Where we go one, we go all.” We are all together in this.

“All for one, and one for all.” We are the musketeers. We are the ones we have been waiting for to transform our world. You, mean, and everyone else will design this new world together.

Breathe

Now, with all of that information. Breathe. Remember love? That thing you can’t quite describe, but know it when you feel it? Feel it now. Remember beauty.

Deanna Troi Asks Life Coaching Questions

If you’ve read m y about page, then you know I like Star Trek not Star Wars. During my life coaching training, I decided to see if Star Trek: The Next Generation (TNG) character Deanna Troi asks life coaching questions.

If there’s one thing I learned during a year’s worth of training towards becoming a life coach, it’s that asking a good question at the right time can change a client’s perspective in a heartbeat. And sometimes – just sometimes – Deanna Troi indeed does ask a question that alters perspective.

That said, I think Guinan is better at helping Enterprise crew see different perspectives. Rather than asking “life coachy” questions, though, Guinan tends to tell stories that elicit changes.

What Is A Good Life Coaching Question?

A good life coaching question makes you stop and think. I know I’ve asked a good question when the client can’t respond with a snappy answer.

There’s even a book with hundreds of powerful questions that a life coach might ask – questions like:

What are some of your core values?
What kind of structure can you place around yourself to make sure you remember to do that consistently?
What’s the dream that calls you here?
What makes this significant to you?
What would it take for you to get to the bottom of this?
What does this look like from the other person’s perspective?

These are the kind of questions that aren’t easy to answer. You really do have to pause and reflect before responding. The response can really change your perspective on whatever you happen to be exploring with your coach that day.

And Then I Watched Star Trek

I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve watched the entire seven year run of Star Trek: The Next Generation. But then I got obsessed with the whole idea of Deanna Troi asking life coaching questions, and found Chrissie’s Transcript Site that has most TNG scripts.

And THEN I scanned all scripts on the website for questions asked by Deanna Troi.

Why did I do that? Because someone noticed how many roving potted plants there are on TNG, so – why not how many life coaching questions Troi asks?

It’s remarkable how few lines Troi has. On some shows it’s one or two lines, while on others (The Hunted, Season 3) she has many. And there are even fewer scenes in her (decidedly 80s-styled) office.

There’s a lot more I could say here about the Deanna Troi character -most of it negative – but plenty of other people already have (here – here – and here, too.)

Let’s get to the questions.

Deanna Troi’s Questions

My excel spreadsheet shows 887 questions. Yes, I did put them into a spreadsheet. How else could I figure out if they were good coaching questions?

319 of those questions are about what I’ll call “outer space problems.” These are topics that your average life coach will never need to ask:

Is there any indication of temporal displacement?
Captain, do you exist in combination with this entity?
Are we at war with the Ferengi yet?
Did you ever spend time in the nacelle control room while it was under construction?
How are we going to know whether the pulse reboots Data’s ethical program?
Hekaras Two is inhabited, isn’t it?
If we have established that the Romulans were not responsible for the destruction of the Yamato, would it not be prudent to withdraw?
Mister Tarmin, are all Ullians able to read memories?
Is there any evidence at all that they’re sentient?

There are around 63 questions that are not even remotely appropriate for a coach to ask:

Come in for a drink?
May I join you?
Wouldn’t you rather be alone with me? With me in your mind?
Data, have you been in my quarters?
You don’t remember us falling in love and getting married?
Can you deal me in?
Why didn’t we do this a long time ago?

Here are some of the questions that definitely aren’t coaching questions. But then again, maybe they could become coaching questions if they were restructured a bit:

Memory or nightmare?
You have no idea who she is?
Can’t you intensify that emotion?
Why do you have all this anger toward me?
Where are you?
Should I?
Why should you care whether I trust you or not?
Why can’t you turn your disadvantage into an advantage? (I really wish the line had been “How can you turn your advantage into a disadvantage?” That would be a great coaching question!)
Are you ready to cooperate?
Do you think you’re the only one in pain?
Do you think you have the monopoly on loss?

Good Coaching Questions, Deanna!

There are more than 300 questions that are ‘good’ coaching questions:

Captain, if I may recommend? (Here, she’s asking permission to recommend. This is important in coaching.)
But did we tell them anything they want to hear?
How did you manage that?
Now what?
Mmmm? (This is a good question, I swear. It allows the client to expand on the topic.)
When was the last attempt made?
What do you wish you had said?
Why are you so hard on yourself? (this one’s questionable – it might put the client on the defensive.)
What do you mean?
What is it you’re looking for?
May I make a suggestion?
What do your feelings tell you?
What?
Why not?
May I ask how?
What have you discovered?
How are you feeling about this now?
What is your plan?
How’s it going?
What’s wrong?
How does it feel being with people again?
Is that what you’ve decided to do?
If you had to give this feeling a name, what would you call it?
What’s wrong?
What were you trying to do?
What happened next?
How so?
What?
May I ask why?
Is there a solution?
Do you have any idea why that might be?
And from these specifics, what general conclusion can you extrapolate?

Did you notice anything about the “good” coaching questions?

They’re all open-ended questions. They all invite the client to continue to add to the train of thought, or expand their perspective. The questions start with What, Who, How.

The questions usually don’t start with the word “why.” In fact, asking “why” puts the coach in an aggressive position, and entices the client to defend themselves.

Empathic Abilities?

It’s fairly well known that the writers of Start Trek: The Next Generation didn’t really know what to do with Deanna Troi and her “empathic” abilities; she was there for sex appeal.

Fortunately over seven seasons, the character did grow and change – and even became a bridge officer. Along the way, Deanna Troi also asked some good life coaching questions.