How The Future Happens®

As first announced on 'Coast-to-Coast AM with George Noory' in February 2005, we are making the FREE 25 Page Report "How The Future Happens®" available to 'Coast To Coast AM' listeners and to regular users of The MERLIN Project website.  This remarkable report was first offered to private clients in the 1980's in the form of a 90 minute narration for as much as $35, in conjunction with arranging a personal appointment with futurist Paul Guercio.  Paul insisted that new clients familiarize themselves with the concepts contained in this report before any consultation work was performed.

"How The Future Happens®" is based on research originally conducted in conjunction with Paul's primary mentor, a grandfatherly, old 'wizard' named Lionel Day.  Mr. Day never had an opportunity to publish his research before his death in the early 1980's.  This report stands as a testament to the value and timelessness of his ideas and discoveries.  Without the friendship and insight of Lionel Day, Paul is convinced that the breakthrough concepts that led to the creation of MERLIN would never have occurred. 

"How The Future Happens®" brings together equal elements of hard science and Jungian metaphysics that can provide the foundation for profound and lasting life changes.  Some of the concepts presented are not easily found anywhere else and long time clients regularly report the astonishing results of implementing techniques offered in this remarkable report. If you want to end unproductive behaviors, unfulfilling careers or unsatisfactory relationships download a copy of "How The Future Happens."  It will put extra money in your pocket and in all likelihood.. add years to your life.  It's 30 years in the making and it's the essence of where MERLIN came from.  It's a truly remarkable document and it's our gift to you.

If you would like to obtain "How The Future Happens" by mail or as a set of audio CD's, click HERE for more information.

HOW THEFUTUREHAPPENS®

Introduction        

Let’s make something very clear, right away. MERLIN tells time! It doesn’t tell you what’s going to happen. Nothing can tell you what’s going to happen, unless of course what’s going to happen already exists. In that case we’re all just reading from cue cards or teleprompter and this existence becomes pretty academic. The truth is no one can predict exact events except by accident because events in the future appear to be the result of a composite phenomenon involving multiple forces and effects, some of which we even, probably control. To paraphrase the late actor, Cary Grant, everyone would like to be Nostradamus; hell, even Nostradamus would like to have been Nostradamus and wasn’t! Exact predictions by other humans only happen by luck or accident.

A majority of us grew up embracing the notion that either the future is all planned and preordained and we’re just a bunch of actors playing-out roles, or more typically that the future is just one big crapshoot and you can’t predict anything because it hasn’t happened yet. Research suggests the likelihood that neither of those positions is true. Events really seem to be the convergence point or gathering place for multiple factors, rather than the result of simple cause and effect. If true, one of those factors may be Time. Not the more random clock-time you’re used to thinking about, the wall clocks and calendars that decorate our lives, but something more infrequent and at the same time, more organized. Something that’s akin to ocean tides or the seasons; sunrise and sunset, the phases of the Moon.

MERLIN doesn’t predict exact events but it does something almost as interesting and maybe even more useful. It finds the times of your life when the big events will happen and indicates how dramatic they’re likely to be and how long they’re liable to last. In a word, well, three words -- onset, intensity, duration. The when of things, the how big and the how long! You could think of it as chapter headings or even some of the sub-chapter headings of a lifetime. (And) if the future turns out to be this composite phenomenon we think it is, knowing when to make changes could dramatically alter, for the better, what happens in the future. Your future!

Did you ever notice how in all the thought-provoking science fiction stories about going back in time, they always warn you not to change anything in the past or the future might change accordingly? Suppose I told you that our research over the past fifteen years suggests that if you were to plan the timetable of your choices or change the starting moment of your endeavors, you’d change the outcome. It’s true. That’s what makes MERLIN so fascinating. It provides you with a time-sensitive framework for initiating change and a roadmap of the route that change will follow – in advance! MERLIN can forecast a likely timetable for the big events in your life, but it can more importantly tell you when to commence changes to produce the effect you want to achieve. And that’s something worth knowing about.

Throughout this report we repeatedly use a surfing metaphor. That’s no accident. Catching a wave produces a rather different ride or outcome than missing one does. If time does come in waves, knowing which one to catch and when to catch it can be life-changing and could represent the difference between something that succeeds and all the other somethings that didn’t. It’s the difference between having the future happen on purpose instead of by accident. (And) wouldn’t that be something to savor.

How The Future Happens        

Future Thoughts

Sit back for moment and think about the Future. Your future! Whether you're 18 or 80 or somewhere in between, it's something we all think about. Usually alone. Often with great hopes and dreams and fears. How much of the future is already “in place” and how much do we affect or control? What tools and techniques do we have at our disposal right now and precisely how would we begin the process? Where does it come from, this thing we call the future? Most importantly of all, can we make our future better than our past?

The best way to derive some real value from this report, is first to put what we're going to do into a little perspective. The future, like everything else it seems in our little corner of the universe, has rules of order.

To begin with, the problem many of us have with what cynics like to call "soft science" (that is to say, subjective reality or intuitive information,) is that we act as though it had no tangible dimensions. Nothing reproducible; no carefully defined boundaries. It’s not the more common form of objective reality and hard data which we can quantify. You know the kind; four times four is sixteen, because if you put four rows of four things out and you count them, you'll have sixteen things. That’s all very quantifiable.

Subjective information includes hunches and intuition, psychic impressions, precognitive dreams, deja vu and other equally peculiar and fragmentary phenomena. We tend to dismiss that as though it were somehow not quite as good. It's all just spontaneous and coincidental and probably isn't true anyway. So when we reach for the phone to call a friend who turns out to be on the line already (they had this irresistible urge to call us at that very same moment) or we wake up with a flash of insight or the solution to a nagging problem in the middle of the night, we just shrug it off. Or when we're shopping and we stop in front of the shoelace display and then after looking at it for a while wondering why we're standing there looking at it at all, (since we don't have any shoes with laces,) we then arrive home only to discover that someone there who does have shoes with laces has just broken one and says, "Damn, I don't have any spare shoelaces!" And we say "hmmm" and dismiss it as coincidence because we don't know what else to call it.

And there's the problem. Making practical use of any of the many forms of subjective reality involves recognizing that it operates by its own set of rules. It's just not the set of rules we're familiar with. But it's no less valid. It's just different. The very same problem exists with the concept most of us have of the future. We try not to think about it at all for the most part. All we're readily willing to admit is that it's where we're going to live and it's rushing toward us with tomorrow rapidly becoming yesterday, sometimes a lot more rapidly than many of us would care to admit. But when it comes to trying to define what the future "is," or even more specifically, how it happens, we are for the most part up the proverbial creek without a paddle because, again, we don't understand that there are rules at work. We've either been taught that the future is all planned and fixed and we're just actors playing out roles or that it's just spontaneous and coincidental and there's no way you can know what's going to happen because it hasn't happened yet.

Suppose, however, that the future is neither of those things. Not only is it not unknown and not mysterious, it's not unpredictable. In part, the fault lies in our education on the subject. No one ever taught us to notice the obvious patterns in our lives. We are all much too busy being caught up in the relentless residual buzz from real or perceived events to recognize that there are structural, repetitive and decisive factors at work from which those circumstances are formed. Events don't just happen at any old time for no particular reason. They happen at very specific times for very particular reasons. Each of us to a surprising extent appears to have set up the boundaries.

The future actually seems to be made up of factors; about three or four categories of things that make it happen. Three that we're sure of and a fourth one, which is sort of speculative. Let's start with that fourth one first.

It's into that category of things that make the future happen that you could place all of those things you can't prove. Things like past lives and future lives, reincarnation, Karma, along with Heaven, Hell, Purgatory and all of those other alleged places. It's not that you shouldn't have personal feelings about those things, because we all do. During the past quarter century there have been more and more indications from personal accounts of near death experiences and such that strongly suggest these dimensions of reality truly exists. But we’re still in the early stages of getting a firm grasp on those dimensions and although fascinating and evocative, the jury is still out.

Until a verdict is in, we’re forced to leave them as an intriguing unknown. Besides, you certainly don't want to enforce your subjective rules on someone else. (Evangelicals, please take note!) We wouldn't expect most of you to be particularly receptive to a channeler or shaman telling you that the reason this lifetime is so miserable is because you ‘did in’ two of your husbands or wives in a past life.

Fixed Boundaries

That leaves us with three working categories of things that make the future happen; factors that we can quantify to some extent. The first one of those let’s call Fixed Boundaries.

Fixed Boundaries include all those things that you can't change. Things like the fact that we all came here as male and female, which some people have tried to change, including a few of our clients (with mixed results, one might add.) We have certain fixed quantities of genetics and heredity, which may become less fixed as genetic engineering advances. And then there are all of those fixed circumstances of childhood and environment, which some of us would have like to have changed but can't. Finally, in the category of Fixed Boundaries, there are all of those rules of the road, the physics of living here. Things like the number of days you can go without food and water and the number of feet you can fall off a building without squashing on the sidewalk, which seem to get less and less as we get older and older.

Some people have learned how to bend those rules a little. Most notably the ones who pop up in places like The Guinness Book of Records. Some yogis have learned how to breathe once a minute or less so you can seal one of them in a cabinet for a surprisingly long period of time and have him survive. But if you seal him in that cabinet for one minute too long you'll find that he'll be just as dead a yogi as the rest of us would have been a lot sooner. So whether these rules can be suspended entirely is very debatable. They can be bent a little here and there, but we're inclined to think they're relatively fixed things.

Personal Laws

Beneath this level of the more obvious sorts of boundaries, however, there's a second set which is a good deal less visible, but whose impact is even more dramatic and often more troublesome. That's the category of things that make the future happen which we call Personal Laws.

Personal Laws might be thought of as all of those things that you "really believe," after you've finished with what you're willing to admit to, which seems to vary for most of us. We affirm a certain set of approved goals in this society. We all want to be happy and healthy and successful. We want to have enough love and money and sex and food and creature comforts. And we all keep going around saying these things to ourselves and to each other. But it’s a fair bet that if merely saying them had anything much to do with making them happen, we'd all be a lot more successful and fulfilled than most of us are. And while it's hard to think of anyone who actively seeks second best, there are lots of people we all know who get second best with some degree of regularity, whether they asked for it directly or not. So, saying these things alone can't be the factor that makes them happen, however loudly or often we repeat them.

But, something does affect the quality of our lives. And that something seems to be a level or portion of the consciousness or subconscious mind in which exists what we might think of as a kind of Master File. A storehouse of all sorts of unrelated pieces of information that describe our past interaction with the universe around us and our relative position within that universe.. An internalized picture of who we think we are as a result of the feedback we've gotten from other people. And that inner picture, or at least a lot of it, got to be there long before we had any "critic" in place to say things like, "Well, that's a stupid piece of information. Who the hell cares if she thinks I'm a jerk. I know I'm a nice person."

If we were belittled or victimized prior to say, age seven, or sometimes even later than that, and it was done by someone who had power over us in any significant way, we're going to dutifully file it away because it's likely to be our first experience with that piece of information. If we have nothing else to compare it to, it gets to occupy that file unchallenged. By the time we reach age twenty-five or thirty, there's quite a file down there of all kinds of questionable stuff that probably never was true. But in the long run, it doesn't make any difference if none of it's true, because, if we believe it and we use it to define our reality, it's going to affect what happens to us.

What you'll find to be true is that what someone believes about themselves has more of an impact on what happens to them than virtually any other single factor. Because what they believe, rather than what's really true, ends up affecting very basic things. Such as how much they like the person who looks back at them in the mirror. What kind of relationships they get involved in. What kinds of people they hang out with. And most importantly of all, what they ask back from the universe in return for what they think they're worth. Those issues have very little to do with actual talent or ability or potential, but rather with their own beliefs and expectations.

What seems to be true about events is that it's almost as though new circumstances, in order to become part of your personal LifeScene®, have to pass a kind of reviewing stand or perhaps a gauntlet of all of those previous experiences. And the ones that are allowed to become part of the fabric of your reality are essentially those that most closely duplicate what's already there. In order for them to be drastically different, they are going to have to force out the concepts that are there.

One of the things you begin to notice at about age twenty-five or thirty, and this can be a very painful realization, is that a lot of what's happening in your life starts to look remarkably familiar and consistent. Now, if the future really was this spontaneous, coincidental phenomenon that we've all been led to believe, we'd all have a random sample of things happening. We'd all have a few terrific, wonderful things happen. We'd all win at least one lottery. We'd all have a bunch of terrible, awful things happen. We'd all break at least one arm or leg or have some scandal or something occur. And then we'd have a generous helping of average everyday things occurring.

But that's not what happens. People who have terrific, wonderful things happen, have lots of them. And people who have terrible awful things happen, have lots of them. And people who have average, everyday things happen have lots of them. It's all very orderly. And consistent. There's nothing coincidental about it.

All you have to do is take careful inventory of your own life to date and you'll begin to notice that most of the important events and even a lot of the trivial ones come in similar sized "packages" (with minor variations depending on whatever your basic ‘thing’ is). And they keep doing just that. We must have some direct control over those circumstances, apply some filtering mechanism, which selects from the field of possible things that could happen, the ones that actually do so that this level of consistency is maintained.

That's the province of Personal Laws. And they affect not only your sense of self, but also your occupation, health, level of success and failure. Each of these things seems to be an extension not of what the universe is doing to you, or education, or childhood circumstances or genetics, but rather on how much you expect or believe you're entitled to. In essence, the events in our lives are perhaps nothing more than a feedback system for our own Personal Laws. What we believe to be possible affecting what is possible, because it affects what we reach for and thereby what we ultimately attract.

So now we have two factors that make the future happen: Fixed Boundaries, the laws of the physical universe that we live in and Personal Laws, the way in which our beliefs color that universe and the quality of the events in our lives.

Non-Uniform Time

There's still something else that seems to have an impact on the future. Like the others, it's an area that goes by unnoticed for most of us. The last category of things that make the future happen and the one that MERLIN addresses; a factor that we might just call Time.

Nature has this neat little habit of never quite making any two things the same in this existence. We even have sciences that have been built up around that phenomenon. No two people carry the same fingerprints or patterns in the colored iris of the eye. We know the same thing is true of snowflakes and tree rings. Even popped corn kernels come out of Nature's hopper one uniquely different specimen at a time.

Most of us who have grown up and been educated in this society have this quaint idea that time is all the same. That any sixty minutes is pretty much equivalent to any other sixty minutes. It doesn't make any difference precisely when you do anything, because time is all the same. As a matter of fact, the only differentiations that we make for time (for the most part,) are those of leisure. We break time down into increments of when we don't have to work. So on that basis, all Fridays are better that all Mondays. All five PM's better that all nine AM's, and so on. But that's about the best we ever do. We don't think of time as being unique or meaningful. Instead, it's just this ritualized abstraction which we refer to constantly. We wear it on our wrists, we carry it around in our pockets and look at it endlessly on walls and buildings.

But there's one little problem. That isn't Time. That's what you could call "local bookkeeping" or "Earth-time." And you can bet Earth-time isn't time in the Solar System or anywhere else in our Universe..
There are no hours or minutes or seconds (or weeks, months, and years.) We invented them! We invented the months and the number system. And twenty what? Counting from where exactly? It's all very approximate. In fact, when you dig a little, you find that it's like warm jello down there. Not really very solid stuff that we've been telling ourselves.

So, while we're busy watching 25th anniversaries and Ground Hog’s Day and trying to remember if it’s Daylight Savings Time, we're missing something. We're missing the fact that time really does occur in memorable increments that are going by unnoticed, for the most part. Because they're just not the increments we've been taught to watch. They're increments that come in groupings of many Earth years taken at once. And we don't find those increments in science textbooks. We find them in the great writings of antiquity and in the sacred writings of civilizations as diverse as the ancient Chinese and the Native American. We find them in the Bible, we find them in Shakespeare, in Dickens and even crusty old Mark Twain.

In the Bible, for instance, they talk about "the seven lean years and the seven fat years." We have that filtering down to us in things like the statute of limitations, which is seven years. And if you're missing for seven years, you're considered to be legally dead. Or bankruptcy, which you can declare only once every seven years. Each of those was borrowed, in effect, from English Common Law, which comes from Roman Law and in part from Hebrew Law; the observed phenomena of the ages.

The ancients who noticed those meaningful intervals weren't base ten obsessed like we are in this society. Why would they choose a number like seven? The Earth doesn't do anything special every seven years. It doesn't wobble a little on its axis or swing out a little further in its orbit than it's supposed to. So that if that increment of years is meaningful in some way, it doesn't have anything to do with "Earth-time." Instead, it suggests some external pulse; a repeating cadence or tide that operates in our little corner of the universe, which is why it's become so noticeable.

If you look in Genesis, in the Bible and read the section after Adam and Eve (Chapter 29, Verse 20 - for those of you who are taking notes) you'll discover that Jacob worked for seven years and he got a piece of land. Then he worked for another seven years and he got his choice of wives, etc. Those increments of Earth years were not assigned arbitrarily. The biblical writers simply made note of a phenomenon that over the centuries had become common knowledge. Every so many Earth years and the increment seems to be seven, there occurs a sort of catharsis, a turn over, a re-evaluation of things. Every seven years.

There was an advertising campaign a while back that the American Cancer Society was running, in which they were making note of the fact that breast cancer is typically growing for seven years before is becomes detectable. Why seven? Why not eight? Or ten? Or twelve? In Dicken's "A Christmas Carol," Scrooge had his three visitations on Christmas Eve, seven years after Marley died. And then there's the "seven year itch" and the seven years of bad luck you precipitate when you break a mirror. But, for the most part, we dismiss those foolish superstitions, because of course, time is all the same, isn't it? Well, maybe it isn't.

Time actually seems to come in shadings, in gradations, in qualities of more active and less active. Not good and bad. There's no such thing as far as we can tell. No good and bad in Nature or anywhere else in the universe. Even around us. Good and bad is an entirely subjective phenomenon. What actually seems to occur is that the universe delivers up activity and rest. We then label the activity good or bad, depending on whether it was favorable to us or not in the short term. Often we label experiences “bad,” only to go back and look at those events, say ten years later, and realize that if that terrible, awful thing had not happened ten years ago, these three or four terrific things wouldn't have happened later. So what was the original event? Good or bad? It probably was neither, but just simply activity, the tide coming in. We can't even agree that death is bad, because if it weren't for death, where would morticians and florists be? Events in life are neither good nor bad. They are merely the convergence point for the tides of change. They simply occur, but in an orderly, predictable fashion.

Besides delivering up periods of activity and rest, time also seems to come in different sized packages. Let's take the full Moon for an example. Many of those old wives' tales about the Full Moon, it seems, really are true. Births, deaths, suicides, the mortality rate from operations, turns in the stock market, along with all manner of bizarre behavior really do peak around the time of the Full Moon. But then, we're all rather good at noticing cycles that are hard not to notice. Things like heartbeat and respiration, high tide and low tide, sunrise and sunset. Why is it not also likely that there are other tidal effects that are so subtle and so infrequent that they're only noticeable every seven or twenty-one or eighty-four years. We're all so caught up in watching hours, minutes and seconds that there's no way we're even going to notice these more long term and subtle effects.

That's essentially what MERLIN does. It gets us away from wrist watches and wall calendars and starts us looking at time in a whole different set of references, something we might call Celestial or Planetary time. Now, that's significantly different from the idea that planets are making people do things. What happens essentially is this. Let's presume that your birth moment was a unique instant of time and wasn't quite the same as any other birth moment in any other year. How would you go about capturing that exact instant and isolating it, so that you can make absolutely sure it's not the day after or the day before?

The fact is, you can't. We have had no technique or device for doing that until now. We certainly couldn't do it with wall calendars or wrist watches because they repeat too often. They don't give us any solid reference for a particular moment of time, so that we're not going to confuse it with some other. But, if we treat that instant of Earth-time as a note or chord occurring in a kind of ongoing celestial symphony, we can then use the planets as "time-markers" for that moment. All at once we have a very useful frame of reference. Because, conveniently, the planets in our Solar System don't repeat positions every twelve hours or even every twelve months. In fact, they only repeat positions about once every 26,000 years so there's no way that we are going to confuse your moment of birth with any other. Each one is going to be completely different, a celestial pattern that changes in an orderly fashion and one which is thoroughly unique from moment to moment.

Now the skeptic says "Okay, so what. So what that's where the planets were. Big deal." Well, we're beginning to notice something. Just like at conception when there is joining of chromosomes causing a unique pattern to form with predispositions which may not develop until age forty, or even later, it's entirely possible that each moment of time has a kind of genetics to it. A set of dimensions that is unique to that moment. The planetary configuration which shares that moment also seems to act as a pretty fair measuring stick for its potentials. And planetary time can often tell a remarkable story.

What kind of story? Suppose you take a photograph of something. In fact, you take several photographs of that same something over many years. What do you have? Well, for one thing, you have a record of what time did to that thing. You can put those pictures in chronological order and absolutely define what happened in those years. And not only that, you can also speculate on what occurred in between the photos, causing one image to become the next.

Now, that doesn't surprise us because that's what time-lapse photography does. But what we don't seem to realize is that orderly change is a function of time, it's built in. Otherwise, time-lapse photography would cease to function. We wouldn't be able to perform that little exercise at all if time didn't produce transitions. One thing that makes time-lapse photography and the use of planetary equations to describe the evolution of Time a little different however, is that with photographs you're stuck with only the actual sequence of pictures you took. You could speculate on what might have happened before you took the first one and what might happen after the last one, but you are essentially limited to only the pictures you have in front of you.

With the planets as "time-markers," we are not restricted to a known sequence or limited arrangement. The planetary patterns are very mathematical. They are like tide tables. We not only know where they are, but we know where they were and where they are going to be at any moment along the way that we are interested in computing. If we weren't able to do that, all the unmanned NASA probes of the planets that are sending back all those fascinating pictures of Jupiter and so on would get out there and Jupiter would be somewhere else. It would all be very chaotic and it isn't. Why? Because we live in an orderly universe.

Gravity keeps those planets in precise orbit and dictates the exact cadences with which they operate. No mystical revelation there. But there is a symbolic connection between the motion of Saturn and Jupiter and Mars and so on, and the course of our lives. If you watch carefully over years, decades and centuries you can see the predicted motion of these planetary equations unfold in time and move in concert with the ebb and flow of human history. Not because the planets are making that happen but because at some deeper level a symbolic connection is being made. The linkage between the pulse of your lifetime and the movement of the planets reflects the incredibly interconnected network of the living universe speaking in its native language, synchronicities. The complicated pattern of activity is like a polyrhythmic cosmic drummer at play. There's nothing mysterious about the fact that you can watch the planetary equation change and at the same time begin to predict life patterns. Not because the planets are making that happen but because whatever is making the planets move is also affecting you. So that both you and the movement of the planets are the fall out from yet some larger effect. A kind of the heartbeat of the Universe.

The planets are a good measuring stick for that celestial pulse, simply because, unlike us, they are traveling in a vacuum and they aren't affected by childhood traumas and lifestyle, or not getting enough sleep last night. When the plants and the animals sense the cadence of Nature, they fly south and drop their leaves and do all sorts of other very orderly things. We don't, always. But that doesn't mean that we are not being affected by those same tides. It just means that we have the ability to deny a lot of what we're sensing, but that doesn't make them go away. What happens instead is that when we sense these tides and attempt to maintain the status quo, we come down with migraine headaches or shingles or whatever we're genetically vulnerable to. Then we head off to the doctor, who pokes and probes and prescribes. Unless your physician takes a holistic approach to you as a patient, he or she won’t be able to figure out why all this is happening. They’ll act as though it were all coincidental. Well, it isn't coincidental. When we actively deny rhythms of the universe (even ones we can't see) or attempt to push our systems beyond their ability to function, we end up having medical or psychological traumas or worse.

And, here's where the key factors that make the future happen begin to come together and form these convergence points that we call events. They're a mixture of certain increments of Non-Uniform Celestial Time which are meaningful and predictable, Personal Laws which affect the way in which we react to those periods of activity and rest and finally, Fixed Boundaries the dimensions of our physical existence, the things none of us can change. The more consistent your beliefs and expectations are, the more likely you will be affected by these tidal changes in some fairly predictable fashion. So that the person who is very consistent in their ways of dealing with things also becomes very predictable. Certain seasonal birthdays are generally more consistent in their ways of dealing with periods of activity than are others and consequently their behavior and choices are more predictable, too.

As you begin to recognize that the future is a composite of each of these factors, you also begin to realize that it's within your ability to alter what occurs. For instance, if you know when to expect a certain higher level of activity and you acknowledge that the frame of mind you're in is going to color that period of time, you can learn to manipulate certain of those variables and literally alter the outcome.

Just think about that for a minute. Imagine if you really could make the future come out differently, better than the past. Well, the fact is that you can!

Birthday Blues

When was the last time that you stopped to consider whether it was an appropriate moment to initiate a significant activity that you were about to engage in. Not whether it was a good idea mind you, but whether it was an appropriate moment. It’s likely that that's something you never considered. Never gave a moment’s thought to. Why should you? The fact is, it just may have been the single most important factor affecting your decision and its outcome. For the remainder of this report we are going to explore one of the critical factors that make your future happen, the boundary of time.

A number of years ago when MERLIN Co-Founder Paul Guercio was first encountering some of these concepts, he had a teacher (a grandfatherly, old ‘wizard’ named Lionel Day,) who proposed what Paul at first thought to be a rather preposterous idea. He indicated that there were periods of time each year that were allegedly "beneficial" and periods that were "adverse." During the beneficial periods, he said, "nothing much happens." Things are easy and lazy and comfortable and for the most part, we do a lot of lying around and relaxing. Conversely, during the "adverse periods," we're likely to be frustrated, we find fault with our environment and make changes in it. We're also more likely to have accidents, get sick and possibly even die during one of these adverse periods.

Paul can remember thinking at the time that if that were really true, we would have all heard about it by now. They'd teach it in third grade and it would be common knowledge. He's since discovered that there are a lot of things that they should teach in third grade and don't.

Paul was about to dismiss it all as just a "likely story" when a thought occurred to him. He had been told that during these "adverse" periods, you're more likely to get sick and die and that can be checked statistically. So Paul proceeded to go about doing just that. He went through birth and death records, accident reports and emergency room admissions. He even wandered around a number of old cemeteries, although usually in broad daylight.

After researching the phenomenon for a year or so, he came to the conclusion that his mentor was absolutely right. That we don't just arrive and depart from here in some random fashion. Nature appears to issue "passports" and "exit visas" at orderly intervals, not just coincidentally. He decided that, perhaps, some of the other things he had been told about those periods of time were worth looking into. And over the years, here's what he found.

Around your birthday, give or take a week or two and then reoccurring at intervals of ninety days, about every three months, a most peculiar thing begins to happen. The easiest way to explain it is simply that you begin sensing your mortality a little more then. You start to feel a little bit more vulnerable, a little more defensive. The universe around you looks a lot less supportive and you begin to notice the things in your environment that irritate you. Not because they are worse than usual, but because you're less willing or able to deal with them.

Now that's an interesting proposition, because it suggests that for each of us, certain critical levels of self-hatred and perhaps, self-love, follow a predictable, orderly pattern. We might all experience periods of time each year during which we love ourselves or hate ourselves more than usual. So much so, that it affects our outlook and choices. At ninety day intervals for instance, we seem to look around at our environment with a higher degree of dissatisfaction. As a result, we attempt to place blame for the sensation we're experiencing because that's what we've learned to do. We’ve been educated to believe that if things aren't going well, you should do something about them.

So we do. We decide it's our car or the place we live, disappointing relationships in our life, the job we work at, our finances, or our lifestyle in general. So, we march right out and change things, (we trade “it” in for a new model,) only to discover maybe six months or a year later that the new thing we got to replace the old one isn't any better than the old thing was. Just different. It's like an instant replay. Which is a mite scary when you consider the fact that we keep doing the same thing again and again.

If this phenomenon occurs every ninety days, something has to be causing it. It can't just be coincidental. It's too orderly. Dying on schedule is very real; so are car accidents or the flu and divorces. All very real. And all very orderly. Every ninety days. And something's got to be causing that to happen.

In hunting around and trying to find out what it was, the only thing Paul noticed was that it happened at the same cadence that Nature changes seasons. But he couldn't figure out what the parallel was. And then, it finally dawned on him. Why does Nature change seasons? We don't think about that much. It's just Nature doing its thing. But what's really happening is that Nature is “remembering” the beginning of it all. Nature is remembering Creation, or the "Big Bang" (whichever you prefer). .

What if we do the same thing? That what happens every ninety days is that we are simply reliving our beginning, birth itself. Now, thankfully, most of us don't remember that experience, at least not consciously. As a research colleague likes to say, one of the reasons babies cry so much is that they still remember what it's like to be born. He's not sure that's really true, but then again, he's not sure it isn't. Anyway, since most of us don't remember our birth experience, try visualizing this reenactment.

Here you were, in a fairly comfortable place; you had been there for several months. It was sort of 24 hour room service with refuse removal. Low lights, soft music, neat little gurgling sounds (you could write graffiti on the walls.) You may have been upside down, but what did you know. And then, all of a sudden, for no apparent reason and with no warning, you found yourself slowly getting evicted, over the course of 8 or 10 or 12 or 20 or sometimes 30 hours of what has been aptly termed "labor." And then, you were expelled, literally, into an environment which isn't exactly supportive. Where nothing is there when you need it; where you have to scream and yell for everything. And that's if it was normal, that birth experience.

What if it wasn't so normal? What if you were a blue baby or an RH baby or a premature or breech or you had the cord wrapped around your throat? What then? Well, for one thing, it would write a definitive message on that spanking new blackboard of the subconscious. First set of Personal Laws would read anything like “Change is uncomfortable,” all the way down to “Change can be fatal!” And since we live in an orderly universe, there's a nasty little groove left on the psyche, to be tripped over again and again on some orderly timetable. What would be the cadence or interval that would be most likely? Perhaps the one that Nature follows, every ninety days.

Those of you who qualify as refugees from the 60's drug culture, know that one of the most commonly reported and often painful phenomenon was reliving the birth trauma. In fact, the term, "hung up," comes from that period. People who started to relive this profound experience and who were afraid to go through it during a psychoactively induced state, got caught in it. Permanently. Beginnings, it seems, are very powerful magic. Remember that! And birth may just be the Pandora's box of the subconscious.

Since we live in a cyclical universe, it makes sense that every so often, and the interval appears to be ninety days, we would relive that birth experience. But unlike our "hung up" comrades, we don't relive it on the outside. We don't grunt incessantly or assume a fetal pose over coffee breaks or in traffic jams. Instead, we find ourselves re-experiencing that sense of anxiety or impending doom. And as those birth memories wash over us unconsciously, what do you suppose might happen? Chances are, the universe around us would look a lot more ominous and unsympathetic and we would find ourselves irritable and out of sorts, frustrated and much more in need of support and assistance than usual. While at the same time, less likely to get it. How come? Because you seem to attract, in terms of events, those which are most similar to what you're in essence "broadcasting" to the universe around you. The more irritable and out of sorts and frustrated you are the more likely you are to attract or even generate that phenomenon in your environment.

Now, let's think about that for a minute. Suppose we relive our birth experience at intervals of every three months, just like Nature's seasons. As a result, we exhibit an increased sense of our own mortality and find fault with our social environment. But more than that, we also choose to make changes in what could be termed our LifeScene®, at those same intervals, often on the strength of social or peer pressure. And at a time when our ability to choose is impaired.

What's the bottom line? We often recreate our past, right on into our future, because we pick the least opportune times to choose new things. Imagine that. We might really be our own worst enemy. An active, although unwitting participant in our own discomfort, simply because of the moment we picked to initiate change.

Pressure-Free Performance

A client we know who functions as a corporate "headhunter" made an interesting discovery. She noticed that when she called one of her previous placements, who was happily employed at the time and sent them out on a new round of interviews, they invariably were offered the job. Interestingly enough, the screening interview often developed into an impassioned discussion of last week's NFL card or the future of national health care. Salary and skills were hardly mentioned at all, except in passing, while yardage and "turnovers" were discussed at length.

And yet, if that same applicant, facing a layoff or management freeze was sent out prospecting, even six months later, the pickings were often slim in comparison. For some odd reason, companies were less favorably impressed with the very same individual, at a time when that person was also feeling less good about themselves. What else had changed? Certainly not their credentials or expertise. No, the single factor that made the difference was what we call their "level of desperation".

What each of us does for work is just an extension of our personal creativity. And our sense of fulfillment is affected to a large extent, by the degree of approval we command from our co-workers and our boss. The fear of a layoff is a translated as rejection by most of us and our self-image is dealt a serious blow. One that can manifest itself in a round of unsuccessful job interviews.

But just imagine for a minute that the same "level of desperation" is also influenced by the Celestial tides or rhythms of the universe, more evident at certain moments of time and less evident at others. The events or choices occurring in that period would naturally reflect this tidal shift, an effect which seems to occur every ninety days.

Calendar Caution “Red-Zones”

Now, let's apply some of these tidal effects to your personal LifeScene®. At the end of this report you'll find a set of blank calendar worksheets for the coming year with the Full and New Moon phases marked-in. If this is missing you, you can mark-up a calendar of your choice. In addition, you'll need a pair of colored marking pens, one red and the other green, to indicate active periods in your personal LifeScene® each year. If they are not immediately available, be sure to reread this portion of the report after you have purchased a set. And incidentally, if you tend to panic when following instructions, it would be a good idea to read this section of the report several times before you begin marking your calendar.

 
First, find your birthday and put a big red X across that date on the calendar. This is a period of maximum activity, where your level of desperation and sense of mortality is most evident. Life choices often seem necessary at this time each year and decisions usually produce unsatisfactory results. It's a period of time that lasts from 2 to 4 weeks, so it's a good idea to mark that entire four week period with red X's beginning two weeks before your birthday and ending two weeks after.

Next, locate the date that falls directly opposite your birthday, exactly six months later on the calendar. January is opposite July, August is opposite February, March is opposite September, October is opposite April, May is opposite November and December is opposite June. Locate the date that falls exactly opposite your birthday.
This 2 to 4 week effect is similar to your birthday; an active and often troublesome period. Starting with the day and month that falls exactly opposite your birthday, mark the entire four week period with red X's. Begin two weeks before this date and end two weeks after.

Finally, locate the dates that fall three months before and three months after your birthday on the calendar. If you're born in January, these periods will fall in October and April. In February, they fall in November and May. For March birthdays, they fall in December and June. If you're born in April, they fall in January and July. In May, they fall in February and August. For June birthdays, they fall in March and September. If you're born in July, they fall in April and October. In August, they fall in May and November. For September birthdays, they fall in June and December. If you're born in October, they fall in July and January. In November, they fall in August and February and for December birthdays, they fall in September and March. Locate the dates that fall 90 days before and 90 days after your birthday.

These two to three week time windows are similar to your birthday period and again are best avoided when planning important decisions and initiating activity. Starting with the day and month that falls 90 days before your birthday, mark the entire three week period with red X's beginning ten days before this date and ending ten days after. Finally, locate the day and month that falls 90 days after your birthday and again mark the entire three week period with red X's beginning ten days before this date and ending ten days after.

As outlined earlier, these "red date" periods mark the points during each year where you re-experience the effects of having been born. You sense your mortality more then and become more acutely aware of those elements in your environment that appear to warrant an overhaul. Remember that your perceptions, rather than your situation, are more likely to be the real culprit and that decisions made at these times often produce unsatisfactory results.

There was an interesting item in a back issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, which suggested that patients are more likely to be hospitalized on or near their birthday and certain other times. Naturally, the physicians had an explanation. "Perhaps people get more depressed because they're a year older."

There’s a real danger that if you're hospitalized on or near your birthday or any of these other "red date" periods that you're less likely to get out of there with everything intact. Surgery is more likely at those times because you're more aware of what ails you. The aches and pains are more prominent, or at least they seem to be. So we head off to the doctor -- who in turn, puts us in the hospital to run tests (up to whatever our insurance will cover). Surgery often looms on the horizon.

If you find yourself in this situation, remember that most surgery is elective not emergency. Get a second or even a third opinion. If possible, schedule that surgery away from these "red date" periods and at least two days before or after the Full Moon (more about that later). Don't assume that your doctor will consider timing factors when scheduling your operation. He won't (except as it interferes with his trip to Aruba or golf game.) Statistical studies show that a grossly disproportionate number of caesarian section deliveries occur on Fridays, for example, which strongly suggests that operating room scheduling has much more to do with surgeon convenience than patient need. Be sure to assert your rights as a patient and participate in choosing the date, keeping these four annual stress periods in mind.

We've explained these personal cycles perhaps as many as several thousand times over the years, during individual consultations as well as on countless radio and TV shows and we've noticed which of our clients pay the most attention to them. Surprisingly, nearly all of them are living in the upper income bracket. It seemed unlikely that wealthy people were simply more superstitious than the rest of us. We eventually started asking questions and the answers we got back were intriguing and informative.

Why Lucky People are.. Lucky

One of the things about living in the upper income bracket is that it's pleasant enough that you'd want to perpetuate it as long as possible. To do that, you have to consider factors that the average hourly worker never even notices. Things like the price of gold and the interest on T-Bills, strategic metals and whether you're in hog bellies or grain futures.  One of the things you become acutely aware of is the importance of timing. Because with most of these speculative investments, the critical decision is not what you bought but when you bought it.  The timing of the purchase was the key factor rather than the particular purchase itself. When you have to contend with that issue of timing often enough, you can't help but wonder if everything isn't like that. That, perhaps, the most important factor in the success or outcome of literally anything in your life, is the timing of the activity and not the quality of the supporting evidence.  We may well make our own luck. There's a little incentive to go and mark your calendar.

Perhaps, it's already occurred to you that if there are periods of time each year that are essentially "adverse," there might also be comparable periods that we might think of as "beneficial." Periods of time when we like ourselves more than usual, when the universe around us seems more supportive and friendly and when we're more likely to feel successful and optimistic. If the theory holds true, these would be ideal times to initiate important changes in our life, make major purchases, move our place of residence or hunt-up a new job.  But then, what kind of crazy person would make changes in their life when things are going along so well. We even have phrases in our vocabulary to keep us from doing just that. Little gems like "...leave well enough alone" and "…don't rock the boat," or "…don't change horses in midstream" and so on. There are literally hundreds of them. How come? Probably because down deep somewhere in that dusty file closet of the subconscious, we have this Personal Law which says, that if something really good is happening to us, it undoubtedly is a mistake and belongs to someone else instead. And that if we raise a lot of dust THEY are going to notice and take it all away. Which is of course nonsense, but many of us believe it.

You know what kind of crazy person makes changes in their life when things are going along well? I'll tell you what kind. We have a name for them. We call them LUCKY!

Several years ago, a number of studies were conducted in an attempt to find out what makes lucky people lucky. Now, of course we all know that there's no such thing as luck.  It's all just coincidence, right?  Just fate.  Nothing more than a wrinkle on the staid and immutable laws of probability. Not so. The researchers discovered that lucky people had something in common; a factor so simple and so obvious that it's almost laughable. Lucky people, it seems, make changes in their life when there's absolutely no reason to. And they do it consistently!

When there's no pressure, no stress, no deadlines.  When they're not fed up with what's going on.  That's when they choose new things. They change jobs right after they got a promotion or a raise, not when they're about to be laid-off. They buy a new car when the old one is running fine and they buy a new house when their old one was a steal. And then, six months or a year later when their old firm goes bankrupt and their old car falls apart on it's new owner, there they are, happily ensconced in their new situation, often with no idea why they're so fortunate.

So what's the basic difference between lucky people and the rest of us?  Well, for one thing, the rest of us need reasons, convenient little chains of logic we employ to explain what we did to other people so they'll agree with us. That's what reasons are. They're not things we need for our own benefit so much. We need them to justify our actions so that we can avoid the thing most of us fear above all other things, and that's to be looked at funny.

We don't want to be looked at funny. We've avoided that ever since we were little kids. That was always the ultimate social faux pas, to have people turn around and look at you and go “...hmmm.” So, we don't take the chance. We play it safe. And in the process of attempting to keep that disapproval from happening, we go to great lengths.  We collect a long litany of reasons to justify our actions and choices. So that no matter whom we tell them to, they'll say "…Boy, were you right.  You really ought to do that." And then, when our decision turns into a disaster a few months down the road, our biased and dubious cheering section can't seem to understand why it happened.  Because of course, they do the same thing.  Which is probably why, for most of us, the future never gets better, just a little different.

Does that mean that "reasons" are bad things? No, but most reasons, if you think about it, express one form of dissatisfaction or another. And the more dissatisfied you are, the more likely your choices will reflect that dissatisfaction. Lucky people simply make choices at times when there are few, if any, reasons present and consequently minimum dissatisfaction. And it shows! But then, all lucky people must also be fairly eccentric, because what other kind of person would consistently make major lifestyle changes, when there's no discernable reason. Eccentricity apparently has its selling points!

Calendar “Personal Luck Cycle”

Now, let's take another look at your calendar. We mentioned that there are periods of time each year when your self-esteem and sense of what's possible, seems to take an upward turn. Like the "red dates" you already marked-in, these "beneficial" or "lucky" periods follow an orderly sequence, too. They occur at intervals of every two months, beginning 60 days after your birthday. The only exception is the date that falls exactly opposite your birthday, which as I've already explained, is generally an active and often stressful period. You might think of this as a kind of "personal luck cycle."

Using the green marking pen, find the dates that fall every two months from your birthday. If you're born in January, these dates will fall in March, May, September and November. In February, they fall in April, June, October and December. For March birthdays, they fall in May, July, November and January. If you're born in April, these dates fall in June, August, December and February. In May, they fall in July, September, January and March. For June birthdays, they fall in August, October, February and April. If you're born in July, these dates fall in September, November, March and May. In August, they fall in October, December, April and June. For September birthdays, they fall in November, January, May and July. If you're born in October, these dates will fall in December, February, June and August. In November, they fall in January, March, July and September. And for December birthdays, they fall in February, April, August and October. Find the dates that fall every two months from you birthday, beginning 60 days after your birthday.
These beneficial or lucky periods are in effect for 3-4 weeks around each date for a total of four "green date" periods each year. Rather than being highly active and complex periods, these green dates are noticeable mostly for their lack of stress and reduced sense of dissatisfaction. And you'll discover that you're less motivated then, too. Remember that these are excellent periods of time to initiate important changes in your life. In fact, the outcome of decisions made during these "beneficial" periods are often much more successful than whatever is normal for you. Think about that for a minute. Imagine if you could actually improve your "batting average" with decisions. You'd be twice as successful as you are right now, simply by timing your activities to take advantage of this personal tide. One that's been operating in your life ever since you arrived here.
Take the time, right now, to mark your "personal activity index" on the calendar. With the green marking pen, find each 60 day interval and mark that period of time with green X's. Begin as much as two weeks before each date and go on until one to two weeks after. Repeat this procedure four times at each 60 day interval around the year.
While you're looking over your calendar, here's an easy way to make sure that you've marked in the right dates. On a blank sheet of paper write the numbers one through twelve in a single column. Following the number one, write your month and day of birth. On line two, write the same day but a month later and on line three, the same day the following month. Continue like that until you have filled-in all of the lines.

Using a September 25 birth date as an example, the listing would look like this:

Now, here's an easy method to check your "personal activity index" for accuracy. Line numbers 1, 4, 7, and 10 should be "red date" periods lasting two to four weeks around each date. Line numbers 3, 5, 9, and 11 should be "green date" periods lasting two to four weeks around each date.

And here's a New Year's resolution to remember. Make a habit each December, to buy a new calendar, for the sole purpose of marking these dates for the coming year. It's a New Year's resolution that will pay handsome and very tangible dividends. You might also consider plotting this annual tidal effect for your mate, your children, members of the family, even your boss and co-workers. It will help to explain why they're irritable and out of sorts at certain times, plus, the best times to approach them with a problem or request.
Now, of course, there are at least some decisions that must be made during "red date" periods and which for one reason or another (there's that word again,) can't be delayed until the next beneficial period. When this happens, try and plan the activity to coincide with the nearest New Moon. New Moons each month (what's known as the dark of the Moon or "waxing" Moon) are similar to the "green date" periods in their effect. Activities that you begin on or right after the New Moon, tend to be more successful than those that you begin at other times of the month. Especially avoid the Full Moon period if at all possible. The Full Moons each month are similar to your annual "red dates" in their effect, although much shorter in duration. The Full and New Moon phases are indicated on the enclosed calendar worksheets or can be easily found on-line.

Incidentally, it stands to reason that if New Moons are appropriately more "beneficial" and Full Moons "adverse," that the New Moons that fall within your "green date" periods would be particularly lucky for implementing decisions and initiating important activity. In reverse fashion, Full Moons, especially Full Moons that fall within your "red date" periods are noticeably more troublesome. These are days when you should plan as little important activity as possible.

Now, to some people, all this "tidal stuff" smacks of predestination and superstition or challenges free will. But not so. We plan certain of our activities around time tables every day. Things like buses and train schedules for example. And while there's nothing to stop us from going to the airport, hoping there's a plane going our way, we'd make much more effective use of our time if we called the airline first to find out when the next one leaves.

In this report we've been exploring two of the basic tides or rhythms that help to make your future happen. Like all cycles of Nature, they occur at regular intervals, in an orderly pattern, whether you believe in them or not. If we all assembled on the East Coast tomorrow and ordered the tides not to come in, they would pay us little heed. Nature has her own rhythms and keeps her own counsel. Yet, these amazing tidal intervals can play a remarkable role in determining the outcome of virtually everything you attempt. And these are just two of the cycles at work in your life. A personal ‘encounter’ with MERLIN will introduce you to some of the others.

These personal tide tables can save you from an endless round of flawed decisions and inappropriate activity, if you choose to monitor them regularly. If you don't, they probably won't treat you any worse than they already have. But why take chances, living your life like a game of Russian Roulette, when you can increase your margin for success with one simple concept -- TIMING!

Download the MERLIN How The Future Happens® Package. We have placed the "How The Future Happens®",  the "Preface" from a forthcoming MERLIN Project book, and general information on MERLIN Sessions into a single Installation file that you can download, install, and read at your leisure. 

		Download MERLIN 'How The Future Happens®' Package (Exe)
		(753 Kb)

© 2000-2007  The MERLIN Project® Research Group   All Rights Reserved 

   The MERLIN Project Research Group

   P.O. Box 1241 - Seabrook, NH 03874

   Call Toll Free (866)-298-7688