"the 111 experience" (the chronology)

This is the chronology of my experiences with the number patterns One Eleven (111) and Eleven-Eleven (11:11). It documents my earliest experiences with 111 (CE 1965) and 11:11 (CE 1968) through 11-1-2000.  If there are any questions regarding this work, of if you find your own Special Pattern on the current version of The Big List (11/111/x11/1111/111x, 112, 137, 22/222/2222, 3/33/333, 316, 318, 37, 42/420, 44/44x/444, 47/x47, 53, 55/555, 666, 69, 7/77/777, 13/42, 23/32, 88/888, 1212, 1234, 1432), feel free to contact me through e-mail at jlwn111@hotmail.com.

BACKGROUND: WHO IS J'LAHN? J'lahn is a name that came to me during an early summer night in late June, 1988 while I was living in  Boulder, Colorado .  It was an intense night, a night of heightened energy, and a night of heightened thought. In my dream state I felt that, for some reason, there were two very powerful beings down near Denver and that somehow I was connected to them.  I sensed that they were WALKING to Boulder to meet me.  The main Highway is a state road called 36.  At any rate, in this lucid dream I knew that I needed to start walking to Denver down 36 and that I would meet them somewhere in the middle. So in the dream, I began my trek down 36. While I was walking, I imagined that we (the three of us) were communicating with each other telepathically. These two beings (they may have been women) referred to me by something that sounded like JAH-LON (I may have told them that this is what they should call me - I don't really remember who used the name first).  I awoke from this deep dream state before I actually met the two. From that moment on, I felt that my INNER CORE BEING was, somehow,  named  J'lahn. I chose the "J apostrophe" spelling because that seemed most fitting.  So that's how the name J'lahn became meaningful to me and that's how it came to represent my innermost self - it was all from an incredibly lucid dream I had way back in 1988.
  

1965 - The Beginning
When I was three years old, I was recorded singing "Old Macdonald" and "Jesus Loves Me" by my grandfather, The Rev. L. F. Nichols . The recording was made on a SCOTCH reel-to-reel magnetic tape (model number 111-12). The flat, reel-to-reel style tape box cover displays a large, white 111 on top of a red and black checkered background. The tapes were discovered in a box of memorabilia during the summer of 1988 while moving from my childhood home.

1968 - The First 11:11 Connection
I used to draw racing cars all the time when I was a little kid. I think that I started putting numbers on them after an outing to the "Stock Car" races up in Middletown,  NY.  The drawing you'll see here is from 1968 when I was just 6 years old and represents the very first evidence of a connection to Two Elevens (known today, of course, as 11:11).

1976 - The Random ID Assignment
I was assigned an ID number of ‘01110’ in the computer systems of the newly opened regional high school . I didn't connect this to "the 111 experience" until the summer of 1980.
  

July 29, 1978 - The Last Issue of Tabor Lake's THE COURIER
I spent every summer of my childhood at a place called Tabor Lake in northern New Jersey.  Two of my friends (they were brothers, actually) and I published THE COURIER , a small "magazine" telling all about the people, places, and things of Tabor Lake. The Last Issue's cover (#11) showed the cover of the "Preview Issue" (#1) with the caption: "OUR FIRST ISSUE - 1974".

1980 through 1983 - The Early 111 Synchronicities
In the summer of 1980, I worked at the local newspaper delivering papers to people who didn't get their papers and carriers that were shorted. I spent a good deal of time in the car and found that I began to see 111 imbedded in the numbers on the odometer and tripometer at least once a day. The first few times it happened, it didn't seem odd, but the problem was that it kept happening. Somehow I would look at the mileage indicators just as they had turned to 111.

I then got a couple of addresses to deliver papers to that had 111 as a part of the address. Now I was starting to get a little spooked. At this point, the experience I was having was very private - I hadn't told a soul. I approached a woman at the newspaper who was into numerology and astrology and asked her what it meant if someone kept seeing the same number all the time. She said "I don't know, but I keep seeing 222 all the time and it's really starting to piss me off !!!"

I thought I was dreaming. How could she be saying this? I hadn't told anyone about my experience until that moment. I said "You're not gonna believe this, but I was going to ask you why I keep seeing 111 all the time!" We were both a little scared by this. The probability that we would both be having such a similar strange experience seemed very low. At that moment, I began to think that I was experiencing something paranormal - something that could not be explained with conventional scientific tools.

The rest of the summer was spent trying to deal with 111 whenever it would come up and trying to remain calm about the whole thing. It showed up in the running time of THE OMEN (111 minutes). This was also when I realized that my high school ID had 111 embedded in it . I wondered if I was going crazy. I thought that maybe I was experiencing some kind of paranormal premonition. Was I sensing the coming of World War III (World War One-One-One)?

Toward the end of the summer, I had another idea. Was 111 a numeric symbol of the Christian Trinity or Trinities in general? A month before my Grandfather Nichols died, he told me that the next time he saw me he would tell me the secret of how he kept his faith. He died before he told me the secret. Was he giving me a sign from the beyond? I kept seeing 111 and continued to resist categorizing it.

The next major event came in September, 1980 during my freshman year of college . At this point I had begun to share the details of my experience with my closest friends and family. Some of them reported that they started noticing 111 only after I had mentioned it to them. They also reported to me that they started seeing 11:11 on the clock after I brought 111 to their attention. I hadn't been seeing 11:11 but I did find these reports very interesting. I was mostly seeing 111 on digital clocks at this point - meaning that it would be 1:11 or it would turn to 1:11 just as I looked at the clock.

My friends in college (who were all studying to be some kind of scientist or engineer) wanted to help me debunk this. The theory was this: choose ANY number at all, make a mental note of it, and then it will start coming up all over the place. We took my TI-55 calculator and used the random number generator on it to select a random number between 1 and 600. We thought it might give us something that looked like a time. It didn't. We got 37. We thought "37’s a prime number, seems odd enough, let's see if it starts to come up." And for me, it did - mostly on cash registers (in prices and change) and in numbers that would come up in my various labs and classes. As a prank, we all helped paint a big 37 on the statue in the middle of campus.

Then one Saturday a few weeks later I was playing around with the numbers in a homework problem and realized that 37 was a close relative of my number. 37 + 37 + 37 = 111! Why should a random number that we generated on a calculator have ANY connection to 111?

Starting in 1982, I began to take special note of several different days during the calendar year. They were January 11th (1-11), November 1st - All Saints' Day (11-1) and April 21st (111th day of the year) . These became my own special holidays. Others who knew about this would actually take the time to say "Happy One Eleven, Jim."

In February 1982 I was with my Grandmother for my yearly trip to Florida. I was at a mall and was looking at a map of the facility. I saw that store number 111 was called Pop-Tops. That sounded interesting. It turned out to be a T-shirt store so I decided I would buy an orange T-shirt with three bright purple ones on it. That night I stood on the beach wearing my new T-shirt and kept repeating the phrase "What is the meaning of 111?" over and over and over. Right after the last time that I asked, a shooting star sailed brilliantly across the clear night sky. A chill ran up my spine. Was I making all this up or was I experiencing something completely paranormal? Was it a symbol for some sort of Trinity?

1987 through 1988 - Boulder and Sedona
I stopped seeing 111 all the time in late 1983. It had become an integral part of my life at this point (all my close friends and family were aware of my association with the number) but I had stopped seeing it on a regular basis. I had graduated from college and had been working as a data processing professional for three years. I was on vacation in Boulder during the summer of 1987 visiting a friend of mine from college. I immediately fell in love with the town. The most striking thing about Boulder is that it is right up against the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains. Right there, in plain view of the entire town, were the Flatirons. The Flatirons are a collection of huge slabs that people go climbing and hiking on.

There are three main slabs. The Flatirons seemed like a huge 111 looking out across the town. My friend Marty agreed. He was one of my friends in college who had tried to debunk 111 nearly seven years earlier. We felt that, once again, 111 was staring us right in the face. This was also right around the time of the Harmonic Convergence - that event added another mystical layer to my Summer of '87 vacation.

I had such an intense vacation that I decided to leave New Jersey and move to Boulder for a break from the hectic pace. I spent nine months in Boulder - living, working, and playing. It was very relaxing. In late June of 1988 I moved to Sedona, Arizona . I had never been there before but had heard that many people on spiritual quests were beginning to gather there. I figured that if anyone was seeing the same thing I was, surely they would be in Sedona. I got networked in with the hip crowd in town very quickly through my housemates.

Although everyone found my 111 connection interesting, nobody was having the same experience. I found a book in a town near Sedona, though, that really made quite an impact on me. It was called "777" by Aleister Crowley. In it, there were several direct references to 111. It referred to 111 as a symbol of the Trinity and the "Trinitarian Equation 3 = 1". I thought this was a pretty amazing discovery - it was July 1988 about a week after the Fourth of July. I had finally discovered a reference to 111 that pre-dated my own experience with the number.

[End of Part I]