The Power of Coincidence (2 page)

My heightened awareness and my thankfulness for the graces that flow from synchronicity have led me to revise this book, to explore further the mysterious power of coincidence in my own life and in those of others. My hope in writing this revised and expanded edition is to share more of what I understand about how all this unfolds and how it blooms.

I am grateful to the staff at Shambhala for believing in this project, and especially to my editor, Eden Steinberg, who attunes so sensitively to my sounds and silences so they can resound more harmoniously.

How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank!

Here will we sit and let the sounds of music

Creep in our ears; soft stillness and the night

Become the touches of sweet harmony.

Sit, Jessica. Look how the floor of heaven

Is thick inlaid with patens of bright gold.

There’s not the smallest orb which thou behold’st

But in his motion like an angel sings,

Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubims;

Such harmony is in immortal souls,

But whilst this muddy vesture of decay

Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it.

—
W
ILLIAM
S
HAKESPEARE,
The Merchant of Venice

Introduction

The very minute bids thee ope’ thine ear!

—W
ILLIAM
S
HAKESPEARE,
The Tempest

A series of unusual correspondences or similar happenings may not be mere coincidence but meaningful coincidence. This synchronicity can be just what it takes to spring us into changes and awakenings that we are ready to experience. Synchronous moments bid to us to pay attention to what comes now or next on our journey. From this point of view, awkward jolts can become graceful transitions, and stops can become steps. We grasp that the people, places, and events of our lives are showing us what we need to know or where we are ready to go. Everyone and everything in our story is part of how our life is coming together and there is nothing left to fear. We then stand at attention to our destiny and join it deliberately, rather than resisting, complaining about, or otherwise bemoaning our fate.

If our life unfolded only according to our plans, however sensible or overblown or constricted, we would miss out on many surprises. We might fail to notice how new doors are opening and ushering us into relationships that stretch us and fashion us into works of art. Our life as designed by our cautious mind might not include all the twists and turns that lead to the release of our creative energy or the clash of forces that make us really extraordinary.

Perhaps all is happening in life just as we intend. Then suddenly we meet someone, or find out something, or have an accident, or hit bottom and our world spins in a new direction that ultimately makes all the difference. Those unexpected events beyond our control are the forces of synchronicity that make us who we are—and who we were always meant to be.

Synchronicity is a mind-boggling and sometimes eerie rendezvous between the world and our inner selves. Something happens in the external world and it fits exactly with what we need right now, showing that our human nature and mother nature are two sides of one coin. In nature, each season produces just the conditions that the ecology of the earth requires for its evolutionary growth. Likewise, in our human story, we keep finding just what we require so we can evolve as psychologically healthy and spiritually aware beings. Synchronicity comes to us as an assisting force in this evolution. We are helped in finding ourselves and we help others find themselves. Thus, synchronicity contributes to the joyous fulfillment of our personal destiny in an always luminous world that longs for ever more light.

As synchronicity erases the line between us and nature, it also blurs the line between the timely and the timeless. It underlines moments that reveal eternity to be the ground of our being. When we trust this, we take steps from and on that ground. They are dance steps, not a formal ballet but a mirthful jig, at times indecorous or even irreverent. Actually, everything that happens to us is synchronicity because everything fits perfectly into our step-by-step advance toward a fulfillment of our potential.

Most of us are quite aware of our limited powers and not so aware of our boundless potential. This potential is our true Self, an energy that is unconditionally and universally loving, discerning with the wisdom of the ages, and abundantly rich with healing power. When these sleeping powers are activated, we are acting in accord with the best in us. Our spiritual powers may, however, remain sleeping giants in our psyche and never display themselves in our actions. Then our destiny remains unfulfilled and a sense of something missing may pervade our life. Synchronicity comes along to wake us and fulfill us.

Synchronicity shows us that the world orchestrates some of our life events so they can harmonize with the requirements of our inner journey. This is reflected in the opening quotation by Shakespeare: “Such harmony is in immortal souls.” Synchronicities are unusual, unexpected, not constructed or controlled by the human ego. In this sense they are miracles of conjunction between ourselves and the events of the world. We cannot cause these kinds of miracles to occur, but we can greet them and grant them hospitality in the yetunopened rooms of our souls. Then the power of coincidence is respected and it opens us to many marvels. These pages show how that can happen.

The human organism comes equipped with self-healing powers. We have three reliable and highly skilled healers—three graces—within ourselves. The first is an inner physician—the grace of the body—who rushes to the scene of an accident. We cut a finger and he brings platelets to stop the bleeding and white cells to prevent infection. We can cooperate in this process by washing and covering the cut—skills we learned from our first aid manual.

We also embody an inner psychologist—the grace of the psyche—who knows just how to help us with our emotional injuries. When a shocking loss occurs, she brings tears of mourning to the site of the wound. We can join in by actively engaging in griefwork. We can trust our inner psychologist to have a handy program perfectly calibrated for every crisis that may come along. To make that program more effective and expeditious we have to work along with it.

Finally, we are aware of the metaphor of the guardian angel. This is our inner priest, our spiritual guide—the grace of the soul—who knows the full itinerary of our journey through life and can offer the provisions it requires. He brings synchronicity, dreams, intuitions, bursts of imagination, spontaneous creativity, sudden awakenings, and other spiritual gifts. We participate by faithful attention, and then by acting in accord with the callings of our destiny. The skills for this work are presented in this book.

The physical work leads to the joy of health. The psychological work leads to the joy of responsible living and effective relating. The spiritual work leads to the joy of universal love. Our work in all three areas is to synchronize our learned skills with our inborn resources. This is the dance, the harmonized movements of effort and grace that enact the equation of human wholeness. Personal power is an abiding and inviolable trust that the three graces are resident and active in our psyches. It is synchronicity at work—or rather, at play.

My personal purpose in life as a psychotherapist, teacher, and writer is to point to this source in all of us. My books, and most specifically this one, are meant as manuals to assist our inner psychologist and our inner priest in their resplendent work. I am hoping we can build our confidence in the trustworthy light inside us and cultivate the skills to let it come through.

In this book, we learn how to recognize synchronicity in our daily experience, in our imagination, and in our dreams. Such heightened awareness leads to a felt sense about what may be incubating in the hidden depths of our unconscious. We then recognize the crucial significance of timing in all that we do. In these pages I’ll draw on the Jungian concept of active imagination, Tibetan Buddhist practices, and other techniques and teachings to help us work with the phenomenon of synchronicity and gain from it. Though I draw strongly on Jungian thought, my intention is not to present Jung’s views but to explore what happens when his work is combined with other wisdom traditions including Buddhism, transpersonal psychology, and mystical traditions of spirituality.

Ultimately, this book helps you to learn to “read” synchronicity in your own life so that you can discover:

How to interpret a series of similar happenings

How to open yourself to the assisting forces around you

How to get past the fears that can stop you from being you

How to deal with fate and participate in your own destiny

How to tell the right time from the wrong time

How to use creative imagination in your choices

How to honor and learn from your dreams

How to integrate your psychological and spiritual work

How to live in accord with your deepest needs and wishes

Reading this book will help you to notice the miracles everywhere around and within you. It presents an exciting and yet simple program that gives you a sense of personal efficacy and of spiritual connectedness. Awareness of synchronicity makes you a person of more depth, especially as you see the underlying significance of your story and the world’s story as one and the same. This kind of awareness leads to a synchronous, melodic, harmonizing of the music in your soul and the rhythms of the cosmic spheres—which are, of course, one and the same. This is the essence of the speech from
The Merchant of Venice
that appears in the preface of this book, which will be referred to throughout the text. This quotation offers an exquisitely complete and touching articulation of all this book attempts to say.

Synchronicity shows us that more is at work than can be accounted for by chance. Since correlations are happening beyond our control, we trust that something, we know not what, is always at work, we know not how, to make us more than we are now, to make the world more than it is yet.

What a precious and privileged destiny we humans have: to be the escorts of light and love as they enter this world. We are like honor guards in a long procession of forbears and followers, who, like us, are always en route and always already Here.

We spend our lives waiting for the great day, the great battle, or the great deed of power. But that external consummation is not given to many, nor is it necessary. So long as our being is tensed passionately into the spirit in everything, then that spirit will emerge from our own hidden, nameless efforts. . . . Right from the hands that knead the dough to the hands that consecrate it, only one Host is being made.

—P
IERRE
T
EILHARD DE
C
HARDIN

1

A Moment Becomes Momentum

W
HAT
I
S
S
YNCHRONICITY?

Synchronicity
is a term used by Carl Jung to describe coincidences that are related by meaningfulness rather than by cause and effect. These coincidences are life-affecting and yet beyond our control. Jung saw meaningful coincidence, rather than random chance, as a governing dynamic for all of human experience and history. Thus synchronicity underlies our collective as well as our personal destiny.

We are usually conscious of synchronicity and experience it as mysterious. As we become more attentive to it, we see how our destiny is unfolding and how to take a hand in it. Synchronicity indicates that the timing of events is tied into an unseen pattern of connections. Personally, synchronicity can point us to new challenges or teach us what we need to know. Synchronicity also works in world events to advance human evolution.

Synchronous events include meaningful coincidences, links, correlations, convergences, or correspondences that may guide us, warn us, or confirm us on our path. Synchronicity is also found in a series of similar events or experiences. It can appear as one striking event that sets off a chain reaction. It is always unexpected and somehow uncanny in its accuracy of connection or revelation. This is what makes it impossible to dismiss synchronicity as mere coincidence.