Something happened to me this past week that threw me for a loop. I spiraled into a lot of fear and insecurity, projecting the worst possible outcome. Despite having a blog called “Another World is Probable,” for my own life, my first impulse is doom and gloom. When I’m in this emotional place, I lose all rational faculties and feel utterly alone, despite all evidence to the contrary.
I had an experience on Saturday that pulled me out of that hole and helped me change my perspective. My friend Rachel Kaplan launched her podcast, “The Healing Feeling Sh*t Show.” I highly recommend checking it out, by the way. It’s all about emotional potty training for adults. I attended the launch party by myself, anticipating I’d see familiar faces in the crowd, but no one I’d spent much time with. While hobnobbing, I spotted not one, but three people I hadn’t seen in years. It felt like a gift, a synchronistic delight, to anticipate aloneness but instead have the opposite experience.
The world is magical. Photo by Aron Visuals on Unsplash
I realize some of you will scratch your heads because after all, don’t Rachel and I have friends in common and therefore wouldn’t it make sense I would see them at her launch party? Yes, yes it would. But wait! There’s more. I ordered a Lyft home and the driver was also a friend of mine! That’s literally never happened to me before.
I bring this up because all of these synchronicities reminded me life is magical, that there is an intelligence at play in the universe. It reminded me I may think I’m alone and under-resourced, but in actuality I have a wealth of care and support at my fingertips. There is an inherent love for me that I cannot fathom or anticipate.
Despite the numerous magical experiences in my life, I usually think they’re a fluke. I think the synchronicity is a one-off, something never to be repeated. My experience from Saturday night illustrated to me how wrong that is. Magic, synchronicity, and care is more the norm than it is the exception. I regularly have these experiences. Not so regular I can predict their occurrence, but regular nonetheless.
I’m not alone in this. I know many people experience synchronicity and what could be called a coincidence. For me, today, I’m taking it as evidence of a loving higher power. An entity that acts benevolently, that orchestrates things in such a way that I’m taken care of, and also shows me from time to time that I’m not alone, that there are greater forces at work in the world that I’m often unaware of.
My spiritual tradition corroborates this. Over and over again my spiritual teacher says the divine loves us more than we can imagine. Loves us so purely, completely, and unconditionally our human brains are unable to comprehend the depth and breadth of love. But it’s up to us to recognize it.
I dream of a world where we realize we are not alone. A world where we recognize there is a greater, benevolent force at play in our lives. A world where we remember we are loved deeply and completely and that means we’ll experience magic from time to time.
Another world is not only possible, it’s probable.
It’s been a busy and stressful week. Lots of traveling, lots of activity. The only thing on my mind is synchronicity. I’m resharing this post on the topic from more than a year ago. Enjoy.
The other week, I ended early with my writing coaching client (which never happens) and conducted my usual grocery shopping. As I walked out of the grocery store, I ran into someone I literally haven’t seen or talked to in close to five years. It turns out, a few days prior he mentioned me to his girlfriend and voila, we ran into each other.
Even better, during the course of our conversation I said some things it seemed he needed to hear so in many ways I felt like a messenger. I walked away from our encounter on a high, marveling at the magic and the mystery of the universe.
There are no coincidences.
Some people would say that interaction was a coincidence, a happy accident. I don’t view it that way at all. My spiritual teacher says everything is incidental. “For each and every incident there is some cause,” he says. We may or may not know the cause, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t one.
He gives the example of an earthquake saying perhaps a huge stone took 10 million years to move from one place to another, but when it fell, the action took only a few seconds and caused the earth to shake. The cause took 10 million years to come to fruition but there was a cause for the earthquake, it didn’t just “happen.”
When I look at the synchronistic turn of events from the other week, I am reminded there is a divine intelligence in place. There is some force at work that configured things just so, allowing me to meet this friend. If I hadn’t left my coaching session early, if my friend walked into the grocery store five minutes later, etc. our meeting wouldn’t have occurred. I am truly in awe of all the moving parts that needed to align in order for us to run into each other.
This story comforts me because at the moment there are a few areas of my life where I feel stuck and hopeless. Where I don’t see how they can or will change. I am convinced they will stay in their current state for the rest of my days. But then I think about this “chance” encounter with my friend and am reminded things can and do change unexpectedly. And not only that, there is also a guiding presence in my life, overseeing everything.
If I can run into a friend out of the blue, is there also a chance these areas of life can also change? That things won’t stay the same? That something else unexpected will show up in my life to shake things up? Like the stone that took 10 million years to fall, maybe there are events slowly, slowly unfolding and when they drop will shake the ground beneath my feet. I find that both terrifying and exciting. I cling to the notion though the universe is working for my benefit, that it ultimately wants to see me succeed.
I dream of a world where we realize everything is incidental. A world where we realize we may not know the initial cause but that doesn’t mean there isn’t one. A world were we remember there is a guiding force in our life that arranges circumstances and events for our benefit.
Another world is not only possible, it’s probable.