“You’re going to think I am crazy, but
I feel compelled to send you this ad I found for a job,” my friend
explained in a brief e-mail.
“The crazy part is that the
job is in Minnesota!”
Now my friend knew that I had recently
moved back to the Bay Area to be with my family after a long absence.
I did not think he was crazy, but I wondered why Minnesota. From experience
I have come to know that sometimes what doesn’t at first make
sense becomes clear in time. I thanked him and put the message aside,
knowing the answer would come.
You know the feeling well, an experience
that seems to reach down to the depths of you. Something on the television
or radio repeatedly touch a nerve? A dream that seems to relate
to situations in real life before it happens? According to Samuels,
Shorter and Plaut, most people have experienced meaningful coincidences
or detected some sort of purposeful trend in their affairs, and it
is in connection with that type of experience that synchronistic moments
may have direct relevance on a personal level.
Later
that day I began to explore the message and found many interesting
and insightful things to think about. The writer of the ad founded a website on Spirit
in Business. I browsed around the website with mild interest. There
were other members in the consortium that offered services that helped
people with spiritual development in various ways. One helped
you design your office space so that your daily work was mindful, peaceful,
and set the stage for a more spiritually attuned worklife.
All
of this was interesting, but I wasn’t sure that there was a lesson in it for me. I
believe that we are here to learn certain lessons in life, and sometimes
we help each other to do so. I knew there was more to the message, so
I put it aside and waited. I could see no connection to Minnesota.
Then
the next week I was standing in the hall at my place of work when a
colleague walked by who no longer worked for us. He had moved months before to a new job
in another state and was back for a visit. Shortly before he had left
I had given him a proposal for a consulting job with his new company. He
said he’d look at it after he was settled. Well there he
was, saying hello to me after all of these months. A few minutes into
our conversation he mentioned he had just recently read my proposal and
was interested in my work. It was just what he was looking for.
Would I be interested in coming to Minnesota in the near future to
do some work for him?
Minnesota! I
had forgotten about the proposal and that he was going to that particular
state. I told my friend about the incident.
“Yes, OK, but what
does it mean anyway?” he said.
Well,
the Universe is full of mystery…but I believe we connected in such a way that
you were there to offer me support and remind me of my contact in Minnesota,
I explained. There are other possibilities. It could mean
that I should not go off in another direction at this time. Or, it
might mean that my friend had some unseen connection to the man in
Minnesota, and that I would do well to pay attention to the similarities
and pace of the message.
This
was a synchronistic experience, a phrase that Carl G. Jung first used
to refer to events that coincide in time and space but can also be
seen to have meaningful psychological connections. It occurs where
two kinds of reality (i.e. ‘inner’ and ‘outer’)
intersect. This kind of awareness brings new meaning to your decision-making
processes. It combines your analytical skills with a spiritual
dimension. Sometimes what makes analytical sense, is not the
best decision for your personal and spiritual growth.
“I’m intrigued,
tell me more,” my friend probed.
I
responded by telling him when you learn to live in the present and
give your full attention to the things you do, you begin to live “mindfully.” Therefore
you attend more fully to your own needs, your family's needs, your job,
and your environment. This attention brings new meaning to your
life. It gives you access to your center, your own inner voice, and
your higher consciousness, which is in connection with your higher
power.
In the Celestine Prophecy,
James Redfield describes the process of mindfulness and synchronicity. These
coincidences make us feel there is something more, something spiritual,
operating underneath everything we do. So, when you are faced
with a fork in the road, look at both paths carefully. One will look
rather drab and colorless, the other vibrant, and full of color and possibilities. Then
your choice is simple and clear. The one you want to take is
the one that offers you the greatest amount of energy, makes you feel
lighter and more directed.
So,
being mindfulsets the tone to become sensitive to the possibilities
around you enriching and adding beauty to your life.
“Hmmm,” my
friend mused, “can you give me another example? I’m
not sure I get the synchronistic event part.” Sure, I have
a great example for you.
Once
I had an old song drifting around in and out of my thoughts over a
period of more than a week. It was so pervasive that it was almost distracting. I
found myself humming the Big Band sound from the 40’s “In
The Mood,” by Glenn Miller while in the shower, working, driving,
etc. It began to be annoying, because I could see no earthly connection
of this song to my life. I failed to see the significance and decided
prematurely that there probably wasn’t any. Not all things
that are compelling need attention. So I tried to just enjoy
the memory of the song and kept myself mindfully on my daily tasks
at hand.
Later
that week a work acquaintance told me her father had died and she needed
to settle his estate. She was having an estate sale and she asked me to come
to her father’s house and look at his things to see if there was
anything of real value. She didn’t feel she had the objectivity
to assess them. Now this is not an area that I am experienced in and
I explained this carefully. I don’t even “garage sale
hop,” but I went with her. We went over the lunch hour all the
while humming “In The Mood,” to myself of course.
The
next day my cousin was in town from Maui, and I happily made the 40-minute
drive to visit her at my aunt’s house. “In The Mood” accompanied me
on the way. By then I was sure that this meant something, and asked myself
some questions to try to come to an understanding of it. Then as
I made the turn to my aunt’s house, I spotted a sign that said, “estate
sale” with an address located around the corner from my aunt’s. Hmmm,
another one of those sales! I felt an immediate urge to go to the sale
and told my cousin about it. She thought it would be interesting
too, so when we went out for Chinese food, we swung around the block
to check it out.
We
pulled up to the moderate looking house and once inside we found the
place filled with 40’s
and 50’s era furnishings, dishes, and clothing. A pleasant
looking woman showed us a lot of “nothing special” looking
collectibles. My cousin and I drifted around the small house that
seemed to be stuck in time. We shrugged as we looked at things,
but saw nothing that prompted us to spend. The pleasant looking
woman returned and we mentioned we were on route to get some Chinese
food for an impromptu family reunion. She said that we were in the wrong
place for Chinese and that the very best was at a place in Fremont a
couple of miles from where she lived. I laughed and said that
I lived in Fremont and I had just come from there. She told me where
she lived which was just around the corner from me.
“What a coincidence,” my
cousin remarked as we moved to the kitchen.
We
looked around the collection of kitchen items lying out on the table
as I explained the week’s
events. We tried to assess the meaning of the last few days in
relation to my life and myself. It is somewhat like dream analysis
to find connections and clues. Well, I found no connection. Unless
I’m somehow “stuck with a 40’s value system,” like
the house that was stuck in a time warp.
Then
we both looked up at the same time to the wall across from us. There
were plates with a traditional looking man and woman on each, one with
the name John,
the other with the name Rose painted on it. These were the
names of the deceased occupants of the house. My cousin Rosie turned
to me, urging me to keep looking.
“There are just
too many coincidences to stop now,” she said smiling.
I
assessed the area again and was drawn to a flat 2x15x20 inch box. I opened it and was surprised
to find it full of old 40’s era newspapers. Rosie and I looked
at each other, smiled, paid for the box and left. Back at the house we
ate Chinese food and contemplated our find. We were not sure what it
all meant. I opened my fortune cookie and read my fortune: You
will meet a savant that will energize you. Well as I said,
I have come to know that sometimes what doesn’t at first make sense
becomes clear in time. But, I don’t know anyone like the
guy in the movie Rain Man…
The next morning I inspected the
fragile papers scanning headlines like “WAR: Japs Bomb Hawaii,” and “JAPS
SURRENDER.” Some of the papers were printed as early as 1929,
but most were printed through the years around World War II. I
saw pictures of Marines raising our flag on Iwo Jima, and MacArther walking
purposely with other prominent military officers. I saw nothing
that meant anything to me. I began to amuse myself with ads for
better women’s dresses priced at $16.99, and prime rib at $.23
a pound. Then there was a “Tell it to Hazel” article, the
equivalent of Ann Landers that encouraged a young mother and housewife
who felt stifled by the ordinary life she led. She felt she had
artistic talents, which were unexpressed. Hazel told the young woman
that her ordinary life was important, and invited other young women to
write their support. In a nutshell Hazel told her that her family's
needs were more important than her own! I felt for the young woman, and
I thought about my own artistic and spiritual needs that seemed to get
lost in my daily work. I tried hard to keep these parts of me alive,
though they seemed to be swallowed up by the bureaucracy in which I worked.
I longed for the opportunity to do artistic and spiritual things unencumbered
by a ritualistic worklife. Yes, that was all well and good, but I already
knew that…there must be more.
I kept looking. Yet another article caught
my attention, “Savant Advises Balance in Interpersonal Skills.” OK,
here’s something. Didn’t my fortune cookie say
I would meet a savant that would energize me? I was still stuck on the
notion that I didn’t know anyone with the gifts of the Rain
Man. I
read the article carefully and realized in that era they used the word
in place of professor or in this case psychiatrist. Today, we
don’t typically call professors savants, but I recognized the use
of the word as meaning higher knowledge.
This psychiatrist was explaining
that to live a life of balance one needed to express what you know
to be true authentically but in ways that people can accept, in a way
that was gentle. In
my zeal to be authentic, had I become too direct in a society that
communicates in very indirect ways?
Were my traditional values keeping
me from doing the work I loved? Should I be more indirect in communicating with
others, or communicate with more finesse? Probably both of these
insights are true to some degree for me. I thought about what I
would do with the new knowledge. How interesting I thought. Didn’t
I sign up for a workshop 3 months ago on communication? Yes, I
was scheduled for a workshop on the “The Essentials of Communication:
Communicating with Finesse.”
“So you went to the workshop and learned to
be how to be charming?” he said, “and then what?”
Sitting there in the back of the
room were four other employees from my place of work. I knew them slightly and
even worked with one on occasion. They asked me to lunch on both days
of the workshop, and on the second day before lunch the workshop activity
was on how we would express our passion for work in a sentence. I
wrote : my work passion is to get people to work together for better
results. I do group process training and team building. In
the car on the way to the restaurant I explained how I felt about art
and spirituality. I wondered aloud how I might combine work, art, and
spirit. As we moved to the table the conversation drifted to
meaningful coincidence, and several mentioned reading the Celestine Prophesy.
We talked about the article that I was writing and a possible workshop
on synchronicity and the power of the flow of universal energy that
I was thinking about doing.
My coworkers encouraged me to proceed
with both, as they shared their own situations that had meaning for
them. I told them that I was struck by the fact that we had connected
as a group, and that we had little contact with each other on a day-to-day
basis. But we communicated today with a similar interest in a subject
that was not a typical area that people discussed on first meetings. I
was sure in that moment that I was not there to learn about communication
technique, but something else. I was there to be reinforced and supported
towards my passion, and wherever that leads, I would follow.
“Well those are interesting insights,” my
friend said, “but it seems like a lot of work.”
Sometimes I said, but not all synchronistic events
are so labor intensive. Some are brief thoughts: should I turn right
or left at the next corner? Making that turn could have you bump in to
a long lost friend! Ever do that?
Nontraditional ways of problem
solving can add a new dimension to our problem solving and decision
making style. Acknowledging
meaningful coincidences and following them through is simply another
way to solve problems. It combines right and left brain activities.
Analysis alone may bring you the best decision, but at what expense? Use
of the right side of you brain provides a whole brain, systems approach
to thinking and builds spiritual awareness in the process. It uses
your intuition to its best advantage, creating a circular way of looking
at situations. This allows us to look at each situation from every
angle, while honoring who we are and how we feel about things.
In this way we bring a sense of
who we are to each decision and turn of event in our life as part of
our personal journey. On this journey, we all have untapped skills
that we have never given voice to and doing so expands our awareness
of the joy of living and gives full expression to the journey. Adding
this expression and dimension to living allows each of us to truly
feel, see, hear, touch and be touched, blessedly throughout the day.
Consequently, to use all the resources that we are given is to live
fully and mindfully through the present of our existence.
Shirley
Ryan was led to create the book Searching for
the Waters of Antiquity a meditation tool, and a unique
integration of her extensive career experience and her skills
of painting and meditation. She is also the founder and president
of Working Together, a business specializing in managing life’s
changes in Mind, Body & Spirit through the coaching process. She
has worked as a professional life coach since 1994.
