Synchronicity, Ingrid Bergman and Me
“Coincidence is God’s way of remaining anonymous.”
~ Albert Einstein
“Synchronicity is God’s way of remaining anonymous.”
~ me
We live in a world where we are constantly seduced by the illusion that we are separate from Existence and each other, instead of the deeper reality that in fact we are One.
We find ourselves bombarded by this ‘consensus reality’ of separation over and over, and in spite of all our best spiritual and intellectual understanding that “we are one,” so few of us truly live from that higher reality.
Often when I find myself buying into this feeling that we are separate, it is a healthy dose of synchronicity that brings me back from forgetting my Oneness. When those gifts of synchronicity occur in my life, I feel my heart melt and my nervous system relax and I am drawn back into remembrance of our oneness and how Existence conspires to hold me.
My husband Hugh and I have been students of synchronicity for years and always share with one another little episodes of being blessed by one of those love taps from Existence. The other day he came home and told me about one. He was was working on a dock project and went to his truck to get his sunscreen. He looked and looked and the sunscreen was nowhere to be found.
Since he was working in the neighborhood he popped home to look in his golf bag to see if he had any there. Nothing! So he drove back to the job site got out of his truck, and when he looked down, there on the street was a full bottle of sunscreen. It wasn’t his, and wasn’t the brand he uses. Synchronicity. Existence placed it there asking him, “is this what you’re looking for Hugh?”
Later that day, I drove to my office and as sometimes happens when you drive on a stretch of road with which you are familiar, I started day-dreaming and drove passed my exit!
Feeling foolish I got off at the next exit and headed to my office. Getting out of the car I notice an attractive woman lingering outside the building, and when I went inside she followed me upstairs, but since I figured she was there to see another therapist, I went into my office.
A few minutes later I looked and she was outside my office kind of peeking in. We exchanged greetings and she said, “I really like your office.” I love my office, so it’s always nice to get a compliment like that. She told me she was here to see the office next door as that gal was renting her Saturday’s out. Without giving any thought, I said: ”Well if it doesn’t work out, I have a day to rent, here’s my card, let me know if you are interested.” She lit up.
Now here’s the back story. After my previous tenant left a few months ago I knew I wanted another one, but I found myself postponing placing an ad. Every time Hugh would remind me, I’d say, “Yeah, thanks for the reminder,” but I would never do anything about it. But recently I was really feeling the pull to actively put the word out,. Did I run an ad? No!
I just kept saying to myself, “I want a new tenant to show up, someone I felt good about, who’s responsible, will respect the space and pay the rent on time.
I found myself running that dialog in my head, and then, because my arrival was delayed by a few minutes, I met my new perfect tenant!
Our mind of course will insist on offering a rational explanation for such occurrences because the mind by it’s very nature dismisses anything that is even remotely miraculous or affirms Oneness.
Another synchronistic moment happened last year while watching the Queen’s Jubilee on TV. The streets were packed with people, and I started wondering, ”I wonder if Leo is in the crowd?” Leo is one of my long-distance clients living in London with whom I work over the phone or on Skype. I hadn’t been in touch with him for 6 months and as I watched the TV I started wondering how Leo was doing; even imagining how it would be funny to see his face in the crowd. I looked forward to working with him again. And just as I had that thought the phone rang. It was Leo, asking if there was anyway I could fit him in for a phone session. I love it when I think of someone and 20 minutes later I get a phone call or email from them.
Noticing and acknowledging synchronistic events seemed to accelerate their popping up in my life. This motivated me to study the art of synchronicity.
To understand something, it helps to first understand what it is not. Synchronicity is not manifesting. Manifesting has always been about treating things that you want as though they are objects outside of yourself that must be bent to your will.
When I was a child, the first example of a great manifester I remember was played by Ingrid Bergman in the movie, The Bells of St. Mary. It was on every Christmas like clockwork. Her ability to bend the rich guy, Mr. Bogardus to her will, so that he gave up his new office building and donate it to the parish, was magic to me. I wanted to be able to do that!
Like many of you I’ve also been an experimenter of manifesting over the years, but when I had varying degrees of success with it, and certainly not the kind of results achieved by Ingrid Bergman, I began to understand the flaw with manifesting.
As long as you perceive things that you want as if they are objects that need to be bent to your will, you are in fact acting from a very young and immature place. I began to connect to a deep psychological insight. The ‘terrible two’s’ are called that because it’s the time we begin to develop our 3rd chakras, our will. And at that age, one way we get to demonstrate our power and will in the world is by successfully bending objects outside ourselves – namely our parents.
If you were successful at that, you might believe from that egocentric world that that’s all you have to do, but eventually our parents respond from their 3rd chakra and our attempt at manipulating them is met with an adult-sized, ‘NO.’
As I am fond of saying, especially when I am explaining The Releasing Process to clients, 90% of our behavior is run by our sub-conscious and our sub-conscious always gravitates to what’s known, what’s familiar, what’s home, and if “No” for you is home, you will continue to manifest no.
The other important part of the equation is that before we get to the crystallizing of the will power in the ‘terrible two’s’, we have the experience of being at one with everything around us. There is no separation between us and our parents, between us and the family dog, or between us and a raindrop. We are in a state of wonder – like a little Buddha. And then of course comes the terrible shock of separation and you lose touch with the oneness and harmony. This can be an uncomfortable place from a spiritual perspective as well. It’s where we sometimes get stuck in separation loneliness, and feel we have to manipulate and control and manifest through our will, using the force of ego to drive us forward.
As I became more familiar with Synchronicity, I saw that it is about remembering and cultivating our sense of wonder and oneness with Existence. The more we are open to this reality, the less we need to bend things outside of ourselves to our will. As you notice you are one with everything around you, there is nothing outside of you that needs to be bent to your will. It gave me a whole new appreciation of the famous line: “Luke, become one with the Force”
This in turn pointed towards intention and how intention is the doorway to synchronistic events.
Intention is connected to your heart, your soul, your destiny, as opposed to a goal which is an object of one’s ambition or effort. When we bring our intentions and desires into the equation, magic can happen. Your intention is fueled by the emotional power and impact you stand in and that’s what moves mountains and refines your frequency to be in harmony with ‘the Force’, which in turn aligns you with Synchronistic events. When our emotions, our passions, are heightened and our intentions are focused, stuff happens.
Sometimes synchronicity can be seen in simple and mundane situations, such as Hugh’s sunblock experience. However it can also be life-altering. A friend of ours with Hepatitis C had been struggling with the disease her entire adult life. Everywhere she turned, she was discouraged but said that she kept holding the intention of being free of it’s grip one day, and refused to give up. She was walking through a UCSF medical building when a brochure she stepped on literally stuck to her foot. She was about to throw it away when she saw the words, “Free pilot study at Stanford for Hepatitis. To make a long story short, she was able to enroll in the program that used a new experimental cocktail of drugs and 6 months later she is now totally free of Hepatitis.
And here’s an example from the world of relationship.
A friend stopped by a few days ago, and without even knowing the topic I was working on for my blog she blurted out an example of synchronicity that happened to her. She’d been holding the intention and desire to meet a man. When she walked into Trader Joe’s the day before, she noticed a good looking man and found herself bumping into him on different aisles throughout the store. Finally when she went to check out he pulled into her line. After having trouble holding one of her bags, he offered to help her out to her car. They exchanged numbers and made a date – and his name is JOE!
So what makes things ripe for synchronicity in our life?
Anything in your environment can hint at Synchronicity, also as with the earlier example, having your heart open and engaged and holding a clear intention with focus and determination.
Synchronicity can serve to attune your awareness, reminding you that beneath the routine surface of daily life there’s an underlying current of beauty harmony and unity that may not be immediately obvious, in other words, ambiguity kills it. I also found that the more you honor the process, the more it unfolds.
So I want to encourage you to try an experiment in synchronicity
Start out small the 1st week. As this should be a light-hearted experience, try having an intention that you will notice how often you are synchronized with an image, sound or word. It could be a certain flower, a bird or a song or some other fun, neutral image. I remember when I was younger and my friends started to get pregnant. They would say to me I never noticed any pregnant women in my neighborhood, now everywhere I go I see pregnant women. I remember when Hugh and I were dating, whenever I would think of him a certain song would magically come on the radio. Or you get a certain breed of dog and all of a sudden you see them everywhere, that kind of thing.
So start off with something simple and fun that doesn’t hold any negative charge for you.
The second week start asking for synchronistic events related to something you want to have happen in your life. Remember my tenant story? I kept holding the intention of finding a new tenant without going through the traditional means and she just showed up.
People find remembering dreams is easier when they keep a dream journal beside their bed, so my suggestion is to keep a synchronicity journal. Write down every synchronistic event and how you were feeling at the time. I tell you, the more you note them the more they will show up. They build on each other.
The third week, if you feel up to the challenge, in your journal, state a question. Keep it simple and specific. Instead of asking “Where is this relationship going?” ask “What is the true nature of this relationship?” Or, instead of asking if you’ll get the new job, ask if it’s the right job for you. Do you see the difference in quality between these two ways of asking questions? One is more a first chakra survival question, while the other is more a 7th chakra destiny question. Think about your question periodically, and as the days unfold you will have an answer to your question.
In closing I want to remind you, we can’t see miracles with our left brain. Our left brain, which is linear, and logical is a problem solving machine. It also likes to predict things not from intuition, but purely from what it has experienced previously from the past. Synchronicity upsets the apple cart for the left brain. That is it’s beauty. The more you can open to it, it can change your brain chemistry from being a problem predictor to a miracle recognizer.
Enjoy the ride!
If you find that you are having some difficulty with ways that separation blocks you from experiencing synchronistic events, The Releasing Process is a powerful tool to help you let go of whatever stops you from being “one with the Force”.