We have all experienced coincidences that seem extraordinary. Perhaps you were on your bike and collided with another rider in front of a small café you’d never noticed before. Later in the week, you decide to eat lunch there and end up meeting your future wife at the next table. Or maybe you pick up the Sunday classified ads for no apparent reason and notice a job opening that interests you. A couple of weeks later, you find out that your corporation is laying off everyone in your division. You suddenly remember the ad you saw, and decide to apply. You go for the interview and the new company offers you an even better position that hadn’t been advertised. The Swiss psychologist Jung coined a word to describe these moments of meaningful coincidence: synchronicity.
A synchronicity is a coming together of seemingly unconnected events. If you focus your attention, you may recognize that your life is shaped by those moments of meaningful coincidences. You may even be able to nurture and participate in those moments in a positive way. Together, this awareness and intention make up what I call your SynchroDestiny
In any aspect of life, attention and awareness foster growth. Whenever you focus your attention on a subject or phenomenon, the object of your attention will grow stronger. The more you become aware of meaningful coincidences in your life, the more often you will encounter them. Moreover, meaningful coincidences are well worth your attention. According to Vedic tradition, there are two characteristics that define a person on the path towards enlightenment: First, a sense that worries are disappearing. Things may go wrong, but they don’t bother you anymore. Second, in every area of your life, you become aware of a growing number of synchronicities.
Most people experience at least one coincidence in their lives during a single day. If you do not, don’t worry. Just cultivate an attitude of relaxed attention and intention. Nature is built on an infinite number of coincidences, and their presence in your life will soon become apparent.
The nature of SynchroDestiny
Whenever coincidences present themselves, you can dismiss them as meaningless or choose to recognize their amazing potential. In reality, life’s coincidences aren’t random occurrences in a chaotic universe – they are clues to fulfilling your deepest dreams and desires.
Each of us is connected to the field of infinite intelligence that endlessly creates all the physical forms in the world. When we awaken to the true nature of creation, we become aware of the eternal patterns and rhythms that govern life. We also realize that the universe is constantly sending us messages in the form of serendipitous events. In fact, we’re completely immersed in a web of coincidences that guides us to fulfill our dharma or purpose in life.
At this very instant, your destiny has led you to read these words. The fact that you chose this magazine and this article is a coincidence, offering potentially life-transforming opportunities. What circumstances led to this moment? Why are you perusing this article instead of one of countless others out there? What are you beginning to dream about creating in your life?
Awakening to the field of pure potentiality
The word SynchroDestiny expresses awareness of a developing pattern in the events of our lives. Of course, SynchroDestiny is also more than just awareness. Awareness is not an end in itself. SynchroDestiny also means understanding and participating in the process of meaningful coincidence. It means lending your attention and intention in order to bring the process to fruition. When this happens, the result is a phrase that I’ve used many times in my books and lectures: the spontaneous fulfillment of desire in the field of infinite possibilities. Here I want to discuss the different categories of responses that are open to you when you encounter a moment of meaningful coincidence. This will illuminate what I mean by the spontaneous fulfillment of desire in the field of infinite possibilities.
Suppose you suddenly encounter a synchronistic moment. Let’s say you’re at the public library, and for some reason you’re thinking about how you would like to have a bit more spending money. Right at that moment, you take a book from one of the shelves, and a hundred dollar bill falls out. This actually happened to a friend of mine.
What kinds of responses are open to you at a moment like that? At one extreme, you can always say it’s just a coincidence. It means nothing. It’s amusing, but insignificant. You have another hundred dollars to spend and that’s all.
On the other extreme, you might think: This is the most fantastic thing that’s ever happened! This is going to change everything! Or maybe you conclude: All I have to do is want something and it will appear! I’m going to the racetrack! I’m going to Las Vegas!
Of course, it doesn’t really work that way. SynchroDestiny is not about waving a magic wand to gratify ego-based wants. It is about something very different – the fulfillment of intentions that exist at much deeper levels, and of desires that are based in spirit rather than ego.
To take another example, imagine that you’re walking and see a beautiful rose growing along the road. It will look really great pinned onto your jacket or your blouse and you want it. Should you pull the rose off the bush? If you do, that’s just an ego-based action. It’s obviously not SynchroDestiny. What if you look at the rose and at that very moment it falls off the bush? If that kindles a kind of ego greed in you, then that’s not SynchroDestiny either. If you suddenly think you’ve become the master of the universe, that’s not what would be called a positive transformation.
Let’s say you’re admiring the rose, and you hold your hand under it, and then it just falls down into your hand. You think: Something wonderful and beautiful just happened. It seems to be a kind of flowing together of what is in me and what is in the rose bush. It was unforced, but there was an intention present in me – and I’d like to know more about how this happened and what it means. I’d like to bring more of these moments into my life. I’d like to see where they lead me. I’d like to learn what they have to teach me.
This is the frame of mind that fosters SynchroDestiny. This is setting the stage for the spontaneous fulfillment of desire. Most people would call this a spiritual point of view, but it’s actually closely related to the insights of modern physics.
SynchroDestiny and the conscious energy field
Although synchronicities may seem like events that just happen by themselves, SynchroDestiny is definitely something that must be learned. But this shouldn’t seem at all intimidating. After all, many things that we take for granted in our everyday lives are actually learned behaviors and responses. Even the nature of the physical world is something that we learn during early childhood. We are told that the whole truth about things is available to our senses. Thus, when you look at a table, what you see is exactly what’s there in space and time. It’s a piece of solid matter composed of smaller pieces of solid matter all the way down to the level of subatomic particles. This is a materialist interpretation of reality. It’s the way almost everyone lives day in and day out.
There is another philosophy, according to which, the world that we perceive through our senses is only a version of a deeper reality. The Greek philosophers Socrates and Plato, for example, taught that the world of our senses is a distortion, a mirage – like a shadow playing across a wall. Many historians believe that the Greeks were influenced by spiritual thinkers from India, where the idea of a deeper reality has a very long history. In Sanskrit the word maya refers to the illusion that we perceive as the true nature of things through our senses. But we’re really seeing only a selective view of reality. That’s because beyond the manifest physical universe, there is a field of energy, information, and intelligence that orchestrates and governs the material environment. This ground-state of creation is the conscious energy field.
The conscious energy field does not exist independently of our perception of it. In other words, reality is a two-way street. We are both transmitters and receivers of information. We are both the creation and the creators of the conscious energy field. We are participants in a consciousness-created universe. This doesn’t mean that there’s no external reality, or that the universe literally takes place inside our heads.
What it means is that the physical universe has no qualities or attributes in the absence of a conscious observer.
For example, we see color as an attribute of physical reality. When we look at an American flag, we see red, white, and blue. When we look at the grass, we see green. But colors are not really inherent to the reality. Instead, the phenomenon of color is a response made by the human nervous system to stimuli from the environment. We experience color as if it’s happening outside us, but we’re actually projecting it from inside us. Color does not exist in the absence of our observations. We create the phenomenon of color in the conscious energy field. And we can create other phenomena as well, including meaningful coincidences.
Tapping into the power of intention
The power of intention is a critical factor in all areas of life. Simply by intending to create synchronicity in your life, you can nurture that result. In Vedic teaching, there is an important concept relating to spiritual evolution and the role that cosmic intention plays in our lives. This is the concept of dharma, and understanding what dharma means, is essential to bringing synchronicity into your life. Dharma is a Sanskrit word that refers to the natural path a person is intended to follow through life. Your dharma is your destiny – but it is destiny without any hint of compulsion or force. On the contrary, your dharma is the path of least resistance. It’s the course that is most right and most nourishing – that brings you the greatest fulfillment and the most happiness.
Each of us has a gift, a special purpose that we alone can give to the world. This is our individual dharma. We are meant to discover and share this unique gift. When we do, we have achieved our true purpose in life. If you are in harmony with your dharma, you will always remain anchored in a sense of purpose and meaning.
Realizing that you’re connected to a network of coincidences is only the first stage in learning to access the field of pure potentiality. In the second stage, you begin to recognize coincidences while they’re happening rather than just in hindsight. From this state of higher consciousness, you’re better positioned to take advantage of the opportunities that present themselves.
Exercises:
To nurture coincidences and become aware of opportunities, you can begin by using a few simple techniques:
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- When a coincidence happens, don’t ignore it. Instead, ask yourself, “What is the message here? What is the significance of this event?” Don’t strain for the answer: Just ask the question and the answer will come easily. It may arrive as a sudden insight, a chance encounter, a relationship, or in another way. Whatever form the response takes, you’ll immediately know that you’re receiving an important clue.
- Focus on one of your five senses – sight, taste, hearing, touch, smell – for a minute or two each day. Notice as many different aspects of this sense as you can. When a powerful or unusual stimulus draws your attention, focus on it, for this is what you need to look at most closely. As you become more sensitive to your environment, you’ll become more sensitive to the messages coming your way.
- Keep a journal of your coincidences. Writing down the coincidences you experience, whether tiny or huge, encourages more of them to unfold. More coincidences provide more clues to guide your actions and more possibilities for fulfillment.
The more you notice and appreciate coincidences, the more likely they are to appear. And as your awareness expands, you start to understand the way life works . . . how the quantum domain orchestrates the flow of energy, information, and intelligence to manifest your intentions. You’ll also discover that you can consciously participate in the creation of your life and achieve the spontaneous fulfillment of all your dreams.
Characteristics of SynchroDestiny
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- SynchroDestiny events are orchestrated by an intention you have made consciously or unconsciously.
- They have the ability to change and transform your entire life.
- They generate joyful fulfillment because they are significant to you. Everything has a meaning.
- They leave clues to the unity of your inner and outer worlds.
- Many events occur simultaneously – a seeming conspiracy of improbabilities.
- They are orchestrated in a domain of awareness that is non-local.
- When you become alert to the significance of events, you move into higher states of awareness.
