The Power of Coincidence (15 page)

The culmination of synchronicity is its aptitude for revealing our destiny, which can mean simply our life story or can have the grander scope we are shooting for in this book. Then destiny can be the evolutionary design of the whole universe as it fulfills itself in the daily display of each of our unique human lives. “Life is a struggle to succeed in being in fact what we are in design. . . . Our will is free to realize or not to realize the vital design we are but which we cannot change or abbreviate,” wrote the philosopher José Ortega y Gasset.

What we refuse to bring into consciousness comes back to us as fate. It hits us from without when we refuse to heed its summons from within. This is why it makes spiritual sense for us to forge a lasting agreement with the universe, which can only be an unconditional Yes to what is. Attention to synchronicity helps us consciously join the unfolding of what is. Ortega y Gasset’s word “design” reminds us of the element of artistry in the unfolding.

As we saw above, there is a lifelong synchronicity in the link between our innate talents or gifts and our life work. Our talents bring us bliss when we follow them up with practice. When bliss and talent come together, we know what our vocation is and we find work that pays our salary. In addition, in our career we meet other people with inclinations and fascinations like our own and from among them come lifelong colleagues, friends, or partners. It all works together in a synchronous way so that who we always were makes who we are and will be one joyous and successful continuity. The synchronicity is complete when we feel grateful for the grace by which it all worked out and we feel a rise in spiritual consciousness.

We gain a sense of fulfillment especially when we notice that our work is making a contribution to our family and to humanity in some way. This is how our inborn interests lead us to our destiny. “My work is that of a collective being and it bears Goethe’s name,” Goethe wrote. Our work on ourselves makes us healthy enough to transcend our immediate gratifications long enough to make our contribution to the world. This is why compassion is always an essential element of spirituality. “Individuation does not shut out the world but gathers it to oneself,” says Jung.

There is synchronicity in the fact that this Class of 2007—every person on earth today—comprises members who, taken together, have everything the world needs for it to evolve fully now. Some of our classmates are models and heroes and some are rogues and rascals. Some are getting
As
in their work and some are failing. Some love their alma mater and others are attempting to destroy her. As a member of this class, I have a unique contribution that no one else can make but me. I am an indispensable participant in the vast unfolding and protecting of my world. Among those alive this year, there is a precise and ample combination of ingredients and strengths for the nourishment of today’s world. It will stand up to those on the dark side. How can I doubt that I have a part to play in this arc of wholeness that moves in such perfect timing toward the eternal commencement? The other people in my life and on the planet now have come to receive my gifts. They are also assisting forces in my self-discovery. Our personal fulfillment requires a wider resource than just ourselves or our family. This alignment of personal and universal purposes is a beautiful example of how synchronicity and destiny go hand in hand. The mountainous desires in our hearts are the desire of the everlasting hills of earth.

Thus it is a synchronous fact that here and now the world always has just the human resources that it needs to further its evolution as is fitting for this epoch. Nature participates in the same synchronicity by its drifts of growth and change in each era, both in seasons and in species. Nature mounts an ice age and a temperate age in accord with the overall requirements of evolution. I am here at the right time—and just in time—for me to make my contribution, and nature is supporting me by presenting just the conditions that promote this enterprise. And so are all the people in my life, both now and in the past.

Jonah is the biblical archetype of refusing one’s destiny. Since he was needed as a prophet, his refusal of the call to become one was disregarded by Yahweh. He was swallowed by a whale and thereby forced to swallow his pride. Jung wisely wrote, “We find our destiny on the path we take to avoid it.”

There are also times in the course of life when our refusals are allowed to stand and then “a great prince in prison lies,” as the poet John Donne says. The greatest of human tragedies is to be distracted from our destiny and lose our power to activate our potential because of years of stuckness, laziness, addictions, or relationships that are abusive, unworkable, or depleting and imprisoning. A great potential in us can thereby fade away, and no one does anything to halt the dissolution. The world will stand by as we throw away our fortune. We will stand by as we throw ourselves away. There is no guarantee that a whale will intervene for us, as it did for Jonah, or a tornado, as it did for Dorothy. The challenge is to find our destiny in exactly what we are refusing to engage in. This is no easy task. It is hard to stop and look while we are running the other way.
Is my real destiny scribbled on parchment, twirled in a bottle and hurled into the sea, to be stumbled upon only long after I am gone?

Some of our difficulty in finding out who we are and what we are called to be stems from toxic injunctions and imperatives that we introjected. We heard or imbibed perspectives from our parents and others that interrupted our self-emergence. These may have taken the form of verbal messages that negated our power, beliefs that diminished or inhibited us, such as images of what a man/woman
should
be. These three forms of childhood detritus may now litter our psyche so that we cannot walk freely toward our personal destiny. They are generalized myths that do not fit our present reality. They are to be examined and scuttled if they do not serve us, if they disable us, or if they disempower us. Only those messages, beliefs, and images that animate our potential and release it are to be cherished and maintained. Obedience to self-defeating messages, beliefs, and images denies us the chance to be who we are. In such obedience we cannot love ourselves, part of the achievement of which is living out our own destiny. “Whom do I obey?”

A belief system that has despair as its bottom line may be organizing our life experiences and choices. “I am fated to lose,” “Nothing I do will ever work out,” “I’ll never be good enough.” These selfnegations do not arise from our true self but are an alien cargo that may have been smuggled into our psyches in early life. Before we could discriminate, our parents’ worst fears and beliefs may have become such cargo in our minds. To maintain the crucially needed tie with our parents, we may have had to join them in their despair about us/themselves. This happened at the dear price of our own self-authenticated experience of the world. Now optimistic glimmers, encouraging signs, hopeful prospects, and even kind words or compliments fall flat. They land in the quicksand of automatic disbelief and disavowal.

Despair is the illusion that there is an inexorable fate that awaits our condition and our enterprises. Synchronicity tells us there is no such thing as an inexorable fate. Choices continue to arise and paths continue to appear even until the eleventh hour of a lifetime. Even if the path is to grieve an ending, the next step is to go on. Even if it is our ending, are we not still able to salute the sunset with dignity, equanimity, and deeply contented serenity?

In the film
Mr. Holland’s Opus,
the main character was a competent instructor of music who helped many young people achieve their potential. Mr. Holland was a born teacher, but he sometimes felt despair because he really wanted to direct a symphony orchestra. Some people may find great success and seem to hit the target of their destiny in a career and all the while they wish it were otherwise. There are no guarantees in the enigmatic world of the Self. We find ourselves not in charge of how it will be for us or in charge of how it has been. We realize that our wishes or even our choices or successes may give us no information about our real destiny. It is a mystery of synchronicity that life/destiny works just right for some and not for others. Synchronicity has a power beyond the ego’s will, another way of saying that it is a grace with a will of its own.

The question arises: How am I responsible if things happen to me beyond my control or my will? There is a seemingly contradictory answer to this in the
Iliad:
Agamemnon incites the wrath of Achilles by taking his slave woman from him. Agamemnon later says to Achilles, “Since destiny did this to me, I will give compensation.” “What happened was incited by Zeus,” adds Achilles. But notice that even though both of them make fate/god responsible for what happened, the liability for amends is nonetheless Agamemnon’s. We may not produce the “what is,” but we are accountable for how we handle it.

There is no conflict in an enlightened person between what happens and human choice, since there is always a coincidence, an aligning of her personal will and that of the universe. This is articulated in an unconditional Yes to what is. By that Yes, I am the embodiment of nature’s laws and harmonies. Shakespeare states this so profoundly in the speech we keep returning to from
The Merchant of Venice:
“Soft stillness and the night become the touches of sweet harmony. . . . Such harmony is in immortal souls.”

H
OW TO
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W
HAT
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1. Here are some suggestions that may be helpful in discovering and embracing your own reality and thereby moving toward the fulfillment of your destiny. Following these may help you know who you really are and then know how to act on that knowledge in healthy ways.

Tell those close to you what you feel within yourself and in reaction to them, no matter how embarrassing it may be.

If necessary, allow yourself to retreat from a distressing issue long enough to regroup your strengths. Then come back and face the music with a sense of personal power.

Pause to hold every feeling, cradling it, and allowing it to have its full career in you. Distractions and avoidances only conceal you from yourself. We learned early in life to overlook our authentic feelings so as not to “hurt the feelings” of others. This stop-and-hold method reverses that misguided self-sacrifice.

Embrace this triple-A program for handling fear:
a
dmit your fear,
a
llow yourself to feel it, and then
a
ct as if it were not able to stop or drive you.

Some fears are obstacles to what you really want. Other fears are signals that you are attempting something that you do not want. For example, you may fear commitment to a partner. If that fear is a hurdle to jump in your own evolution, apply the program above to
fulfill
your authentic needs and wishes. If that fear is a warning to you that you are not cut out for a committed relationship but only for lighter ones, then take the fear as
information
about your authentic needs and wishes. How can you tell the difference? Simply let the record speak. How have you mostly operated in your relationships? What has mostly worked? Fear thrives on isolation, trappedness, and powerlessness. Admitting fear reduces ego and ends isolation since the more deeply personal a feeling is, the more definitely will you trust that it is widely felt by fellow pilgrims.

2. There is a connection between self-knowledge and self-esteem. Consider these three pegs of self-esteem and how they fit for you.

First: Act in the most loving way you can toward everyone.

Second: Build a sense of accomplishment based on your doing all you can with your talents and potential. This will usually require discipline and patience as you work on gaining the credentials to do the work that can fulfill you.

Third: Grant yourself the freedom to act and live in accord with your deepest wishes and needs. This is the secret of finding out who you really are, free of injunctions and inhibitions from childhood. Here are some ways of knowing what your wishes and needs really are:

•   Free yourself from inhibition and clinging and see what results.

•   Tell the truth about yourself. Self-disclosure leads to self-knowing.

•   Ask often for what you already know you want and gradually you will ask yourself—and others—for the deeper things.

•   Set boundaries in your relationships and you will know a great deal about yourself and your real needs. In a truly healthy relationship, you do not have to submerge, deny, or kill off any of your deepest needs and wishes.

•   Ask before each venture, Does this make me happy and give me a sense of fulfillment? Notice how many
yeses
follow or how many
no
s.