The Power of Coincidence (21 page)

We have an inner inclination—even an urgency—to be open to what is and to attune to reality as it is. The inhibiting mind wants to dress up reality in accord with its own fears and desires. These are attempts to protect our opening self from feelings, especially hurt and disappointment. Mindfulness means simply noticing our feelings and paying attention to them rather than seeking a refuge in serenity or disregard. Mindfulness meditation is visiting the mind as a witness, not escaping it as a prisoner. It is not dissociation from our feelings but disidentifying with their possessive power over us. We do this, paradoxically, by experiencing them and then stepping into what comes next. We never have to doubt that we know how to open to this process. We do not have to try to open; we are always and already there. The work is to catch ourselves at closing and gently reopen. Write a poem or prayer about this potential and actual power in yourself.

We can practice recontextualizing and thereby transforming the challenging life conditions that we are presented with. For example, when tragedy strikes in my life, I am tempted to ask, “What did I do to deserve this?” This is a normal guilt reaction with roots in childhood superstition. An adult—and more highly evolved—spiritual alternative is now presented to me:
“This is not about what I did. This is about what I am called to be.”
This way of configuring crisis is in keeping with the relationship between synchronicity and destiny. Everything that happens is about how I am called to be all that I can be, not about how bad I was or how victimized I am. How have the tragedies and crises in my life opened the door to new vistas, helped me find my own truth, led me to show more love, and made me more compassionate toward and understanding of others? When I focus on these questions, I make what has happened workable in the ongoing unfolding of my heroic story.

I now affirm that I can tolerate my emotional reactions without being overwhelmed by them. I sometimes feel myself collapsing under the weight of my concerns or problems. I can decide to hold my disintegration rather than try to escape from it or fix it. I can hold my terrifying feelings as I hold a child with a terrifying nightmare. Simply by holding and cradling him, I help him regain his reason and be soothed. I can hold myself that way, and thereby reconstitute myself. I can hold my own disintegration till it becomes integrated. The belief that restitution will follow disruption leads to a sense of trust in the universe and in the cohesive strength within me. Feelings then become signs of lively tides, not of tidal waves. I am ready to dive.

I say to myself (and/or my partner):

You can be broken down, and I will hold and love you that way.

You can fall apart, and I will hold and love you that way.

You can have nothing to offer for now, and I will hold and love you that way.

You can be at your lowest ebb, and I will hold and love you that way.

You can be depressed, contorted, wounded, or distraught, and I will hold and love you that way.

I will do this with no insistence that you be fixed. I can accommodate a you that breaks down and is not available for my needs for the time being.

In quantum physics, the “principle of indeterminacy” refers to the fact that chance and unpredictability meet at the very heart of matter. Evolution brings order to this chaos, but the chaos remains nonetheless. Our personal work is to contain just such opposites within ourselves. This means allowing crises to unfold and doing all we can to evoke harmony from them. This is welcoming what enters our world and waving good-bye to what wants to go. Perfect joy happens when we no longer oppose what is.

Answer these questions in your journal: What is chaotic in my life? How can I allow the chaos? How can I bring harmony and order to it? What is ready to be said good-bye to? What is ready to be welcomed? What am I holding out against? What wants to happen? What are the conditions of my existence now? How am I facing them? What is love’s best chance in any of this?

Pip loved life and all life’s peaceable securities, so that the panic-striking business in which he had somehow unaccountably become entrapped, had most sadly burned his brightness; though, as ere long would be seen, what was thus temporarily subdued in him, in the end was destined to be luridly illumined by strange wild fires, that fictitiously showed him off to ten times the natural lustre with which in his native Tolland County in Connecticut, he had once enlivened many a fiddler’s frolic on the green; and at melodious even-tide, with his gay ha-ha! had turned the round horizon into one star-belled tambourine.

—H
ERMAN
M
ELVILLE,
Moby Dick

G
UIDES
W
HO
C
OME TO
W
AVE
U
S
O
N

Although I showed you the path to liberation, you must walk it alone.

—G
AUTAMA
B
UDDHA

The hero acknowledges that his own capacities and efforts are inadequate to the full requirements of his task. He consults the archetype of wisdom in the form of a trusted advisor. This emerges from the hero’s spiritual yearning to hear a numinous voice, to make contact with the infinite, to ask for the grace that takes him beyond the limitations of his own knowledge and powers. It is not about seeking answers to mundane questions. It is an acknowledgment that he will always have to look beyond himself to find himself.

Assisting forces continually appear in history and in our quotidian life. They take many forms: people, writings, animals, etc. Scriptures like the Vedas, the Bible, the Koran, etc., are examples of guides. They are limitless wisdom submitting to the limits of time and space, a kind of incarnation. The teachings mirror the wisdom of the inner Self, which is why they are recognizable as wise. Since this is so, the teachings hail to us from beginnings of humanity. A teacher or guru is legitimate as a channel because he is in a line of succession to that beginning. For a true teacher, the teachings are the teacher.

A person who is a true guide has characteristics like these:

•   He asks for respectful attention, not blind obedience.

•   He is an escort to our unique destiny and does not require that we follow his. To honor such a guide evokes his power to show us the path, protect us, and even give us the grace of an impetus from which there is no turning back.

•   A valid guide always leads us back to ourselves and the riches within us. He does not want to be clung to as a source, but only be attended to as a temporary channel. He empowers us to find the power in ourselves. Buddha uses the analogy of the raft for his teachings. A raft is provisional; it works to get us across the river but then it is meant to be left behind so that we can walk unencumbered through our own jungle. The best teachings/teacher are those we can leave safely at the threshold of what comes next for us on our journey. The raft/teachings bring us to where the journey begins, and then it is our task to enlist new forces from within.

•   A guide may also be one who reveals—or challenges—the meaning of the flora and fauna of the path, cryptic messages from the unconscious.

•   A true guide never looks for ego-enhancement or asserts his ego over ours. He leads us beyond our own egos because he has already transcended it in himself. He never takes advantage of us physically, emotionally, sexually, financially, or in any other way.

•   Our freedom to choose is a indispensable ingredient for our work of opening ourselves to wholeness. A true guide cherishes and is immensely sensitive to that freedom. He offers external supports only as a means of activating our inner resources, not as replacements of them. He wants us to have our own life, not be dependent on him.

In myth and story, the guide is often a stranger, often of another creed or nationality, for example, the dwarfs in Snow White. Another example is in the Hasidic story of the Czech rabbi who dreams of a treasure buried under a bridge. He does not find the treasure there, but a guard in Prague tells his own dream to the rabbi, mockingly saying he saw a treasure in a rabbi’s house under the hearth, which is where the rabbi finds it. All we need is here, but we have to go away sometimes to find that out. Note how the guard/guide ridicules the meaningfulness of dreams. Our guide, too, may point by laughing.

As we become friendlier toward bedrock reality, that reality itself appears more and more as the true guide, ever presenting opportunities for initiation. Unadorned reality gives us our best instruction on the path. Our ego’s pretensions to sovereignty collapse in the implacable face of this invincible governor. He seems to thwart us over and over—but only to fulfill us once and for all.

Alone, alone, all, all alone,

Alone on a wide wide sea!

And never a saint took pity on

My soul in agony. . . .

A thousand thousand slimy things

Lived on; and so did I. . . .

I looked to heaven, and tried to pray;

But or ever a prayer had gusht,

A wicked whisper came, and made

My heart as dry as dust. . . .

The moving Moon went up the sky,

And no where did abide.

Softly she was going up,

And a star or two beside. . . .

Beyond the shadow of the ship,

I watched the water-snakes. . . .

O happy living things! no tongue

Their beauty might declare

A spring of love gushed from my heart,

And I blessed them unaware

Sure my kind saint took pity on me,

And I blessed them unaware.

The selfsame moment I could pray

And from my neck so free

The Albatross fell off, and sank

Like lead into the sea.

Oh sleep! It is a gentle thing,

Beloved from pole to pole!

To Mary Queen the praise be given!

She sent the gentle sleep from Heaven,

That slid into my soul.

—S
AMUEL
T
AYLOR
C
OLERIDGE
,

“The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”

In Coleridge’s “Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” the mariner killed the albatross and brought bad luck upon himself and the crew. He became an afflicting force when every sailor on board is called upon to be an assisting force. The albatross was a bird of good omen that led ships through icy waters. The mariner unconsciously shot down a spiritual guide, a visionary grace that was meant to complement the sailors’ ego efforts on their voyage toward wholeness. This is symbolic of the fact that it is in us sometimes to deny and kill the powers that come to help or love or complete us. The mariner has found no way to make up for his misdeed. Death and loneliness reign. He is condemned to wear the lifeless albatross around his neck. He sits alone one night and simply gazes in rapt attention at the sea and its marvelous creatures. He is staying and attending, that is, being mindful. In this effortless moment, the mariner’s “kind saint” takes pity on him, and he blesses the creatures he feared before. In the poem, the words “a spring of love gushed,” “my kind saint,” “unaware,” are all ways of showing the effortless and hence egoless nature of the experience. It is pure grace. It happens to and through the mariner, and at that moment “the albatross fell off, and sank like lead into the sea.”