Synchronicity

For about three weeks now, I’ve had the desire to do a post on “synchronicity.” I mulled it over and have been trying to figure out exactly what it is I want to say on the subject. For inspiration, I turned to one of my favorite – and by far, the most colorful – books I own, Make Your Creative Dreams Real by SARK. I read the book years ago and remembered a passage on synchronicity. So last night I got out the book and flipped it open to a random page to begin my hunt. But lo behold, there, on the first page I opened to, was the exact passage I was looking for. Of course, I had to laugh at the irony because this is a great illustration of what “synchronicity” is…a meaningful coincidence.

I think of synchronicity as the sister of the Law of Attraction. It’s the universe putting people, tools and information in your path at just the right time to aid you in following your dreams. It’s the idea that when the student is ready, the teacher will come.

SARK describes the concept of synchronicity through a story about the building of the Hotel del Coronado in San Diego: In the late 1800s, two men had the creative dream of building a fabulous hotel. They had no money or experience, but they had their creative vision. They drew pictures of their hotel, and began acting as if they knew what they were doing. They floated redwood logs down from San Francisco, which they had bartered for, and hired teams of workers, whom they paid with promises of partial ownership. They attracted the attention of Thomas Edison, who put lights in the hotel (the first electricity in a commercial building) and L. Frank Baum (author of The Wizard of Oz), who designed much of the architecture. In three months their creative dreams [and synchronicity] had built this hotel.

Katherine Ramsland, author of Bliss, defines synchronicity as “a principle that links events in a way that defies normal cause and effect. Instead, it fuels momentum. It connects the outer world with your inner psychic events. If you need to know something, the person with the right information will come along.”

Coincidentally, I found a signed copy of Ramsland’s book in one of those “leave a book, take a book” exchanges at a time when I was seriously questioning the direction of my life. I never got over the feeling that her book found me at a time when I really needed it.

In her book, Ramsland shares a story about Abraham Lincoln and synchronicity: A man approached [Lincoln] with a barrel of full of books, looking for money. Wanting to help, Lincoln gave him one dollar for the lot. Among the contents of the barrel was a set of law books that Lincoln ended up reading. He went on to become a lawyer, and you know the rest of the story.

Reading SARK and Ramsland’s stories about synchronicity inspired me to look at my own life and there’s one example that jumps immediately to mind. It was the summer before my senior year of college and, at the time, the big question in my life was: what should I do after I graduate? That summer, my family took a vacation to Australia. As we explored Sydney and hiked the Blue Mountains, I wrestled with this question. I was bound for graduation in nine months and I was engaged to be married just three months after that. Everything was falling into place and the future seemed promising. My only dilemma was that I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. Correction: I knew what I wanted to do, but I was too afraid to listen to that insistent little voice inside of me. My heart begged me to follow my creative inclinations but without so much as a Fine Arts minor (I went to business school), that seemed less and less realistic. On the other hand, the pharmaceutical industry seemed a good match for my business degree and had all the makings of a “real” job: a salary, health benefits and a healthy 401k match.

I puzzled over it the entire time we were in Australia: follow the money or follow my heart? My dad made a compelling case for the pharmaceutical industry, but when we arrived in the Outback we met a fellow traveler named Andra. Irony of ironies, Andra was an artist. Naturally, she defended the case for following my heart. In the last few days of our trip, I wandered in to a little bookstore and stumbled upon a book entitled, The Book of Answers. It was like the magic eight ball of books – it had to be 700 pages thick and it was filled with all kinds of zany answers to whatever question you wanted to ask. Ok, I thought. Why not? And so I placed my right hand on its cover and asked the question that had been simmering in my mind the entire trip: should I follow my heart and pursue a creative path? I took a deep breath, opened to a random page and of all the crazy answers I could’ve found there, the only world that was staring back at me was…YES.

The key things I’ve learned about synchronicity are that 1) you have to be able to recognize it and 2) you must be prepared to act on it. I wish I could tell you that I came home from Australia, followed my creative dreams and lived happily ever after. But, unfortunately, at the tender age of twenty I wasn’t ready to act on it…or I was, but I was too scared. Now, several years later, I’m working to build a life that allows me to pursue those creative dreams, but I can’t help but wonder, what if I had acted on the overwhelming synchronicity I experienced back then?

Have you ever experienced synchronicity in your life? If so, please share!