Week Three of The Artist’s Way: Synchronicity

“Whatever you think you can do or believe you can do, begin it. Action has magic, grace, and power in it.”
-Goethe

Life’s been quite a whirlwind for me since Samhain and I’ve let my writing slip to the side as a consequence, but I’m back now and filled with a sense of wonder at how the creative process continues to unfold in my life.

There are times when I am in the flow, and other times when I am out of it. The distinguishing characteristic I’ve found that tells me whether I am in or out of the flow is synchronicity. When I am in the flow the synchronicities come at me like a deluge, and every day I wake up with an expectation that doors will open, opportunities will unfold, and good things will happen. I stray out of the flow and the synchronicities begin to dry up; life takes on a hollow pallor and the days pass in a thick, timeless fog.

The latter has been my reality for the past couple years, until I realized I had to do something, had to recover a sense of my own power if I ever hoped to find the flow again. In the last three months and especially the last few weeks synchronicity has returned to my life, and in that return I know I am on the right path.

To illustrate what I mean, here are just a few of the more significant synchronicities I’ve experienced since Samhain:

I dream I am an old woman who is impoverished and alone after a life spent futilely chasing my passions. The older me tells the younger me that it’s not too late to do something sensible and avoid ending up like her. Cue fuzzy dream montage in which I’m working in an office and accumulating possessions. The montage ends abruptly and I am standing next to a copy of myself observing a large city on fire surrounded by a blasted landscape, which my subconscious has gleefully populated with zombies (thanks, Walking Dead). My copy turns from the burning city, looks directly at me and says: “You could, but that’s not what is needed”. The next morning I turn on my computer to check social media and email, and this is the first thing I see:

I notice that although there is no definitive sign that my worst fears illustrated in the dream won’t come true anyway, I feel a loosening of that fear I hadn’t known I was holding onto. I see that I had been falling into a poverty mentality recently without conscious realization, allowing doubt and fear of not having enough to creep in and dictate my mood and actions.

Two days later I am thinking about the upcoming visit from my husband, who I hadn’t seen in four months. We would have a week together before he had to return to Chicago and wrap up his job there, before finally coming back to Portland for good about a month after that. I find myself thinking how it would be great if we could get away from the busyness of my house share for a couple of days to reconnect. I decide on two nights in Seattle, as there is a big event happening during that time I know we would both enjoy. I am met by all manner of obstructions trying to make these arrangements, the foremost of which is cost. All the hotels which are both nice and in our budget are booked, leaving me with a choice between a crappy hotel, a hotel way out of our budget, or imposing on friends. The whole situation starts to feel forced and out of the flow, so I let it go. Later that same day I am chatting with friends who tell me they have timeshare points they will lose if they don’t use by the end of the year, and would I like to get away for a couple of days with my husband? Within an hour I find myself booked into a luxury suite at no cost to me, with a hot tub on a private deck overlooking the ocean at a Washington shoreline resort.

Several days later we arrive at the resort having made the intention to relax, play, and generally have fun reconnecting. We’re wondering aloud what we’ll do for dinner as we walk into the suite, and there on the foyer table is a vase of pink roses, a mug that says “Believe” and contains a bouquet of candy of all things (probably should have been more specific with the ‘play’ part), and a gift certificate for $100 to a nearby restaurant. The restaurant turns out to be incredible and we have one of the loveliest dinners in memory. The next morning I’m slicing up a watermelon I had spontaneously brought with us thinking we might not want to go out for breakfast, and as I do this the center of the watermelon separates and falls away from the rest into a perfect heart-shaped medallion. This is repeated with every slice I make. On the way home I contemplate how inappropriate a party in Seattle would have been to the quality alone time we actually needed.

A week later my husband has gone back Chicago and I am searching online for a house to rent. We hoped to have something for December 1st, but suspected it may be as long as January 1st. I steel myself for the usual stressful process of finding the right place to live. I spend several fruitless days looking at the same boring suburban houses with no yard privacy, and then realize that I am expecting difficulty rather than ease, and I hadn’t placed on paper what we actually wanted. I take a breath and adjust my mindset. I make a list of what we want and place the paper on my altar with a lit candle and a home-finding talisman I had dedicated to Hekate and been carrying with me for months. I then bring up Craig’s List and immediately get an intuitive hit that I should increase my max price search parameter just a bit. The right house appears at the top of my search results. At only five miles from where my husband would be working the slight increase in price is offset by gas savings.

Three days later, the day before the showing, I get another intuitive hit that I should use the realtor’s online application to apply before I actually see the inside of the house in person. I know I will be out the $100 application fee if it turns out to be the wrong place but I feel certain if I don’t apply now I will lose it, and confident that this is the place I am supposed to rent. As expected, on viewing the house it is perfect. There are several other people at the showing, one of whom announces to the realtor that she wanted to apply on the spot. The realtor hands her the application but informs her that I already have an application in, and so have first pick, assuming the application is approved. Our move-in date is December first.

Some would say I am ascribing meaning where there is none, finding comfort and seeing signs in random occurrences and calling blind luck an intuitive hit. Objectively, they would be right. I am interpreting events based on my own subjective experience. I am choosing to believe – and my life is better for it. Should it matter that not everyone will see the significance that I do?

I think that disbelief in synchronicity is synonymous with disbelief in the gods, or a conscious and responsive universal force. I think that beyond all the eye-rolling and sometimes condescending statements as to why such things cannot be, is a subconscious fear that such things might actually be.  To believe, Cameron tells us, is to truly accept  responsibility for the manifestation of our dreams:

“If we do, in fact, have to believe in a force beyond ourselves that involves itself in our lives, then we may have to move into action on those previously impossible dreams. . . . Is it any wonder we discount answered prayers? We call it coincidence. We call it luck. We call it anything but what it is- the hand of God, or good, activated by our own hand when we act in behalf of our truest dreams, when we commit to our own soul.“

To believe in an all-powerful force responsive to our actions as individuals is to contemplate a level of freedom and responsibility outside the comfort level of most. Apathy and cynicism are easier and less threatening than action and faith.

So I’m back in the flow with a renewed certainty that if I want to stay there, I have to be an active participant in this process. I have to know what I want, ask for it, recognize it when it appears, take action, then start the cycle all over again. This is a partnership, not a genie in a bottle, and the possibilities go far beyond a miserly three wishes.