One of the questions that Dr. Bernard Beitman’s study on coincidences asks is if we can create synchronicities. It’s an intriguing question, and while I was mulling this over, I happened to check out the ibooks library for new books and ran across The Now Effect, by Elisha Goldstein.
This book fascinates me. The material is undoubtedly familiar to most people who experience synchronicity frequently and yet, Goldstein never mentions the word, never talks about synchronicity per se. Instead, he talks about mindfulness, about being totally present in the moment – echoes of Eckhard Tolle’s Power of Now and and the Abraham/Hicks material.
Goldstein talks about the importance of “dropping into the moment” through breath work, yoga, and just being present. I’ve always had a problem with this concept. When I’m doing yoga, my mind is off into some other zone that has nothing to do with my body and everything to do with whatever I happen to be writing at the time. I’m gnawing away at how I can improve what I’ve written, increase the tension, hone the characters. During meditation, I have a specific set of questions begging for answers. My bottom line seems to be: show me, guide me, and please don’t pull any shifty trickster tricks in the process.
But in reading The Now Effect, I have come to realize that mindfulness is more than the sum of its parts. It’s a state of being. It’s a matter of training your brain to bring itself fully into the moment. When I eat breakfast, for instance, I am scrolling through messages on my BlackBerry, taking note of what I need to answer before I head to the gym. I am living a few moments ahead of myself when it would behoove me to actually pay attention to the sweet succulence of my grapefruit, to the beauty of its color, its texture, to how each bite tastes as it slides down my throat.
So this morning, I paid attention to my grapefruit. I spoke to it – Hey, how’s it going? As I dug out each little wedge, I thought of my friend Nancy Pickard who, after a visit, sent me a set of grapefruit spoons so that I wouldn’t have to struggle to extract those little delicious wedges. I tried to be present for my grapefruit.
Yes, I know how silly that sounds. I know how ridiculous it sounds when you’re telling yourself a story that just isn’t true in this moment – my bills are paid, I am rich, healthy, in love, my kids are doing great, I have EVERYHING I need.
But there’s a certain raw beauty in recognizing that disparity and not being limited by it as you reach out for more. In the end, we are limitless beings whose experiences reflect and encapsulate who we are right now, in this instant. And perhaps synchros are the Aha! experiences that tells us how we’re doing in any given moment. Course correction needed. Pay attention. You’re on the right track. Keep doing what you’re doing…
I still don’t know if we can create synchros. But we can certainly invite more of them into our lives by remaining aware of what we think and do and feel moment to moment. Maybe dogs know and practice this far better than we humans.
Nika, having the time of her life, in the moment.
The magic of synchronicity for me is when they fall on my head. I don’t want to be the one manifesting them.
I love the story about Sherry’s ascension. SO COOL that she tried to record it. Wow.
Good to see you, Nat!
Then he would follow by his sight a bumble-bee that landed on a carnation, bent it, then took off, leaving the carnation to, trembling, search for its previous position. When he tried really hard, he achieved to see simultaneously in front of his eyes both the bumble-bee landing and the carnation bending after the bumble-bee took off. By looking this way, it seemed like the bumble-bee by its unmistakable intuition flies to the point where the bending carnation will be at the very moment when the bumble-bee approaches.
‘The one who sees through time, doesn’t make mistakes’, this thought was becoming increasingly clear to him.
This quote (translated for this occasion from Serbian by me, so I’m responsible if it isn’t clear) is from the novel Carigradski drum (Constantinople Road) by Nenad Ilic. I’ve mentioned this book a few times. It’s full of similar ideas to the one mentioned above. I find it interesting that the author is an Orthodox deacon and I’m not quite sure how ideas about seeing the future fit to his profession. There is a similar quote somewhere in 100 Years of Solitude (I can’t find it at the moment) about trying to see through a paper that has written present and future events on it.
You forgot to mention that Power of Now is influenced by Zen Buddhism. I like how you compared nirvana (usually achieved through meditation and in many schools of Buddhism – relaxation) and satori (tension, presence, explosion). They are seemingly totally opposite, but at the same time (no matter how paradoxically) similar.
Opps sorry for the typos, cooking a very late dinner. Eggplant parmesan. A little wine too. hee hee. Surfing the web while waiting for things to finish cooking. It happens.
🙂
Oh I do believe we can create them, so many of my thoughts do become reality. Sounds strange or rather it sounds like fantasy, but no I assure you that many thoughts that suddenly pop into my mind happen. But then that beckons the question is that more about intuition versus a synchro. But would “it” have happened at all if I had not thought it. Who know. I guess you can go with the idea of be careful with what you wish for in this case. Hope you all did well through all the weather that recently made its way through Flordia. Thought about you both. Dealing with 105 degree weather presently. Ugh too hot and nothing is happening outside right now except dry, straw grass and restless children indoors. Love the pic of your doggy. They know things too, naturally. I will check the book out and see what more I can learn and watch my thoughts. 🙂 Take care McGregors.
105! Ireaf about those temps today. Hope u r straying cool. We did fine in the weather – just a lot of rain.
Love this. Thank you for the reminder.
This is pretty significant “in this moment”. I just emailed you guys a message about my having had an “epiphany” this past week; a “light-bulb moment”, then clicked over to read the blog and you are talking about having the “AHA moment”! Very significant, at least for me. My friend Sherry was an Abraham-Hicks person and spoke often about being in the moment, which is pretty much how Sherry lived her life right up until her final breath, apparently, because from all evidence she had an
“aware transition”…….the final sentence in her journal, laying open on her kitchen table, was “Ascension into Light Body”, and then her pen just slid down towards the bottom of the page. She lived alone and was alone at the time of her transition; wasn’t ill although for a few days preceding her death she’d had some kind of ailment going on but hadn’t seen a doctor, yet apparently she felt dizzy or something when she wrote that final notation in her journal because when she was found, she was laying in a sleeping position on her kitchen floor. Her final four comments, written in her journal, lead us to believe she knew without a doubt that she was in process of leaving this dimension. But…of eberyone I’ve ever known, Sherry was the person who truly lived her life “in the moment”. I envy that. Good post, guys.
Supposedly, steve jobs’ last words were: “Wow, oh wow.”
well, i was engrossed reading your post and was mentally saying “yes, that’s right” all the way through it – as i read, i was sipping on my breakfast healthy milkshake – multi-tasking as we all do – checking email and reading your blog during my liquid breakfast – and then i got to the grapefruit part and realized how i, too, had become complacent with the now – the moment – and for me, “feeling/tasting the good” – and so i shifted my focus – turned away from the screen and sat looking out my window at the magnificent sunny day as i sipped some more, relishing how the shake tasted in my mouth and then throat and just being in the moment of the literal “tasting” of good – and then – and then – just as i’m almost finished with my shake, like the very last sip, the lid of the shake bottle [which is attached to the bottle by a thick loop of plastic – yes, i know – plastic – but that’s another issue] comes out from under my finger holding it down and crashes onto my nose, tossing as it does so, the last drops of shake squarely into my open left eye – in the shock of it all, i drop the shake bottle which then rolls under my desk – that shifty trickster stirrin’ things up again! [either that or a message i’m not grasping at the moment – like, don’t be blinded by this or that going on right now] – geeeezzzzeee…………… 😉
Ha ha!
Funny! Sure does sound like the trickster!
I’m sure we do create synchros – not all of them, but some of them.
If we visualise something we want, or want answered it will come about and often by one or a series of coincidences/synchros.
About mindfulness just this morning I read : “… they train themselves to become conscious of what they see, by thinking of what they are doing and looking at. They repeat such things as : I am walking by the river … a bird is singing … I am combing my hair … the clock is ticking …” and so on.
Sometimes I feel we can become almost detached from our lives and are frequently miles away from what we are actually doing. If we return and become a full part of the now maybe we’ll find that Factor X that Colin Wilson talks about in his books.
Colin was way ahead of his time when he wrote about the X factor!
Nika is definitely having a ball, in the now. Love that picture! I know that being in the present moment is intensely satisfying, no matter what it is that brings me there. It’s one of the reasons I love to skydive: there is only that moment when I’m getting ready to leave the plane.