Synchronicity
How did that, wha, holy mackerel?!
“I am open to the guidance of synchronicity, and do not let expectations hinder my path.”
Dalai Lama
My human form slips into synchronicity. It is certainly not forced. It’s paying attention, but also not paying attention.
Just an accident, but one that brings a change and insight into your life.
This serendipitous moment is one to be cherished.
They seem to happen to me all the time. They do happen to all of us.
Look! Over there!
So, pay attention.
In our hurry to get onto the next thing many of us dismiss them and do not give them the gratitude and space that synchronicities deserve.
“Our greatest human adventure is the evolution of consciousness. We are in this life to enlarge the soul, liberate the spirit, and light up the brain.” Tom Robbins
You don’t make it happen. Well, maybe you do because you are paying attention. Your eyes are wide open. Your mind is still. You are just here.
Now.
Or maybe you are not even in your mind.
Your heart needs to be open.
At times, I wish I had kept a list of the happenings that came about and blew my little mind, but what is a list but words on paper? What good are notebooks, as David Byrne wrote, they won’t help me survive?
They stay alive in my stories.
The true flashes of coincidence, just happen. They are meaningful.
Meeting people that you know came into your life for a reason and without any push or pull they remain there and bring you gifts. I am not talking about steak knives.
Noticing the trick of the light or the sound of that cricket or the sunshine reminding you that you forgot to close the blind last night.
And that leads to you seeing a beautiful sunrise that morning and you sit and marvel at that big yellow star.
Or the time you met someone at a campfire or a musical event or at a coffee shop and the conversation turned to a topic that was unexpected. A topic you both were deeply interested in and suddenly the portal opens again.
A simple spark turns into a flame. And all you had to do was BE THERE.
Later on, you have to tend to the fire to keep the warmth alive, but that spark seemed to come out of nowhere.
But that initial spark, what do we call it?
“According to Vedanta, there are only two symptoms of enlightenment, just two indications that a transformation is taking place within you toward a higher consciousness. The first symptom is that you stop worrying. Things don't bother you anymore. You become light-hearted and full of joy. The second symptom is that you encounter more and more meaningful coincidences in your life, more and more synchronicities. And this accelerates to the point where you actually experience the miraculous.” (Carol Lynn Pearson in Consider the Butterfly)-Via Deepak Chopra
“The intellect has little to do with the road to discovery. There comes a leap in consciousness, call it intuition or what you will, the solution comes to you and you don't know how or why.” - Albert Einstein
I like to call it magic.
“I was a victim of a series of accidents, as are we all.” -Kurt Vonnegut
And maybe, just maybe, it happened to you right now.
The tale that follows is a vivid example of what I am talking about.
The Magical Compass
Along the banks of Lake Ontario, in the college town of Oswego, New York I met a woman named Diane. It was 1977.
We became friends and lovers very quickly and we spent the next 5 years together in New York creating memories that can never be removed, like a beautiful stain.
We would connect each time I came back to America from Australia and exchange emails periodically as friends do.
45 years later I found myself following a synchronous path to Massachusetts to take part in a Vision Quest. Diane and her husband Peter lived about an hour from where this was to take place so I was hoping to see them before or after.
Diane and I communicated (while I was traveling around America) and she also said she could help me with camping gear for my week in the forest and she also drove me to the base camp for the Quest. How blessed am I?
On my return from the forest, Diane and Peter were happy to host me for a night so I could take a hot shower and sleep in a bed and have a meal with them. Peter, a beautiful man, and musician, was performing in town that night so he had to skip the feed.
As Di and I drove to dinner, I was hit by the sweetness of the moment. Here we were together in a college town, with that late summer light again, reminding me of the day we met. It was, as I recall, almost 45 years to the day.
The next morning I awoke and had brekkie with Peter and Diane, talked music and toured Peter’s studio for quite some time, and packed my stuff to head back to New York.
As I sat finishing my coffee a bit later on, Diane said, “I found something of yours the other day, let me get it.”
Something of mine? I was thinking it might be something from college found in a dusty old part of her attic or a relic in a closet.
She came downstairs and told me that while I was taking part in the Vision Quest, she had been looking at an art studio space with her sister, Eileen. The studio had a bunch of boxes and flotsam jetsam that the landlord said he would clean out. Diane thought there might be some shelves or other things she could use so she asked if she could go throughh the stuff before he trashed it. The landlord agreed and off they went.
Diane handed me this heavy little item enclosed in a cloth pouch. I did not recognize this as something of mine and when I took it out of the pouch I was not even sure what it was.
Surely, this was nothing that I ever owned.
I turned it over and over in my hand and discovered that it had a clasp, and it could be opened.
Here is where pictures speak a thousand words.
The symbolism of it being a compass after I was in the woods for a week looking for direction made me burst into tears and amazement. I was sure it was a little joke , but Diane said she found it in a box in that studio while I was in the woods. Whoa.
But she then said, “Turn it over and you will see why it is really yours.”
I turned the compass over and engraved on the back was this:
Busch, as you may know, is my surname. And also the manufacturer of this compass.
Mind blown.
Magical synchronicity.
Or just plain magic.
I would love to hear of your synchronicities if you want to add them in the comments….I think they are wonderful to share.
My most recent synchronistic experience occurred yesterday, the same day as your synchronicity post. I received a Facebook friendship request, out of the blue, from a distant cousin, Chip Covington, who I have never known. We ended up “chatting” on Facebook, sharing stories and family photos all afternoon. He owned a blues bar called Biddy Mulligans on Chicago’s north side in the 1980s, before becoming a leader in the Chicago bluegrass community and helping to launch the Chicago Bluegrass Festival. A little Wilco family connection; Susan Miller Tweedy worked as a waitress at Biddy Mulligans. Chip shared a great photo of himself with Willie Dixon and Albert King in front of his club. Sue Miller is in the photo too. It also turns out that Chip Covington’s son lives in the town next to the community where my son, Tyler, lives north of Chicago. Cousin Chip and I are planning to get together for lunch and to play a few tunes together during my next visit to the States in August.