Synchronicity: A few notes on how it seems to work

If we accept the premise that there are no coincidences in life then we enter what I am calling an “alchemical mystery.” Alchemical because as we grow we have the opportunity to make gold out of the drudge we may have started with (or visa versa) and a mystery because the series of coincidences can guide us rather than our little selves trying to control everything. As a long time reader of science fiction fantasy, those terms enliven my heart – I want my life to be a mystery and I enjoy the processes of all things alchemical. My reader will just have to indulge my tastes.

It is a lot more fun to live a life where you don’t know where you are going exactly than to plan, fret and try to coerce an otherwise uncooperative universe into doing what YOU (the little you) want it to do. Or at least this is becoming true for me and I have a few examples.

Like millions of people I started 2008 planning. Only this year I had no real idea of where I was going so rather than planning for particular things (little me planning) I opened it up to the alchemical side of things. Having been trained as an artist is very useful here – artists become comfortable when they face those big white pieces of paper that they don’t know and can’t precisely control what will come out on the other side. There may be zen in it (if I better understood zen), but I know that there is flow to it, using Csikszentmihalyi’s (1990) discussion of flow (which I would call an alchemical state) where people enter a zone (as the athletes understand it) and “magic” happens. Art requires focus, flow, and entering the zone and so did my planning session this year.

I won’t bore you with the details, suffice it to say that I came out with a diagram with four arms, two representing things that work in my life now and two that are the energies I want more of. I couldn’t n tell you all that I thought about or what the parts meant because I was largely moving on instinct. When the drawing that represented what my little mind might call a strategic plan felt “right” I printed it. Now it resides above my head and since part of the picture is a growing body of writing and two book proposals, I occasionally add words around the diagram.

Synchronistically, I was listening to a Deepak Chopra tape (2007) in which he leads his audience through exercises to identify their archetypes. I have seen this type of work before and it didn ‘t “click – this time it did and I adopted the archetype of ….(drum roll)…..(you guessed it) the alchemist. Being visual I went to the internet to find pictures of alchemists and …..(drum roll again) they look just like my office looks when I have these large planning documents up covering all my cabinets – many things going on, different sections of the office in use for different things I am doing, etc. I like to have everything out where I can see it – and evidently this has been the case for people who think like me throughout the ages.

Feeling satisfied that I was on the right track, I started to use another Chopra (2007) idea and as I go to bed at night I scan my day – then ask the universally connected part of myself (the bigger than me, me) to watch my dreams in the same way. Great stuff! While I may not remember my dreams exactly I can ask when I wake up what was that all about – and my other knowing self gives me an answer.

Enter new or refinements of old ideas and we’ll see the mystery of unfoldment in action once again. The facts are:

1. I have said that if I was to come back to the US and/or lead another reinventing life retreat that the universe would have to open the possibilities because I couldn’t see how it was going to happen.

2. Years ago when I did something called, The course in miracles, (Foundation for Inner Peace., 1992) one of the exercises that did not make sense was, “There is nothing you need do.” What did that mean? I could almost hear myself (small self) argue with the words on the page.

3. In my work as a university professor I am studying transformative education – this took me to a book by Loder (1989) who discusses the Christian stories of transformation.

4. Oprah Winfrey is evidently recommending a new book by one of my favorite provocative authors Eckhardt Tolle (year) Name of book and I got it to listen to on my iPod.

5. There is another Deepak book (2006) Power, freedom and grace, sitting on my desk that I haven’t quite gotten to that I want to add in my Reinventing Life database.

How do all these separate items – coupled with my asking myself when I wake up the meaning of my dreams have to do with following the mystery? The message that came to hit me over the head not once by three times from three different authors (Loder, Chopra and Tolle) was (there is that drum roll again) – my small (what they call egoic) limited self can’t control anything but the bigger connected to the mystery self can have a great time sitting back and letting the flow take me to interesting places. Interesting place number 1 at the moment is to Colorado in April. I received an email yesterday from an old business colleague who will bring me in as a guest speaker for a few days. While I am there, if all is meant to be, I can meet some people and get the next reinventing life retreat going. I will also keep my eyes and ears open in case there are other reasons I am meant to be there and doors may open that I can’t quite imagine.

The dream sequence last night cinched it for me. Mid way through the night I awaken feeling pressured and burdened (not an unusual set of feelings when I am trying to control things) to find that in my dreams I had taken on one too many things and the conflicting deadlines had me running (gee, I wonder if any of my readers have ever experienced this?). OK fine, I noticed it and went back to sleep. As I awoke this morning I felt at ease, upon asking what that was about I “heard,” this was an example of how it feels to let the mystery lead, “There is nothing you need do.”

WOW!

(Chopra, 2006, 2007; Csikszentmihalyi, 1990; Loder, 1989; Tolle, 2005)

Chopra, D. (2006). Power, freedom, and grace: Living from the source of lasting happiness. San Rafael, Calif.: Amber-Allen Pub.

Chopra, D. (2007). The essential spontaneous fulfillment of desire: The essence of harnessing the infinite power of coincidence (1st abridged ed.). New York: Harmony Books.

Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1990). Flow : the psychology of optimal experience (1st ed.). New York: Harper & Row.

Foundation for Inner Peace. (1992). A Course in miracles : combined volume (2nd ed.). Glen Elen, CA: Foundation for Inner Peace.

Loder, J. E. (1989). The transforming moment (2nd ed.). Colorado Springs: Helmers & Howard.

Tolle, E. (2005). A new earth: Awakening to your life's purpose. New York, N.Y.: Dutton/Penguin Group.

Philosophy and Computer Games

Hi everyone,

I have been struggling this week with the overarching questions of philosophy and epistemology AT THE SAME TIME I am learning to play a video game. That’s what I call balance! The academic and the obscure? Or perhaps the grand and the stupid? Whatever you want to call them, both have their positive and negative attributes, both intrique and frustrate, they cause me to delight as I learn something new intersperse with throwing up my hands in the frustration of “just not getting it.”

I’m convinced this is universal pay backs for some moment of mental idleness – as I have been assigned doctoral level classes covering the theories of education at the same time I am teaching philosophy and epistemology of human inquiry. The great bit is free books and being paid to learn something. The awful part is the uphill learning curve where every week I realize that if I had only known what I know now, I would have taught last week differently. UGH.

As for the computer game (FATE is the one I am playing) I see why they are addictive. Where else can you know the agonies of defeat and yet, by and large, come out ahead after every session? I wish my chart of the evolution of philosophy and education brought me the same thrill of satisfaction. That mostly leaves me feeling as though my head is just too thick to let new things in. I decided to write an analogy between learning this game and becoming a professional writer, but it could be an analogy for learning anything. I’ll give you a sneak preview of some of my experiences so far…..

I noticed that my new HP laptop came packaged with a series of games, all tied together in a console. With no particular time on my hands I nevertheless decided to investigate. A game called FATE caught my eye and I opened it up.

I chose a random name as my character. I also had a choice of my appearance (male) and my role in life. Do I want to play a page, a magician, an adventurer? No fool me, I decide to start at the low end as a page. I get a helpful companion (I choose the cat) and off I am sent into the town. Immediately it becomes clear that there is a town (safe and full of resources) and a dungeon (not safe and where I earn my keep). My ultimate quest (given me right at the start) will be to roust bad guys on dungeon level 44. Still my simple page self (ranked level 1) doesn’t have to worry about that yet, so I explore a little, pick up what seems like a simple quest, and off I go.

I am equipped with a club and so (quite naturally I feel) I start smashing everything I come across in the dungeon. This seems to have positive effect because my bag of gold in the lower left column grows in amount (I remain clueless as to why, but go on nonetheless). I have to comment that this is much the same as the strategy I use when I take on learning a new subject – I smash all the knowledge I can and hope to figure out as I go how it fits together.

I get pretty good at level one, and (three days later) after playing for about an hour, I lay down the $20 required to buy the game and start fresh. This time I choose myself as the character and go for a dog instead of the cat companion just to add variety. I enter the dungeon once again, and this time strategically smash everything (as opposed to what? Smashing everything without a strategy behind it). I have definitely improved, I know now to be on the look-out for bad guys and I efficiently leave them in puddles on the dungeon floor. I am also very good at finding weapons and gold – and efficient at maximum storage. Lastly I know how to watch my life force and to refuel as it gets low (although I don’t know how to keep my pet alive and worry when his life force gets low – fortunately it just as magically seems to refill). The first three levels of the dungeon have been conquered and the game is getting a bit repetitive. I leave musing about what I am supposed to do with these extra weapons, how I feed the fish to my dog in the heat of battle in order to transform him (a wonderous power hinted at but the specifics of which still make no sense), nor how or why I would want to change weapons, let alone cast spells, etc.

Going back to my chart, I have also mastered the types of philosophy (metaphysics, epistemology, ethics and aesthetics), have sorted out some of the main periods of growth and change (not surprising that the renaissance figured here) but am still frustrated by the links to what happened in educational idealism. Weren’t people learning and transforming even in the 1600’s?

My time in town (in safety) is spent organizing, catching up with those who owe me and sorting through what I want to keep with me as I go into the dungeon on my next quests. I know now to keep my pack open so that I can pick up weapons and gemstones as I find them. I make one mistake by selling a weapon with a gemstone in it (I find out later that I could have smashed it and saved the stone). Of course it is hard to make decisions when you have little or no understanding of the consequences you face. For instance are gemstones hard to come by? Should l keep them at all costs? Nevertheless I feel badly, as though I will regret later this hasty decision.

The same happens with teaching. When I haven’t taught a class before, I look ahead to see the material that is assigned for the next week and plot a course that I believe will help students navigate these waters. However, even though I have expertise in the general area, I don’t know these resources, and half way through the week I realize that things could have been much more efficiently handled another way.

Today I did something really stupid. In the heat of battle with green men with orange hair, I left clicked on my health potion instead of right clicking. As I was almost out of health (another reprehensible state of affairs I should have avoided) this mistake resulted in my death. While all is not lost (if they really killed you off you would stop playing the game) it cost me money and fame (ha! as if I had any fame). It’s bad enough making mistakes you don’t see coming, but dismal to do yourself in because of lack of focus or attention to details.

Alas that brings me back to philosophy and epistemology, “dismal to do yourself in because of lack of focus or attention to details. While not a graduate student, teaching these classes reminds me of the frustrations of the roles my students are in. Not only do they work full time jobs but they add on to their lives the headaches that we take on when we ask ourselves the bigger questions of life and try to make them meaningful to our everyday practice. For instance, is life something that exists outside of ourselves and therefore we can measure it and learn about IT (as though it has external truth to teach us)? Or is life something we create from the inside out, giving it meaning and having it reflect to us the meanings we give it?

Well I think you all know which one is true for me: strongly in the camp of those who see our internal selfhood and connection to universal energies creating our ideas about and therefore experiences of reality.

My potential for the rest of my day is to sort through those philosophical ideas again to find order between them and the ways in which people teach. I also want to spend a little more time in dungeon level 5; I have to figure out how to use the spells I have supposed learned before I try to finish the quests I have accepted on levels 6 and 7.

Better get back to it,

Love you all ,

Alana

And now we are four......

Hi everyone,

Yesterday was a sad day at our house. After having several scarey "episodes" where she would stop, gag, and be temporarily unable to move, our dearest dog Shadow died on our way to take her to the vet. She had a great morning - the food she loved, a walk on the hill, but the exertion of it all seemed too much for her failing body. It is always hard to know - quality or quantity of life - which do we go for? Shadow always appreciated quality - and so we know she approved of the way she passed from this world to the next.

Ireland is fantastic in that you can bury your animals in the property around where you live. Shadow's final resting place will probably becomes mini graveyard - as this place on the hill behind our house is visible from our kitchen window. With a brilliant view of the marina on the one side and the beach and inlet to the sea on the other, the spirits of our animals will enjoy the final beauty and freedom that our lives here offer.

I don't know how many of you have read, Marley & Me: Life and Love with the World's Worst Dog by John Grogan, but Margie and I loved it this summer. Our animals may not be perfect, and the little reminders of Shadow's life include an antique Wizard of OZ book in shreds and an antique chair with one rocker slightly shorter than another. Why she loved old things and wood to chew on was always a mystery! Still reading about Marley puts it in perspective and all the "Marley-like" animals we love (including ancient cats who pee on rugs, large laboradors who have trouble getting up stairs to mention our other two animal friends) warm our hearts, make us get out of ourselves to take them on walks and through their requirement for love, keep our hearts open to the world.

"And through their requirement for love, keep our hearts open to the world" ......may all of us require love from each other today - in memory of Shadow.

All the best,
Alana

Rotarians support old people

Hi everyone,

The title of my post today is something of a joke. My Rotary club, although one of the youngest and most vibrant in the area, is primarily filled with white haired business people, close to if not over the edge of retirement. The rest of the clubs in Cork are even more so, thus making it ironic for the three clubs to get together every year and put on a bash for “old people” How is it we define old?

Tuesday night this week found me in a ballroom at the Cork City Hall setting tables and helping at the door. The food consisted of a variety of “English style” sandwiches on mostly white bread, complete with the crusts cut off, and pastry trays full of sweets. No one had made coffee so all had tea. The tables were set with paper goods and fabulous bright colored balloons. Overall the atmosphere was festive, if low budget.

At the door, my friend Colette and I were discussing whether we would come to an event like this – she said no and I said, “Of course! When the times come we all take our entertainment where we can get it.” The crowd was mixed, if predictably higher on the side of the feminine gender. Collette immediately noticed that some of the people didn’t look “old enough” to attend, and this is really where my musings start:

I am currently teaching philosophy and epistemology classes to doctoral students. These topics have made me “go brain dead” in the past, but for whatever reason I am now interested in and fascinated by questions of how we know what we know. For instance, two schools drop out immediately, do we know what we know from the external world and then we sort it out inside of us, or is it the other way around? My experience at the door would make a case for the later, woefully subjective as it is. A few years back I can remember thinking that young people in offices (sometimes my doctors) had become very young indeed. Now at the door supporting an “old people’s” gig I found our clientele for the evening not old at all.

What may count more than age is that, whatever the universe has in mind for our personal circumstances, we can always find “a good time.” Picture a ballroom full of people, some blind, some having few economic resources, some looking as spry and well put together as either you or I. The entertainment during their sandwiches is the excellent Cork military band. Afterwards they sing and dance to the sounds of a local musician playing what were mostly hit tunes or Irish classics. Women dance with women (I love that part), men dance with women, young people (sons and daughters of Rotarians) dance with old people. It was a gas!

One of the younger lads I met took pictures and has agreed to send them to me. If all comes through I’ll add pictures here in the future. But in the meantime, something that we all muse on at some point: What is age? How do we know it and what does it matter?

Love to everyone,

Alana

Was it the Driving or the Dangly Earrings?

Hi Everyone,

Celebrations are in order! Margie and I have reached the status of grown up once again and can retire our learner’s permits! We both passed our driving tests, we can take the red “L”s off our car. There were several levels of synchronicity that conspired to make this so.

The following tale is not to say that we had not done our homework. Last Sunday we had spent a difficult day going through the maneuvers, following the maps given to us online and practicing the driving routes so as not to be caught unaware during the test. Also we scheduled this test one and a half hours from our home, rather than returning to the Cork sites, because we would be driving on roads more like our everyday driving patterns in Kinsale.

First, there were the dangly earrings. One of our new friends, Liz, a main protagonist in the Transition town group (working to help life in Kinsale be completely sustainable through the challenges ahead) gave us a hint. Because the dratted Irish driving test is so hard to pass, and because they frequently fail people on their lack of continual perusal of the driving environment, women who pass frequently wear dangly earrings. The logic being that movement on the earring alerts the examiner to how often you are looking in your mirrors. You’ll love the way Margie looks in them with her current haircut – an unexpected bonus!

Perhaps more than the earrings however was the fact that the examiner remembered us from a chance meeting last year. Here is where the coincidence get VERY interesting. I have recently heard Deepak Chopra’s audio work, The spontaneous fulfillment of desire, I generally love his ideas and consider him one of my teachers and this book came to me, as if by magic, just when I needed it. To make this long explanation short, as I am sitting in the car park at the test centre I am meditating with the intention of opening myself up to anyway the universe can conspire to help me pass this test.

Once in the waiting room, the door opens and a man comes out, beaconing to both myself and the young lad next to me to come into the inner recesses where we start our tests. All goes along as expected, I miss a few signs, I stumble on getting the car started, I am not at the top of my game but not failing or panicking either. Things progress, I get more assured, my driving becomes more indicative of my normal assuredness behind the wheel, and the driving examiner begins to talk to me. We discuss his daughter in Italy (also a Dr. whose degree is not medical), the advantages to speaking many languages, etc. After about half the test we are entering a straight away where I am required to increase speed to 100kmh, he mentions a massage therapist in Clonakilty, OUR massage therapist who opened an office in there last year, an opening we attended.

Picture if you will my driving along a lovely country road next to a picturesque river, speeding up through the gears, proving to the examiner next to me that I know how to shift – meanwhile in my head I am flashing back to a spring afternoon where we had taken the afternoon to support our friend Joy as she opened her new business in Clonakilty. On that earlier afternoon we sat on a stone wall, eating Thai pastries and >>>>> YES>>>> talking to this man and his wife! They had come along to Joy’s opening because they had traveled in Thailand and had enjoyed massage there. He had had an adventure of note, having found it so relaxing as to fall asleep, only to waken confused when they started to pull on his fingers, thinking they were stealing his ring. The earlier conversation merged with the present moment, I finished my test, and as he handed me my license he said, “Another milestone out of the way.”

I end this musing on little dreams and intentions coming true, the power of the universal mind and the synchronicity that supports us. Had we done our homework and were we ready for our tests? Absolutely, nevertheless that had been true in the past and the lessons had been different. Less than 50% of the people taking these tests pass them. As we both learned as well, the negative power of a high stakes test is that the person being tested can become so nervous they are thrown completely off and stumble in areas they would under other conditions be assured. To my complete chagrin, at one point prior to yesterday I had be reduced to a sniveling idiot, convinced I wasn’t going to pass proving that as much power resides the in the head game as goes with the external experience.

When all is said and done I will take synchronicity every time, it makes things so much easier!

Sending love out to everyone,

Alana (Chopra, 2003, 2007)

Chopra, D. (2003). The spontaneous fulfillment of desire: Harnessing the infinite power of coincidence (1st ed.). New York: Harmony Books.

Chopra, D. (2007). The essential spontaneous fulfillment of desire: The essence of harnessing the infinite power of coincidence (1st abridged ed.). New York: Harmony Books.

The importance of Salt - The mines near Krakow

Hi everyone,

I will finish my musings on Krakow with this photo - sculptures commemorating the mythology of Queen Wanda. Whether or not based on a true story, we hear from Kazik in our multicultural group that Wanda stories are told to children to display all that is good and true to Poland. In one she throws herself into a river rather than marry (therefore creating allegiance with) a German prince. Here she threw her ring into the river a symbol of her marriage and dedication to the Polish person - later the ring nestled in the mines below this area, only to be returned to her by the first miners.

Salt was no light matter to Poland, becoming one of the solid basis for the local economy for hundreds of years. Visitors to the salt mines are taken on a two hour tour, descending 300 hundred meters. Throughout the tour diorama's such as the one above, carved out of salt, tell the story of the mines and the miners through the centuries. What the visitor needs to keep in mind is that, due to the humidity in the mines, these sculptures wear away with time.

All the best for now,
Alana

One plaque among many (Krakow's darker history)

The place we did not visit, yet one that is reported by many to be a life changing experience, was Auschwitz. Our apartment in Kazimierz (the district that had been central to Jewish life pre WWII) faced a central square. On the same side of the street as our apartment was the oldest synagogue and cemetery - taken over by the Nazi's and made into an office, although not destroyed. Thankfully, it houses a small but active congregation once more and has been reinstated to its former place in the community. The plaque above, commemorating an entire family, if not bloodline, of people murdered was the only one in English - but as my title suggests, was one among many.

Faith in Practice near Krakow - The Black Madonna

Dear Friends,
This post goes with the one above it - because a visit to Krakow gives the traveler choices - do you want to investigate faith and hope or man's inhumanity to man and despair. Both are just a day trip away! Perhaps that is true for most of us.

Margie and I opted for faith and hope, although when we decided to go to Czestochowa (a small town 2 hours from Krakow by train) we did not realize what a treat we were in for. Shown here is the processional walkway to the cathedral where the Black Madonna is housed. Said to have stopped a war at one point, the collaged painting has been the destination for millions of pilgrims for centuries.

Inside the cathedral a visitor will experience faith in action. We were there on a very mundane Thursday afternoon with nothing in particular to cause religious activity, yet five confessionals, spread throughout the larger cathedral were filled with priests hearing confession. In the Sacristy to the side, where the Black Madonna is displayed, thousands of visitors throughout the day rotate for prayer. Some crawl on their knees in a path that starts on the left of the small altar, takes them around behind the painting and then out on the right. Crutches, Medals and other signs of devotion and healing cover the walls.

Having been in Poland, an otherwise poor country, yet rich in faith, throws light on the importance of John Paul II being from this part of the world. In greater relief still was the spotlight on pictures of the millions who were in attendance during his visit to Czestochowa while Russian tanks were parked just outside the border. I had not remembered, if I had ever been aware of, the cannonization of the queen (also reported as king) "Jadwiga of Anjou (1373/4 – July 17, 1399) was Queen of Poland from 1384 to her death. Wikipedia says, "she is venerated by the Roman Catholic Church as Saint Hedwig (Jadwiga) the Queen. Jadwiga is the Patron Saint of queens, and of United Europe."

Our visit to Czestochowa left us feeling satisfied - lovely to see active faith in a secular world!

All the best,
Alana