Sync'd

The Universe is speaking to us. Stories and insights about how I am learning to listen.

Guided

Synchronicity is an ever present reality for those who have eyes to see it.

Carl Jung

Eight psychics have been asked to peer into the layers of my life.  Each had unique approaches to guide their work.  One used a crystal ball.  Another shared insights by “speaking to spiritual guides,” then confirmed her insights using Tarot cards.  A third used a deck of regular playing cards as we sat at a tiny table with her two Shih Tzus panting at my feet as if they were also excited to learn what was ahead.  At one point, laying down a King of Diamonds, like a psychic card shark said, “What’s the deal with Larry King?”  I responded, “Do you mean Larry Kook? We had a torrid and chaotic three year on and off relationship.”  She snapped, “I said King!”  I tossed her a psychic softball and she let it pass. Shrugging in my reply I clarified, “I’ve never met Larry King and there’s no connection.”  “He’s in your future,” she declared confidentially.

Larry King passed a few years ago, and to my knowledge he never crossed my path. That said, all eight psychics shared some unexpected insights and a few revealed things that were quite astounding. 

About ten years ago, there was a lackluster, but impactful reading with a psychic referred by a friend who is the quintessential intellectual skeptic.  Throughout the years of drinks or dinners together, topics of psychics, coincidences and other paranormal fodder were broached, and quickly dismissed by her as “ridiculously” beyond the physical realm. 

This referral was based on a chance encounter my friend had at a house party.  She was intrigued by the buzz surrounding a hired psychic’s uncanny insights shared with other guests.  Toward the end of the evening, with a shield of skepticism secured in place, she ventured to an upstairs bedroom where he was stationed.  Entering the room, the psychic looked up and instantly said, “You’ve just beaten a very serious bout with cancer!”  Her shield was pierced.  A battle with Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma was a year in the past and her significant weight and hair loss could no longer be detected.  At her insistence, my appointment for a reading was scheduled.

I’ve shared a few lessons about seeking out a clairvoyant or psychic with friends and family.  Don’t stumble into an ornately decorated store front with a gold lame table and a prominently displayed crystal ball.  Also steer clear from flashing neon lights declaring someone’s ability to peer into the future.  When looking for a psychic, it’s best to discreetly ask around.  Often, someone knows someone who saw someone very good.  Even then, be discerning. 

And as an aside, dating one can be complicated.  He’s not included in my list of eight, but I had several dates with a published clairvoyant.  Discretion and personal privacy isn’t really an option if he’s good … and who wants to date a bad one?  I received some very direct and unsolicited guidance from him on the second date, and there wasn’t a third.  So think twice before adding the ability to peer into the future to your wish list on Hinge or Match.  

The referred psychic lived in a historic high rise on the Chicago river that was built in the mid 1800’s. It is always spotlighted on the Architectural Boat Cruise as having been originally designed to be a giant ice storage facility.  Entering the iconic piece of architectural history was disappointing.  The building’s dry-walled to death and the plain residential floors possessed the same drab aesthetic.  Like the common spaces, the psychic was a very nondescript man, small in stature and seemed oddly ageless.  He had tussled grey hair and was casually dressed in jeans and an almost colorless shirt, sweater and jacket.  The apartment was also a white washing of different shades of beige.  Perhaps color distracted his ability to peer into the future.

Appearing nervous and jittery, the beige psychic pointed to a seat at a large table between the kitchen and living room and suggested starting with a question or two.  The top items on my list were embarrassingly cliche: relationship and job.   The third was a compelling, maybe even obsessive, desire to write something about my work in politics. But try as I might, it seemed beyond my ability. Should I give-up the effort and dispose hundreds of pages of musings?

The first question I posed was about the relationship.  A rather circular monologue emerged from the psychic with a lot of repetition.  Each time a phrase or concept was repeated, he would swirl a little deeper.  “You both really like each other.  You like and care for each other.  This is one of the deepest relationships you’ve had.  You both like spending time together, so you've met each other’s families.  His family really likes you and they care about you.  If you stay together, you could be happy, because you like and care about each other … ”  On and on the Tilt-a-Whirl narrative twirled.

But as minutes passed, specific accuracies were revealed.  The psychic shared that my partner’s father had serious heath challenges resulting from a car accident many years earlier. He was aware of my extensive history of being single and the traumatic aspects of my parents’ divorce. 

Questions about my career and writing led him into the same circular verbal labyrinth without conclusive insights.  But he indicated my father had more to do with my writing than I could understand. Which, at the time, seemed completely off base, but now seems one of his most accurate predictions.

The reading was coming to a close.  Frustration and disappointment were settling in.  Then without any prompting or questioning, he shared that a psychic energy surrounded me. It wasn’t a conventional ability like reading palms, the Tarot or contacting spiritual guides.  He said, “You are highly prone to synchronistic experiences.”  It felt like the most obvious secret in my life had finally been named and in a strange way given its due. 

The Oxford Language dictionary defines synchronicity as the “simultaneous occurrence of events which appear significantly related but have no discernible causal connections.”  The term was also coined by Carl Jung to identify deeply meaningful coincidences that mysteriously occur in one’s life.  M. Scott Peck, a more contemporary author of many spiritual books and concepts, has also written and spoken extensively on synchronicity.  His insights and observations reinforce the phenomenon, “that highly implausible events, for which no cause can be determined within the framework of known natural law, occur with implausible frequency.”

To bring this down to earth, a common example many people have experienced is thinking of someone you want or need to speak with and moments later a text or call from them arrives.  Most of my synchronistic experiences revolve around people.  I’m a complete stranger magnet and known as the guy who has great stories about brushes with the bizarre.  A few of them I’m asked to tell again and again at parties include a teenage runaway I met in Europe named Nomis Nobile from Moline, Illinois,  ghostly voices heard at the Skirvin Hotel in Oklahoma City, or a twenty-minute conversation at the 2008 Democratic convention with Anne Hathaway about her role in Brokeback Mountain. 

The show-stopping synchronicities are fun but are rarely part of something deeper for me. Beyond ghosts, celebrities and teenage runaways, there is an energy that pulls me into an inordinate number of these experiences. The most meaningful usually unfold in the smallest and subtlest ways, and are often rooted in the midst of the simple day-to-day grind.

I believe all of us at some point experience a brush from the mystical forces of the universe.  But it’s usually more subdued than expected.  By looking to the heavens for a sign, we walk by the miraculous in the haze and maze of the everyday.

As an example, a friend of mine was riding the subway one day and the woman sitting across from him was quietly moving her fingers along a strand of rosary beads with her eyes closed and her lips moving silently with prayers.  Raised Catholic, he was moved and inspired by her contemplative focus on the busy train, and closed his own eyes to say a prayer for a few minutes.  When the train pulled into his stop as he rose to depart, she opened her eyes, looked directly at him and said, “Thank you for praying with me.”  To his knowledge they had made no previous eye contact.  It was an amazing moment.     

My destiny is as unclear as anyone’s.  But when these incidences occur out of coincidence, aligned timing, or an encounter with a stranger that seems to connect important dots in my life, I try to dig deeper into what the experience has to offer and what it might mean.  Sometimes its’s as simple and transparent as something that’s needed suddenly showing up.

About fifteen years ago my softball team was coached by a close friend who had never spent any time pulling his apartment together.  No matching towels.  Incredible vintage family photos with curling edges jammed into the corner of a mirror.  Basically, his idea of decorating was an ashtray full of loose change.  For his 50th birthday, the team was planning a surprise home makeover.  His partner was secretly assisting and had picked out paint colors and a number of other furnishings to be included in the effort.  They were going out of town for Labor Day and we had the keys to their condo and a plan of action that included all of us painting together. 

Unfortunately, on the Wednesday and Thursday before Labor Day, everyone started cancelling because they made last minute plans to go out of town.  I was sitting at Starbucks with a friend freaking out about how I could pull this off without any additional manpower and asked him, “Do you think there’s any way I could find a painter who could start tomorrow and work over the long weekend?”  Someone tapped my shoulder from the adjacent table and as I turned around, he handed me his painter’s business card and said he was free to start the following morning.

Spending the entire weekend working with him, he shared an incredible personal story of being raised by abusive alcoholics that eventually led him to spending several years in a Christian detox work camp in Kentucky.  Just released, he was literally living day-to day-on what each painting job could bring in.  His work was impeccable and as his apprentice on this job, I learned more about the patience, skill, and technique of painting than I could have imagined.          

Often the synchronistic dynamics that emerge aren’t as transparent or rewarding as the example above.  But regardless of whether they are positive or negative, I try to be open to a higher energy that might be present.  There are times when it’s taken years to see the full arc of a synchronistic moment and sometimes I’m left with complete uncertainty about its meaning.

In our modern day world we continue to be increasingly DAZZLED by fame, fortune, wealth, power, status … and a growing fixation on things outside of ourselves that’s fueling a harmful societal narcissism.  But deep down, I believe we all know the real show stopping moments in our lives emerge as we move through the world simply as we are, with an authentic awareness and appreciation for what’s happening in the moment.   

Unfortunately with the avalanche of stimulus coming at us minute to minute, it’s almost impossible to enter the moment as an intentional destination to seek deeper awareness.  With hundreds of emails … the constant buzzing of cell phones … LinkedIn content and connection requests … Twitter feeds titillating our temperament … Instagram videos fueling fame… and Facebook friend requests … the only way to manage it all is to live in a constant state of slight distraction. 

Holding a present awareness in an intentional moment is when the universe is the most likely to speak to you.  Synchronicity is only one dimension or aspect of its voice, but being attentive to the here and now can open the circuits of deeper receptivity.  The “present” state of mind is different for everyone.  For me it’s a deep breath or two that simply opens a subtly appreciative awareness of the way things are right now.  This tiny gesture of reverence welcomes the mundane and the dramatic, releasing any sense of expectation. 

Being open to the moment also fosters a receptivity to insights or nudges from the universe that you’ve block or ignored.  My sister who works in interior design often tells clients searching for a specific piece of furniture, rug or fixture that hasn’t emerged, “Sometimes you need to give up, take some time, and let it find you.”  It’s also important to note that I can’t “look” for a sign or an affirming gesture from the universe.  It usually has to unfold to me when I’m open.

Every day examples of leaning into this awareness include catching the glimpse of a sunset that stirs an appreciation for it’s simple beauty or hearing a song on the radio that might speak to your state of mind in a unique way.

Each post shared on Sync’d will include at least one thread of a synchronistic event or nudge that I’ve experienced and often several more. They are shared to inspire an openness to similar experiences that I believe are happening in everyone’s life.  There is a creative energy moving through us in every moment and I believe there is a higher backstory and meaning to all of our wanderings, decisions, angsts, adventures, celebrations, loves and losses.  By being a little more present and open to these possibilities, an awareness might emerge to draw you more deeply into the here, the now, and may even reveal important insights from the creative source of the universe.    

Alchemy is the combination of elements to create precious metals.  There is an alchemic opportunity to the moments in our lives, but we need to be open to the power and possibilities of the unexpected.  I hope these posts will increase your inclination to reflect on the circumstances or coincidences that have dribbled or barreled into your life, and you will begin to consider the magic, grace or synchronicity at play and underway.