Synchronicity: When Everything Really Does Happen for a Reason

"All things work together for the good of those who love the Lord" - St. Paul

Sometimes everything really does happen for a reason.

Last year I wrote a post debunking the commonly-heard remark that "everything happens for a reason". I called it the EHFAR attitude. It's much favoured by New Age acolytes, because it sounds profound and casts a rosy - and often misleading - glow over all kinds of mistakes and problems. If we can't recognize when we've made a mistake, we can't change. So the EHFAR philosophy, applied too broadly, kills spiritual progress.

For instance, one New Age-y alcoholic of my acquaintance once took a wrong turn and ended up in Miami, Florida, hundreds of miles from his destination. The fact that he was drunk at the time didn't stop him from claiming that it had "happened for a reason". The reason, he said, was that he had been given an unexpected stay in Miami, which he'd always wanted to visit. But, I pointed out, spending 48 hours semi-comatose in a motel was hardly "visiting Miami". Still, he so much wanted to justify his drunken spree that he clung tenaciously to the idea that all had happened for the best, in the best of all possible worlds.

As an example of self-justifying, this was a typical response by someone who wasn't ready to see their own mistakes.

Years later, when at last he came into recovery, he saw that spree - what he could remember of it - as yet another one of the really stupid things he'd done while drunk. Which, of course, it was. And he made amends to his family for the harm and distress he had caused them, which he had never realized before.

Many, perhaps most, people live under the Law of Accident. Nothing then happens for any kind of sublime, spiritual reason. Things just happen. They go the only way they can go, and the result is entropy, sometimes chaos. We can all slip to that level if we give up trying to become more conscious.

But, if we are living at a higher level than that of life, everything really does begin to happen for a reason.

I'm assuming that you, dear reader, are living at this higher level, or at least that you would like to, that you are making real efforts.

In this case, everything may well be happening for a reason in your life, and you can very often see that reason quite easily.

Not only those of us in the Work may experience this higher level. A Good Householder, someone who follows the path of duty and lives according to his or her conscience, will also often find that events have worked out well in unexpected ways, and that benevolent "coincidences", which Jung called synchronicity, occur far more often than chance.

Those following a religious path, whether in the world or in monasteries, also frequently live at this higher level. They understand what Sufis call "the Cause behind the cause", and see how seemingly unconnected events may actually be joined at that higher level and lead to spiritual progress.

Accidents happen all the time at the level of life. There is nothing but mechanicalness in many people's lives, because they don't even know that a higher level, a higher purpose than just eating, sleeping and reproducing, exists and that they could reach it by making efforts. We see this most clearly in the lives of active alcoholics and addicts, whose series of accidents will most likely end in death and on the way destroy the happiness of those around them.

But we may choose to live more consciously, and then God - Conscious Humanity, Jesus, the saints - can reach into our lives and bring about miraculous happenings. This is what St Paul meant by his cryptic statement at the start of this post.

Let me give two examples from my own experience.

After a Work week in New York I was returning with a group of friends, driving back to Georgia. We lost our way in the maze of highways around Washington, DC (this was long before the days of satnavs). But, as we were there, I felt very strongly that we should visit a Sufi sheikh of my acquaintance, who taught at a well-known university in Washington.

This sheikh was surprised to see us, but accepted our visit in the spirit of Sufi hospitality. We were all full of the higher energies generated by a week of intensive work, and he could see this. He was free that afternoon because a tutorial had just "happened" to get cancelled. And, by synchonicity, a friend of this sheikh, a well-known Middle Eastern sheikh of another Sufi Order, also "happened" to be visiting him at the same time.

That sheikh, whom we met that day for the first and last time, was in Washington only for a very short stay, and that night he had been invited to hold a special tekke, or service, in an apartment near the university.

We too were invited to join the circle, and that night we experienced what I can only describe as another world; the chanting and prayers led all of us into an even higher state than we had reached in New York, and it was a life-changing experience for all of us. All kinds of mysterious but clearly fated events began to happen to us after that, and all of us felt that our time in the Sufi circle, so different from anything we'd experienced before, acted as a catalyst for an amazing series of "happenings" that changed us all for ever in the months that followed.

This was real synchronicity. Our "getting lost" had happened for a reason, and the reason was that we could come closer to the Law of Fate, and experience, even though temporarily, what it would be like to live at a much more conscious level. Because I was in a higher state of consciousness my intuition functioned perfectly, and I knew we had to visit the university where the Sufi Sheikh taught.

On the journey back to Georgia, we experienced many more synchonicities. They came thick and fast, and we reached our homes much earlier than we'd believed possible.

But there was one small synchronicity that amused us very much.

One member of our party was married, and he said, in mock gloom, "I'll really be in the doghouse when I get back. We've taken two days longer than we were supposed to, and my wife's going to be furious."

And then, just a few seconds later, we passed a dog-grooming parlour outside which was a huge sign proclaiming "Kim's Doghouse".

And our friend's wife's name was Kim!

We all thought that was a significant sign from Conscious Humanity that we were indeed on the right path.  God has a sense of humour, after all. And in that little synchronistic event He'd shown us that He was with us, even in the very small things, and that confirmed the rightness of what we'd done.

My friend was indeed in the "doghouse" when he got back, but that too turned out well, and he made some beneficial changes in his life as a result. He become a much better husband and father, living more responsibly from then on.

I suspect that you, my reader, have also experienced many synchronicities in your life. When they happen, we can be sure we are on the right path, living according to the Law of Fate, approaching closer to our destiny.

And sometimes they seem to happen in advance of our living at a higher level. God knows when we are in a more approachable state, when we just might be willing to pay attention to our level of consciousness and rethink the way we've been living.

Such a synchronicity happened in the life of my alcoholic friend. He was arrested for drunk driving, but instead of being sent to the town "drunk tank" he was shown a video of a rehab centre and he chose to apply for a place there. His motive was to avoid a jail term, but the result was that he came into recovery. The arresting officer would have immediately locked him up in the cells, but for the fact that a social worker, visiting another suspect, "happened" to be present when my friend was brought into the police station.

That social worker saw something in my friend, some deeply-buried longing for recovery, and responded - albeit unconsciously - to that longing. She persuaded the deeply suspicious police officer to show him the video she "happened" to have with her.

God had anticipated my friend's recovery, and given him a nudge. And today, that man has been sober for more than 20 years and is very active in AA, visiting alcoholics in their homes and persuading them, often successfully, to try going to AA.

God does indeed work for good in the lives of those who love Him.

Nostalgia - Friend or Foe?

Thinking of Passover again, with the holiday due to start this weekend, I've been reflecting on the different types of Israelites who followed Moses into the wilderness. Of course, they're all I's in us, all commonly found reactions to new experiences, and they can all teach us something useful about ourselves.

Perhaps the most sympathetic, to me at least, are the "murmurers" in the crowd. You know, the complainers and grumblers who kept on and on reminiscing about the wonderful leeks, cucumbers and melons they'd enjoyed back in Egypt, when they were slaves.

The food back there was really great, they told Moses, but now all we have is this weird stuff called "manna". Why ever did we leave Egypt? It was better to be a slave and enjoy good food than to chase after a Promised Land and have to exist on "manna". We should never have left! It's all your fault for bringing us here!

The reason I can relate to these sorry individuals is that - as an alcoholic and as a human being - I too can, if I choose, look back to a mythical past and compare it with present troubles. In that imaginary past, everything was easy and fun, and life was much better. 

If alcoholics think this way in relation to their drinking, it's known as "euphoric recall". The same is true for any addiction. The path to freedom is difficult and involves giving up much that we have enjoyed in the past; even though, with drugs and alcohol, the enjoyment quickly turned to sackcloth and ashes, in our own false memory we were much happier then.

It's a dangerous way to think. Persisted with, it can lead to relapse. And in everyday life, too, even if we're not tempted to drink or use drugs, we can easily live in a place of illusion rather than in the present, with all its problems and challenges.

For freedom is a challenge, an opportunity that many refuse to take up. We're so used to having our brains follow the well-trodden paths, to repeating old patterns and habitual attitudes. They're not happy experiences, but they are familiar. If we want to change, we must abandon these old ways of thinking, which means - in counsellor talk - moving out of our "comfort zones". Physically, new neural pathways must be forged. We must move into the unexplored parts of our minds to experience something new, to be free from the backwards drag of the past.

In the Work, we speak of "metanoia" or thinking in a new way, undergoing a renewal of our mind. This is possible only when we give up the old ways, but that giving up seems threatening, because when we start something new we have no assurance that it will end well, that we really will reach whatever our Promised Land may be. 

Such an attitude was epitomized for me by an elderly lady I once knew. In her late 80s, living in a beautiful, comfortable bungalow with a loving husband, and with her children and grandchildren frequent visitors, she nevertheless managed to feel sorry for herself.

Her complaints would begin with anything that happened to be going on at the moment, whether it was a poor telephone connection, bad weather or a meal that hadn't turned out as expected. And she always ended with "I never should have left the island". 

The "island" was a real place, the location of her mythically happy childhood. In her childhood reminiscences the sun always shone, her mother was always happy, her sister always ready to play on the beach. There was no school, no discipline; life was a perpetual holiday with no work and no compulsion to do anything except enjoy herself.

Of course, it wasn't like that at all! But such is the power of nostalgia that it can make us long for a time that never was in a land that never existed. We give up all chance of enjoying the present and of working on ourselves if we lose our bearings in nostalgia.

Yet, there's a different type of nostalgia that is actually a spiritual experience. It's the longing, the ineffable yearning that all of us sometimes experience when in the presence of great beauty. It may be the natural beauty of the forest or the sea that triggers this nostalgia; it may suddenly descend on us when we're in a Gothic cathedral complete with soaring stone arches, stained glass windows, and a choir singing hymns of surpassing beauty. I've felt it in a beautiful mosque with its gorgeous tiles,  sacred architecture and atmosphere of utter peace. It may surround us when we hear Gabrieli, or Monteverdi, or Palestrina; when we look at a great, objective work of art such as Rembrandt's Prodigal Son, or pages from the Book of Kells; or when we see a beautiful, innocent child playing on a patch of grass, utterly absorbed in her dolls or puzzles.

This is the feeling that the Sufis call "the great nostalgia".

It is given to us to remind us of the fact that we do not belong only in this material world, but that our Essence comes from somewhere far above it, which is our true home.

The beauty we experience on earth - whether in a cathedral or mosque, or in a Zen temple; or whether in unspoiled Nature, or in art - is only a reflection of what our true home is like.

That place, which many people call "heaven", is where we originated. It is the place to which we shall one day return, and for which, unconsciously, we always long. The times when the great nostalgia descends upon us are spiritual experiences because they remind us to look above and beyond the material, and into the realm of the spirit itself. They are a form of self-remembering.

Then, nostalgia is not a looking back to a false past, but a looking forward to a future which is more real than anything we know on Earth.

Praise God for the "great nostalgia" which calls us home!

 

The Month of Nissan - Moving Towards Greater Freedom

The Hebrew month of Nissan, which began last Saturday, marks the beginning of the spiritual New Year in Judaism. As with other great religious festivals, this timing reflects the special cosmic energies which reach the Earth at different times during its annual orbit of the Sun.

The better-known secular Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah, takes place in Autumn, but Jewish mystical thought sees Nissan as the time of spiritual renewal and growth towards greater freedom.

The increase of light, the flowering plants and trees, the birth of young animals and birds, and all the joyful signs of Springtime shine forth now as the Earth passes through the Aries-Libra axis. Many ancient cultures celebrated the New Year at this time, just after the Spring Equinox, because the renewal of life is so obvious now.

Conscious men and woman situated religious festivals at the most propitious time of year for their celebration; clearly, it was appropriate that the great drama of Christ's Passion should take place now, so it was timed that both the Passover and Easter were to take place at this very special time of year. Jesus knew that His death and resurrection would have to take place directly preceding the Passover. Both Easter and Passover are about the redemption of mankind from slavery and death, and He came to deepen our understanding of this process and to show us how we may participate in it by our own self-sacrifice and personal resurrection.

Passover marks the passage of the Israelites from their life of slavery in Egypt to the freedom they were to enjoy in their Promised Land, Israel.  When they left Egypt, the Jews had been conditioned to endure life as slaves, rather than to live as free people with the power of choice. They needed time to become free within, as well as without. This time we know as the period of wandering in the wilderness, when the Jews underwent a lengthy purification to make them ready for a life as free men and women, subject to the laws of God rather than slaves to Pharaoh.

Psychologically, today Passover has become a festival of freedom for oppressed people all over the world. It's celebrated in many churches, because it was at the festival of Passover that Jesus chose to suffer death on the cross in order to win a greater liberation for all. He showed us how we must die to all our mechanicalness, all our self-seeking, all our slaveries - our addictions - in order to rise to greater life in God.

In the Work, we see how the festival of Easter brings the completion, the universal fulfillment, of the spiritual possibilities given to the Jews at Passover. No longer limited to a particular people in a particular time and place, Easter makes redemption a possibility for everyone, no matter what his or her life circumstances may be.

To better understand the underlying meaning of Easter, we need to look at Passover. Jesus, as a Jew, celebrated Passover every year with his family. Whenever possible, Jews went to Jerusalem to keep the feast, because that was the location of the Temple where sacrifices were offered. We've seen in previous posts how important in the ancient world was the enactment of the blood sacrifice. Initially, conscious men and women instituted the sacrifice of animals, repugnant as it was, because it was a necessary half-way stage from human sacrifice, as practiced by pagans, to the ultimate sacrifice of Christ, whose own blood purified the Earth and brought the chance of redemption to everyone. That is why animal sacrifices were no longer necessary after the crucifixion of Jesus.

Before the Jews could escape from Egypt, they were told by a messenger of God to sacrifice a lamb in each household. The blood of the lamb was then to be daubed on the doorposts of each Jewish house, so that the Angel of Death would pass over these dwelling places and spare the inhabitants from the terrible fate of the Egyptians, whose first-born sons were to be taken.

As Christians, we read what we call the Old Testament and are often horrified at the apparent blood-thirstiness of God and the ancient peoples. But Kabbalists, the mystics of Judaism, read the Bible just as we in the Work also understand it, as a series of tales to be seen on two levels. There is the literal, physical event, and the metaphysical, inner meaning. No doubt many terrible sacrifices and wars did occur, but both Jewish and Christian mystics, and we in the Work, read the stories as spiritual truths, still valid for us today.

Thus, something of great value - just as a lamb was extremely valuable, especially to ill-fed slaves - must be sacrificed so that we can experience greater freedom.

The Jews could then escape to the wilderness under the leadership of Moses, where their wanderings constituted their time of purgatorial cleansing from all the harmful habits of thought, speech and action they had imbibed as slaves.

Today we see that there are many forms of slavery, and that we are all in some way slaves to our habits. Some have obvious, easily-defined addictions - to alcohol, drugs, sex, co-dependence and so on. These mental and physical enslavements can kill the body: they certainly prevent any spiritual growth while they govern our behaviour.

And there are other, more subtle, types of enslavement, symbolized by the prohibition of hametz during the eight-day festival of the Passover.

Each Jew must ensure his or her house is completely from hametz. Hametz is the leavening agent of baked goods. This may be yeast, baking powder or any similar substance. Sometimes water alone causes the swelling up of flour, and attracts hametz. Bread, many types of cake and other foods are usually leavened, so the house must be cleansed of all crumbs to ensure that no hametz remains within. That is why the Passover is also known as the Feast of Unleavened Bread, when only unleavened baked goods, such as matzoh (a type of crispbread) and specially prepared cakes and other foods may be eaten.

What does this mean for us, in the Work? Hametz, or leaven, is that which puffs up, or inflates, the substance in which it is placed. To us, as to the Kabbalists, this symbolizes pride. Pride, vanity, arrogance, self-importance - these are all at root the same kind of evil; they keep us bound, like slaves, to our False Personality. They keep us from reaching inner freedom.

The process of cleaning out the house to make it free from hametz is undertaken intentionally, with the simultaneous cleansing of our minds and hearts to free them from False Personality I's.

The enactment of this cleansing ritual by Orthodox Jews is very powerful. It involves walking round the home at night by the light of a candle, entering every room, opening cupboards and searching every nook and cranny, and carefully sweeping into a bag all traces of crumbs and yeasted bread that may be found. In fact, to make sure this ritual is fruitful, the head of the household will have carefully put pieces of bread in hard to reach places beforehand, so that the rite can be acted out in full.

 When it is done in this way, the ritual gives to the Higher Emotional Centre an unforgettable image of how we as individuals must undertake our own inner cleansing. We may not have much light, but if we are careful and have the right intention, we can bring that light into all the dark, neglected corners of our False Personality and sweep away the harmful I's that lurk there.

The completion of the ritual is the burning of the hametz. This can take place at the synagogue or in the home; wherever it is done, it involves the gathering in one place of all the crumbs of hametz, and their careful burning in a small fire.

To watch the flames burn away the harmful remains of pride, vanity and arrogance is a very powerful experience. We may symbolically add to the fire all those I's we know must be sacrificed so that we can draw closer to God and experience greater freedom.

When we do this, we symbolically open ourselves to positive energy and create greater possibilities for newness in our lives.

Of course, traditionally it is a rite performed by Orthodox Jews. But anyone may carry it out. More and more, Christians are being invited to take part in Passover seders; in the same way, before attending the seder, many now carry out the hametz cleansing ritual to prepare themselves.

There are obvious parallels here with Easter and the Resurrection. Both tell a similar story. It is our own story, in the Work, as we gradually sacrifice all that is false in us and move towards what is true and of real value - our Essence, and ultimately, Real I. 

A Work task for this time of year is to find examples of our own self-important or arrogant I's, and then deliberately sacrifice them for one day. At the end of the day, write your observations on how successful - or otherwise - you were. Practiced every day for a fortnight, this exercise can be very illuminating in showing you precisely where you need to make sacrifices so that your Essence may be set free.

At the end of this period, the written list may be burned, and the ascending smoke seen as a visible sign of the sacrifice of all the hametz we have noticed in ourselves. A real wish to be free from pride, made as the fire burns, will draw strength from the ritual.