Dear Vivie, and anyone else interested in adding sparkle to life:
Today a woman came to pick up a piece of calligraphy from me that I wanted to return to the artist. It was not what I had ordered.
We talked for a long time together and got along well. We began to talk aboutcoincidences and synchronous events. We both have had some. I've had a number
of very interesting ones through the years. The odds of such things happening must be in the multi-millions. I think everybody has them and they are some part
of how the creation works. Some people are aware and see them, and others don'
t. For me, they come in little flocks, and then there are no more for awhile.
The great psychologist Carl Jung wrote extensively about them and there are stories in his biography, Memories, Dreams and Reflections that are quite amazing.
Life is so much more than what we experience as we go about our daily routines.
To me these kinds of occurences, (synchronous events,) is one of the things that
make life exciting. When they begin to occur I look upon it as meaning that in
some way I have moved into a kind of good balance and am dancing with the universe. Somehow I'm properly in step, and things begin to fit together into patterns that will eventually show themselves to have been significant. I think that
it is possible that the warp and weft of the universe is showing and thatwe only see the little bit where we are, but that the whole fabric moves when a
part is twitched.
It is dangerous to mental health for people to look for them regularly in small
things like license numbers and so on. I'm not talking about that kind of practice. These synchronous events are much bigger or subtle but happen over a number
of occurences. One doesn't need to search for them. All you need to know is that they can happen. You don't need to think of it very often, only when they almost thrust themselves on your notice. They seem to present themselves to you.
It's interesting to write a description of them in your journal because then you see how frequently they happen and they can make me feel as though I'm in a fairytale. That's a rather different view of life. Really quite a charming view.
I don't take them as signs as to how I should proceed, or anything like that. I
only take them as a sort of encouragement. I also suspect that they are parts
of a much greater design that's going on and reaches back and forth through time
. Of course we can only see our little bit here and now. It's magical things like coincidence and synchronous events that can make life fascinating, it costs
nothing and keeps the mind fresh and alert.
Another good thing is to build your own way of looking at things so that you may
see islands and shorelines in the evening clouds when they appear, and almost feel as though you are an early explorer gazing at an unknown continent, and0 that you can feel the wind of the sea on your cheek as you look from your deck toward the distant shore. I've really seen places in Mexico that look just like those clouds with their islands and lagoons, only I've seen them from the shore, looking toward the islands across the water. Probably those of you who live near
water have seen the same.
Imagination is a wonderful gift and we can find many ways to use it. It's true
that life is often a struggle and that there are dull and boring patches. Life
is often somewhat like the turning of the planet toward and then away from the sun. Night and day. Sometimes we feel that we are in the light and then, just as inevitably we find we are going into the dusk, or the winter, or being like the changing phase of the moon toward the dark side. Then we need to hold on and
persist, because inevitably, the light will begin to appear again, or spring will come. The wheel continually turns. The snowflakes are always the same, yet always completely different. The water that falls as rain has been in many lives
before us. The air we breathe has been breathed by dinosaurs. The wheel of Earth's history turns, the same, yet ever different.
The imagination is a way to escape into a happier life, even as we continue to play our necessary parts in this present material life -- and do a good job at it
, too. Yes, Marx was right that life is struggle, but it is much more than that
. It is also necessary to take part in an inward struggle to become. We need to draw ourselves to account each night and try to learn how to become better for
the next day. Not to continue to make the same mistakes. There are so many things to consider in this regard.
As we do it through the years we begin to know ourselves and how to motivate ourselves to accomplish and for change. On a simple scale, I find when I write lists it is always easier for me to accomplish those goals, whether I look at that
list again to remind me to do them, or not. There is something about writing them down and seeing them that helps me a lot. I keep a pencil and paper around so that when I'm doing something and a thought drifts across my mind I don't lose
it. I've also found not to throw the lists away. Let them collect for some months or a year. Eventually if I look at them I discovere that I've done most of
what was on them. It's interestsing to you gather the old lists and see that.
Then I decide which left over things are worth putting on a new list. I find a
feeling of satisfaction because I see that I'm making progress.
What are on lists besides chores? Things I've thought of. Stuff I've found hard to get around to. Now I want a pattern for a flared skirt, and to do fifteen
minutes a day at my garden chores, to walk for a half hour on six days of the week, and to buy a certain hair colour, pick up some books from the library that have come in and see if any good ones are for sale for $1.00 for hardcovers. What a bargain! That's my present mundane list but when things have been done they
morph into further developments of the next stage, and that pulls my little wagon forward in many interesting and creative ways.
Changes in my character I want to work on I keep privately in my head and not on
lists, but I know what I'm aiming to adjust so I won't do it again some day. As
I grow enough to see deeper into myself more is revealed that I didn't see before and I get little understandings of things I've done that I should change in myself for the future.
Whenever difficult things have happened in my life I've thought how much I could
learn from them in case I could help someone else through a similar difficulty
some day. Usually I thought of my children as the ones who might benefit. This
is a way to become wise by examining life. I think our own minds can be our sources of richness in life. Small things can become fascinating.
So along with the struggle we can bring in sparkling bits of light. Try it andsee, or tell me how you do it. I've love to hear and maybe learn some new way to bring beauty or magic into life. :-) I know some of you write beautiful, poetic prose. You must have a lot of fun visualising and searching for the best words to express what you see and feel in your imaginations.
Warmly, Mary
