Read The Power of Coincidence for Free Online Page A

or an assistance (physical, psychological, or spiritual) that will come to me precisely at the time I need it from the presence or image of shells. Dostoevsky says, “It must have lain hidden in my soul, though I knew nothing of it, and it rose suddenly to my memory when it was needed.” Images held onto with fascination are thereby assisting forces. Blisses are too! “When you follow your bliss,” Joseph Campbell says,“doors open where there were no doors before!” That is synchronicity. And, when bliss meets talent, behold the synchronicity of finding a vocation.
    The quotation from Dostoevsky can also refer to how we may not notice that an activity, learning, or project we have been engaged in will come in handy later in an unexpected way. Synchronicity is at work when our actions turn out to be preparations we have unwittingly made to handle a future need. For instance, we keep reading a poster in the restroom at work about how to perform the Heimlich maneuver and then, at a family dinner, we use it to save our aunt from choking. We join a sangha or faith group and engage in spiritual practices and soon thereafter we face a crisis and all of that shores us up well. We volunteer at a hospice and, when our spouse dies suddenly, its services are there for us.
    In synchronicity a coincidence makes a meaningful connection between our vocation and our destiny. Our destiny is to evolve, to be fulfilled, to become self-realized, and to share our unique gifts. Some of our gifts are talents, skills, and aptitudes, psychological and physical. Our spiritual gifts are showing love unconditionally, seeing and acting wisely, and bringing healing to ourselves and our world. To have gifts means they are given. Thus we are receiving the help of assisting forces, graces that our ego’s power cannot construct on its own. Synchronicity is one of those forces of grace. It is the spur of the moment in that it spurs us on and it happens just in time for us to learn or make a move or grow in some new way. Synchronicity is also just in time in the sense that it is part of the justice of the evolutionary universe in bringing us exactly the pieces we need to fashion—or be fashioned by—our destiny.
    Synchronicity can also be recognized as we look back upon our life and notice how it all prepared us or instructed us for the fullest fruition of our potential. A hidden feeling or truth waited to be awakened by just the right person or circumstance, sometimes painfully. “My wounds are making me a wounded healer. My Jewish background has led me to take action against genocides everywhere on the globe. My neglectful father helped me practice for the independent life I live now. My destiny had to have just such a beginning.” James Hillman writes, “This way of seeing removes the burden from the early years as having been a mistake and yourself a victim of handicaps and cruelties; instead it is the acorn in the mirror.”
    A D ARK S IDE
    There is negative synchronicity in world events that bring destruction because of a dangerous or tragic coincidence in time, place, or decision. For example, the iceberg that destroyed the Titanic began to form fifteen thousand years ago. In 1909, while the ship was being constructed, it broke off from Greenland and began to move toward the North Atlantic. Unusually, it traveled as far south as the latitude of New York City. In April 1912 it crossed paths with the Titanic, resulting in the deaths of fifteen hundred passengers. The captain had decided to speed up the voyage. If the ship had kept to its original schedule, it would not have collided with the iceberg that was steadily moving toward no particular destination.
    Two terrifying negative synchronicities have appeared in our contemporary world. We see country after country engaging in wars and terrorism and proud of having nuclear weaponry. Secondly, we see a rise in fundamentalism and religious fanaticism all over the world. Both these threats to