I wonder if people's differing use of synchronicity and coincidence is a matter of semantics or if truly, those people who believe in coincidence over synchronicity believe that everything is truly random; that when events align and reveal parallel meaning to one another it is simply due to a multitude of randomness -- chance happenings because of random occurrence after random occurrence: pure coincidence.
I feel triggered by coincidence.
I have to question coincidence when I think back to a moment among moments in December: In ceremony, a ladybug lands on my pillow in the midst of a shared moment with a sister-friend ... I later learn ladybug's totem significance to be one of protection, as well as connection (in relationship with others or inner-connection -- that within yourself). That powerful night two and a half months ago began a conscious leg of my current and arduous process of the integration of the head and the heart. Two weeks after that beginning, I opened a gym membership in the name of self-care and protecting and grounding my porousness through exercise via an indoor swimming pool ... and a giant ladybug flag is strung above the open lane I dip into. This ladybug comes to me as I begin action towards much-needed sweet inner connection with and protection of myself. A week after this, I mention to a friend while at work these parallel connections and in conversation around shamanic meanings: she responds that she and her partner (who share a relationship often steeped in tumult, now reaching a period of peace) -- only the day before -- had brought home a purchase of hundreds of ladybugs to assist in their gardening endeavors; there were currently ladybugs flying all about her partner's home -- my friend mentioned one had landed on her partner's face the night before and they had shared a tender moment over this silliness. Protection. Connection. Is this coincidence?
Is it coincidence that an image of a butterfly floated aimlessly (yet directedly) through my mind amidst recent mid-winter musings, and in a particularly low moment of despair, I wondered if I would, in fact, be lucky enough to find my way to the sweet renewal of springtime and see a butterfly again. (I can't ever recall a moment when I've ever had a drifting thought of a butterfly, specifically.) A few days later on a spring-like day in Colorado's early February, a butterfly lights on my back tire of my bike while at the park. Later that night I get in a bike accident and my bike tire is destroyed in the collision. It's only later that I look up the shamanic meaning of the butterfly and learn that it's a totem for transformation. Is this coincidence? Is it coincidence that the seemingly (and still so) last intimate experience shared with my now-ex partner was the most beautiful it had ever been, while still feeling different, and I notice for the first time a hanging butterfly at his window, dripping rainbow-wielding crystals from its wings. We have shared many experiences here by this window, but this is the first time I notice the butterfly. We are all transforming all the time, and this particular connection the two of us share certainly did there, in that hour, in that space. Butterflies continue to appear to me in many new spaces I enter in subsequent moments: on the wall of a sister-friend's living room as I go to her place for the first time for our now-growing womyn's circle. I notice another, a bumper sticker on the back of a new friend's car as I leave her home after sharing in a beautiful night of transformative connection: pure transformation through relationship in safe space. The butterfly sticker is on the back of her car, parked in front of mine, and the butterfly bids me farewell as I reverse out of my parking space, changed, to head into the chilled night -- home.
Around this same week (towards the end of February), when sharing my straight-out-of-a-psychological-thriller type experiences with a friend, he mentions to me a womyn friend of his who has prophetic dreams; my friend asks me if I know this womyn. I have seen pictures of her on Facebook in relation to him, and also to another girlfriend who knows her, so would recognize this womyn by face but have never met her. Is it coincidence that the very next day, she walks by my desk while I sit there at work? She has never walked by my desk before while I've been sitting there (and I sit there all day during the week, 9-5:30 -- and have for over nine months). She is on her way to where our campus's Lost & Found is kept in the hopes of finding her notebook gone recently missing. Is it coincidence that this womyn (who wears moonstone around her neck as I sit with my own moonstone on my desk altar and as studs in my ears) lost a notebook the very week after I lost a notebook of my own? I had sought out Lost & Founds all over two campuses and this search had brought me to many people I myself needed to meet. (Perhaps the moonstone connection is coincidence. But her own notebook search that brought her to me?) We shared a chills-inducing conversation around our dream experiences and are both brought to tears over the shared knowing that we are magical beings. This is no coincidence. We can share knowing of this and this, this sort of magic is enough.
Is it coincidence that I learn that my close friend (the one with the new ladybug family) experienced her father's death when she was just 20; or that I meet another womyn whose father died when she was 13, and then another who died when he was even younger, and then more and more people come into my life, one by one, unaware of the thread that ties them to one another and that strings them towards me -- these shared experiences of fathers who have passed. These experiences happen within weeks of each other, and sometimes days. My most recent partner -- the one with whom our relationship we chose to end on a chilly and expected Wednesday just one month ago -- held his own father in his arms as he died nine years ago. I continue to make these connections, though consciously *making* them is hardly a task. On Wednesday of this week alone -- my first day back to work after taking some personal time off, attempting to recollect and ground myself through my current and potent spiritual crisis of sorts -- I meet two young womyn in the period of one hour who speak of fathers who have died. This is not a normal topic of conversation, I think. Yet twice in the scope of minutes it occurs in my field. I read on Facebook tonight that a friend's father's died this morning: this particular friend came to me in a dream early last week -- in the dream she had been trying to tell me something, the content of which was unclear to me at the time. I ask now -- is this all coincidence. What if you were to learn that I have been haunted by images and dreams of this very thing happening to my own father for over two months now. Do we call in what our thoughts consist of? Support for our stories? Preparation for what's to come? Presto manifesto? Is this simply the neurosis side of vajra? Or is it its mirror-like wisdom counterpart? Does my reality reflect my inner state and must I accept this alignment as actuality; roots in physicality? These roots run deep, but where they go I can't be sure. I have many questions, and they are ones for which answers cannot be found. I distrust my ability to see what I cannot touch. I distrust my ability to conjure truth.
My synchronistic experiences have taken no breathers: I've mentioned here only a small handful. The universe is ripe with juicy messages -- funneling themselves, unrestrained, into my experience. My blood sugar levels are at an all-time high, though. I'm not sure how much more meaning my cup can hold. If these are coincidences, have they always been occurring at this extreme of a level? Have they always been going on around me and it's been me and my limits of comprehension that have been out of alignment with the universe and what it desires for my soul's path? I picture now a lotus flower on the very top of my head, assisting me in protecting my crown chakra -- closing it up just a bit so that the unrestrained funneling becomes perhaps more of a healthy dose; one to be taken when I so choose. I'm not sure how the Universe feels about this -- if It will comply with this need for my own self-protection in service of sanity and literal or figurative blood sugar levels and things of that nature.
I have always prided myself on my openness; I can connect deeply with people who are also open, and often dive quickly and fluidly into often-dense depths with them. These connections are often rewarding and nourishing. And I wish to close, now -- just a little. I am calling in better boundaries. I care so much, but perhaps healthier boundaries mean I can't save everyone. I can't give of myself and my gifts and my abilities to everyone. I can give of myself to some ... but mostly I can give of myself to myself. (I will say, though, that elderly homeless men should always have Whole Foods almond-flour chocolate-dipped cookies available to them, especially on blustery Boulder nights; my own soul's warming is found in the response of, "I'll take a cookie!," from a human at a stop sign who I'm able to give of some small part of myself by way of baked, gluten-free awesomeness) At times, giving to myself looks like what has been introduced to me as becoming "consciously unconscious", and in the name of self-care, I'm embracing it now. Except for this blog post. There's not a lot of unconsciousness here -- but by sharing any of this with the world, perhaps much conscious coincidence.
LOVE the last paragraph
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