Synchronicity

Friday, April 27, 2018 Good Things, Learning, Life, Love, Thinking No tags Permalink

I’m having way too much fun with my letter board. Apparently, I am easily amused, but I don’t see that as a bad thing. 🙂

The universe is a funny thing. Lately, I’ve been doing a better job of paying attention to what the universe is trying to teach me. Sometimes things come together in such an interesting way. Synchronicity at work. Years ago I had record album by The Police called Synchronicity. I loved that album. Ironically, it contains the song Every Breath You Take, which I later came to hate, but the album is still great. Especially the song Synchronicity II. It refers to Carl Jung’s theory of synchronicity and tells the story of an emasculated husband and harried father whose home, work life, and environment are dispiriting and depressing.

Another suburban family morning
Grandmother screaming at the wall
We have to shout above the din of our rice crispies
We can’t hear anything at all

Mother chants her litany of boredom and frustration
But we know all her suicides are fake
Daddy only stares into the distance
There’s only so much more that he can take
Many miles away something crawls from the slime
At the bottom of a dark Scottish lake

Another industrial ugly morning
The factory belches filth into the sky
He walks unhindered through the picket lines today,
He doesn’t think to wonder why

The secretaries pout and preen like cheap tarts in a red light street,
But all he ever thinks to do is watch,
And every single meeting with his so-called superior
Is a humiliating kick in the crotch
Many miles away something crawls to the surface
Of a dark Scottish loch

Another working day has ended
Only the rush hour hell to face
Packed like lemmings into shiny metal boxes
Contestants in a suicidal race

Daddy grips the wheel and stares alone into the distance
He knows that something somewhere has to break
He sees the family home now, looming in his headlights
The pain upstairs that makes his eyeballs ache
Many miles away there’s a shadow on the door
Of a cottage on the shore
Of a dark Scottish lake

Many miles away…

Anyhow, back to what the universe is telling me. Several months ago, I requested that the library purchase the book Gift of injury: the strength athlete’s guide to recovering from back injury and winning again by Stuart McGill. I just got the notification that it has arrived and I can pick it up. That very night, my back went out, and for the past few days, I’ve had the worst and most painful back spasms of my life. Non-stop. If you are reading this, you know me well, and you know that I don’t tolerate weakness in myself very well. And by very well, I mean not at all. 😉 I am not good at needing help. I am not good at being dependent on anyone for anything. But in the past few days, I’ve had times where I couldn’t get up off the floor on my own. Talk about humbling. I am trying to practice more lovingkindness toward myself, more patience with myself, and more acceptance of myself.

Earlier this week I was scanning through the documentaries on Netflix. I love a good documentary. I stumbled upon Ram Dass: Going Home. It was a really interesting film. Since suffering a life-changing stroke twenty years ago, he has been living at his home on Maui and deepening his spiritual practice — which is centered on love and his idea of merging with his surroundings and all living things.

Some of my favorite lines :

I am loving awareness.

We are souls. As souls, we are not under time or space. We are infinite.

In this culture, dependency is a no-no. The stroke showed me dependency. And that I have people who are dependable.

I don’t wish you the stroke, I wish you the grace from the stroke.

While having my back go out is nothing like a stroke, it’s minor and temporary. But it did make me see that I have people who are dependable and that I can practice grace quite well. I am learning.