Synchronicity, Superstitions, and Signs25 Jul 2018

4 min readJul 25, 2018

“Signs and symbols rule the world, not rules nor laws.”-Confucius

Since I have begun the process of the artist way, I have reignited my interest in signs. A homework exercise given each week is to look for moments of synchronicity. This is something I did with ease as a teenager, but my busy mind has kept me from seeing and experiencing what is in front of me.

Recently, while waiting to enter a yoga class as an attendee, I opened my yoga bag to find a glass Frappuccino bottle. I quietly tried to shift it to my purse, and upon doing so glass shattered everywhere. Since the class was about to begin, all other classmates witnessed this embarrassing event. Superstitions tell me breaking a mirror is bad luck, but don’t Greeks slam plates and glasses on the floor as they dance in celebration? As I researched this online, breaking a glass bottle in public indicates success (as long as nobody gets hurt).

Last week at 4:00 am before work, I walked the dogs. For some reason they extended their morning walk to twenty minutes. As I waked under the trees of the darkened morning, I felt a splatter on my hair. I touched the back of my head, and smelled my fingers. Yes, it was pure bird poop. This is only the second time this has happened in my life. Those that I shared this with reminded me that this equates with good luck, perhaps financial wealth entering my life. I will take that perception, versus viewing the dire consequences of cleaning out excrement from my hair.

Upon finishing our meal at an Asian restaurant last week, I was given this fortune in the image above. Intuition remained in the forefront of my mind. It seemed to be the theme in the yoga class I attended, as the teacher at the end of class placed her fingertips on my 6th chakra. This is also known as the third eye, the seed of intuition.

As I continue to delve deeper into the ending of this book, my awareness to the moment is deepening. I am trying to observe the signs that are arising, instead of simply looking at my phone. Am I making out these signs to force synchronicity to arise in my life or is it really there?

There are so many ways to look at the daily happenings that arise in our lives. We can choose to take everything that happens to us on face value, without any analysis or reflection. Bird poop is bird poop. I was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. Or we can try to start to look at the events that unravel in our monotonous lives with wonder. Perhaps we can dissect it as we would an independent film. What is the meaning that underlies this? What is the theme that is being threaded through the narrative? Who are the characters that appear? What is being foreshadowed?

I chose to believe that there is a higher power in this world that slowly reveals the magic in our lives. I will leave you with an awe inspiring quote from Joseph Campbell from his interview with Bill Moyers on the Power of Myth:

“Schopenhauer suggests that just as your dreams are composed by an aspect of yourself of which your consciousness is unaware, so, too, your whole life is composed by the will within you. And just as people whom you will have met apparently by mere chance became leading agents in the structuring of your life, so, too, will you have served unknowingly as an agent, giving meaning to the lives of others. The whole thing gears together like one big symphony, with everything unconsciously structuring everything else. And Schopenhauer concludes that it is as though our lives were the features of the one great dream of a single dreamer in which all the dream characters dream, too; so that everything links to everything else, moved by the one will to life which is the universal will in nature.”

Originally published at itonlytakesasmile.com on July 25, 2018.