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October 30, 2021 - January 14, 2022
Charles Eisenstein articulated today’s dominant worldview thus: “You are a separate individual among other separate individuals in a universe that is separate from you as well. There is no purpose, only cause. The universe is at bottom blind and dead.”3 In other words, the world is a lifeless stage that doesn’t know you are here. By contrast, the worldview I subscribe to holds that every choice you make is meaningful, each action builds momentum toward your conscious or unconscious goals, and these facts can have a real impact on day-to-day quality of life through the experience of flow.
Charles Eisenstein wrote eloquently about “the more beautiful world our hearts know is possible.” For me, the message of the science of synchronicity and flow is about developing the motivation and willingness to try to create that world.
A synchronicity is an event with significant consequences that is woven into our life in a meaningful way.
The willingness of Stephen’s mother to stay and ski for an extra two weeks, the timing of Hitler’s invasion of Prague, and probably many other small twists can be seen as meaningful because they aligned with Stephen’s gut sense that he was in danger. Together they can be seen as flow. Neither Stephen nor his mother knew what effect their decisions would have, but by attending carefully to the choices available to them in the moment, they avoided a threat to their lives.
Csikszentmihalyi defines flow as a human state of optimal functioning, a dynamic balance of challenge and skill.
We can know we are in flow when events seem to happen in a meaningful way and the external aspects of life seem to fit together with the internal ones.
This sense of mutual relationship in flow between thinking and feeling extends to our surroundings as well. We enter into a dance with life—whether it is our tennis racket, our musical instrument, our teammates, or our family members—and find that the whole notion of control drops away. Instead of controlling our environment, we find ourselves in a symbiotic exchange, an act of mutual creation.
flow is not about gaining control or surrendering control; it is about transcending the sense of worry about control.
Carl Jung described synchronicity as the alignment between inner and outer experiences, a “falling together in time.” More formally, a synchronicity consists of “events which are related to one another … meaningfully, without there being any possibility of proving that this relation is a causal one.”
11 In the definition I will use in this book, a synchronicity—or, equivalently, a “meaningful coincidence”—is an experience that was initially not very likely to occur but has become more probable because of its meaningful alignment with our personal (or collective) choices. I view these two concepts, flow and synchronicity, as mutually dependent. In short, when we align with circumstance, circumstance aligns with us.
Getting into a state of flow requires adaptability to life at any moment, and this requires inner work, such as openness and a healthy relationship with ourselves. When our mind is focused on some fear of the future, how are we to see the current circumstances clearly enough to notice a hidden opportunity?
When we incorporate both flow and synchronicity into our way of life, we recover a sense of ease, connectedness, and joy even in the midst of high-stakes endeavors. These
To me, living in flow is a compelling way to tame the fear of the unknown and tango with the uncertainties of life. The more we can come to trust—not “the world” but our dance with the world—the more we can flow with the inevitable losses and disappointments that come while nourishing the constructive connections that are equally plentiful.
On our journey, we are not left to our own devices. The central premise of this book is that being in flow leads to a greater chance of experiencing meaningful coincidences. These coincidences lead us further on the path of flow. From this view, the best way to remain safe is to learn to get into flow and dance with life.
When we align with circumstances, circumstances align with us. We can call this flow.
Singular events are like forks in the road. They are points at which our choice of action makes a significant difference in the course of future events. If we envision all possible outcomes existing on a tree of forked branches, singular events are the forking points where one major path diverges from another.
The most important question to me is this: How does the cosmos respond to what I choose to do? If
If the universe is indeed responsive to our actions, then we are the source of the meaning in our lives. Experiences outside serve as a mirror for experiences inside, and every event can be a meaningful opportunity for learning about ourselves.
purposeful action is one whose meaning is aligned with a coherent plan on your part. To act purposefully, you must know what you intend and then take actions in alignment with your intent.
Finding a sense of purpose focuses more on the “sense of” part than on the “purpose” part; the purpose can be any goal or intention you take on, but your sense of purpose is unique to you. Finding a sense of purpose is about finding the essence of yourself in everything you do.
synchronicity, in my definition of the word, is an event that seems meaningfully related to what is going on in our lives, especially related to the choices we have made or are trying to make.
My advice was based on the principle that intentional, directed action can facilitate the appearance of unexpected coincidences that support our goals.
Csikszentmihalyi describes his research participants’ perspective on flow as a “state of mind when consciousness is harmoniously ordered, and they want to pursue whatever they are doing for its own sake.”30
Limb and Braun at Johns Hopkins University found that when jazz musicians improvise, various functions of the prefrontal cortex related to self-censure are inhibited.33 Musicians know well that when they’re improvising, trying to decide what to do next is the kiss of death. A performer gets into a state of flow to let their authentic expression come through.
A flow state emerges when we align with life, and then we find that life aligns with us too.
Finding flow is about putting ourselves in situations that are appropriately challenging and that we are skilled enough to perform.
The trick to aligning with flow and synchronicity is to be able to identify the objective meaning of our actions and then make adjustments to align them with our conscious intent.
Jung calls these universal forms “archetypes.” He explains, “The concept of the archetype … indicates the existence of definite forms in the psyche which seem to be present always and everywhere.” This perspective implies that some symbols convey meaning to us not because of our own past experiences but because of our shared collective experience that “does not develop individually but is inherited.”
The idea that the physical world is secondary to the world of ideas or meaning has shown up in various forms throughout history, including the analytic psychology of Jung; the philosophy of idealism as expressed in the writings of Plato, Berkeley, and Kant; modern cognitive science in the work of Donald Hoffman and others; and many of the Eastern spiritual traditions.
The qualitative experiences of life are like a language being spoken between the responsive cosmos and the living creatures in it
So the qualitative experiences that happen as a result of our actions lead to a sense of the objective meaning of our actions. From objective meaning we can now understand how what I call the “tree of possibilities” determines the likelihood of future circumstances and can lead to synchronicity.
The premise of meaningful history selection is that the world we experience in everyday life is a specific set of circumstances drawn from a multitude of possibilities. The possibilities that could come to pass can be visualized as existing on a tree. (See figure 1.) Our lives get shaped in different ways depending on how we navigate the tree. Figure 1.
Each branch of the tree represents all of the universe branching into different versions of itself. In other words, it is a decision tree through possible experiences. Rather than using the tree to navigate our way through a single landscape, we use the tree to navigate from one landscape to another. On one of the top branches I may end up as an architect, while on another branch I end up as a sculptor. I am represented on both branches but in two different sets of circumstances based both on my decisions along the way and upon the response that the universe provides at each step. This
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We can only speak about the branch we are actually on, a concept known as “counterfactual indefiniteness.” Other branches, which we might think of as missed opportunities, don’t have any “realness” to them. In this model, regretting missed opportunities doesn’t make any sense, because opportunities only unfold in response to the choices we actually make, not the ones we could have made.
In order to make consistent decisions in harmony with our lives and our communities, we must be able to feel our feelings accurately and relate to others authentically.
Every moment can bring useful information, and how you respond to the nuggets of joy that show up randomly throughout your day makes a huge difference in what happens next.
By seeking alignment between our conscious desires and our subconscious motivations and looking out for surprising opportunities, we may move ourselves closer to the outcome we want.
We are beings of experience living in a world of emotion. We are immersed in a sea of subconscious affect or feeling, and it is our feelings that drive the responsive cosmos. Our feelings pull us toward (or pull toward us) the meaningful events of our lives.
we are in awe are bodily reactions to emotions that we don’t have any conscious control over. Feelings, on the other hand, are how we perceive the emotions. Having feelings gives rise to what Damasio calls core consciousness. Feelings are more complex than emotions because they depend on how we perceive our circumstances. A
By adding our own mental interpretation to our emotions, the five basic emotions of fear, anger, joy, sadness, and disgust become a broad field of possible feelings or interpretations.
Taken together, these considerations suggest that our life consists of experiences, to which we have emotional reactions, which we interpret as feelings and which lead to cognitive thoughts about life. (See figure 3.) This isn’t
Then, through meaningful history selection, that feeling of attraction toward a symbolic experience aligns with certain qualia on the tree of possibilities. Any number of potential situations could arise that align with this feeling—we end up being offered a piece of cake, or we bump into the person we’re attracted to unexpectedly—and
Medieval scholar and saint Albertus Magnus also concluded that feelings appeared to be a source of synchronicity.
When therefore the soul of a person falls into a great excess of any passion … it binds things and alters them in the way it wants. For a long time I did not believe it … [but] I found that the emotionality of the human soul is the chief cause of all these things.47
Jung comments on this passage: “This text clearly shows that synchronistic happenings are regarded as being dependent on affect (e.g. emotion or feeling).”48 In my experience, feelings become our enemy when we don’t know what we feel. A hidden feeling can cause an unfortunate synchronicity.
By contrast, when we are directed by hidden feelings, we might feel like victims of circumstance.
Zukav emphasizes, “It is, therefore, wise for us to become aware of the many intentions that inform our experience, to sort out which intentions produce which effects, and to choose our intentions according to the effects that we desire to produce.”49 Things don’t happen to us, they happen through us. We connect to the future branches of the tree that align with our actions.
When we proactively unearth our hidden feelings, we can be freed to choose those actions that shape the world we want, and meaningful events get drawn to us like water flowing down the hillside toward the sea.
Jaworski encourages us to listen to the nature of things that are unfolding and then to “create dreams, visions, and stories that we sense at our center want to happen.”51
To see this process more clearly, let’s break my experience down into the following steps: Listen, Open, Reflect, Release, Act, Repeat (X), or LORRAX.
