Day 38: 40 Day Abundance Meditations--Do something different

 My consciousness of the Spirit within me as my unlimited Source is the Divine Power to restore the years the locusts have eaten, to make all things new, to lift me up to the High Road of abundant prosperity.  This awareness, understanding and knowledge of Spirit appears as every visible form and experience that I could possibly desire.*

All things new--what does that really mean?  To me it means that I only have this one minute, this one day.  It may be Saturday, January 19th, 2013.  It may be my son's 18th birthday (happy birthday, Nick!).  It may be the 38th day of a 40 day abundance meditation series.  It is certainly today.  It is certainly now.  This is the only time I have and I have the choice today to begin again and be new.  

We acknowledge that and celebrate it on New Year's Day and create resolutions for all sorts of ways we're going to change.  By January 19th, we may have let go of a number of our resolutions.   The truth is that I can turn on a dime and starting today, I can choose to do things differently for myself.  I can let go of habits that weren't serving me (how about just one?) and I can embrace habits that serve (again, just one?) and make all things new.

I heard an interview with Deepak Chopra on NPR the other day where he suggested just doing one thing differently than usually do to challenge your brain.  If you always buckle your belt on the left, turn it around and buckle it on the right.  If you always take a given route to work in your car, drive a different way (or better yet, bike or take a bus to work).  Do something different (and new) today.

*If you are just joining our show in progress, meditate on this for 15 minutes today.  You can start the meditations any day, don't worry about the day it says it is, but then do it for 40 days.  At any time you can look ahead or behind and see how it works by going to this link:  How to do the 40 day Meditation Program

(;)(:)(:)(:)(:) for Deepak Chopra, M.D.

Five snouts up for Deepak Chopra. This is the first time I've ever used my snout-based rating system to rate a person, rather than one of their books, movies or plays. But I make an exception for Chopra. I love Chopra. I devour Chopra books and speeches (although I've never seen him in person). If I had TiVo I would TiVo him. If they made Chopra t-shirts and bracelets, I would buy them and wear them.

And I'm not the least physically attracted to him! This may be my first all out obsession with a public figure that wasn't based at least in part on physical attraction. If I had been using my snout-based rating system as a teenager, I'm ashamed to say that I would have issued 5 snouts to such luminaries as Bobby Sherman, John Travolta, and (shudder) Sly Stallone (I haven't given up the habit of celebrity crushes, but I no longer have posters of them in my room--now they would be of George Clooney and, well, Bill Clinton, but not Hillary).

No, I love Chopra because he is able to explain in scientific terms such concepts as thoughts, dreams, intentions, coincidences, past, present and future, and, ultimately, God.

In a speech the kids and I listen to called "The Cosmic Mind and the Submanifest Order of Being" he really walks us through the quantum physics of consciousness. It's all very well and good for people to stand up in church and say we are all one. To me, it's another thing entirely to be shown that at the subatomic (quantum) level, the boundaries between our bodies absolutely do not exist.

We are light and energy and intention. We are not even specific masses of light, energy and intention. There is nothing to indicate where one person (or for that matter, one chair, table, mountain or river) starts or ends--we are all literally one.

By the way, my kids have trouble interpreting his South Asian accent. They insist that he is northern European, rather than Indian. They call him "that Swedish guy."

Pay Attention to Coincidence

As the grandchild of a Jungian, I was raised on "synchronicity"--the Jungian term for paying attention to coincidence. My grandmother, Sally Stevens Nichols, author of Jung and Tarot: an archetypal journey lived by it, and my mother definitely tracked it as well.

As a teenager and young adult, I came to view the notion of synchronicity sceptically. So you kept seeing the same symbol or animal or person over and over again? So what? Unless you believe in an unseen hand that is arranging all things for you, it makes no sense to ascribe any meaning to it. It is merely a coincidence (which popularly means that two things coincide for no particular reason).

In the past couple years I have learned that (and why) there are no meaningless coincidences. Deepak Chopra, M.D., in his marvelous mandatory book The Spontaneous Fulfillment of Desire: Harnessing The Infinite Power of Coincidence, explains it best:

There are no meaningless coincidences. It is not that the universe, or some unseen hand that is ascribing meaning to these coinciding events, it is us. At any given time in our field of experience, there are hundreds if not thousands of things that we could pay attention to. Some of them we do, and most of them we don't. Right now, I'm moving my attention from my computer screen to the clutter of my office, the Halloween detritus, the random lipstick that may be smooshed, the ipod I need to charge up. No wonder I mostly look at the screen!

Have you ever had that phenomenon where you hear about something new, a word, a car, a movie, a concept, and "suddenly" you hear it, see it, everywhere? Of course you have. Is that because suddenly events are arranging themselves to display more of that item? No. It's because now your mind is interested in it and is paying attention to it.

What's interesting about coincidences is not the fact of the coinciding people, places or things. What's interesting about coincidence is that I notice them. Coincidences are a clue as to what is most important to me. Of all the things I could pay attention to, I pay attention to this.

Chopra calls them clues to one's heart's desire, one's life destiny--the best that our subconscious (or "non local intelligence") wants to bring into the world. He tells a compelling story of how he followed coincidences to leave a hard-won prestigious medical research fellowship to go work in the ER of a county hospital only to discover his life's work, the connection between mind and body and to becoming an incredibly successful writer, speaker, runner of institutes.

Another book I like on the subject is Synchronicity: the Inner Path of Leadership by Joseph Jaworski (Leon's son). This book tells Joe's story of how he followed synchronicities to go from being a Type A Republican Texas wheeler dealer lawyer to founding an international institute for connecting people and public policy.

I have been experimenting for the past year with this. I try to write down coincidences every night in my journal putting a star next to the big ones. I believe they are shortcuts. Example, if a bunny keeps showing up in my life, everywhere I turn I see a bunny, and then I am faced with a choice between two things, one of which involves a bunny, one of which does not, I choose the bunny option. That most likely will result in my getting quicker along my path. Going where I want to go faster, more smoothly, with more clarity, focus, ease and grace.

Coincidences or synchronicities are signposts on what otherwise would be my largely unmarked path.