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According to Vedanta, there are only two symptoms of enlightenment, just two indications that a transformation is taking place within you toward a higher consciousness. The first symptom is that you stop worrying. Things don't bother you anymore. You become light-hearted and full of joy. The second symptom is that you encounter more and more meaningful coincidences in your life, more and more synchronicities. And this accelerates to the point where you actually experience the miraculous.
Deepak Chopra, Synchrodestiny
I was in Peet's Coffee Shop talking to a friend about how he might accomplish some necessary communication with his parents, both of whom have passed on. The subject of synchronicity came up, and we spoke about how you can discount it as 'just coincidence' or see it as a perfect expression of this one, whole, conscious universe. And we were speaking about the fact that, in the Vedic world view, life never ends, even with physical death, but rather that it transforms, much as water transforms from liquid to ice to steam. All of it is water, but the form it takes changes. I was telling my friend the Vedic idea that life is just like this--that when body death occurs it is seen as merely a transformation of the life energy. The life energy, or spirit, doesn't die; rather it's that it no longer is associated with this body.
As an example I mentioned my friend, Lauren, with whom I have an ongoing relationship, though she left the body a few years ago. That I can speak with her at any time. I indicated a space just next to our table where she could be standing and immediately felt her presence there, felt my feelings for her rise up within me.
My friend was trying to take in all that I was saying without just writing me off as some New Age magical-thinking ass, and then in the next moment I saw my friend Matt walk into the coffee shop with his wife. I leaned over to my friend and pointed Matt out to him and said, 'My friend, Lauren, that I'm talking about? We were a trio, she and me and Matt. The three of us hung out. A lot. I just showed you how Lauren could be here. Now here's Matt. There's a coincidence, isn't it?'
If I choose to see the world as a random set of energy and information, then I am just another random piece of that world with very little opportunity to advance, because if it's all random, what is there to advance to, other than to find some way to wrestle the randomness into shape and into submission? But if I choose to see the world as one whole complete consciousness, then things like the above story are just indications from the universe, winks from the Wholeness, that are telling me, Hey. Keep it up. You're doing good. You're headed in the right direction.
It feels better for me to believe the second idea as opposed to the first. It's definitely more fun and more of an adventure to believe the second as opposed to the first; but even more to the point, it feels more right to believe the second as opposed to the first. The truth of the second idea resonates within me. It strikes that place within me that knows. And after all, why shouldn't it? There is only one thing. The Truth is the Truth, no matter from where we are hearing it, feeling it, seeing it, sensing it. Within me as well as outside of me. So when I hear the truth spoken, it is going to reverberate within me with the truth that resides there. That reverberation is indication of the rightness of things. That is a feeling I seek to have. That is a feeling I depend on.
Today I am going to ask myself if perhaps I might be able to see the world as a bit more magical than I saw it yesterday. I am going to expect the unexpected. I am going to expect to be pleasantly surprised by the people I meet and the things that happen to us. I am going to expect miracles. I am going to expect life to show me exactly where to be and what to do, and I am going to follow along with what life is showing me to do.
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