The world that we see around us is built on a story. Every culture has a different set of answers to these basic questions of who are you? What is it to be a human being? What’s important? What’s valuable? Where did we come from? Where are we going? How does the world work? Every culture answers this in a different way. Science provides some answers. It says, basically, that what you are is a discreet, separate individual among other individuals in a universe that’s separate from you as well. Every field has agreed with this characterization of what it is to exist.
Psychology, you’re this bubble of psychology or this mind encased in flesh. Religion, you are a soul encased in flesh. Physics, you’re a mass subject to impersonal forces that are deterministic. Biology, you are basically a flesh robot programmed by your genes to maximize reproductive self-interest. Economics, you are a rational actor seeking to maximize financial self-interest. All of them agreed on what it was to exist.
Well the new sciences contradict that. Quantum mechanics seems to violate the separation between self and other. If we’re separate from the universe then of course we want to control these indifferent or hostile external forces and humanity’s destiny becomes to become the lords and masters of nature and to transcend nature. It’s not working too well anymore. In economics, that translates into growth, the endless growth of the human realm and we’re learning that there’s a limit to that and we’re learning that it’s not an external universe out there but that everything we do to this world, we’re doing on some level to ourselves.
That is a wound that we feel all the time and that we suffer from. That pain of existing in our culture that’s so omnipresent, we don’t even realize it except when we’re bored, you know? That feeling of why does it hurt just to exist? When we’re young we have this knowledge that the world is supposed to be much more beautiful than what has been offered to us as normal. We understand that but that expectation gets betrayed again and again and again and to protect it we develop cynicism. As our ecosystems fall apart, our political system, our educational system, healthcare system falls apart. Things aren’t working so well anymore and it’s a lot harder to fully believe in our stories.
We’re moving into a different story. A different story of self, a different story of the world, a different story of the people. The self of interconnectedness, the self of inner-beingness. One thing it means is that these tiny actions may have a significance beyond that we can understand. That logic of the heart that says, “Yeah, I know that this is a significant act and I know that everything I do is significant,” no longer contradicts the logic of the mind, which had been the logic of separation and what effect could you, one tiny little being have with the puny force available to you. When the powers that be have so much force at their disposal.
Every act that comes from the understanding of inner connection, of inner being, is a spiritual act and also a political act. By acting from a different story, we disrupt the psychic sub-structure of our mythology and we offer an alternative. This is something that’s eminently practical and anytime that we give somebody an experience that doesn’t fit into the old story, it weakens that old story. It disrupts it. It could be an act of generosity. It could be an act of forgiveness. Anything that violates that understanding that we’re separate and everyone’s in it for themselves. Being in service to something larger than yourself.
I would offer that as the formula for stepping into the flow of synchronicity. You don’t know how to get from here to there but that thing larger than yourself does. It arranges these synchornicities, being at the right place at the right time, bing in flow. I think everyone’s experienced that and usually when you experience that, it’s when your world has kind of fallen apart and you’re in this state of uncertainty, then all things start to flow and they start to work, right? We can enter that state when we let go of the paradigm of control and bow into service to this thing larger than ourselves.
What is this thing? What is it that unifies all of these different things that we’re committed to? Let’s call it the more beautiful world our heart knows is possible as you go about your life. In fact, right now, feel that part of you that knows that you are here in service and ask yourself if you’re ready to bow more deeply into that service. If you do it, I predict that you will experience an unexpected opportunity to act on that intention and it’ll be just at the edge of your courage, but not past it.
