VideoTranscript:

Opening into Synchronicity & Flow

0:20

So welcome once again to what's arising in this podcast.

I'm going to talk about opening to synchronicity and flow.

Synchronicity is probably without a doubt my most delightful ongoing experience in life and I hope it is for you.

0:43

Or if not, how do we get you into the experience of synchronicity?

Because within it is just delightful surprise and a sense that something bigger than us is there holding us, taking care of us.

1:02

It helps us out of the current, I don't know, hamster wheel of life and the struggle and the suffering and gives us hope every step of the way.

And if we can get in touch with the synchronicity and flow and the insights that come through this, then life becomes easy.

1:27

We can navigate this complex world much more effectively when we are connected in this way.

So in this podcast, I'm going to talk about what synchronicity is, why it's important and talk about kind of how we create the conditions for synchronicity.

1:46

We can't make synchronicity happen.

It happens.

It happens when we're not looking in a sense or as we're aware and open to it.

It can happen, but we can't make it happen.

But just like other methods, we can create the environment where it happens more frequently and we are receptive to it when it's there.

2:11

So let me ring my bells as I traditionally do, and then we'll get into the topic.

3:41

So I wonder, have you ever experienced coincidences before?

I assume you have there, and you even called them, oh, that was a coincidence.

Someone might even say that's just a coincidence.

3:59

And that's how he lived my life for the first, I don't know, 30 years or so was I would have these experiences and I would go, oh, wow, that's a coincidence.

And they didn't happen very often, but sometimes they were profound.

4:15

I don't know if you've had these experiences, but you know something like going somewhere and meeting someone.

Maybe you're travelling and in a far off place and you're running into somebody that you actually know there.

How is that possible?

Or you pick up the phone before it even rings and the other person that you were going to call is on the line already without the ring.

4:41

You just at the exact same moment actually called on each other.

Now, I haven't experienced that with my cell phone, but the old landlines I used to experience that every once in a while or I would think about someone and then they would call.

4:58

The other day I was out for my walk and I was looking up in the trees and I thought I saw a rough grouse sitting in the trees.

And then I realized it wasn't a rough grouse.

And then a rough grouse right beside me runs off.

5:13

And I've never seen a rough gross on that road before.

And I thought about it and there was running beside me.

Coincidence.

Or something else going on in our world today.

5:32

I think we all need some assurance and some hope that everything's going to be all right.

And where can we grab that?

Our world is just so chaotic right now.

5:50

It's like we're on hamster wheels, Many of us running just to survive and feed our family, pay the bills.

Almost robotic, and the world's a very complex Right now.

6:07

It's overwhelming.

Umm, this trying to survive this feeling of separation or not belonging, the polarization, the powerlessness to do anything about what's going on in our world.

Sometimes at set up a large world basis, then sometimes that's in our family, in our own conditions in life.

6:29

Life can get so overwhelming.

So wow, how do we get out of this?

How do we find more meaning in life?

Some are, you know, some of the symptoms of our chaotic, complex world.

This, this lack of hope is kind of drugs and disease and decay that's happening in our world.

6:51

From all this sense of separation, what's the way out?

You know, I don't think it's from distracting ourselves.

I think it is from the inner work.

Or at least that's my experience.

But what if we weren't alone in attempting to navigate all of this complexity and suffering that comes with life?

7:16

What if there was a guiding force?

Many people say, yes, there is, it's there's God.

But I would suggest that many people feel that God has abandoned them because they're not living in a with a sense of meaning and happiness and joy.

7:33

It's a struggle.

And maybe there's no evidence that God is supporting you.

Maybe you haven't seen the miracles that you've been looking for.

But what if there were lots of miracles, these little miracles that I call synchronicity available to you like all the time, which could in a sense, hold you and say everything is going to be all right.

8:05

You're not alone.

What if there was this force, this benevolent force, that we can see evidence of and that we could listen to and be guided by it every day?

If you've not have had those, if you haven't had those experiences and these are just coincidences, I invite you to play with this idea a little bit.

8:33

I'll share more about these these events, but invite you to play with that because maybe, just maybe, it'll change your life as it is.

It did mine and continues to guide and change my life to hold me and invite me into a larger flow with the river versus fighting everything in this reality.

9:01

A different reality unfolds when we have this sense of guidance.

And of course, maybe you're already sold on this, maybe you're already following that sense.

So this switch into synchronicity and this awareness of synchronicity versus just a coincidence arose from me back in 1995.

9:30

I was on a plane down to Houston with a stop in Dallas and I got on the plane in Calgary going to Dallas and after a little while the guy I was sitting beside, he says do you like books?

That's all he said, do you like books?

9:45

And I said yeah, I read all the time.

And he says then you'll like this book.

Well, he didn't have any idea of what genres I read, but he when he I asked him a bit about this book, he says, I think, yeah, I might be interested in that book.

10:04

And the book was this book here, The Celestine Prophecy by James Redfield.

And it's a novel.

So I started, I stopped in Dallas.

I went to the bookstore and I'd never seen this book on the shelves prior to that.

10:24

I don't know, never noticed it.

And I was laying lots of bookstores in the airports, etcetera.

And here there was a table with them stacked really high, as if they had been flying off the shelves in great demand.

So I bought one and I started reading it on the way to Houston and throughout that trip.

10:47

And suddenly as I was reading about the idea of synchronicities in chapter, I think chapter two or three of the book, synchronicities started to explode all around me.

I was meeting people on this trip that just shouldn't be there or I shouldn't have met them.

11:06

How?

How unlikely is that, that I was going to meet these people?

But it just wasn't.

Once.

It was again and again and again and I look at this book and I thought, am I going crazy?

This is a novel and it gave me some signals about how to kind of culture synchronicity.

11:26

Like if I feel attracted to to somebody that maybe I should just go over and talk to them and maybe they have an answer for me or the next step on my path spend some time and curiosity with them, I'll I'll share more about how to get in touch with the synchronicity and and and the ongoing synchronicity.

11:48

So it's sustainable, but so this I was reading this book and I decided if I wasn't going crazy I'm going to play with this idea and and follow the guidance in this book.

And I continued to do this to step into a place of being open minded about this, curious about this.

12:10

And eventually the next year I was, I was on that hamster wheel.

I was working, you know, 12 hour, 14 hour days, seven days a week just to keep up with my work at IBM.

12:26

And I was I I was burning out.

I became so angry with the conditions of of the job and and what I was doing and and I was failing, failing and there was nothing I could do to to fix it.

12:41

And eventually I just quit.

I just went into the office of my manager and said I'm done here.

I had tears in my eyes.

I was angry throughout me and I said I'm done, I'm, I'm out of here.

And I walked out the door after a short interview and decided how I was going to get positive again.

13:06

And the way for me to get positive I thought was to go traveling.

So I made a plan to follow my knowing and I knew I had to go to India and Nepal and he didn't know why.

13:22

I just had this inner knowing.

And that's part of the way of culturing synchronicity is follow your knowing your felt sense of things have to go there.

But other things started to rise and I wasn't to go there first.

I was to go to Europe.

13:39

And so I just followed Synchronicity to Europe, to to Eastern Europe, to Egypt.

And I almost gave up on that whole journey.

I almost came back to Canada and never went to India and Nepal, but there was a synchronicity in the Siwa Oasis in Egypt that it's a couple different people, said Richard, you need to go to India, you're ready.

14:10

They said this to different people at different times of the day and I thought, yeah, got to go there.

So January 1997 I went to India, followed the synchronicity and continued.

It was it was a marvelous, miraculous journey full of synchronicity and guidance and it changed my whole outlook on life.

14:33

The people I met there and I'll tell more stories about that, have told stories about that in in past articles and podcasts.

But it changed my life and synchronicity has kind of come and waned since 1997.

14:56

There would be, there would be periods of great synchronicity and guidance and and often that happened for me in travel.

For instance, in 2010 I decided to go to India once again and I booked my ticket and got everything arranged and this time I didn't have any plan on where I was going to go.

15:19

I was going to probably go to some of the previous places I went to, but I had in my mind that, you know, there's something I needed to discover there and I didn't know where it was.

And just this knowing that I needed to go to India and a synchronicity happened about two or three days before I left.

15:39

An old girlfriend that hadn't been in touch with for years and had never received a text message from and she was living in the States.

She sent me a text and she mentions that she was in a Art Museum, I think in New York, and had seen some paintings by a Russian painter by the name of Nikolai Warwick.

16:08

And I said, oh, thank you.

And, oh, by the way, I'm going to India on Saturday.

And she said another text back.

Oh, maybe that's why I sent you the information on Nikolai.

Well that was late at night and the next morning I I went and looked up Nikolai Rourke and saw these paintings of his paintings in India.

16:39

Now Nikolai Rohrich was a Mystic and he was interested in finding in the Himalayans the the place called Shambhala.

This Mystic place where the the maybe avatars or enlightened ones lived.

17:00

This mystical place called Shambhala and he was following the foots of Saint Issa in India.

So there is my first place.

There is where I had to go because I had no idea where I was going to go after I landed.

17:16

So I knew inside that somehow I had to maybe even follow the footsteps of Saint Issa or visit the places that Nikolai Rourke had lived and something else.

So off I off I went.

And the synchronicities were astounding on that trip on my way from Varanasi to Bodhgaya.

17:41

Bodhgaya is where Buddha got enlightened under the tree and there's a descendant of the original tree there in the square in Bodhgaya.

On the way there, I was sitting with some Russians on a train and they we got talking and before long they mentioned you have to buy this book, Jesus lived in India and really.

18:08

And so I did buy this book and found out that there was a whole myth, a whole belief system that Jesus had lived in India after, before and after the crucifixion in those first, you know, 20 years before he did his work And then after the crucifixion, the book, the, the belief was that he survived the crucifixion and went and lived in India.

18:37

And he was Saint Issa.

He was the the this was his name in that area.

So here's everything falling together in this trip.

Another cool synchronicity on that trip, Unrelated, as I was in Rishikesh and I was looking at the books on this table in this hotel, and there was one book that was that everybody was talking about.

19:02

That was a great book.

Everybody was carrying it around, and I looked at the book and it was really thick.

And she's already got a bunch of books in my backpack.

I don't think I want to buy this, but I looked at it hard, flipped through it and put it back on the table.

Then about 3 weeks or a month later and another place in India, I I met this other traveller in my bed and breakfast.

19:28

I was staying at, and there he had this book, the same kind of book on the table, but it looked strangely familiar, as if it was the same book that I'd seen, you know, 1000 miles away in another part of India.

19:44

And there's your cash.

So I asked the guy, where did you buy that book?

Where did you pick it up is, You know, where to buy it?

And he says, oh, it was at this particular hotel in the restaurant area in Rishikesh, the identical book.

20:03

It was the identical book.

And here it showed up.

And these are the kinds of magical.

Mystery moments that can happen in synchronicity, these amazing experiences.

Another thing that happens to me all the time, and I know lots of other people, is the seeing of numbers like 111 or 4444 or 222 like that might be on the clock or on license plates or something.

20:31

And this is quite a magical experience too.

When you start seeing that all the time, it's like something's trying to communicate something and you can actually look up different numbers on the Internet, Angel numbers, you can look at numerology, and there's often meaning behind these these numbers.

20:57

I'll tell you another brief travel experience with numbers.

Again, travel seems to open up synchronicity for me all the time, and there's a particular state I'm in which I'll talk about in a moment on travelling.

21:13

So this time I was driving out to New Brunswick.

This was about four or five years ago and and I'm on my way to a friend's place, stopping off in in Quebec.

And I have my phone using the GPS, have it on to give me guidance on getting to Ottawa or Quebec City, actually to my friend's place.

21:39

And I noticed on the clock in my car that it was 222 in the afternoon and that was a signal 222.

And I I get into just the light when when these I happen to see lots of 220 twos or 444 or 111 I just go.

21:57

I get get present and imagine and just step in into this gratitude.

Thank you.

Well, I then clicked my my iPhone with the GPS and it said that I was two hours and 22 minutes and 222 kilometers from my destination, my friend's place in Quebec City.

22:23

And I also had just passed exit, I think 22 A in just a mile back or something like this.

So this is a craziness that happens actually on the way back to to Saskatchewan at that time, A month or so later.

22:41

A few months later maybe the well a few months later or next year I I'm on my way to Kitchener Waterloo and I'm wondering should I be taking this trip or not?

I have this question in my mind maybe I shouldn't have gone.

I'm going to drive back to to Saskatchewan.

22:58

I'm going to stop at this workshop in Kitchener Waterloo and I have this question on my mind.

Is this the right thing to do?

Maybe I should just go back to New Brunswick and happen to look at the clock in that moment and it was I think 444 and I go are there any mother other fours around?

23:17

And I look up and the license car passes me with 444 on the license plate just in that moment.

And so, so you have it.

It's just crazy synchronicities and they just delight you.

23:35

They just move you into the light and joy and gives you confirmation that somehow something is guiding you and saying everything's going to be all right.

And I'll tell you that's extremely helpful when those things happens, when you're in doubt and hope is waning.

23:58

So what is it about travel that allows for synchronicity?

What are the characteristics?

For me, at least in travel, that seems to get me in the flow of life more to allow synchronicity to happen.

24:23

Let's talk about how you catch the flow, catch the flow of life, and step into creating the conditions for more synchronicity.

You cannot make synchronicity happen.

You can just recognize it and create conditions within yourself to to allow for it.

24:47

Travel for me is a not a hectic thing.

Usually when I travel, I travel for a long time and I travel slowly.

It's a it's an energy.

Where I am in, I'm in curiosity.

I have an open mind about where I might go.

25:05

I have flexibility in this.

I'm not on this tight schedule.

I never take tours where I have this tight schedule, where I'm just found myself another hamster wheel to run on.

I usually am in a place of openness, of curiosity, of lots of time.

25:23

There's a reflection.

I'll even write lots.

I'll have thoughts about questions in my mind about what I might want to do or what I want to explore, even inside myself as a in this travel, outside of myself in in this place.

25:43

And I think some of those are the core and keys to synchronicity.

They're about culturing an open mind and be open to surprises.

It's it's about awareness slowing down enough that I can be aware of the things that are going around going on around me letting go of the sense of controlling life, open to what wants to pop in, in the moment, in a conversation.

26:13

Yeah, so they're slowing down, this pausing, this curiosity, this wonder, this sense of gratitude that I get to be here and do this, this sense of gratitude and acceptance for what's unfolding.

These are also conditions for this, this space where where synchronicity can unfold.

26:37

But it's also the following.

This knowing as knowing inside I for some reason you know you talked about this place.

I have to go there.

You talked about this workshop and I asked you a few questions.

26:52

Wow, it seems like I have to go there and I don't know why it might not even be the workshop is the reason I'm going there.

But who I'm going to meet there.

I think I recognize somebody or attracted somebody in a restaurant or market and have the courage to go.

27:09

For some reason I have to go talk to this felt sense of have to go there.

And chances are if I follow that, if I have the courage to go talk to that person or let go of my agenda of trying to make things happen and say hum and they just suspend that for a moment.

27:32

Because I need to go in this direction.

I need to follow this inner calling of going there.

When I follow that, often my questions that I have inside of me, my next question gets answered or I get the next clue into into say another question in terms of direction or it's not about answering my question at all, it's about showing up to answer somebody else's question.

28:02

So I become the instrument of the of the answer or the synchronicity or the message for someone else, just like those guys in India gave me the message, Richard, you have to go to India.

You're ready.

28:19

So there's a bit of a rebel in this, creating this conditions, conditions for synchronicity.

You kind of got to go away from the rat race, from what you're conditioned to be, for what success is, and be willing to just follow life, follow this voice, this magic that wants to guide us step by step by step to hold us.

28:50

So these conditions for creating synchronicity and flow are not necessarily easy.

And they are.

It was really easy for me to get into this synchronicity after I was reading this book, Celestine Prophecy or other or other books following that.

29:14

It's like it wanted to happen.

It was like there was an opening in me so that it just kind of flooded in and it was easy and I had none.

Pretty much no inner work up into that point.

I was on the rat race, so something, something in it, the timing for me in my life said, OK, Richard, it's time that you're going to get this awareness.

29:39

And I was had this instrument of the book that made me a little open to be surprised and everything happened.

But I think to have this open awareness, to be able to slow down, to let go of so many attachments in our life to change our belief systems, we need some other tools.

30:03

And it's helpful to get to sustain the synchronicity, to do the inner work.

So that means changing your beliefs about what is possible, opening up to what is possible.

It means letting go of all that inner baggage that we all carry around doing the shadow work, healing the inner words, the inner wounds, forgiving people in our life, forgiving ourselves for all the mistakes that we've made, and just surrendering into the flow of life.

30:39

There's some risk in all of that.

It may lead you to a place that is not aligned with your current goals, and those current goals may come from your conditioning.

You should be doing this to be successful.

30:57

Coming from our parents, that was me before this first trip to India is to be successful in life.

I had to do this and this and this.

I had to get on the rat race.

So there's a risk to following the flow.

Your soul wants something maybe different from what you want in your goals, and it will support you also in your goals.

31:21

Young people talk about the law of attraction.

That can happen too, but there is a risk.

It could take you somewhere else outside of what you're attached to.

It could take you to the places you need to heal those inner wounds and and discover and surrender those shadows that you can get into your full authentic power inside this inner guidance system.

31:46

This, this larger force that wants to guide us in our lives, has its own agenda for us.

And resisting it, well, it's not entirely futile, but it's painful if you follow the synchronicity, if you follow that inner voice, if you let go.

32:10

Of all the things that are holding you back from that journey, it's the most amazing journey you could possibly take.

It is filled with hope.

It is filled with joy.

It is filled with filled with inner healing for yourself.

It is filled with service to others.

32:27

It is.

It attracts other people that have similar goals in terms of service of life and love in the world.

It leads you to complete acceptance of life, the flow of life, the trust of life, and knowing that you and everyone else is going to be OK.

32:55

I love.

I love me.

I love all that is.

And from that place of love and acceptance, you know that the world is unfolding somehow, maybe beyond our understanding, with a sense of perfection, and that whatever this force is that is holding us is holding the world.

33:25

And we cannot fail.

Will wake from the and we'll all go home this force guide.

So it may synchronicities and miracles follow you around in the coming year.

33:55

May you get connected and know that you are held and if there's any way that I can help.

If something in your own knowing guides you to me, either to give me a message or to receive one or both, or you to something on my website, please reach out.

34:23

Do a discovery session with me.

Come to a workshop.

There is a belief change course on my website where you can learn how to change subconscious beliefs and get in more flow.

34:40

And the shadow work is also extremely good for letting go of those patterns that keep you in the old conditioned self.

And it includes working with those parts of you that is are resistant to the flow.

35:00

To get in touch with your inner rebel, to break out of the the Maya, the conditioned narrative of this world and follow a new path.

I'll put links in the show notes and if you feel that someone else could get some inspiration and insight from this or other podcasts on the site, please share.

35:34

Like this This podcast?

Make some comments and that will help others to maybe through synchronicity find me and through me or for me get some synchronicity and insight.

Close