(The Angel of Death Descends… a page from the Falnama )
Before we begin…do you believe in synchronicity?
I ask because the synchronicity surrounding the fiction piece I’m writing is OUT OF CONTROL right now! The book “The Adventures of Isabelle” (working title) is an epic fairy tale about a half mortal half g*ddess princess and, of course, her wild adventures. I really had no intentions of writing fiction, it just happened (which is a part of the synchronicity I’m talking about) and I’m having so much fun with it. Even though the work is fiction it involves research. I’m drawing from myths from all over the world so the research mainly centers on this as well as a bit of pirate lore (more on that later). I realized yesterday that I’m engaging in a sort of organic research process that relies on synchronicity. It’s almost like magic. When I need a bit of information it seems to drop out of the sky. If I try to force it, it does not work but when I follow my instincts the things that make a strong impression on me seem to belong in the story.
Example: Yesterday I went on a mission to see Falnama: The Book of Omens at the Sackler Gallery (near the Smithsonian Castle). I had seen the poster in the metro underground and knew I needed to learn about it. After visiting some clients across the street at the Dept of Energy I had time to go. I was looking around wondering what I was supposed to see. I expected some huge revelation, some character info or a plot point, but nothing was jumping out at me and frankly I was not really feeling the exhibit. I was a bit irritated, then I realized that I was forcing it. I had an expectation about how it was supposed to go and that was wrong. That’s when I realized that my research was more organic than that and that only if something struck me was I to use it. And a few things did stand out so perhaps that was all I was supposed to get from that exhibit. I discovered something else really powerful on the way to the museum shop (a statue of one of 64 Yoginis) and once in the shop (a poem by Rumi that exactly echoed something I had read the night before about dying in Deepak Chopra’s Book of Secrets). So I realized that even though I went there with a certain expectation, what was to be revealed to me was different than what I expected. That’s when it struck me that I was engaged in synchronistic research and how cool, easy and fun it is…so much more fun than forcing it.
Then the wildest thing happened that night when I was back at home writing. I needed some information on a G*ddess so I went to my 240 pg coffee table book called, what else Goddess and was flipping through it. On the third page that I opened (p. 142) I saw a black speck between the pages. At first I thought it was a piece of lint but on closer inspection saw that it was a tiny baby spider crawling on the pages. I wondered what he could be doing there since he would have had to survive between the pages of this heavy book. I just blew him off then re-focused on the page that I had opened to. That’s when I saw the title…Athena and Arachne.
What does all of this mean? It’s hard to describe, but for me it means that I can let go and follow my instincts and that what comes to me is what is supposed to come to me.
Do you have experiences like these and if so what do you make of them? Drop me a line and let me know.
(first posted 1.20.10)
