Synchronicity and Destiny

photo by Lon

When we see the Divine at work in our lives, it means we are on the Authentic Path of Life. Learn to accept that without trying to take control.

I was once the head chemist for the heating and cooling plants of a major university. I bought most of our water treatment products from a certain company which I had gotten to know over the previous three years. I knew their product line, personnel and manufacturing processes, and I had visited their laboratory and factory floor.

I reached a point of intense frustration with my job at the university, which also coincided with some critical turnover at the chemical company. The manager of the struggling company asked to meet me for lunch, which it turns out he considered to be a job interview. So I left my job at the university and went to work for the chemical company, rife with expectation and trepidation.

"this was not the first synchronicity in which my memory and awareness had not synched-up until the key synchronous events fell into place."

Here’s the synchronicity: On my first day on the job, as I was driving up to the laboratory from a particular direction, I paid close attention to the building exterior. I suddenly remembered having examined that building years before from that same vantage point when I had just started college.

At that time in my life I had been worried and fearful to the point of despair about what kind of career I might make for myself, and I had spent a lot of time asking for divine intervention. I passed the laboratory one afternoon on an errand. The laboratory sign unexpectedly caught my eye, and I suddenly thought what a sophisticated and stimulating job it could be to work there.

So I said something along the lines of, “God, I desperately want to work at some place like that. How about that place?”

Then I forgot all about it.

"I was . . . discomfited by the awareness that I was not at all in control of my life."

Several years later, the manager of the laboratory offered me a job.

Please pay attention here: somehow, in my recent visits to the lab, I had approached from a different street and did not pay attention to the building exterior. Furthermore, most of my dealings with this company were out in the field, not in their offices. I should also point out that this was not the first synchronicity in which my memory and awareness had not synched-up until the key synchronous events fell into place.

It freaked me out, remembering that prayer from my undergrad days. Freaked out is not the way you want to start a new job. But I stood there, a little jittery, at the side entrance of my new job. I was understandably enervated about the future, but also discomfited by the awareness that I was not at all in control of my life. I supposed I was conscious of personal destiny being played out.

Not so. At least not in the way that I understood destiny at the time. Whatever possibilities I supposed the synchronous event might have portended did not play out. The company meant well, but was being managed in such a way that I could not achieve my ambitions. Three years later, bewildered, I went back to my old boss, who had been a mentor to me, and shared about my continued frustration. I told him I would take whatever position he had open.

The next day, the chemist who had replaced me at the university—quit. So I went back to my original job. How's that for timing?

Here is my conundrum: Should I say that this story is an example of answered prayer? I can’t deny that interpretation. That’s the way I thought of it when I drove up to the building on my first day with the chemical company. What is problematic is the way the job played out.

As supernaturally as I had embarked on a new path, I had been supernaturally returned to the original path. Surely, God is not so fickle. The most bewildering thing to me was that there were forces at work which I could only think of as divine, and yet I ended up right where I had started.

The experience evoked so many unanswered questions:

• If I could be started on a path in a supernatural way, why could it not be supernaturally sustained?

• Miraculous forces were at work, so why was I not beneficiary of a miraculous outcome?

• How can destiny be at work without a divine destination?

• Since destination didn't prove to be the point of the experience, what had been the point?

"I want divine intervention, but I also want to be in charge."

I have some ideas:

I certainly learned a lot—about business, chemistry, sales and managing risk and failure. So I grew a bit, too. It occurs to me even now that I probably didn’t learn everything I needed to know about fear, or else I wouldn’t have gone back to the old job with all of its old problems. But I did become a different person with a lot more experience, and I managed things with more courage than before.

The ultimate results were good. Things did work out, though not according to my plan.

So maybe that is the lesson. I am not in charge. The experience made me aware of a subtle hypocrisy in my psyche: I want divine intervention, but I also want to be in charge. Ignoring the moral implications, that's just plain illogical and self-contradictory. If the Divine is involved, then the Divine, ontologically speaking, is in charge.

Sychronicities show us that we are on the right path and that we are participating in the Divine. I have decided that this state should be our highest ambition. It is the Authentic Path of Life.

The moment we get preoccupied with controlling circumstances to fulfill our ambitions or provide for our own security, we get off the Divine path.

The whole point of life is to be on the path.