THE MOST POWERFUL tool we have for learning to live synchrodestiny, to see the connective patterns of the universe, to make miracles out of our desires, is meditation. Meditation allows us to place our attention and intention in these more subtle planes, giving us access to all that unseen, untapped information and energy.
If your doctor gave you a prescription to walk for twenty minutes twice a day, and told you that those walks alone would lead to good health, peace of mind, freedom from worry, increased success in your personal and professional life, would you follow her recommendation? Most people would at least give it a try. The synchrodestiny prescription is to meditate for fifteen to twenty minutes twice a day, followed by a moment of extending an invitation to your archetypes (as described in the previous chapter). If you do that twice a day, you’ll start to see a transformation in your life. Beyond that, conduct yourself just as you always have before. Meditate in the morning, live the rest of your day, and then meditate again in the evening. That alone will start you on the road to transforming your life and creating the miracles you want.
Everything that you have read in this book has been preparation for the actual practice of meditation that will lead you to enlightenment and living synchrodestiny. That background isn’t necessary; it’s just fun. If everyone needed to understand quantum physics to get enlightened, then only quantum physicists would attain enlightenment. As it happens, the great pioneers of quantum physics also advanced the cause of spirit by questioning the deeper meaning of life. Some of these remarkable scientists include Wolfgang Pauli, who along with Carl Jung first spoke about synchronicity. Erwin Schrodinger, Paul Dirac, Werner Heisenberg, Max Planck, David Bohm, and John Wheeler are others who felt that quantum physics could never be understood unless we included consciousness as a primary component of fundamental reality. But you don’t need to understand religion, or philosophy, or science to access spirit. All you need to do is pay attention to the following instructions.
Meditation is a simple process that is difficult to describe, but is very easy to do once you begin to practice it regularly. Here I will present the basics of meditation so that you can successfully apply the principles of synchrodestiny described in the rest of the book.
Our minds are constantly active, always jumping from thought to thought, emotion to emotion. Getting in touch with the nonlocal intelligence, the universal soul that lies within us and is part of us all, requires finding a way past the fog of distracting thoughts that typically hide it from us. We cannot fight our way through that barrier any more than we can fight our way through a real fog. If you want to see across the street on a foggy day, nothing you can do physically will help. You must wait, patiently and calmly, for the fog to thin and lift on its own. Once in a while, a clear patch will emerge, and you can glimpse what lies ahead. The same is true of thoughts. If we are quiet, we encounter moments of pure silence—I call them thought “gaps”—and through these gaps we can glimpse the deeper level of the soul. Each glimpse increases our understanding, and eventually our consciousness becomes expanded.
The purpose of meditation is to stop thinking for a time, wait for the fog of thought to thin, and glimpse the spirit within. Controlling the flood of thoughts is very difficult for most people. Beginners can sometimes become very frustrated, but frustration is just another thought, another emotion that gets in the way. The goal is to release all thoughts, quietly, passively.
A common way to begin meditation is to gently focus on one thing so that it becomes more difficult for stray thoughts to enter your mind. I like to start with a breathing meditation.
To begin meditation, find a comfortable position. Sit in a comfortable chair, with your feet flat on the ground. Place your hands in your lap with the palms facing upward. Close your eyes and begin witnessing your breath. Observe the inflow and outflow of your breath without attempting to control it in any way. You may find that your breathing spontaneously gets faster or slower, deeper or shallower, and may even pause for a time. Observe the changes without resistance or anticipation. Whenever your attention drifts away from your breath to a sound in the environment, or a sensation in your body, or a thought in your mind, gently return your awareness to your breathing.
This is the basic meditation. Once a person becomes comfortable with simply sitting quietly and focusing on breathing, I recommend adding a mantra, which creates a mental environment that will allow you to expand your consciousness.
The word mantra has two components to it: man, which is the root sound of the word mind, and tra, which is the root sound of the word instrument. So, the word mantra literally means an instrument of the mind. The ancient wisdom tradition of Vedanta examined the various sounds produced in nature, the fundamental vibrations of the world around us. According to Vedanta, these sounds are an expression of the infinite or cosmic mind, and provide the basis for every human language. For example, if you sound out all the letters of the alphabet, the vowels and the consonants, you’ll hear that these are the same sounds that all babies make spontaneously. These sounds also contain the same vibrations that animals make. And if you listen carefully, you’ll notice that these sounds are everywhere in nature. These are the sounds of the wind, of fire crackling, of thunder, of the river rushing by, of ocean waves crashing on the shore. Nature is vibration. The infinite being vibrates, and that vibration is rhythmic, musical, and primordial. Vibration is the means through which infinite potential expresses itself as the manifest universe.
We know that the manifest universe—which appears to be made up of solid objects—is actually made up of vibrations, with different objects vibrating at different frequencies. Of course, if I kick a large rock, I don’t feel vibration. I feel pain. But the fact is that the foot that feels the pain and the brain that records the pain are also vibration. Vibration interacts with vibration, and we interpret that as matter and sensation. Mantra is just a word that describes this quality of the universe.
The ancient seers are said to have heard these vibrations of the universe when they were in deep meditation. We can all hear these same vibrations any time. It is very simple. If you quiet your mind and sit silently, you will hear vibrations. You can try it any time you want. Even when you cover your ears, you’ll hear them. Your body is also constantly vibrating, but the sounds are so subtle that you usually don’t hear them. But if you sit quietly when there is no noise around you, you’ll hear a background hum in the air. And if you start paying attention to that background hum, with practice you’ll actually end up hearing all the mantras that have been recorded in the Vedic literature.
The Vedas also maintain that if you recite a mantra out loud, its special pattern of vibrations creates its own effects, and can create events in our current physical realm. Reciting the mantra mentally creates a mental vibration, which then becomes more abstract. Ultimately it takes you into the field of pure consciousness or spirit from where the vibration arose. So a mantra is a very good way to transcend and go back to the source of thought, which is pure consciousness. This is why specific mantras are recommended—because of the specific vibrations they induce.
The mantra I use, and that I recommend for achieving synchrodestiny, is the simple mantra “so-hum.” This is the mantra of the breath; if you observe your breathing you’ll hear “so-hum” as air moves in and out of your lungs. As you inhale, the sound of that vibration is “so.” And as you exhale, the sound becomes “hum.” If you want, you can experiment with this. Inhale deeply, close your eyes and your mouth, and exhale forcefully through your nose. If you concentrate, you’ll hear the “hum” sound quite clearly.
One of the techniques of meditation is, in fact, simply focusing on where your breath comes from. With your eyes closed, inhale and think the word “so”; on the exhale, think the word “hum.” Gradually both the breath and the sound will become quieter and quieter and quieter, and the breath becomes so quiet that it almost seems to stop. By quieting your breath, you quiet your mind. When you transcend, the mantra “so-hum” entirely disappears, and your breath pauses momentarily. Time itself comes to a stop and you’re in the field of pure consciousness, the nonlocal domain, spirit, the ground of being.
The mantra, then, is a way to experience nonlocal consciousness. Aborigines, Indians, Native Americans, and many other traditional cultures have used it for thousands of years. In every tradition mantras involve chanting to create special vibrations, sounds of the universe that create something from nothingness, that move energy from the unmanifest into the manifest.
The sutra is a mantra that has meaning. The mantra itself has no meaning. It’s just a vibration, a sound. It becomes a sutra when there’s an intention coded in the sound. The word sutra is a Sanskrit word, related to the Latin noun sutura, which is the base of the English word suture, meaning “to join together by sewing.” So a sutra is actually a stitch on the soul, and the stitch is one of intention. Both mantras and sutras allow you to transcend to a deeper consciousness. Therefore you could use the “so-hum” mantra, for example, to transcend. Then you could use an actual word, a sutra, to embed a particular intention into your consciousness.
The messages in a sutra are simple and complex at the same time. If I say the sutra “aham brahmasmi” (“the core of my being is the ultimate reality, the root and ground of the universe, the source of all that exists”), it might take a whole day, or half a book, to explain and understand that one sentence. Yet the sutra contains the complete understanding of that complex thought. So this sutra, these two words, summarizes the whole understanding. By simply putting your attention on this sutra, you will experience and understand the entire explanation contained within it.
There are mantras and sutras that have been used successfully for thousands of years, and you will find them in the chapters that follow. They provide a path to synchrodestiny. Although the Sanskrit words that embody those sutras may sound foreign to you, that doesn’t diminish their effectiveness. You do not even have to understand the meanings of the sutras in order for them to work. Remember, these are the sounds of nature, with meaning attached. The soul will understand their meaning even if you do not.
Why do we use these ancient words as our mantras and sutras instead of more modern language? The answer has to do with potency. Using newer mantras and sutras only makes the process of experiencing synchronicity more difficult. Consider that there are many ways for me to go from my home to my office. I can take the highway. I can follow a road map or a contour map. I can take a helicopter. I can go to the coast and take a ship. But if I take a path that’s well trodden, one that is familiar and that I’ve taken many times, then the journey is easier. Similarly, mantras and sutras that have been used for thousands of years by millions of people over generations provide the easiest route to transcendence and to the nonlocal domain.
But there’s an additional value in using something that’s been used many times before for a particular purpose. Every time a mantra or sutra is used, it helps increase the probability that a similar outcome will result from a later usage of the same mantra or sutra. If you recall the discussion of the wave-particle in Chapter 1, you’ll remember that every time a wave-particle collapses as a particular wave pattern, it increases the likelihood that it will collapse as that same pattern of wave again in the future. Sutras are actually intentions that increase the statistical likelihood of the collapse of a wave function along predictable probability amplitudes. This means that the more a sutra is used, the greater the likelihood that its chosen intention will be fulfilled. Therefore it is better to use an old, well-used sutra than a new sutra. Try not to be put off by the use of Sanskrit, but welcome the ancient words as allies in your search for the transcendence that leads to synchrodestiny.
The following chapters describe the seven Principles of Synchrodestiny and provide exercises to strengthen your understanding of them. These seven principles are ways of thinking about the qualities of nonlocal intelligence and relating them to your life. Each principle offers a new lesson, a new way of relating that brings you closer to spirit, with its infinite possibilities.
Here is the program for achieving synchrodestiny, a specific way to use all the elements I’ve discussed so far:
Each principle has a sutra that encapsulates the teachings of the principle. Thoroughly understand the meaning of the sutra. Perform the exercises associated with the sutra until they have become part of your reality. After many weeks, you will be able to read the sutra alone and gain the benefit of the entire chapter. Ideally, you will continue this program every day, with each week, each month bringing you closer to fulfilling your life’s destiny.
These first four steps should take no longer than twenty or thirty minutes. Repeat the process at night.
For the rest of the day, you do not need to do anything special. Just live your life the way you normally would. The morning meditation focuses your intention for the day, even when you are not even thinking about it. By reading the principle, you create that intention, and then allow nonlocal intelligence to synchronize all the millions of individual events that need to occur to have the intention be fulfilled. That’s all you need to do.
Although intention works on its own through synchronicity organized by nonlocal intelligence, synchronicity can become blocked by the ego. How can you tell when your ego is getting in the way of your dreams? There are many clues, but the most important is anxiety. Whenever your self or your spirit is overshadowed by your self-image or your ego, you feel anxiety. Your true, core self does not feel stress or anxiety. A person who is centered does not feel stress or anxiety. These feelings are a signal that your intimate connection to the nonlocal entity is blocked. For many people, this happens all too often. The way to break through this obstacle, and to regain the focus you lost by feeling stressed, or anxious, is through a process I call heliotropism.
Heliotropism is the natural mechanism in plants that allows them to always grow in the direction of light. By extension, I believe that your thoughts, your intentions, are the equivalent of that light, and the world itself grows in a direction to meet those intentions. Use the Sutra Statements at the end of each of the following seven chapters whenever you feel stressed, anxious, or lose your center during the day. Each day, simply turn to the Sutra Statement for that day. (You might find it helpful to photocopy these statements and carry them with you so you can use them when needed to reestablish your sense of self.) Read the first statement silently and allow an image to come to your consciousness. As soon as you register the image, say the sutra for that day (as included in the exercises). Do the same for each of that day’s statements. As soon as you finish all the statements, which will take only about a minute or so, you should feel centered once again.
At the end of each chapter you will find one or more exercises designed to help illustrate the principles and guide you to a deeper understanding of the sutras. These are not part of the daily meditation, but a supplement. Try them whenever you feel you would like to take that extra step toward understanding the Principles of Synchrodestiny.
In the end, that’s really all you need in order to reach the place where synchrodestiny happens—the seven principles, the seven sutras, your archetypes, an ability to meditate using the “so-hum” mantra, and the Sutra Statements to read when you feel yourself beginning to lose your center. In your hands these are the tools that make miracles happen.