Fourth Form of Madness

I believe that Carl Jung was onto something when he spoke of synchronicity.  The state where all things seem to repeat a theme or concept or idea all connected by a common meaning. The world seems to be singing out a message for you to sense and/or at least acknowledge.  I am sure we have all had many occurrences of synchronicity in our lives.  They remind us that there is much mystery to life that we need not understand to experience it. Oh the beautiful mystery.

It’s easy to forget the beautiful mystery that surrounds us or worse still feel like we need to explain it.  I have often felt myself get unusually agitated with myself and other people when I hear them having to give explanations for things that are unexplainable.  Recently when I was out to dinner with a friend, she started to explain enlightenment to me from a book she had read.  Unfortunately for her I had already had two daiquiris and was on fire for a debate.  I really should lock myself away in a cupboard when I am like that.  Instead, we were so engrossed in our somewhat heated discussion on my part that we missed the next two tapas dishes and our partners ate our share for us. Which I thought was ample proof that life is better to live than discuss, in the discussion you miss the good stuff.

The next day I mentioned the heated discussion with a Zen Priest I was meeting with for an introduction to Zen course.  I was troubled that I was so annoyed by my friend’s statement that she knew what enlightenment was now from reading a book.  Something he said turned out to be very enlightening to me 🙂 hee hee “People love to read things in a book and say “oh I get that and understand that now” it lets the ego feel great.  The ego says I understand it, I am smart, I am wonderful, I am better than so and so.  But everything remains the same. The sun still rises and sets, life goes on unaffected by the “new knowledge” gained”. It’s funny certain things that people say can just be said at the right time in your life.   For me, his words just turned my way at how I look at and live life and approached learning completely around.

Why did I start this piece with mentioning synchronicity because my whole path to Zen has been my most recent example of synchronicity in my life.  I have always got goose pimples up and down my arms when I would see Zen mentioned and I have no idea why.  At the beginning of the year, Zen just seemed to be everywhere, people around me were mentioning it in conversation, books I was reading would take wide diversions on the topic I was reading about to mention Zen, the whole world just seemed to be about Zen.  This prompted to me to remember that about 7 or 8 years ago when I was first starting my yoga journey I had also visited a Zen temple.  It was actually my husband’s suggestions, there was some sort of relationship between the martial art that he was doing and the Zen temple.  I went along and fell in love with the whole experience, my husband not so much but then he got hit with the Zen stick for not having a straight enough spine when sitting which I must admit still makes me smile 🙂  However, it’s best to court only one love at a time when first learning (until you realise they are pretty much the same love) and I was so head over heels with yoga that I didn’t want to do anything else that distracted my learning and experience of that love 🙂

Eight years on I looked up the same Zen priest and began another avenue of learning and experiencing of love.  Even though the world was singing to me to explore this path, it wasn’t until the last session of the introduction course that I was certain this was definitely a path worth exploring for me.  On this last day, I sat with my teacher in the temple and we chatted like normal about stuff.   Then he told me a story about the last Zen meditation “technique” he was going to teach me.  He spoke openly about spiritual crisis experienced by people when on certain paths and how one infamous fierce Zen teacher had devised this meditation technique he was going to teach me  in an effort to stop losing students.  By losing he meant dying.  Quite a number of people it turns out on spiritual paths experience quite literally spiritual melt downs and it kills them. You don’t see that in any modern day yoga brochures do you 🙂 I know this sounds funny but it was quite refreshing to speak about stuff of this nature so opening and matter-a-factly.  On the last count the fierce Zen teacher had lost ~ 160 students from this and their graves are still on the island that he used to teach on.

So with every cell in my body intrigued I sat on the edge of my meditation cushion waiting for him to teach me this method.  He began to speak and as he did the last biggest piece of synchronicity fell into my lap.  The method involves a much softer meditation than the usual styles of Zen.  It involves sitting and imaging a warm liquid start to spread from the crown of your head right down the entire outside of your body to your toes. Slow and warm the liquid oozes down the outside of your being, time and time again.  It really is a magical meditation.  The thing is quite a few years back, in the mist of time of great suffering in my life, I had been having a night of great doubt and fear.  I was not in a great place spiritually to say the least.  And then it spontaneously happened, as I lay there in the dark gripped by the greatest fears and sorrows that life has to offer, a warm liquid started to slowly ooze down from the top of my head to the tip of my toes and a feeling of complete serenity engulfed me.  Well complete serenity engulfed me only after I was able to let go of the fear that I was not having a stroke and trust in whatever was happening.  I never forgot that experience, it wasn’t rational, it wasn’t easily understandable, but it was real.  I asked a few people I knew that wouldn’t have me committed about the experience but none of them was able to explain it to me or offer any advice on what it was.  And here I sat many years later in front of the Zen priest, the Zen priest that was telling me  that it was just a meditation technique and in true Zen style – it was nothing more and nothing less 🙂  That was a great moment, I was totally blown over by the coincidences that occur in our lives and totally emerged in a beautiful unknowable mystery.

So as we live our days all connected and together in this mystery, it’s really healthy and harmonious to remember from time to time – that no body knows.  Not the true sense of knowing.  It’s a health check to come back to yourself and checkin with yourself and your experience of life and your ability to sit in the mystery of the gorgeous abyss we all find ourselves in.  And let the synchronicity of life lead the way and be your greatest guide.