Fortunately, there are ministers and other counselors who can help us on the path. We also have within us what the Vedas call the "upaguru" meaning "guru without form." In Ascended Master terminology, this is our Holy Christ Self, the inner voice that warns us, prompts us to do the right thing and teaches us through synchronistic experiences. How many times have we heard or said "I should have listened to my Holy Christ Self? When we don’t listen to our inner guru, things usually go wrong. When we become more attuned with our Holy Christ Self, we become more sensitive to his inner promptings and follow them. We also begin to experience life as a fascinating adventure in synchronicity.

Synchronicity is defined as the coincidence of a psychic state in the observer with corresponding (more or less simultaneous) external event.

M. Scott Peck wrote that synchronistic events "serve to nurture, support, protect, and enhance human life and spiritual growth."(110)

The essential characteristics of a synchronistic event are:

1. Something is in our consciousness.

2. Something happens concerning what’s on our mind.

3. The correspondence between the external event and the internal thought may be literal or figurative.

4. The external event may be distant in time and space in relation to the psychic state (as in telepathy, clairvoyance, etc.)

5. The inner mental state and external event are not causally related.

6. The event is meaningful and implies absolute knowledge that transcends the individual..

7. The event feels like a spiritual experience.

8. The content of the subjective-level interpretation must relect back on the issues of the individual.

THE FIVE BE-ATTITUDES OF FAITH

How can we evoke synchronistic experiences? First we need to cultivate the attitudes that encourage them, what I call the be-attitudes of FAITH: be Flexible, be Alert, be Intrepid, be Trusting, and be Humble.

Be Flexible - Discard any preconceptions about what you should do the moment a synchronistic event clues you otherwise. This may require that you be flexible enough to bend 180 degrees in the opposite direction. Obey immediately the inner promptings of your Holy Christ Self. When I was researching an article on musical scales, I thought that the interval of the golden ratio was a key interval. I was in a bookstore looking for a book on it when I bumped into an old friend. When he asked me what I was doing, I told him I was researching the golden ratio in music. He then told me that he was just thumbing through a book on the golden ratio and showed it to me. I didn't even bother looking at the table of contents before buying it since I saw this chance encounter as a synchronistic experience and I needed to read that book. The sections on the golden ratio in music didn't help me. However, while perusing other sections on patterns, including the tetraktys and magic square, I found that the intervals of a fourth and fifth were the key intervals. Had I stubbornly stuck to my original thesis of the golden ratio, I wouldn't have arrived at the divine scale in the article, The Word.

Be Alert - Maintain an expectancy or watchfulness so that you don’t miss the subtle clues about what you should do next. Any improbable event is a clue. Also look for repeated signs that you’re on the right track. The book in which I found the tetraktys and magic square is an example. In ancient times, synchronistic signs of confirmation and warning were called good and bad omens.

Be Intrepid - Don’t be scared when you encounter warning signs. Think of them not as bad omens but as opportunities to overcome karma. For an example, read my experience with crows in Adventures With the Word. How you interpret a synchronistic event determines its reality. If you interpret it fearfully, you will get a fearful outcome. Interpret it positively and you get a positive outcome.

Be Trusting - Acknowledge that the universe is out to help you, not to get you. The feeling that the universe is working against you must be replaced by a conviction that God wants what’s best for you and will bestow it if you ask for it. Gregg Braden, in the tape album, "Beyond Zero Point"(111) lists the five tenets of the Essenes. One of them is trust in the process of divine timing. That is, trust that God will cause you to miss that flight that crashes or that God will give you what you need at the right time. If an answer to a question is not immediately forthcoming, don’t despair. Jesus said, "Ask, and it shall be given you." Matt. 7:7. He didn't say that it would be given immediately. End each prayer with " I accept it done according to God's perfect will and timing."

Be Humble - the human intellect must come to the realization and admit that it not only doesn’t know the answers to the important questions of life, it doesn’t even know the right questions to ask. Start each day and face each new problem by asking your Holy Christ Self, "What is the question I need to ask now?" Einstein, who was just voted "person of the century" by Time magazine, had an I.Q. of 170. There are many people walking around with I.Q.s of 170 or greater. Why aren't they all Einsteins? What was it about Einstein that gave his genius its towering stature? Was it his upbringing or his education or his diet? Or was it the way he approached a problem? Einstein said "The important thing is to not stop questioning." He also said, "You cannot find the solution to a problem at the same level of intelligence with which you first approach it."(112) Scientists like Richard Hoagland and Dan Winter are difficult to read and listen to because they constantly question. They question their sources of information. They question their questions and the logic behind them. They take their readers and listeners down a tortuous path with many sidetrips in search of the right question and aren't necessarily concerned about finding an immediate answer. This can be a frustrating experience, but it is precisely the mental technique that separates an ordinary genius from an Einstein. But in order to do this, we have to admit, in true humility, that we don't even know the right question, let alone any answers. Few scientists can do this.

Webster’s New World Dictionary defines attitude first as "the position or posture assumed by the body in conjunction with an action feeling, mood, etc.[to kneel in an attitude of prayer]. After that it gives, "a manner of acting, feeling or thinking that shows one’s diposition, opinion, etc."(113) The attitude the body assumes is conducive to evoking the corresponding mental attitude. For example, it would be difficult to feel humble or convince anyone else of your humility when you’re standing ramrod straight, legs spread apart and arms akimbo. But, prostrating yourself before someone is very humbling and convincing. Thus, in order to cultivate the be-attitudes of FAITH we need to bend the knee before our Holy Christ Self, physically, not just mentally. In the next issue of Mandala of Light we will explore the body-attitude connection involved in hatha yoga therapy and chi kung (qigong) standing exercises.

We can start each day, or, if you’re like me and find peace and quiet only at 3:00 o’clock in the morning, prepare for the next day before going to bed, by spending a few minutes in meditation and prayer to put on the five be-attitudes of FAITH.

You can say the following prayer, or, better yet, compose your own. Just make sure it touches on the five be-attitudes.

"Beloved Holy Christ Self, I prostrate myself before you, my inner guru. I surrender all human intellectual pride, inflexibilty, disobedience, stubbornness, distrust, mental density, fear and doubt that would prevent me from following my path of individual Christhood this day. Show me what I need to ask for this day. I trust that you will give me what I need. Help me to see the clues you will send and the signs that I am on the right path. Help me to obey your promptings immediately. Give me courage to face any difficulties and overcome them. I thank thee and accept it done in full FAITH according to God's perfect will and timing. Amen!"

GRACE

I have experienced synchronistic events in the writing of nearly every article in Mandala of Light. How could this one be an exception? In reasearching another article I took the book "Mass Dreams of the Future" off my shelf and started thumbing through the pages. I found a slip of paper stuck between two pages. On one of the pages was a quote by M. Scott Peck on grace. The thought occurred to me that perhaps I should reread what Peck had to say about grace. Later that day, I was researching the internet for this article and came across a page on synchronicity that included several quotes by Peck on grace. This reinforced my thought to reread Peck but I didn't do anything till the next day. I was walking past my bookcase, when "The Road Less Traveled" jumped out at me. That is, it's bright yellow, red and white cover grabbed my attention. I grabbed it and started reading. After a few minutes, I realized that what Peck refers to as grace is the same as what I am trying to convey in this article.

Peck examines grace in a variety of phenomena: (1) Dreams, idles thoughts and Freudian slips that help us solve problems or make us conscious of problems; (2)Serendipity or highly unlikely beneficial events [such as my finding Peck's quotes]; and (3) miracles. He presents the paradox that grace seems to come both from within as in dreams and without as in synchronistic events and miracles. He solves the paradox by postulating the existence of a permeable membrane between the individual and other "entities". He writes, "Just as our conscious mind is continually partially permeable to our unconscious, so is our unconscious permeable to the 'mind' without, the 'mind' that permeates us yet is not us as entities."(114) Later on, Peck comes to the conclusion that God is so intimately associated with us "that he is part of us. If you want to know the closest place to look for grace, it is within yourself. If you desire wisdom greater than your own, you can find it inside you. What this suggests is that the interface between God and man is at least in part the interface between our unconscious and our conscious. To put it plainly, our unconscious is God... In my vision, the collective unconscious is God; the conscious is man as individual; and the personal unconscious is the interface between them... It is because our conscious self resists our unconscious wisdom that we become [mentally] ill... The ultimate goal of spiritual growth is for the individual to become as one with God... If... we can identify our mature free will with that of God, then God will have assumed through our conscious ego a new and potent life form. We will have become God's agent, his arm, so to speak, and therefore part of Him. And insofar as we might then through our conscious decisions be able to influence the world according to His will, our lives themselves will become the agents of God's grace. We ourselves will then have become one form of the grace of God, working on His behalf among mankind, creating love where love did not exist before, pulling our fellow creatures up to our own level of awareness, pushing the plane of human evolution forward."(115)

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