How to choose the future we want
There is no “time”
Did you know that it takes eight minutes for light to reach us from the Sun? Did you also know for light itself, that's not exactly true? For light, there is no before or after.
There is no time. There is no travel.
Instead, there is a script, there is a plot, there is a story.
The path of the light is "happening all at once,” not in separate steps but in one gigantic leap.
I published research to this effect on the last day of 2020 in the journal Quantum Reports, and using that model, I suggest that we think of time like a filmstrip. Think about the trajectory you are on. What is the final scene of that movie? What momentum does the plot have?
When I speak of choice, I specifically mean asking “What feelings do I choose to engage with? What inner experience do I feed? How do I choose what to feel in each moment?” It is these choices at a granular level which influence what outward choices we make at work, in relationship, and with ourselves. Further down the road, these choices lead to synchronicities which move our life forward in one way or another. We experience those very things which serve the unfolding plot of our inner dream.
Can we connect all the dots? The word “science” comes from the Latin root “scindere,” meaning “to divide.” Science is premised on slicing things apart to study them. The research I do provides an alternative to this: can we know more about things as a whole?
Seeing our own filters
We all have a tendency to filter things down according to our own biases and filters. This is a way we take the whole of information and we distill it down to what we can understand. But is our understanding correct? Do we have a clear sense of what someone really means when they give us constructive feedback? Do we have an accurate understanding of what another person really wants from our collaboration together?
Our preferences, our preconceived ideas, and our beliefs about each situation determine what we can hear and what we can’t hear. Healing and forward progress are premised on being able to drop our mental frameworks temporarily and hear more fully what is being said. From our current level of understanding, there may be some dynamics going on in our own individual lives that we can’t even recognize, much less change. For instance, we may not yet understand that the way we are engaging at work is strongly influenced by the way we were treated when we were younger. We may not see the strategies we learned to survive emotionally that are getting in the way of understanding our current work dynamics.
What if the world is programmed to give us the information we need to know, when we need to know it, to help us bridge this gap? Synchronicity is a tool we can use to learn where we are “killing it” and where we are “missing it.” This is an invitation to recognize the situations you experience as the perfect teachers.
Honor every experience as a synchronicity, and ask of it “What do I need to learn about myself and my framework from this experience?”
Who do you react to?
What situations continually cause you grief?
The more you are able to do this, the more a passage can open through the murky waters of emotional misunderstandings. You more readily see ways to resolve sticky issues you face.
Which story do you tell?
Time is like a filmstrip, or many possible filmstrips actually, each of which tells a different story. How do you chisel away at this monolith of possibility and choose the future you actually want? Which story do you tell? Which dream do you dream?
Synchronicity is nature’s way of giving us feedback so we can choose the future that aligns with who we wish to be. We can use it to deconstruct our habits and install more conscious ways of responding to the world. In the process, we can experience more joy, more connection, and a relief from habitual stress.