Serendipity & Shoe Shopping (Part 2)
We all have stories of interesting “coincidences” or events that play out in a serendipitous way. Usually, when these things happen, people think of them as either pure luck or mysterious workings of the universe. But either way, most people don’t think of them has having anything to do with their own creative power or thoughts. It’s interesting that even the definitions of the words have evolved to convey arbitrariness about it:
Serendipity: 1. making desirable discoveries by accident. 2. good fortune; luck. Coincidence: 1. an occurrence of events apparently by mere chance.
However, the root of ‘coincidence’ stems from the mathematical term coincide:to correspond exactly. There is nothing accidental or arbitrary about that in math. On the contrary, it is quite intentional. And maybe our instances of coincidence or serendipity are not merely good luck, but intentional responses or consequences from our own thoughts or actions. And maybe we ought to pay more attention to them when they happen so we can learn to make them happen again.
That’s what I wondered after I read Rhonda Byrnes’ example of her “manifesting” the skirt from Paris. Was it a coincidence or did her desire for the skirt cause it to materialize, as she concluded. There are many ‘new thought’ teachers now talking about how our thoughts can cause things to happen, so I found myself reevaluating how I got my shoes.
Coincidences are Not By Chance
I realized how much I had been thinking about them over those months, and how those thoughts were all positive about how good the shoes would look with so many things (and not negative, for example, thinking about how expensive they were). Then I really thought about how unlikely it was that I was able to receive, nearly a year later, that exact pair of shoes in the exact size that would fit me, and I realized that it had to be so much more than a lucky accident, more than serendipity.
Because my recent experience with this involved something seemingly trivial and inconsequential as shoe shopping, I nearly overlooked the message it held for me. It had to be an intentional coincidence, in the mathematical sense. Too many things had to “correspond exactly” to make that happen.
Maybe my thoughts about the shoes did cause them to manifest for me. Which then leads to me to wonder how I made that happen and what I can do to make it happen for other things, things more important to me than shoes.
Positive Thinking Only
The first step to manifest anything is to think ONLY positive thoughts about it. But most of us think positive thoughts in the beginning and then, when it hasn’t manifested in a timely manner, start thinking about the lack of it, and wondering why we don’t have it yet. We think about how much better our life would be with it, which focuses us on lack and negativity. I realized that I hadn’t done this with the shoes because they weren’t that important to me. It would be nice if I had them, but I wasn’t attached to the outcome. That’s another key to manifesting.
Desire Without Attachment
I also realized the significance of desiring a manifestation without attaching yourself to it. This is something I’ve heard from many teachers like Wayne Dyer, Abraham Hicks, Eckhart Tolle, but it’s hard to understand how to desire something with enough emotion to make it manifest without also being emotionally invested in seeing that it manifests. This seems like a dichotomy, a contradiction and seems difficult to practice in reality. While pondering the shoe manifestation, I listened to a discussion on The Manifestation Question by Eckhart Tolle. He explained that
in order to manifest, you must take action without losing yourself in the doing, without attaching yourself to the outcome. If you get upset by obstacles, it is because your ego is involved. If you can approach the obstacles with stillness, that will dissolve them or show you a way around them.
The shoes showed me how to do that. Although I felt strong positive emotions about the shoes, I wasn’t upset that I didn’t have them. I just kept looking for another, similar shoe to achieve the same result. That was easy to do because it was only about shoes. But now I’m thinking that if I can manifest the shoes, what else might I be able to manifest if I can apply these same thinking strategies.
Learn From Your Coincidences!
Maybe we are all manifesting things like this all the time, things we don’t even notice because they aren’t big wishes or life goals or new jobs. Maybe coincidences are not chance at all. Maybe when things coincide exactly in unexpected ways, we ought to pay attention so we can learn how to be the genius creators we are all meant to be!
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