You will Find Signs to Hope, Peace and Joy through Synchronicities and Coincidences. But first, you must pay attention and be aware of them. Otherwise, the Cosmos is talking and no one is listening.

“Bouquet” by Marilyn Wells, 24″ x 36″ oil and cold wax on wood panel

Dear Reader,

In preparing this article, a particular synchronous happening coincided with my writing and my creating the above abstract oil painting, which I will talk about below.

But first, I will tell you some stories to illustrate how to find your signs to hope, peace, and joy through paying attention to these in your life. Find Signs Through Synchronicities.

my spiritual mentor and friend on “find signs through synchronicities to hope, peace and joy”

Charlotte Tomaino, author of “Awakening the Brain” talks frequently about her own experiences of Synchronicity and Coincidence. “When the universe delivers…chance encounters, I typically feel the lights go on inside. There is something curious and fun that gets my interest. It feels like a yes! When you’re looking for an answer, a synchronistic event will often provide it if you’re awake to it coming to you.” pg 202.

Dr. Tomaino’s insightful book gives many instances of how such synchronicities come into one’s life and can be recognized, if you pay attention and are aware of the “feeling” states in your own body.

One series of such synchronistic experiences turned into a wonderful trip to India for herself, with a friend, that came about quite unexpectedly, with all things falling into place around it, serendipitously.

This trip included a month long retreat at the Oneness University, a remarkable site of meditation and miracles in India. She was able to participate in their enlightening and renewing teachings because of these series of synchronicities (and that she paid attention to them!) that made the journey possible, “by Grace”, for her.

“Such intuitive and synchronistic experiences are available to everyone if they want to pay attention to…very subtle distinctions in our experience, and we must learn to recognize them.” pg. 242-244.

Check out the book, and you will even better understand my stories that follow.

i find signs to hope, peace and joy through synchronicities in my own life

When I was considering what I wanted to write for you here, I found myself thinking about which synchronicities in my life I wanted to share with you. I had trouble, because the more I thought about it, the more I began to understand that almost everything major that has changed the course of my life has been a synchronicity!

I was a young girl, barely 18 and just graduated High School in Nebraska. Finding work as a typist and stenographer using a dictaphone with an insurance company in Lincoln, the capitol of the state was my job. I was barely earning $100 a month and could only afford a rented, one-bedroom sleeping arrangement, with kitchen privileges (if I didn’t put paper-bagged food in the Frigidare, which took up too much cold) in Mrs. Berry’s home. Suffice it to say, my dreams of being an artist and getting higher education were vanishing.

how did i do it?

One morning, standing beside the ticking clock on her buffet dresser in the dining room, while I waited to leave the house to catch the bus at the corner, I happened to pick up “The Upper Room” booklet lying beside the clock.

The reading for the day always had a little verse of scripture with it. The inspirational message told me that I had to find a way to make my life become something of the dreams I had, and that I must do it before it was too late and I lived the rest of my life with regret that I hadn’t found a way.

I took this little story to heart and began in earnest to find my way out of my limited-means situation. I have been working on it to this day and have achieved what I dreamed of and so much more by pursuing the dream against all odds, and finding my own paths. Synchronicity and coincidence changed my life that day.

another of my stories – find signs through synchronicities to hope, peace and joy

Later, after I made it through my first college degree and found a teaching position in Canada, I met my future husband. Oddly too, this was foretold to me by a Ukraninan fortune teller and reader of tea leaves. He and I were both from the same city in America, never met before until in Canada, at a small teachers’ induction ceremony, we met in the little county town where we were hired into.

That I should have been in a certain place at a certain time and met a special person has rarely seemed a “mere coincidence”. He and I, both from Colorado, did not know each other previously – coincided to be at that small town in that room together, meeting, talking, and eventually marrying. No small happening, and I believe a direction of my life intended by the Universe.

After a brief courtship, we married on Leap Day in that county, and after the evening ceremony with only a church pastor, his wife, and my good friend, Elaine, standing up with us, we went for dinner at a local café in the tiny town where the wedding took place. How does one have fried oysters in such an unlikely place at such a time in a small provincial town? But we did. And one of my oysters contained a small pearl.

I took the pearl as a happy sign for the marriage, and carried it for many years in a Lourdes souvenir casing I found, by coincidence, at a wayside park. Somehow the casing and the pearl disappeared after about 10 years, and just as the marriage was experiencing difficulties. The pearl carried the fortune of my early married life, never to be seen again. A synchronicity, a coincidence that gave me hope, until it was time for another passage in life.

my brother finds signs to hope, peace and joy through a synchronicity

I have been hesitant about the new abstracts I just recently began to paint. An experience with my brother just a week ago has greatly encouraged me to show these and to paint more.

My brother is having some memory loss deficits, which are a great concern for the family, himself, and all of us. No one wants to experience this condition in a family member. He has considerable difficulty remembering pertinent details of his daily life and recent histories. In my understanding, this points to something I’m just learning more about from Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor’s latest book, “Whole Brain Living” (more on this subject later). It strikes me as “linear thinking ability” loss, which had previously been most of the pattern of skill his entire life. Upper left brain hemisphere capacity.

how he did find signs to joy through the synchronicity of paintings

However, I had him over to my home for a visit. When he encountered the abstracts I placed here and there to study in my living room, he was not only enthralled, but very articulate in his description and discussion about what he “liked” about the paintings, when I asked him.

I began to see that he was genuinely “enjoying” the colors and shapes that had no or very little linear content. At my questioning him, how surprising (he’s mostly a Currier & Ives guy) it was to see how taken with these particular images he was.

“The colors are exuberant, luxurious, the details compelling”. “The darks keep drawing me in”.

He said he could gaze at my paintings, any of them, for hours.

Speaking of a forest in the foreground of the painting below, he said that most were undefinable. He just reveled in the color, the shapes, and the intricacies as they showed up – with no literal content.

what then?

I left the room for a moment and returned. He was making notes and writing down the titles. (He keeps notes so he can think from his notes later, he says.) “A bit more from the titles rather than just #s 1, 2 and 3″, (which is how I titled them at that point), please.”

He didn’t get the feminine from them, though I told him that was their origin. I talked to him about the qualities of the feminine I thought should show, but he wasn’t seeing it. I realized what he was seeing was not the label or name I was giving the painting, but he was actually seeing the painting, a fresh and important Zen concept of the importance of being present in the moment.

how did he do it?

Monet quote: “To see, we must forget the name of the thing we are looking at.”

How intriguing his totally unschooled reactions and comments – very from heart, soul and gut, which is how art should be. More importantly, the reactions I heard registered to me as coming from the upper right quadrant of his brain, which Dr. Taylor refers to as the Bliss Center, the Oneness Center, the Infinite All Expression.

“Origins of the Feminine Divine #1” – abstract oil painting by Marilyn Wells – $1320.00

how this synchronicity for me was to find a sign to hope, peace and joy

As I reflected on this over the following week, I realized this was the spontaneous gift of synchronicity for me. Should I pursue the abstract paintings as an independent series? I am now very intrigued about what happens when others respond to abstract art. Do they do it from a purely unschooled, unlearned freshness?

Can one have a moment of purely language-less perception? Can this be perceiving of Bliss, Joy, the state we call Enlightenment? If so, works of abstraction – let’s cultivate as sacred images. Let’s see them having potential to reveal the dimension of living at a higher level of evolution. Especially as more and more people are experiencing the dissatisfaction of our linear, digital era of data overwhelm and stress. If one studies the trends of both current abstract art forms and contemporary stress, one can see the correlation indeed.

carl jung on find signs through synchronicities

Carl Jung is well known. His early writings, as a psychiatrist, are on the nature of “Synchronicities” and “Coincidences”. These come to all of you who are observant and notice them.

Nowadays, linear thinking scientists sometimes differ with the intuitive knowledge of many of us that Synchronicities portend within them “meaning”. That being noted, we also know it behooves us to ask this. “What is the meaning of this?” when something strikingly synchronistic comes to us. 

Synchronicity was first defined by Carl Jung in the 1920s and explored throughout his career. It has been subsequently studied by physicists such as Wolfgang Pauli, parapsychologists, psychoanalysts and Jungian scholars.

What is the difference between coincidence and synchronicity?

Coincidence and synchronicity are related but distinct terms. The term “coincidence” describes a seemingly related series of events that occur without apparent cause. The term “synchronicity” requires that the individual ascribe deeper meaning to the coincidence. Indeed, Carl Jung described synchronicity as “meaningful coincidences.” 

Nowadays, linear thinking scientists would sometimes differ with the intuitive knowledge of many of us that Synchronicities portend within them “meaning”. However, that being noted, we also know it behooves us to ask something anyhow. What is the “meaning of this?” when something strikingly synchronistic comes to us.

find signs through synchronicities – what about the journals?

Some of you will recall I promised something. That my article on Using Notebooks and Sketchbooks to Find Your Signs to Hope, Peace and Joy would be next. However, I got excited recording these synchronicities and coincidences as signs for you. The Journal topic must wait until next week! Join me then, and if you like, remember to read my previous blogs on this topic. I will get about 15 blogs, which are all in my notes and in Scrivener right now. I will be publishing these as a book and journal, which I want you all to have.

Many Blessings on your own Path to Find Signs Through Synchronicities to Hope, Peace and Joy.

Marilyn