The following has been excerpted from Sidewalk Oracles by Robert Moss, which provides an introduction to the magic of kairomancy and how it applies to daily life.
Synchronicity is when the universe gets personal. Navigating by synchronicity is the dreamer’s way of operating 24/7. Though the word synchronicity is a modern invention—Jung made it up because he noticed that people have a hard time talking about coincidence—the phenomenon has been recognized, and highly valued, from the most ancient times. The Greek philosopher Heraclitus maintained that the deepest order in our experienced universe is the effect of “a child playing with game pieces” in another reality. As the game pieces fall, we notice the reverberations, in the play of coincidence.
When we pay attention, we find that we are given signs by the world around us every day. Like a street sign, a synchronistic event may seem to say Stop or Go, Dead End or Fast Lane. Beyond these signs, we find ourselves moving in a field of symbolic resonance that not only reflects back our inner themes and preoccupations, but provides confirmation or course correction. A symbol is more than a sign: it brings together what we know with what we do not yet know.
Through the weaving of synchronicity, we are brought awake and alive to a hidden order of events, to the understory of our world and our lives. As in the scene in the movie The Matrix when the black cat crosses the room in the same way twice, riffs of coincidence (for which I have coined the term reincidence) can teach us that consensual reality may be far less solid than we supposed.
This book provides roadside assistance for the conscious traveller in the dream of waking life. We will learn how the world is speaking to us in many voices through signs and symbols and synchronicity, and how we can bring from these many voices guidance, joy, and a deeper sense of what it is all about. This is a book of practice rather than theory, and I will follow the Gryphon’s advice from Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland:
“Explain all that,” said the Mock Turtle.
“No, no! The adventures first,” said the Gryphon in an impatient tone: “explanations take such a dreadful time.”
Adventures are more fun than explanations, and a story is our easiest way to get to the truth of a matter and to carry that truth. I will start with personal stories because I agree with Mark Twain when he says, “I do not wish to hear about the moon from someone who has not been there.” These stories are not about traveling to the moon (I have written about that in other books), but about encounters with a deeper reality in quite ordinary places: a pub, a gritty urban street, and a backyard.
You do not need to travel far to encounter powers of the deeper world or to hear oracles speak. You are at the center of the multi-dimensional universe right now. The doors to the Otherworld open from wherever you are, and the traffic moves both ways.
A seat in the fox’s pub
The fox had put his name on the pub, which should have clued me in to the possibility that stopping here for a beer and a bite might be more than a routine affair. The Firkin and Fox. Thoroughly English sounding, but used on the American side of the big pond for a chain of airport restaurants that do not have English ales on tap, and where you probably will not find meat pies or bangers on the menu. It was the only sit-down place with alcohol available that seemed to be open on that long concourse at Washington’s Dulles airport, so I was ready to take the best I could get.
There was already a tilt to my day, that shift away from the sense that the world is solid or fixed that comes when your plans have been screwed up and you are traveling on a completely different itinerary from the one you had had signed, sealed, and emailed. I had discovered in the early hours that the first flight in a long journey had been cancelled. I had to wait only 20 minutes in a phone queue before a helpful agent rebooked me. I was now traveling via Dulles instead of Newark. So be it. Such changes in plans bring a Trickster energy into play. If you can avoid type-A personality disorder and are not allergic to surprises, you may find things and people coming together in unusual ways, giving you, at the least, the gift of a fresh story.
However, it did not seem that the Firkin and Fox was going to be part of my story. The place was jam-packed.
I was moving on when a woman started disentangling herself from her seat at the bar. The young man next to her reached down to help her with her bags. As she came toward me, I moved to take her seat.
“Your timing is exquisite,” I thanked her.
“You are going to enjoy that young man,” was her unlikely response.
The young man at the bar was behaving oddly, hopping back and forth between the now vacant seat and the one he had been sitting on. He finally decided I could have his previous seat. Clearly, there was going to be some kind of engagement here. His baby-blue eyes floated up out of a pale and desperate face.
He declared, “I know you are an elder. I have been asking for an elder to help me.”
He asked me to guess his age. I did, and got it right. Twenty-two. Now he was almost beseeching. “What can you tell me about life?”
“Never leave home without your sense of humour.”
“I know. But I get so intense, so aggressive. Like, if someone bumps the back of my seat”—he thumped on the back of my seat to make his point—“I want to get up and get in that guy’s face.”
He hit the back of my seat a second time, but I did not lose my beer or my patience. “I’ll tell you something else I have learned about life,” I said carefully. “We always have the freedom to choose our attitude.”
He stopped banging the back of my seat. “Oh my God, you’re right. It’s amazing you just sit down next to me and say that.”
He pushed his face close to mine as if he needed to be petted. He reminded me of someone. Who was it? Got it. He resembled Sméagol in The Lord of the Rings, in his gentler, beseeching mode. The absence of hair on his head was the least notable point of resemblance.
He spoke of how he was headed for San Francisco, to make some new life. He knew nobody in the Bay Area. I assured him he would make friends soon enough, and gave him a few suggestions about the city.
He wanted something more from me I could not yet fathom.
As he went on talking, questioning, I began to sense the shape and the history of his need. He talked about his military family in Virginia and his estrangement from his father, who sounded like an iron-hard soldier of the old Southern school. He had suffered some recent shaming and rejection by his father, and he was bleeding inside. It took no great intuition on my part to realize that his dad had not been able to accept that this young man was gay.
I told him that I, too, came from a military family and that I had been estranged from my father until three years before his death, when we became the best of friends. I told the young man that if it were my life, I would make it my game to make all well with my dad while he was still in the world.
“You’re giving me goose bumps.” He showed me. His whole arm was chicken skin.
“Truth comes with goose bumps.”
He was crying now, leaking onto my shoulder.
“You come into the bar,” he sobbed, “you take a seat, and you tell me the most important things I’ve ever been told.”
“Here’s something else I’ve learned: The world speaks to us through coincidence and chance encounters. It’s a kind of magic.”
“Is that what you are? A magician? You got me crying at the bar, for chrissake.”
“Well that lady who gave me her seat did give you a good review.”
I was ready to leave.
“Can I see you again?”
“No, this was our moment. The only time for us.”
He wanted to pay for my burger and beer. Of course I would not let him.
“Can I at least have a hug?”
I gave him that.
As I headed for my departure gate, I turned back to look at the fox on the sign of the pub. I said in my mind, Thank you. I had the deep feeling that my chance encounter with the desperate young man at the bar had pulled him back from the brink of suicide. There is often more than chance going on in a chance encounter.
[su_panel background=”#f2f2f2″ color=”#000000″ border=”0px none #ffffff” shadow=”0px 0px 0px #ffffff”]
  |
Robert Moss is the author of Sidewalk Oracles and numerous other books about dreaming, shamanism, and imagination. He is a novelist, poet, and independent scholar, and the creator of Active Dreaming, an original synthesis of dreamwork and shamanism. He leads creative and shamanic adventures all over the world and leads popular online courses in Active Dreaming for The Shift Network. His website is www.mossdreams.com.
Excerpted from Sidewalk Oracles: Playing with Signs, Symbols and Synchronicity in Everyday Life ©2015 by Robert Moss. Printed with permission of New World Library. www.newworldlibrary.com |
