Coincidence

In order to create what we want we must first take a peek at what we create without knowing how we create. Coincidence is a good example. Why? Because we don't believe we create them. The word's definition itself suggests it "just happens" and it is our associations with the event that gives it meaning. Francis Crick, the discoverer of DNA once said that the greatest coincidence of all is that we exist. The "random" combination of factors that had to come together to create the universe, our sun, our earth and eventually life itself are so improbale that Crick called it a miracle. Miracles are simply nature unimpeded. Eventually I'll get to how we impede nature, but for now I'd like to share one or two of my own coincidences in the hope that they might jog us loose, ever so slightly, from our current understanding of who we are and the nature of reality itself.

In 1990 I began participating in the mythopoetic branch of the men's movement. This is the branch of the movement that beats drums and does sweat lodges and was ridiculed by the network sitcoms. A sweat lodge ceremony is a Native American spiritual tradition whereby consciousness is altered through extreme heat. Anyway, I had participated in several sweat lodge ceremonies and wanted to construct a lodge on my property. I live atop a wooded hill and knew that I wanted my sweat lodge below the level of the ground. At that time I was beginning to see the earth less as an accident and more as a mother, but not yet as an outer projection of me. I still didn’t see it as my own construction. I reasoned there was virtually nothing on the earth that didn't come out of it, so metaphorically it acted similar to a mother. I began digging. For those of you that know the New England woods, you know that digging a four metre diameter hole one metre deep is a chore more for a back hoe than a small sized man. The project took weeks, and as I neared the bottom of my dig, a large boulder began to surface. It was irregular in shape, gold in colour and had the appearance of marble. All in all a beautiful stone,
but at nearly 180 kilograms I knew I would need a digging bar to pry it loose. A digging bar is a heavy steel bar 1.8 metres long with a flattened, somewhat pointed end for punching holes in the earth or prying large stones out of it.

During this process I questioned whether I should be changing a Native American tradition for my own purposes, and whether I should be using their tradition at all. Maybe I should reconnect with my own Church that I left thirty years earlier. I asked for a sign and continued to dig around the megalith that stood dead centre of the lodge. My shovel hit something hard and I groaned, fearing another large stone. I probed the earth with my shovel like a soldier probing for land mines. I had asked for an answer and it was given me as I unearthed a two hundred-year-old digging bar lying next to the 180 kilogram stone that stood dead centre in my one metre deep, three metre wide sweat lodge hole. Some things are just too meaningful to be accidental, but our mesmerized worldview makes it difficult to admit publicly that deep down we really believe there is meaning in such events and that they are not accidental. They are messages that reality is more complex than we believe it to be.

The second coincidence involves a birth My first baby arrived sixteen years ago. It was one of those hidden pregnancies. You know, the one where the overweight woman shows up at the emergency room with intense stomach cramps and to her surprise gives birth to a ten pound baby an hour later. I am generally a sound sleeper, but on this particular night I awoke with a dull backache. I tried changing position and rubbing the area, but nothing relieved the increasing pain. My attention was exclusively on the pain. After about an hour my wife was frantic with worry as I draped myself over an ottoman and began cracking the windows with my screams. Three hours later, through a morphine-induced haze, I gave birth to what seemed like a ten-pound moon rock, but in reality was nothing more than a gritty fleck of kidney stone. How something so small could hurt so much I cannot explain. I've had severe toe stubs that felt like a Swedish foot massage in comparison.

Since I was a serious long distance runner and road racer, and thus had a belief in the effects of chronic dehydration, and since my mother had a long history of kidney stones, and I believed in heredity, my doctor told me I could expect more of the little blessed events. This is the general script for kidney stones in the reality we currently believe in. I tried to meditate through the pain of my third delivery a few years later and quickly discovered that meditation was cool when I was cool (cool meaning hip), but wasn't worth a damn when a moon rock was clawing its way through my plumbing. By the time of my fourth birth in 1998 I was well into a belief make over. Coincidences, synchronicities and powerful dreams began appearing in my life signalling the legitimacy of of this path toward understanding not only my own nature, but nature itself.

I started seeing my kidney stones as a metaphor of an inner condition or need that I was creating. I also saw it as my way of getting my attention. The stones began to take on a conscious purpose. They didn’t come because I was bad, or fallen, or because all life is suffering, or because of chronic dehydration and a family history for kidney stones, although these beliefs do play a part in what I manifest objectively. The stones came to communicate something I was unable to see with less attention-getting messages. You have already noticed that I've likened passing a kidney stone to giving birth. The question I had to ask myself was, “what in me do I need to give birth to, or, more importantly, what is asking to be born in me that I so ignore that it has to get my attention in such a painful way?” These questions plagued me as my wife rushed me for the fourth time to the hospital emergency room to give birth to another bouncing baby stone. This little hard ass was stubborn, so stubborn that my urologist had to go in and fetch it. I'll spare you the details, but by the time it was all over my head (thought) figured out what my hard little children were trying to tell me. And it was not that I drink more water, or get a gene splice. Since I was working so hard and diligently at figuring out the metaphor I also created a few clues to help.

The solution to avoiding my stony little ones was to give birth to the creative energies in myself. I had already begun the process by beginning to write a few years earlier, but was not sure if this was the answer I was looking for. Six months before my last stone I sent the manuscript of my first book, Gideon McGee's Dream, off to the printer and expected delivery of 1000 copies sometime in March. Now, here come the clues that my thinking on this matter was correct. My last kidney stone was taken from my body on March 3rd 1998. March 3rd 1945 is my birthday. On March 3rd 1998 a delivery was made to my house of 1000 copies of Gideon McGee's Dream. Coincidence or communication? You decide. Since coming to this understanding I have not had a kidney stone attack nor are there any hanging around like bats snoozing in a cave waiting for sunset. Eventually I'll get to where the communication came from, but not yet; you're not ready.
Bill