Most of us have noticed them – those moments when things go just exactly right. These are the times when the right person turns up at exactly the perfect moment to save the situation; those occasions when it feels as if the stars have aligned miraculously to move you to where you need to be. You can call it luck, or Karma, or coincidence, or the Guiding hand, or God. You could thank your Guardian Angel, the spirit of your ancestors, your patron Saint, or simply call it a miracle.

Sometimes we call this “friends”. We look at our dearest friend of dozens of years and know that we couldn’t have trodden the path we did without that person’s help – that he or she was exactly the person we needed. And perhaps that friend is truly a miraculous gift.

We have plenty of words we can use to attempt to describe this. But how do we understand it? And if we understand it, then what do we do about it?

The day after I got married, my wife and I boarded a plane for England, and, for the first and only time in my life, in which I’ve made hundreds of flights, we were upgraded for free to first class. We sprawled in our luxurious leather seats, sipped champagne, and felt blessed. Simple luck, perhaps? Or a hint from the universe?

Then there is Bob, an independent bookstore owner and a friend of mine, who was three months behind on his rent, and his store was about to be shuttered on him for good. He decided he’d play the lottery that night and if nothing happened he’d shoot himself. Since he also worked as a security guard, he had his revolver ready. That night his four numbers came up – and the amount he won was exactly enough, to within a few cents, to pay the backlog of his rent. He was delighted, joyous, relieved – and also puzzled. For he wondered what this was telling him about the nature of the universe he lived in, and what it might mean.

Just coincidence, right? His situation raises some important questions. Does fate solve all our problems for us? Well, we know that isn’t always true. So why does it solve some of them and not others? Answering these questions may mean we have to think in new ways about our experiences, and sometimes it means we’ll have to visit an idea several times before it lets us feel its meaning.

When we look at such events on their own they are hard to understand, but that often we can trace an underlying pattern. And it is the pattern of small and large nudges we get from chance and luck and fate that we may need to pay attention to. If we become conscious of what is happening to us we’ll see such gifts everywhere, and realize that synchronicity is beckoning to us.

To get into the flow of synchronicity we need to do three things:

First, we must trust that there is an energy in the universe that exists, and that it has a plan to use us to benefit our world. That trust has to be a deep trust.

Second, we must be prepared to notice when this energy gives us help, and be alert to the many ways it can operate. If we’re unaware of its methods, we may stop noticing how it comes into our lives. If we’re ignorant we can’t work with what arrives in terms of opportunity. Plenty of people are waiting for their “big break”. It’s a waste of time. The big break only ever happens because there were a lot of little breaks first, ones that someone worked at with plenty of energy and trust.

Third, we must expect to be used by this synchronous energy in ways that seem to be counter-logical. The universe has a plan and we must learn to roll with it and do our part. So we have to let go of ego expectations and rewards. There will be rewards, but they probably won’t be what we imagine. They’ll be better.

Deepak Chopra described this eloquently in the interview he did with Jean Houston. I’ve laid out the paragraphs below so it’s easier to see the main ideas. ‘’In India there is a tradition in the Vedanta where they say that you experience synchronicity when you have Ritam Bara Pragyan.

Ritam is the word for rhythm, order of the universe; Bara means ‘full of’; Pragyan means ‘mind’. So Ritam Bara Pragyan means he whose mind is filled with the rhythm of the cosmos. So when the elements and forces in you and the elements and forces in the cosmos are totally aligned, in that field of almost choiceless awareness, a little, subtle intention orchestrates its own fulfillment. That intention, in that field where the elements and forces are aligned, summons forth the possibility waves to cohere together, to collapse into space time events that are synchronized so that the outcome is determined.’’

Getting into this place - the space of synchronicity - is not as simple as wishing for something and then expecting it to appear. It involves aligning with the energies of the cosmos.

Based on the book, The Path of Synchronicity: Align Yourself with Your Life’s Flow by Dr. Allan G Hunter. (Findhorn Press, August 2011)

Dr. Allan Hunter is a literature professor at Curry College in Boston and has a counseling practice, which has led him to study the relationship between psychology, myth and writing. He is the author of several books including Write Your Memoir and Stories We Need to Know.