In January of 2018, I started writing in the Notes section of my phone. A couple of odd coincidences happened to me early in the month, things that were just interesting enough to make me pause and go “Hmmmm.”
So I’d whip out my phone, which is never far from me, and write the date and a brief synopsis of what happened.
It started out innocently enough. It was a grey and wintery Saturday early in January. I live alone and I was bored. And I recall thinking – “I wish I had some company.” That was it. I was looking ahead to a long afternoon and night, with no card readings, no plans, nothing. (I hibernate when it’s cold. Any of my friends can confirm this).
The random thought flitted through my head and I continued doing laundry.
About an hour later, a good friend that I hadn’t seen in months sends a random text. “You home?”
She was in the neighborhood and ended up coming by for most of the day.
Seems fairly insignificant, right? But I love the process. I wished for something and it arrived.
To be honest, I didn’t even write that one down at first. I noticed it, but didn’t make too much of it.
Then later that same afternoon, before my friend arrived, I was scrolling through Facebook and saw that a friend’s child was doing a bottle drive to collect money for their sports team. They didn’t live anywhere near me, but I distinctly remember thinking, “I wish someone would come and take my empties away.”
Again, a quick thought, and I moved on with the day.
On Sunday, there was a knock on my door. A neighborhood kid, with his dad, was collecting bottles for a hockey team.
I’d lived in this house for over a year then and this was the one and only time anyone has ever knocked to collect bottles.
THAT’S when I started writing it all down.
But again, just another kooky coincidence, right? But two random wishes granted in the span of one weekend was significant enough for me to take out the phone – ok, let’s be real, it was likely already in my hand – and open the Notes App and write it down. I like to write. And it was EASY – I tend towards things that are simple and straightforward and fun. When spirituality becomes WORK for me, that’s the day I’ll lose interest.
And that’s how it started.
It happens to all of us though, doesn’t it? Ever think of a friend and then they call? This happens to me and Allison all the time. She’s one of the three people in my life who I actually use the phone to SPEAK to. (The other two being my mother and my sister). I can always tell when it’s happened because I can hear it in her voice when she answers. She’s laughing. “You just crossed my mind,” she’d say. “Like that EXACT moment.”
As the year progressed, this happened more frequently. And I’d diligently make my Notes.
Spirituality, from my perspective, is all about awareness.
I talked about this to my friends and colleagues so much that they started sending me their Universe Notes via text message.
This one from my sister – “I was running this morning and happened across a man walking three dogs. This reminded me of a former co-worker that I hadn’t spoken to in months, who happens to have three dogs, and I resolved to reach out to him to see how he was doing. Hours later, I’m at the office and HE emails ME!!!”
From a friend – “Remember when I was at your house last week and I said that I had the strangest feeling that I was going to run into my ex? I haven’t crossed paths with him in over a year. Saw him randomly this morning.”
I always encourage people to write these things down. They rarely listen to me on that. And that’s ok, too. Just the AWARENESS is enough. Just NOTICING is something. For years, that’s all I did. Some coincidence would happen, and I’d notice, and I’d smile.
But what writing it down reinforces in me is that it does exist, there is an energy out there. For me, it’s proof.
I started out reading cards as a total skeptic. For most of my twenties, I was basically an Atheist – I didn’t believe in ANYTHING. And if I even considered the notion that there was a Higher Power out there, It certainly didn’t seem to be a fan of mine. I was in self-destruct mode for most of that decade and if I was to be brutally honest, I got into reading cards and trying to develop my psychic abilities solely to financially profit from it. I thought that maybe – since I’d always felt that I had some sort of latent psychic sense – I’d be able to tap into this and win myself the lottery.
I recall being in high school and predicting the winning team and the final score for every game of the Stanley Cup finals that year. No doubt I was trying to impress some boy I had a crush on who watched hockey – because I really didn’t – but the feat was impressive enough that he’d see me the morning after a game and, with a note of amazement in his voice, say “You called it.”
(This doesn’t work anymore, by the way. Many years later, a colleague and I tried it with a Proline ticket and I sucked. We won nothing. Although my money is on the Saints for the Superbowl win this year. Just a feeling I have).
So with that in mind, I started reading books about developing psychic ability. And I recall a line from one of them that specifically said “If you are doing this to win the lottery, you may as well stop now. This isn’t how it works.” Or something to that effect. And it went on to say that if you think you can be psychic without being spiritual, you’re in for a rude awakening.
But I didn’t care. I still believed I could read cards and set about learning how to do that. And I resisted the notion of being spiritual with every fiber of my being.
And then one day, I read cards for a lovely lady named Sandra and she put a book in my hands that changed everything. She insisted that I take this book and read it. It wasn’t my thing. The title was enough for me to know that it wasn’t my thing. It was called Conversations with God.
I didn’t believe in God. I have issues – deep seated issues – with religion. I call myself a “recovering Roman Catholic”……..and the word “God” doesn’t sit so well with me.
But even so, I read it. More than read it, I argued with it. The resistance was strong and I thought this was all nonsense. He was talking to God? Sure, he was. Cause I was so likely to believe THAT.
But reading it was enough. The sections I disbelieved outright – and there were a lot of them – the Universe would find a way for my life to demonstrate what I was reading. For example, the book says that there are only two emotions, love and fear, and all other emotions, at their most basic level, are either – and only – love or fear. In my head, I would call bullshit on something like that and then something would happen the next day that would show me that maybe the book was right. It made me think and it made me look at situations and issues in a different light.
And once it started, there was no stopping it. Despite my best efforts, the coincidences, the synchronicites, seeing 11:11 and 1:11 all the time, were relentless. I’d read cards for friends and they would message me a few weeks later to tell me that something I’d predicted had actually happened. And I was as blown away as they were. I didn’t know how, couldn’t explain how, but it didn’t matter. It just kept happening.
I still read this book regularly. It’s sitting on the table next to me as I write this. And I recommend this book to everyone. I have read sections of it aloud to people. Usually without their permission. But that’s the price you pay for being friends with me.
One of my favorite excepts —
“So go ahead now. Ask Me anything. Anything. I will contrive to bring you the answer. The whole universe I will use to do this. So be on the lookout; this book is far from My only tool. You may ask a question, then put this book down. But watch. Listen. The words to the next song you hear. The information in the next article you read. The story line of the next movie you watch. The chance utterance of the next person you meet. Or the whisper of the next river, the next ocean, the next breeze that caresses your ear – all these device are Mine; all these avenues are open to Me. I will speak to you if you will listen. I will come to you if you will invite Me. I will show you then that I have always been there. All ways.”
So these little signs and messages – while again, seemingly coincidental and insignificant – actually do mean something. For me, it’s proof. Proof that we are all energy that we are all connected and that thoughts actually do create reality.
Over time, I began using this connection. Actively engaging with it, as the book suggested. If there was something I was wondering about, I’d ASK for a sign. If there was a situation that was causing me stress, I’d say something like “If everything is ok with” – insert stressful situation here – “could you please just send me a sign so I can relax about it?”
What else this instills in me is a sense of gratitude. I get the sign, I feel a sense of relief and I mentally say “Thank you” to the Universe.
Because gratitude is exceptionally important.
I recall reading somewhere that the Universe is really nothing more than a giant photocopying machine. It just gives you more of whatever you’re focusing on, whatever you’re thinking about. So the more gratitude you express, the more the Universe sends you to be grateful about. How cool is that, really?
These Notes also reassure me on the bad days. Days when nothing is going my way and I’m cranky and irritable af. Let me capitalize that – AF. I open the Notes and I reread some of these odd coincidences and signs. And I smile. And I remember to be grateful.
But don’t take my word for it. Try all this yourself. See if you start recognizing signs, coincidences, and synchronicities. Play this game with me. In fact, you’re already playing. By reading this, you’ve probably already start to recall how this has happened to you. Because it’s happening ALL THE TIME. You just haven’t been aware. And now that you’ve taken the time to read your way through this post, you’ll start noticing this even more. And when you do, feel free to send me those stories. I LOVE those stories. They always make my day a little brighter – or give me the opportunity to say “See?!!! I told you so!!”
This is one of my most favorite, recent stories.
A friend of mine asked to come see me, said that she wanted to ask me about something. I went into the conversation with no idea what this was about. But when she finally sat in front of me, it went something like this.
“I didn’t really know who to ask about this. So I figured I would come to you.”
I nodded, still not sure where she was going with this, but by now pretty accustomed to people talking to me about things that they don’t talk to anyone else about.
And she continued….”Rob, do you think” – and her face fell – “Do you think that my dad is okay?”
Her father passed away earlier this year.
We both cried. She and I had never really had a heart to heart like this. She’s always been very supportive of me and the things I believe in, but we’ve never chatted much about those things from her perspective. So that day I talked to her about signs, messages, and that I believe that our Loved Ones who have passed are very much okay and that they’d like to let us know that, if we’d just open ourselves up to these small, seemingly insignificant messages. I tried to give her some examples of something to look for. I said that it wouldn’t necessarily be a huge thing – that she likely wouldn’t see an apparition or have a dream where he appeared. That it could be something like just having him cross her mind and then turning on the radio and his favorite song is playing.
I often think that’s a reason why we miss a lot of the messages – because they’re simple, they’re everyday things…..we’re looking for one HUGE impactful sign and in doing so, miss all the little things.
I also encouraged her to talk to him. And assured her that she didn’t have to visit his gravesite in order to do that. That he was more likely to be sitting next to her on the drive to the graveyard than buried in the ground beneath the headstone.
I thought about her for the rest of the afternoon and I hoped and wished that her father would find a way to let her know that he was there.
She called early that evening. She was driving home and had taken my advice and was talking to her father in her head. And she was asking him for a sign. She told me that she’d thought – “Dad, if you’re here, can you please let me know?”
And then she said this – “And as soon as I had that thought, I looked up and saw a shooting star dance across the sky. There were no stars anywhere, just this shooting one, and I don’t know – maybe it’s crazy – but I just KNEW that it was him.”
Of course it was.
And this is why I love this, why it sustains me. Because it HELPS. It helps us connect with our Loved Ones, it helps us believe that a stressful situation really might just work out in our favor, it helps us realize that we are not alone.
So if I could encourage you to take on a simple spiritual practice for 2019, it’s this. Watch for signs, ask for signs. And then just pay attention. You may just find yourself pleasantly astonished by what the Universe sends.
And maybe even write them down? Because in just a few months, you’ll scroll back through multiple examples. So many examples – I promise.
And don’t worry if you don’t REALLY believe in such things. Those of us who do are behind you and we have plenty of faith to spread around.
Here’s to an amazing and astonishing 2019.