Dwell in Magic: A Family Story of Synchronicity

I'd like to share a family story with you today, which I think is relevant to the work we do at Montclair Kundalini Yoga. 

My grandfather, Paterson Bond, Papa to me, was a larger than life figure who liked to tell jokes, tap dance, and love. A long time smoker he'd had part of his voice box removed and could only speak in a loud whisper. Even so, his life force and his voice were strong. He always called me his number one granddaughter.  (By the way, he called all his other granddaughters that too.) Papa exuded gusto and even bravado. I loved him, and we all loved him. We took it hard when he died many years ago. 

But he left something behind that reminds us of his spirit and his big declarations, and it reminds me of the ever-present undercurrent of divine magic. The picture above is a piece of wall from Papa's childhood home. I don't know exactly how old he was, but one day he was angry at his mother and declared, as many kids do, that he was going to run away. He even scrawled his intention on the wall: "I will leave at 3." 

Now, amazingly, his mother saved this note. I don't know how: she chipped it out of the wall or they were tearing the wall down anyway, but she saved it and framed it and somehow it made its way to the downstairs bathroom of the home I grew up in. "I will leave at 3."

It's so Papa to grandstand and be dramatic. So funny, we thought.

As it happened, sixty or seventy years after he wrote those words on the wall, most of my family surrounded him in his hospital bed knowing the end was near. His moment of childhood fury turned out to be a premonition... It was 3 o'clock when he took his last breath.

That synchronicity and synchronicities like it make me believe that there is something bigger at work than just our brains and our bodies taking twists and turns through life. 

How can we tap into that something bigger? How can we tune into that when there's news in our country and the world to tune into which seems to prove the contrary? 

My way of drawing on the magic and dwelling in it is the practice of Kundalini Yoga. ​

---