Karen O'Neill

<h4>Has something ever happened to you seemingly out of the blue? Are such random incidents related, if at all? KAREN O’ NEILL muses on our connection with each other and with the Universe.</h4>Maybe you are thinking of an old friend who coincidentally calls you, or you unexpectedly bump into an acquaintance. A song keeps playing wherever you go, or a sequence of numbers continuously crops up everywhere you look. Later when another seemingly random event occurs, suddenly the mismatched pieces of the puzzle of your life fall into place and, in that moment, the full picture comes into focus. It seems as if the Universe has illuminated the path from behind you, pointing you towards the future.We may all have had such experiences. In those moments the separateness of the parts of our lives, boxed into the predictable and the ordinary, is suddenly turned upside down. The mysterious working of the Universe is briefly exposed to us, and we marvel at how our destinies made up of random and disparate events can be so subtly intertwined. This is called synchronicity.Steve Jobs said, “You can’t connect the dots looking forward, you can only connect them looking backwards.” Sequences of chance encounters and events, and of symbols that may seem mundane, can find meaning if only we expand our awareness to distil the method from the madness. The Universe has strewn daisy chains of its workings for us to stumble across, if only we open our eyes to what is under our feet.<hr><h4 style="text-align:center;">The mysterious working of the Universe is briefly exposed to us, and we marvel at how our destinies made up of random and disparate events can be so subtly intertwined. This is called synchronicity.</h4><hr>In 2015, I made the decision to move to India. A couple of months before I left, a woman I knew gifted me some crystals. I cannot say that I was hugely enamored of the crystals at the time. One was rose quartz in the shape of a heart. I tried to refuse, but she insisted. “Take it,” she said, “you’ll be needing it soon.” Puzzled, I packed it among my belongings.Some months later I came across Heartfulness Meditation. These seemingly unconnected events signaled to me that something had been set in motion from the moment that she had gifted me the heart to the moment I meditated on the heart.So the next time you have a eureka moment, when things fall into place, when the dots connect and you realize that they form the outline of a beautiful galaxy, take a moment. Cherish it. It is a sign that you are on the right path.&nbsp;