The Artist's Way

is—the hand of God, or good, activated by our own hand
when we act in behalf of our truest dreams, when we
commit to our own soul.
Even the most timid life contains such moments of
commitment: “I will get a new love seat after all!” And then,
“I found the perfect one. It was the strangest thing. I was at
my Aunt Bernice’s and her neighbor was having a garage
sale and she had this wonderful love seat her new husband
was allergic to!”
In outsized lives, such moments stand out in bas-relief,
large as Mount Rushmore: Lewis and Clark headed west.
Isak Dinesen took off for Africa. We all have our Africas,
those dark and romantic notions that call to our deepest
selves. When we answer that call, when we commit to it, we
set in motion the principle that C. G. Jung dubbed
synchronicity, loosely defined as a fortuitous intermeshing
of events. Back in the sixties, we called it serendipity.
Whatever you choose to call it, once you begin your
creative recovery you may be startled to find it cropping up
everywhere.
Don’t be surprised if you try to discount it. It can be a
very threatening concept. Although Jung’s paper on
synchronicity was a cornerstone of his thought, even many
Jungians prefer to believe it was a sort of side issue. They
dismiss it, like his interest in the I Ching, as an oddity,
nothing to take too seriously.
Jung might differ with them. Following his own inner
leadings brought him to experience and describe a