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5. Synchronicity Dropping Dots.

When you wake up to Life, you’re looking for any breadcrumbs that might give you a clue. You are for all practical purposes in a foreign land and making your way forward as best you can on sheer curiosity and stamina and determination. You have questions, lots of questions and looking hard for some answers. While ‘living some distant day into the answer’ may be comforting, it is hardly a boon for patience!

You wait. You go with the flow. You let time pass which is required to prove your patience. Your energy is directed forward, and energy put forth creates. All of a sudden, you’re rewarded with a leg-up, a fast forward, an ‘aha’ moment that sends your entire energy system into hyperdrive!

Finding Synchronicity Synchronistically.

I can’t show a montage of pictures to indicate “time passes” like they do in movies, but time had been and was passing. Somewhere between five and seven years since I ran into The Catalyst that jolted me out of being asleep. I’d skipped through the music industry, hit a lick in television production. By this time, I had ‘flowed’ into being a writer by occupation–albeit marketing/advertising–but I was realizing I could write. Part of me even felt in all the repetitious projects, I was obediently doing my “sums” or “times tables.” Rote. Writing dust jacket flap and back cover copy for a national publisher was teaching me to take a lump of clay, shape and mold it into a piece of art capable enough to sell a book. Again and again. Lump. Art. Rote.

Being freelance, I had a certain control over my own time. As long as I met deadlines, sure, I could take some time off.

It was a sunny day, with no deadlines looming, so I packed my ever-present notebook and pen, some books, and a bite to eat for a leisurely drive down The Natchez Trace to revive spirit and soul. Fifty miles per hour limit, shady, curvy, hilly, lovely overlooks. I stopped here for an overlook, there for an historic marker, ending up at Meriwether Lewis Death and Burial Site. Yes, that Meriwether Lewis of Lewis and Clark, the adventurers who mapped out this virgin and unknown land.

I read. I wrote. I sat under a big tree beside the flat markers of the Pioneer Cemetery there. I toured the grounds, read the intriguing but brief signs indicating that while Lewis was killed at this place, it was uncertain as to the circumstances—intruder/murder or suicide? I’m not sure why I was so fascinated with the ambiguity and mystery of his death at this place, but it was such that I vowed I was going to get more details and draw my own conclusion.

Upon my return to civilization, I went immediately to the library (yes, this was in the day of the library and I was into Books). To the Biography Section (in alphabetical order by subject). Here’s the default setting of a book lover: if you’re gonna get one book in the L’s for Lewis, why not one in the J’s for James Joyce and, what the heck, here’s a name I’ve heard somewhere before here in the J’s, Carl G. Jung.

I made short shrift of James Joyce—he was just too far out for me to identify with his life whatsoever. I didn’t even bother to finish that book.

I formed my own opinion about Meriwether Lewis’ death after reading his bio—murder, not suicide. A couple of reasons. First, The Trace was a boon to highway robbers as it was the way home by land for men who had floated their crops down the Mississippi to sell and they were carrying cash. Second, Lewis was a mere 34 years old and headed back to Philadelphia to edit a book on his great expedition; I felt no one with as adventurous a spirit as he exhibited would have taken his own life as was hinted at in those oblique signs posted at the park.

Then came time for the Jung book, Memories, Dreams and Reflections. (Did I instinctively save the best for last?) It was the next turning point in my life, a whole loaf of bread, forget the crumbs! It was a lighted beacon in my stumbling, asking-questions darkness. In today’s vernacular—“OMG!” In the vernacular of that day, all I could utter was ”This man’s been readin’ my mail.”

The things he wrote about were delineating what I’d been experiencing since “I woke up.” It was more than just confirmation and validation. He gave me the “Why” that I so desperately craved. I would read a passage—“yes!’—and get up and run around the house to expend the excited energy that was pulsing through me! In my journal, I noted: “…reading his bio was exhilarating; I kept saying, ‘wonderful,’ ‘wondrous,’ ‘thank you’ because it was so re-affirming to me.” I had lived some distant day into an answer—answers, in fact! I was getting lots of clues, answers, reaffirmations, validations, new information—check check check! Fast forward propulsion! Hyperdrive!

Connecting the Dots:

If I hadn’t laid out from writing assignments to take a day off; if I hadn’t ended up at Meriwether Lewis Park on my drive; if I hadn’t stopped, got out, walked the park; if I hadn’t been intrigued enough by Lewis’ death to go to a library and get a book not only about him but, what the heck, how about some guy named Carl Jung; and then that book telling me about EVERYTHING that had been happening to me in my new “awakened” state (in the past five years)…

I’m sorry, but that just does not happen by accident, now, does it?

That’s called Synchronicity. Incarnate.

Think of it—finding answers I was seeking for years…in a book…because I went to a park and was curious about Meriwether Lewis. There’s no cause and effect. Synchronicity—two things linked with no common causality.

Synchronicity Marks the Dots for You.

Synchronicity, or meaningful coincidence as some timid people are wont to call it, is a flaming coincidence that even you can’t ignore–and it has a message, a meaning, especially for you. If you recognize Synchronicity occuring in your life, stop and ask: what is it underscoring for me? Something here has meaning and importance. What am I to see? Of further mention here: Synchronicity seems to become more prevalent when you ‘wake up’ and start ‘seeking’ or asking your questions of Life. Or, maybe it’s just because you are now ‘awake’ and noticing it.

First, synchronicities are only seen by those with wide-open eyes that see and only heard with ears that hear (that’s biblical!) Second, you have a feeling like it’s a connection with some unseen helper who’s in on the journey with you. Third, it’s like an underscore—you know, like when you underscore or highlight a passage that has meaning and significance to you? That you want to remember. It may give you new information on your Life, that “aha!” moment, a light-bulb going on. Many times it reinforces something you just learned about yourself, an affirmation, so-to-speak, that you got it right and are headed in the right direction. But it always makes you feel connected to something bigger, something benevolent that’s laying down a few breadcrumbs for you to follow on your way to safety. When you experience Synchronicity in your life, look around. There’s a Dot dropping somewhere!

If it hadn’t been for a string, yes, string, I tell you, of synchronicities,

I would never have met The Catalyst that woke me up.

If you’re new to Mesmarriah Miracle, it’s best to start at Post #1 and

continue in numbered sequence, like Connecting the Dots.

4. Clinging I Shall Die of Boredom.

“It is by going down into the abyss that we recover the treasures of life.”
“The very cave you are afraid to enter turns out to be the source of what you are looking for. The damned thing in the cave that was so dreaded has become the center.”
Joseph Campbell, “A Joseph Campbell Companion,” p. 24

I’m sure I got the flow seed planted after reading Richard Bach’s “Illusions.” It was a Dot for sure (he dropped several of them in that book). I can’t be sure if it was dropped just before, after, or coincided with the event of My Catalyst. Reading the book was easy, especially when he hooked me with the very first words, “There was a Master come unto the earth, born in the holy land of Indiana…” (my home state—how could I not read on!)

There is the part in the intro where he talks about the creatures in the river who “cling” as a way of life. Then one creature decides he’s going to let go and see where the crystal river takes him, because, clinging he shall surely die of boredom. He trusts that the river knows where it is going, and so (with much fear and admonishment from his peer clingers) he let go to go with the flow of the river. A Dot dropped and I was in the ‘let it flow, let it flow, let it flow” mode.

Or, maybe my entire life was a part of ‘let it flow,” and I just had to recognize and name it.

In the age of career specialization I was a generalist. Dig deep into just one career path? No. I would try one career path, be there long enough to see behind the curtain and opt out. I was a systems analyst for Blue Cross-Blue Shield because someone recognized I was a problem solver, organized, efficient, and could manage people. An industrial psychologist who tested all BC-BS management said, “You ranked in the 94^th Percentile of Upper Level Male Managers, BUT, you have no goals to be president of BC-BS”—as if that were a bad thing. He was right—I certainly did not have goals of becoming president of BC-BS. I opted out.

I moved to the country music industry because my husband wanted to be a songwriter. We moved to Nashville so why shouldn’t I be in the music industry also? Three years with a major record label run with a mafia-management style of rewards and punishments, and I opted out again. Seeing behind the curtain is always eye-opening—and a test to see just how much you’re willing to pay for the pretense.

I left it to fate (aka the flow) to take me to my next career, and my organizational skills took me to becoming Associate Producer (the logistics person) for a new television show. Out of the music business, and into television. One season of organizing and logistics, and I decided I could write the show, too. I did two sample scripts, and the producer who had hired me for my organizational abilities, agreed. Soon I was a writer—television, print, marketing, publishing—writing for anybody who would hire me to hone my skills. Just going with the flow, where the flow would take me.

Jump. It’s Not as Wide as You Think. (Or) There Are No Pumas

Let’s just say “waking up” sets you up with lots of questions…lots…of…questions! Try and describe that to friends and about all you’ll hear is, “Awake? Of course you’re awake. You’re talking. There’s no question there.” Hard to explain unless you’ve been there.

Questioning—especially the “Why” question—and “seeking answers” is trying, anguishing work, and most times tinged with a bit o’ fear (hence why it’s “the road less travelled”). Looking inward for answers to questions can be especially fearful because somehow we innately ‘believe’ we’re hiding some sort of monster inside. (I have yet to determine where we got this—unless it’s the deeply ingrained ‘original sin’ that’s been taught us by a loving church.) We fear if we dare peek inside, we’ll let loose the monster on the world. Some sort of beast is hidden inside! We’ll be out of control!

Yes, I know this from personal experience. I have feared the monster and asked that exact question.

When working with a wonderful counsellor whose name, Mrs. True, said it all, I had begun to feel good about myself—getting self-esteem can do that for you. I remember specifically asking her (because I felt good), “Aren’t you afraid you’ll create a monster (meaning me)?” She just laughed and reassured me, “No, I just want you to throw back that curly hair of yours and laugh.”

Please believe me, I have looked: There are no monsters inside. It’s ok to look.

I believe that is why so many people are afraid to ask questions of themselves, to look inside. They fear they will face pumas in the crevasse. (That’s an old Smothers Brothers routine—Tommy Smothers was afraid of the pumas in the crevasse, and his brother had to convince him, “There are no pumas in the crevasse, Tommy”—for those who are wondering where that came from…or for those who may remember!) I chose to believe Dickie Smothers! (That was a Dot dropped waaaay back!)

Asking questions of Life and looking inward for answers, yes, that requires facing the (phantom) pumas in the abyss (or crevasse). Joseph Campbell came through again, reassuring me with this myth:

“A bit of advice
Given to a young Native American
At the time of his initiation:
As you go the way of life,
You will see a great chasm.

Jump.
It is not as wide as you think.”
― Joseph Campbell

Dick Smothers would add…’and there are NO PUMAS in the crevasse!’ Those are the pumas we fear are lurking inside us if we ever look. (Who knew Dickie Smothers was a mythologist!)

Reassured by both Dickie Smothers and Joseph Campbell, jump I did. More asking. More seeking. More questioning. More reading. More learning. More dreams. More Dots. A whole lot of “Why me’s?” because answers were slow in coming. (Patience, remember?) Some bon-a-fide gnashing of teeth involved. A good friend who’d listened to me gnash teeth, wail, found a poem and gave it to me as salve. It came first as “Anon” but, as the poem itself told me, I would ‘live along some distant day into the answer.’ I would find its true source.

I magnetized it to my refrigerator.

Have you heard the term, Synchronicity? We’ll get more detail on it later. It’s a term that pops up again and again when you enter the forest on your own path. Synchronicity may feel more like a breadcrumb you find on your way, assuring you that you’re on the right path home. A few years, yes, years, after receiving this Anon poem, another friend gave me a book as a birthday gift, “Letters to a Young Poet” by Rainer Maria Rilke. In that book was the very verse that was on my fridge:

“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart

and try to love the questions themselves,

like locked rooms and like books

that are now written in a very foreign tongue.

Do not now seek the answers,

which cannot be given you

because you would not be able to live them.

And the point is, to live everything.

Live the questions now.

Perhaps you will then gradually,

without noticing it,

live along some distant day into the answer.”

― Rainer Maria Rilke

Salve for an anguished heart for sure. It was like getting a primer for learning a new language and here was my first translation. Love the questions themselves. Locked rooms. Books in a foreign tongue. Live everything. Reaffirmation that I was not alone in the experience I was having. Others had gone before me and were dropping their own Dots and breadcrumbs for me to follow and be encouraged by. And somehow, they would make sure I found the ones I needed. How could I not trod on?

The original Anon paper stayed magnetized to my refrigerator for years til it had stains and curled edges. It reinforced for me that, indeed, I would ‘live along some distant day into the answer” (and answers) that I sought.

Synchronicity… A Dot dropped one year connected to a Dot a few years later. Check-Check.

How I Found Synchronicity Synchronistically.

3. Mesmarriah Was Born in a Dream

There came a point in my searching for answers to my Big Questions of Life that I started having these little subtle feelings that dreams were important, so I’d been writing them down for a while. Didn’t know specifically what to do with them, but I honored them enough to go out and buy blank books to write them down. Drilling down, I started reading other books on how to record and explore my dreams.

And I had this dream…

In this dream, “I” had just joined “the circus” and was just about to meet some of the other people. It seemed like it was dark, which I came to find out means “in the dark” or “not known to us at this time” so that seemed apropos. Some of the circus people asked me, “What is your name?” (This is how dreams are funny) I realized I did not know what my name was, and I needed to listen to see what name I spoke. I heard myself say, “My name is Mesmarriah Miracle, M-e-s-m-a-r-r-i-a-h.”(It seemed very important they understand it was Mesmarriah with two “r’s.”) “You can call me Marriah.” There’s not much more from the dream except they seemed likeable people to be around.

Even in the dream, I knew what a very special name I had been given. I mean, first of all, I’ve always loved alliteration, MM, mmmmmmmm—what did it mean? Where did it come from? Who was the “I” who had to listen to see what her name was? What was I to do with it? Why would I be given such a beautiful and special name in a dream? Was I to do something special with it? Surely there had to be a purpose for my being given a name I could not possibly have heard or read about.

I didn’t know. I felt all I could do was wait and see what presented itself. That’s what I’d been learning how to do—be patient, wait, Just. Let. Life. ‘Flow.’ Mesmarriah Miracle did seem like a Dot dropped for sure. Would there be a Dot to connect it to? Would I recognize it? How long would it take?

Waiting. Patience. Not my strong suits. But how was I to do otherwise? Who can you scream at to get an answer, “why the heck was I given such a special name and not know what to do with it, for criminy’s sake!”

Nobody.

Nothing to do but just wait. And wait. And wonder. And revisit. And wait. Yeaaarrs.

While we’re waiting, I’m going to back up for just a moment. Now, this ‘feeling” that dreams were important? Where did that come from?

Close your eyes. Super tight. You’re in pitch black darkness. Not a dust mote of light seeping through your eyelids. But in life, you’re moving, always moving so you must keep walking. Move slowly. Feel your way. Feeling is the only thing that will guide you, will save you, and enable you to go forward. Slow, cautious progress perhaps, but movement forward nonetheless. When you first wake up to Life with a Capital L that is what you do. Feel your way. Feeling that dreams were important was reason enough for me to step forward.

I’d been traversing that pitch black darkness aka unknown territory for almost five years before I’d felt my way to the feeling that “I think dreams might be important.” Feeling my way day by day, emotion by emotion, one feeling to the next. What had started the journey into the Unknown?

A feeling that I’d just ‘woken up.’

When you feel “I just woke up,’ the natural question you ask is, “When did I fall asleep?”

A Dot. ‘Waking Up”

I woke up at the age of 35. “Waking up” requires a catalyst. A very strong one. A strong emotional, many times heartbreaking, devastating, crippling catalyst to jolt you awake. That’s Part A. Part B is you must heed the challenge you have now been given to investigate “why,” look inside, dig deep, face feelings, conquer uncertainty, and not succumb to the fear or pain it might threaten. It’s what the mythologist Joseph Campbell calls, “The Hero’s Journey,” and heroes face and conquer awesome challenges, don’t they?

From a book called, “Passages,” by Gail Sheehy, I retained the breakdown of our life’s passages. Roughly (and I’m paraphrasing my own concise view): our 20’s, 30’s we’re acquiring—family, careers, all those plans we have, we’re working hard to bring them into fruition. Late 30’s, early 40’s we start some assessing: is this where I wanted to be, is it what I thought it would be, is this what I want? Then comes some time of possible re-assessing. Late 40’s and 50’s are when people make major changes in careers, lifestyles, life goals, life ambitions if their reassessment comes up short for feeling a purpose in life. (Believe it or not, we all crave a purpose in life.)

Many times the reassessment of original goals and aims uncovers a feeling of malaise, discontent, melancholy that has seeped through all the striving and doing. By the time we’re in our 60’s, we’re probably on the way to beginning what I call concretizing. Wild changes in thought, attitude, actions are null; the ones we have at that time are beginning to harden, perhaps stultify.

Basically, I was right on target, 35.

My catalyst was an encounter with another human being, a person I’d never met before and yet I knew immediately.

“Breaking the heart opens it. “

(Retained as pertinent to my survival from one of Alice Walker’s books.)

The inward journey is portrayed in the Myth of King Arthur which stories man’s (woman’s, human’s) psyche—the part where ‘each knight of the round table must go into the forest on his own path searching for the Holy Grail.’ That is the metaphor for an inward, dark foresty search for our ‘holy grail,” our true Selves. Every hero enters on his or her own path. “Seek and ye shall find,” sayeth the Bible.

The impact was a bomb crater in my life as I knew it. Hurt and heartbreak for me and those I loved most of all. A tearing apart of the life I was living. Yet I knew with some unknown knowledge that all of it was for a purpose that had deeper meaning than what the surface attraction, turmoil and anguish showed. It required that I not fall into the trap of thinking the surface circumstances were the reason or the end-all-be-all. I had to navigate my way through it only with what I felt was the leading of something bigger than mere logic or feelings or desire, something inside rather than outside. Following that leading, I started a search to understand why I now felt I had just woken up. That search would take me inward, now outward.

When I ‘woke up,’ the feeling was more a puzzlement than an amazement. I was more curious about, “when did I fall asleep?” I searched back over my life to see if I’d ever felt a feeling like this before. Was I ever awake that I could recall? Fell asleep somehow…was it from boredom, monotony, the mundane?…and then all of a sudden kissed awake? (Sound familiar?) I had to conclude that I somehow must have been asleep all my life and was just now awakening to it.

What did that mean, ‘to wake up?’ Honestly, I didn’t even equate this ‘waking up’ feeling to ‘Wow! All of a sudden I know what my purpose in life is. I know what Life is all about!” Nope. Feeling that I was waking up from a sleep was all I could explain. Was I living a real life version of Sleeping Beauty? Why not? Myths are the contents of (hu)man’s psyche! The story had to have some spark of origination in reality.

Feeling my way in this new state—what it meant, where I needed to go/learn/do next—was like stepping into that blind darkness of the unknown. Who knows what lurks in the scary darkness of the unknown? Who is hero(ine) enough to step into the darkness and look?

Well, that’s where my quirky (and sometimes irritating) trait of forever asking, “Why” would pay off! I was (and have always been) curious as to “Why.” It’s just a question that rolls naturally off my tongue, no matter the situation—much to the chagrin of family, friends, bosses, especially. And for every answer to the question ‘Why?” you can continue to ask “Why?” yet again ad infinitum. Even though I felt hesitant and tentative, I also felt compelled to go forward, lay trepidation aside and follow through as many “why’s” as I could find the bravery to do so. The Mesmarriah Miracle dream came a few years after The Catalyst. Was she the new life I had just awoken to, symbolic for my true Self? In that case, I had just joined the Circus. I could then only assume it was The Circus known as Life.

I decided I must stop clinging to being asleep and let the river take me where it knew I should go.

Clinging I Shall Die of Boredom

2. We Retain That Which Is Pertinent to Our Survival

Normally I don’t retain a lot; I’ve likened my memory to a sieve from time to time. But apparently those things which some part of me knew were important to my journey—the survival of my physical, mental, emotional, or spiritual being—would end up in some mental pocket for me to remember and call upon to use. I didn’t even have to catalog them or memorize them to remember. They were just there. I recognized them only as ‘pertinent’ after I found myself pulling them out of that pocket and re-saying them over years of time. (I’ve had the luxury to collect data for years about this.)

Sometimes I’d hear myself, in some sort of earnest teaching “lecture” to a fellow-being, laughingly end my harangue with the disclaimer, “We Teach Best that Which We Need to Learn” (from Richard Bach’s “Illusions”). I’d then jokingly admonish myself, “I hope you were listening to what you were just ‘teaching’ because it was probably something you needed to hear.’

I’d quoted Richard Bach enough times that I came to immediately grasp the moment I started ‘teaching’ someone else, and I’d make a point to listen as I talked. It became so familiar that I was able to extrapolate even further: “We Bitch Most About that Which We Do the Worst.” (An original, not attributable to Richard Bach—I’m not sure he’d want it.)

Collecting data and extrapolating a conclusion is one thing I like to do. Here’s my research: If you hear yourself bitching with great vehemence about something someone else is doing that royally ticks you off, check yo-self…you probably be doin’ it, too, and this is your way of pointing it out to yourself—bitching about someone else. LISTEN. (Just sayin’.)

I can claim credit for retaining the phrase, “We retain that which is pertinent to our survival” for decades. Unfortunately, I did not apparently retain where I first heard it, but it has remained afloat, bobbing up and down in my conversations and questing. I’d use it to fend off a friend who’d ask me “Do you remember the time we went…found…did…said…played… visited…et al?” (And I wouldn’t remember.) “That must not have been pertinent to my survival.” Or if I were commiserating with a friend who was frozen with the tiredness of dealing with life’s everyday onslaught, I would hear myself relating an oft-repeated antidote for just that situation: “You just need another mule in the traces with you for a while.” (Apparently that had been pertinent to my survival, too.)

Collecting data over the years, I would hear myself repeating a piece of knowledge…a wisdom…an apt quote…a pertinent book paragraph…a lesson I’d learned…some advice that someone had shared with me that worked…some explanation to others…again and again. I recognized: that must have been pertinent to my survival. I had found it, used it to survive the journey of life, and found myself offering it as a gesture that perhaps might help someone else in their surviving.

Layin’ Down the Dots:

When one idea remained in my consciousness, my vernacular, my storytelling, my sharing (not to mention the import of the fact that I remembered it at all!) to be called forth again and again, it was labeled, ‘pertinent.’ Maybe it was a stepping-stone, a building block, a seed to sprout. Flotsam among the jetsam. Flagstones placed in the pea gravel of life. I called them dots. Dots of big truth. Dots of insight. Dots of understanding.

There’s a difference between Life with a Capital L and life with a little “l.” I sorta see Life (the Capital one) as a series of dots that we’re given, taught, seek out, learn, experience, fall into, teach. Those are the things that you “retain” (even when not intentional) and through sheer repetition (and some sort of feeling) seem meaningful. They are pertinent to your path, if not also to your survival and growing as an evolving human being.

Dots. Easy enough. And what do you do with dots?

If you’re a puzzler, you Connect-The-Dots!

And what’s the purpose of connecting the dots?

To reveal a picture (that you get to color any way you dang well please).

For me, I have always hoped that connecting the dots would reveal not just a picture, but “The Big Picture!” It’s a phrase that pops up again and again for me. Any job I had, I needed to see not just my part; I always needed to see “The Big Picture,” how my part fit into the whole. Doing an ad or a spot for a company, I had to understand the whole company first. I named my business ‘The Big Picture Company.’ Thinking in terms of ‘The Big Picture’ also comes in handy when the minutiae of the little life picture gets too heavy a burden. Just paint a bigger picture and the misery seems much more manageable in perspective.

Here’s another example I’ve retained for decades, and just now popped into my head. Can’t give proper credit, but I heard some fellow explain how, when he gets a really big problem to solve, or an issue causing him consternation, or a mad-at-someone-he’d-like-to-throttle, he begins to imagine himself rising up up up and away from it all, past jetliners at 30,000 feet, past the ISS, up up and more up to, I think he was like 30,000 miles up or so. How big does that problem look now? Manageably miniscule. Drawing my conclusion: Got a big problem? Paint a bigger picture and take a look at it from a higher perspective.

Now I firmly believe that dots do not drop linearly. Nope, this is not necessarily a linear thought process. Life (with the Capital L) is non-linear despite what life (with a lower case ‘l’) drags on like. A dot dropped in one decade may connect to a dot dropped a decade later. Paying attention to Life vs life—that is the Call. Remember those 3-D pictures where you’d stare at a bunch of squiggly art in a certain way (focus or lose focus whichever) and all of a sudden a 3-D image would pop out at you? It’s like that. Seeing the 3-D picture of Life in amongst all the squiggles of life.

Let’s start. You can connect two dots right here. If you have retained some pith of knowledge or saying or code or helpful antidote that you hear yourself repeating from time to time in an effort to share with another human being (Dot One), it is pertinent to you and your journey (Dot Two). See how easy Connect-the-Dots can be?

For me, I call these pertinent pieces “dots,” for a big “Connect-the-Dots” puzzle. Could they instead be called breadcrumbs, just like the fable foretold? Maybe they are the breadcrumbs we laid down to lead us back to safety.

I’m going to be dropping a few dots, some bread crumbs. See if something inside makes you feel they are pertinent to your survival or at least useful. As the saying goes, you can take what you need and let the rest rot. See what sticks and the rest will go through the sieve, right? This is what I have gleaned from a quest to “Know Thyself” because I have come to believe if you “Know Thyself” you will “Know All Others.” (Then comes the “Love Thyself” so that you can Love All Others.)

Connecting these dots could take decades, maybe a lifetime. But, to me, it was important to connect the dots. Maybe connecting the dots IS a lifetime.

First, let me tell you who Mesmarriah Miracle is.

Mesmarriah Miracle was born in a dream.

1. Life Gives Us Clues, As Well as Lemons.

Life is gonna hand you lemons. Count on it. Making lemonade is passe. Look for clues instead.

I’d say I’ve had my fair share of lemons in life just like most people. I fought, struggled to understand why. What was I doing wrong? How to fix it? How to make a refreshing glass of lemonade, make sweet out of sour. As I struggled my way through it, I’d always find myself asking the question “Why?” Every “Why?” seemed to take me to bigger and bigger questions, so I’ve come to believe that life hands you lemons so you will start asking questions. Because most times, behind every sour lemon is a clue.

What started me asking the BIG questions of Life?

I’ve always had something bitin’ my butt, as they say. Something that made me feel I was supposed to be doing “something” but I couldn’t quite figure out what “it” was—no matter how anguished or intent I was to find out. I was teased (enticed?) with several dreams that were so striking, so mystifying, they could not be forgotten.

In one dream it was a calming voice from a cave behind me that muted my frantic fighting actions, “You Will Be an Organizer.”

What? When?

Another: when asked what my name was, I heard ‘me’ tell people my name was “Mesmarriah Miracle.”

What a miraculous name. Where did that come from? Why?

Yet another where an unknown man had ‘saved’ me and some women in some way. In the dream I was prompted to thank him and ask him for his autograph. He smiled knowingly and wrote vertically on a board:

Never heard of him. I spelled it out in my dream journal exactly as he had in the dream. GURDJIEFF. Wikipedia would inform me he was an Armenian philosopher and spiritual teacher some considered a mystic in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s. Why me and why that name?

In a third dream, I was flying through the air with a young boy on my back. I thought I was showing him the joys of flying when he made a move that made us even more aerodynamic. Surprised, I asked him, ‘how did you know how to do that?” And he answered: “I am the continuum. I am the beginning and the end.”

Heavy duty words to me! I had to look up ‘continuum’ in the dictionary to confirm its meaning. A continuum is sort of like it sounds—a continuous whole, but made up of elements that vary and change/grow almost imperceptibly to get from one opposite to another opposite…like the continuum that stretches from cold to hot. Good and bad stand at opposite ends of a continuum. In psychology, it’s the premise that to achieve peak physical, emotional, and mental health in an adult life, a person must be treated with great care during their infancy and childhood. The continuum of a whole life stretching between birth and death—made up of like elements that change/grow imperceptibly to culminate in the opposite.

Would you, could you just ignore dreams like that?

Spread out over years, these sporadic and intriguing dreams were fuel to the fire of finding answers to My Big Questions of Life. Each hung in my subconscious like a bright orange, freshly scrubbed organic gluten-free carrot, dangling just beyond my grasp.

They had to mean something. Were they clues? Were they leading me? Where to? I searched: nowhere on the entire internet was there anything comparable to the name Mesmarriah Miracle. When I related the story of this name to my son-in-law some 30-years later, he was sure someone already had that domain name. He checked. No one. Thirty years after I was given the name, no one else had it.

I’d never seen nor heard the name Gurdjieff before in my conscious life. But researching him revealed he’d written books, had followers who believed in his work—described as:

“Gurdjieff believed that people cannot perceive reality in their current condition because they do not possess a unified consciousness but rather live in a state of a hypnotic “waking sleep”.

“Man lives his life in sleep, and in sleep he dies.” P.D. Ouspensky (1949), In Search of the Miraculous)

As a result of this each person perceives things from a completely subjective perspective. He asserted that people in their typical state function as unconscious automatons, but that a person can “wake up” and become a different sort of human being altogether.Jacob Needleman, “G. I. Gurdjieff and His School”

As you read these first 14 posts, can you see why I might have had call to thank the man who saved me and request his autograph?

The little boy who is the continuum (or Continuum), is he the concept of God, the beginning and the end? (Except ye be as little children?) What was that saying to me?

Did any of these tie together? Were they the parts and pieces for a Purpose to Life? Were they stepping stones to where I needed to go next? Carrots, stepping stones, lemons, (aka Dots)—I had to think Something other than me or my conscious mind was involved. What was “it” (or “It”)?

I had to name ‘it/It.” I had to see if there really was “A Big(ger) Picture” to Life. Life lemons cannot be the end all, be all for life. There has to be something ‘behind’ it. There has to be something “more,” something to learn from it. With that as a guiding force, there will always be a bigger picture if you ask and look…turning lemons into clues.

If you are new to Mesmarriah Miracle, You might find it best to start at Post 1 and continue in numbered sequence, like connecting Dots.