Navigating by synchronicity is the dreamer’s way of operating 24/7. We all know what it feels like when the world around us gives us a sign or a symbol. Coincidence is when the universe gets personal. It can feel like a secret handshake, or a wink, or a tickle – or like an unseen hand slamming a door shut in your face or pulling the rug from under you.

A sign may point us in a certain direction, like Left or Right, or Detour Ahead or Stop/Go. The play of synchronicity gives us plenty of signs, if we are paying attention, and they can be life-savers. But  the world speaks to us in a richer and more complex vocabulary of symbols. A symbol is more than a sign. A symbol brings together what we know with what we do not yet know.

Navigating by synchronicity is not just about getting an instant message. It is about growing our perception, about learning to track what rhymes in a day, a week or a life. It is about developing pattern recognition and field perception. As we do that, we begin to sense the hidden order of reality, and the shapes of “what wants to happen in Earth and Heaven” (as the Chinese sages say of the I Ching).

My daily game is to receive everything that enters my field of perception as a possible clue to the larger reality.

To bring this into practical focus, here are three coincidence games you may find fun and rewarding on any day.

First: ask yourself is there a theme or question on which you would like some guidance right now. Then play this game. Carry that question with you and accept the first unusual or striking thing that enters your field of perception as a possible message from the world.

Second: schedule ten minutes of free time every day. Go outside and use all of your senses to see what the world may be saying to you. This works in a city street, or out in the woods, anywhere you are ready to expand your attention.

Three: open a book at random and see whether the first sentence you notice has a message for you. The five-dollar word for this is bibliomancy (divination by the book). The ten-dollar word is stichomancy (divination by the line, or verse).

For more on coincidence games, please see The Three “Only” Things: Tapping the Power of Dreams, Coincidence and Imagination by Robert Moss. Published by New World Library.