Have you ever experienced something that forever shifted your understanding of reality? Here's my tale:

Background

I can't say spirituality played a role in my life until 2012. I was raised Catholic and in my twenties became a skeptic with a dismissive attitude to anything spiritual or "new age." While working day jobs in the corporate world, I played in a rock band. The limited success we achieved came with the whole generic sex, drugs and rock 'n roll routine. During the day I was working a hell of a lot, earning more money than I ever expected to, visiting amazing places on business, and all the while stressed out of my mind. At night, I’d retreat into Miami’s seedy independent music scene to party until wee hours of the morning. I was caught up in it all. And without going into detail, it wasn’t pretty.

Reaching Out

I couldn’t take it anymore. I made way too many mistakes and noticed I was not only hurting myself I was hurting people around me. I started to research stress reduction. I began reading Jon Kabat-Zinn and began to take breaks at work to sit under a tree. While listening to one of Jon's talks, he mentioned Eckhart Tolle. I read Tolle's A New Earth and Power of Now. I got the feeling that these individuals were experiencing life differently than I was, but this felt unattainable to me. While I did not experience a "shift in consciousness," I did feel slightly more relaxed and I began to slow down my unhealthy routine a bit.

Loss

BAM. My company’s primary account was lost in a sudden, dramatic and unexpected fashion. I was out of a job. My girlfriend left me. My brother was moving into town and I decided to room with him. Within the span of 30 days: my career, relationship and housing situation suddenly shifted. I did what I could to manage through it, but frankly looking back it was like an earthquake shifted the ground below me.

The Magic Key

One day at my band’s rehearsal studio, my band mate asks me for a key to our rehearsal studio. Since he was the "new guy" I refused to give him a key. My band mate’s a pretty funny guy and he knew I was dabbling in spirituality. He began to tease me by saying in a mock new age tone, "guess what, I have always had the key." He jokingly opened his hand as if a key was in his palm. It was pretty funny at the time (you had to be there).

This magical rehearsal key joke went on for a while. One of us was always opening our palm and an imaginary magical key would appear out of thin air.

A Burst of Color

A week or two later, I went to the Regal movie theater on South Beach. Being a newly single man, I went on my own. On the way there I was day dreaming about how people care for flowers. I thought, “imagine someone would love flowers so much they would decide to grow them inside a car.” Then I thought, “wouldn’t it be funny if people had cars full of flowers, I’ve never seen that before.”

Once the movie finished, I walked through the theater's parking garage towards my car. It was late at night and there was no one around. Something stopped me in my tracks. The car next to me had bright flowers lining the dashboard. I felt a shock to my body. “What the hell?” I had just thought about this! I took a picture.