Hello,

I have been practicing mettā for several months and my state of happiness has been increasing steadily. In the past month, I have been seeing smiling faces in all kinds of things: on the sandy floor, on a plate, etc. I'm sure this is not my speculation; I actually notice them all around me. I think this is Universe responding back to me, since I'm sending good wishes to all beings.

I asked my old friend, who used to be a Theravada Buddhist monk and a spiritual practitioner his whole life, about this. He told me this phenomenon is called synchronicity. Did anyone here had similar experience? What do you think about the phenomenon of synchronicity in spiritual life?

love,
Marino

Meta based hallucinating of smiling faces? 
No, not so much
Feeling better by working on loving kindness for others and myself? Heck ya.
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Feeling synchronicities? Ya...that's fun, not related to any specific practice as far as I can tell.
Have fun,
​​​​​​​~D

I think the physical universe is created by consciousness. It's like a simulation - so there are natural laws, but it's not running on a computer, it's running in consciousness.

Even though there are natural laws defined by mathematical relationships, consciousness can create or do anything as a special case. 

So anything is possible.

(Some of the founders of quantum mechanics believed that only consciousness could collapse a wave function so you had to have consciousness first before you could have matter.)

I have a lot of synchronicities. They can have meaning depending on the context. It can be a message from a higher source, or sometimes it can be coming from your own unconscious mind, or other times it can be just an ordinary coincidence.

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I did an experiment with friends a few years ago. If you say "bear" ten times, you will find yourself seeing pictures of bears and hearing bears mentioned in conversation, etc. for the next few days. The same things works if you say "red car" ten times before starting a drive. You will see many more red cars than you usually do. My guess is that it happens because of the way the mind works, and not because of the way the universe works, but then the mind is part of the universe, so maybe it doesn't matter which one I attribute it to.