A Bali Story of Alignment, Possibility, and the Subtle Art of Manifestation

There are moments in life when something so unexpected happens that it makes you pause and wonder whether what we call coincidence is actually something far more intentional. Bali has been teaching me that when I stop gripping, stop pushing, and stop trying to control the timing of everything, life moves with a kind of clarity and precision I could never manufacture.

About a month ago, word spread quickly through our community chat: a rare Javanese ebony monkey had been spotted passing through the grounds. This wasn’t the kind of monkey people normally see in Ubud. It was larger, deep black, and native to a completely different region of Bali. The excitement was immediate — and understandable. Seeing this type of monkey here was unusual.

My husband and daughter were the very first to see it. Neighbors saw it after that. But for weeks, I kept missing it. And eventually the sightings stopped, and we all assumed it had moved on.

Then one early morning, someone once again posted that the monkey was back. I was standing in our bedroom with the balcony doors open when I read the message. And in a quick, effortless moment — no longer than a breath — I had a thought: Wouldn’t it be cool to see the monkey right here on this balcony, or even in the bedroom?

There was nothing intentional about it. No force. No technique. Just curiosity. I didn’t repeat the thought. I didn’t try to visualize it. I didn’t attach to it. I moved on as quickly as it came.

A few hours later, while I was journaling downstairs, my husband came down quietly and said, “Come up slowly… the monkey is sitting on our balcony.”

And there it was.

Still. Calm. Completely unbothered. It stayed for almost twenty minutes while we observed it — long enough for the moment to feel precise, surreal, and gently orchestrated. Not because I tried to manifest it, but because I wasn’t trying at all.

That moment opened the door to a week filled with synchronicities just as curious and unexpected. While waiting for our kids to finish their first aid course at school, I found myself sitting with my neighbor and another mother she knew at a cafe on the beach. Out of the hundreds of families at the school, this woman happened to have lived in Santa Fe in our same neighborhood— the city where I lived for 15 years. We discovered we gave birth in the same city, around the same time, without ever crossing paths until now.

Synchronicities have a texture — a sense that something larger is weaving threads you didn’t know existed. When they appear repeatedly in the same week, it becomes impossible to ignore.

Around that same time, my transformational speaking teacher, Gail, emailed to introduce me to one of her students, who was also living in Bali and had gone through the same speaking certification I did. In her short reply, this woman said she’d be happy to meet but that she would only be available before December because she was leaving Bali for world schooling. That was it — a simple, brief email. But when she mentioned she was preparing to begin a world-schooling journey, something clicked for me immediately.

I had only heard that term once before — from a neighbor I met here in August who left Bali in September to lead a world-schooling program in South America. I asked if the person she knew was named Lisee. It was.

Different continents. Different years. Different networks. And yet, woven.

These experiences reminded me that manifestation isn’t always loud or intentional. Often it’s subtle. Quiet. A single, unattached thought moving through an open mind. When I live in possibility instead of pressure, synchronicity has room to find me.

If you’d like to hear this story in my own voice, I share it in this weeks podcast episode, listen it here.

What I keep learning is that when I soften my grip, I can actually see what’s trying to arrive. 

When I look back at that week, what stands out isn’t the rarity of the monkey or the uncanny overlaps with strangers. It’s how effortlessly everything unfolded the moment I stopped trying to make life happen and allowed life to reach me instead. These experiences made me wonder how many synchronicities we miss simply because we’re too focused on controlling the next step. 

What possibilities might reveal themselves if you softened your grip, even just a little, and let life meet you with its own timing?

With love and courage,

Tania

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