The Wonder Of Synchronicity
“Synchronicity as a term explains nothing, it simply formulates the occurrence of meaningful coincidences which, in themselves, are chance happenings, but are so improbable that we must assume them to be based on some kind of principle, or one some property of the empirical world.”
- Carl Jung
This part of the mythic journey requires a substantial dive into the depths of complexity and paradox at play regarding what Carl Jung called this ‘acausal connecting principle’. How doe we understand and make use of events or happenings that ‘coincide’ -both in time and in space - and have some type of meaningful connection to be discerned, yet have no known cause that connects them.
Roderick Main highlights the following concepts in Jung’s defining of synchronicity: time, causality, meaning, improbability, and inexplicability.
Synchronicity suggests there may be a dimension of reality that is accessible to human beings, but is not created by us. Jung thought that synchronicity was important because it could assist in our individuation process and, by doing do, contribute to increasing our levels of consciousness.
Joseph Campbell referred to this phenomena when he spoke of an animating force that moved through the world, unseen and at play, like a song playing in the background of our lives that we are typically not aware of, but we find ourselves humming along to nonetheless.
“The defining feature of synchronistic events is that they ‘force’ meaning upon us.”
- Jung’s Red Book For Our Time, Vol. 3
It is easy enough to dismiss our night time dreams once we enter the rational world of our waking states. Once we are ‘up and about’ and moving through our day, we can busy ourselves to no particular end, other than to perhaps keep what is unconscious from coming into our awareness. What is unknown is always a potential threat.
However, when synchronistic events break through, they always tend to catch us off guard. They offer us one of those ‘cubic centimeters of chance’, showing us a possibility that suddenly could cause us to re-think our worldview, our path, our sense of purpose.
Let’s review a few of the more striking aspects of a synchronistic happening:
Synchronicity is that un-ignorable thing that somehow rivets our attention in the present moment.
It brings something that was deep in the background of our awareness suddenly to the foreground. Synchronicity serves as an indicator that something wants us to be paying attention. It informs us that mysterious forces are at play.
This feeds a compelling sense of adventure, and provides us with a moment of ‘swing’ that can propel us further on our journey. It is something that has an intangible origin point, that something that has preceded us and is already in motion, and is coming from another realm.
Synchronicity brings something forward into the material world for us to glimpse, as a kind of guidepost.
Synchronistic happenings are like sudden turns in the road; they can change the focus and direction of our journey in an instant. They are potential ‘portals’ into a dimension of human experience that does not originate with us.
Synchronicity is that which captures our attention, presenting an opportunity to pay more attention to an unseen track that is there, waiting for us.
Synchronicity helps support one of the primary functions of myth, which is to pull us forward in life, and onto a very particular track that is meant for us.
Like many people these days, we often get boxed deliveries dropped off at the front door of our house. When working in my home office, I typically observe this happening through the window, and bring in the package after the delivery driver departs.
The weather was atypically warm last week, so the front door was open. I happened to walk past it, and noticed a UPS truck pull up just then, in front of the house. I saw the driver setting aside a few packages, so I spontaneously decided to step outside. I walked up to the vehicle to help him with the packages.
He was friendly and talkative, and we were engaging in small talk when he recognized my last name as I signed for one of the packages. He knew my last name and spoke it aloud as it rang a bell for him. He recalled a woman with that same last name who lived in an area where he had his usual delivery route for a number of years. It was the same area where my mother had lived in the later years of her life.
He made a point of telling of her friendliness, and of being one of his favorite ‘customers’. This touched me, as the Christmas holiday was upon us, which was my mother’s favorite holiday to celebrate. She would prepare for it weeks in advance, and so she had been very much on my mind. I found my exchange with the delivery man unexpectedly enlivening. He was quite friendly as well. And I was more friendly and outgoing than I might typically be, especially when I am caught up in the busy-ness of my ‘to do’ list.
This brief moment in time could have easily passed by my awareness as simply a pleasant coincidence and an enjoyable encounter. But that day, something affected me more than I might typically have allowed. I was filled with wonder; left with a kind of buoyancy. Had the spirit of my mother moved through me? What made me turn towards the door to help the driver, instead of walk back into the office? I was uplifted in an inexplicable way, and that feeling stayed with me through the day.
If it can be this way with a ‘small’ encounter, could it be the same when a larger movement of synchronicity breaks through and captures my attention? What does it all mean? How will it shape my path? How has it done so, already?
Finally, I was able to reflect on the notion of a ‘special delivery’ as a living metaphor for something else happening in my life, something in operation in the background of everything else, that needed to be recognized and received.
I am presently reflecting on that powerful symbol of ‘something being lovingly delivered’ to me from the Source of everything...
Joseph Campbell emphasized this dynamic repeatedly in his teaching:
If you do follow your bliss,you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while waiting for you, and the life you ought to be living is the one you are living.
When you can see that, you begin to meet people who are in the field of your bliss, and they open the doors to you.
I say, follow your bliss and don't be afraid, and doors will open where you didn't know they were going to be. If you follow your bliss,doors will open for you
that wouldn't have opened for anyone else.
Photo by Dima Pechurin on Unsplash
Reflection Point #1
Think about a prior synchronistic event that has already taken place in your life.
Take the space and time you need to recall it to yourself with a very clear and specific recollection. What happened? What was un-ignorable about it? What was inexplicable and unexplainable about it? What states of wonder does it stir? How does it make you feel? What make you want to reflect on it further? What makes you want to push it away from your mind?
Redefining Heroism - To Be in Alliance with One’s Highest and Best Self
Each man had only one genuine vocation – to find the way to himself…His task was to discover his own destiny – not an arbitrary one – and live it out wholly and resolutely within himself. Everything else was only a would-be existence, an attempt at evasion, a flight back to the ideals of the masses, conformity and fear of one’s own inwardness.
- Herman Hesse, Demian
Photo by Martin Rancourt on Unsplash
In the Implicate Order, the totality of existence is enfolded within each ‘fragment’ of space and time – whether it be a single object, thought or event. Thus everything in the universe affects everything else because they are all part of the same unbroken whole.
- David Bohm
Ultimately, synchronicity can help guide us towards an alignment with our best self and our highest purpose in life.
We can learn to practice saying “Yes” to our own largeness, to our own ‘as-yet-unlived’ potential, and to line up our actions wholeheartedly with this aim. This is take us where we need to go, and as well, bring us up against our deepest resistances to going.
This is the kind of alignment - with our full commitment to our own personal journey - that is meant only for us, and to the one particular journey that will take us and pull us forward - beyond where our ego would typically choose to go. It will provide us with a mixture of adventures and ordeals.
This is an essential (and consciously repeated) internal action step that must be undertaken by anyone who seeks to be awakened to their own inner life. It requires humility and daring in equal measures.
Here is an example of a mantra for someone who humbly dares to enter into the fullness of their own being and becoming:
“Set me on a course that takes me on my own true, mythic adventure. Let the exact circumstances and opportunities come to me that will insistently and inexorably bring forth the highest and best self within me.”
“All of us, whether or not we are warriors, have a cubic centimeter of chance that pops out in front of our eyes from time to time. The difference between an average man and a warrior is that the warrior is aware of this, and one of his tasks is to be alert, deliberately waiting, so that when his cubic centimeter pops out he has the necessary speed, the prowess, to pick it up.”
- Carlos Castenada
Just go with it. You cannot be fixed in how you’re going about it any more than you would be fixed if you were setting about to paint a great work of art. Be alert, be self-aware, so that when opportunity presents itself, you can actually rise to it.
- David Bohm
Opening Yourself To The Possibility of a Synchronistic Event
We can’t make a synchronistic event happen simply because we are looking for one or wanting one to happen. This is just the ego going fishing for evidence of its own self importance or omnipotence. It is certainly a folly to think in this way.
Yet by opening our minds and sharpening our awareness, we can recognize them better when they appear before us.
When we are open to being helped by people that matter to us, and when we can feel ourselves being carried by unseen forces, we slip into the realm of wonder and beauty. This is so essential to experience in times like these. Something has to keep us going, offering us hope, that is beyond everything we see happening on the surface of this life.
Our willingness to be in alliance with others provides us with a sense of being intimately loved and cared for through meaningful companioning.
Accompanied by journey companions, and deeply struck from time to time by uncanny and improbable occurrences, we begin to cultivate the ‘extra-ordinary attention of the spirit-warrior’, as described by Carlos Castenada. We are on alert, being self-aware, so that when opportunity presents itself, and our ‘cubic centimeter of chance’ appears in front of our eyes, we are ready for it, and can act decisively.
As we prepare to face adventures and confront ordeals, the heroic aspect of our nature must practice two things: active waiting and decisive acting. When we learn to wait with alert attention, with one foot in the world of daily routine, and one foot in the realm of mystery and adventure, we must be ready and be patient. We are patient because in our hearts we know that it is inevitable that the gods will give us chances. Our unique opportunity to step towards largeness will come.
And when it comes, we must be able to act decisively. To say yes to the adventure, and accept that it will turn into an ordeal at some moment. And in that moment of challenge, when we find our authentic and vital response to the ordeal, we have become contributors to living, we realize ourselves, become who we are, by living into our potential.
This is modern day heroism, and we are all called to play the part we were born for, no matter how we’ve played it to date.
Fluent
I would love to live
Like a river flows,
Carried by the surprise
Of its own unfolding.
- John O'Donohue
The Principle of Attraction - Like Attracts Like
Keep in mind that that which you are seeking is also seeking you.
At some point along the pathway to realizing our bliss, the mystery of the intangible world will inevitably begin to move towards us, being drawn towards the one being one’s own self.
The universe going to align itself towards life itself - and with those who actively taking up the heroic journey of awakening - and being of service to life.
The arrival of the intangible world into our daily world almost always happens in an unexpected or surprising way, infusing our experience with a message that holds personal meaning only for the seeker in us. When this takes place, an expansion of our consciousness (the boon) arrives in unlikely ways and through unlikely forms.
Pay attention, and watch how this threshold may be opened to you in the days ahead!
Today could be the day your window of opportunity opens.
Or perhaps it is awaiting you tomorrow.
Reflection Point #2
It has been said that symbolic and synchronistic activity are more likely to occur for those who open their minds to such recognitions. This is very different from wishful thinking or fantasizing. It is simply being awake and aware of such a possibility being so.
How willing are you to set aside a part of a day - or the whole day - to open yourself to the presence of a synchronistic happening? How open will you be to being moved by such an event?
Let’s see what happens from here…
Coming Up Next - A New Essay Series - Adventures & Ordeals - Finding One Within The Other
The adventures of life will also yield ordeals, and vice versa. This is the deal, and we have say ‘yes’ to it. The intertwining of an adventure with an ordeal is the very thing which can bring forth the exact conditions needed by which we discover many unrealized potentials in ourselves. This creates a sense of largeness in life.
If we only stay on our journey, either way will take up towards the realization of our boon - the pearl behind all price - and the life we are living is the one we are meant to be living.
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