Synchronicity
“Most
people think that intuition is a hunch that occurs now and then… It is more
than that. It is a very sophisticated system that allows you to see more
than you can with your five senses. As we become more intuitive—and
we all are—we encounter different kinds of these experiences.”
Gary Zukav in Soul Stories
A worthwhile practice is to notice the synchronicity
in your life. Carl Jung coined the term synchronicity to describe those meaningful
coincidences of inner and outer events that are not causally related.*
Maybe you are thinking of a friend you haven’t seen in a long time and an
hour later you bump into him on the street. Or you hear an unusual word,
apparently for the first time, and moments later you open a book and the
first thing you see is that word. Or you finally decide to learn more about
your finances and the next day a neighbor’s financial magazine is delivered
to your house by mistake. None of these things is clearly caused by the other,
but they are related, at least in your mind. Such events are common, but
many people pay little attention to them and soon forget them. It seems though
that when one attends to synchronicity it is more likely to occur.
Noticing meaningful coincidences can give us a greater appreciation of the
connectedness of psyche and matter. We don’t know why things happen as they
do, but if life events were entirely random one wouldn’t expect some of these
things to happen at all. Synchronicity is another way to understand our own
minds and it can be a source of fascination and hope. When things look bleak,
but one has had experiences of synchronicity, the possibility of a happy
accident that might improve the situation seems less remote. Sometimes the
odds may be against you, but it is good to know that life is not all about
the odds.
Be alert to synchronistic events. Expect that they will occur. Pay attention
when they do. Consider writing them down, perhaps in a special section of
your journal. Contemplate their meaning when they occur. See what you can
learn from them. Use them to increase your wonder at the mysteries of life.
Use them to enlarge the scope of your intuition.
*Carl Jung, et al, Man and His Symbols, Doubleday, 1964, p. 211.
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