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We’ve all done it! We look up suddenly and see a sign that means something to us. We might see the same numbers over and over again or hear a song that speaks about a decision we’re considering. Synchronicity or not?
Let’s define this word. Carl Jung, who developed his Theory of Synchronicity says that it “ is a meaningful coincidence of two or more events, where something other than the probability of chance is involved.” (Carl G. Jung (1960), Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle, Princeton University Press, 2012, p. 44.) He also came up with the word ‘Synchronicity’.
I experienced synchronicity while writing one of my recent blogs. I like to look up words and their meanings just to make sure I’m communicating what I want to convey. The word I wanted to use was ‘machinations’ but I wasn’t sure it was the right word so I clicked on Thesaurus.com. On the page right in front of me, before I typed in what word I was looking up, was the Word of the Day. Guess what it was? Yep, ‘machinations’. It means crafty schemes; plots; intrigues and not at all what I wanted to convey. For me, this wasn't a coincidence. It was too specific. It made my heart skip a beat and I felt an instant surge of pure joy. It confirmed the timing of this particular blog. I’d been thinking this subject was not the right one for me to write just yet. It also was a sign for me that words and writing were an important part of my mission and purpose in life. It was like my consciousness had expanded for a second allowing me to see the breadcrumb that the collective Universe placed there. That breadcrumb let me know I was traveling my life’s path and I wasn't alone. I was connected.
Psychic Tanya Carroll Richardson wrote an article in MindBodyGreen that synchronicities often come with feelings:
”Does time seem to slow down, as if the moment is pregnant with meaning? Do you experience physical cues from your intuition like getting chills? Does this potential sign keep popping into your mind hours or days later? Does this potential sign speak to a larger theme in your life? Even if it’s not what you wanted to hear, deep down inside does this information still register as a sign? Any of these could indicate a synchronicity.”
Other types of synchronicity a lot of us experience are number sequences. In the past, I tended to see 11:11 on clocks everywhere. My oldest son was born at 11:11pm. Over time, I realized when significant changes were about to take place in my life, that number sequence would show up more frequently. When I looked for more information on the 1111 number sequence, different spirituality sources seemed to agree on a few explanations. These numbers are associated with manifesting and new beginnings. This particular sequence is an angel number. Angel numbers appear in groups of 3 or 4 numbers and tend to pop up anywhere. For me it was just clocks. Perhaps my angels were urging me to be aware that time was short and to get on with my life’s purpose.
Some medical science people call synchronicity, apophenia, “an error of perception—the tendency to interpret random patterns as meaningful.” (https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/reality-check/201111/11-11-11-apophenia-and-the-meaning-of-life) Some psychologists call apophenia “the human tendency to see connections and patterns that are not really there".(https://www.merriam-webster.com/wordplay/how-perceptive-of-you-words-about-perception) In fact, a common human trait is to find patterns in everything. In the past it helped keep us safe. It’s human nature, though, to notice certain things in our environment when we’re thinking of that certain thing. For instance, when you buy a new car, suddenly you see the same car everywhere, but didn’t see them before that car was yours. I’ve had that experience, too. One could even call it ‘pattern recognition’.
Here’s another example I wrote about in a blog post yesterday: I had been having doubts about my work on the book I’m now editing. It seemed to me that the information that poured out of me was disorganized and jumbled. Will people understand it? Have I said what I know to be true clearly? I was feeling like I wasn’t enough and felt the familiar haze of dismal cloudiness over my head as I walked into the store. When I came out, I happened to look down and there amongst the trampled leaves and brown fall foliage was a shiny blue wrapper in the shape of a heart. My cloud lifted immediately and I whipped out my phone to take a picture. It was obvious the gum wrapper had been discarded and just happened to take the shape of a heart after being walked on by many feet judging by the ground around it. Hmmm, that’s just how I felt, kind of trampled, a little discarded, and it was by grace that the thrown away gum wrapper spoke to me of love, lifting me up instantly.
The connection of feeling trampled and seeing the gum wrapper was a synchronistic event for me. The meaning was clear. “Take heart.” When I saw a second heart in the form of a single leaf on the ground in the same spot as the gum wrapper a few weeks later, the message was received, “Take heart and keep going.” The possibilities of me walking into the same store and seeing the same heart shape at two different times in the same spot on the ground was much more than coincidence. I felt a deep connection with the Creator and with all created beings in that moment. That connection is what made seeing those two hearts more than just coincidence.
Speaking of just more than coincidence, there’s way more to synchronicity than seeing a few patterns. Dr. Mark Harmon says in his blog that:
“Deepak [Chopra] looks at synchronicity as the “organizing ability of pure consciousness.” By exploring our own awareness at its deepest level, we see how everything is connected and that is what synchronicity is revealing.”
On Dr. Harmon’s podcast, The Doctor’s Farmacy, Deepak Chopra and Dr. Harmon discuss what synchronicity means in the context of “How Can You Wake Up To Your Highest Intelligence?”. Deepak relates that Einstein objected to the theory of non-local correlation that his contemporary, Niels Bohr, Nobel Prize Winner in Physics (1922) was espousing but was almost “muddled” about his own theory of relativity even though he wrote that equation. Deepak relates:
“There’s a joke about general relativity and non-local correlation. Since he [Einstein] and Niels Bohr were fighting about it all the time, they say that when Einstein is turning over in his grave, Niels Bohr turns the other way simultaneously. That is a good metaphor for everything in the Universe is co-related [or synchronistic. In fact] synchronicity is what people call today ‘entanglement’ or ‘or non-local correlation’.”
Dr. Harmon reflects about his life and states:
… there’s this phenomenon of synchronicity and magic that happens in the unfolding of your life that you couldn’t plan, design or create but that happens as a result of you realizing you’re not your ego [or] your thoughts… When my intentions are clear, when I’m working from a place of service … magic happens.”
There's a lot more to unpack about synchronicity, but for this blog, I’d like to conclude by highlighting and slightly rearranging Dr. Harmon’s words: As a result of you realizing you’re not your ego or your thoughts, when intentions are clear and one is working from a place of service, magic happens.’
And that magic is synchronicity and connection.
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