Synchronicity

Synchronicity, to be appreciated, requires an openness and willingness to explore the connections between apparently unconnected events and the significance of that connection to our lives. Searching for its meaning reveals purpose behind the apparent randomness of our lives.

Jung first coined the term and defined it as: “The simultaneous occurrence of two meaningfully but not causally connected events.”

So synchronicity involves two or more unusual and apparently unrelated but connected events that have a deep significance in your life. Let’s look at this. First is ‘unusual.’ If a friend calls me and asks what I’m doing, I might say, “Sitting on my patio drinking a cup of coffee.” He might reply, “That’s a coincidence. So am I.” Big deal! I spend most of my non-computer time out there and we’re both prodigious coffee-drinkers. But suppose I say, “I’m in the coffee shop at the Luxor,” and he says, “So am I.” We both put our cell phones down and realize we’re just a few feet apart, separated by a large, potted palm. Now that’s unusual because it’s the first time in there for both of us.

‘Apparently unrelated but connected’ means that to the world out there, the events seem unrelated. When you think about a person and the phone rings, there’s no apparent relation. But when the caller is the same person you were thinking about, there’s the connection.

‘Deep significance’ means something changes in your life that otherwise would not have happened. Perhaps you pay more attention to the reason your friend called, and end up going somewhere that you otherwise would have missed … and that’s where you meet your twin flame.Synchronicity is ‘meaningful’ because it impacts your life. As a fiction writer, I have fun with the characters in the books I write or edit, and strive for tight story lines where, say, the hero enters a room just in time to hear two bad guys plotting something evil. A second later would have been too late, and there’s no story. If my characters were able to talk to me, they would probably tell me their lives are full of such meaningful coincidences. It’s true … they are because I put them there to move the plot along and make things interesting.Now, pull the camera back a little and look at your life. Are you sure you’re not a character in a larger story? If you were, who would be the author, and what synchronicities would he or she write into your life story? And how would you-the-character interpret them? Would you even notice them? Or would you just dismiss them? Big shame if you do because they are a major way Spirit uses to ‘move your life along.’Other characteristics of synchronicity are that it is unique and unrepeatable—true one-in-a-million freaks of circumstance that tell you you’re not the author of your life story, and there’s a larger Author writing little subplots into the story. For example, this is a true story of synchronicity, but the names have been changed:

Mike and Jenny meet at a party near San Francisco and are immediately drawn to each other, but they are both in relationships, so the attraction goes no further. Jenny moves with her boyfriend to Texas, hoping he will commit and propose marriage. Over the years, she thinks often of Mike and the strong connection she felt with him. After eight years, her boyfriend still won’t commit, so she leaves Texas and drives back to California.

Meanwhile, Mike often thinks of Jenny but knows she moved east somewhere, and has probably married her boyfriend. One day, he has to go to Las Vegas to attend his grandmother’s funeral but doesn’t really want to. SF airport is fogged in so he sets out on the 12-hour drive. Late that night, driving through a ‘blink and you miss it’ town, his car starts acting up, so he checks into a motel, hoping the town mechanic can fix the car in the morning. He is astute enough to realize his car trouble is due to his lack of wholehearted commitment to his Las Vegas trip.

While Mike is in the motel office checking in, Jenny walks in, also intending to spend the night there on her way to California. Both see the synchronicity, and begin a relationship on the spot, to which Mike has no trouble committing because that’s the issue that was up for him.

Coincidence or synchronicity? Well, the two apparently unrelated events of the pair both separately checking into the same motel had deep personal significance to them. They were unusual ‘once in a lifetime’ events in that neither of them had ever been to that town before … and it was impeccable timing—a few minutes either way and they could have missed each other—so they were unique and unrepeatable. You be the judge—guided or not?

But look at what their guides had to pull off:

1. This all had to be orchestrated around Mike’s grandmother’s funeral.
2. San Francisco airport had to be fogged in.
3. Mike had to take that particular route to Las Vegas out of all possible routes.
4. His car had to be ‘tampered with’ so he’d spend the night in that town.
5. He had to choose that motel, and exactly at that time, just as Jenny entered.

Similarly, Jenny’s itinerary had to be meticulously managed so that she, too, would end up in the motel office at exactly the same time as Mike. Not a bad job, eh?

"Synchronicity" is excerpted from "Living with Soul" by Tony Stubbs