Synchronicity

Probably we have all had the experience of two or more related events occurring at the same or nearly the same time. We call this "synchronicity" when the events are not causally linked and normally would not be expected to occur together just by chance.

We see a lot of synchronicity in our office. Someone will call with an obscure but important question about some subject, and at the same time, the answer will appear somewhere else in a totally unexpected way. Then, in the same day, Marion may come across a post on that very subject in one of the several blogs she follows. Synchronicity! What is going on there? Is this merely coincidence or is there something else at play?

Psychologist Carl Jung noticed the remarkable phenomenon of synchronicity and wrote, "When coincidences pile up in this way, one cannot help being impressed by them—for the greater the number of terms in such a series, or the more unusual its character, the more improbable it becomes." (C. G. Jung, Jung on Synchronicity and the Paranormal, p. 91) Jung was right.

Last Sunday I was scheduled to start a week’s vacation and, while many things were unfinished ‘works in progress’, there was one important task I felt I needed to complete before I left. This would require a face-to-face meeting with a couple, and to ask them to wait for a week seemed quite unfair. At the same time, I had a feeling that I should go to church in Cambridge that day; perhaps 200 kilometres in the opposite direction from the people I needed to meet. What to do?

Fortunately my wife is both understanding and insightful. Joan encouraged me to trust my spiritual instincts, so I decided I would go to church in Cambridge and try to arrange to meet these folks later in the afternoon. It would mean extra driving, but that would have to be okay. When I called my friends on their cell phone to see if we could meet, I discovered that they were already in the car. Where were they going? Cambridge!

Was this mere coincidence? Was God intervening and stage managing this whole process? Did the Holy Spirit know my friends were on their way to Cambridge and therefore urged me to go there too? Was the energetic matrix of our holographic universe merely aligned in such a way as to produce synchronous events? I will leave it to the reader to decide. I will tell you, however, that I myself have not believed in coincidence for a long time.

So, what do you think? Are you willing to click on the comments button and share your opinions with the world?

As for me, I am on vacation!

Posted by Carman