The Power of Coincidence (4 page)

Joseph in the Old Testament was sold into slavery to the Egyptians by his brothers. He rose in power in Egypt because of his skill in dream interpretation and because of his personal integrity. In accord with his interpretation of the Pharaoh’s dream, he prepared for and headed off a disaster from a future famine. When his brothers, many years later, felt the effects of this same famine, they came to Joseph and he was able to feed them and be reconciled with his family.

Synchronicity is found in an event that seems meaningless when it happens but later shows itself to be of utmost significance:

Abraham Lincoln, out of compassion for a man who was forced to sell all he had, bought a barrel from him for his asking price of one dollar. Lincoln never asked what it contained. He stored it at home and forgot about it. Later on, Lincoln went through a long period of confusion and indecision about whether to enter the legal profession or that of journalism. In the midst of this quandary, he happened to notice the barrel and lackadaisically opened it. It contained a set of law books. He took this as a sign and entered the profession that led to politics and the presidency. The many synchronicities in Lincoln’s life—and in the lives of most great people—show so emphatically how synchronicity points to destiny.

Synchronicity can arise in the form of a dream that answers a wakingworld question or in a dream that foretells the future:

Elias Howe, in the nineteenth century, invented the sewing machine. However, he could not figure out how to shape the needle to let the thread run through it and simultaneously through the material being sewed. He pondered long and hard with no results. Without such a needle, the invention was useless. One night, Elias, who lived in Massachusetts, dreamed he was in Africa observing natives with strange spears. He was drawn to the unusual shape of the blades with an oblong hole in the center. When Howe awoke, he realized he had found the solution to his problem.

Synchronicity shows itself in sudden or spontaneous decisions that we make, not knowing why, that later prove significant:

Fritz Perls, the founder of Gestalt therapy, taught in a university in Germany in the thirties. He and two of his colleagues were asked one day by their department chair if any one of them would like a transfer to teach at the German university in South Africa. The two colleagues began asking questions about the practical aspects of the move but Perls immediately said “Yes.” All three of them were Jewish and within a few short years, the two colleagues were in concentration camps while Perls remained safe in Africa. Later, he came to America and made important contributions to the field of psychotherapy.

Synchronicity occurs in an unusual coincidence that later proves to be necessary or helpful:

In Nebraska, several years ago, every member of a church choir failed to show up for choir practice on the very night the furnace blew up. Their lives were saved by this unusual coincidence. Prior to that night, each member had appeared faithfully and punctually every week without exception.

Synchronicity can appear as a response to a question about the future or about the reality of a spiritual world:

One evening, my friend’s cousin, Concetta, a middle-aged woman, whose mother had died recently, was sitting with her father in the house where she had grown up. Her husband would be coming later to pick her up to return to their home. As her father dozed off, Concetta was reminiscing about her mother and was wondering if there were a heaven or any afterlife. Suddenly, she found herself saying, “Ma, if there is another world, send me a slice of pizza.” Shortly thereafter, Concetta’s husband called from a pizzeria to tell her he would not be able to pick her up but that her brother would come instead. She said, “That’s fine” and was about to hang up when Tony added, “And, by the way, he’s bringing you a slice of pizza.”

There is synchronicity in the way we find our destiny in life through people and events:

Mother Teresa was born in Albania. At age fifteen, she heard of women who worked among the poor as missionaries. She was filled with an ardent desire to do that work. At eighteen, never having seen a nun, she left home for Ireland and joined the Sisters of Loreto, missionaries to India. Soon Mother Teresa indeed found herself teaching in Calcutta, but the convent and school were behind a wall and served rich girls, and she was not allowed to work in the slums where she felt called to be. At age thirty-eight, she was released by special permission of the Pope to fulfill her dream. She felt a deep loneliness as she worked all by herself as a teacher of the poor with no money, supplies, or sisterly support. One day, Mother Teresa saw a dying woman and stayed by her on the street. This expanded her sense of her mission and she began nursing the sick and dying. One nun joined her. Now there are thousands of nuns and lay people continuing her work. Her destiny in the world began as a wish and ended in a work that helped those with needs and mobilized those with resources. Just the meetings and events occurred to make it all happen as she, and the world, needed it to happen.

There is synchronicity in the way a physical disability and/or an emotional wound becomes the threshold to our mission in life or to the unfolding of our talents. The wounded healer archetype thrives on this synchronicity:

Helen Keller’s own hardships became precisely what it took for her to find her destiny of service to others. And in the film,
My Left Foot,
we saw another example: Christy Brown was afflicted with cerebral palsy and unable to use his hands. He successfully used his left foot to express his talent in painting and writing.

In our own lives we may have been abused in childhood and now could ask ourselves how this has helped us become bolder within ourselves and more compassionate toward others. “Because I was neglected, I learned to be self-sufficient. Because I was left out, I am more conscious of including others now.” Our wounds are often the openings into the best and most beautiful part of us. We all recall the cruel stepmother in fairy tales. That archetype is often a necessary element in a fairy tale so that the heroine/hero can become a person of character and power. Stories of heroes and heroines often begin with a wound or loss or injustice and end with heroic acts of restoration and gift-bestowing love: “It takes just such evil and painful things for the great emancipation to occur,” Nietzsche says.

Synchronicity can open us to our psychological work or to our sense of a world beyond rational scientific thought:

One of Carl Jung’s patients was a young woman who was resistant to his form of transpersonal, archetypal treatment because she was so much “in her head.” One day she shared a dream in which she was handed a golden scarab. As Jung listened to her, he was distracted by the tapping of a beetle at his window. He opened the window and it flew into the room. It was a
Scarabaeidae
beetle, a close equivalent of the scarab in his patient’s dream. Both Jung and the young woman could see the synchronicity in that event and she became more open to the spiritual dimension of life.

Synchronicity is at work when something occurs that substantiates a belief or philosophy of life.

There is a touching story told by Jung in
The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious
of an event that fit and confirmed his belief that humans always hoped in an afterlife. Another point in this story is its affirmation of the power of love:

In Upper Egypt, near Aswan, I once looked into an ancient Egyptian tomb that had just been opened. Just behind the entrance door was a little basket made of reeds, containing the withered body of a newborn infant, wrapped in rags. Evidently the wife of one of the workmen had hastily laid the body of her dead child in the nobleman’s tomb at the last moment. She must have hoped that, when the great man entered the sun barge in order to rise anew, the little stowaway might share in his salvation, because it was in the holy precinct within reach of divine grace.

L
EARNING TO
P
RACTICE
O
PENNESS
TO
S
YNCHRONICITY

Synchronicity invites or challenges us to become more capable of loving, of accessing wisdom, of becoming a source of healing and peace. The actualization of these potentials
is
our spiritual destiny. We do not create our destiny; we participate in its unfolding. Synchronicity works as a catalyst toward the working out of that destiny. It can help us in this way because it is a numinous visit of the transcendent/transpersonal into our transitory/personal world. These are worlds that love to embrace. Synchronicity is thus a major tool of soul-making, divulging immortal meanings through personal events so that we can find our way toward integration. We can find this way through practices.

The suggestions that follow, like all those in this book, are meant to help you work
with
synchronicity in two ways: You learn to recognize synchronicities and follow them up with practices that take their cues, always uniquely designed by your higher Self to move you toward your destiny of wholeness. Consider each of these elements of synchronicity and ask which ones are afoot right now in your life. Make a conscious choice to become aware of these as they happen in the near future.

Coincidence, correspondence, connection, resemblance, links between past events or meetings and later developments

Triggers to a series of events or turning points

The unexpected, unusual, uncanny, improbable

What happens on the spur of the moment and just in time

What is meaningful, revelatory, and has become conscious to us

What happens beyond our control or contrary to our wishes

The fluke or choice or happenstance that uncovers a whole new possibility in our psyche or a path to our true bliss or calling

Serendipity, finding good fortune by accident, a way of referring to the playful dimension of synchronicity

In what follows, and in all the practices recommended in this book, use art, sculpture, music-composing, poetry, dance, or any art form that is appealing to you.

1. Keep track in your journal of any coincidences that happen as you read this book. Notice which of them become meaningful, that is, bring out the best in you; change your perspective in such a way that new things can happen to you; or make you more loving, or wiser, or more able to help or heal yourself or others. Find a personal message from these experiences, one that moves you along on your journey. This happens when you challenge yourself to act in new ways, to go out of character, to be more authentic about your deepest needs and wishes, and to have a sense of personal mission.

If you do not have a spiritual teacher or mentor, share your experiences with the friend who seems most spiritually conscious and listen to his/her feedback. Take the feedback as an extension of the synchronicity that touched off this process of finding your own mission. What purpose of the universe wants to work itself out in you? How has it already begun? How have you participated in it or sabotaged it?

2. Look at the significant events in your life, listing them by decade, and explore the synchronicities that may have happened around them. What message was trying to come through? Look at events that seemed negative at first and then turned into something good. What synchronicities clustered around those events? Now look at your present life. If synchronicity happens around an event that seems negative to you now, there may be something positive in the works. Find something good in what seems so bad and look for ways to expand on it.

3. Pay attention to the surprises that happen to you. What do they call you to uncover? Are you setting up your life so that there will be no surprises? Is everything too orderly? What do you lose that way? Is fear behind your not being surprised very much these days?

4. What are some correspondences, similarities, or serendipities that have happened this month? How do they warn, guide, or confirm you? What may be afoot in your life? What new freedom in you may be endeavoring to be born by lightening you of what you have been carrying for so long? Perhaps there are obligations that you want to be done with. Or perhaps there are things you may be loath to lose, but the time has come to let them go.

5. What are the images—or one image—that come up over and over for you? How do they point to something you are ready to go for or to let go of? Is there a need or want in you that is not being fulfilled? Does not the synchronicity of an image continually fascinating you call you to follow it through? Look at your dream images too. what do the images and synchronicities say to you about your present predicament?

6. Every coincidence offers a grace. Notice how, in the stories above, an increase of consciousness led to an increase in love, wisdom, and/or healing. Look at your own experiences of synchronicity to find the very same possibility.

7. The next time you experience déjà vu, ask what is unfinished that is asking for closure, or what loss you are regretting, or what era of life you might like to return to in order to begin again at that point. How does any of this elicit grief or its milder friend, nostalgia?

8. Has there been a series of similar events—or dreams—in the past month or two? What is the common theme? What force beyond yourself is trying to reach you through this orchestration of your life? What challenge does this theme present to you? What is exciting about it? What scares you? Write out the answers to these questions and notice which feelings arise in you. How do these feelings help or hinder you in responding to the theme?