OK, I have not posted in a seriously long time. I guess I could blame it on the
Mercury Retrograde, since he is an easy scapegoat, but this dry spell has been going on for longer than that. I keep telling myself that my next post has to be something on a larger topic, and I think I was putting too much pressure on myself to come up with something awesome, and therefore psyched myself out of writing at all.
So in a sort-of cheater way, this post is actually a summary I wrote of a discussion that occurred over two weeks at the
metaphysical church I attend. To be fair, I was the facilitator of said discussion, so much of the material covered came from me. There are also stories related by other participants in the discussion, and excerpts from various research materials.
I am lucky enough to have found a church that does not have a single person who delivers a sermon while there is a mute listening audience who is asked to accept what they are being told without question. Rather, each week we have a discussion that is lead by a facilitator (who is not always the same person every time) and that person brings in some thought-provoking material to help get a conversation started. Anyone can put in their two cents on any topic, as our philosophy is that we are all there to learn from each other. I can't speak highly enough of this group, and this may be for selfish reasons, as they accepted me for who I was right from the first time I visited to see what they were all about. There's no dogma, there's no, "This is the one and only way to be and if you are not this way then you are on a path to damnation." There is only, "Here is my experience. What do you think?" Beautiful. You are made to feel like it is a conversation among equals, not as though there is only one enlightened leader who is going to teach an ignorant flock the ways of the universe. But I digress.
So for two Sundays in July, I mustered my courage and volunteered to lead a discussion on Synchronicity, as this is a topic that I thought would be able to spur a conversation, and that I had some experience with. I was nervous, which is odd for someone who normally has zero problems with public speaking, but everyone reassured me that I needn't worry, and kept reminding me that I didn't have to know everything about everything to facilitate a discussion.
So below are my notes for the two weeks of conversation. You can also
read them at the church's Facebook page. I volunteered one Sunday to create a summary of our weekly discussions for Facebook, and have been doing it ever since, so you are welcome to see more of what I get up to in my free time when I'm not blogging about
talking boards.
For two weeks we discussed the subject of
Synchronicity.
What is Synchronicity? It is defined as:
"The
experience of two or more events that are apparently causally
unrelated or unlikely to occur together by chance, yet are experienced
as occurring together in a meaningful manner. The concept of
synchronicity was first described in this terminology by Carl Gustav
Jung, a Swiss psychologist, in the 1920s"
What
do we think synchronicity means to us? A very basic idea of what the
concept meant to Carl Jung, who coined the term is as follows:
"Following
discussions with both Albert Einstein and Wolfgang Pauli, Jung believed
that there were parallels between synchronicity and aspects of
relativity theory and quantum mechanics. Jung was transfixed by the idea
that life was not a series of random events but rather an expression of
a deeper order, which he and Pauli referred to as Unus mundus.
This deeper order led to the insights that a person was both embedded
in an orderly framework and was the focus of that orderly framework and
that the realisation of this was more than just an intellectual
exercise, but also having elements of a spiritual awakening. From the
religious perspective, synchronicity shares similar characteristics of
an "intervention of grace". Jung also believed that in a person's life,
synchronicity served a role similar to that of dreams, with the purpose
of shifting a person's egocentric conscious thinking to greater
wholeness."
Our group had many personal examples to share with us of synchronous events that had occurred in their lives:
Lara
recalled the time in her life when she was considering a move to
Chicago - everywhere she looked, there were references to the city, as
if the universe were reassuring her that this was the right move to
make. One day she was attending a Highland Scottish Festival with a
friend of hers and she was explaining to her friend this Chicago
phenomenon. Her friend brushed it off as coincidence, but just a few
moments later, as her and her friend went to view a bagpipe performance,
the first pipe band up to play was from Chicago, as if to prove to her
that she was not imagining things and reading into normal coincidences.
Neils
discussed his lake house back east, where he said that at an earlier
visit, he had discovered that a very large tree had fallen into the
lake. He tasked a local man to haul the tree out of the lake and dispose
of it, but various circumstances prevented this undertaking from being
completed. The next time he visited the house there had recently been
extensive, and seasonally uncommon rains, causing the lake to flood, and
the tree to float to the surface. Now they were easily able to haul it
out of the lake with a rope and cut it up into firewood. What were the
odds that they would happen to be at the house just in time for the
flooding, when they had no idea who they would have gotten the offending
tree out of the lake otherwise?
Richard remembered when
his brother, who was born in 1937, passed away. Suddenly Richard began
seeing 37s everywhere that he happened to look at numbers: Restaurant
receipts, addresses, phone numbers. During a phone call with his sister,
she said that she was experiencing the same thing, and they both
decided that their brother was trying to send a message to them. At a
psychic fair which took place after this had been going on, he received a
message through a medium from his mother and the first thing she said
was that his brother was OK, which was not a normal conversational
gambit from her, to be so direct about such a subject.
An
example cited by more than one UMS member concerned a time when the
church building was undergoing a remodel. The city inspectors insisted
that the building have at least two restrooms, so that there would be
both a ladies' and a men's room. As church members scratched their
heads, wondering how they would rectify this issue on their already
limited budget, a man drove by and introduced himself as a plumber. He
said that he had just come from a job and had two toilets he didn't end
up using, and wanted to know if anyone would be interested in buying
them at a very low price, as he needed to be rid of them. Perfect
timing!
A fun example was read from the book:
Synchronicity & You, by Frank Joseph : "Few motion pictures were more plagued with production nightmares than the 1939 version of
The Wizard of Oz.
Among the lesser, although vexing, problems confronting Victor Fleming
(one of five directors associated with the film) was something as simple
as locating the right kind of coat for the traveling fortune-teller to
wear. Incredibly, the studio did not possess a single frock coat that
fit
Frank
Morgan, who portrayed Professor Marvel, or satisfied Fleming. He gave
an ultimatum to the head of the props department, saying, "Bring me the
coat I want after lunch, or you're fired!" Production had already gone
far over budget, so falling behind now on its shooting schedule would
result in the film's cancellation. In a panic, the props chief ran from
the lot and sprinted several miles to the nearest pawn shop. There, in
the back room, he found an old black coat he hoped would pacify the
director. It looked about the right size, too. He returned in time for
the shoot to find that the long-tailed coat fit actor Morgan perfectly
and met Fleming's specifications. Months later, after filming and
editing were completed and all the props were collected and returned to
storage, the coat used for Professor Marvel's part hit a bureaucratic
snag. The item was not in the Warner Brothers stock catalogue, and the
prop chief had to explain how and where he obtained it. Turning the
collar up to sew in a company label, he was surprised to find a tag
bearing the name of its former owner. It read simply, "L. Frank Baum,"
author of the original Wizard of Oz series of children's books. Baum had
already been dead for twenty years, so he could not appreciate this
meaningful coincidence, made all the more intriguing because he
personally identified with the character who wore the coat, Professor
Marvel. The connection was appropriate, nevertheless, in that the 1939
film version did more to popularize his life's work that any publishing
effort could have."
We had many questions about this phenomenon:
What
counts as a synchronicity? Premonitions? Dreams? Repetition within a
short span of time of the same numbers, words or phrases, objects?
Are
all these incidents and occurrences happening because we are looking
for them, or are they there all the time and it is up to us to use them
and open ourselves to them? Or perhaps, are we simply catching an
unfettered glimpse of the unifying underlying structure of the universe
when our ego consciousness momentarily quiets down? We all had different
opinions of which idea was closest to truth, and some of us allowed
that it could be any or all of these things, depending on the situation.
During
the first week of the discussion the question was asked, "What is the
difference between a coincidence, a synchronicity, and a miracle?" When
Rochelle, the facilitator of this discussion, was contemplating this
question, she received an answer "out of the blue," that was posed as
another question to her, "What is the difference between a wave and a
tsunami?" The answer was: Magnitude.
The more we take note
of synchronicities, the more of them we will see. The universe will
show itself to us if we are willing to see it. We talked about how we
have to let go of trying to control every aspect of our lives and let
the synchronicities of the world help us.
Synchronicity is a way that we can experience oneness with the universe.
One
participant provided an apt metaphor: We are now used to using GPS
systems in our cars or on our phones. If we have set out GPS to provide
us with directions to a destination, and we you go the wrong way, the
GPS will re-direct us until we get where we are supposed to go. The
farther off track from the destination we get, the longer and more
difficult it will be to get back to the correct path. Synchronicities
may be like warnings or guidance trying to nudge us onto the right path.
The whole system is self-correcting. If you miss the clues, they will
come around again.
We
suggested the possibility of keeping a synchronicity journal, so that
we may see larger patterns that we are unable to notice when we only
look at each small instance separately, especially those instances where
we cannot immediately see a meaning behind the event. Not only could we
discover larger patterns among our synchronicities, but we would be
able to take note of recurring types of incidents that may be specific
to us, personally.
How can we interpret the meanings behind these events? Frank Joseph, in the book mentioned above in the
Wizard of Oz
story, says, "To scrutinize something like synchronicity is to diminish
it. We murder when we dissect. In trying to understand the phenomenon,
the degree to which we analyze it determines how it either divulges
itself or escapes up. Indeed, it is less important that we consciously
understand a meaningful coincidence than that we allow ourselves to feel
it. What we may never understand intellectually we more certainly grasp
subconsciously, with other ways of knowing. People long in contact with
synchronous events believe humans have more ways of knowing than most
of us realize. they regard the rational mind as a jealous tyrant at all
times, who, afraid of losing control, needs to dominate all things at
all times and refuses to recognize our intuitive capacity for knowledge
through feeling. A concertgoer who confines his attention to the
scientific principles of air set in motion through certain vibrations
generated by wooden and metal instruments will hear various frequencies
of sound, but no music."
As Rev. Jess said at the end
of this discussion, "The answers are all there in the æther, until you
ask the questions, the knowledge means nothing to you."
