Synchronicity

[Maricel Evasco]

What is Synchronicity?
http://www.carl-jung.net/synchronicity.html

The term synchronicity is coined by Jung to express a concept that belongs to him. It is about acausal connection of two or more psycho-physic phenomena. This concept was inspired to him by a patient's case that was in situation of impasse in treatment. Her exaggerate rationalism (animus inflation) was holding her back from assimilating unconscious materials. One night, the patient dreamt a golden scarab - cetonia aurata. The next day, during the psychotherapy session, a real insect this time, hit against the Jung's cabinet window. Jung caught it and discovered surprisingly that it was a golden scarab; a very rare presence for that climate.

So, the idea is all about coincidence: in this case, between the scarab dreamt by the patient and its appearance in reality, in the psychotherapy cabinet.

But this coincidence is not senseless, a simple coincidence. By using the amplification method, Jung associates in connection with the scarab and comes to the concept of death and rebirth from the esoteric philosophy of antiquity, a process that, in a symbolic way, the patient should experience for a renewal and vitalization of her unilateral personality, the cause of the neurosis she was suffering from.

Thus, a significant coincidence of physical and psychological phenomena that are acausal connected.

Behind all these phenomena Jung places the archetype or the constellation of an archetype, which, in his view, is a process that engages equally objective manifestations, in the physical world, and subjective ones, in the psychological universe.

Synchronicity, as an explicative theory, applies to phenomena from the area of parapsychology, prevision and premonition, to I Ching (specific method of consulting the Oracle of Changes), to astrology and many other borderline fields.

It is also present in psychotherapy, as we have already shown. Several psychoanalysts noted certain strange coincidences in which their patients received information about them by extra-sensorial ways, information that was not accessible to the general public.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I am inclined to believe in the concept of synchronicity because I have physically experienced it many times in my lifetime. I've even experienced. fairly recently,  the golden scarab phenomena but instead of a golden scarab, it was a centipede, harbinger of danger. After the dream of the centipede approaching me, I woke up the next morning to find a live centipede approaching within inches of my bed.


Another such experience of synchronicity on a microcosmic scale for me is my unexpected 3-day visit to Jamaica. My sister observed how unhappy I was at a former school--the negative climate, the fast turn over rate, enabling parents, etc. She suggested a weekend  vacation breather to Montego Bay, Jamaica. I jumped at the opportunity and took my kids with us. We had the time of our lives and I had a great epiphany sitting for what it felt like hours on a rocky ledge jutting out into the shore. My job (not career because career is meaningful) at that school had eroded my focus and the rut I found myself in was eating away at my happiness and past successes as a teacher. I had to "let go"  just like  the "ebb and flow" of the tide lapping at my legs. I was more than ready for change, but preventing myself from welcoming it. 

I returned home refreshed and rejuvenated and voluntarily left that school within the month (mid school year) and surprisingly and luckily found another school to work for (current school) where I feel happy, valued as a teacher and colleague, and at home. And to my pleasant surprise, a majority of my students in my classes were of Jamaican descent. LoL  talk about synchronicity at play. I had the most MARVELOUS rapport with these kids so my transition into the school went rather beautifully.


Here's an interesting science-oriented blog about the subject:
http://www.intentblog.com/archives/2007/03/hqr_burden_of_p.html

Oh, and here is synchronicity at play, I just found someone's response
to what posted in that blog which resonates well with what I am thinking
and feeling about synchronicity- written on my birthday. Silly coincidences
to others, but somewhat meaningful to me.

Dear D.K.

My cup runneth over.  (This one of the taglines in the Ramblers Realm avatar)

My heart is beating with a renewed enthusiasm over
the possibilities given here!

We may have just turned the corners of of ears back.

I hope you give us cats some extra time to play with this thread.

I have been searching for the justifications of my experiences.

Of course, it's only my intellect that asks how...
my heart knows why and what for.

I always wondered how much influence my own presence
contributed to the events that unfolded because
it's not like I consciously planned them to happen.

Losing one's original faith in moments of despair
is certainly a type of death, practically a crux of fiction.

The 'good news' has always been "there is Life after this death."

AND after that One, and that one and that One!

I know I scare people sometimes with my over-enthusiastic optimism.

Their faces may show disgust but their hearts
gleam hope through the eyes.

Rays of light like shining, double-edged swords
cut through space and invade my movie screen
with moving pictures, lights, sound and ACTION!

Aye, I have seen the end of the rainbow, my friends.
I have photographs to prove there is no pot of gold there.

Immersed in a prism of thunder-showers at dusk
does wonders where Spirit is concerned, and the soul
is discerned for That which it is in fact!

A projector of my life resides within Me2.

I have been lucky charmed. Le pro con, I am! Keith~

(taken from the blog above)

[Dazzling Zoomer Gal Diana]

"Coincidences have never been idle for me, instinctively, but as meaningful as I was to find they were to Jung. I have always had a hunch that they are a manifestation of a law of life of which we are inadequately aware and which in terms of our short life are unfortunately incapable of total definition, and yet however partial the meaning we can extract from them, we ignore it, I believe, at our peril.

For as well as promoting some cosmic law, coincidences, I suspect, are some sort of indication to what extent the evolution of our lives is obedient or not obedient to the symmetry of the universe."

~Sir Laurens van der Post, Jung and the Story of Our Time ~

[Maricel Evasco]

"...For as well as promoting some cosmic law, coincidences, I suspect, are some sort of indication to what extent the evolution of our lives is obedient or not obedient to the symmetry of the universe."

[Tim E]

This presentation about symmetry involves the domain of mathematical proof. Jung's theory of synchronicity is merely speculative. There are controls on mathematical proof, but there are no controls on how people interpret coincidental events. The theory of synchronicity is of a kind with numerology, astrology, and spiritualism, to my reckoning. I wouldn't stake a dime on it, except as a psychological disposition to protect it from.

[Maricel Evasco]

There are controls on mathematical proof, but there are no controls on how people interpret coincidental events.

I think it is possible to quantify to some degree how people interpret events by applying a applying a ‘numerical scale’ to the type, or intensity, of perceived connections and generate data to analyze, but because most "self-respectin'" scientist wouldn't dare venture into the realm of para-psychology, no formal research has been done on this kind of perception. Btw....The Bandura Bobo Doll experiment and the Asch Experiment were examples of opinion based research.

[thallygal]

I just love the books written by skeptic scientists turned believers....(smile)....a couple of these....
Many Lives, Many Masters written by Brian Weiss
and The Journey Home by Phillip Berman
never hurts to have an open mind.....and yes i believe in synchronicity.....happens to me all of the time, all of the time, and for me it is about the people who come into my life at the most unexpected times, the times when I need them the most...
one such time...was working in an AA club...a piddly job for little money, was going through a horrendous divorce, was raising four kids by myself, had a troubled son, worked seven days a week and was taking eighteen credit hours at school...was at my very lowest point...wondering what was the point....a man walked into that club and started telling me of his life and a time he was going through a divorce....he was in mexico, thinking about taking his life, when he walked into a bookstore and a book fell off of the shelf, the book which he brought me the very next day was How to Survive the Loss of a Love....just what I needed to read at the exact time I needed it.....coincidence????? call it what you will....
I'm a believer for sure
have a great friday everyone, fill it with love and laughter and keep looking for the synchronicities....the miracles...we all have them if we will be aware and awake to life around us
thalia

[Maricel Evasco]

keep looking for the synchronicities....the miracles...we all have them if we will be aware and awake to life around us thallygal

Yes Thally, a life full of miracles is something to look forward to.

[Tim E]

thallygal 51 wrote: I just love the books written by skeptic scientists turned believers

Yeah, well, I'm glad I had a forty-year head start on them. Maybe they'll realize by the time they're eighty. If they don't, I'm sure there will always be plenty of places for them on the Internet.

[thallygal]

Say what???????????????? you eighty?????????

[Dazzling Zoomer Gal Diana]

Well, putting Jung aside (an individual who's extraordinary body of work, is a tad difficult to summarily dismiss ) there is Gary Zukav, and his book The Dancing Wu Li Masters.

Back to Jung, his theories of the collective consciousness have hardly been dismissed out of hand as cant.

A mechanistic view of reality is a mechanical construct of the mind.
A quantum view of reality is a quantum construct of the mind.
An open mind can embrace the reality of both constructs.

External Stimuli : Hennin Lederer’s Industriepalast, Fritz Kahn’s Modern Physiology, Mechanism Philosophy . . . and there is of course so much more.

There is geometry in the humming of the strings, there is music in the spacing of the spheres. ~ Pythagoras

[Harley Hans Hoglin]

So Jung coined a word and idea, based on a dung beetle(which is what scarabs are), now that is a coincidence.

[Dazzling Zoomer Gal Diana]

Now now - Freud coined words based upon the excitement over his own efforts at masturbation. Deemed it to be "hysteric " behaviour, if psych. 101 @ university served me correctly. Oh - wait - I've got his manual - here - somewhere - hold ON!

You can let go now . . .

Jung had his beetle, Freud had his penis. And psychology became even more a mythology.

[Maricel Evasco]

Even mythologies have hidden realities...
Quantum physicists are working to prove that the gap between science and spirituality is being bridged by the recognition that our visible physical reality is connected to an invisible spiritual reality. Einstein (my boo) said, “Men invented time to feel comfortable in space. But is doesn’t actually exist. All experience is happening at once.” He also said time does not flow in only one direction. In a sense, reincarnation speaks to this at another level – synchronistic events that lead one to believe they have been born and died and born again into this earthly plane. Again, I believe this to be true. Dr. Stephen Hawking (noted physicist who occupies the Sir Isaac Newton Chair at Cambridge University in England) said on national television that reincarnation was a distinct possibility because of coincidences which had haunted him since childhood. Carl Jung, when treating his patients, said the degree of their psychosis stood in direct relationship to their level of spiritual convictions. Those who lacked religious beliefs, philosophic or spiritual views, had the deepest neurosis. In his work, Jung concluded that a spiritual instinct is part of the human psyche.

http://blog.ctnews.com/lenhard/2009/08/18/synchronicity-psychic-dev...