I love synchronicities, or "meaningful coincidences". Yesterday I experienced three within the space of two hours, so that's worth writing about.
- Three days ago, I spent hours searching for a t-shirt dress to replace my ancient favorite. As I tried on the too-short, -tight, -shapeless, -matronly, and -ridiculous items on offer, I wished I could just find someone to replicate the original. Then yesterday, en route to the subway, a dress in a window caught my eye. Turns out the store had just opened, and its business was custom-made clothing, particularly of the "bring in the dress and we'll make you a new one" variety!!!
- Before leaving the house, I had grabbed a subway book, chosen randomly for smallness and portability. Then during morning pages, I wrote about going back to work, and how to "look" from a place of inspiration and pleasure. What would my ideal work involve? What am I looking forward to? Once on the subway, I opened the book, Florence Scovel Shinn's The Game of Life for Women, first printed in 1925. Flo Sco, page 3: "There is a place that you are to fill that no one else can fill. ... There is a perfect picture of this in the superconscious mind. It usually flashes across the conscious as an unattainable ideal -- something "too good to be true". In reality it is a woman's true destiny, flashed to her from the Infinite Intelligence, which is within herself." A timely reminder about the value of deliberate dreaming.
- Last week I was in particular agreement with a Carbon Foresight blog post arguing that "sustainability" is a fear-based and reactive idea, and what is needed is a much more compelling vision for how people can live well together and with the environment in years to come. I've been thinking about the need to find examples of that compelling vision. So yesterday I get home and there is the new Atlantic magazine, titled "The Ideas Issue: How to Fix the World". A great place to start!
I know these are small examples. But they point to a larger pattern of interconnectedness that is significant and beautiful. Jungian psychologist Jean Shinoda Bolen M.D. explains:
"The experience of the Tao or of a unifying principle in the universe to which everything in the world relates, underlies the major Eastern religions -- Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, and Zen. .... Fritjov Capra in The Tao of Physic, postulates that modern atomic physics leads us to a view of reality that is very similar to the Eastern mystic's intuitive vision of reality. The picture of an interconnected cosmic web in which the human observer is always a participator emerges from quantum physics.
"In psychology, only C. G. Jung has addressed this issue, describing synchronistic events as manifestations of the acausal connecting principle that is equivalent to the Tao. He theorized that people as well as all animate and inanimate objects are linked through a collective unconscious.
"Synchronicity is the Tao of psychology, relating the individual to the totality. If we personally realize that synchronicity is at work in our lives, we feel conected, rather than isolated and estranged from others; we feel ourselves part of a divine, dynamic, interrelated universe. .... Every time I have become ware of a synchronistic experience, I have had an accompanying feeling (of) grace. .... There is something awesome and humbling, yest moving and knowing about glimpsing the Tao through synchronistic events." -- The Tao of Psychology pp. 4-7
This is why I look out for synchronicities. Even the most mundane ones give me a sense of connection and meaning. For awhile I recorded every synchronicity I experienced, and had pages of them within a few months. Yesterday's hat-trick made me want to start collecting the again. Any synchronicity stories you would be willing to share?