Embracing Synchronicity

“Synchronicity is an ever present reality for those who have eyes to see.” - Carl Jung

It was a Friday when I had a sudden spark of inspiration. Gravity! Gravity is something we all know exists, but we can’t see it, and few of us fully comprehend how it works. It just does. To me Reiki is a similar concept. As much confidence that I have in Reiki, I had been struggling with explaining Reiki to people who are new to the concept. And probably, more honestly, I had been struggling to explain Reiki to people like my dad; people who believe in science above all else. So the thought occurred to me that maybe I can write a blog post comparing Reiki to Gravity. Then the chatter in my brain kicked in. Do I really want to start blogging? Creating a website and committing to social media posts has been a lot of work. What kind of time commitment would this take? Who really wants to hear my thoughts on gravity anyway?

Saturday rolled by. It was a normal day full of family and the buzz of getting my studio ready for outside clients. I was happy and busy. Yet when I sat with my thoughts that evening, my mind wandered to find the words to explain my feelings about gravity again.

Sunday morning eased in. My partner Ben was going to visit his parents and was taking our 2 year old with him. I was excited to have the whole afternoon to myself to work on my new social media platforms, and for a quick second I toiled with the thought of getting some of my ideas on gravity down on paper. No, I told myself. I have a lot to do. Blogs will come later down the line.

Sunday afternoon arrived. While Ben was packing the car with all the necessary toddler gear, he brought in a book (that had been sitting in the backseat of our car for way too long) and set it on my desk. We kissed, said goodbye, and they're off. I had the house to myself. Sigh. I glanced down and turned over the book on my desk. It was a children’s book titled “Molly on the Moon”. Ben’s dad gave it to me for my birthday. He was very excited about it, and a pang of guilt hit me. I had every intention of reading it to my daughter, but sometimes in our house things just hibernate in the car for a very long time.

I picked up the book. It was a story about Molly and her brother having to adjust to their new home on the moon. I flipped through it, already thinking of the next thing on my to-do list. As I was about to set it aside, I reached the very last page. “Gravity!” it read. “Gravity is the force that makes us fall…”. I stopped in my tracks. Shocked. This book had been sitting in my car for two months. Two months untouched. And the exact morning at the exact time that I needed the encouragement to write about gravity, I got it.

So, it turns out that this blog is not about gravity (although it’s next on my list). This blog is about synchronicity. Synchronicity is not a concept I fully grasped until recent years. Although looking back, I now clearly see hundreds of synchronicities sprinkled throughout my entire life. In fact, my family always called me the Golden Child. Things just work out for you, they’d say. I never liked the sound of that. I used to think of these synchronicities as lucky coincidences, and chalked a lot of it up to the power of positive thinking. 

But this little nudge from the universe is the type of thing that is happening to me with regularity these days, and I want to do a quick dive into this phenomenon. A popular line from the book The Alchemist that’s stuck with me throughout the years is, “When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.” And although I do believe in this statement, I realize it’s only half of the story. According to the law of correspondence, “As above, so below.” We want the universe to work for us, but are we in turn willing to work for the universe? When the universe presents hints and opportunities, are we open enough to listen and trusting enough to believe that in doing so we create alignment and harmony that propels us forward?

I now view synchronicities as what happens when you begin to view the world through the perspective of interconnectedness. When we realize that everything and everyone is connected in a non-random way, we start to see the patterns and connections that were previously dismissed, as meaningful hints about ourselves and our surroundings. 

Synchronicity, according to the Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung, is the experience of two or more events that are apparently unrelated or unlikely to occur together, but are experienced as meaningful or significant. He suggests that synchronicity implies a deeper order or meaning to the universe, and it is a way in which the collective unconscious communicates with the conscious mind. Jung believed that occurrences coined coincidences are directly related to the observer’s mind, and serve to provide powerful insight, direction and guidance.

Some psychologists might argue that we feel better when we’re able to find meaning in the coincidences in our life, and those positive attitudes create opportunities. And yes, it  sounds logical until you begin to test it and watch the momentum grow. I no longer believe it is me finding meaning in random events, but rather a higher power revealing the bigger meaning to me through events related on a conscious level. And with that change of perspective, I take action. I trust my intuition. I start a blog when I otherwise wouldn't have. And I see the direct improvements in my life.

I admit I don’t understand HOW it all works, and in attempting to explain it I would have to take a refresher on quantum entanglement (and probably lose a few readers).  But I can tell you from first-hand experience, that the bigger the leaps of faith I take and the more I face my fears, the more synchronicities occur. The more that I lean on my intuition, the more guided, connected, and unified I am with the world. This doesn’t mean I don't have unanswered questions and occasional doubt. But it does mean I take a stance to believe in my intuition and the life force energy connecting us all. 

Albert Einstein spent years pondering this very topic. In the end, he concluded that, “Coincidence is God’s way of remaining anonymous.” Because, after all, what fun would life be any other way?