Synchronicities
‘Synchronicity is an ever present reality for those who have eyes to see it.’
C.G. Jung
A little while ago I was reading a book that had somehow found itself in to my acupuncture studio. It was not my usual reading material, as it was written by an English rugby prop forward and seemingly a long way away from Chinese medical theory. I became intrigued with the story as he was writing about his experiences of life in the front row of a scrum. Here you are literally face to face with your opponent at the most brutal and pressurised position on the rugby pitch. No weakness can be shown with absolutely no sign of backing down. You have to front up with maximum strength and toughness. However to this prop forward it was indeed only a front. He suffered from anxiety and depression and wrote quite eloquently about his struggles with mental health. Fortunately, he sought help and found it with a sports psychologist who specialised in, amongst other things, Buddhist meditation techniques.
As I was reading this, I received a phone call from someone who was in town and was looking for an acupuncture session. As I was free, he came straight in and I started out with the usual consultation. I was stunned to discover that he was the very same sports psychologist that I had literally just been reading about. I wondered what the chances of this happening were.
I’m pretty sure coincidences happen all the time, often on a daily basis. Have you ever learnt a new word, only to discover it suddenly everywhere? Do you always look at the clock when it says 11:11, or do you think of someone immediately before they ring on the phone? Many of these little happenings can be put down to confirmation bias, for example, you don’t register it when you see that the time is 11:12, or when a friend doesn’t ring when you think of them. However when such a random coincidence occurs such as my rugby story, then it does make you stop and wonder if something else is going on.
Carl Jung was the first person to coin the phrase ‘synchronicity’. It stems from the Greek words Syn meaning ‘together’ and Khronos meaning ‘time’. He defines it as ‘a meaningful coincidence of two or more events where something other than the probability of chance is involved.’ Jung believed that many occurrences labelled as ‘coincidences,’ are not actually due to chance. Instead, he believed that these occurrences serve to provide powerful insight, direction and guidance. He held the view that one’s ability to recognise synchronicities could be trained and improved upon and help to create a heightened state of awareness.
Much of Jung’s work came from an in depth study of the Chinese I Ching, which he saw as a way of divining the nature of an event through the synchronistic unfolding of yin and yang combined with numerology. Indeed, the idea of synchronicity can be seen to be defused throughout Chinese philosophies and Taoist teachings. Take the concept of Ming for example. Ming can loosely be translated as ‘destiny’ but it is better described as the path of life that you agreed to embark upon before you were born. This path is not always obvious and we may stray across it many times before, if ever, we follow it. But when we do follow it, it’s as though the whole Universe conspires to help us along. It is here, on the path of Ming, that we may experience more coincidences, more deja vus, more intuitions and more synchronicities that help propel us in the direction of our destiny.
It is also said in Taoism that if we give our attention to something then that will cause it to grow. So if we recognise that these synchronicities are more than just a mere chance happening, we are opening ourselves up to invite more of them in to our lives. And if we listen very hard to the whisperings of the Universe we may discover that there is some ordering principle behind the sometimes seemingly random nature of life.
bb