Don't EVEN get me started. I could tell you stories that would make your head spin. Nothing happens by chance. Nothing. I am CONVINCED of that. Yes, I could tell you stories. And, if I did, there would be no such thing as a Doubting Thomas.
Richard Reeve
· 11 months ago
Your leaving us hanging Rosalie, not even one example...
Well, to add another tidbit from Jung: "It is not only possible but fairly probable, even, that payche and matter are two different aspects of one and the same thing. The synchronicity phenomena point, it seems to me, in this direction, for they show that the nonpsychic can behave like the psychic, and vice versa, without there being any causal connection between them." (On the Nature of the Psyche, par. 418)
Rita Argiros
· 11 months ago
I just wrote about randomness from a very different perspective so it was wonderful to come over here and change my vantage point.
I think people confuse finding meaning in random associations with explaining those associations. Since Rosalie didn't leave an exampl, I will.
All day long, a friend keeps coming into my mind unbidden. In the evening I call her and find out that she has had a really bad day and needs to talk. People who know me will tell you that while I am willing to talk on the phone if you call me, I will rarely call you. I hate making calls. And I do not just pick up the phone to check in on someone. But I couldn't stop thinking about her. And I knew I wouldn't be able to do anything else until I had spoken to her.
I don't believe that she cosmically projected her feelings into the universe, or that I picked up on them all day, like some sort of psychic 911 system. But this is exactly the thought/image that ran through my brain just after I said hello and she started to tell me her day. "That's why I have been thinking of her all day. This is why I had to call. It was meant to be."
That's not true in any physical sense. However, I believe that thought was an invitation from part of me to the rest of me to explore/restore my relationship with my friend.
We have been a little snippy with each other lately, she and I. There were hurt feelings and resentments that couldn't be easily or directly amended. At the time I made the call, I only had a very shallow understanding of what was wrong between us. I had no inkling that I might have done something wrong, that she had some reason to be mad at me, or even that I had something to fix. Nor was I aware of how mad I was at her in return.
But my subconscious knew better and had its own plan. The conversation lasted for 2 hours. At the end she thanked me for helping her and I pointed out, truthfully that no thanks were needed because had gotten at least as much as I had given.
We never talked about the events that had been jamming us up these past few months. It had nothing to do with her current situation. But I know, that at the end of the phone call, it was clear to both of us that we had gotten as close as we were going to get to resolving that old issue and that our relationship is on the mend.
<abbr>Rita Argiros´s last blog post..Influence</abbr>
Richard Reeve
· 11 months ago
Hey Rita, great comment... Jung has often expresses the unconscious as being the collective reservoir of instinct/image, which weighs in upon the situations that occur throughout our days. Having faced similar conflicts of relationship countless amounts of time through history, the psyche prompts us to recognize, sometimes though random thoughts or images, those situations which we might be otherwise ignore. It's a regulatory system, not much different than sweat when the body overheats, but here the regulation is with cognition...
Detlef Cordes
· 11 months ago
My ongoing experience with synchronicity is this: I life in conflict with one of my neighbors: We don't talk, we don't greet each other, we try hard to avoid each other (long story). It costs a lot of energy to constantly break the social rule of greeting people you know and not to be civil.
But this is the neighbor I meet most often "by chance": on the staircase, at the letter-box, at the garbage can, in the supermarket. I life in a big house in a big town where normally you do not meet by chance. But the bad neighbor and me: we are in perfect sync.
Yes Detlef, great point that these experiences can constellate around negative relationships...
Alasdair Munn
· 11 months ago
Great read thanks.
I am finding that the more accepting I become of things like synchronicity and embrace it rather than trying to understand it, the more I benefit from it and the more I understand it. It is the type of understanding that you just have but cannot articulate.
Having said that Richard, you have articulated it very well indeed.
Alasdair, One of the terms I've heard to describe it: the understanding just "clicks" ...fits like a puzzle piece...
chas
· 11 months ago
that's so wild...i was just looking up at the sun making one last break through the clouds before settling down for the evening, noticing the shadowplay of my silhouette against the wall of the cafe i am sitting in right now, and thinking about how activated my shadow has been lately, like peter pan's almost, and then here, on my google reader...
Exactly Chas, the leaning in of the objective psyche. The two begot three,... wait what's the axiom of Maria? here (gotta love Wiki)..."One becomes two, two becomes three, and out of the third comes the one as the fourth."
Thanks for sharing.
Adele - I Ching
· 11 months ago
I just found your wonderful blog via Twitter. I could talk forever about synchronisity and of course, I Ching. I will link your site in my blogroll and have to come back to see more here. All this social networking sure eats into time which there is never enough of.
Glad that you found us. Look forward to discussing the I Ching with you.
Benjamin Jancewicz
· 11 months ago
good points! I especially like the last one about dreaming.
have you tried google alerts yet? if you haven't, you should.
Richard Reeve
· 11 months ago
Hey Benjamin... I have not broken into Google alerts yet...not really sure to what use. Could you explain how you use it?
Hilary
· 11 months ago
Google alerts - a similar idea to monitoring a Twitter search, but with Google. At http://www.google.com/alerts you can enter your chosen search terms and get new results emailed to you at intervals of your choice.
Nice article on synchronicity, by the way. Would you say that there is always an 'inherent meaning', more than simply 'look, things connect'?
Regarding inherent meaning: perhaps, but just as all dreams do not have the energy to pass over into consciousness, if we force the recognitions, the analogy would be having a person in a relationship that never stopped asking "is everything ok, are you alright, ..." My point is relaxing into a posture that eill allow the appropriate disclosures to surface, with an implicit trust that they indeed will... Peace.
Matt Searles
· 11 months ago
Hmm... It seems to me this is one of those tricky areas in Jung where one can get carried off into mystical fun.. but where.. to suggest that there's any pretense of science here.. is sorta tricky.. depending on how far out on that mystical limb you want to go. One can look at information theory and see in the configuration of matter... information, and that seems to come to.... complicate what one might put in the mind box or the matter box..
At the same time.. its pretty easy to see that the unconscious is always compensating for consciousness... and always expressing its self on us... and, in sometimes strange ways, contextualizing experience.. And as super groovy as detached objectivity, with its God's eye quests might be.. reality is never actually experienced that way... well accept, perhaps, to the degree to which we are all God..
So in comes the roll for magickal thinking, and what not.. but I feel like this is a tricky pace.. and maybe I'm just not sure how to think of it myself... like,... you can find a kind of escapism here that Freud would have rightly criticized.. but at the same time I think you can make a very serious philosophical argument that allows someone who's... well skeptical.... to travel down these paths.
I suppose this is the power of Jung... to bridge, as they say, the rational and "irrational minds." But in terms of the popular imagination of what synchronicity is... I feel like what is kind of needed is that deeper discussion.
Or that's my thought of the day anyway
Richard Reeve
· 11 months ago
I agree Matt, we need to move the discussion to where it's fruitful. The chatter I've been monitoring tends to be silly. Thanks as always for your intense comments, I enjoy them thoroughly.
Alden Smith
· 11 months ago
I may be way off base, Richard, with your thoughts on Jung. I have not studied him but have read references to him in the Seth Material and Seth Speaks. I do NOT believe in coincidence - you give the example of thinking of someone and they phone you. We are all connected through ways our ego will not let us see or believe, and I have explored many of these things. My thoughts and strong feelings can put me in a place of beauty or back in the jungles of Viet Nam. This is never coincidence but very real to me because I explore these events to the maximum advantage to my soul. I am not one of those whacked out New Age people that believe in so many things, but am opened minded enough to know that there is a grain of truth in everything.
In a recent conversation with my wife, we discussed the theory of myths, particularly Greek mythology. The conversation took place because we had just finished viewing The Chronicles of Narnia - Prince Caspian. I know you are a voracious reader, and have surely read Lewis' works. We discussed the presence of centaurs and minotaurs in the world. My wife has a very rational, logic mind and dismisses this off hand. I told her I felt that there was more to this than we believe. I have long held a belief in vampires and werewolves because I feel that these are not just something that someone woke up in the morning and decided to invent. Every myth, I believe, is based on fact.
I grew up in a world of faeries, dragons and elven folk. I have yet to find the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, but have had some interesting experiences with the elven folks as early as late last summer. My mind is always open to this. Seth's works help me get there.
Hey Alden, Thanks for the thoughtful comment. Jung's whole point is that the connections aren't only chance, but that they are not causal in the way our minds are trained to think things fit together. The meaningfulness is not that we happen to notice it, but that it is presented to us. Saying it's presented, or constellation as Jung often puts it is another way to consider that it's more than random... As for the centaurs and the like, Jung's writings are full of those archetypal energies.
Alden Smith
· 11 months ago
Hi, Richard~
It does not surprise me that Jung would make mention of Greek mythology, and these particular energies. I must pursue Jung - perhaps you could point me to a good basic overview, and I could go from there.
From what little I know of Jung, he pursued like-minded paths as I do, but never followed the thread as far as I would go. I have learned much in my 65 years on this old rock, and I am a ferocious advocate of knowledge seeking. I would love to sit and pick your brain some time. I am working my way around your manner of presentation, and it sometimes leads me on paths that I do not go on. Thanks for the thoughtful comment on Jung.
All Comments
Well, to add another tidbit from Jung:
"It is not only possible but fairly probable, even, that payche and matter are two different aspects of one and the same thing. The synchronicity phenomena point, it seems to me, in this direction, for they show that the nonpsychic can behave like the psychic, and vice versa, without there being any causal connection between them." (On the Nature of the Psyche, par. 418)
I think people confuse finding meaning in random associations with explaining those associations. Since Rosalie didn't leave an exampl, I will.
All day long, a friend keeps coming into my mind unbidden. In the evening I call her and find out that she has had a really bad day and needs to talk. People who know me will tell you that while I am willing to talk on the phone if you call me, I will rarely call you. I hate making calls. And I do not just pick up the phone to check in on someone. But I couldn't stop thinking about her. And I knew I wouldn't be able to do anything else until I had spoken to her.
I don't believe that she cosmically projected her feelings into the universe, or that I picked up on them all day, like some sort of psychic 911 system. But this is exactly the thought/image that ran through my brain just after I said hello and she started to tell me her day. "That's why I have been thinking of her all day. This is why I had to call. It was meant to be."
That's not true in any physical sense. However, I believe that thought was an invitation from part of me to the rest of me to explore/restore my relationship with my friend.
We have been a little snippy with each other lately, she and I. There were hurt feelings and resentments that couldn't be easily or directly amended. At the time I made the call, I only had a very shallow understanding of what was wrong between us. I had no inkling that I might have done something wrong, that she had some reason to be mad at me, or even that I had something to fix. Nor was I aware of how mad I was at her in return.
But my subconscious knew better and had its own plan. The conversation lasted for 2 hours. At the end she thanked me for helping her and I pointed out, truthfully that no thanks were needed because had gotten at least as much as I had given.
We never talked about the events that had been jamming us up these past few months. It had nothing to do with her current situation. But I know, that at the end of the phone call, it was clear to both of us that we had gotten as close as we were going to get to resolving that old issue and that our relationship is on the mend.
<abbr>Rita Argiros´s last blog post..Influence</abbr>
Jung has often expresses the unconscious as being the collective reservoir of instinct/image, which weighs in upon the situations that occur throughout our days. Having faced similar conflicts of relationship countless amounts of time through history, the psyche prompts us to recognize, sometimes though random thoughts or images, those situations which we might be otherwise ignore. It's a regulatory system, not much different than sweat when the body overheats, but here the regulation is with cognition...
But this is the neighbor I meet most often "by chance": on the staircase, at the letter-box, at the garbage can, in the supermarket. I life in a big house in a big town where normally you do not meet by chance. But the bad neighbor and me: we are in perfect sync.
<abbr>Detlef Cordes´s last blog post..Consider yourself lucky</abbr>
I am finding that the more accepting I become of things like synchronicity and embrace it rather than trying to understand it, the more I benefit from it and the more I understand it. It is the type of understanding that you just have but cannot articulate.
Having said that Richard, you have articulated it very well indeed.
<abbr>Alasdair Munn´s last blog post..Beyond the U.S. Economy</abbr>
One of the terms I've heard to describe it: the understanding just "clicks" ...fits like a puzzle piece...
oh wait...that's three things, not two...
<abbr>chas´s last blog post..monday morning motivator! 6, a vision of wholeness</abbr>
Thanks for sharing.
<abbr>Adele - I Ching´s last blog post..Hexagram Seven - Six in the Third Place</abbr>
have you tried google alerts yet? if you haven't, you should.
I have not broken into Google alerts yet...not really sure to what use. Could you explain how you use it?
Nice article on synchronicity, by the way. Would you say that there is always an 'inherent meaning', more than simply 'look, things connect'?
<abbr>Hilary´s last blog post..Self-cultivation?</abbr>
Thanks for the tutoring on alerts...
Regarding inherent meaning: perhaps, but just as all dreams do not have the energy to pass over into consciousness, if we force the recognitions, the analogy would be having a person in a relationship that never stopped asking "is everything ok, are you alright, ..." My point is relaxing into a posture that eill allow the appropriate disclosures to surface, with an implicit trust that they indeed will...
Peace.
At the same time.. its pretty easy to see that the unconscious is always compensating for consciousness... and always expressing its self on us... and, in sometimes strange ways, contextualizing experience.. And as super groovy as detached objectivity, with its God's eye quests might be.. reality is never actually experienced that way... well accept, perhaps, to the degree to which we are all God..
So in comes the roll for magickal thinking, and what not.. but I feel like this is a tricky pace.. and maybe I'm just not sure how to think of it myself... like,... you can find a kind of escapism here that Freud would have rightly criticized.. but at the same time I think you can make a very serious philosophical argument that allows someone who's... well skeptical.... to travel down these paths.
I suppose this is the power of Jung... to bridge, as they say, the rational and "irrational minds." But in terms of the popular imagination of what synchronicity is... I feel like what is kind of needed is that deeper discussion.
Or that's my thought of the day anyway
In a recent conversation with my wife, we discussed the theory of myths, particularly Greek mythology. The conversation took place because we had just finished viewing The Chronicles of Narnia - Prince Caspian. I know you are a voracious reader, and have surely read Lewis' works. We discussed the presence of centaurs and minotaurs in the world. My wife has a very rational, logic mind and dismisses this off hand. I told her I felt that there was more to this than we believe. I have long held a belief in vampires and werewolves because I feel that these are not just something that someone woke up in the morning and decided to invent. Every myth, I believe, is based on fact.
I grew up in a world of faeries, dragons and elven folk. I have yet to find the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, but have had some interesting experiences with the elven folks as early as late last summer. My mind is always open to this. Seth's works help me get there.
Regards,
Alden~
<abbr>Alden Smith´s last blog post..Article Marketing - The Importance of Keywords</abbr>
Thanks for the thoughtful comment. Jung's whole point is that the connections aren't only chance, but that they are not causal in the way our minds are trained to think things fit together. The meaningfulness is not that we happen to notice it, but that it is presented to us. Saying it's presented, or constellation as Jung often puts it is another way to consider that it's more than random... As for the centaurs and the like, Jung's writings are full of those archetypal energies.
It does not surprise me that Jung would make mention of Greek mythology, and these particular energies. I must pursue Jung - perhaps you could point me to a good basic overview, and I could go from there.
From what little I know of Jung, he pursued like-minded paths as I do, but never followed the thread as far as I would go. I have learned much in my 65 years on this old rock, and I am a ferocious advocate of knowledge seeking. I would love to sit and pick your brain some time. I am working my way around your manner of presentation, and it sometimes leads me on paths that I do not go on. Thanks for the thoughtful comment on Jung.
Peace,
Alden~
<abbr>Alden Smith´s last blog post..Why Article Marketing Works</abbr>