The True Nature of Synchronicity

The True Nature of Synchronicity

 There are no accidents or coincidences in life – everything is synchronicity – because everything has a frequency. It’s simply the physics of life and the Universe in action. ~Rhonda Byrne

Synchronicity is explored in spiritual circles in a light and playful way. Some are claiming it as the Universe’s way of telling us we are on the right track. Others believing that the Universe is leaving us breadcrumbs on our path to awakening. In truth, the well of synchronicity goes much deeper than initially explored. It speaks to some of the fundamental truths at the core of spirituality – unity, self-organization, and our capacity to create our reality. 

What is Synchronicity?

When Carl Jung coined the term synchronicity, he called them meaningful coincidences. A significant occurrence of related events that have no apparent causal connection. For example, last week, I was listening to a podcast, and the guest recommends the book War of Art by Steven Pressfield. An author who I’ve read before and really enjoyed. Then the next day, my husband tells me he wants to buy the same book – out of the blue. He heard of it from a completely different source – that to me is synchronicity. Events falling together in time but don’t appear to follow a causal path. 

For decades, Jung and a Nobel-winning scientist, Wolfgang Pauli, explored this idea in a series of correspondences. These letters were later published as Atom and Archetype: The Pauli/Jung Letters, 1932–1958. Jung was convinced that somewhere deep in our psyche, we call forth events needed for our growth and development. Jung believed that archetypes were the origins of these synchronous events. 

Archetypes are universal patterns that are the structure of the collective unconscious that bridge the unmanifest and the world of form. Johannes Kepler described them as preexisting ideas from the mind of God that left imprints on our souls and as humans, we had an innate ability to perceive them. Another way to understand archetypes is that they are symbols of shared mythologies or templates of human experience. Moving from the universal and objective and crossing over into the world of matter, becoming more personal and subjective as the individual experiences them.

If you know your archetypes – and not just yours, if you know how to perceive the world in archetypes, through archetypes – everything changes. Everything. Because you have two things: you can see through one eye which is impersonal, and through the other, which is personal. That’s the way the game is written down here. ~Caroline Myss

Embracing the Whole

To fully appreciate synchronistic events, we must see the world through the eyes of unity rather than separation. Physicist David Bohm had a similar view of the universe. Explaining that the universe should not be fragmented and looked at as the mere sum of its parts. Instead, we should see it as an Undivided Wholeness in Flowing Movement. This living awareness consists of potentialities or what he called the implicate order. It wasn’t until an observer came along that the implicate order would collapse into form (explicate). The implicate, explicate, and awareness are not separate; instead, they co-emerge.

This holistic view of the universe is also mirrored in Buddhism as explored through co-dependent origination. Or the Kybalion, through the Hermetic view of cause and effect. While it might seem that this correlates well with our Western view of causality, it is much more integrated. In these perspectives, the effect is a matter of the entanglement of many forces and elements that co-produce and self organize. It is about unification rather than fragmentation. This self-organization of the universe is the coming together of diverse individual parts in unified relationships.

“After a careful and critical appraisal of the many experiences and arguments, I have come to accept the existence of deeper spiritual layers that cannot be adequately defined by the conventional concept of time.” ~Wolfgang Pauli

Meaning as Order

So if it isn’t the law of cause and effect, what brings these events into our experience? Jung believed that there is another acausal force that orchestrates these events that is non-local. In this view, meaning is seen as an ordering factor. There isn’t a point A that moves to B in a defined space. Rather it is beyond time and space and brings about events based on meaning and affinity. This affinity or attractive forces are selectively calling forth form and function to assist our movement into an integrated whole. Or as Maria Popova put it, “The ultimate dependency between the observer and the observed.” On some level, we are using meaning as an acausal force to attract experiences into reality that serves our evolution.

Why Is This Important?

Synchronicity speaks to both ideas of a self-organizing emergent Universe and our ability to bring into form what serves our highest potential. Once we begin to recognize these sync events, our capacity for co-creation becomes tangible. We are creating a union of the masculine principle as an ordering agent+time and the feminine principle of energy and creation. This is the very nature of all manifestation. And the movement of the cosmos from unmanifested consciousness into manifested. But the idea that these events operate outside of time/space and is a product of meaning and affinity is also the very nature of magic itself. 

Don’t dismiss the synchronicity of what is happening right now finding its way to your life at just this moment. There are no coincidences in the Universe, only convergences of Will, Intent, and Experience. ~Neale Donald Walsch

Becoming Aware of Synchronicity

James Redfield, in his book The Celestine Prophecy, talks about synchronicity as a way of building energy and as a means to further our spiritual path. Describing them as a spiritual process that we can consciously engage with. If Jung believes we call them forth on some level from the collective unconscious, Redfield contends that we can do this deliberately. He suggests we do this by clarifying what we’d like to know and asking the question. Then we pay attention to our inner and outer environment and look for the signs. This makes synchronicity an act of co-creation, not just a passive sign by the Universe.

The more we become aware of these signs that our higher self calls forth for our growth and evolution, the more that occurs. We no longer need to wait for the Universe to send breadcrumbs to let us know we are on the ‘right’ path. Once we understand synchronicity, we know we create the path. The Universe is a self-organizing, emergent intelligence, and we are part of the intelligence. We have access to the mind of God. When we understand these events’ true nature, we take a step toward our full human potential. As we become agents of the whole, we embrace our roles as revolutionaries rather than passive participants.

 

Join Angela on Substack

The Rise of the Systems Buster

The Rise of the Systems Buster


Looking around at the world in frustration you may just want to burn it all down. But perhaps there is a better way. In order for new things to be birthed the old paradigm needs to be deconstructed and new seeds need to be planted. Listen in this week as we talk about the role of the systems buster and why their skillful illumination is needed at this divisive time.

In this podcast:

  • In the Divine Spectacle segment, we explore the willingness to throw around highly volatile words and cast people into boxes to discredit them E.g. asset or racists and why this tactic will never take us to the change we want to see.
  • In the Sacred Mind segment, we explore the qualities of the systems buster archetype which is part advocate, part warrior, and part rebel.
    • We look at the systems buster’s ability to skillfully illuminate the current narrative and why it is no longer working.
    • We look at the ‘Burn it all down’ mentality and how that is different from the systems buster’s ability to render the constructs irrelevant.
    • We look at conscious chaos and its aim to make space for and plant seeds for a new possibility.
  • In the It’s Worth Your Time segment we discuss Christopher Ryan and his systems busting new book called Civilized to Death: The Price of Progress. This book challenges the current narrative of perpetual progress and looks back at pre-civilized society for an understanding of what leads to a healthful fulfilling existence.

 

 

Join Angela on Substack

The Story of Them

The Story of Them

“We are all here to contribute our gifts toward something greater than ourselves, and will never be content unless we are.”

― Charles Eisenstein

Last week I visited Hiroshima. It happened to be the same day that Trump stated he wanted to leave a decades-old arms treaty with Russia. Saying something to the effect that we need to build up our arsenal so there comes a time when we don ’t need them. As I stood at the place where the first atomic bomb dropped all I could feel was hurting in my heart. From where I stood, it seemed inconceivable even to entertain the thought of using a weapon like this again. With all that we know about each other and the world, could it really be possible? Would humanity let it happen?

There is a part of me that wishes we could skip to the good parts. To the place where I hope we are evolving toward. A place where we get along, where we can feed our people and where we see the earth as a living system and not as a resource to be exploited. The thing that seems crazy to me is that most people I know feel the same way. If we were to get out of our heads and into our hearts, most people ache for a better world not just for them, but for everyone. So why are we here? Why are we contemplating another arms race?

The story of ‘Them’ is deeply rooted in our culture. We see it played out in our media, our movies, and our politics. This story requires a hero, an enemy, and a victim. There is a battle to be fought, and there are always winners, losers, losses, and costs. If we really do want to get to the good parts, then we desperately need to write a new story. One with less collateral damage.

Many things have changed since World War II. Our world is increasingly interdependent; international business, tourism and living abroad are commonplace. We indeed are a global village. I can talk to my family while they are camping in Oregon as I sit at my table in Japan. We now face existential threats that can’t be solved by the actions of a single nation or a few banding together. It will take a worldwide effort. We are tied together in ways that aren’t easily untethered. This is also a time of increasing transparency. We are no longer able just to see glimpses of the planet from our little corner of the world that networks and/or governments allow us to see. We can see the whole world and talk to people on the other side of it in real time. This makes it increasingly difficult for those in power to manipulate or maintain a particular message. And with all of this, we are chipping away at the idea of ‘Them’ and looking toward the story of ‘Us’.

The ‘Them’ story is the ultimate game of distraction. It makes for exciting and dramatic television, but it also provides a justification for being perpetually angry, fearful, offended or indifferent. There is also an underlying message of futility that we are doomed to repeat this story over and over. After all, it is human nature, right? So, our only action is to hold tightly to our tribe and rally around the enemy. But I believe that if we took a minute to challenge this story, we’d see that we aren’t that different. That person sitting next to you isn’t the enemy, but rather just another human trying to do the best they can with what they know. I know this because every time there is a natural disaster or wide-scale human suffering – people show up. They show up regardless of their political affiliation or their membership to their tribe. They show up because in their hearts they feel moved to help. Somewhere they understand our connectedness.

The story of ‘Them’ is just a mutually agreed upon construct that we can pull the plug on any time we want. We can choose to stay focused on the enemy, and their contribution to the ills of society or we can choose to interrupt the regularly scheduled programming of fear and divisiveness and witness each other with compassion and humility. And while it seems like we are moving further away from each other, I think it is just the last throes of a dying paradigm. Right now more people are paying attention, people’s eyes are opening, and the reaction is to lash out at what they don’t want to see. The next step is to create what we do want to see. And that requires that we pull the plug on this narrative.

We may not have the same values or skin color or the same reasons for what gets us up in the morning. But we share something much more profound than any of those things. I know that you suffer and hurt sometimes. I know that you care about the world you live in, and you want things to have meaning. I know that you are a person that loves and wants to be loved. So, I choose to extend something more than judgment, fear or distrust. What if the best ‘weapon’ I have against our misunderstandings is not to condemn you but to sit with the notion, that maybe I just don’t understand yet. And until I do, I will just be with our differences and seek out our similarities. 

Our culture’s battle mentality likes to fight wars, drugs, poverty, and illness. People are hailed as survivors and heroes and talked about as allies, enemies, and victims. What if stories of man vs. man and man vs. nature have been done to death (literally)? Maybe the only interesting story left to tell isn’t one of conflict but one of peace and collaboration. The question shouldn’t be who is right and who is wrong, but what is it I don’t understand and where do we align? That is the core of the story of ‘Us’. It seeks the true causes of our behavior and circumstances and allows space for change and growth. We will never bomb our way to a better world or spread democracy through invasion. We could easily fund this new story too if we didn’t need to fund the perpetual battle against ‘Them’. And let’s be real, in the face of existential threats, the story of ‘Them’ has a really shitty ending.

Join Angela on Substack