Synchronicity

A worthwhile practice is to notice the synchronicity in your life. Carl Jung coined the term synchronicity to describe those meaningful coincidences of inner and outer events that are not causally related.* 

Maybe you are thinking of a friend you haven’t seen in a long time and an hour later you bump into him on the street. Or you hear an unusual word, apparently for the first time, and moments later you open a book and the first thing you see is that word. Or you finally decide to learn more about your finances and the next day a neighbor’s financial magazine is delivered to your house by mistake. None of these things is clearly caused by the other, but they are related, at least in your mind. Such events are common, but many people pay little attention to them and soon forget them. It seems though that when one attends to synchronicity it is more likely to occur.

Noticing meaningful coincidences can give us a greater appreciation of the connectedness of psyche and matter. We don’t know why things happen as they do, but if life events were entirely random one wouldn’t expect some of these things to happen at all. Synchronicity is another way to understand our own minds and it can be a source of fascination and hope. When things look bleak, but one has had experiences of synchronicity, the possibility of a happy accident that might improve the situation seems less remote. Sometimes the odds may be against you, but it is good to know that life is not all about the odds.

Be alert to synchronistic events. Expect that they will occur. Pay attention when they do. Consider writing them down, perhaps in a special section of your journal. Contemplate their meaning when they occur. See what you can learn from them. Use them to increase your wonder at the mysteries of life. Use them to enlarge the scope of your intuition.


*Carl Jung, et al, Man and His Symbols, Doubleday, 1964, p. 211.

To the Meditation Archive Menu

To the current Meditation of the Week