“Synchronicity is that the Universe says that you are warming up.”

– Michelle Risi

You may be familiar with the term “synchronicity”, but if not, it is a concept first explained by psychoanalyst Carl Jung (1875-1961), and refers to events that are “significant coincidences”, that is, that occur without causal relationship but appear to be significantly related.

I have experienced many significant coincidences in my life, especially at the time of my husband’s sudden death when we were both 32 years old.

Mind you, he was probably more open to the strangeness of seemingly unrelated, but somehow connected events, due to the shock of his sudden death and the immense impact it had on my heart and soul.

In fact, according to Charlene Belitz and Meg Lundstrom in their book, The Power of Flow:

Practical ways to transform your life with a meaningful coincidence, synchronicity is more likely to occur when we are in a highly charged emotional and mental state of awareness.

And yet, as Jung points out: “Synchronicity is an ever-present reality for those who have eyes to see it.”

In other words, we don’t have to be in the middle of intense emotional and / or psychological trauma to experience synchronicity, which is a good thing!

In her essay, Synchronicity and the Soul, writer Nancy Seifer explains how “Jung recognized that synchronicity … had the effect of breaking through the rationalistic shell of the modern scientific mind. It is a form of coincidence powerful enough to break the notion that materials science has discovered everything there is to know about the universe. “

But to what end? Are we going to get something out of these synchronous experiences?

I think so. Also Seifer. “As the soul awakens,” he explains, “it returns to the task of discovering the meaning of life experiences, trying to discern what each new circumstance may be trying to teach us.”

Seifer goes on to explain that, “because experience has a particular meaning for the individual involved, it has the power to open a portal to the world of meaning … the world of the soul.”

So why are we often quick to label a series of unusual incidents, which deep down we suspect may be trying to tell us something, as mere “coincidence”?

Because, as Belitz and Lundstrom explain: “Our scientific worldview is based on the concept of cause and effect. As a culture, we tend to doubt and deny aspects of experience that are neither measurable nor verifiable.”

AHA!

That explains why, when I once told a room full of police officers trying to plan my husband’s funeral that I thought there was a correlation between the Disneyland Parade we were in the week before and his funeral procession the week before. Next, I was met with wide -looks of concern. Clearly, he was crazy.

Maybe. But maybe not.

Here’s what I know: connecting those two unrelated events would only make sense to me. And now that seventeen years have passed since that awkward moment in my living room, I can safely say that enough weird “coincidences” have happened that it’s just by NOT paying attention to them that I would have gone crazy.

For me, synchronicity has become a tool that I use to help me stay on track in my life, work, and writing. When enough weird things start to happen, I take some time to process what might be happening and what lessons maybe I should be learning, and then modify accordingly.

Based on personal experience over the years, I suspect that synchronicity is the Universe’s way of letting us know that we are warming up. Our job, of course, is to pay attention to the clues that are sent to us.