One April, in lower Manhattan, I stepped out of a cab on West Broadway in front of the SoHo Grand Hotel. Missing the curb I began to fall and a man who was walking by caught me. The man turned out to be an old friend from Westlake High School who still lives in Austin and who I had not seen in twenty years. This is a coincidence: an uncanny event.
In the summer of 2007, I was attending a conference in Santa Fe, and during my lunch break, I was online searching for doctors anywhere in the world who might be able to help my son Sam, who was born blind. I was interrupted by a call from my friend Felicia who asked me to speak to a friend of hers who also has a blind son. She had found a doctor with alternative methods and she was fearful of the doctor’s unusual protocols. I immediately called this person, got the name of that doctor, and discovered that he lived in Santa Fe and his name was Sam! This is synchronicity: an unconscious awareness of life, a set of messages and these messages that are life-changing. Often times a prophecy, synchronicity is an unlikely or impossible coincidence that cannot be explained by luck or chance.
[Tweet “Synchronicity and the magic of life, allowing life to reveal itself with grace”]Carl Gustave Jung was a Swiss psychiatrist and he coined the term synchronicity to describe what he called the “acausal connecting principle” that links mind and matter. He said this underlying connectedness manifests itself through meaningful coincidences that cannot be explained by cause and effect. Such synchronicities occur, he theorized when a strong need arises in the psyche of an individual.
Coincidence and synchronicity are both defined as “striking occurrences of two or more events at one time.” The difference is that coincidence is perceived as chance or luck while synchronicity implies intuition, harmony, and resonance, the presence of a deeper intelligence at work.
A coincidence is a random external event that has nothing to do with your inner world. You live as a reactor to the external. You are not yet conscious of the fact that you have the ability to think independently of your present circumstances, thereby creating your own experience. The magic of life is overlooked.
Understanding synchronicity, you realize that there is more to everyone and everything than what they appear to be in physical form. You know that the invisible essence of everything on the planet is interconnected. You recognize the power of your thoughts and begin to consciously choose thoughts and belief patterns that will serve you and the planet. You are deeply humbled as you begin to see the connection between what you are thinking and what the Universe is delivering to you. The recognition of a deeper intelligence at work holds you in a beautiful state of awe and wonder at the mystery of life. The secret to life is not knowing how it all works: rather, in knowing your purpose, and allowing life to reveal itself with grace. You understand that to humans, time happens on a linear line; but, to the Universe, time happens all at once. Synchronicity means we are participating in the creative mind of the universe.
Some people attribute synchronicity to luck, fate, destiny, karma, angels or a miracle. My grandfather used to say that synchronicity happens when God wants to remain anonymous. Whatever your belief might be, synchronicity is the magic that gives us a sense that something bigger is happening something we can’t observe with just our five senses.
Whether you believe in synchronicity or not, I encourage you to approach the mishaps of life as favors. View accidents as not so accidental and all people we encounter serving a meaningful purposeful in our lives. There is significance in interruptions and in the unexpected. Your reality will shift and you will find yourself on the bridge between the invisible and the visible. Moments will be full of discovery and fulfillment and you will realize that you are constantly surrounded by messages, blessings, and magic. Because those who don’t believe in magic will never find it and certainly never experience it.
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