Psychic synchronicities abound in multiples daily now. If I've learned anything from these strange coincidences in the past, then I should know that change is on the way. And by change I do not mean merely physical or material change (yet in that respect I may have some clue as to what), but more importantly... a change of perspective or some new mental structure is crystallizing.
So many little miracles are happening all the time and we are hardly paying close enough attention to notice them. Finally I am slowing down enough to see the little clues suggesting the interconnectedness of reality everywhere I look, and in return, it appears as if some kind of intelligence is waving at me through the seeming randomness of events. Is it my own psyche projecting narcissistic nonsense? Or is my consciousness effecting the randomness of the apparent chaos around me and self organizing coherence?
Today at work, I started thinking about a conversation I had with a woman about Jesus and the Devil at a show we played a few nights ago. I thought to myself, I ought to write about our little discussion. It wasn't more than five minutes after thinking this when I heard someone requesting to sit in my section and be served by me. It was the same woman.
My nights have been long the past week... I have been spending them with an old book on philosophy I read in high school called Sophie's World. There probably isn't a more important book to my development since the Bible, yet I hadn't returned to it in almost ten years. Two days ago I picked it up again. At work the following day, a filmaker/author named Heath Jones whom I admire and who often frequents the diner, introduced me to his young daughter whom I had never seen or met in the year or two that I have known him. Her name was Sophia. She looked up at me and said jovially, "Hello Matt."
Sophie says hello.
Maybe I'm a schizophrenic with a positive outlook so it's of no consequence. This is always possible too. But when I pick up a book it's talking about the same thing that I was thinking about, or someone was just talking about the thing on my mind as it plays on the the T.V. simultaneously. Last night I read in Sophie's World about Logos and the early Greek philosophers Parmenides and Heraclitus. Taking a break from that book, I switched to another book I have already read by Daniel Pinchbeck called 2012:The Return of Quetzalcoatl. As it happened, the pages I crossed within the next ten minutes happened to touch upon Parmenides, Heraclitus and Logos.
Of course, the first thing that I think is that on some level I must have known that both of these books talked about these philosophers and concepts, being as how I've read both of them already, even if on a conscious level I had forgotten this. The natural conclusion would be that some part of me, my subconscious perhaps, was leading me to read these things at the same time. And immediately I ask, is this no less a miracle?
If we are to accept that the subconscious works is such subtle ways, utilizing and weaving practically forgotten knowledge, and we take seriously the Jungian notion of collective unconsciousness... well, then we might have a new context in which we see these strange occurrences called coincidence. Might they not be evidence of the subtle weaving of an even larger, all encompassing Mind? Is it not possible that on a micro level such as the case of my mind leading me to read two books that align with the same concept, that it might also occur on a macro level, where people, things or events might be brought together for some greater subconscious purpose?
Bah! But what's to come of it? I don't know. If it's not all hogwash and there is meaning to it, then what, what, what should we do? There aren't any clear mandates from the great Mind, that coherency that elusively slips in and out of focus. In the end, the only response I know to give is that of wonder. I am amazed by it and I recognize it, and I have noticed that this response of wonder, this recognition, makes the synchronicities appear more often. And it just may be that this wonder is the most important response we can feel, because it reminds us that this life and this world is sacred and worthy of our full attention. I could hardly think of a more important mandate than understanding that.
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ReplyDeleteBeautifully done, Matt. I like your point about the subconscious, too. People usually use that as a dismissal tactic, but you are so right that even if it is "just our subconscious," it is no less amazing.
My favorite synchronicities are the conceptual ones. The little ones where you hear the same song 3 times in one day or whatever are cool, but the best is when you have an idea cooking and you hear it spit right back at you. The other day I was listening to those Nietszche lectures you told me about and talking to my friend Kris online. During the lecture I was daydreaming off into some things I've been stewing over lately, but what I was thinking about wasn't directly connected to anything that had been said so far. So me and Kris are talking about Solomon, the professor who does the lectures, and he says "Yeah, he was also a proponent of the idea that emotions aren't these uncontrollable forces that wash over you, that we actually have a bit of a say in how we feel." Literally seconds before that, the same idea clicked into place in my head. And then I'm staring at it on the screen, reflected right back at me.
So you too think that an explosion of synchronicities means the crystallization of new mental structures? I think that sounds about right. I think we're also hyperaware when a perspective shift comes on like that, so we're more likely to notice them. They are everywhereeee.