“Synchronicity is an ever present reality for those who have eyes to see”

– Carl Jung

There are times in your life when suddenly you see something popping up repeatedly in your life. For me this is in the form of multiple numbers. In any given week, I see numbers being repeated. This will be in the form of time where I will see time like 11:11 or 1:11 or 4:44 or even 5:55. Or maybe when I am reading book, online or offline and when I glance at the page number, it will show a double number like 44, 55 or even 77 or 99! I got curious about these coincidences and this is what I learnt.

When you notice the same coincidence happening more than once and it begins to take on meaning, then it becomes a Synchronicity. This type of serendipity can seem startling and mysterious when it happens often enough. Everyone has experienced these ‘meaningful coincidences’ in their life, but many don’t always pay attention to the meaning of the synchronicity itself, or realize how it came about in the first place. It is believed by many that this continued coincidence is a nudge from the universe telling you to go in a certain direction or maybe reassuring you that you on the right track, perhaps you are grappling with a decision and such coincidences show you the path to take?

A growing number of people believe that synchronicity is like a powerful ‘wink’ from the Universe telling us that yes, we’re on the right track. Synchronicity is also believed to be a form of guidance from the Higher Self; a way of showing you where to go and what to do next in your life as you proceed through your spiritual awakening.

Synchrocity is different from Serendipity. Serendipity is defined as the occurrence and development of events by chance in a happy or beneficial way, while synchrocity is a series of events which are symbolic in nature and which point out to something happening or going to happen in your life.

A concept first introduced by the analytical psychologist Carl Jung, synchronicity is defined as “the simultaneous occurrence of events which appear significantly related but have no discernible causal connection”. He says such events are “meaningful coincidences” if they occur with no causal relationship yet seem to be meaningfully related. According to Jung, synchronicity is an “acausal connecting (togetherness) principle,” “meaningful coincidence”, “acausal parallelism” or “meaningful coincidence of two or more events where something other than the probability of chance is involved”. He introduced the concept as early as the 1920s but gave a full statement of it only in 1951 in an Eranos lecture.

Synchronicity is considered pseudoscience because it is neither testable nor falsifiable. Mainstream science explains synchronicities as mere coincidences or spurious correlations which can be described by laws of statistics and confirmation biases.

According to Jung’s 1960 book, “Résumé”, Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle, the occurrence of a meaningful coincidence in time can take three forms:
a) The coincidence of a certain psychic content with a corresponding objective process which is perceived to take place simultaneously.
b) The coincidence of a subjective psychic state with a phantasm (dream or vision) which later turns out to be a more or less faithful reflection of a “synchronistic,” objective event that took place more or less simultaneously, but at a distance.
c) The same, except that the event perceived takes place in the future and is represented in the present only by a phantasm that corresponds to it.

For subjects like synchronicity, there will be skepctics who say that it’s all coincidence, chalking it up to what’s called “confirmation bias,” which is our very real tendency to remember our ‘hits,’ and forget our ‘misses’. They also point out to the fact that all experiences you hear from people about synchronicity are anecdotal, which means it’s a personal experience, something that happened only to them and can’t be replicated. But if you think about it, most of our experiences in life, spiritual or material are personal and what you experience and undergo may not be the same as someone in the same situation.

It is not very difficult to develop the ability to have synchronicity in your life. You need to be aware and have an open and receptive mind which pays attention to the now and present. Also be humble and don’t impose your desires on your experiences. Trust in yourself and the fact the universe will show synchronicity in your life. Lastly, listen to what your instincts tell you. Sometimes, and this is something I struggle with all the time, we tend to dismiss what our instincts tell us and instead use our mind and practicalities to make a decision. When this happens, when I have a disconnect between my mind and my heart and I let my mind win, I always regret it because my instincts were spot on. Our unconscious mind is vast and very wise and when we listen to our instincts, doors open and things happen for the better.

So the next time such coincidences happen in your life, don’t dismiss them. Stop and think and if you have a battle between your practical mind and your instincts, give the instinct a chance, you will be pleasantly surprised!

Have you had instances of synchronicity happen to you? Do comment and share it with me, I’d love to hear all about it!