Jung’s classic and most frequently cited example of synchronicity was drawn from the time he was in the midst of going over dream material with a client of his. The individual had dreamt of the Egyptian scarab, a sacred beetle symbolizing rebirth and transformation. This client was, in Jung’s opinion, trapped in a rational outlook which required an injection of open-mindedness (the ability to accept some "irrational" perspectives and approaches) in order to escape from her rut. At that very moment, Jung, whose back was turned to the window, heard a thumping on the glass behind him, and turning around, saw a beetle (as physically similar to the scarab as existed in his part of the world) which was trying to get in. The anomalous arrival of the beetle at the very instant that the woman was discussing her dream about the scarab seemed tailor-made by the universe to break through her closed mind, and to show her the spiritual nature of existence at the exact moment that she needed to embrace that nature in order to take her healing to another plane. Upon the arrival of the beetle, in this highly-charged context, the woman was jolted by an inner comprehension which could only be termed a moment of enlightenment, and at this point, her treatment began to progress by leaps and bounds. Jung was also deeply moved by this incident of SYNCHRONICITY, which had a major impact on how he, himself, perceived the universe.

Scientists, not surprisingly, dismiss the concept of synchronicity in the following way: they claim that during the course of a lifetime, the laws of probability favor some such incidents occurring (pairs of unrelated events that seem connected by the context in which they occur); after that, they cite the phenomenon of apophenia, which refers to an alleged human tendency to find patterns and relationships between random and meaningless data, when, in fact, no such patterns or relationships actually exist. The ability to find relationships, these scientists say, has had great survival benefits for our species; but the impulse to discover connections frequently misfires, especially when the perceiver is oversensitive or extremely creative. In this way, they say, aberrant marks and shadows on the surface of the planet Mars can be "seen" as a sculpted face on top of a gigantic pyramid, proof of a vanished civilization in outer space; a weathered rock found beside dinosaur bones can be "imagined" to be a shaped, tool, evidence of human life before any man ever walked on the earth; and a mere coincidence can be turned into a sign from God, proof of a "spiritual universe." According to these scientists, synchronicities are completely explicable in terms of statistical probabilities (over the course of a lifetime) and apophenia. They prove nothing and in no way contaminate the pristine world of reason we have been granted by science.

In my spiritual autobiography, The Journey of Rainsnow, I spent a great deal of time discussing synchronicities, which I feel are a crucial component of the modern spiritual awakening. For me, they were particularly important as "verifiers" of other esoteric experiences which I was undergoing at the time, and especially related to my past-life regressions. To digress only for a moment: my current take on my regressions is that they capture essences of lives I really did live in the past (I am a believer in reincarnation); at the same time, I am perfectly open to the idea that some of the memories attached to those past lives may be confabulations, or fantasies generated by the subconscious, in trance, to bridge gaps between real facts and to construct a continuous narrative on the basis of fragments. Since there was little in the past-life memories, themselves, to prove they were not all fantasies, once my previous knowledge of history is taken into account (which could have been drawn upon by the subconscious), it became important for me to have other means of establishing their credibility (for my own purposes). These sources of credibility must come from outside of the experiences, since, though they were moving and frequently convincing, to me, they were not definitively self-proving. It is at this time that synchronicities came to the forefront of my spiritual development. They were the verifiers that I needed.

This discussion is not meant to switch tracks, and to turn this article on synchronicities into one on past-life regressions, but merely to set the stage for the following material from The Journey of Rainsnow. Drawn from Chapter 18, "Messages All Around Us", it is meant to deepen the idea of synchronicities by providing many clear and powerful examples of the phenomenon. They are presented not to boast, but to illustrate, and to help those who are beginners in this fascinating realm of awareness to find their own personal and motivating wealth of coincidences, their own personal treasures of belief, confidence and understanding with which to enrich and transform their lives.

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[EXCERPTS, ADAPTED, FROM THE JOURNEY OF RAINSNOW, "MESSAGES ALL AROUND US", P. 139-154]

[I had undergone significant past-life work with a therapist who I refer to – not his real name - as "Dr. Louis." I was in a state of struggling with my skepticism, paralyzed between doubt and belief and therefore unable to make use of my spiritual discoveries.] … I was walking along the streets of New York City towards another one of my self-annihilating jobs, feeling down about everything… painfully distant from myself, my dreams, my regressions, my future, my hope. Nothing seemed real to me except my unhappiness. But suddenly something happened: that is when I noticed an eerily familiar clerk working at the front desk of the Renaissance Hotel as I walked past, towards my daily dose of death – a deadringer for Dr. Louis, a veritable twin! In a split-second it all leapt together in my mind, like a form of language. Dr. Louis was a symbol, like a word, representing my inner search and my work with past-life regressions. The Renaissance Hotel was a symbol, as the French word "renaissance" itself signifies, of rebirth. The two symbols placed together meant that through the work I was doing with past-life regressions, I could resurrect my fallen self within this life: and also, perhaps, that rebirth, itself – reincarnation in the literal sense – might not be the mindless fantasy [skeptics] had made it out to be. Of course, there was no logic to this interpretation. My own subconscious "recognized" and gave meaning to the symbols, and put them together with a spontaneous grammar spawned by intuition, rising beautiful and unexpected like Aphrodite from the waves of the sea. It all happened in an instant, like a flash of enlightenment, like the birth of a haiku poem…

Of course, you could question this way of putting apparently unrelated objects outside of myself – the Dr.-Louis-look-alike, and Renaissance Hotel – together in such a way as to create a highly-significant personal meaning for myself. You could say this was a case of wishful thinking, of "reading too much into" a coincidence, of unconsciously manipulating reality to fit my own emotional needs. However, the simple fact is that I did not "put anything together:" it put itself together, it erupted from the depths of my soul as something obvious, in a single powerful instant without time for reflection, editing, or judgment. Without feeling any egocentric right to claim these circumstances as appendages of my own being – the man and hotel existed, outside of myself, for their own purposes – I nonetheless "chanced" upon them at a moment of critical need in my own life and was able to perceive what I felt was a message from the Universe through their presence: "You are on the right track, J.! There is something real and genuine in all this! Do not forsake the journey, it is what you need to rise up from the ashes of your life!"

Carl Gustav Jung, the great German psychologist known for his generous open-mindedness towards mystical and paranormal phenomena, called these strange events which sometimes occur in our lives "synchronicities." In our own times, James Redfield has brought the concept back into the forefront of New Age thought with his uneven bestseller, The Celestine Prophecy. In that popular and widely-read book, Redfield takes the bumps out of the word "synchronicities", by calling them "coincidences", or more appropriately, "meaningful coincidences." What both Jung and Redfield are referring to is the phenomenon of strange events occurring outside of ourselves which, nonetheless, have so much significance and meaning to our own lives, that it is almost as though they occurred for us, coordinated by some outside force for our benefit, to deliver a critical message to us or precipitate a crucial insight at a time of need. Outwardly alien to our lives – as were that man, and the name of the hotel – they nonetheless seem intimately linked to us, if only for an instant, surfacing like clockwork at that precise moment when their meaning can be understood, and their message needs to be received. According to Redfield, life abounds with such "coincidences." For those who choose to be alert to them and follow them, to flow with their strangeness, it is the beginning of a great reawakening, the opening of a door that will let magic and spiritual power back into their lives. It is the beginning of a journey that will reconnect them to God and their own true selves. For those who choose to deny them, to reject the sudden intuition that gives them meaning, to deny them, to "unread" them when the passion is gone and push them away from the center of their lives, only logic will remain, moving on in cold determination toward oblivion, past the untraveled roads of the heart.

The message of rebirth still fresh in my mind, a new idea suddenly came upon me as I walked down the ashen streets of New York City towards the job I hated so much. An inner voice suddenly explained to me, "The whole world is a quipu!" [The "quipu" was an ancient Incan means of storing information and conveying messages, consisting of a rope cord from which dangled a series of strings, into which intricate combinations of knots were tied. A class of specially trained "readers of the knots", the quipu-camayoc, existed to interpret the quipus. After the Spanish Conquest, the quipu system was disrupted: as many of the quipus as could be found were destroyed, and the "readers of the knots" gradually passed away until, at last, there was no one left who could understand the few quipus that remained. As Victor W. Von Hagen wrote in The Realm Of The Incas (p. 187): "The quipus now found in graves tell us nothing; they are only lifeless strings." In The Journey of Rainsnow, I used the history of the quipus as a metaphor for the existence of a paranormal language which surrounds us, which we can now no longer read, because "that part of us trusting, audacious, and natural enough to interpret [it] is dead… crushed by Reason’s conquest of the subtle genius of our souls." But resurrect that banished part of ourselves, "and the language comes back to life!"] There are messages all around us waiting to be read, waiting to guide us, waiting to enlighten us, waiting to remind us that we are not alone, that we are supported on our journey. And I realized: The whole world is not only a place to live in, but also a form of communication!

As a result of this experience, I determined to reawaken the dormant ["reader of knots"] within me, to become a reader of the messages that surround us every day, whether we choose to be aware of them or not. As in any art form, however, care must be taken to master the subtleties which underlie its essence. One must learn to reject the beginner’s over-anxiety of searching for important personal meanings in everything that occurs, of "trying too hard", of trying to force meanings into things, and manipulate the content of the messages. One must be receptive, and alert, but let the meanings of things come naturally, which requires a certain degree of psychological balance and "emptiness." As Lao Tsu wrote in "Chapter 11" of the Tao Te Ching [translation by Gia-Fu Feng and Jane English]: "…Shape clay into a vessel; it is the space within that makes it useful. Cut doors and windows for a room; it is the holes which make it useful…"

One’s mind must be open, not predisposed to find any particular meaning in things, not "hunting" for any specific communication, not committed to "putting together" any particular message out of the symbols that constantly surround one in life. Otherwise, the messages one gets will not come from the truest and most powerful source, but from that part of one which is disconnected from that source. One must, in this sense, be "empty", waiting to be filled with the Universe’s wisdom. One must be like the "hole" in Lao Tsu’s writing, through which the light will enter the house.

All this said and done, how does one know if one has truly received a message, or just invented one out of desperation, twisting the arm of fate to produce a superficial communication from some unenlightened part of oneself? The answer is feeling. The truth will ring like a bell, explode like a light in your heart, it will stand out like an island in the sea, and you will know it and feel it at once. The other, "invented" communication will taste of logic, there will be a struggle within it, too much time spent in its construction, too much skill needed to interpret it. The first will fall like manna from heaven; the other will come into being with too much care and cleverness, like the elaborate argument of a sophist.

Of course, to "read" this language, the heart must be open to feel. This seems unnecessary to state, but unfortunately, in our modern society, most hearts have already lost the emotional depth and sensitivity need to be a good [quipu-reader] of the world. This is because modern life, under its guise of comfort, abundance and security (compared, at least, to the days of the caves), is a terrible torment for the soul. (Remember Rilke’s poem [about] the panther [who is imprisoned in a cage, where all his might is paralyzed; there, his soul retreats from flashes of its true self which are too painful to bear, behind eyes that gaze at nothing.] How many of us could go through life feeling, each day, the pain of being eaten alive, of having our hearts cut out, of being lost, like children without a mother, of being destroyed, over and over again, for nothing? That is why our hearts "shut down", why we abandon the deepest realms of feeling within us, the "oversensitive" realms of true love and life, which cannot bear the terrible suffering of living in bondage. Numbness is the result: a form of self-anesthetization, like chewing the coca leaf day and night, as we distract ourselves from the pain that is burning within us and turning us to ashes, by running, buying, working, drinking, lying to ourselves… Like the owner of a great mansion of which we are afraid, we choose to live our lives in one or two rooms, leaving the rest in darkness, abandoned to our ghosts and dreams.

In order to master the language of the divine messages which wait, like angel’s wings, to carry us back to ourselves, we must first learn to turn on the full power of our feelings once again; and be prepared to cross a field of fire to get there. This is when "insight" alone does not suffice. For even more than insight, I will tell you right now, it is valor which marks the spiritual man and woman.

Once open to this new dimension of experience, of course, the messages begin to "come in." How could they not, when we all live surrounded by, even immersed in, a sea of messages? For me, the critical significance of this new insight, this new vision of the world as a gigantic quipu waiting to be read by our awakened souls, was that the guidance and support I received, once I opened myself to the experience, provided me with the strength to continue on my path.

It was while in the midst [of my battles with skeptics], pondering [their] question of how I knew my past-life regressions were real, and not merely fantasies, that I realized the proof of their reality did not exist within the content of the regressions themselves, but outside of that content, in the feelings I had about them, in the messages of support that I received from the Universe during or after them. [However, it should be pointed out for those who adamantly reject the reality of past lives: the synchronicities which I experienced in their wake were personal supports indicating that I was on the right path for me, and they provided me with guidance and solidarity in terms of the spiritual framework I had adopted. I continue to firmly believe that spiritual truth comes to us in many different forms of packaging, and that if a Christian has a vision of Jesus, it does not mean that the Muslim or the Buddhist is wrong, only that Jesus is the expression of spirituality which the Christian will admit and understand, and by means of which spiritual truth will, therefore, reach him. I do not intend my tales of synchronicities, here, to prove that my vision is the ONE OBJECTIVE TRUTH, but to show how one sincere path, out of many, was sincerely validated according to its own systems of comprehension.]

[EXAMPLES OF SYNCHRONICITIES ON MY PERSONAL SPIRITUAL PATH]

[After I had had my first past-life regression with Dr. Louis, I returned to the house of my relatives which had served as my base for that visit, in a distant city. I had not experienced any melodramatic, amazingly vivid and convincing visions, and thought that what I had undergone might well be nothing more than a daydream, or a fantasy [p. 62, Journey.] I, therefore, asked the Universe to give me some sign if what I had experienced was real… In the regression, itself, I had seen myself as a Native American warrior on the American Great Plains hiding in a dry river bed, and later, as a Maya refugee after the Spanish Conquest, looking down into an abandoned cenote, or ceremonial well. Into such wells in the past, Mayas had been flung in sacrifice to the rain god – and I would find out, in another regression, that this had once been a fate which I chose for myself. In the life I remembered on Dr. Louis’ couch, however, I only looked into the well, without jumping into its waters. Instead, I prayed above it: prayed that my life might not end with this defeat at the hands of the Spaniards, but that it might continue after I was dead; that I might come back, like rain, to restore life to my people… Only moments after I asked the Universe for a sign concerning this regression, the skies above my relatives’ house suddenly began to grow dark; days without precipitation ended abruptly in a sudden downpour, which scoured the landscape with driving rains that surprised all those who lived there with their intensity.]

[Later, in another regression, I clarified my first visions of a Native American life on the Great Plains. I remembered a lifetime as a Cheyenne warrior. But though it seemed clear in my regression, I doubted it was true when I was not in a trance.]

I remember, in the early days, as I was still struggling with the issue of my Cheyenne existence, sitting down on the pitiful ‘R’ train to begin yet another heartless ride to work. True or false? Fact or fiction? Reborn Cheyenne, or New Age idiot? [Then, looking up onto the wall of the subway car I was riding in, I saw a poster in the "poetry in motion" series which the MTA had started placing throughout the subway system in conjunction with Barnes & Noble. It was a poem by Lance Henson, originally written in Cheyenne, and translated into English. Its title was "I Am Singing The Cold Rain", and it ended: "I am turning in the gray morning of my life toward home…" The fact that this poem appeared on the subway at this exact moment (the first time I ever saw it, or any piece of literature by a Cheyenne, for that matter, let alone one about "going home") was utterly mind-boggling. Right away, I was overwhelmed by its significance, by its perfect connection with my life, and its perfect timing, to arrive at an hour of supreme relevance.] On this gray morning of my life I was being told that I was on the right path, going to my true home, that my regressions were not wrong turns on the road of life, or fantasies that should be ignored and sent away. I was Cheyenne, and I was on the road back to myself. I felt like crying at that moment, like I was someone who had fallen down, and a great hand had just come over to pick me up. That is the feeling I am talking about, that lets you know you have received a message!

Another powerful message that came to me in this same manner, occurred when I was on the way to my [parents’] home, in the midst of a desperate economic emergency, to grab up any of my old belongings [in storage] that I could find, and pawn them, even for pocket change. [On the way there], I came upon a weird, empty-looking building that looked like an abandoned art gallery [I do not even remember it being there from the days I used to live in that town. There was] nothing in it that I could see, except for a few paintings and a bronze sculpture. Peering in through the semi-whitewashed windows, I saw that the sculpture was of an Indian’s head in a headdress; and the title of that sculpture was ‘Cheyenne Pride and Courage’! One of the paintings was of an old man in a bonnet with a pipe praying to ‘The Four Winds’, and the other, of an old Indian man sitting down, which was called "My Land, My people.’" [The amazing discovery boosted my spirits. Though my crisis remained, I felt the Universe was reminding me of the virtues of courage and the powers of endurance manifested by the Cheyenne people, with whom I shared a strange psychic bond. I felt inspired to be brave, and divinely supported through my hardship. However, there was more to the story. Once I arrived at my parents’ home, I was informed that I had received a savings bond worth $1,000 from a deceased relative who had lived in South Dakota on the edge of the Black Hills, which was the center of the Cheyenne people’s sacred world – the place where they received the great mysteries that became the basis for their tribal ceremonies, and the place where they went seeking spiritual power and understanding in the solitude: the homeland of their vision quests. Although the economic relief "was not enough to solve my economic problems for long, or spare me the need for further struggle", it helped me for a while, and more than that, renewed my belief that man is not separate from the Universe – that we remain connected in the most intimate and personal of ways with the great forces that have created us and sustain us.]

[Probably the biggest synchronicity which occurred in my personal experience, happened in the days when I was working as a New York City messenger, delivering packages and envelopes from business to business. One of my "runs" brought me near a Barnes & Noble bookstore, providing me with the opportunity to pop in and grab up a book which I wanted to send to someone as a gift. The book was by Lame Deer, a Lakota holy man and storyteller, and it was entitled: Lame Deer: Seeker of Visions. I had already read the book and been impressed by many parts of it, but most especially by Lame Deer’s prophecy that one day, soon, a man or group of men would appear to bring light to the world. They would begin the transformation by stopping electricity, turning off the "white electro-power", breaking the dependence on machines which made men helpless and out of touch with nature and human values, replacing electric light with spiritual light. It would be a hard time, but out of the hardships, a new world would be born. Something about the prophecy, which seemed unlikely yet vivid and compelling, simultaneously disturbing and uplifting, mesmerized me and remained in my mind as the single most striking feature of the book. That day, as it turns out, I finished up at the World Trade Center (I was working part-time in those days, so it was in the early afternoon when I completed my final delivery). Following protocol, I found a payphone there, in a corridor right outside WTC 2 (one of the Twin Towers) and began to call in the signatures and delivery times of my final batch of tickets to the office. Right at that very moment, the lights went out. I could barely finish reading off the information from the tickets. As it turns out, the WTC and much of downtown Manhattan had just been hit by a massive power failure. Thousands of people had to come down the darkened, paralyzed building, via endless stairways, since the elevators were frozen; and the work day came to a sudden and unexpected halt. Astonished, I staggered out of the building, back into the light of day. ] Of course, the incident shook me to the core. Lame Deer’s prophecy of the ‘Light Men’ and the collapse of electric power leapt, with all the force of a Biblical vision, into the forefront of my mind. It was like the sky had split open, and horsemen come riding out. On this, the one day I had ever carried Lame Deer’s book around with me in my backpack [and right when I was in downtown Manhattan, at the epicenter of the power failure], a taste of Lame Deer’s prophecy was put into my life, and now that I am writing it down, into the world. There, in the heart of the modern world’s material power, the spiritual power of a ‘beaten’ people showed that its far greater power is fast approaching. What Lame Deer said in his book were not just the words of a foolish old man.

[There are some more personal synchronicities that are associated with this great power failure, but it is enough to write of this one, for now.]

________________________

Many other synchronicities from my life, both those associated with past-life regressions, and those utterly unconnected to them, abound:

There was the time I emerged from a long and grueling past-life regression in which I remembered parts of two lives lived in China, one during the Mongol occupation and another during the Ming Dynasty. Once again, I was filled with doubts, thinking I might just have emerged from a gigantic episode of hypnotic fantasy-production. I asked the Universe for some sign to let me know if the memories I had encountered were real or imagined. Within minutes, the phone rang. It was my wife’s Chinese friend, who she hadn’t heard from for many months, calling to say hello and to talk. And after that conversation, she never called again. That is, to say, the phone call occurred totally out of the blue at the precise instant that I was seeking validation for my Chinese regression. The fact that the caller was Chinese was clearly understood, like a word in the language of occult sensibilities, meaning, "You, too, were really once Chinese" (or have a special spiritual link to China), "just like the girl who we induced to call your home."

OTHER SYNCHRONICITIES:

On another occasion, I was mourning the loss of my beloved cat. People who have pets know what this is like. Many times, pets become fully integrated members of our families, and we come to cherish their affection and to recognize their nobility, almost as if they were people. We come to value and to rely on their presence. When they die, especially under some circumstances, we are often left devastated and heartbroken. It is not absurd to feel this way, it is human. I was in the midst of such a loss, consumed by an almost unbearable sorrow over the fate of my dead cat, and also riddled with guilt, thinking I should have taken better care of him (though it is never easy for the poor to provide for their pets), when, all of a sudden, I turned the corner as I was walking down the street and came upon a high fence on which were formed the words, made by yellow ribbons tied to its front: THANK YOU. Given the internal conversation going on in my head – I was just then apologizing, with all my heart, to my cat, for not doing enough for him - it was as if he, himself, were responding to me, assuring me that I had done enough, after all, and thanking me for what I had given him – which was all that I could. "Thank You," he told me. I cannot tell you how moved I was!

In one other instance (of many), I was thinking of an educational facility where I had once worked. There, I had been caught in a conflict between a panicking administration, that wanted to impose draconian measures on the facility in order to provide cover for a coworker who had no idea of how to control the students in a dignified way, and the students, themselves, with whom I had developed a good rapport, and who I was able to supervise in a looser way based on vigilance and the maintenance of respectful relations between us. Feeling that I could not abandon my looser style to become an enforcer of the new draconian spirit, without betraying the relations I had built with the students, I chose to leave the job without first procuring a backup, which precipitated a major nosedive in my life, but which, at least, preserved my sense of integrity. Many years after that, as I was walking down the street doing an entirely different kind of job, outwardly menial and low-paying, I thought of that choice, felt some regrets about it, then touched base once again with the consolation of having done what I believed was right. I was not born to be a repressor. Better to be poor and to live on the fringe. After all, what is morality if one will not stand up for it when it has a cost? At that moment, on a car radio, I heard one of the songs that used to blare out of the juke box at the facility where I used to work. It was one of the students’ favorites, back in those days, but now it was years later, and it was long gone from the airwaves. The fact that I heard it playing now, just as I thought of the students who had loved it and of the sacrifice I had made for them, fortified my conviction that I had made the right decision not to betray their trust. Once more, my heart was set at ease.

[A few more synchronicities for good measure]

Following are two basic synchronicities, which skeptics would no doubt have a statistical field day working over. But such incidents deeply enrich the texture of life, "enchant" it as modern New Age philosophers would say. Common as incidents like this may (or may not) be, they help to close the gap between our hearts and the world we live in:

I was riding in a taxi cab to go to a Marathon, which I had decided to run as a kind of ritual to prove to myself that I could finish things which I began (I had dropped out of a previous Marathon; and found that I did not complete many projects which I started). On the way to the Marathon, on the cab’s radio, I heard a version of "The Long and Winding Road", which perfectly captured the mood of the moment. I was inspired and moved by the song; the energy which it gave to me helped me to accomplish my task.

When I was preparing to leave home for the first time to make it on my own, I took a small day-trip in search of inspiration and head-space. It was the beginning of my move towards independence. With me on that day I carried a copy of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude. Years later, as I got onto the train to travel towards a site where I was attempting to win intellectual independence from the way I had been raised, by uncovering my spirituality, I saw a young man in the same train car carrying, with him, a copy of One Hundred Years of Solitude. This event connected the two times in my life, showing me the common thread that linked them: the effort to become myself. The manifestation of symmetry was both beautiful and encouraging.

The following synchronicities are a little more dramatic:

I was reading a book on ancient Greek oracles, and studying the section on the Oracle of the Dead at Ephyra, to which grieving pilgrims came in hopes of contacting the spirits of vanished loved ones. After a long period of preparation which put them into an altered state, they were finally led into a chamber of apparitions to meet their relatives. While I was reading about this oracle, outside my window, on the street below, I heard a man calling out the nickname of one of my own dear, deceased relatives. It turned out that it also happened to be the name of his dog. But that is how the magic of synchronicities work – agendas coinciding in the cosmos; it was the first time I had ever heard him calling out that name, and it happened precisely when I was reading about people attempting to communicate with their deceased relatives. I took it to be a form of contact from the beyond.

Another day, reading that same book, I was browsing through the pages on the Oracle of Dodona, where ancient Greek priestesses believed they heard the voice of Zeus speaking to them through the sound of the branches of a sacred oak tree as they rustled in the wind. (At a later date, a system of bronze "gongs" was added to the compound, to increase the volume of the noise produced as the winds blew.) As I held the book in my hands, reading all this, a tremendous wind suddenly rushed into the apartment, knocking vases off of the window sill and blowing dirt from other plant pots all over the floor. In all the years I lived in this apartment, a wind of comparable force had entered only once before, and that was after a long period of anticipation, with skies slowly darkening and a storm obviously approaching. This wild blowing of the wind, which lasted for several minutes, came out of nowhere, from the midst of sunny skies and absolute calm. As it howled, I thought I could begin to hear the wildly swaying trees outside moving towards language. I felt, immediately, that this event had occurred to give me a sense of what had once happened at Dodona, and to convince me of the reality of the God-element that was interpreted by the ancient Greeks as Zeus. Given one of my past-life memories as a loyal servant of Zeus, this was particularly moving.

On another occasion, I had just finished reading a passage from The Iliad. I had found the passage by spontaneous "book-opening", a practice which I used to search for synchronistic bits of guidance in those days. The part I found was where aged Priam, King of Troy, loads a wagon filled with treasures and rides out of the city gates towards the Greek camp in an attempt to buy back the corpse of his fallen, heroic son, Hector, who has been slain in single combat by Achilles. The father wants to give him a proper burial. But the mission is perilous, the Greeks may be wrathful, or attempt to seize the riches in his wagon even before he reaches Achilles. The frail old man begs Zeus for assistance before he goes. In eloquent language (WHD Rouse translation, page 288), Priam asks for Zeus to show him that he is supported in his journey, and protected, by sending him an omen: an eagle in the sky, flying on his right-hand side. The great eagle duly appears, and Priam is thereby given the courage to act. In a second book-opening I did that day, from a kind of dictionary of signs, I came up with the words "money" and "wagon." There was a correspondence in the two book-openings. This happened during a time when I needed strong support of some kind, a helping hand from the divine, for I was facing many difficult dilemmas. As I went outside to take a walk and to handle my business for that day, about a mile from my apartment I was stunned to see a large hawk, so similar to the eagle mentioned in the Iliad, perched on the balcony of a high-rise. It was the first and only time I ever saw such a bird in my stretch of the borough of Queens. I wondered if it might not be another kind of bird – a seagull perhaps? But its hooked beak was too compact, too strong, too eagle-like. As if to dispel my doubt, the bird flung itself gracefully off of the balcony and disappeared behind the grating of another balcony. When suddenly, from that balcony, a cloud of pigeon feathers began to rain down, I knew that the bird I had seen was, indeed, a hawk, and that it had just succeeded in making a kill. It was a powerful and shocking moment. In spite of the horror of what had just happened (on one level), I felt the strength and might of the bird, and its deep connection with the words I had just read: "O Zeus our Father, most mighty and most glorious, enthroned upon Mount Ida! Grant that Achilles may show me kindness and pity, and send me a bird, that swift messenger whom thou lovest more than all the birds, the strongest bird of all. Show him on my right hand, that I may see him with my eyes and have him to trust in this journey to the Danaan camp!" So Priam prayed, and Zeus Allwise heard him. At once he sent an eagle, most unfailing omen among birds that fly, the dark one, the hunter… The stretch of his outspread wings was as wide as the bolted door of a rich man’s lofty treasure-house. They saw him on the right sailing over the city; all that saw him were glad, and their hearts were warmed within them.

For me, June 17 (and the day leading up to it), is a special day, the anniversary of the great Lakota warrior Crazy Horse’s victory in the Battle of the Rosebud: a battle in which his inner visions were transformed into a victory on the earth. One year during this time, as I was walking on the street, I found a discarded book of matches on the street. Its label was "Rosebud." I haven’t ever seen these matches around except for on this one day, and in this way (lying in the street). The discovery showed me that the spirit power of the Rosebud Battle lives on in this world, and reminds me that it is still possible to connect with it.

On another day I was going to give blood for a test to see if my bone marrow might be compatible with that of a little girl in another part of the borough, who had a rare blood disease and needed treatment. The posters of the innocent little child plastered around the subway station had deeply moved me. As I got off of my train to look for the church where the blood samples were being taken, I saw a sign in the window of a local store advertising the availability of buffalo meat. This is not a common offering in New York City, and it is the first time that I ever saw it here. Given my developing connection with Native Americans, it was a particularly strong sign. The buffalo was the giver of life to the people of the Great Plains. It was believed to sacrifice itself in order to sustain the people, and therefore, it had a sacred connection with human life. Seeing the sign there, that day, called to mind the spirit of sacrifice which I was manifesting on one level, as well as the fact that we are nourished by our good deeds and what we do for others. Though the idea of having marrow sucked out of my bones horrified me (and that would be the end result if my blood was a match), the buffalo sign helped to bring peace to my heart, and to make me, once more, very glad for what I was doing. It helped me to overcome my anxieties for myself and stay true to the little girl who needed help.

A dear, deceased relative of mine was born on April Fool’s Day (April 1) and passed away on the day corresponding to April Fool’s Day in her own culture (Dec. 28, The Day of the Innocents). It was a reminder to me that there is an illusory aspect to our lives here on the earth, which takes place between the demarcation lines of birth and death. Many of the things which we take so seriously are nothing more than cosmic pranks; we look down because we believe our shoelaces are untied, when, in fact, they are not; we cry because someone tell us our uncle is dead, when, in fact, he is still alive. We are ingenuous, deceived; we are "fools" and "inocentes" who do not know the true nature of existence. This does not mean that we should treat our pain on the earth, and the pain of our brothers, lightly, or treat this world as if it were all a mere joke; it simply means that we should keep in mind that where we are is only one shallow manifestation of a far wider and deeper truth. And that we should try to remain connected to that truth rather than fall prey to the values, anxieties, and lies which predominate on the surface. Thinking deeply about life and death after the passing of my relative, I found insight in the strange coinciding of her two great dates: her date of coming and her date of going. Knowing her taught me many things, and this is one of them.

Two good friends entered my life, at different times over the past few years: I thought, perhaps, to go farther with me than they did. They did not. On reflection, I realized that their birthdays corresponded to supremely important days in my spiritual calendar, one corresponding to the day that launched my sense of justice into the world, and the other to the day that, for me, symbolizes reverence for one’s most precious personal dreams. Neither one of them came to offer me the relationship which I wanted to have with them. Both of them were my friends, however; and both of them reminded me, because of their birthdays, of things that were sacred to me, which the Universe wished to keep close to me, and did, by bringing them into my life. In the end, the "special relationship" I was supposed to have was not with them, but with my own essence.  The Universe needs us to be true to ourselves.

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All of this personal material is not meant to glorify myself. To cite the synchronicities which have occurred in one’s life is used, by some - as are references to how many prophetic dreams one has had and how many psychic incidents one has experienced - for the purpose of vanity: to, as it were, pin medals of enlightenment on one’s chest and acquire proof of some special spiritual status. I merely cite these cases to illustrate the nature of synchronicities, and the manner in which they are capable of interacting with the issues of one’s life. I am sure you have had many yourself, or if you have not, that once you are open to them, you will. What matters, in the end, is not that one experiences synchronicities, though it is wonderful if one can open oneself to them; but that, once one does, one does not ward them off with the reflex of science, which attempts to brush them away like flies with a whisk, but instead, allows oneself to be enriched by them; and that one, rather than stuffing them like feathers into one’s cap, uses them vigorously and effectively to become a better human being and to do the things that better human beings are needed to do in the world.

When one considers other forms of divination popular in today’s New Age, such as the Tarot, tea leaves, the rune stones, or "book opening", one, once again, quickly apprehends that the only principle which could ever make them truly effective is synchronicity. In the Tarot, for example, what should cause a certain card with a certain meaning to be drawn under a certain circumstance, in such a way as to have profound relevance to the life of the subject? Only an act of coinciding, binding the act of selecting an unknown card from the Tarot deck with the life situation of the individual in need of clarity, could possibly provide legitimacy to this method; only an "induced synchronicity", facilitated by the creation of a conducive spiritual space, and by the small amount of event-resources needed to engineer it. (The less outer forces that need to be harmonized and brought together to produce the synchronicity, the easier it must be to induce it. Working with a deck of cards is, relatively speaking, very easy on the Universe. Synchronicities, as most commonly understood, however, are not "induced", they just happen.)

In all cases, it must be stated, revelations pulled from the mystic realm must always be balanced by an appreciation for the solid facts of earthly existence; common sense and good judgment should never be thrown to the winds for the sake of a prophecy – for the psychic arts are delicate and subject to misinterpretation, and sometimes even seem cast our way to test us and the level of confidence we have within us. There is no way to flee from the burden of our will; no way to evade the fact that we are responsible for our own lives.

It is a natural result, once we come to such an appreciation, that we begin to expect great things. Coming to believe that we are noted, that our existence has been detected and registered by a greater power, that we are not invisible and do not live without a trace, and that the Universe is not as cold and indifferent to us as we once imagined, we come to expect all the benefits that recognition and love "should bring", all the blessings of "good parenting" that ought to come from the Higher Power we have recovered our belief in. We expect our spiritual awakening to bring us happiness, joy, health, prosperity, love, all the beautiful things we have longed for, and been dreaming of. Now that we are finally reconnected, we feel sure we will get them.

This is not always, however, the way it happens. In the wake of The Celestine Prophecy, the modern pop version of Jung’s exploration of synchronicities, vast numbers of excited readers were inspired to chase after the "meaningful coincidences" which appeared to them in their lives; to follow them, like Alice, down the rabbit hole of a new spiritual way of seeing, thinking, and living. Whole New Age multitudes opened themselves up to the experience of the synchronicity, and began to navigate their lives according to its magical possibilities, leaping from one inner discovery to the next, throwing away old maps for plotting personal and professional trajectories and replacing these dependable but unsatisfying maps with pure intuition. They lived without iron-clad plans, with their spiritual antennae up. There was, in these initial moments of the Celestine "revelations", a sense of optimism and euphoria pervasive among its converts: a rosy belief that this spiritual opening-up would expose them to infallible guidance previously shut out by reason, and that from this guidance would come bliss.

For others, the difficulty is to accept the synchronicities as true heralds of a spiritual order; to discount the constant whispering of Science in your ear, assuring you that they are nothing but constructs of your own mind. You have touched a hair on God’s head, but they call it probability.

Perhaps, there is no better reply to this nagging criticism than the words of Jung, himself [Memories, Dreams, Reflections, p. 302]: "Reason sets the boundaries far too narrowly for us, and would have us accept only the known – and that too with limitations – and live in a known framework, just as if we were sure how far life actually extends. As a matter of fact, day after day we live far beyond the bounds of our consciousness; without our knowledge, the life of the unconscious is also going on within us. The more the critical reason dominates, the more impoverished life becomes; but the more of the unconscious and the more of myth we are capable of making conscious, the more of life we integrate. Overvalued reason has this in common with political absolutism: under its dominion the individual is pauperized."

I write this article on synchronicities for both of us: for you and me. We have before us, a wonderful, time-tried path to belief, a wonderful compass on the journey of life. It will not save us from the steps we have to take, but it will help us to know where we should walk, and give us the strength to take those steps.

Synchronicities are what we will let them be: cords that connect us to greater and deeper ways of knowing; or cords cut by reason and left dangling from our lives, connecting us to nothing.

SOURCES INCLUDE:

Jung, Carl G. Memories, Dreams, Reflections.

Rainsnow, J. The Journey of Rainsnow.