Synchronicity is more than an 80s pop song by The Police. And I’d have to give Sting credit for the lyrics because if you really listen, he was on to something. Sting owes the basic concept of synchronicity to psychologist Carl Jung who coined the phrase.
Synchronicity occurs whenever a meaningful coincidence happens. To Jung, the events have to occur simultaneously and be meaningful to the individual. So context becomes extremely important. From Jung’s own experience comes the classic example of a patient who had been dreaming of scarab beetles when lo and behold a beetle starts rapping at the window during one of their sessions. Synchronicity! It was a simultaneous event and meaningful to the patient. By definition, Jung’s idea of synchronicity would exclude a lot of phenomena including dreams that sometime in the future, actually come true.
Jung thought synchronistic events were rare and unpredictable. Related to the unseen realm of archetypes, the events were more likely to occur in times of transition. Any upheaval in our personal lives: career changes, illness, death, and especially during spiritual growth are key times for synchronous events. Bridging the inner and outer world of our experience, synchronicities may point us in the right direction. But of course, only if we’re listening. If you’ve bought into the paradigm of the material and excluded all else, you are unlikely to see a synchronous event. It will just be a bizarre coincidence and you are likely to shake your head and go about your day relatively unfazed. But what if we opened up just a little and entertained the idea that there is more out there?
Carl Jung
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