After reading the story of the church choir members who were all late for practice the day the church blew up, you certainly could call those people lucky. So what’s the difference between luck and synchronicity?
In essence, luck is a fortunate synchronicity unless the adjective ‘bad’ comes before it. Luck is something that appears unplanned, outside of cause and effect, hence, synchronicity.
But here’s the difference. Imagine jotting down six numbers and they turn out to be the ones that win the powerball lottery the next day. That’s synchronicity. But if you bought the ticket and used the numbers, that’s luck.
So it took action before the synchronicity turned into something incredibly lucky.
When someone is an overnight success, we call that person lucky. But a closer look usually reveals that the ‘sudden’ success followed years, even decades, of practice. Trish wrote five novels in the 1970s after graduating from college before writing one that got published. Yet, some would say she was lucky, because her work was selected from hundreds, even thousands, of manuscripts written by competent writers.
On the one hand, it wasn’t just luck, it was work and strong intent. And along way synchronicity guided her. The editor at Ballantine Books who bought the manuscript read it the weekend after the premiere of Miami Vice. Like the television show, In Shadow featured two Miami detectives, one white, one black, and they were involved in a drug investigation.
Synchronicity. The editor made an offer and Trish’s fiction-writing career was launched. That came on the twenty-fifth submission of her sixth novel, and was the first and only of those books to be published.
As Frank Joseph writes in Synchronicity and You, “The surest method for conjuring synchronous events into one’s life is to be passionately involved in something, especially if it is greater than oneself.”
Notes therapist Marcus Anthony, author of Sage of Synchronicity: “For Jung, the cosmos was not the great machine of the modern science, but more of an intelligent, organic entity. A serendipitous cosmos is a playful, childlike one, and an adventurous and joyful approach to life encourages synchronicity. A key point is bringing the mind fully into the present moment. In the joyful state of complete presence, it is as if the cosmos comes alive. The deeper meaning and purpose of things becomes known even as they unfold, as if your psyche and the cosmic mind are in open dialogue.”
When you’re doing an activity like biking or running you are releasing so many endorphins that if you positively visualize what you want, it materializes faster. But research also points to the release of endorphins during meditation and intense creative work, as well as sex and childbirth. It’s as if the endorphins somehow help connect us to the powerful source of who we really are, and the potential of who we can become.
Rob
"The joyful state of complete presence" seems to be key to creativity, paticularly creativity that attracts synchronicities. May we all experience more of it!
Hello and Thank You for following APOGEE Poet. I appreciate your expressed perspectives. I am presently preparing for a poetry reading scheduled for this evening. I will post when I have a bit more time.
The mindfulness you refer to, "A key point is bringing the mind fully into the present moment. In the joyful state of complete presence, it is as if the cosmos comes alive." is very much my reality!
Best,
Rose Marie
Thank you for this bit of wisdom. I especially love…"an adventurous and joyful approach to life encourages synchronicity. A key point is bringing the mind fully into the present moment. In the joyful state of complete presence, it is as if the cosmos comes alive. The deeper meaning and purpose of things becomes known…"
I hope to evolve into a joyful human being who looks at the world with a child-like wonder and does this effortlessly for the rest of her life.
I love this post – especially agree with the part about passion and creativity.
I like this post – A LOT! The important point for me is the – being engaged with passion. This is when synchronicity flows, like the endorphins. When we are at rest, the universe will let us rest.
Unlike childish-ness, the universe is child like, wanting to play when we are ready to play. It is not demanding, or performing for our attention. Being human is the game we chose to play, and the universe will dance with us, giving us clues, songs, numbers, charts, etc. for us to remember how important the choice was, to play the game.
This post speaks to me, about the delight of synchronicity to pick lottery numbers, but it is our action that plays the ticket. It takes passion, dedication and practice, to play a game well…
This was a fantastic post, Rob. Thank you for educating us on the difference between synchronicity and luck, and how to access both. I think we have all experienced being in the "flow", which is what Jung was trying to explain. I also like the comment by Barbara Martin, and totally agree with what she said, as well.
The connection of which you write is divine and related to the cosmos. It is by tapping into the direct source of positive energy that synchronicity occurs.