Astronomical odds are often evident in synchronicities that involve the ways in which lost or stolen objects return to their owners. Jung related one such story that came to him through writer Wilhelm von Stultz, about a mother who took a photo of her young son while they were in the Black Forest. After dropping it off in Strassburg to be developed, she never had a chance to pick it up again because WWI broke out. Then in 1916, she purchased film in Frankfort to take a photo of her daughter. When that film was developed, it turned out to be doubly exposed. Beneath the picture of her daughter was the photo of her son taken two years earlier. The old film apparently hadn’t been developed and had somehow made its way back into circulation.
It’s one thing to read about a story like this that happened to someone else a long time ago. It’s something else to experience it yourself. We’ve all done it – misplaced or lost something practical or valuable (keys come quickly to mind!) and then we tear through our homes, cars and lives, looking for the object. Sometimes, that object returns in ways that are every bit as strange as the mother’s photo of her son.
Ten or eleven years ago, Rob was windsurfing on a lake near the house where we lived at the time and lost his wallet. He hoped he had lost it before going windsurfing, but he couldn’t find it on the shore where he’d rigged his sail. He knew if he had accidentally taken it with him and lost it in the lake, chances of recovering it were nil.
But when he got home, he didn’t do any of the things people normally do when they lost their wallets-no calls to credit card companies, no application for a new driver’s license, no contact with the auto insurance company. Instead, he visualize the wallet returning to him, felt it in his hand, his back pocket.
A lawn man stopped by our house that same week, soliciting business. We already had someone taking care of the yard, but Rob and the man chatted, then the guy left. A few days later, this same man was fishing with a net in the lake where Rob had been windsurfing and dredged up Rob’s wallet. He returned it, complete with all the cards and water-soaked cash, and said he was relieved Rob was alive and not on the bottom of that lake.
What were the chances of that happening? Not only was the wallet recovered from the lake where we’d never seen anyone fishing with a net, but the man had met Rob a few days earlier. Skeptics say this stuff is bound to happen from time to time. Mere coincidence. Not in a million years, we say. Synchronicity. The subconscious mind or higher mind affects matter, alters reality. In this case, Rob was convinced from the beginning that the wallet would be found.
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UPDATE
So with the wind gusting over 20 mph this morning, we checked the blog to see if the windsurfing post came up as scheduled, then looked at the e-mail. There we found the following note from Nicholas Pasztor. Something is blowing in the wind.
“I was surfing the web on my laptop at home on Thursday the 5th November 2009 looking at BitTorrent movie links and saw a link to “Gone With The Wind”. My TV was on in the background and at that exact moment as I read this someone on a TV talk show said Gone With The Wind. It sent shivers down my spine.”
I love both stories about the film and the wallet. I'll have to remember the wallet story for inspiration.
I have my own film story to tell, though not with a happy ending.
In 2002, I went on a roadtrip with my friend to Boston and New York City. Since I'm a fan of Kerouac, I made sure that I spent a day in Lowell MA, where he grew up. I took pictures of the houses Kerouac lived in and the buildings he had written about in his books.
I probably took about five rolls of film on that trip (Lowell took up one entire roll and a few frames on another roll). When I returned home to Atlanta, I developed the film at the regular drug store I always went to. When I picked them up a couple days later, they could not find one of the rolls. They had no idea where it went. It happened to be the film with all the Lowell pictures in it.
In all my years of developing film, I had never had a place lose a roll of film before. I was very upset about it and even lost my temper with the poor lady who worked there.
A few months later, I had a strange message on my answering machine that the film had been located and was ready to pick up. The voice was some kind of foreign accent, where the lady had pronounced my name Nicholas as something like Nee-koh-lyce. It gave me the creeps listening to it.
So, I rushed to the drug store to pick the film up. No one in the store had called me. The film had not been located. When I explained the message, no one knew of any person who spoke with a foreign accent that worked at the store or any of the other ones in the chain. It was the oddest thing.
In the years since, I wonder if that was a trickster spirit at play. The phone message was so odd that it gave me the creeps listening to it. I would love to learn te mystery of that phone message and where my lost film ended up. I would really love a synchronistic experience where that film made its way to me. I think I'd have a heart attack if that happened, though.
At the end of the post, we added a comment from Nicholas Pasztor that came in e-mail and included 'surfing' and 'Gone with the Wind' in the copy, arriving in our mailbox as this post went up.
Now Nicholas adds to the story:
'I forgot to mention that straight after my strange coincidence last Thurs with "Gone with the Wind", I typed in "synchronicity gone with the wind" into Google just to see if there was any significance or connection somewhere in the world.
It was your website that Google first highlighted as it had references to synchronicity and Gone with the Wind, a previous post from your 12th October 2009 blog. That's why I emailed you!
Interestingly that October post mentioned some significance with the number 137.
Surfing a little info on Wikipedia I read Margaret Mitchell won the Pulitzer Prize for her novel Gone with the
Wind in 1937!'
Very cool story. 😀
This is an amazing story! I'm a huge believer in the power of visualization. I've seen it change my life around, and I truly believe in it. Although I'm scientifically minded, my spirit belongs to the universe and its workings. Thank you for sharing that!
Nevine
oh, good grief!!! more and more of it all! i could just see your celticself standing in the midst of all those saris and indian men! what a colorful "rest of the story" – thanks for adding this chapter!
and namaste' is one of my favorite words –
namaste' –
We posted this story today, because it's one of several personal stories that we ended up removing from our book because 65,000 words weren't enough for all the stories we'd gathered and experienced.
There's actually a bit more to the story that Trish didn't relate, because she wasn't with me when I went to the man's house to get my billfold.
It was on a Sunday that was a Hindu holiday and the man was from India. When I arrived at the house, I had to walk about a block because there was no place to park. It turned out that 50-75 people were gathered at the house, and everyone was Indian – except me.
So I walked into the garage where about a dozen men were standing around and asked for the man who had called. I can't remember his name. It seemed long and odd to me, but apparently it was quite common. Let's call him Chinmayu.
I was directed to the crowded kitchen and found him. When I told Chinmayu I was here for my wallet, he didn't know what I was talking about. Then he brightened and led me to the dining room and introduced me to another Chinmayu.
This guy was also the wrong one, but he wanted to talk to me about windsurfing. So we chatted for about five minutes amidst the smells of curry, ginger, cumin and other Indian spices from the dishes nearby, and blurred visions of women moving past me in colorful saris.
Then the 'real' Chinmayu walked up waving my wallet in his hand. The scenario just added to the mysterious nature of the entire event. Namaste!
oh, wow! the stories of the film and of rob's wallet absolutely incredible!!! and like butternut says, one should always be ever so mindful of one's own thoughts! something i have found to be true over and over again – and on pazstor's note, something that happens over and over again – very very neat post!!! you all never disappoint over here on the drama and intrigue!
I have done the same thing as Rob, a time or two. Just felt there was no need to react to something because I felt sure it would turn out okay in the end. Great story. Glad the wallet was found.
Oh MacGregors! What an amazing exciting synchronicity; the stories just keep coming and this was a wonderful one for a Sunday morning—faith nonpareil! Grace incarnate in everyday life and the "fisher of man." Thank you.
Wow amazing! Reminds me of a time I was listening to Guns N' Roses' song November Rain. Co-incidentally it was the month of November. And even more weird was the fact that it STARTED RAINING! It was surprising since it NEVER rains in November. Monsoons typically last from June to September. And this incident happened towards the end of November. I remember how eager I was to tell everyone of this co-incidence. But I guess I've forgotten all about it. Keep writing!
If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed your wallet will come back. That was an awesome story. It makes me mindful of the consequences of my thoughts. Peace.