Unconscious Hints

Posted on March 26, 2010 by Trish and Rob

Now and then, I pick Jung’s autobiography, Memories, Dreams and Reflections, and just read from random pages. Even though I’ve read the book several times, I usually find some nugget that I don’t recall reading before. One powerful story that he recounts took place during WWII, when he was returning home from Bollingen, Switzerland. He was on a train, had a book with him, but couldn’t read. “…for the moment the train started to move, I was overpowered by the image of someone drowning.”

During the entire journey, Jung couldn’t get rid of the feeling. “It struck me as uncanny, and I thought, ‘What has happened? Can there have been an accident?'” The feeling was apparently exacerbated by a memory of an accident that had occurred while he was in the military service.

He got off the train at  Erlenbach and walked home, still troubled. His second daughter’s family was living with the Jungs then and as he walked into the garden, her kids were all there, upset. “They told me that Adrian, then the youngest of the boys, had fallen into the water at the boathouse. It is quite deep there, and since he could not really swim, he had almost drowned. This had taken place at exactly the time I had been assailed by that memory on the train.”

This story appears in the chapter on life after death, which has numerous examples of synchronicities like this that Jung experienced.  As he wrote, “The unconscious helps by communicating things to us, or making figurative allusions. It has other ways, too, of informing us of things which by all logic we could not possibly know. Consider synchronistic phenomena, premonitions, and dreams that come true. The unconscious had given me a hint. Why should it not be able to inform us of other things also?”

Posted in Carl Jung, hunches | 5 Comments

The Foxes: A Play on Words

Posted on March 25, 2010 by Trish and Rob

Aleksandar Malecic of Serbia has commented frequently on our blog, offering  his insights. In this story, which he emailed us, a couple of foxes are the stars!
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I don’t know whether this event counts as synchronicity, but here it is: A few minutes ago, I visited a friend’s page on my space, whose highest ranking online friend is Ilenia Volpe. A few hours ago I received an  SMS message from my cousin-in-law containing his e-mail address – vulpes@…  I somehow “knew” that volpe and vulpes are the same thing, without actually knowing that these words mean anything. Indeed, volpe is fox in Italian and vulpes  is red fox in Latin.”

Shortly after Aleksandar sent us the email, he turned to his Dictionary of Symbols (Hans Bierdermann), which connects the fox with the trickster, Loki. Then he came to our blog, and found our post on  Loki, where he left this comment: “I almost dropped the book on the floor when I read “Loki.”
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So that’s three foxes, which qualifies this sequence of synchronicities as a cluster, one of the 7 secrets. But it’s also a trickster synchronicity. So, what’s the message? I looked up fox in Ted Andrews’s book Animal Speak. Here’s what he says: “It is a totem that speaks of the need to develop or the awakening of camouflage, invisibility, and shape-shifting.” Foxes are family creatures, nocturnal, and, of course, cunning. So perhaps this cluster synchronicity is addressing some of these qualities in Aleksandar’s life.

Addendum:
This gets a little stranger. Trish put together this post from an e-mail. I hadn’t read it until this evening (Wednesday). But earlier in the day, I had responded to Aleksandar, asking if there were two Aleksandars,  with slightly different spellings to their last names. You can see in the comments Wednesday that one is spelled Malecic, the other Maircic, and Malecic said he is not Maircic. Very confusing.

So, for some reason, I started thinking about an old Saturday Night Live skit involving Steve Martin and Dan Ackroyd in which they played two Eastern European guys on the make in NYC. In the skit, they would slink into nightclubs in their disco outfits and introduce themselves as “two wild and crazy guys,” and–for those of you who remember that skit–what were they always looking for? “Foxes!” (American slang for good looking women, though outdated even at that time.)

So I was telling this to Trish and said…”foxes” loudly, mimicking Martin and Ackroyd. But Trish thought I was making reference to Aleksandar’s story,  which I hadn’t read. So Aleksandar was stunned when he read the Loki post, which I wrote, and I was stunned in return when I read his foxes post.

Wild and crazy stuff! Foxes!

Posted in clusters, foxes, secret 5, trickster | 9 Comments

Butterfly

Posted on March 24, 2010 by Trish and Rob

 

I just love it when our Google alert delivers synchronicity alerts. That’s how I found Lauren’s blog.

Her terrific synchro about a butterfly started with a story about a black butterfly, so I used her photo. I’ve never seen a black butterfly, didn’t even know they existed until I read her story.
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 Perhaps the most dramatic “butterfly experience” I had occurred 10 years ago. Since this experience had to do with both dream and synchronicity, I don’t know if I can tell it very cohesively, but I’ll try.

It began with a disturbing dream. I was on a ship, and on the deck many people sat in deck chairs, all of them playing with masks, taking them on and off. I seemed, in the dream, to be two people at once. I knew that there was, down in the lower decks of the boat, a demon. One of the women that I was was a kind of priestess or missionary – she was about to descend into the depths of the boat, where the demon below would torture and kill her. She thought that if she did so, offering herself as sacrificial victim, she could save the people above.

The other “me” was a cynical observer who thought she was a ridiculous martyr, and knew everyone, especially her, was doomed. I woke up as the “martyr self” began her descent.

Without going into the many circumstantial and psychological meanings of this important dream, I’ll skip ahead in real time. About 6 months after having this dream, I actually found myself, with a lot of actors, and a few masks, on an old decommissioned ocean liner (the “art ship”), which was anchored in the industrial harbor of Oakland. I was acting in a movie, and the writer and director of the film, Antero Alli, had decided to do his filming in the very bottom of this 5 level boat; the old, cold, dark, dank, cargo bay.

Descending into the bottom of the boat brought my dream back vividly, and every superstitious notion of prophetic dreams I ever had came right to the fore. I didn’t like it there! Between shoots, the cast hung out in what must have once been the crew’s cafeteria – located in a middle deck, it had round portholes, all of which were closed because it was a cold day in March. As we waited, the Director offered everyone a card from his own fascinating deck of oracular cards (with his artist wife, Sylvie Alli), and there was lively interest as each person contemplated his or her card.

I took a card from Antero with trepidation, and sure enough, damn if it wasn’t the “DEATH” card.

Not five minutes later, as I stood with the card of doom in hand, a small orange butterfly landed on my shoulder.

There was absolutely no explanation for how that butterfly could have gotten into that closed room. I had lots of witnesses – and after the miracle revealed itself, several of them helped to catch the butterfly and get it upstairs where it could be released.
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Pretty cool. In many esoteric traditions, butterflies represent transformation. I suspect, then, that this butterfly experience portended an important transformation in Lauren’s life.

Posted in butterflies, transformation | 17 Comments

Here I Am

Posted on March 23, 2010 by Trish and Rob

This story comes from Gypsy. We’ve posted a number of her synchronicities, which are always richly textured and detailed.  This one is startling.
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The MacGregors’ post on March 15 regarding
 “untimely” deaths finds me remembering even more than usual the very unusual and  especially untimely death of an old friend in Shreveport, Louisiana. I first met Graves Thomas through a dear friend many moons ago, back in the early 80s. My friend and Graves  were both local attorneys known as “those renegade/maverick lawyers” because they took cases that no other attorney would take – those  involving civil rights violations, reputed crime figures, drug smugglers, white collar criminals. You name it. If  a wrong had been done, an injustice imposed,  my friend and Graves were there.

In a court room they were  poetry in motion. In real life outside the court room, they were just as
 beautiful – both in their early 40’s, their charisma and charm were surpassed only  by their passions. And they were passionate about everything around them – the law, their clients, seeking justice no matter the personal or financial cost,  their friends and family, for good food and drink and good times and fast cars. Then there was their renegade/mavericks good looks – both long haired, gorgeous men, suntanned, dressed in pin striped suits of the day.  They both  participated in all the extreme sports. They were the golden  boys.

The memorial day weekend of 1987 was to be another weekend at Lake Bistineau, a weekend of fun and sun, boats and skiing. swimming and good food. Graves  had a new ski boat to take out, so off they went. Then, when the weather went from good  to not so good, they brought the boat in. During the process, as talk was made of the thunderstorm overhead while they were docking, Graves – being Graves, stood up, threw both arms into the air and shouted to the heavens, “HERE  I AM!”

At that very moment,  a lightning bolt struck him in the head, killing him instantly. To make this story even more interesting, at the time of his death on Lake Bistineau, Graves  was representing a Lake Bistineau man accused of recklessness in a boating accident that killed three people on that very lake that same month.
At the time of his death, he had also just been hired by the family of a man accused of child rape whose criminal  trial had not yet taken place. Ultimately, this accused man was convicted of the crime and went to jail where he stayed for 22 years. He was exonerated when the paralegal who had been working for Graves at the time of his death years later  persevered to have the man’s DNA  submitted and it was found not to match any DNA associated with the crime.

So there you have the many curious but not surprising facets of one man’s life and  legacy.

Posted in crimes, death, gypsy, lightning | 10 Comments

Nature’s Synchronicities

Posted on March 22, 2010 by Trish and Rob

 Nature, it seems, propagates its share of synchronicities. But this story is one of the strangest, for sure.

According to Buddhist legend, this oddly beautiful and rare flower – known as the Youtan Poluo or Udumbara flower – only blooms every 3,000 years. It was found in the home of a Chinese nun, under her washing machine!

The nun initially thought the little stems were worm eggs, but the following morning, she discovered that 18 tiny white flowers had sprouted from the stems. It’s believe that these mini blossoms are specimens of the Udumbara or Udambara flower. In Sanskrit, it means “auspicious flower from heaven.” Found under a nun’s washing machine!

Maybe the trickster is at work here.

Posted in Buddhism, flowers, nature | 11 Comments

Manifesting a Car

Posted on March 21, 2010 by Trish and Rob

 Manifestation  is something you hear a lot about these days. You know the mantra – back your desires with powerful emotion, visualize, believe that what you want is on its way to you. But for many of us, the desires manifestation often gets tackled in its opposite – lack! So when we received an email from Trevor Simpson about how he manifested a car… well, let him tell the story.
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 I woke up on Monday following the completion of the Olympics with the realization that my vehicle had not yet appeared and now the Olympics was over, perhaps it was time to resort to more traditional methods of buying a car. The idea of the car coming to me rather than me going to the car seemed to have been less than successful. I had decided that what I wanted was a used Suburu Outback. So what if they were hard to find and over-priced, I felt I wanted one and perhaps it was time to do something tangible to acquire it. How long could I continue to affirm, “Let my vehicle appear” and have nothing concrete manifest? That was all well and good while I was in Mexico and even right through the Olympics but now my confidence was beginning to wane. Perhaps I was in a delusionary state about this; my friend Lorne had already tried to show me how easy it could be to locate one through Craig’s List but at the time I was in no mood to listen, preferring to try my own strange and different method of finding my car.

Feeling a little sad about having to give up what I was hoping would be an amazing example of synchronicity and manifestation, I went to check my e-mail and to my astonishment there was a comment on the blog I had written back on February where I had described the process of trying to buy a car through meaningful coincidence. At that time I had been given a tentative offer of a Sebring Convertible but at the time it seemed too nebulous, uncertain and not really what I was looking for. The comment read “Buy the Sebring ! Buy the Sebring ! I have one and I love it ! I too, went from a 20 year old VW Van, I love my baby and still have it, to a used 2002 Sebring Convertible. Feel the love even more!” I sat back feeling a little bemused “Was this the sign I had been waiting for?”

It seemed like an astonishing coincidence to get this e-mail on this particular day. I decided to send the e-mail to my friend who owned the Sebring. The response I got back practically knocked me out of my chair. “I may have a “manifestation compromise” option for you to consider.  I leave for South Africa on March 22 and won’t return until May 11.  My car will sit in the garage for that whole time so you are more than welcome to “try it out” and use while I am away.” What an amazing and generous offer, I had absolutely nothing to lose. Who knows if I will buy the Sebring or not but this evidence of the universe responding to my intention could not be ignored. I decided to accept.

While out on my bike later that day, I found my usual route blocked by road works so I detoured to an alternative street. Then the thought crossed my mind that I should continue with my affirmation “Let my vehicle appear”. For some reason, in that same moment, I glanced to my right and there right beside me was – yes you guessed it – a Sebring Convertible. The universe is a wondrous place to play.

Posted in manifestation | 11 Comments

The Infinite and the Beyond

Posted on March 20, 2010 by Trish and Rob

Here’s a curious podcast on Coincidence and Synchronicity. Hosted by Christopher Orapello, The Infinite and Beyond is called an esoteric podcast for the introspective pagan mind. The part about synchronicity begins at about minute 11 and goes through minute 18 in the program.

I say it’s a curious one because it combines wicca, the Cabala, Jung and synchronicity, and evolution in a mind-twisting swirl of rapid-speak. See if you can follow it. It’s interesting to hear the Cabala linked to synchronicity, because Jung never mentioned it in any of his writing.

Posted in Carl Jung, podcast | 7 Comments

Premonitions of Disaster?

Posted on March 19, 2010 by Trish and Rob

Last week, we wrote a post called Planetary Empaths about people who apparently have the ability to detect changes in the earth, such as earthquakes, in advance of such events. Usually, the sensations are felt hours or days before such an event. In the past 24 hours from Thursday evening to Friday afternoon, we received four  e-mails from readers here, who have experienced through one means or another, foreboding sensations related to a potential disaster.

Jane Clifford of Wales told us that before the earthquake in Hiati, she stopped in the middle of the living room and said “All I can feel is a great upheaval of the earth, chaos and despair.” She added: “My whole body feels broken and I feel crushed under heavy stones, also anxious and gloomy.” Before the earthquake in Chile she  felt the same doom.

Thursday,  she wrote and said: “I had the broken all over feeling again last night. I also had a high pitched clear ringing  outside of my right ear. So I was most interested to know that others experience earthquake premonitions.”
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Here’s from Connie Cannon, received Friday afternoon.

“I’ve been unable to focus on anything today; am more or less walking the floor and crying, but don’t feel depressed….just angry at myself because I have no clue why I’m crying and agitated.  And, my service dog, Sunshine, who always perceives events no matter where on the planet they will be happening (I think she is an angel in canine disguise who has input from all dimensions, and I don’t say that in jest), is behaving the way she behaves when something big is on the horizon.

“I’m experiencing a sense of devastating sadness, but it doesn’t feel it’s relative to ME.  And I don’t know where this overwhelming sadness is originating.  As I said, I’m not depressed.  I feel the way I used to feel when one of my patients at hospice was end-terminal and approaching imminent transition.  It was sad for me, yet I had work to do and couldn’t give into the sadness. Then when my job was done and the patient was no longer suffering, I’d come home and  weep.  For both loss and joy.  That’s how I  feel.  No other explanation.  Sunshine is hugging my feet since yesterday morning.  She feels it, too, whatever it is.”
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Here’s from Nancy, writing Friday afternoon.

“I really hope my dream last night of the earth going “off axis” doesn’t come true!”

We asked for more details and she wrote: “Just fire and chaos.” She sensed in the dream that the fire was from broken gas lines.

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Here’s from Jenean (Gypsywoman), received Friday afternoon.

“…Sitting at my computer desk right by a double for the last hour or so – at 12:58 just now, a large shudder of the house/earth with all the double storm windows rattling and stuff on my desk bouncing – within a second of the first, another, smaller one happened, again with windows rattling, house “shuddering” – I looked outdoors but nothing seemed amiss with neighbors – anyway, I quickly googled the site:  “earthquake today did you feel it” and filled out a little questionnaire – just wondering if you all have had any other messages about something happening.”

Later, she wrote: “Police said no one else noticed anything – no one! but I PHYSICALLY FELT something! I mean, my phones jumped around on my desk and i thought the windows were going to break – “
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There it is. Hopefully, nothing serious will happen. But we decided to post this series of seemingly related comments, a possibly forewarning. Here’s Nancy’s post on it.
  

Posted in disasters, planetary empaths | 17 Comments

A vision that saved a life

Posted on March 19, 2010 by Trish and Rob

As we’ve mentioned previously, we see precognition as an aspect of synchronicity because a thought or dream is linked with an event in the outer world without any involvement of cause and effect. For example, numerous people reported dreams and premonitions about the devastating attack on the World Trade Center.We’ve cited several such stories in 7 Secrets of Synchronicity.

But it’s rare when someone can save a life with a dream. But here’s one such case from Connie Cannon of St. Augustine, Florida.
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 “When we lived in GA and I was progressing through the degrees of magical skills at The House Of Ravenwood, which was my Wiccan coven, my high priestess was named Lady Sintana.  One night I sat bolt upright wide awake in bed, and in the dresser mirror across from the end of our bed, an image began to play out.

“In this wide-awake image, I saw Ravenwood, which was an old two-story  Victorian home with lots of trees and shrubs in the front.  It had a sidewalk leading up to steps that went to the front porch.  In the mirror I saw a short, bulky man with shoulder-length hair wearing a red plaid shirt walking up the sidewalk towards the porch.  He was carrying a pistol that he held down beside his leg, and I “knew” he was planning to kill our High Priestess.  I glanced at the clock.  It was exactly 3:30 am.  Psychically, I knew it was going to occur the next night.  The vision ended.

“Early the next morning I phoned Lady Sintana and described to her every detail in the waking vision.  She called the police. They were no doubt dubious about dreams and premonitions, but just to be on the safe side, they put an officer on the property that night.

“Surely enough, at exactly 3:30 am, a short bulky man with shoulder-length hair wearing a red plaid shirt walked onto the sidewalk approaching the porch to the house.  The officer grabbed him,  The man was a religious fanatic.  He held a .38 in his hand, and he was intending to “kill the witch.”

After that, the Atlanta police occasionally used me on an on-call basis. So I pay attention to my dreams, even though most of the time they are not nearly as precise at that one. In Lady Sintana’s situation, I was in a position to help prevent the event.  In most instances, I just get the visions but can’t do anything, even if I understand the message.
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We suspect that Connie’s magical deed saving the life of the priestess moved her up a notch in the Wiccan degree system.

Posted in dreams, precognition, wiccan | 13 Comments

Synchronous malapropisms

Posted on March 18, 2010 by Trish and Rob


Here’s a short collection of examples of flagrant misuses of the term synchronicity. They range from hilarious to pathetic. I would say that it’s no coincidence if we found out these writers never read Carl Jung, or anything about Jung’s works, or maybe even never heard of the famed psychotherapist who coined the term they are misusing.
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“Synchronicity is a wonderful thing – well certainly if you’re an IT guy in charge of a system that has handheld devices, laptops and desktops reading and writing to your server.  In that kind of environment, software versions that aren’t synched up can mean one device isn’t patched to be protected against a particular virus, and you find a trojan’s found it’s way in via the weakest link.”
– from intisarabioto.com

It is a wonderful thing, but I’m sure these IT guys are finding any meaningful coincidences in their handheld devices, etc.  
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“Running with no interruption, cars moved by some force bigger than me to keep me moving. Synchronicity. Normally, I love it. Not so much while running….At mile three, I was hating synchronicity and all its perfection. And in my hatred, I was able to see through the false sense of orderliness it builds around us. And what I saw was chaos.”
–From a blog called Wandering Through the Words
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Runners, it seems, are competing with techies for strange uses of synchronicity.

“Another 50 feet puts us in front of the first drink stop. Naturally, we’re their first customers because the real runners have yet to make it up Snake Hill. At this point my dear friend is becoming rather exasperated with my slow pace, although I assure her I’m just getting into my rhythm. We’ve just reached a perfect walking synchronicity when shouts alert us to the first runner.”

Let’s see, that would be a perfect walking meaningful coincidence. Hmm. Okay.
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I think the next one is my favorite.

“Carr’s arrival — and his Houston Texans draft-bust days — serves as a painful reminder about what quarterbacks (and power-running, vertical-passing offenses) need to succeed. That boils down to having a wall of 300-pound behemoths who can block with wonderful knee-brace synchronicity.”
–from the San Jose Mercury News 3/12/2010

Yikes, some sports writes are masters of malapropisms. Put that knee-brace synchronicity into your vertical offense and see how far that gets you down the field!

Finally…click to read it, and see if you can figure it out. If you do, tell us.

Posted in misuse of term, word synchros | 10 Comments