Precognition often comes through signs and symbols—a particular song we hear, a book that falls at our feet, an animal that crosses our path, a sequence of numbers or a name that crops up repeatedly, an event or incident that hits us viscerally, and yes, even through billboards. Synchronicity is often a component.
We live in a collective sea of these signs and symbols. Nature, the universe, Source, God, whatever you want to call it, constantly chatters to us. But we’re so mired in the business of physical life that we don’t always hear that voice. Or we hear it and ignore it. Or we hear it and think, Yeah, sure, I’m kinda losing it here.
You’re in your car. Maybe you’re on a road trip. Or picking up your son or daughter from school. Or maybe you’re about to back out of your garage to head off to the grocery store, the park, a friend’s house. Your car dies. You turn the key and nothing happens. On one level, it’s an annoying and inconvenient event from our everyday world. But on another level, the abrupt and unexpected nature of the event could serve as a sign or symbol of something that’s about to happen.
When our daughter was in elementary school, Rob would take her to school and I would pick her up. On one particular day, I was in the pickup line – longer than the one in the photo – and my car suddenly went dead. There I was, the car refusing to start, cars behind me honking because hey, why wasn’t that car moving forward?
Rob drove over and jumped the battery and followed Megan and me home. Once in the driveway, the battery died again. Clearly, a new battery was in order. But was there something more, an underlying message?
When we’re in the midst of such events in our daily lives, it’s easy to overlook them as possibly symbolic. But sometimes the meaning pops right out at you. I was about to call AAA when I noticed a message on our answering machine from a writer friend. Diane Cleaver, the woman who had been our literary agent for 15 years, who had jump started our careers, had died suddenly of a heart attack.
Standstill. The battery dies. The car has to be jumped started.
If there are no accidents, as Robert Hopke theorizes in his book by the same name, then the death of the car coinciding with our hearing about Diane’s death wasn’t random. Just how are all of us, the dead and the living, connected, anyway? How are we connected to the larger world beyond us?
We think of it as synchronicity. It exists in the space between what we see and what we sense, that border between what quantum physicist David Bohm called the implicate (enfolded) order—the underlying reality—and the explicate (unfolded) order—the physical world and everyday reality. The inner, the outer. The non-local and the local mind.
Ever since, I’ve paid close attention to events like this. Especially those involving car batteries.
UPDATE: September 2018
On the morning of 9/1, I drove Megan over to an apartment building where she had to walk a dog. We were going to meet Rob in Cassadaga, then head out to look at some homes in possible areas for our move. Nika, Megan’s dog, and I waited in the car outside the building while she went in to get the dog.
15 minutes later, Megan hops into the car. I turn the key in the ignition. Oops. No go. Megan goes inside the building to see if she can get jumper cables, Rob drives over, we jump the battery and make it back to her house. The battery dies again. We head off for our day and when we get back that evening call AAA. The battery was less than 3 years old, so they install a new one.
Not sure what this incident was about on a synchro level. But it’s also a synchro that it happened within 72 hours of my writing this post about the dead battery more than 20 years ago. That capitalized S in the post title is what I added with my update.
