Synchronicity stories

[DefectiveCreative]

Here's one I got from Robert Anton Wilson's book "Cosmic Trigger":

"In the early '60's in Tangier, [William S.] Burroughs knew a certain Captain Clark who ran a ferry from Tangier to Spain. One day, Clark said to Burroughs that he'd been running the ferry 23 years without an accident. That very day, the ferry sank, killing Clark and everyone on board.

In the evening, Burroughs was thinking about this when he turned on the radio. The first newscast told about the crash of an Eastern Airlines plane on the New York-Miami route. The pilot was another Captain Clark and the flight was listed as Flight 23."

Check out this link. http://www.wnyc.org/shows/radiolab/episodes/2009/09/11

Those were great, thanks for posting them.

 

[crystaluni]

A startling synchronicity for me.... (It's a long story, so if you read it, thanks for reading.)

I stumbled into the bathroom, still groggy from my afternoon nap, when a voice in my imagination told me, "You are getting married...." Incredulously, I asked, "And how am I going to start a family when I don't have a full-time job or a place of my own? Plus, I don't even have a boyfriend!" The voice answered: "Red Grouse." And then a page number flashed in my mind. So I asked, "Which book?" And the voice told me to find the second book from the left of the topmost shelf on my sister's bookcase.

Puzzled by what "Red Grouse" had to do with the possibility of my being married, I searched for the book on my sister's shelf and opened it to the page number that flashed in my imagination.

On that exact page number, there was an article on the territorial and mating habits of a bird called Red Grouse. According to the article, a breeding pair of Red Grouse is extremely territorial and will fight off other breeding pairs (even to the death) to ensure that there will be enough food to feed their family within a given territory.

A young Red Grouse that has paired off, would expect to be expelled by its parents, once the breeding season comes around. But, parent Red Grouse may extend hospitality to the young breeding pair, until they are big enough to find their own territory and defend it from other birds.

So if the universe is telling me something through this startling synchronicity, it would only make sense that it was simply answering my question about the seeming improbability of my being married because I still don't have my own place. Perhaps, I'm being told that I can live with my parents first until I own my own place?

At any rate, I shared this surprising synchronicity with my mother, and she agreed with the above interpretation. She told me that if I were to choose to get married soon, she'd definitely want me and my future husband to still live with her.

Wow!

But I'm still a bit shaken by the synchronicity, and I'm sure anybody would feel the same way, if it happened to them.

 

[DefectiveCreative]

Here's a fairly lengthy one that Susan Jeffers relates in her book "Feel the Fear...and Do It Anyway!"

"My original "fear class" came about as a result of my intuition. At the time, I had a vague notion that I wanted to teach a course on fear. I put it off indefinitely, largely because I was too busy with other things to write up the course description and outline and then find a school that would want me to teach such a course. It seemed like a lot of work.

One day, as I sat at my desk working, a strong message came to my mind. It said, "Go to the New School." I couldn't figure out why this message came into my head. I never attended the New School for Social Research. I knew no-one there. In fact, I didn't even know where it was. Out of curiosity, I decided to go. I told my secretary I was going to the New School and she asked why. I said "i don't know!" She looked at me strangely as I walked out the door.

I got into a taxi that delivered me right to the door of the New School. When I walked into the lobby, I asked myself "What should I do now?" I saw a directory and looked at the various departments listed. My eye caught on Human Relations. "That's where I'm supposed to go." My moind reasoned that I was probably "sent" here to sign up for a great workshop they were offering. The idea of teaching at the New School didn't occur to me.

I found the door marked Human Relations Department and walked inside. No-one sat at the reception desk. I looked through the door on my right and saw a woman sitting at her desk. She called out "Can I help you?" Intuitively, without "thinking" about it, I surprised myself by saying "I'm here to teach a course about overcoming fear." Without my realising it, I was talking to the head of the department, a wonderful woman named Ruth Van Doren. She looked at me with amazement and finally blurted out "I can't believe that! I've been searching high and low for someone to teach a course about fear, and haven't been able to find anyone. And today is my deadline - all catalog descriptions must be in today."

She inquired about my credentials and was pleased with them. She then told me she had to run to catch a bus, and asked me to quickly write up a course description. I did. She handed it to her secretary and ran out the door, thanking me profusely.

After she left, I stood in a state of shock. I had no conscious intention of proposing a course that day. And what I had imagined would be an arduous task, taking months, took exactly twelve minutes! Ruth Van Doren wanted something, I wanted something, and the Universe put us together. How this works, I don't know. I simply know it works. The amazing thing is that had I consciously thought it through, I would never have approached the New School. I would have gone to Hunter College, where I went to undergraduate school, or to Columbia University, where I had obtained my advanced degrees. I knew a lot of people in both places. The New School would not have entered my rational mind."

 

[DefectiveCreative]

Bumpin' an old thread.

Had a couple of moments this week that might be considered synchronous.

With the first, I was watching an old Angry Video Game Nerd video and in it he decided to call up a competition phone line from an old game to see what what would happen after the 15-20 years or so since the game had been released. As it turned out, the phone-line now linked to a sex chat line. Later in the week, I caught the tail-end of a news story about how a charity recently sent out a leaflet with a phone-number on the bottom that was supposed to link to their donation/information line, but instead linked to...a sex chat line.

The second had to do with the "handedness" survey that was posted on here just yesterday. A couple of hours after I'd filled in the survey and posted in the thread I picked up the copy of Iain McGilchrist's "The Master and his Emissary" that I've just started reading, and almost the first thing I read was McGilchrist talking about the relation between brain lateralisation and "handedness".

 

[crystaluni]

My synchronicity is a pretty entertaining one. I was so bored early last week that I decided to watch the movie, "Singing in the Rain" for the second time. Then I got on the internet and saw an article that a remix of "Singing in the Rain" was made popular by a current TV series. The next day, I couldn't sleep so I flicked on the TV and watched cable and the French movie showing revolved around three generations of men falling in love with the "Singing in the Rain" that it changed their lives forever.

Could the universe be telling me something? If so, then what?

 

[MsEnLite]

I just bookmarked that site--- thank you
I just don't know where to begin
You could say syncronicity is the story of my life
It really freaked me out to begin with. I was just messing around, didn't take it seriously, shrugged it all off like it was oh just de ja vu or a mere coincidences.....just Randomness. IDK? I think that I went through a maturity thing, and finally it climaxed in one big circumstantial situation that changed my life forever. I mean I've always believed, but it wasn't until this situation that I really started to take it seriously. I had a precognitive dream, wel it was another one, of many. But this time it was so strong that there was no dought as to what was happening.
I cant explain it all in full detail. Not now, maybe I'll right a book later.

Let's just say that I was brought up in the Christian faith. But it wasn't until years later that I find out my great grandmother's sisters could make stoves move... Yeh well thanks for finally telling me, that explains a lot.
Anyways one such story that I do want to tell. Which goes along with the above web site regarding ... Um randomness. Is a story about the I Ching. I actually forgot all about this story until it was told back to me this year during thanksgiving.
It starts with three coins. I had just picked up a cool new book out of the new age section at Hastings called the I Ching. An ancient Chinese practice of divination. It is based upon sixty somethin hexagrams in a wheel. Each of which represents a random throwing of three coins, the yin or yang principal they posses. And the order and positioning in which they lay. It's kind a hard to fully explain it.
He way I've alway done divination is by telling my seeker to first ask a question, but silently and in their heads. Then I ask them to draw their own cards or in this case throw the coins.
In this story my seeker at that time had lost a lover, well he actually went missing. And yeh maybe I would have known that and maybe icould have easily guessed her question, I mean knowing myself I probably suggested asking the I Ching.
But really all I did was read what the book said under the hexagrams that came up after she threw the coins.
The coins said. (I mean the book said) he was dead in the mountains....
Spring came and the snow melted, no word from him for months,
Guess where they found him....
Do you dought me?

 

[Stu]

My 12 yr old (an academic wiz with advanced math skills) came home and reported that during a coin flipping experiment she flipped 13 heads and 13 tails

I pointed out that it was just like her to flip exactly 50% heads and 50%tails, she is a very "either it is or it is not" person

 

[Stu]

it a miracle!

Yesterday morning I parked on the curb in the "loading only' spot outside of the bagel bookstore before eight am as usual to pick up my breakfast. When I came out a parking patrol person in a jeep had given every car on the block a ticket except for mine. It was too early for metered parking to be in effect and the meters were uncovered indicating that it was legal to park on the street.

The "loading only 15 min" spot is usually open as well as some metered spots and I often wonder if I technically am not in violation of parking regulations as I am not loading any more then a bagel and a coffee.

I checked the meters again this morning to verify times of operation. There is even a sign indicating that overnight parking is allowed.

According to my meager understanding of Synchronicity, it is not any coincidental or odd happening in the outer world that qualifies, rather those that hold meaning for the individual.

Not getting a ticket was nice (kinda like being nearly missed by a bird dropping)

Still there was something about it that felt like grace.

 

[DefectiveCreative]

A rather silly one, but here goes:

A while ago I was doing some reading up on wikipedia about British folklore and the like. After clicking through a couple of links in the text (as you do) I ended up on the page for the nursery rhyme Old King Cole.

At the bottom of the page was a list of some of its modern uses, amongst which was a note that at one point the commentary team for the pro-wrestling promotion WWE was made up of 'Good Ol'' Jim Ross, Jerry 'The King' Lawler, and Michael Cole - Ol'(d). King. Cole.

Interesting enough in its own right, but more interesting still for me because I happened to be doing that reading up during an episode of WWE's TV program 'Monday Night: Raw'. Additionally, the entry seems to have been removed since the last time I saw it; which means either that I imagined the whole thing, or that I happened to stumble across it during the short time it was up whilst also watching the program it was about. @_@

 

[AhSver]

So.. one night my buddy got this acid from one dude from some concert......... :-D

Just kidding. No synchronicity then. Ha, kidding again.

Anyways, I think it's like the highest state in Taoism, becoming one with everything, including time itself, that's why so many great philosophers from China back then died from alchemy. I think that it's unique and very different from Nirvana which presupposes moksha and means more of an elevation from everything, beyond time, life and death. Not the state of observation. So that's what synchronicity is like but I hear much more often such states being induced by drugs vs. meditations and leading cloistered monastic lifestyle. Is such state possible to achieve in general, for real? Highly doubt that we ever will be but once you start listening to the waves of oceans you might make a one step closer...

 

[Nixie]

It just struck me that I have 3 posts in this thread. Am I magnet for synchronicity or something?

OMG I was just thinking that! [MENTION=933]Seraphim[/MENTION]; Weird huh.

 

[Lark]

This is one of those things which I really want to believe in and Jung was quite persuasive about but which in reality is likely to be cognitive confirmation bias.

 

[not sure]

This is one of those things which I really want to believe in and Jung was quite persuasive about but which in reality is likely to be cognitive confirmation bias.

True. However, this doesn't stop us from believing anything we find convenient. I generally do not believe in synchronicity but at the moment the idea makes me happy so I'll play along as long as it works. I allow myself the freedom to believe in contradictory ideas. My perception of the world is entirely mine to do with as I like.

It isn't even unusual. An obvious example is how we tell ourselves that other people love us even when the evidence is otherwise. We know the truth under it all but sometimes the illusion is what we need.

 

[Stu]

This is one of those things which I really want to believe in and Jung was quite persuasive about but which in reality is likely to be cognitive confirmation bias.

Confirmation bias
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Confirmation bias (also called confirmatory bias or myside bias) is a tendency for people to favor information that confirms their preconceptions or hypotheses regardless of whether the information is true.[Note 1][1] As a result, people gather evidence and recall information from memory selectively, and interpret it in a biased way. The biases appear in particular for emotionally significant issues and for established beliefs. For example, in reading about gun control, people usually prefer sources that affirm their existing attitudes. They also tend to interpret ambiguous evidence as supporting their existing position. Biased search, interpretation and/or recall have been invoked to explain attitude polarization (when a disagreement becomes more extreme even though the different parties are exposed to the same evidence), belief perseverance (when beliefs persist after the evidence for them is shown to be false), the irrational primacy effect (a stronger weighting for data encountered early in an arbitrary series) and illusory correlation (in which people falsely perceive an association between two events or situations).

A series of experiments in the 1960s suggested that people are biased towards confirming their existing beliefs. Later work explained these results in terms of a tendency to test ideas in a one-sided way, focusing on one possibility and ignoring alternatives. In combination with other effects, this strategy can bias the conclusions that are reached. Explanations for the observed biases include wishful thinking and the limited human capacity to process information. Another proposal is that people show confirmation bias because they are pragmatically assessing the costs of being wrong, rather than investigating in a neutral, scientific way.

Confirmation biases contribute to overconfidence in personal beliefs and can maintain or strengthen beliefs in the face of contrary evidence. Hence they can lead to disastrous decisions, especially in organizational, military, political and social contexts.

 

[SamE]

Synchronicity is very real, think of them like mirrors and charges of intentions. What we think, feel and act manifests, what we think, feel and act negatively is brought into our awareness more and more, what we think, feel and act positively is brought into our awareness more and more. It is our self perception that creates the victim mentality and creator mentality we have and as a wise woman said none of us are victims, we are simply living in a story of our choosing and have the power to move when we are ready.

 

[Relm]

In my opinion, it isn't so much a question to whom synchronicity happens, as a question of who pays attention when it does... It is my feeling as conscious beings, that we tend to draw to us/notice experiences that confirm our worldview and the life we are currently wishing to experience. I've seen countless instances of things/events lining up eerily or two people seeming to read each other's minds, that the people in question immediately dismiss as weird coincidences.

I can say this, though, the times I have focused more on these synchronicities (say, kept a journal of them) are the times when they seem to have happened with greater magnitude and frequency...

 

[Stu]

...............the times I have focused more on these synchronicities (say, kept a journal of them) are the times when they seem to have happened with greater magnitude and frequency........

where is the frickin monkey that touches her nose while winking and pointing [MENTION=4347]Relm[/MENTION]?

 

[lenina]

i believe this may count as synchronicity.

a few years back i had a dream where i was chainsawed in half by my closest friend. (i didnt feel any pain, during the chain sawing i was just thinking this person is sooo careless) the next day i called my friend and told him about my dream and he told me last night he was watching a movie where people were being chainsawed in half.

 

[GracieRuth]

If anyone told me this story, I wouldn't believe it. But yes this actually happened.

It was during a time of my life where I was studying Taoism. I was reading the Tao te Ching, Chuang Tzu's inner chapters, the Tao of Pooh, etc. I was doing Tai Chi and Chi Gong on a daily basis, and I would go to an Acupuncturist and an Herbal apothecary. So I was touching on two wings of Taoism: Philosophical and Practical. I decided that my exploration wouldn't be thorough unless I looked into religious Toaism.

I found the address for a Taoist Temple in El Monte. I must have driven up and down Lower Azusa Road seven times, and I just couldn't find it. I pulled my car to the side of the road to think. Across the street was a building labeled "Ming Saint Tao" which I took to mean some catholic kind of deal. The door opened and a nicely dressed young man stepped out onto the steps. I walked across the street and asked him, "I'm looking for a Taoist temple, and I know its somewhere on this street but I can't find it. Do you by any chance know where it is?" He looked at me kind of shocked, and said, "What?" So I repeated it more slowiy. And his eyes got really big and he flashed this incredible smile and said, "Well you looked for it and you've found it. You are here."

From that moment, he and I had this INSTANT REPORTE, like we had known each other all our lives. Our friendship was so deep that others in the temple would remark about it.