The Rose
Synchronicity is a term coined by Carl Jung to “describe circumstances that appear meaningfully related yet lack a causal connection” (Kerr, 2013; Jung, 1963). Science tends to pooh-pooh this idea because it cannot prove the cause, and relegates it to the realm of philosophical and/or religious thought. However, clinicians are often struck with the synchronistic events that begin to occur in the lives of clients when they have less mental preoccupation and more attunement and awareness of body states.
Jung apparently started using the I Ching, an ancient Chinese coin-tossing divination system with roots in Taoism and Confucianism (Blofeld, 1968) that dates back to 1000 B.C. Jung claimed that the I Ching accurately reflected his own experience. In my first year of graduate school, I was introduced to the I Ching. I promptly threw the coins for two years, kept careful notes on the hexagrams the coins created, and applied statistics: it in not by chance…so what is this!
Jung proceeded to seek out others who might have studied this phenomenon, and one of them was the philosopher Schopenhauer:
“All the events in a [person’s] life would accordingly stand in two fundamentally different kinds of connection: firstly, in the objective, causal connection of the natural process; secondly, in a subjective connection which exists only in relation to the individual who experiences it, and which is thus as subjective as his own dreams” (Schopenhauer, 1851, emphasis mine).
My father was a philosopher and scholar of history and religions, and I have a strong longing to talk to him about Schopenhauer. In the objective/explicit world Dad is not on earth anymore, but can I speak with him from the implicit world?
One cannot help reflect on how Schopenhauer beautifully described the explicit v. implicit worlds of knowing that are associated with left and right brain processing. To add our (and my) current understanding, the explicit world is our outer world consisting of language, concepts, and structure with the implicit world consisting of patterns based more in feeling. These patterns have been shaped by our families, tribes, cultures, and lineage for ways to navigate the world (and often not subjected to reflection and reason). We can also creatively invent ideas and reasons to anchor us as in magical thinking (quite natural in young children) and delusional thinking (a mental health concern) when there is not enough given to sustain our growth and development.
Jung also affiliated with the theoretical physicist Wolfgang Pauli who was a pioneer in quantum physics and the quantum structure of Nature. Adding physics to the concept of synchronicity resulted in a joint publication (Jung & Pauli, 1952, The Interpretation of Nature and the Psyche) where Jung introduced synchronicity as a noncausal principle (Jung & Pauli, 1952).
In the end, I believe it is Jung that will stand as the discoverer of the portal to our spiritual connections. If synchronicity happens to us, we can’t help but notice that we have resonance in that moment. The explicit world disappears, leaving us in communion with a greater Life...a communion that feels like we are known, as hard as that is to believe from our explicit world standpoint.
I personally like that synchronicity is always in the present moment, nicely sidestepping ongoing time and reassuring us that we are not alone.
On my walk yesterday, I saw the above rose laying in the parking strip. I could have passed it, but felt the rose was too beautiful to be left by the side of the road so carried it home. As soon as I picked it up, I felt a resonance and gave thanks to the larger world for the lovely gift. Today as I write, I still feel the resonance from this experience, which became the food that prompted this Note.
I could have thought of the rose as simply a discarded ‘object’ that someone threw away and walked on. Or, I could feel the rose needed me as much as I needed the rose. And as Robert Frost might say, the decision to respond to the latter made all the difference.
We, and all of our Children need this.
|