There’s something truly fascinating about synchronicity.
On my coffee table is an exquisite grey stone. It’s rather bigger than the size of a palm. It’s been polished so that it feels like silk to touch, and through the middle are three bands of some translucent substance so that light shines through these bands. It’s by a famous New Zealand sculptor and is called the Light-stone. People can’t resist picking it up, and holding it.
It was a gift from a friend who seemed to have every material need met- her husband featured on the country’s rich list, and when it came to Christmas I never had any idea what to give her. I managed mostly, but this particular year I was stumped. Then one afternoon I was browsing through a book store and I came on a book by Annie Dillard, who I’d never heard of until then. The title was so intriguing that I explored the book, and decided to buy two copies, one for me and one for my friend.
When we met and swapped presents, I unwrapped her precious stone, and she unwrapped my book which was called ‘Teaching a Stone to Talk’.
There was something so perfect and complete about this moment. It was a glorious unexplainable coming together of thoughts and feelings and objects… these sorts of moments given an extra dimension of mystery and magic to the material world. What other glorious happenings can take place in a world where the unexpected and inexplicable solves problems with such leaps of imagination?
When a patient was telling Carl Jung about a dream with a scarab beetle in it, there was a bang against the window, and a green-blue scarab looking beetle hit the glass. Jung called this sort of incident ‘synchronicity’. If he hadn’t given it that label, would we recognise it as that, or would we be reduced to the lesser word, coincidence?
So at a lunch party yesterday we were talking about Wikipedia… I mentioned I’d tried to get an entry corrected which wrongly condemned a doctor based on the controversial findings of a very biased newspaper report. My attempt to correct the entry failed – I was told Wikipedia would only accept my facts if I was a relative or legally appointed representative.
But today, a sceptical guest who had queried what I had said, sent an e-mail… which told me that at the very time we had been talking about it, the doctor had been exonerated by the Court of Appeals in the UK.
The unexpectedness of this news and the timing, was so exquisite that I felt quite awed. And these inexplicable events happen more and more often, not just to me, but to everyone.
Back in the eighties, Peter Russell wrote a book called ‘The Awakening Earth’, and he had this to say about synchronicity: “ What we regard as curious chains of coincidence may likewise be the manifestation at the level of the individual of a higher organising principle at the collective level – the as yet rudimentary social super-organism.
“As humanity becomes more integrated, functioning more and more as a healthy high energy system, we might expect to see a steady increase in the number of supportive coincidences. A growing experience of synchronicity throughout the population could, therefore, be the first major indication of the emergence of a global level of organisation”…
Which means to me, that as more and more of us become aware and integrated – another of Jung’s terms, meaning ‘whole’ – our more open hearts, and lack of fear and aggression will create a world where the highest good of everyone starts to emerge.
Whenever another synchronicity makes itself known, I feel a sense of awe as well as joy… it seems to mean that life is flowing, and all is well. This morning I found I had a client coming for an appointment later today, when it wasn’t going to work for me. I rang to ask if she could postpone it, and she said she’d already left a message on my answer-phone to say she couldn’t come this afternoon!
One of the gifts of synchronicity is the timing. It always seems to work for all the people involved. Peter Russell also called synchronicities benevolent co-incidences. The word benevolent seems to sum them up perfectly, they always work for the good of every-one. No-one is disadvantaged, everyone is better off for a synchronistic event.
And this is the magic and the miracle of it. Some days I say to myself, I would like a really exciting synchronicity today… just as a little reminder of how wonderful life can be… and sure enough, the magic spills into the day in a totally unexpected way.
So may you and me both, enjoy a continuing stream of that magic and benevolence in our lives, knowing that it’s a gift that makes the world go round more happily!
Food for Threadbare Gourmet
First – a correction from an apologetic threadbare gourmet. I left out an important ingredient in the salad Nicoise in my last blog. I should have added some hard-boiled eggs to the list… and I should also have said that I rarely use anchovies in it, as I find the pickled walnuts and olives give it enough tang.
Today’s recipe is the result of a Christmas present. A friend gave me a stick beater and a recipe to go with it. The easiest fresh mayonnaise I’ve ever made. In the beaker that comes with the beater, break one whole egg – both yolk and white – plus salt, pepper, a good slurp of white wine vinegar or lemon juice and a good teasp of mixed mustard. Pour in some grape oil or other gentle tasting oil but not olive oil, to just under half the height of the beaker, and then press the button! Whizz, whizz, and mayonnaise is ready!
It’s important not to use olive oil in this mixture, as the process spoils the taste of the olive oil – alright to use olive oil in the old-fashioned way with a wooden spoon, but modern whizzing spoils the taste. When my friend demonstrated this method to me she used an aromatic sherry balsamic vinegar, but I would use something less distinctive. The more oil you put in the beaker, the thicker the mayonnaise, so if you want a thinner one, use less oil.
Food for Thought
A loving person lives in a loving world.
A hostile person lives in a hostile world.
Everyone you meet is your mirror.
Ken Keyes, 1921 – 1995 Inspirational writer on personal growth
valeriedavies 