Synchronicity

What evidence can you find for synchronicity?

Evidence is best evidenced through example. In early December this past year, a friend with whom I had often danced in Afro-Haitian classes at CCSF sent me an invitation to a party via email. As busy as I was during this period, struggling to get my application into ACCHS, writing to folks to ask for recommendations, looking for work, and attempting to send Holiday Greeting cards in a timely fashion; I failed to respond to her invitation. Tuesday afternoons I am still found at CCSF where I have a Tango class. After class my usual route off campus is through the library, where one can enter the rear set of doors at a lower ground level, take the elevator to the fourth floor, exit through the front set of doors at a higher ground level, and thereby avoid climbing the hill in which the library building itself is nestled. Last Tuesday after class this friend was heavy on my mind and I was reminding myself that I really needed to contact her, thank her for the invite, and just learn how things were going with her. Riding up the elevator, I suddenly decided to get off on the third floor because the third floor restroom usually has paper towels whereas the fourth floor restroom does not. I found the third floor restroom closed for repairs and as I turned toward the stairway to climb the flight, there was the friend I was needing to contact.

In this example, what had prompted my change in route (a preferred restroom) became a tertiary relation (a “trick” of the Universe?) connecting the objective outer Event (meeting my friend) and my inner psychological State (needing to meet her). The Event and my State did not cause one the other, or vice versa, but they certainly were a-causally related through meaning.

My best example (one of the favorite stories of my life), however, goes back to a previous century when I was but a lad in high school. My Grandmother took my cousin and myself on a summer trip to Gloucester, Massachusetts near where she’d been born and raised (Salem). There were distant cousins still living there and we stayed with them in a huge old house which had once been part of the underground railroad in Civil War days. Now, my Grandmother, who had never been to this house either, was Reverend Harriet Rae Smiley of the Spiritualist Helpers Church. Before I knew better, I used to tell people that she “dressed up like a gypsy and rented herself out for parties.” If nothing else she had what some called an uncanny ability to know things that most would think could not possibly be known nor, at least, known by her. She told my disbelieving mother once that she would be pregnant again, and sure enough… My Grandmother “read cards” and a very large number of people came to her regularly for advice and counsel. I knew her as a generous and loving soul who loved me unconditionally and taught me to play poker.

Staying in the huge old house near Gloucester one night, my Grandmother informed us all that a woman who used to live there had died very young. She didn’t know her name, but it did begin with the letter “S.” She also gave the year of her death as 1864. That night I remember, too, as the night my distant relatives taught me how to do tequila shots with salt and lemon. We all had a good time. The next day our hosts invited all the younger of us for a jeep ride up into nearby woods where there was a deserted cemetery long overgrown with wildness and trees which had cracked and tipped the tombstones. The filtering leaves dappled sunlight around us, making the cemetery really beautiful and very peaceful. Wandering among the ancient monuments, I happened across the stone of “Sarah (undecipherable),” who’d been born in 1846 and died in 1864! I truly believe there was no way my Grandmother could have discovered this information in this way beforehand.

In this example, though, there was a-causal relational meaning given to the connection between my Grandmother’s pre-existing knowledge of an Event (age, gender, initial letter of a deceased) and the confirmation of the Event, by me, which induced my inner psychological State (love, awe, respect, belief, etc.). In this way, I learned there is no such thing as coincidence.

Based on what you know, how would you explain connectivity?

Connectivity is there from the beginning. We are taught to be unconnected, from the Earth and from each other, in order to sell us more refrigerators. The question would better be: How do we relearn our truer nature of connection? How do we explain to those we hope will be able to follow us what the hell happened?