STEP EIGHT: SIGNS An object, quality, or event whose presence or occurrence indicates the probable presence or occurrence of something else. DREAMS SYNCHRONICITY MESSAGES Synchronicity is an ever present reality for those who have eyes to see. -Jung
Synchronicity was a term that was introduced by the legendary psychologist, Carl Jung. He defined it as an a causal and uncaused meaningful coincidence. So it is not just a random sort of event that has no meaning, that is just a curiosity. It has to convey real meaning. It has to contain meaningfulness to the person who experiences it. And you can t come up with any particular cause for it. So it is uncaused and it is extremely meaningful. That is what he meant by a synchronistic What s going on when we experience the synchronicity? Something unknown is doing we don t know what. I think we have to be open to the mystery of these things. And be open to the messages that the universe wants to declare to us in the form of these synchronicities. I think we ought to be grateful for synchronicities. Jung said once that every time one of these things happens we ought to get down on our knees in gratitude for what the universe has decided to show us. I feel much the same way. Alison Pothier: And so I was in a place where I thought, well I need to know whether or not things are as they seem in black and white or whether things have meaning and purpose and significance and that if you paid attention to them they could help you out, guide you and actually create a more magical existence and life. I don t believe synchronicities are completely random. If they were random then they would not convey that deep sense of meaning that is part of their, that is one of their hallmarks. So I think that these things are although statistically unlikely, when they occur they almost clobber us with this deep meaning. I can t say that that s a random event; it just simply doesn t feel like it. Alison Pothier: So the concept of magic glasses was my decision to take the same day and look at it through a different set of eyes. So I started to write every day down and the one page of a journal I would write everything as it seemed in black and white, no colour. This is what it was. And on another page, right across from it I would write the number sequence on the radio when I woke up. The song that stuck in my head when certain things were going on. The person I bumped into randomly during that day that shifted something that was happening. And the dreams that I was having. The words in
somebody s sentence that stuck in the air at just a certain point. The signs on a billboard that I saw relative to the ones I didn t see. So I wrote the whole day down as if it had a twist and it was speaking to me. I don t think dreams are always synchronicities. I think they can be, but they so often warn us about things that are predictable that it is hard to say that they are uncaused and unrelated to present circumstances.. They warn us of challenges which could be lethal if we don t pay attention to them. They are not always conscious and in fact the unconscious side of premonitions I find more fascinating than the conscious side. What is a sign or synchronicity? Peter Fraser: The person materializes who has got the information you need, or the book turns up, in fact look through libraries and books fall on your head. Oh look..what s this How on earth this can happen but people will tell you lots about this. Have you ever found just the right book at just the right time in your life? Brett Moran: To make myself look busy, I had to walk around the library pretending I was looking for a book, but what I was really waiting for was the other guy to give me the puff. And while I was there, this book seemed to just fall-out from the shelf. It was as though it fell out in front of me. And I just seemed to pick this book up and just for that one split second, and it sounds completely mad and very woo woo, but for that one split second it felt like I wasn t on that prison sentence, it felt like the world had just stopped spinning, it felt like everything just disappeared. It sounds mad and when I picked the book up, I felt I was so connected with it, and it was a book on. It was called Moment by Moment- The Practice of Art and Meditation. Now I have always been told that a book chooses you, you find a book at the right time. But back then I hardly ever read any books and it felt like this book just jumped out, it literally felt like it jumped out at me and it was lying in front of me to pick up. And when I picked that book up, everything stopped, you know my past just
disappeared, the world stopped spinning, I wasn t in prison. Even the noise, it just went silent for that one moment. I walked back to my cell with this book underneath my jumper so no other inmates or cellmates could see me And on that first night, I remember reading two or three paragraphs and this is coming from someone who hated books, loathed reading never had nothing I think I was embarrassed. I was embarrassed about looking at this book. I don t know why, it sounds mad now because that book saved my life. But I remember going underneath the sheet in my book in my bunk and I remember putting my hands together and just consciously saying a prayer. And I sort of made a vow to myself and I just asked if that book was in any way, you know insightful or truthful or if there was anything out there such as Buddha or God or anything out there then I would make you know like a conscious promise to myself to change, to really try and put something different into the world. To really become someone different. I ve said I hated the lifestyle I was living, I hated the person I d become and I wanted something different and I d really prove myself. Ian Macleod: Yes that was a random event being off school and picking up this book which took me in a totally different direction and something really innocuous like a map where you could go and find all this exploration. But the book in itself didn t tell me to do anything or didn t influence me really in any kind of complicated way. It just sort of said there is this other world out there and it is really close and really accessible. But I didn t think of it in those terms at the time. I just thought oh yeah look at that. Or great I can explore a bit. And that s what got me into exploring in general, exploring mountains. And that s what opened me up to the world of nature. Once you begin to become aware of signs and synchronicities, it feels as though the whole universe is communicating with you.
I had a lesson in what synchronicities were like several years ago. Someone gave me a book that had to do with the crafting of a sea going canoe by a young man who lived off the coast of British Columbia in North America. And I was not particularly interested in this book. I left it on the shelf literally for many, many years. Then I had a speaking engagement up in this area many years later and I thought, well it might be good to read this book because it is about the area I am going to. So I read this book as I was journeying on several airline flights up to this remote conference centre and when I reached there, the Director of the Conference Centre took my wife and me for a little walk on the beach and I noticed a peculiar object leaning against a log on the sea shore. And I said, what in the world is that? And he said, that is the sea going canoe that this young man had built. I was speechless. I mean the statistical likelihood that this event that I had resisted reading about for many years would occur at that particular day at that particular moment in that particular location simply left me breathless. How do I know if the sign has meaning for me? Jack Canfield: So I think we need to tune in to our own inner guidance, our own sense of what gives us joy, you know, Joseph Kindle said follow your bliss that will naturally do that which is in harmony with the universe, which is in harmony with the patterns happening around us. Now obviously one can study those patterns that people have done and whether they studied astrology or studies cycles of the moon, I mean I had astrologists telling me: don t sign contracts on that date, that s not a good time. And don t ship off a book to the publisher until this date, because that s auspicious for the beginning of a new project. There are patterns that have to do with energy from Fung Shui, you know we have to move certain things in our house every year as the dynamics change. And so I do all that. And my life works better because of it, in fact, we put a globe in my wealth corner because we wanted more international consulting, we started getting so much international consulting my wife said I am taking that globe out of the corner because you are away too much. You know, so I know these things work.
Is astrology linked to cycles and synchronicities? David Hamilton: I think there is a lot more in astrology than we, we take, than we assume. I think we shouldn t just dismiss it as easy as we often do because we clearly can see that the sun has been going through cycles of 11.1 years for a very long time. And it will continue to do that for a very, very long time. And as long as we are existing here and our bodies are actually feeling this, so in a sense maybe there is something there in astrology in that rhythmic type of event that will come over and over and over again. Something is happening in the body which may well affect our emotions and choices over and over and over again. How can I learn to see the signs in my life? If you wanted to become more premonition prone in your life, the question is how would you go about that? I think there are several ways that are very helpful. One of the most helpful ways is to keep a dream diary. I have tried this myself and found that my dream life just sort of explodes and becomes richer and deeper and much more interesting. And it also increases the frequency of dreamlike premonitions. The dreams that crop up are more likely to predict the future than before you started that. There is something about the dream diary that sort of freshens up the unconscious and allows more information to surface during your dream life.
Do the signs come from deep within? Harry Massey: To experience a choice point, life will start becoming hard and it might become incredibly hard and here really is the key, to not look at these so much as problems but look at them as signs and really think and reflect about your life and what really you want your purpose to be. If you see it as a change, just a change in life for a better life coming. Scilla Elworthy: If I can just get quiet and close my eyes for a minute or two and stop my brain rushing about like a busy fly, and just breathe out. Automatically and inevitably and every single time, what comes into that space is far more intelligent and wise than anything that my little brain could have thought of. So that vast intelligence, whatever anyone wants to call it, which is evident in nature. I mean there could not be such a beautiful planet and beautiful trees and light and the stars. That could not exist were there not some great intelligence. I don t know what it is. But what I am saying is that it becomes available in all its huge force when we manage to quieten our chattering minds. Barbara Marx Hubbard: Earth is now creating a form of life which I would call a form of life that is able to see the story and able to participate. And it s a form of life that wants to give its gift, wants to express its creativity and my own intuition is: that since the impulse of evolution has been going for billions of years to create more intelligence, more complexity, more consciousness, more creativity.
Gregg Braden: Philosophically, this brings up all kinds of interesting principles and phenomenon. So for example, when we think of ourselves here and we close our eyes and we go to that place deep within and we communicate with our higher self. Is it possible that that higher self is really us, the real us outside of the simulation that is having the experience. This opens the door to so many possibilities, but the beauty and why it excites me is that science, the best science of our time is taking seriously the possibility that we may be in the simulated reality and that the core principles of those simulations are parallel to the principles of our most ancient and cherished spiritual traditions. And I think it is this kind of thinking, even if it is not 100% correct, our willingness to cross the traditional boundaries and go into this kind of thinking, open the door to a vast new understanding of what is real and what is possible and gives new meaning and context to some of the things that seem absolutely meaningless in our lives and our world today. And this is I think where the journey really begins. When you see the signs and recognise the messages you are ready for the next step: Destiny