The Synchronicity Challenge, How Is This Coincidence?

Hello All,

I am a firm believer in signs and synchronicities. I also believe that they are a form of communication from Source/God. But in my day to day life, if I try to talk to anyone about this. I get treated like I'm crazy for believing it. Now granted the synchronicities that I experience are completely insane, I get that. But how that craziness gets transferred to the person experiencing them is beyond me. But the other thing I don't understand, is how someone can write something like I have posted below off as mere coincidences. I could understand if it was just one coincidence, seeing it that way. But what I experience are strings of synchronicities, that sometimes go on for days before they stop. So if you are not a believer in synchronicity, can you explain to me how you can rationally write something like the experience I have posted below off as all just a big long string of coincidences? In my mind a coincidence is something that is rare, which is what makes it a coincidence in the first place. So isn't a big long string of coincidences contradictory to the definition of what a coincidence is? If no, why?

coincidence synonyms: accident, chance, fluke

Before this past summer, I was checking to see who was coming to Colorado in concert. After a long search of different bands, I end up going to Steve Vai's website. He's wasn't touring, but I noticed a note at the bottom of the webpage that said he was coming to Colorado for a guitar clinic in Vail in August. So I go to that website. (I can't afford something like that, but I wanted to check it out anyways.) Then after reading about the guitar clinic, there's a note at the bottom of that page talking about how Steve will be playing a free concert in Copper Mountain the following weekend. So he wasn't touring, but he was coming here for free! So I made a mental note of the date, and told my wife so she could get off from work for it.

Summer passes, and I start going through about 5 major things all at the same time, all of which are
life altering. Nothing in my life will be the same in a few months from now. But long story short, I completely forgot about the concert. Then when I go to look it up, thinking it may have passed already. My wife tells me the wrong date, so then I really think that I missed it. But Source led me to verify the date. So I did, and the concert was that day in about 4 hours, in Copper Mountain.

My wife forgot to take off from work, so it was my daughter and I going to the show. We also planned on going up to Glenwood Springs after the show, so that we could climb up to Hanging Lake the next day, which my daughter hadn't done since she was around 4 years old, and had basically forgotten it. So I wanted her to experience that too, before school kicked off it's new year.

So we were rushing around the house, getting everything ready to go. I asked my daughter if she had grabbed a hat, because she might want one. She said no, so I asked her which one she wanted. She took a bit to decide, so I said how about this one, and grabbed her pink baseball hat. She said ok, but I could tell she wasn't thrilled with it. But she didn't know what else to grab, so that's what we took. We stopped to get some burritos on the way up the mountain, then continued to the show. When we got there, we found out that we couldn't bring outside food in. So we decided to eat on a stone fence next to a roundabout outside the venue since we had about 30 minutes 'til show time.

So we're eating our burritos, and a SUV pulls up in front of us. Then when they drive away, a hat comes flying off behind them into the street landing in front of us. So I get up and get the hat, and yell a couple of times that they dropped their hat, but they couldn't hear me. So I told my daughter when I was walking back to her, that somebody must have heard that she needed a hat. I told her if they came back before we finished eating looking for it, that we would give it back to them. But if they didn't come back, that I would let her keep it. They didn't come back.

So we go into the show, and end up next to an older woman and her daughter. One of the first things out of the moms' mouth was how much she liked my daughters hat. She said that she almost bought that exact hat in a store not 50 yards away from where we were sitting.

At the end of the show, I asked my daughter if she would like to try and get Steve Vai's autograph, to which she said yes. So we went over to a fence with some other people waiting, and we end up getting Steve's autograph on the hat that we had just found in the parking lot before the show.

Then we go to Glenwood Springs for the night. We get a hotel room, and we're sitting outside our room taking in the sights and sounds. When there is a thud in the middle of the road. So we try to see what it was, but it was dark. So I guessed it was a tire tread or something, and went to get it out of the street so no cars would hit it, and it ends up being a Domino's pizza bag with a bunch of food still in it. So I called Domino's and reported the lost pizza bag, to which I'm told to wait outside and a driver will be by soon to pick it up. Well a half hour to 40 minutes later I'm on the phone to report the lost pizza bag again. I tell them what happened again. The guy tells the manager, and he says it's the first that he's even heard of it. But to wait inside our room if we want, and he would send over a driver with a $10 reward, to which I said thank you. Then I asked him what they were going to do with the food inside the bag, to which he said we could have it if we want it. So two times in one day, something flew off of or out of a car in front of us, that we ended up getting for free, on top of the free concert.

The next day we drive to Hanging Lake for our hike, but the electric signs for the exit were saying that the parking lots were full. Which means you have to drive several miles up the highway. Then turn around and go all the way back to Glenwood Springs, and then back toward Hanging Lake again, and hope the sign doesn't say the parking lots are full still. But Source/God led me to go ahead and give it a shot. So we took the exit for Hanging Lake and found a parking spot within 5 minutes or less. We could have been driving back and forth for hours until that signs said that the parking lot wasn't full. Then on our hike up the mountain, we took a break on a bridge going over a river. A butterfly landed on the rail to the bridge not far from us. So I told my daughter to move her hand really slow towards it, and stop when her hand was next to it. So she did, and the butterfly climbed up on her hand and stayed there for 2 minutes or so.

So that whole weekend was a really cool string of synchronicities that just kept going. So for the doubters, how do you rationalize something like that as all just coincidences, when synonyms for coincidence are accident, chance, and fluke. How is it rare if they happen one right after the other over a two day period?

You can view a video of the Steve Vai concert in Copper Mountain at the link below. One of my favorite songs that he played that day, was a song that I didn't even go to the show to hear. But the moment was pretty magical, you can find it at the 42:22 mark in the video. The song is called Whispering A Prayer.

www.youtube.com...

Peace, and thank you for your time,
TomSawyer

a reply to: TomSawyer

coincidence doesn't exist...

the very word describes something that is a mutual meeting of synchronicity

Two instances which coincide.. and mutually become one instance which relates to a previous occurrence in most cases...

synchronicity is like a wink from God

a reply to: TomSawyer

It sounds like a phenomenally good couple of days you had there...synchronicities or not. I've never quite been able to refute or believe in them and they've whispered and fluttered through my life for many years. The idea of secret signals from the cosmos being aimed at individuals whilst circumstances are rearranged to mystify them seems irrational and unlikely. In contrast, they really do occur and the best ones are so profoundly curious as to become 'meaningful.'

A couple of years back, I had a dream that included a black fox and was so technicolour 'real' I awoke and googled 'black fox.' I didn't even know there was such a thing as one nevermind dreaming of them. The dream itself had a profound effect hence the google search. The next day I was clearing a room out at work and throwing old books out. One of the books was La Fontaine Fables illustrated by the great Gustave Dore. I flipped it open at a random page and there was an illustration of a black fox. It's a mundane anecdote to anyone apart from me. However, the various elements of the circumstances had particular resonance to me on a personal level and the image right there was like a hot shot of static. The book is right in front of me as I type this. : )

These things are hard to put a pin in and the very essence of synchronicity is in its value to the person/s directly experiencing it. Unless tending towards the mystical, they just sound like normal coincidences to everyone else.

a reply to: TomSawyer

So to summarize : you remembered the date of a concert, you found a hat, you found a parking spot, you found pizzas and a butterfly stood on your hand for 2 minutes.

I don't really see any link between those events, they are all different in nature a part from the found hat and pizzas. It's just luck in my opinion.

Synchronicity or schizophrenia? I think we'll decide.

a reply to: CaIIYourBluff
'we'll' ? You think there are two of you ? Explains the schizophrenia reference

a reply to: CaIIYourBluff
'we'll' ? You think there are two of you ? Explains the schizophrenia reference

Great, my pc has it now!

a reply to: TomSawyer

I experience "coincidences" on a daily basis. I find by just even observing and being conscience of them amplifies the syncronicities ten fold.
To me, the Universe ism't just a dead junkyard of matter floating around, it's a highly conscience, living entity with an ideology
and understanding that differs vastly to our own.

God may have made man in his own image, but we most certainly don't share the same logic

As a firm believer in synchronicity heres my story .. I was reading Stephen Kings book Bag of Bones and in it the protaganist sees birds (sparrows I think) in trees outsides his window while thinking of his dead wife.He then finds out the birds" "carry souls and messages to heaven" ... later THE SAME DAY ... Im in a coworkers office and see a Carl Jung anthology and decide to look up synchronicity .. heres where it gets freaky .. Jung talks about synchronicity and an example he uses is about a breakthru in therapy for a patient where he told him about birds carrying souls or messages to heaven .. I almost dropped the book it was so weird .. and synchronicity has happened my whole life yes I firmly believe

a reply to: TomSawyer

Are you a very happy and kind guy that lives in the moment?

Sounds like you just have good karma which is sorta the same as Synchronicity. There is no such thing as coincidences.

When I first started my journey of "living in the moment" the coolest things started happening to me.

I like stuff like this a lot.

But they are not indications of a God, to me. It's just part of living and the human condition. It happens.

I think it's more or less like winning the lottery, which happens too. It's not impossible. It's just a different kind of lottery. And some people don't experience it at all or as much, it's true, just like some people never win the lottery.

I also have the sneaking suspicion that it has something to do with your own pattern recognition/awareness of your own environment. For example, I think that when you start thinking about someone that you haven't thought of in a long time... something in your environment triggered you to think about them (even though you may not be aware of the trigger itself- it could've been a commercial, a song, or even the way the sky looks or a smell or even just after a period of time, because relationships might have their own kind of circadian rhythms), and then BAM, they arise and call you out of nowhere or you bump into them soon after. And that's because they, like you, have picked up environmental cues subconsciously. And I think everyone does this on some level because everyone forms subtle bonds with one another and a mind will pick up cues and patterns and associate it with a past relationship/someone from the past because our relationships with people are emotional and important. So it's not really magic to me... but it's still meaningful.

Thanks for sharing!

a reply to: geezlouise

Law of Attraction, ie, karma

its real even if you don't believe in it.

a reply to: veracity

I suppose I believe in cause and effect.

I certainly do NOT believe in the general idea of karma. But maybe I don't know what karma is. How do you explain karma to little starving children?

a reply to: geezlouise
good (hard) question.

I believe that karma only works for those who have intent, starving children do not have ill will or the power to make better for themselves. Therefor, their karma (good and bad) is smaller to non-existent and they are more dependent on environmental and other factors, just as we all are.

Coincidence is inevitable, and not unusual.

"People are entirely too disbelieving of coincidence. They are far too ready to dismiss it and to build arcane structures of extremely rickety substance in order to avoid it. I, on the other hand, see coincidence everywhere as an inevitable consequence of the laws of probability, according to which having no unusual coincidence is far more unusual than any coincidence could possibly be." -Isaac Asimov

Coincidences themselves are meaningless. Although they can and have created circumstances that lead to meaningful change in persons' life and beliefs, the fact that the coincidence occurred is not more special than any other natural phenomena. If you apply rational thinking and statistical understanding to them, they become commonplace, normal, and unremarkable. The building of spiritual or superstitious constructs based on coincidence is a form of special pleading and magical thinking, and is really not rational at all.

An example is the birthday paradox:

In a room with 23 people there is about a 50% chance that two of them will share a birthday. Most people would think of that as very strange, since 23 isn't even 10%, much less 50%, of 365, the numbers of days in a year. However, this thinking reflects the self-centered nature of human thought and the usual failure to take the whole statistical picture into account. The birthday paradox states not that there is a 50% chance that any person will share a birthday with someone, but that there is a 50% chance that there is one pair of people in the room sharing a birthday, even though the odds of any specific individual being part of that pair is low.
Even more counter-intuitively, in a room with 57 people, there is a 99% chance that a birthday-sharing pair will be in the room. The relevance of this is that some may be tempted to think that if they meet someone who shares their birthday at a party, they must have been brought together by destiny or fate, or some other supernatural force, when in reality, it's just a result of the normal statistical processes of the world.

Coincidences happen from nothing more than the natural reality of the playing out of events in the universe. They are not special, they are not unusual, they are not magical or spiritual. They are a statistically inevitable part of life.

Synchronicity is an interesting idea, i'll grant you, but it has many problems. Carl Jung himself didn't know how to define it in any meaningful way outside of a "collective unconscious". It is unmeasurable and can only be self-reported, the "meaningfulness" of any coincidence is completely subjective and arbitrary, and the use of it as justification for any kind of "God" requires multiple logical fallacies.

Coincidence is so ill defined that any and all occurrences or events in the universe could be defined as coincidental, effectively diminishing their ability to explain anything to the point of irrelevance.

It is often claimed that things like Earth being exactly where it is, exactly perfect for the evolution of life, exactly the correct distance from sun etc. etc. to be so improbable and coincidental as to be a miracle. This is a perfect example of "reverse coincidence" logic. If something occurs that could not have occurred had any small variation taken place prior to the event, it is defined as statically unlikely and therefore a remarkable coincidence. This logic ignores the fact that the statistical likelihood of this event is 100%, given all prior events that did occur.

"That a particular specified event or coincidence will occur is very unlikely. That some astonishing unspecified events will occur is certain. That is why remarkable coincidences are noted in hindsight, not predicted with foresight."
-David G. Myers

Improbable things happen naturally, all the time. Using statistical improbability to justify the improbable nature of an event post hoc, is a meaningless argument. I direct you to a quote from Richard Feynman which sums up the logical fallacy of "special coincidences and synchronicity" rather well:

"You know, the most amazing thing happened to me tonight. I was coming here, on the way to the lecture, and I came in through the parking lot. And you won't believe what happened. I saw a car with the license plate ARW 357. Can you imagine? Of all the millions of license plates in the state, what was the chance I would see that particular one tonight? Amazing!"

The "string of synchronicity" described in the op is nothing out of the ordinary and nothing special. These kind of things happen all the time. Calling it improbable is not grounds for it to be defined as supernatural or the result of an underlying conscious will. It is a probabilistic certainty that these events would play out as they did, if the events are evaluated without subjective bias.

If one wishes to be rational, they must understand and accept these points. Is it a coincidence that I happened upon this thread at exactly 10:10am, on the 16/01/16? Yes. Is it improbable or especially meaningful? No.

If someone wishes to really see synchronicity plant good karma seeds of action in body speech and mind... as karma balances what you put out echos back almost immediately instead of what normally seems as a random arising without that balance. Its a very curious yet amazing thing that can and often causes bliss at random or in relation to what you put out in response... in doing so puts one so much closer to harmony with the great energy that makes up all sentient life.

originally posted by: BigBrotherDarkness
If someone wishes to really see synchronicity plant good karma seeds of action in body speech and mind... as karma balances what you put out echos back almost immediately instead of what normally seems as a random arising without that balance. Its a very curious yet amazing thing that can and often causes bliss at random or in relation to what you put out in response... in doing so puts one so much closer to harmony with the great energy that makes up all sentient life.

If one is following the traditional Hindu conception of karma, rather than the dumbed-down bastardised western variation, then the path to being in harmony with the "great energy(??!) that makes up all sentient life" is actually to free yourself from karma and its consequences. Karma is unhelpful to the end goal of enlightenment and a serious practitioner must endeavour to not incur any karma whatsoever, good or bad.

Synchronicity never played a part the original conceptions of karma, they've been shoehorned together by western new-agers, who almost never really do any kind of due diligence before setting up their pseudospiritualities.

I've had a few weird coincidences, too. One night about 15 years ago I had a very vivid dream that consisted solely of the image of a golden American quarter in the palm of my hand. Golden American quarters don't exist as far as I know. I woke up and remarked to my then-girlfriend about the dream and it stuck with me that day. The following day, the person in front of me at a hotdog stand received a gold-colored American quarter with her change. The hot dog vendor said, "Look at that. A gold quarter." I asked to see it, and was in a moment holding it in the palm of my hand, looking down at it, exactly like in my dream. In the next few days I told everyone I knew about it. Had quite an effect on me. Probably the strangest thing I've ever experienced.

More recently, I was looking up a woodpeckers in my bird manual because there was one at our suet feeder and I wanted to find out what kind it was. It was a downy woodpecker, but I noticed that the "hairy woodpecker" on the same page looked very similar, so I read about it for a few minutes. About half an hour later, my daughter was playing a game on the Wii and in this game she came across a hairy woodpecker - the exact species I had just been reading about. How many references have you heard in your life to the hairy woodpecker? I'm guessing not a ton. These two seperate references came within 30 minutes of one another. Weird, I say.

a reply to: spygeek

It is an impossibility to be alive and not accumulate karma its really a matter of what intent is behind what you do to generate it. Sometimes a situation calls for generating negative to turn it into a positive as a profound teaching tool where the negative and positive collide and cancel each other out. Any action does via body speech and mind is karma... impossible to remove all volition but change the volition to positive? easy peasy