NotLostJustWandering
Jun 28, 2010, 10:19 PM
Synchronicity is the experience of coincidences so unlikely they seem to be more than coincidences, perhaps signs or omens.
I first learned this concept as a high school boy, reading the works of Robert Anton Wilson. Wilson said that there was synchronicity within the annals of historical synchronicity itself; a lot of the weird true stories out there involved the number 23, such as the gangland murder of "Mad Dog" Coll and the ensuing events. It seemed the number 23 attracted synchronicity around itself.
I gave this bizarre theory a try and began looking out for the number 23 as it popped up in my life, and soon I was seeing it everywhere. Naturally, I knew, this was to be expected when you are looking for a particular type of thing in the vast number of minute events that happen every day. Things you would otherwise pay no attention to you now notice because you have ascribed significance to some arbitrary thing; a pattern emerges from the chaos, but the pattern is only a product of your mind. The sheer number of the "significant" events is startling at first. The lesson seems to be about just how much your mind edits and filters the sea of impressions the world gives us in order to make meaning and find patterns, as our survival depends on.
But as I continued with the experiment I came to question this rationale and interpretation of synchronicity. There were just TOO damn many 23s. It really seemed that, for example, in media photos there were a disproportionate number of football jerseys with the number 23. I tried paying as much attention to all the other football jersey numbers I happened to see and it still seemed there were too many 23s. And indeed many of the other 23s that cropped up in my daily life were accompanied with other coincidences of varying degrees of unlikeliness. Was there something else going on besides my mind making patterns out of random events? Was it possible my mind was actually attracting certain events to me, or that there were forces at work in the universe undermining the Law of Probability? I entertained these different theories and remained unconvinced of any of them.
I told a friend about all this and he thought it was all my imagination. Then he began experiencing 23-synchronicity himself, with coincidences far weirder and more frequently than mine. It really freaked him out, especially after he had a bike accident on 23rd Street and Fifth Avenue (2+3=5). He seriously asked me if I had hypnotized him and given him post-hypnotic suggestions to make him see these things.
I stopped believing in the Law of Probability and the 23s stopped surprising me. I took the recurrence of this number in my life as a mystery I could neither explain nor find meaning in. The synchronicity made a pattern appear out of chaos but the pattern itself lacked significance, indicated nothing. I often wound up living at a 23 address -- 23 Panini Place, where I lived for the lion's share of my time on Maui, room 23 of the beach camp hotel where I'm now staying, and weirdest of all, my home in Honolulu -- 23 Kuilei Place, Apt. W (W is the 23rd letter of the alphabet). When I told my best friend in Hawaii where I'd just moved, he told me he and his lover had for several years lived in that exact same apartment in the exact same building.
One day I was musing how as a child I'd been fascinated by the number 9 and how 23 had supplanted it in my adult life. I multiplied the two numbers. 9 x 23 = 207. I was floored; this was a very significant number for me. I had learned my trade, computer graphics, in a student media office, Room 207 Thomas Hunter Hall at Hunter College. To think I'd spent so much time in that office, oblivious all the time that its number was the product of my two magic numbers.
My next career was massage therapy. I enrolled at the Maui School of Therapeutic Massage. Its address number was also 207. 23 and 9 would continue coming together at times of initiation into new times of learning. The teacher who initiated me in the Ruhaniat Order of Sufis was born on September 23rd. September is the 9th month of the year.
The synchronicity no longer seemed meaningless; I derived a spiritual lesson from it. From the time I embarked on living in Hawaii I had taken mad gambles and come up incredibly lucky, with doors opening to more doors. If nothing else the synchronicity seemed to demonstrate that while the Law of Probability may have jurisdiction over simple meaningless events such as the rolling of dice or the flipping of a coin, the really significant events of our lives were governed by forces or a Force superseding blind chance. Never again would I let probability factor too heavily in the pursuit of my dreams. I took as my motto Han Solo's line in Star Wars, "Never tell me the odds!"
My spiritual journey led to an investigation into Islam.The first time I looked up when the next Ramadan would start, the projected date was my sheikh's birthday, September 23rd. This came at a time when it would take a sign from God to get me to fast for 30 days. I took it as such. Given that Ramadan would not start on this propitious date again in my life, and indeed, odds were only 1 in 3 that it should have happened at any point in the course of my lifetime anyway, it seemed I was destined, or commanded to observe Ramadan that year even if was the only time I ever did, that this particular Ramadan was a time Allah had prepared for me and given me all the other 9s
and 23s as signposts leading up to that point...
Three Ramadans later my religious trip lost a lot of steam. I had come out to the so-called "Islamic" world and what I experienced in Egypt made me lose appetite for religion. My days crashing at a Sufi mosque in Syria were the final straw. In Jordan I shaved off my beard, began passing as Christian, and was seriously wondering what this journey was all about when I fell painfully in love with another guy. My journey became about rethinking how to live with my bisexuality.
Later, settled in Sinai, I joined this site and here I read a post about World Bisexuality Day. It is... September 23.
So when it seems God has led you on your way with signs, it's very strange to find your path disappearing or radically changing direction. And yet, there it is, another signpost. So, it looks like I'm still on the same path, weird and winding that it is!
(PS: About to take my first trip to Germany, and was checking out the German bi web site bine.net. The first number on the page, after the year, is 23; a link to download the 23rd issue of their journal.)
I first learned this concept as a high school boy, reading the works of Robert Anton Wilson. Wilson said that there was synchronicity within the annals of historical synchronicity itself; a lot of the weird true stories out there involved the number 23, such as the gangland murder of "Mad Dog" Coll and the ensuing events. It seemed the number 23 attracted synchronicity around itself.
I gave this bizarre theory a try and began looking out for the number 23 as it popped up in my life, and soon I was seeing it everywhere. Naturally, I knew, this was to be expected when you are looking for a particular type of thing in the vast number of minute events that happen every day. Things you would otherwise pay no attention to you now notice because you have ascribed significance to some arbitrary thing; a pattern emerges from the chaos, but the pattern is only a product of your mind. The sheer number of the "significant" events is startling at first. The lesson seems to be about just how much your mind edits and filters the sea of impressions the world gives us in order to make meaning and find patterns, as our survival depends on.
But as I continued with the experiment I came to question this rationale and interpretation of synchronicity. There were just TOO damn many 23s. It really seemed that, for example, in media photos there were a disproportionate number of football jerseys with the number 23. I tried paying as much attention to all the other football jersey numbers I happened to see and it still seemed there were too many 23s. And indeed many of the other 23s that cropped up in my daily life were accompanied with other coincidences of varying degrees of unlikeliness. Was there something else going on besides my mind making patterns out of random events? Was it possible my mind was actually attracting certain events to me, or that there were forces at work in the universe undermining the Law of Probability? I entertained these different theories and remained unconvinced of any of them.
I told a friend about all this and he thought it was all my imagination. Then he began experiencing 23-synchronicity himself, with coincidences far weirder and more frequently than mine. It really freaked him out, especially after he had a bike accident on 23rd Street and Fifth Avenue (2+3=5). He seriously asked me if I had hypnotized him and given him post-hypnotic suggestions to make him see these things.
I stopped believing in the Law of Probability and the 23s stopped surprising me. I took the recurrence of this number in my life as a mystery I could neither explain nor find meaning in. The synchronicity made a pattern appear out of chaos but the pattern itself lacked significance, indicated nothing. I often wound up living at a 23 address -- 23 Panini Place, where I lived for the lion's share of my time on Maui, room 23 of the beach camp hotel where I'm now staying, and weirdest of all, my home in Honolulu -- 23 Kuilei Place, Apt. W (W is the 23rd letter of the alphabet). When I told my best friend in Hawaii where I'd just moved, he told me he and his lover had for several years lived in that exact same apartment in the exact same building.
One day I was musing how as a child I'd been fascinated by the number 9 and how 23 had supplanted it in my adult life. I multiplied the two numbers. 9 x 23 = 207. I was floored; this was a very significant number for me. I had learned my trade, computer graphics, in a student media office, Room 207 Thomas Hunter Hall at Hunter College. To think I'd spent so much time in that office, oblivious all the time that its number was the product of my two magic numbers.
My next career was massage therapy. I enrolled at the Maui School of Therapeutic Massage. Its address number was also 207. 23 and 9 would continue coming together at times of initiation into new times of learning. The teacher who initiated me in the Ruhaniat Order of Sufis was born on September 23rd. September is the 9th month of the year.
The synchronicity no longer seemed meaningless; I derived a spiritual lesson from it. From the time I embarked on living in Hawaii I had taken mad gambles and come up incredibly lucky, with doors opening to more doors. If nothing else the synchronicity seemed to demonstrate that while the Law of Probability may have jurisdiction over simple meaningless events such as the rolling of dice or the flipping of a coin, the really significant events of our lives were governed by forces or a Force superseding blind chance. Never again would I let probability factor too heavily in the pursuit of my dreams. I took as my motto Han Solo's line in Star Wars, "Never tell me the odds!"
My spiritual journey led to an investigation into Islam.The first time I looked up when the next Ramadan would start, the projected date was my sheikh's birthday, September 23rd. This came at a time when it would take a sign from God to get me to fast for 30 days. I took it as such. Given that Ramadan would not start on this propitious date again in my life, and indeed, odds were only 1 in 3 that it should have happened at any point in the course of my lifetime anyway, it seemed I was destined, or commanded to observe Ramadan that year even if was the only time I ever did, that this particular Ramadan was a time Allah had prepared for me and given me all the other 9s
and 23s as signposts leading up to that point...
Three Ramadans later my religious trip lost a lot of steam. I had come out to the so-called "Islamic" world and what I experienced in Egypt made me lose appetite for religion. My days crashing at a Sufi mosque in Syria were the final straw. In Jordan I shaved off my beard, began passing as Christian, and was seriously wondering what this journey was all about when I fell painfully in love with another guy. My journey became about rethinking how to live with my bisexuality.
Later, settled in Sinai, I joined this site and here I read a post about World Bisexuality Day. It is... September 23.
So when it seems God has led you on your way with signs, it's very strange to find your path disappearing or radically changing direction. And yet, there it is, another signpost. So, it looks like I'm still on the same path, weird and winding that it is!
(PS: About to take my first trip to Germany, and was checking out the German bi web site bine.net. The first number on the page, after the year, is 23; a link to download the 23rd issue of their journal.)