Karl Jung – who first introduced the notion of synchronicity circa 1920’s defined it as an “acausal connecting (togetherness) principle,” “meaningful coincidence”, and “acausal parallelism” – meaning that events can hold or give meaning if they occur coincidentally with no obvious or causal relationship.
An easily interpreted example would be: a bolt of lightning strikes your grandmother’s favourite tree on the day of she dies – that’s synchronicity – where one aspect of the event appears to be related to the other but there’s no verifiable evidence, no material cause that can prove this.
In order for us to be involved in synchronous events we need to be(come) active participants – a real contradiction – to actively get out of the way. We can improve the likelihood of such events occurring in our lives firstly via a willingness to entertain the existence of such and secondly by ensuring we are ‘present and conscious’ – i.e. ready for inclusion into these seemingly random meaningful chance happenings. It matters little if you happen to be dodging pedestrian traffic in Times Square or you are the lighthouse keeper on Maatsuyker Island the requirement is always the same: the imperative is that we reside within the NOW as often as we can. The external environment is then bound – by the nature of synchronicity – to provide all the other elements. This is not to discount the Fool archetype – who looks to be completely oblivious to any responsibility or cares – just daydreaming and bumbling his/her way through life with all life’s necessities simply arriving via some invisible force – providence. The Fool’s attitude and approach to life and living: i.e. with apparent exemption from the stressors that are part of everyday life for the most of us – need to be emulated/adopted. But how – how do we become blissfully unaware of the potentially stressful laden events and able to relax away from anxiety to where we can allow the visitation of a synchronous event? The answer in theory – like most of these existential conundrums is simple? We can relax when we know we have done our best – done all that we can – and this knowing arrives not as an intellectual understanding but as ‘a feeling’ a sense.