The author Daniel Pinchback (a Mayan calendar expert) said on public radio the other day that as we near 2012 we will all be experiencing more and more synchronicities. You know, those things that happen that shouldn’t happen because they have nothing to do with cause and effect.
My son Joel and I wrote about them in Hubab Ku in connection with archetypal symbols and the Mayan’s belief in harmonic resonance. Many people have told me that when they open Hunab Ku or Divine Sparks for some sort of inspiration, they are often amazed at how “right” for them at that very moment the page they "accidentally" turned to seems to be.
Carl Jung explained synchronicities this way: “Events can, so to speak, bunch together in time and space, not because one is causing the other, but because their meanings are linked.”
Linked meanings.
One of Jung’s classic synchronicity stories is about a beetle. His patient was telling him one day of dreaming of receiving a scarab pin fashioned after the Egyptian dung beetle that is still highly prized for its deep meanings of resurrection. Just then Jung walked over to his office window, opened it, and in flew a real golden-green beetle who obviously wished to join them at just that moment.
Our rational minds struggle to explain these synchronicities—and can’t. How can we begin to explain how just when we need a certain bit of information it appears right at our fingertips. The right book in the library or bookstore. How do you explain thinking of someone and then you open your email or answer the phone and there they are!
Eastern thought, as in the Tao and I Ching, readily accepts synchronicities. Western minds always need more answers and causes—but that may be changing if Pinchback is right.
The physicist F. David Peat believes that synchronicities are not only real, but they are little rips in the fabric of our reality that offer fleeting glimpses into our common underlying nature. It’s not so much an anomaly when they pop up, but rather the actual order of all things—for all things are interconnected in the our marvelous universe. Every now and then the universe sends us little winks. It happens so fast, we tend to miss them. But when we spot them, we realize our universe is much less like a static, predictable machine and more like a marvelous shifting hologram.
One reader of SophiaServe from Australia, Debrah Novak, recently shared her amazing synchronicity story with me. She she gave me permission to share it with you…so we can all think about the meaning of “the ring of love.”
Debrah lives opposite Main Beach Yamba in northern New South Wales.
One January day she met three little Aboriginal girls about 8, 10 and 12 playing in the sand. She described them to me as black iridescent pearls with straight shiny black hair. They were wearing colorful bikinis and big smiles. Debrah introduced herself and began searching for shells with them.
She learned they were from Alice Springs—home of Uluru Rock.
A satellite picture of this largest monolith on our planet looks like a heart from outer space. It is the oldest continually "worshipped at" sacred spot on earth.
This little “trinity” of girls were hundreds of miles from their home, enjoying the beach and ocean for the very first time. Suddenly Debrah spotted something shiny in the sand. It turned out to be a silver wedding band. She slipped it on and it fit perfectly. When she removed it, she noticed that something was inscribed on the inside but because she wasn’t wearing her glasses, she called for one of the girls to come over and read it.
“It says Jessica Rose. That’s my sister’s name!" Hearing her name, the younger girl came over, and Debrah knew the ring belonged to her. After all, Jessica means “behold, a woman of wealth” and was one of the women at Jesus’ tomb on Easter morning. And Rose, the sacred emblem for Jesus Mother Mary, Mary Magdelene, Venus and Aphrodite signifying beauty and love.
Debrah said, "For whatever reason the universe saw fit to bring us all together at this moment in time to share this event and unite us in spirit...black and white alongside each other sharing a universal story whose origins must have begun in dream time."
After explaining how she found the ring and clearing the gift with the girls’ nearby parents, Debrah gently held Jessica's hand, placed the ring on her palm and said to all three girls:
“You know, the universe works in mysterious ways. This ring was obviously a gift from Mother Ocean to celebrate Jessica’s visit here to Yamba. This ring is likely a trigger to help you remember the touch, smell and feel of an ancient ocean that once covered Central Australia where you live, millions of years ago.”
The girls may one day learn that a ring can mean many things: unity, wholeness, fidelity, female power, and even the world serpent, Ouroboros. This ancient symbol, a hooped snake, is found on page 40 of Hunab Ku. It's reproduced from a stone bas-relief c. 1800 C.E. by the Aja people in Dahomey, West Africa. This ancient ring tells us that all life is an ordered continuum.
The “Enveloper” The “All in One” holds us. Our Creator is, indeed, a circle whose circumference is nowhere, as the ancients said, and whose center is everywhere.
“At the still point in the center of the circle one can see the infinite in all things.”
As I walked home, Debrah said, I felt blessed and humbled the universe chose me, a non Aboriginal person to share this story with our Indigenous people who are the oldest living fossils on the planet. I am inspired and was gently reminded to continue to believe there is magic and serendipity in our lives.
Whether our name is Jessica Rose or Jane Doe, if we keep our eyes open, we can witness ancient symbolism at work. Like Jessica Rose’s silver ring, synchronicities lie all around just waiting for us to spot them.
And like Debrah, we are called to honor them when they “find us.”
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