I’ve always been intrigued by Carl Jung’s synchronicity theory — meaningful coincidences — which “holds that events are ‘meaningful coincidences’ if they occur with no causal relationship yet seem to be meaningfully related.”
“The Tau of Steves: What You Don’t Know Could Fill a Book”
“5” Steve McQueen (1930 – 1980): “You don’t set out to be original, but you’re working with something other than what was available in the example. Using different ingredients and techniques yields unique results.” Aries
Hi and welcome to Friday’s Episode 33 in Season 3 of “My Paradoxically Normal Year” on this 23rd day of April in the spring of 2021 — which is a three-year examination of how bits of wisdom changed during the “normal” pre-pandemic year and then in the pandemic year, and now months after.
“The Tau of Steves: What You Don’t Know Could Fill a Book”
Previously from Season Three, the Paradoxically Normal Year
S3 E32 — But, Why Should You Care?; S3 E31— Treat It Like a Pawn Ticket to Sketchier Things; S3 E30 — Steal These TauBits, Please. It’s Only Fair!
Related from Season Two, The Pandemic Year
S2 E33 — What Happens When Your Business Collapses?; S2 E32 — Trapped and Bored? Or Unleashing a Reinvention Wave?; S2 E31 — Getting Charged from Box Automattic-aly; S2 E30 — It’s Crazy. Why does Amazon Prime Work, but Netflix Doesn’t?
Related from Season One, The Normal Year
S1 E33 — Day 33 of My 1-Year Experiment; S1 E32 — Day 32 of My 1-Year Experiment; S1 E31 — Day 31 of My 1-Year Experiment; S1 E30 — Day 30 of My 1-Year Experiment
Context
Last time, you’ll recall, writing the Conclusion to my Report I drew inferences from my favorite mode of being — one that correlates well with my practice of lifting TauBits (TauLifts), selecting Holiday Tau and promoting TauBits of Wisdom — intuition.
Intuition is the subtle knowing without ever having any idea why you know it, more like a direct perception of truth, fact, who a person really is, how a situation will play out, what the future has in store for us.
Drawing on intuition, I’m now focusing on synchronicity and meaningful coincidences.
Last night, by coincidence I tripped across a passage in Robert Parker’s “The Devil Wins” I read in my Kindle when Jesse Stone, Police Chief in Paradise says,
“I don’t believe in coincidences.”
In various books, Harry Bosch in Michael Connelly’s series who worked in the LAPD robbery and homicide department (as did Stone), in “A Darkness More Than Night,” described:
“A strange constricting feeling filled his gut. He didn’t believe in coincidences… (It) was a coincidence that even a believer in coincidence would have a difficult time accepting.”
So much for fictionalized police chiefs and detectives, tying up loose ends, relying on their hunches and reordering data, information and witness first hand accounts.
I’ve always been intrigued by Carl Jung’s synchronicity theory — meaningful coincidences — which “holds that events are ‘meaningful coincidences’ if they occur with no causal relationship yet seem to be meaningfully related.”
According to Wikipedia:
“… skeptics (e.g. most psychologists) tend to dismiss the psychological experience of coincidences as just yet one more demonstration of how irrational people can be. Irrationality in this context means an association between the experience of coincidences and biased cognition in terms of poor probabilistic reasoning and a propensity for paranormal beliefs.”
So, while Stone and Bosch are both fictional, they aren’t irrational, biased, reasoning-challenged with a fondness for UFOs.
But Wikipedia also included:
“A survey (with 226 respondents) of the frequency of synchronicity in clinical settings found that:
-
- 44% of therapists reported synchronicity experiences in the therapeutic setting; and
- 67% felt that synchronicity experiences could be useful for therapy”
- “… psychologists were significantly more likely than both counsellors and psychotherapists to agree that chance coincidence was an explanation for synchronicity, whereas, counsellors and psychotherapists were significantly more likely than psychologists to agree that a need for unconscious material to be expressed could be an explanation for synchronicity experiences in the clinical setting”
And as a psychologist in training at the Masters level after my tour of duty in Vietnam what actually intrigued me was what this survey represented to me — clinical psychology as an art form but with a practical natural experiment attempt.
Synchronicity appeared in clinical settings as reported by 4 in 10 therapists and two-thirds felt as a tool synchronicity experiences could prove beneficial for therapeutic outcomes.
What now caught my eye was the which came first, the chicken or the egg implications. Was it that chance coincidences explain synchronicity? Or, encouraging the expression of unconscious material explained synchronicity events in clinical settings?
Sigmund Freud and Jung were pioneers in “Talking Therapy” though Jung was younger and at one point Freud felt he would take the mantle from Freud later in life.
However Jung in 1916 published the English version as of his paper Psychology of the Unconscious making it clear that his views were taking a direction quite different from those of Freud.
To distinguish his system from psychoanalysis, Jung called it analytical psychology.
Fast forward to the Consciousness Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s.
For a period of time, largely in the 1970s meaningful coincidences manifested themselves in Lawrence Blair’s “Aquarian Science” as some sort of grand “consilience” big enough to include astrology and astronomy, mysticism and possibly anticipated string theory in theoretical physics.
“Whereas our outer, rational memories show us only brief span on the surface of history behind us, our inner memories — through myth and symbol — detect currents of meaning beneath the future as well.”
“The outer chaos and confusion of our time is but the disturbance which characterizes the metamorphosis of all great rhythms, or aeon’s, into a new one; but inwardly, the iron-filings of a special kind of related knowledge are already polarizing themselves around a new pattern of Meaning, revealing that a deeper knowledge of universal laws is contingent on a deeper knowledge of the self, and the schism between the two wolds of science and religion is beginning to heal and to merge into a single majestic river of vision.”
— “Rhythms of Vision: The Changing Patterns of Belief” by Lawrence Blair, Ph.D. published in 1975.
Evidence
What about today’s Holiday Tau, TauBits of Wisdom and the need for TauLifts? Synchronicity anyone? Any meaningful coincidences? How about a glimpse of a “majestic river of vision?”
Are we to interpret your TauBit of Wisdom as admonition to turn off conscious processing in favor of unconsciousness chewing?
“3” Steve Zahn, 51: “Can there be peace without understanding? Of course! Sometimes peace is accepting what is, whether or not you get it. Consider giving up the need to process every bit of information, at least right now.” Scorpio
Random ones that make me want change my sign.
True enough, Steve I don’t. I’m improvising a newer recipe.
“5” Steve McQueen (1930 – 1980): “You don’t set out to be original, but you’re working with something other than what was available in the example. Using different ingredients and techniques yields unique results.” Aries
So this was supposed to be a pain-free day for me. Think again. It takes a day to recover from my physical therapy sessions and my knee and hip are still sore. Maybe, tomorrow?
“3” Steve Carell, 57; Steve Martin, 74; Steve Wozniak, 69: “People run, but really there’s no way to avoid it. Pain is as entwined with existence as is breathing. Accepting this inevitability makes pain-free times, such as you’ll have today, all the sweeter. You’ll live on wings of exuberance.” Leo
So G&G, where were you when the country could have used your Holiday Tau as advice for the previous administration. Seems like that’s all they did. Blame and name and avoid fixing or improving things other than a chance for reelection.
“5” Steve Greene, 34; Steve Guttenberg, 61: “The thing about blame is that it’s only one of many ways to package an outcome, and today it’s an entirely unnecessary one at that. Forget about blame. There is only what happened, and various ways for it to not happen again.” Virgo
I’m sure Steve this Holiday Tau, maybe not for you then, but for one of the Steves months ago, triggered my revelation that my greatest fear was public speaking. Thinking back on it, it may have delayed my career transition from advisor to trainer and workshop leader. Finding how to make it work for you is the Tau of Tau.
“5” Steve Aoki, 41: “There are many ineffective ways to handle fear, which include ignoring it, running from it, pretending to be cool about it or letting it stop you. The proper way is to accept fear so you can harness it and make it work for you.” Sagittarius
You had me at “wildly divergent problems,” Steve. The more interdependence and related parts, the better. Give me chaos and complexity any time as long as you pay my fee.
“5” Steve Nash, 45: “It’s amazing what you can solve when you put your mind to it. Don’t even think about backing down from the wildly divergent problems because they will be the stage from which you shine brightest.” Aquarius
What’s Going On …
Literally Bottled and Set Adrift from KnowWhere Atoll
-
- @KnowLabs suite of digital magazines jumps from 8003 to 8068 organically grown followers
Foresight
Quality-of-Life
Long-Form
-
- “Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge” by E.O. Wilson, an entomologist who studied colonies of ants for their insights. But didn’t stop there, according to The Wall Street Journal, “A dazzling journey across the sciences and humanities in search of deep laws to unite them.”
- “True Believers,” the novel by Kurt Andersen (which seems to precede Fantasyland)? I like how he goes back and forth from now to the ‘60s in which the main character is writing a memoir, but needs “Okays” from her friends who had been hiding a secret for 40+ years that could ruin their careers? Like, what’s my equivalent
- “Disappearing Through the Skylight” by O.B. Hardison, Jr. which proceeded “Consilience” by a decade. Hardison’s been described as a polymathic renaissance man who wrote, “… Nature has slipped, perhaps finally beyond our field of vision.” What does it mean for “… science, history, art and architecture, music, language, ultimately, for humanity”? This one provides missing chunks of understanding where we came from and where we’re going.
Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons
Inspired by: Holiday Mathis – Creators Syndicate
CENTER FOR KNOWLEDGE CREATION AND INNOVATION
The Knowledge Path | Know Laboratories | Knowledge Banking | Knowledge ATMs | Western Skies and Island Currents | Best West Road Trips