[Marianne]

To James (post response# 5339)

It seems so weird to give a tale (a moment) of synchronicity a number–but maybe the idea of “number” (#) is fitting, also, as I could have in parenthesis put “synchronicity # 5339) lol. Not to make it funny that the event he describes is about death but that why not since Campbell says to participate equally in the joys and the sorrows of life. (Someone else can find the exact quote to include in response if they want to.)

James, your story here is so touching and I was completely absorbed as I read it, as if there to feel your experience that day with the ashes in the wind. What “really got” me in your story was that the group of younger people were there as the now older group that you were in administered the ashes to the wind. It is as if the group you were in from the old hippies and now older people today had come full circle with death and rebirth. It was probably such a synchronous time for the youths there also–I can imagine them feeling it as numinous–I know I would…and as for myself, I would be on the older end of the spectrum now also and it does feel numinous to me if I had been there from that end also.

Thank you so much for sharing your beautiful story. Yes it is so poignant. Looking back towards the end too of your post where you write,

what this is suppose to mean concerning the nature of existence; but my point has to with “synchronicity” so I’ll just mention what blew me away was I was left with this question of: “why did this happen and why was I there to witness it?” All I can say is Joseph mentions that every now and then you may stumble upon this sense of “profound mystery” that myths are the vehicle of. I barely knew this fellow and had no prior knowledge this event was going to take place. But what it did impress upon me was the sense of asking myself: “What questions does this experience raise to me about the meaning of my own life in the grand scheme of things?; “What does this tell me about all these big questions that people ponder?” And when I think about things that happen out of nowhere; things that seem to tell me or ask me or pull me in a certain direction for some unknown or coincidental circumstance that seem to point in a certain direction this is what I come away with

I come to ask myself these same questions now in a long line of questions in search of meaning for life…answers to our big questions, I am thinking, are similar to the modus operandi in synchronicity in that we cannot prove our answers. We can say the point of life is to be happy, we can say the point of life is this or that, but how ever would we prove it? So then at times a moment or event such as the one you had here happens that touches upon those big questions. I think that synchronicity can do that to a person, to us (people in general perhaps): to make us feel closer to the other side of the “veil”–to for a moment “walk the edge” between the two worlds; I always have imagined/believed that it is possible this is the way the shaman sees the world, with and through the eyes of synchronicity–to see the manifest world around the individual as symbol is to read the symbols and see “into” things (of psyche–it is sometimes said that shamans were the first depth psychologists or analytical psychologists in their own way) and this way of seeing, of reading the symbols, is often like noticing an “omen”–but not all synchronicity experiences are that potent or obvious–some are also so subtle. We all do this at times, and artists are contemporary shamans too in that sense  as many people including scholars have noted.

And James, as you have mentioned in conversations (here in forums, or elsewhere?) before, synchronicity in dreams is another thing I would like to address in part two of my intro–but please, continue onward with your posts and responses and experiences, everyone–because my part two is simply another response to the topic simultaneous to yours (and meaning all of ours). So we will go on to discuss dreams–I have another monarch butterfly tale to tell that was synchronicity operative in my dreams that I will tell when I continue with part two of my post. I have a bunch of  dream journal collections of my dreams that were synchronicity in various ways–I tend to be a symbolist both in dreams and in my awake-world–I love (as any Jungian does!) to read archetypal symbols.

I enjoyed your post so much and best to you always James,

~ Marianne