Coincidence?
It has been some time since I published anything to this blog. It has become rather random and eclectic and something about that bothers me, probably it reminds me of how I too have become seemingly quite random and eclectic... but that is another story.
The story I want to tell today is true, it is the true story of today.
To set the stage, you will need a little bit of background. At this time in my life I am attempting (frustratingly slowly at the moment) to write my Master's thesis. My topic is landscape and pilgrimage. In September and October of 2011, I walked for 37 days covering a distance of nearly 900km from St. Jean Pied-de-Port, France to Santiago de Compostela, Spain. The distance between these two places is more commonly referred to as the Camino de Santiago, a Medieval, Catholic pilgrimage. What I am doing with this is writing an autoethnography exploring how the landscapes of the pilgrimage impact the experiences of the pilgrim, in this case, myself. An autoethnography, is essentially a detailed analysis of your own experiences as a member of a culture. The culture here is that of pilgrims on the Camino, and I was a member of that culture, as soon as I set one foot in front of the other headed down that well worn trail. For my research I kept a daily journal wherein I talked about the landscape I had walked through each day, and what kinds of experiences I had during that day. At this moment, I am engaged in writing out all of these experiences in a more engaging and detailed form to be included in my thesis. A word, and a concept, that has come up several times in my journal that is making its way into my thesis is "Synchronicity". Synchronicity is the idea that "coincidences" are not random, but in fact meaningful. While the idea has come up often in my life and I use the term on occasion, I don't actually have any philosophical grounding for understanding it or talking about it, but I have been aware that I'll need to have one if I'm going to talk about it in my thesis.
This morning I awoke, as I often do, from a dream that I don't really remember and it's not really important. After making myself an americano, I sat down to check my email. Somewhere in the course of checking email I came across a link to a very odd video. In this video, an interview as it turned out, an English rock band by the name of Turbowolf was inquiring into some of the mysteries of the universe with a notable paranormal author. I was listening to this in the background as I went about doing other things but one sequence caught my ear. The author was speaking about the afterlife-obsessed ancient Egyptians and suggesting that the Great Pyramid at Giza was not, as it commonly believed, a tomb but rather an elaborate three dimensional model of their cultural beliefs about the journey into the afterlife. A training arena for the eventual death and associated journey into the afterlife which the Egyptians believed should be something you prepared for in life.
This concept suddenly brought to mind in me the idea that perhaps our dreams are something similar. Dreams, are replete with symbolism (archetypes if you will), and the thought occurred to me that having dreams and trying to decode and understand them, is a kind of training in communicating through symbolism. Symbolism being a far more "universal" language than say English, or Coptic. Once we have an understanding of the language of symbols we can communicate with our subconscious, or perhaps our subconscious can communicate with us... For convenience sake "us" here refers to our conscious self. If your think about it, a journey into the subconscious is an awful lot like a journey into the underworld (semantic metaphors aside). Stories of psychoanalysis and intensive meditation will attest that this journey is no less difficult or dangerous than a journey into a mythological (or real) underworld.
Following this morning coffee theorizing session I tried to go about my work day as usual: walk the dog, meditate to clear my mind, sit in front of the computer and attempt to write my seemingly unending and now dreaded "chapter 4"... Naturally my efforts to focus and "get work done" were largely unsuccessful.
Later in the day my father calls. He really wants everyone to see the movie "Pina", I've seen it! So we talk about that a bit. Somehow or other the conversation comes around (unprompted mind you) to Carl Jung, which I find pretty interesting given my morning, and I might go so far as to call is a minor episode of Synchronicity. We have a pretty interesting conversation about symbols for a little while and eventually I have to go because (interestingly enough) I had already made plans to go see a different movie, "A Dangerous Method", about (you guessed it) Carl Jung, and Sigmund Freud. The movie makes several mentions of Jung's theories about "coincidence", though they don't explicitly use the word "synchronicty", it is heavily implied.
But there's more. As I'm thinking about synchronicity and walking out the door to go home I decide to go into the bookstore instead and maybe check out some Jung, whom I have never actually read, because remember I still need that philosophical grounding for my thesis. I head resolutely toward where I assume the psychology section would be (near Religion and Occult) and sure enough there it is. As I let my eyes roll over the books they come to rest first upon a book by none other than our C.G. Jung. Of course. But wouldn't you know it? The title of the book is quite simply "Synchronicity".
Coincidence?
The story I want to tell today is true, it is the true story of today.
To set the stage, you will need a little bit of background. At this time in my life I am attempting (frustratingly slowly at the moment) to write my Master's thesis. My topic is landscape and pilgrimage. In September and October of 2011, I walked for 37 days covering a distance of nearly 900km from St. Jean Pied-de-Port, France to Santiago de Compostela, Spain. The distance between these two places is more commonly referred to as the Camino de Santiago, a Medieval, Catholic pilgrimage. What I am doing with this is writing an autoethnography exploring how the landscapes of the pilgrimage impact the experiences of the pilgrim, in this case, myself. An autoethnography, is essentially a detailed analysis of your own experiences as a member of a culture. The culture here is that of pilgrims on the Camino, and I was a member of that culture, as soon as I set one foot in front of the other headed down that well worn trail. For my research I kept a daily journal wherein I talked about the landscape I had walked through each day, and what kinds of experiences I had during that day. At this moment, I am engaged in writing out all of these experiences in a more engaging and detailed form to be included in my thesis. A word, and a concept, that has come up several times in my journal that is making its way into my thesis is "Synchronicity". Synchronicity is the idea that "coincidences" are not random, but in fact meaningful. While the idea has come up often in my life and I use the term on occasion, I don't actually have any philosophical grounding for understanding it or talking about it, but I have been aware that I'll need to have one if I'm going to talk about it in my thesis.
This morning I awoke, as I often do, from a dream that I don't really remember and it's not really important. After making myself an americano, I sat down to check my email. Somewhere in the course of checking email I came across a link to a very odd video. In this video, an interview as it turned out, an English rock band by the name of Turbowolf was inquiring into some of the mysteries of the universe with a notable paranormal author. I was listening to this in the background as I went about doing other things but one sequence caught my ear. The author was speaking about the afterlife-obsessed ancient Egyptians and suggesting that the Great Pyramid at Giza was not, as it commonly believed, a tomb but rather an elaborate three dimensional model of their cultural beliefs about the journey into the afterlife. A training arena for the eventual death and associated journey into the afterlife which the Egyptians believed should be something you prepared for in life.
This concept suddenly brought to mind in me the idea that perhaps our dreams are something similar. Dreams, are replete with symbolism (archetypes if you will), and the thought occurred to me that having dreams and trying to decode and understand them, is a kind of training in communicating through symbolism. Symbolism being a far more "universal" language than say English, or Coptic. Once we have an understanding of the language of symbols we can communicate with our subconscious, or perhaps our subconscious can communicate with us... For convenience sake "us" here refers to our conscious self. If your think about it, a journey into the subconscious is an awful lot like a journey into the underworld (semantic metaphors aside). Stories of psychoanalysis and intensive meditation will attest that this journey is no less difficult or dangerous than a journey into a mythological (or real) underworld.
Following this morning coffee theorizing session I tried to go about my work day as usual: walk the dog, meditate to clear my mind, sit in front of the computer and attempt to write my seemingly unending and now dreaded "chapter 4"... Naturally my efforts to focus and "get work done" were largely unsuccessful.
Later in the day my father calls. He really wants everyone to see the movie "Pina", I've seen it! So we talk about that a bit. Somehow or other the conversation comes around (unprompted mind you) to Carl Jung, which I find pretty interesting given my morning, and I might go so far as to call is a minor episode of Synchronicity. We have a pretty interesting conversation about symbols for a little while and eventually I have to go because (interestingly enough) I had already made plans to go see a different movie, "A Dangerous Method", about (you guessed it) Carl Jung, and Sigmund Freud. The movie makes several mentions of Jung's theories about "coincidence", though they don't explicitly use the word "synchronicty", it is heavily implied.
But there's more. As I'm thinking about synchronicity and walking out the door to go home I decide to go into the bookstore instead and maybe check out some Jung, whom I have never actually read, because remember I still need that philosophical grounding for my thesis. I head resolutely toward where I assume the psychology section would be (near Religion and Occult) and sure enough there it is. As I let my eyes roll over the books they come to rest first upon a book by none other than our C.G. Jung. Of course. But wouldn't you know it? The title of the book is quite simply "Synchronicity".
Coincidence?
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