Each one of these posts is an anecdote/commentary of synchronicity, kindly sent into the centre.

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NEXUS -Ryan Madej

There are no coincidences in the world of synchronicity, only the path of personal revelation and insight if one is willing to follow its thread. Even the timing of this essay is a synchronicity in itself, as I begin work on my next book that deals in large part with my own deep experiences with synchro-mystical happenings For two years—from roughly 2006 through 2007—I experienced what I’ve come to call The Nexus (1). A daily storm of synchronicities so strong that there were several points that I began to question my own sanity and why this was happening to me. At the same time, I’ve never been a stranger to unusual occurrences. Several times in my youth I was privy to the presence of what could be called ‘apparitions’ or ‘ghosts’. On top of that, a myriad of other psychic or for lack of a better term, supernatural, occurrences began to shape my personality. Philosophy, science, and mysticism blending together lead of course to my interests in the esoteric arts and the symbolic nature of reality and the world of synchronicity itself. Jung defined synchronicity as ‘meaningful coincidences’, which in this Age of the Algorithm has become clouded due to our footprint on social media and the ever increasing stealing of our data where we ‘see’ coincidences happen more and more bubbling out of the electronic aether; true synchronicity bubbles out of the quantum foam itself. A legitimate synchro-mystic event reaches deeper into one’s psyche, where the symbol, event, person, number has an acausal connection and offers a ‘meaningful’ insight into one’s interpretation of reality.

An example I can offer from my own experience during the Nexus was about cranes. I’ve always had a penchant for birds, and cranes with their grace and beauty are one of my favourites. During an intense day of synchronicities I was walking through the downtown library and into the basement level which had a connection to the train I was going to catch. As I walked through the annex I saw dozens of paper cranes suspended from string that were done by school children for a project. Seeing the cranes took my memory to one of my favourite movies of all time, Blade Runner where the character Officer Gaff makes origami art and in one instance makes a paper crane. Fast forward to the evening of same day where I was planning to watch for the first time John Woo’s classic action movie, Hardboiled. About halfway through the film, there is a scene on a houseboat where Tony Leung’s character lives and one can only guess what was suspended from the ceiling in mass quantity: paper cranes. So what does this all mean in the greater scheme of one’s own existence? As an esotericist, I find it helpful to trace the symbolism of synchronicity in order to garner insight. In Celtic lore, the crane is viewed as a symbol of secret knowledge(2), or spiritual guidance, whereas in Asian cultures it holds high esteem as a creature of wisdom and peace. As Jung said in his long essay on synchroncity (in reference to one of his patients),‘this experience punctured the desired hold in her rationalism and broke the ice of her intellectual resistance’(3). In many ways, I feel that intense experiences of synchronicity is a sign of the mystical path, as sages, saints and shamans alike throughout history have been privy to these events along their path. What Jung is asking of us in our confrontation with synchronicity is to open up our intuitive minds rather than the rational, for the simple reason that these meaningful coincidences don’t appear from what is considered ‘rational’. It’s perhaps no coincidence then that Wolfgang Pauli, the Nobel Prize winning physicist helped Jung in developing this theory along the lines of science.

Rationalism and intuition are two parts of the same whole; our feelings and hunches tell us that strange happenings are afoot behind the fabric of existence, while our rational, logical minds will reveal the evidence to us through signs and symbols. Perhaps then its our duty as humans to follow the thread that synchronicity has laid out for us, for this path leads into the realms of the Unknown.

1 First discussed briefly in my book, The Marble Corridor (2020), and will subsequently be expanded upon in my next book, Triads (Anima).

2 During the writing of this piece, I was privy to a strange Inception like dream where I was told to find a ring in the Ninth Realm, which after some diligent research directed me to the World Tree of Norse mythology and the underworld beneath its roots.

3 Jung, Synchronicity: an acausal connecting principle, Collected Works Volume 8, paragraph 982