Synchronicity is the experience of two or more events that are apparently causally unrelated
or unlikely to occur together by chance, yet are experienced as occurring together
in a meaningful manner. ~ Wikipedia
GROUND: beauty we plan / make / see / choose
LIGHT: beauty that comes unexpectedly / unbidden
A couple of weeks ago – for no reason I could identify at the time – I remembered a book I had read in the mid-1980s. I couldn’t remember the name of it but it wasn’t hard to find when I googled the subject matter: above ground nuclear testing in the US in the 1950s and 1960s. I ordered a used copy of Under the Cloud on Amazon. When it arrived, I began by reading the prologue. It was not an easy read as it was about enlisted men (called volunteers) who were at a test site and experienced the detonation close up with only a helmet and gas mask as protection. Later that same day I was scrolling Facebook. I saw that a friend had posted an article from last week’s The Atlantic magazine: “Atomic Veterans Were Silenced for 50 Years. Now, They’re Talking.” It includes a poignant video interviewing a few of the men who experienced and lived through nuclear testing. Also not an easy watch.
Seriously, I had not consciously thought about above ground nuclear testing in the US, the cost to the humans who participated, or the resulting fallout across the country in years, perhaps even decades. And now, in one day, it hits me in the face twice. Uncanny! So now I’m thinking, “Is this what I am supposed to write about for next week’s email?” It does fit the first principle of aligning with what’s currently showing up in my field. But it does not fit the second principle of serving to lift our vibration. What to do? Then I realized, well of course! Deeper in my consciousness than the surface events of a book and a magazine article is the process of how they came to me at the same time and, thus, captured my attention: synchronicity.
Synchronicity is a recognition of our interconnectedness – like the interconnectedness of trees. A forest of Aspen or Redwoods looks like independent trees above ground but is, in fact, all one organism underground. Said another way, the synchronicity we recognize is just a very small tip of a vast wholeness – like a iceberg where 90% is under water. Interestingly, both of these examples evoke images of what is unseen, unconscious, unknown, unrecognized. So much of life IS unseen, unconscious, unknown, unrecognized. And who knows? If we could see all of those hidden connections, we might be even more overwhelmed than we already are by the sublime music, myriad miracles, and blessed mystery of life on earth. Personally, I find my experiences of synchronicity to be reassuring and awe-inspiring as indicators of the true nature of reality.
Ruminating on why I read Under the Cloud in the first place I see that it’s because the bomb is my older sibling. Its birth into the world was almost exactly a year before mine. For decades we lived together as constant companions in my home, my family, my school, my larger community, my world. For example, I remember Civil Defense drills in the school hallways and Duck and Cover under our desks during 3rd grade. I also remember being home alone during the Cuban Missile Crisis when I was in high school. Sirens went off. I hid under our dining room table. Today, however, it’s clear that I will not read beyond the prologue of the book. It has served its purpose.
~ More to come on experiences with synchronicity. ~
About the Stones
This necklace is part of the Music of the Spheres (Planets) collection. It is named MindsTones. It doesn’t have a usual story per se. Rather, it has a series of attributes. One of them is “Mystery – universal energy of the unknown, more than we can grasp, vastness, perfection, benevolence, synchronicity….”
Read more about MindsTones. It is made entirely of Bali Silver. It was designed in 2005.