We live in a symbolic matrix.
I am developing a taxonomy for coincidences. Early botanists noticed similarities and differences among plants and categorized them; I’ve noticed similarities and differences among and between the coincidental flora in the forest of daily life.
To develop a scale for coincidence sensitivity, I asked participants to rate the frequency of common coincidences. The list of common coincidences was gleaned from a much longer group of possibilities. The result was the Weird Coincidence Survey. The 12 items of the WCS can be found here. You can take the survey to see how sensitive to coincidences you are.
From 1,551 respondents to the WCS, the most common coincidences were:
I think of a question only to have it answered by an external source (i.e. radio, TV, or other people) before I can ask it.
I think of an idea and hear or see it on the radio, TV, or Internet.
I think of calling someone, only to have that person unexpectedly call me.
I advance in my work/career/education by being in the right place at the right time.
Most intriguing to me are the connections to our media. Are we becoming nodes in the vast internet connectivity? I explore this idea in this blog post.
Ray Grasse has a grander view. He starts with synchronicity and then expands to the symbols all around us. He notices what happens at the beginning of a process. One of his examples involves two people meeting for the first time and a car exploding outside as they talk. Foreboding for the relationship! And it was. The relationship did not go well. Grasse quotes Emerson: "The whole world is an omen and a sign. Why look so wistfully in a corner? The voice of divination resounds everywhere and runs to waste unheard, unregarded, as the mountains echo with the bleatings of cattle.” (The Waking Dream, p.251)
You see a car on fire, a knife injures your foot, you have an argument with your spouse and Mars is in transit. Each of these has in common a force of some kind. To hear Ray talk about the expansion of symbol awareness in daily life please click here.
Reference: Grasse, Ray. The Waking Dream (1996): Unlocking the symbolic language of our lives. Quest Books. Wheaton, Ilinois, USA.
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