Coincidences and Synchronicities

[jingofever]

From here:

thank ford.

I had just opened up the 'Brave New World' Wikipedia entry before opening up that thread in another tab. In fact, I believe barracuda and I had Brave New World on the mind at the exact same time. This means something people. Short Ford stock now.

[TheDuke]

A couple of years ago I sharing an apt. with a friend here in Bangkok. TV was satellite channels, about 70 of them, with only a handful being in English. The English movie channel seemed to broadcast dvd's day and night. So usually the movies were pretty new, but quiet often after my friend and I had discussed an old movie, it would come on the next day. It became so common that sometimes we'd switch on the channel and just start laughing cause the film that had been playing we had discussed that morning or the day before.

The other strange thing about that channel was they used to play this trailer for Titanic 2 where Leo's character had been found floating in a block of ice 90 years later and thawed out and now had to cope with this modern world.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vD4OnHCRd_4&feature=fvst

[Joe Hillshoist]

I get that with the Simpsons sometimes, Duke. Usually if for some reason I think of that show, then usually what I'm thinking or talking about is on it within 2 days. I'm not the only one to notice either.

[82_28]

A couple of years ago I sharing an apt. with a friend here in Bangkok. TV was satellite channels, about 70 of them, with only a handful being in English. The English movie channel seemed to broadcast dvd's day and night. So usually the movies were pretty new, but quiet often after my friend and I had discussed an old movie, it would come on the next day. It became so common that sometimes we'd switch on the channel and just start laughing cause the film that had been playing we had discussed that morning or the day before.

The other strange thing about that channel was they used to play this trailer for Titanic 2 where Leo's character had been found floating in a block of ice 90 years later and thawed out and now had to cope with this modern world.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vD4OnHCRd_4&feature=fvst

OMFG. That is PKDickian creepy. What you had to say Duke and the video link. Just amazing.

[Nordic]

A couple of years ago I sharing an apt. with a friend here in Bangkok. TV was satellite channels, about 70 of them, with only a handful being in English. The English movie channel seemed to broadcast dvd's day and night. So usually the movies were pretty new, but quiet often after my friend and I had discussed an old movie, it would come on the next day. It became so common that sometimes we'd switch on the channel and just start laughing cause the film that had been playing we had discussed that morning or the day before.

Like a psychic version of "pay per view".

A friend of mine, who has become ridiculously successful in Hollywood, told me a few years back that he'd figured out how to harness this type of thing, and he mentioned in passing one day that conjuring up success was like "ordering a pizza".

[Luther Blissett]

A friend of mine, who has become ridiculously successful in Hollywood, told me a few years back that he'd figured out how to harness this type of thing, and he mentioned in passing one day that conjuring up success was like "ordering a pizza".

I'd be worried that this might actually be "The Secret." Though he probably because successful due to his talents, connection, and maybe a little luck.

[Nordic]

A friend of mine, who has become ridiculously successful in Hollywood, told me a few years back that he'd figured out how to harness this type of thing, and he mentioned in passing one day that conjuring up success was like "ordering a pizza".

I'd be worried that this might actually be "The Secret." Though he probably because successful due to his talents, connection, and maybe a little luck.

He certainly is lucky, and has a gift for becoming connected.

But maybe it is "The Secret". I don't know. He was really into The Forum and a whole host of other things. There's also this odd strain of faux Buddhism here where people "chant" for stuff. They chant for money, for a new car, they say you can chant for anything. I don't think he's into that, but in LA there's just a whole world of this kind of stuff.

[82_28]

I've been having dreams with proper nouns being used in them that upon waking up I promptly google the words and each time google gets something right on the first hit. Don't worry, it's only been two. So far. . .

First is this dream I had a week ago or so, where I was at some house cleaning party for some guy an ex-girlfriend knew who was away in Asia filming a movie. Lots of details, so I'll try and cut to the chase. Everybody was basically chilling at this great big house out in the woods, out on the lawn, drinking beer, bbqing -- it was nighttime. I was cruising through the house looking for my "current" as in real-time girlfriend, and I found her doing all the work to clean this place. Everybody else was just partying. I told her I'd help her in a sec, but would go down, get a beer, hang out a bit and would be right back. As I'm going down a staircase to the yard I realize my ex-girlfriend (who put the two year depression on me) is behind me as I'm going down the stairs. I didn't want to talk to her, but figured I might as well tell her now how she made me somewhat suicidal for two years by dumping me while I was within an equally as harrowing time. I started to cry. I couldn't get out any words. She lost interest in my crying and moved on and began hanging out with the rest of the people. So, I thought I would go hang out and just make it look like I was cool with the situation of being around a lot of people and having a very emotional time.

Suddenly I find myself alone sitting next to a fence drinking a beer and I notice these four guys at a picnic table, all of them staring at me. My ex to the right was getting hit on by all kinds of guys but I didn't care. I was more worried about my girlfriend as of now, doing all the work inside this house. Anyhow, I look over at the guys and one of them makes this kind of boxing, punching move to me. I get up and walk over and ask what the fuck these guy's problem with me was. They tell me that "Wexley" is waiting for me and if I go into the house he's going to kick my ass, kill me, whatever. I ask who Wexley was. I didn't know anybody's names there. Apparently Wexley was pissed that I had even had a relationship with this ex of mine at all.

So I say "fuck this shit" I'm going to confront him. I go in and all these guys are looking at me intimidatingly along the hallways and stuff and it is somehow brought to my attention that Wexley is in this bathroom. I open the door, he happens to just be coming out and I push him saying just to leave me alone. That's when I wake up. I've never had a violent dream and have never been in a fight.

So. . .

I've woken up now (out of dream), I decide to google Wexley and find on the first hit that it's this media/ad company based here in Seattle. Consciously I'd never heard of it ever before. I've just never had a pronoun be so memorable out of a dream.

http://www.wexley.com/

I begin to wonder, is this a time where I should be looking for a "career" change? Because I would be damned good at what they do.

SOOOOO. . .

Last night I have this dream where I am trying to sell these amplifiers to some guy at a music store. I am not remotely involved or employed by anything within the music industry. The amps were all displayed around the floor of some music store. No big deal. I wake up. Have a smoke etc and not thinking anything of it.

I fall back asleep. I then dream of myself being taken to piano lessons somewhere called "Laney school". We can't find it. I'm in an area of downtown Seattle that supposedly the address is the place where it is. We pull over to ask where Laney School is and some guy tells us it's way up north. I wake up. Now I google Laney. And lo and behold, it's a guitar amplifier company out of the UK. First hit on google! (Keep in mind, my amplifier dream came before the Laney and I have never consciously heard of Laney prior to this).

SOOOOO. . .

Last night, last night we go to some art show of one of my GF's friends and it is in the exact same spot I asked for directions to the "Laney School". This part isn't a dream BTW. There is a dude that is running the gallery, he has all kinds of amps set up next to a wall with a guitar (sorry, they weren't Laney amps! That would have been cool). But for some reason I know this guy. I've never met him before. I ask him if he knows two other friends of mine who he happens to do business with. He says "oh yeah!", he knew them, even gave me their last name. But I knew it was him, before even knowing him! I asked for directions the night before roughly right in front of his gallery! WTF?

So after that I had to "WHOA" a whole bunch and listen to my girlfriend tell me that "you're probably just noticing stuff in your subconscious without knowing it." WELL FUCK YEAH, I seem to be noticing something -- thanks girlfriend.

Anyhow, I hope you all believe me. I'm dead serious, the above is true. I'm really trying to figure it out right now. All this happened as of a week ago and on up to now.

[AlicetheKurious]

Many years ago, I left the American University in Cairo, where I'd studied for a couple of years, and transferred to a university in Canada. In Canada I became very close with this girl, Mimi. One day, I'd been over to Mimi's place for dinner and was waiting at a bus stop to go home when I saw Mimi coming after me with something I'd forgotten. As I watched her walk towards me, I turned to another friend and said, "You wanna know something strange? Mimi reminds me of a good friend I had in Cairo, an American girl called Kate." When Mimi reached us, I told her the same thing, but this time I mentioned Kate's last name. Mimi freaked and said, "Kate XXX? My God, we grew up next door to each other -- I haven't seen her in years, but we were like sisters!" She described her perfectly and everything. I hadn't even known that Mimi was American! I'd assumed she grew up in Canada.

[82_28]

Oh here's a couple other things.

The OP, which I started, began with one of the friends who knew the gallery guy.

AND

I just now realized, that when I went outside of the gallery to have a smoke, I walked around the corner and some douche was yelling at me to come into his bar. I said why not as I didn't want to be in that stuffy gallery anyhow. I go in to get a beer. And I quickly realize that it is some new "dueling piano bar" that I guess has just opened up called "88 keys". There was nobody in there! Nobody. I quickly had a beer and got back to the party. I just put the piano lessons and amp dreams together with what happened the day after with the gallery dude and the piano bar.

This is an area of town I maybe go to once or twice a year too btw. It isn't on my regular rounds.

[Luther Blissett]

This one is a little embarrassing, but I'll still tell it in a more honest way than I've told people I know. This coincidence is more a by-product of my weirdo, high volume memory than anything else.

Okay so back in like '91 or '92, when I was 11 or 12, I was on vacation in the Outer Banks, in North Carolina. A cousin, an aunt, one of my parents and I went to an outdoor water park a good distance south along the islands from where we were staying. This was quite a long excursion as there was a place to eat and quite a few things to do at the park; I'd say maybe 6 hours or so were spent there. Shortly after getting there I notice a girl. She had a very unique look, almost as tall as I was (tall enough to make me think she was a year or two older than me), freckles, green eyes, olive complexion, and very odd hair - short black ringlets that looked as though their natural color might have been red - perhaps it was the water making red hair look dark, but still, she was unmistakably odd-looking and, I thought, very beautiful. We made eye contact a few times and I thought she smiled at me, but being 11 or 12, there was no way I was going to go up and talk to a strange girl out of the blue for another many years. She certainly wasn't the first member of the opposite sex that I was attracted to, nor the "most beautiful" or anything like that, but something about her made me remember her for the next couple of years. Perhaps it was due to the time-honored tradition of young adolescent males, returning from family vacations, being quizzed by their buddies about all the girls they met or saw on their trips - as I remember telling my best friend, "no, I didn't meet any girls, but there was this one girl that I saw…"

Fast forward about 17 years. I'm in Omaha Nebraska on a retreat for board members of local chapters of my professional association. I'm with three other Philadelphians and we're making friends with people from many other chapters across the country. I fall in quickly with a group from another city. I don't remember the details of how or why but I know they invited me out to lunch with them one of the days. In an unrelated synchronicity, one of the girls in that group happened to go to high school with my ex-wife. And this was not a very nearby city.

So after making the acquaintance of this group, they introduce me to the rest of their board that had come along for the trip to Omaha. All of a sudden, I'm facing a very striking, green-eyed, curly-haired, and (for lack of a proper term) well-built female. I thought that a lot of women at the retreat were attractive but for some reason this one was hitting me for a different reason. I'll call her Alexis. It takes a few days and a few collective hours of socializing with her and her chapter for me to recall the unique-looking girl that I had seen and had a crush on as a kid for a single day in North Carolina. It HAD to have been her. Her hair was just a slightly more tamed ringlet-style and a really bizarre, indescribably red-black color. So I come up with a plan (because there's no way that I could reveal that this was just someone I had SEEN once that long ago). The next time I'm hanging out with their chapter, I bring up the topic of vacations, about a made-up vacation to their city and then somehow segue into an anecdote about a vacation in the Outer Banks. I notice Alexis perk up and share some of her own stories about the Outer Banks. We talk about it and I learn that she vacationed there every summer as I did. I felt as though that was verification enough for me to know that, in Omaha in 2008 of all times and places, I had somehow met the same strange-looking and beautiful girl I had once made eyes with 17 years before in a faraway state.

There was no way that I would have brought up or admitted the whole thing because I fully acknowledge that it would seem crazy and creepy, despite it being a natural, real, human thing that happened to me that I couldn't exactly "help" from happening. it made me feel insane but somehow happy for the rest of that trip. There's some lesson about humanity and beauty in there but I don't know what it is.

[Mx32]

"but quiet often after my friend and I had discussed an old movie, it would come on the next day."

My mum and I get that thing with films every few months so maybe it's a fairly common phenomenon? - we'll spontaneously talk about film X the TV guide comes out on Saturday and there's film X scheduled in the week. So it's like: "You'll never believe what's on Tuesday night" "What?" "Film X"

[Mx32]

BTW,

I'd be interested to see if anyone randomly stumbles across any mentions of Jung pretty soon after reading this thread - happens to me that I'll get "hits" on Jung in the real world after a period of thinking about synchronicities.

[82_28]

That's a great story, Mr. Blisset. Thanks for sharing it.

[IanEye]

Note: The following is a recollection of events from my past. I have enjoyed many of the accounts on this thread and wanted to offer my own, as this was a fairly synchronous time in my life. I have tried to write these events down as accurately as possible but it was over 15 years ago so I may have forgotten or altered some things without meaning to. I did change all of the names, and obviously any dialogue is paraphrased from memory. I like music and tend to think/process in a musical fashion, so I revisited some of the music I was listening to back then to help me get my head back in that timeframe. It helped me to write this so I thought I would include the youtube links. The imagery of the videos certainly has no bearing on the story, but the music may be nice for those readers who are the same age as me. Thanks for reading.

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Shortly after Thanksgiving in 1993 I was venting at the Entropy Ranch about the rut my life seemed to be in.  I had graduated from UMass Amherst a couple of years before with a degree in Theater, only to decide I didn’t want to be in front of a camera and couldn’t make a go of lighting design either, because I hated drafting and was afraid of heights.


So, I did what people with Bachelor’s degrees often do, I moved back in with my parents.  This was a significant regression in many respects, but I did manage to land a job assisting with ‘art therapy’ classes at the local psych ward.  I knew absolutely nothing about psychology, but I had spent the previous four years studying people’s behavior from a dramatic perspective and this allowed me to soak up various patient’s neuroses like a sponge.


I also started checking out video cameras from the local cable access station and experimenting with those.  It was fun to take what I had learned about creating rather fleeting imagery from the stage and capturing it on a more permanent medium.


But other than those two aspects of this time, moving back in with my parents seemed lame.  I tried to avoid this conclusion by pretending I had never graduated.  After work I would drive back to Amherst and hang out with all of my college friends, most of whom had moved out of the dorms and into the Entropy Ranch.  I would take various drugs, flirt with people, take out my video camera at inopportune times and film people, and make a general nuisance of myself.  Then, at dawn, with the dregs of whatever chemicals I had intoxicated myself with draining out of my system, I would head back to my job at the psych ward and finger paint. All too quickly, the years were slipping by.


So there I was at the Entropy Ranch complaining about how tough my life was when Joe somewhat reluctantly told me about a way out of my predicament.  “Well, if you are willing to live with a schizophrenic I heard about a gig that lets you live rent free, you even get some sort of a monthly stipend.  You just have to go to some sort of meeting once a week.  But you probably don’t want to live with an insane person.”  I had been dealing with insanity at my job for the past two years, and the rent free angle was intriguing, so I asked Joe for a contact number.


And that is how I found out about the Wind Horse Program.


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After calling the number that Joe provided me I spoke with a woman from Wind Horse who explained the position they were interviewing for. The position was literally called "housemate". My role was to be the roommate of a person with schizophrenia. I would live rent free in an apartment and was required to go to a 'team meeting' once a week for which I would receive a monthly stipend of $250 dollars. "Otherwise you would treat this like any other roommate situation" she said, "the goal is to be as real as possible for the patient." She said that even though this wasn't a typical job that she would appreciate a current resume from me, so the next day I mailed one out to her.

I didn't hear anything from Wind Horse for about a week, and then I got a phone call from the same woman. "We are very interested in you for this position' she said, "But it turns out you have a close family connection with the patient, so we need to double check with the patient's parents to see if this is a problem for them, or a source of conflict. We'll be in touch."

I got a call the next day to come in for an interview at their office in Northampton. I met the woman who I had spoken with on the phone, but only briefly as she said the interview would be conducted by the Doctor in charge of this particular patient's program. She led me down the hall to the Doctor's office and wished me good luck.

"Ian, I should get this out of the way before we start the interview" the Doctor said, "you probably don't remember me but you actually went to elementary school with my daughter, Rita." I did remember Rita, she was a cool kid. We hadn't been friends per se, but were friendly. I had a vague flash of the Doctor attending a school play when I was in 5th grade. "Ok, cool" I said, "tell Rita I said hello."

The Doctor went over the basic approach of Wind Horse in dealing with schizophrenic patients and then got more into the specifics of the patient's case. It was at this point that I learned the patient's name was Tom. I listened carefully to the Doctor as he detailed what responsibilities I would have and what was expected of me, eventually he asked if i had any questions.

"I do have one question."

"Yes?"

"I was told before on the phone that my parents knew Tom's parents. But I don't know anyone named Tom, so I am curious as to what is the connection."

The Doctor laughed. "Ah, that was interesting. Both of your mothers served on the same planning board at one point or another. But Tom's parents don't have a problem with this, in fact it makes it seem more real."

I couldn't help but think of that line from the Firesign Theatre, "What is Reality?" but I kept that thought to myself.

I thought the interview was over and then the Doctor asked if I wanted to see the apartment that had been chosen. This was a good point that hadn't even occurred to me. What if the living quarters sucked? So I said sure. We drove over in the Doctor's car and on the way made informal small talk. He got me up to speed on what Rita was up to, talked about the weather. I wasn't really paying attention to where we were going except that we were heading away from the center of Northampton and towards Florence.

When he pulled up to the house where the apartment was I had to bite my tongue to keep from laughing. I knew this apartment. I had been there several times because Suzanne, a woman I knew from UMass used to live there and we would often end up here because we both wanted to have sex. The Doctor led me around the now vacant apartment. I pretended to pay attention as he introduced me to rooms i already knew, only pausing to ask him if Tom had picked out a room here yet. He said he didn't think so.

I made a quick mental calculation.

*
. I was made aware of this job from a friend from UMass.

. The parents of the person I would be sharing the apartment with were at the very least friendly acquaintances with my parents.

. The Doctor who would be overseeing this treatment had a daughter I went to elementary school with.

. The actual apartment location was one I was intimately familiar with.
*

I parted company with the Doctor knowing I had the gig as Tom's housemate. How could I not?

When the Doctor called me a few hours later to tell me I had the job it seemed like a formality.


And that is how I became a participant in the Wind Horse Program.

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In short order I quit my job at the psych ward, told my parents I was moving out, sold my car and bought my own video camera. In less than a months time, all of my issues with my current way of life seemed to be solved by this Wind Horse thing. Then, sometime after Christmas but before New Years, the Doctor called to tell me there had been a setback, Tom was having anxiety about the whole thing and he wouldn't be moving in on January 2nd as planned. I kind of freaked out and told him I had already quit my job in preparation for the move to Northampton, but he put me at ease and said everything on my end was safe. "Whether it takes Tom three weeks to change his mind or three months, we will go ahead with the plan in some fashion."

So, I moved in on January 2nd and has the whole place to myself for a month. I spent the month roaming around the Northampton/Florence area on foot, sort of rediscovering my past as I headed into the future. My father had owned a store on West Street in Northampton in the 70's and I spent a lot of time at the Forbes library and the Smith College campus as a youth. It was fun to walk out of my new apartment (which was really half of a house) and head into the woods and then find a random snowy path, follow it and find myself at the waterfall by the greenhouse at Smith College. As I left the frigid temperature of January to enter the humid jungle of the greenhouse I thought to myself that I really did feel like I was stepping out of time. It was like I was that kid from the 70's again, only I didn't have to live with my parents anymore. The best of both worlds! And Wind Horse had already paid me a stipend to live with a guy who I didn't even actually have to live with yet. Crazy.

That whole month I felt more creative than I had in years. Someone on my street was throwing out a whole box of National Geographic magazines, so I took them back to the house and would spend hours making collages on big pieces of poster board, mixing the imagery from the National Geographic magazines with other images from magazines like Penthouse and Hustler, getting high off the fumes from the rubber cement. I must have made about 15 or so of these collages. I kept the one I liked the best and would just go around Northampton and leave the remaining collages in random places like The Haymarket. I was into that Re-Search book "Pranks!" at the time and thought this was really funny. I didn't even invite any of my friends over that month. I was happy to just stay inside my head.

When February came the Doctor let me know that Tom was moving in now and I helped him move his stuff in. It was a little awkward at first, because I didn't really know Tom and vice-versa but at first the schizo thing didn't seem readily apparent to me. But then I got into a car with Tom when he was driving. I only did that once. So, the once a week meetings were no big deal. They usually went like this:

DOCTOR: So, how was last week?

ME: ok I guess. Tom and I agreed that we would alternate washing the dishes every day to keep the kitchen clean.

DOCTOR: Great! How is that going?

ME: Tom never washes the dishes.

DOCTOR: Oh. Tom, what are your thoughts on this?

TOM: (shrugs)

DOCTOR Ok! See you next week!

Over time, getting to know Tom it seemed like he only took in about 60% of what was actually going on around him. I'd come home to find a pot of beans completely boiled down and smoking because he had just walked out of the house for some reason. He'd come back hours later with a sandwich. But I could never tell if this seeming lack of awareness was the base level of his schizophrenia or just the amount of medication he was on. Tom was a really good guitar player, much better than I was, and I was able to bond with him the best when I would just jam on tunes with him. After we were through playing Tom seemed much more 'there' and I always tried to mention this in the weekly meetings.

I guess it was some time in April or May at one of the weekly meetings that I had a strange epiphany. I was sitting there with the group as we each went over the week's event and our personal encounters with Tom and I was thinking he seemed really out of it that day, like he couldn't even remember who any of us were or what our 'roles' were, but at the same time he didn't seem to mind the reality of that situation. It was about my turn to speak when all of a sudden a thought hit me very hard.

I had sort of flashed back to when I was first offered the job and all of the odd synchronicity surrounding me getting the job, when a calm voice inside my head said to me. "Ian, what if you are a schizophrenic? What if you are just as unaware of your true 'role' in the group as Tom is? What if the reality of this play is that your roles are equal and you don't take in anymore of the actual world than Tom does? How would you know, Ian? His parents wanted him out of the house, maybe your parents did the same thing."

This voice completely freaked me out! It made perfect sense. I looked at all of the other people in the support team. When they came to pick up Tom to go grocery shopping once a week, didn't I usually go with them? Tom was always given walking around money, was that what my 'stipend' for living there really was?

When it was my time to speak, I couldn't say anything. I said I wasn't feeling well, excused myself and left the Wind Horse headquarters. I walked around Northampton in a daze. All of a sudden the town looked very odd to me. I got on a bus to Amherst to go to the Entropy Ranch. Once I got there I told my friends I was freaking out and told them about my epiphany. Joe just laughed at me and said, "Curses! You've figured it out!". I felt better after several bong hits and a few pints of stout.

Ultimately I left the living situation in September to start Grad school in Boston, but for those remaining months it never felt the same and it wasn't until I was actually in Boston enrolled in classes and into a new phase of my life that I felt "normal" again. I half expected my parents to drive me to a high security mental facility as much as I expected to arrive at grad school orientation.


And that was my experience with the Wind Horse Program.

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Windhorse has been developing its innovative approach to recovery from psychiatric distress since 1981.
The first Windhorse center was established in Boulder, Colorado by Naropa Institute faculty members Jeff and Molly Fortuna and Dr. Edward Podvoll, a psychiatrist and author of the book Recovering Sanity .