Synchronicity
The Oxford dictionary describes “synchronicity” as “the simultaneous occurrence of events which appear significantly related but have no discernible causal connection.”
Wikipedia has a longer definition: “Synchronicity (German: Synchronizität) is a concept first introduced by analytical psychologist Carl G. Jung “to describe circumstances that appear meaningfully related yet lack a causal connection.”[1] In contemporary research, synchronicity experiences refer to one’s subjective experience whereby coincidences between events in one’s mind and the outside world may be causally unrelated to each other yet have some other unknown connection.[2] Jung held that this was a healthy, even necessary, function of the human mind that can become harmful within psychosis.[3]“
As a Bipolar 1 woman who was not diagnosed, let alone medicated, until I was 28 years old, my life was full of synchronicity. I was working as a clerk in Columbia University libraries, cataloging art books. My family did not “believe” in psychiatry nor in mental illness. I kept everything secret from them until I could no longer, when I had my breakdown at age 28. At that point I went for emergency care to the Columbia Counseling Service and was told to stay with my family for a week or go to hospital. I was lucky enough to be able to go to my parents for a week . I had begun therapy with the psychiatrist I would wind up staying with until age 74. But at the time I was all alone. I had a best friend from grammar school who was living in France at this time. She and I corresponded every week. We remained close until she died at age 39. I had a few friends at work, but I lived alone and was isolated. And I became psychotic at times. Synchronicity ruled my life. Parts of a song on the radio, or a program on the TV, a man singing in the street… they all had special messages for me. I thought of people in the street as “teachers” for me to learn from and the people who worked with me, as “mystics,” who understood me, and who were trying to train me.
It was exhilarating when the teachers were happy with my progress but terribly depressing when I did wrong. There were “signs” for me to interpret all over the place. And at work, I regarded every book I catalogued as something that held secrets to help me get mentally well or learn truths about life. I would do my job faithfully, most of the time, but while doing it, I was on the constant look-out for special messages meant for me. I did what I called “readings”. I would find some lesson in each book. One book I was working on held a special secret about the womb and the egg and the sperm uniting and becoming a zygote. I pictured the uniting of the egg and the sperm as fireworks. (Thirty years later, saner and married and actively creating art, and, writing a newspaper column upstate on the side, I created an abstract photograph called “Conception”.) But in the library, I did what I called “time travels.” I didn’t talk to people much during this period. I listened to co-workers and street people, read extensively and deciphered messages. People would come up to me at work to actually talk to me sometimes, to be nice, I guess, and I would leave the world of the womb, and zygotes or some such thing, and talk to them normally as if I were in their world. I was not!!
In other words, to put it in professional terms, I was WACKO!
That is all behind me now and fortunately, though I have had some hard times, but they have occurred within the realm of a marriage, to be 35 years long this May. It has offered me the only stability and deep love in my life. Gone is the world of readings and messages. Gone is the synchronicity. Sometimes I miss it but not the craziness that went with it. Now I have more meaningful, everyday experiences of sanity. There are still some epiphanies, but not like the old days.
Before I close I must add, there was at least one incident that was truly synchronicity… that was not delusional… that felt distinctly like a message from God, the Universe. I was working at my desk and suddenly my scalp felt prickles all over it. I grew alarmed and so decided to go to the reference room for one of my “readings.” Clearly this warranted research. I went to the Reference Room of the library and found a one volume encyclopedia which I pulled off the shelf. In order for the reading to give answers impartially, I had to open it at random and then put my finger on the page. So that’s what I did whilst my scalp prickled. My finger pointed to a picture. It was a print of Christ with a crown of thorns. I was stunned. I felt like it was a message from God. And to this day I think it was. It was a message of hope and love.
Yesterday I wrote to a fellow blogger, Anneta Pinto-Young, at Devotionalinspirations.com, who is a Social Worker and a Christian Minister and recounted this story briefly in response to her post on coincidences in her series on “Hearing God Speak.” She told me something very wise. She said that religion and science have always clashed over these type of things. Sure, I was delusional for much of the time, but I did have occasional experiences like this one. And, she said, that was God sending me a message of his love and encouragement. I felt that then and I feel it today.
Maybe I don’t need the secret messages any more. God’s word comes through friends now and most definitely through my long-suffering husband.
What can I say but look out for synchronicities and see what message there is for you.
Alternative Realities
Recently, having had some trouble with mania, I wrote a post saying I had to take some time off from blogging. People on WordPress were so understanding and supportive! You guys were great! Things were heading in a wrong direction but nowhere near where I was long ago…
II am reposting and editing an old post found by a fellow Wordress blogger, Ronny, on “Ronnie’s Blog.” It is very humbling to look back but also interesting in terms of the nature of reality.
Not long ago, I was being prepped for a surgery and the surgeon asked me about the medications I take. When asked why I took Thiothixene, an anti-psychotic, I told him that I was Bipolar. He said, “I think we are all Bipolar.” Maybe it was an effort to relate to me but it hit me in a “sore spot.” Everyone has moods, it is true, but being Bipolar is not just being “moody.” If we who are Bipolar have to endure the stigma of mental illness, at least allow that it is different from being “normal,” and not just some self-indulgent form of self-pity. What is Bipolar Disorder?
Bipolar Disorder is a major, Axis 1, mental illness characterized by extreme highs and lows. It is a risky mental illness diagnoses because people can die from it. They suicide during a low. In Bipolar 1, the sufferer can become manic and, while manic, and even while depressed, can become psychotic. Normal people do not become psychotic except perhaps, in their dreams. Being psychotic means a major break with reality. It means entering another world that most don’t even know exists. So, no, to that surgeon, we are NOT all Bipolar.
And, yes, people have fractured views of reality. But some views are more fractured than others. There is another “reality” in psychosis. What interests me is that different people who are psychotic have similar experiences, making me question the reality that we call consensual but also the one called psychotic. When I had my one and only breakdown in my 20’s, before I was properly medicated, I entered some other reality.
In that other reality, the TV and radio gave you messages directly relevant to your life– so relevant that one began to think there was some mind-monitoring device in your TV or radio. And the AC had a microphone that allowed you to talk to the world outside one’s window, to the people in the street, and you could play as they responded to your silly commands. When one had the nerve to venture outside of one’s apartment, a cacaphony of voices of people in the street told you positive or negative things. People (I thought of them as teachers and/or psychics) did not come up to you and speak directly to you for they knew you could not handle that. Rather they spoke loudly to one another about your behavior so you couldn’t help but overhear. If they were pleased with your behavior at the time, the comments were your reward for “getting well.” And it was glorious. If they are displeased, criticism came from everywhere. Then there is nowhere to hide the shame you felt because negative feedback was coming at you from every direction. Then life became a hell that did not disappear when you got back home, because you could still hear voices next door or in the street. That was just one down side of this other “reality.” Everything had self-referential meaning. I never heard actual voices– it was either hearing voices that are the normal internal monologue gone haywire so you thought it is someone else, or you were one step away from that because the voices you heard were actually real, saying real things, but not to you although you could find special personal meaning in them. There was no safe place. No escape. No privacy. I was working in a library at Columbia University and living alone in an apartment in New York City at the time. How much worse would it be living in a shelter, hospital, prison or, worse, on the street where one is overwhelmed with every kind of stimuli possible!
Synchronicity was everywhere. SometImes the lessons were religious in nature. This was perhaps a lower form of altered consciousness. Life alternated between heaven and hell. One wonders if there was some divine intervention in these states because of the ubiquitousness of synchronicity. Was this a fractured peek at what Hindus call Maya?
My life is very different now. I have a husband I adore. I often lament to him now that I cannot see the world as a dream or Maya as spiritual writers describe and I feel so utterly unspiritual. And yet, now many, many years ago, I lived in another reality.
“For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.” 1 Corinthians 13:12. Not what St. Paul meant but it works.
Only now can I see a little hint that “reality” IS some sort of a consensual dream that appears on our retinas and ear drums and that our mind interprets in a similar fashion… or so we think.
For sure there are different realities. But I am striving towards a higher form of consciousness and have little time left in which to do it. In looking back over the post that Ronnie “liked,” I am VERY grateful to have survived thus far out of the hell I was once in. I got help and medication. And God sent me a wonderful husband who eventually became a psychiatric social worker. I thank God for bringing him into my life. And for giving me access to the common reality in which most people dwell… but also glimpses into other realities and levels of life… and perhaps a schematic feeling for Maya.
This entry was posted on September 8, 2023. It was filed under Abstract Photography, Bipolar Disorder, Depression and Mania and was tagged with Bipolar 1, Bipolar Disorder, Fragmented reality, Hearing voices, Maya, Mental illness, Mental illness advocacy, Psychosis, Reality, Stigma, Stigma of mental illness, Synchronicity. Edit.
MOONSIDE 
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