This happened a couple days ago: It was a down day for me. I hadn't had a good sleep, and then some negative incidents happened. For a while, I tried to dig myself out of it. Finally, Linda noticed, asked me about it, and plied me with positive things. That helped, but not enough, so I finally phoned my sister in Calgary.
Well, to get across the extent of weirdness here, you need to know that she and I had not been communicating for a few years until one day some months ago I finally got myself to sit down and write her a letter. Just as I got the blank page up on my computer, the phone rang. It was her. She had had exactly the same feeling and idea at exactly the same time, after that years-long interval.
Well, two days ago it happened again. With the addition that this time she expected it. She had just written me an email, and, as she paused before putting in the salutation, for some reason she felt I would call her right then, during that pause. And I did! She couldn't have known I had the phone in my hand. And I couldn't have known she was about to punch send.
Okay, that's coincidence #1. I was calling about my emotional pain. After we got calmed down from our excitement about that coincidence (which also seemed like telepathy), and I told her why I was calling, she sent me the email.
Here it is:
"Hi Stan, Here is a little coincidence. You wrote a blog about giving thanks for help unknown, (I had met Roy MacDonald at a bus stop where he recited to me his now-favourite "poem") a few days ago, and today I read the same thing! A friend brought me a book called “Healing Trauma”, by Peter Levine. Today, I read in the book, “I’d like to share with you an affirmation from the Native American tradition: ‘I give thanks for help unknown, already on its way.’ Whenever you begin to feel lost or frightened, this affirmation can have a beneficial effect.”
" Levine went to Berkley, and taught at the Hopi Guidance Center and at trauma centres."
That isn't the whole of my sister's story. Amazed by it all, she tried to put it together in words in an email to me: "And look at this. That quote was given to you by Roy MacDonald, out of the blue, on the sidewalk, I think you said. Then days later, when things were bad, the same quote was given to you in a book lent, just at that time, to your sister. (By a friend who drove all the way out here to bring me the book, because she “felt” I should have it, though we haven’t seen each other in person for years.)"
Okay, so far we have me phoning her exactly when she thought I would. Then the content of her email had to do with the healing of trauma, which was what I was hoping to get from her when I called, and her quote was exactly the same quote that Roy had just told me on the street, but which I had not applied myself to at the time. (I posted it here on my Facebook page anyway--just scroll down and you'll see it.) But now that it had been given to me a second time, I really got into it and all its implications. So the second time was necessary. And for my sister to read the quote right when she did, so that she would write the email right then, her friend had to "feel" she should give the book to my sister exactly the right number of days beforehand. And drive a long way to get it to her, something she hadn't done for years.
And here's another thing about it, not quite as shocking a coincidence, but which maybe falls in the same general area of weirdness. My sister's email told me that the saying was Native American. And the previous month I had featured indigenous poetry and history at London Open Mic. I had been looking forward to that event all season, and because of it, and since then, I've been getting more into indigenous culture and wisdom. And right now I'm in the process of planning to do a lengthy interview about it with Charmaine E. Elijah, one of the indigenous poets.
And one more thing. Earlier in my life, I had gone on some very long, very risky adventures, during which the most astonishing seemingly-impossible coincidences saved my life so often that I began to lose my fear when I found myself in extremely dangerous situations. I began to assume that something would happen at the last minute to rescue me. And it always did.
Anyway, another interesting thing about all this is that now that so many formerly-separate events in my life and memories and ideas seem to be coalescing around that major coincidence of me phoning just when my sister thought I would, then others are also entering the circle, attached to them, and so on. The whole swirling mass contains so much now that there is no point in trying to mention it all.
And why bother? Coincidences are only coincidences. To be more than that, everyone's unconscious mind would have to be connected with everyone else's. Which just isn't possible in the real world (although it's fun to fantasise about). And those unconscious minds would have to be able to see into the future, another impossibility since the future hasn't happened. And based on their view into the future they would all have to decide to force innumerable things to happen just so some extremely insignificant coming together would amaze two tiny little critters amongst billions.
I don't think so. But tossed all together like this, it does seem pretty weird. At least to the people it happened to.
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Comments
Paulette C Turcotte Jung would say that are highly significant and should be held as sacred messages. What is taking place is highly relevant and should be taken very seriously in one's journey. If that had been happening to me, I would have called my favourite Jungian analyst for a session... just to make sure I wasn't missing any cues..... my opinion for what it's worth... xx
Like · Reply · 1 · 7 June at 20:18
Stan Burfield Thanks, Paulette. My sister and I are working on it. Since it makes no sense starting at the point of view where none of this can mean anything, my normal point of view, I'm working back towards my point of view from the other end, just assuming things, like telepathy, like everyone's unconscious mind is in constant contact with everyone else's, like the unconscious mind can hold an infinite amount of data, and so on. And see where I end up.
Like · Reply · 7 June at 20:23
Stan Burfield One assumption I pretty much have to make for any of these other assumptions to work in terms of coincidences is a very difficult one to make, even compared to those three. It is that those unconscious minds can see into the future. No matter what physicists say, the future does not exist.
Like · Reply · 7 June at 20:26
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Margary Robinson Coincidenses do make us wonder if someone or something does have controls that we are not aware of and how they are arranged in the atoms that fly around us. It's true it's weird!l
Unlike · Reply · 1 · 8 June at 23:37