Degrees of Separation

This is a story told to me by a close friend to whom I was teaching much of the material that composes my lecture series. In teaching her how to open herself up and look for this phenomenon authentically, she - someone with no prior belief in this topic - had an experience which to this day stands out in my mind as an exemplary piece of evidence in favour of the reality of the phenomenon of psynchronicity. I imagine that this is the sort of story you will readily dismiss, as it seems the sort of thing that only happens in movies or in video games, when there's a director to the drama, not in the chaos of real life where there is no 'grand plan'. Regardless, this is what she told me. First, I have provided a summary of the incident that she wrote in her own words in retrospect some months later, and secondly I have provided my own account of what she told me, an account I recorded within my psynchronicity journal within days of her telling me her story.

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"Case One (both instances occurred on the same day)

In my capacity as a young person’s safeguarding officer, I was charged with helping to find an absconder. I spoke to the manager of their home and discovered they’d had an argument at some point. I made a list of their favourite places to go and regular haunts: the river, friends houses etc. and nothing.

I checked their estranged family and not a sign of them.

I had recently been learning about synchronicity and as I stopped in a lay-by for coffee a bird made a mess on my car.

I casually spoke to the bird sitting up in the tree above and with more than a hint of sarcasm, asked it if it knew the whereabouts of the child.

At that point the bird flew off down the road ahead and perched on a street lamp or bus stop (I don’t recall), but still within my sight.

I laughed out loud and asked myself if I was truly going to indulge the thought in my mind to follow the bird. I simply could not resist my curiosity.

(Sorry, retyping this quickly on my lunch break from memory)

I did indeed decide to follow the bird and it flew and stopped on several places until it turned a corner and I followed in my car.

As I looked down the road towards the shops I saw a chicken shop and low and behold the child I was looking for was crossing the corner with their friend.

Case Two

One of the children from a family home in the area that we cover, ran away. We follow the same procedure of checking regular places and family that are known.

An aunt listed some friends and their addresses for me so I called on them to check if they’d seen the child. The aunt had a cross and candle tattoo on her arm and I asked her about it as it was pretty and then left. I pass a church with a light in the window that was a fake candle, the type that is battery operated, usually small but this one was quite large. At the point where I draw parallel with the church my car stalls so I decide to get out and walk 6and as I walk through the cemetery, sitting behind one of the gravestones with some other children is the child I was looking for.

Nothing like these incidents has ever happened since, even though I’ve had several other cases of children who have absconded." - Diane's account

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"A day or two after writing the previous entry [to my psynchronicity journal], I began to work on a lecture I had been planning to write for a little over a month at that point. Once I began the task, I quickly realized that, in order to do the material justice, I would rather need to present an entire lecture series, so that I could link up the relevant ideas and material in a way that is sufficiently comprehensive, while at the same time not overwhelming to the listener. This series brings together half-a-dozen critical, parallel threads that I've been exploring over the past year, and gives me a chance to crystallize the material and start teaching it, so that the resonance chamber can be built up once more. This piece of work was exciting in a way I have not felt since DMTheory, and I felt my internal tempo increase dramatically. This resulted in a huge surge of productivity and dedication to the one arc, which was obviously catalytic for the conceptual crystallization. Now, I know it to be a rule in any resonance chamber that, when I touch the magic and make remarkable progress on a particular problem, those individuals with which I have an authentic connection also make progress, and that it tends to be parallel in some sense. Thus, the following is my best attempt to recreate a story told to me by Diane, about a peculiar experience she had at work.

She was trying to locate two children who had absconded from carers, and were thus MIA. After going through the routine procedure for these situations, she stopped in a park to get a coffee. As she was drinking her coffee, a bird left the tree near her and flew over to her car, circled it once, then took a dump on it before flying back and alighting upon the branch once more. She was none too impressed by this, and chatted to herself about 'what a wonderful gift you've given me,' before adding, 'wouldn't it be lovely if you gave me another, and helped me locate this child I'm searching for.' She continued to drink her coffee, and a short time later the bird took off out of the tree and flew down a nearby street. Once she had finished her coffee, she decided to, on a whim, follow the path that the bird had taken. This, she told herself, was something she planned never to admit that she had done both because of the serious nature of her job and how ridiculous it would sound to others, yet she did tell me. She said that the street this took her down was not one she would have been likely to search normally, as there was not much on this street - only a chicken shop down at the end. Once she reached the end, she was just chilling in her car, feeling a little silly, when who should cross the street right in front of her eyes but exactly the boy she was trying to find - mission accomplished.

Due to the unprecedented success of her first exercise, she resolved to keep an open mind and a watchful eye on the details, relevant or not, of the next case. During the routine interviews with close family and friends, Diane noticed, for no apparent reason, that the woman she was speaking to (the child's aunt) had a peculiar tattoo on her arm, which Diane proceeded to ask her about. The design of the tattoo was of a cross, wrapped gracefully in barbed wire, and in the centre of the cross was a candle. After the woman answered her questions, they quickly moved on and she had forgotten all about this part of the conversation two and a half hours later when she was driving around aimlessly in an attempt to locate the child as she had already exhausted all of the normal procedures. As she was driving along the road, her car suddenly stalled. Now, it's worth noting that when she was recounting this story to me, she almost forgot the detail about having stalled, first telling me instead that she'd stopped the car voluntarily, and then correcting herself after a moment that actually the engine had stalled. When this occurred, she treated it as a sign that she ought to get out and take a look around. It turned out that she had stopped close by to a rather old church which was located next to a graveyard. In one of the windows of the church, she could see a flickering light, as if a candle was lit inside. Recalling the tattoo, she decided to take a look around - she was, after all, aimlessly searching the streets at this point. When she reached the church and went inside however, she found that it was not really a candle after all, but an electronic lamp supposed to imitate real fire, and that there was no-one around. Turning to leave after a moment and feeling a bit silly, she rounded the opposite corner and suddenly saw a group of young people relaxing near some headstones in the cemetery. Among their number - the one she had been looking for." - From my own psynchronicity journal.

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Every time I begin to doubt the fidelity of my experiences, when I start to doubt my integrity, when I wonder if maybe I am deceiving myself, I remember this story and I remember that I have to reckon with it: it is part of the evidence, and - for me, at least - it speaks for itself.

What do you think?