Meaning, Purpose, Spirit (Part 2)

“Serendipitous synchronicity” is a fancy phrase that refers to a “coincidence.” But if, as many say and believe, “there are no coincidences,” then what accounts for the phenomenon?

 

Carl Jung offered an occult, psycho-spiritual explanation—something about an acausal connecting principle, perhaps associated with his theory of archetypal energies.

 

Like it or not, the phrase entered the lexicon. Although at present there is no “serendipitous synchronicity page” on Wikipedia, the phrase is bandied about among many who are researching consciousness and the new paradigm that is moving beyond the status quo “mental-rational trance dance.”

 

In layman’s terms I would say “serendipitous synchronicity” means “a chance coming together, at the same time, of two or more people, events, etc.” The encounter is usually fortuitous, positive—though not always.

 

Scholars like long words because they bloviate, and bloviating is something they do well. In fact one could say that academia is essentially "institutionalized bloviating"; a form of endless recapitulation that ultimately goes nowhere and signifies nothing that has much insight or creativity. (Oops, even this writer apparently engages in a bit of bloviating—why not just say that academics mostly like to hear themselves talk, or write, and by so doing they forever seek to con us?) 

 

Still, the phrase, “serendipitous synchronicity,” decidedly carries a certain cachet. It rolls nicely off the tongue.

 

Long words are composed of phonemes, sounds. As such, they have a music all their own that mesmerizes. And considering that each word (including, e.g., its Latin or Greek prefix and/or suffix) carries an etymological source, the music and meter can beautifully, magically drive meaning in listeners.

 

Put two or three words together to form a phrase and meaning is heightened, perhaps even exponentially. The ears hear, the brain activates, and the heart and soul engage. 

 

When we make meaning we think, feel, intuit. We connect-up, not just with things we already know, but with things we are constantly editing in our minds. In this sense, making meaning is an act of creation; the more meaning we make, the larger is the domain of our world. Our reality bubble will expand (or remain inert), all depending upon how much meaning we make, i.e., how meaningful life is for us.

 

It is not really definitions we are collecting throughout our lives. Rather, it is a coalescing of a sensibility that comes about via cycles of human apprehension. We come to a sense of the world around us that individuates, accordingly, into a sense of a self. That self is an individual but one who is also a part of something larger.

 

Human beings do not come into this world as separate creatures. We are part of a human environment; a landscape of people and things that extends outward like concentric circles from individual=> family=> friends=> community=> town or city=> county=> state or province=> region=> country=> countries of a shared language group=> planet=> solar system=> galaxy=> universe. (It is mind-boggling to note that this model of expanding concentric circles is a space-time model contemplating a physical universe only; it does not even touch upon realms of spiritual growth and maturation inhering both within and beyond such a comprehensive definition of the material world! Finding meaning and purpose, then, can be thought of as being precursors to those realms of Spirit.)     

 

To make meaning is to have meaning in one’s life; to find life meaningful. Each person seeks a meaningful existence, for there is little or no existence without meaning. We seek to have a meaningful interrelationship with the world around us, as opposed to a sensibility exiled into alienation and separation.

 

Meaning, in turn, nourishes purpose. Experiencing a meaningful existence causes us to formulate purpose in our lives. Each of us has an overriding purpose. Our lifetime on Earth seems designed for us to discover just what purpose our lives serve; what are we meant to do while we are in the here and now?—not just what career path we choose (or that chooses us) but what greater part do we play in the unfolding of creation? If creating meaning is itself an act of creation, and many billions of people are always creating meaning, is this not creation-in motion-as-an-unfolding?

 

If each of us has an instrumental part to play in this, then what, pray tell, comprises the greater whole? If we are participating in a great game, a more-than-human drama, then what is it? How did it come about? Where does it take us, not just in our own lifetimes but lifetime-after-lifetime of generation-after-generation?

 

Consider these the acts of making meaning, of finding purpose. Does being human simply revolve around neurons, dendrites and synapses; cognition as explained by “science”? Is poetry just words strung together? Is music just organized sound?

 

No, there is something very miraculous about being a human being, a being capable of ferreting out meaning and purpose, of apprehending and identifying serendipitous synchronicities when they occur; our being cast into a sense of wonderment at the ability to discern and to pick apart our own consciousness. The very phrase, “human being,” refers to a race of creatures, humans, modified by a gerund, being, whose modal sense is a present progressive, present continuous, creation-in-motion.

 

Ah, the wonder that can be fleshed out of words, out of a simple phrase! Wonderment, stupefaction, is real. It points the way to something greater than ourselves, a certain something that we know is there, though we cannot quite explain or grok it. The phenomenon goes beyond our reasoning abilities into the realm of a sort of meta-reason, guided by the soul of each living entity; that spark of Spirit of which we are endowed.

 

To be endowed means: to be “supplied,” or perhaps better said, “a putting into.” Who or what did the supplying, the putting into? Might it be an entity that is beyond our ken, beyond even what we can construe as an conceptual entity we refer to as God? But if we can barely admit to having souls, let alone knowing and becoming familiar with our souls, how can we even begin to know the nature of Spirit? And if Spirit emanates from God, how can we know this emanation of God, let alone God?

 

God is revealed to us via creation—the meaning that we make of the plants, animals and minerals around us; through our human constructions and inventiveness; and the finding of our purpose on Earth (including our overriding purpose).

 

Yes, life itself is more than a mere serendipitous synchronicity, a phrase composed of two long words. But life’s serendipitous synchronicities are markers: markers that point and encourage us to go in the right directions; markers that help us to discover that Divine spark within—that urge us to be larger than ourselves, to plumb the breadth and depth of our own consciousness and to imagine the unimaginable glory of God the Creator, Who has endowed us our humble souls—the essence of liberty, our very human beingness.