Synchronicity: When Meaning Aligns

Carl Gustav Jung (1875–1961) was a Swiss psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, and philosopher who founded what is now known as Analytical Psychology.

He was one of the most influential thinkers of the 20th century and played a central role in shaping modern depth psychology, spirituality, and our understanding of the unconscious mind.

Jung once gave a name to something many of us have experienced but couldn’t explain.

He called it Synchronicity a meaningful coincidence that has no clear cause, but somehow feels deeply connected to where we are, what we need, or what we’re becoming.

“Synchronicity is an ever present reality for those who have eyes to see.”

— Carl Jung, “Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle” (1952)

The first time I heard the word, I was intrigued and fascinated with the word itself.

I didn’t need a psychologist to tell me what it was, I’d been living it.

Moments that weren’t planned. People who appeared just when I needed them. Symbols, songs, signs, timings I couldn’t manufacture even if I tried.

I used to refer to it as a strange coincidence but Jung called it Synchronicity.

It wasn’t something I could explain, and it didn’t need to be.

It felt like a quiet alignment, a whisper from life, from the Self, from something deeper than logic that says, yes. Keep going.

Jung was deeply drawn to alchemy, Eastern philosophy, mythology, and religion.

He didn’t dismiss spiritual experience as superstition, he saw it as essential to psychological wholeness.

To him, the soul wasn’t a metaphor.

It was something real.

Moments I Couldn’t Make Up

There was a day in August 2016 I’ll never forget.

I’d just come out of the darkest stretch of my life and was working at a hardware store in Mentone.

I casually told a coworker I was thinking about doing some landscaping work on the weekend.

Fifteen minutes later, a total stranger asked me without knowing anything if I wanted to help him with landscaping work that weekend.

It was too specific. Too exact.

It cracked something open in me.

That moment marked the beginning of everything.

It wasn’t a belief, it was a direct experience.

Read the full story →

Another time, I was driving through Melbourne when a vivid memory came over me, something funny that had happened years ago at a friend’s house involving his mum.

I could see it clearly, like a film playing in my mind.

Then my phone rang.

It was that exact friend.

He said, “Bro, remember that time” And I cut him off.

“I know what you’re about to say,” I told him and repeated the entire story.

There was silence. Then I heard his partner on loudspeaker:

“Oh my god, that's creepy?”

I smiled.

Synchronicity.

“We often dream so precisely of a situation that only occurs the next day that it is hard not to believe in foreknowledge.”

— Carl Jung, Letters Vol. I (1906–1950)

Not a Sign to Follow — A Presence to Trust

Synchronicity doesn’t mean you’re on the “right path” because there’s no single right path.

But it does remind you that life is listening.

That you’re not alone in the unfolding.

Even Jung himself didn’t come to this theory by intellect alone, he lived it.

In one of his most well-known cases, he was working with a woman who was deeply stuck in intellectual resistance.

She told him a dream about being given a golden scarab, an ancient symbol of transformation. As she spoke, Jung heard a tapping at the window behind him.

He turned, opened it, and to his amazement, a Scarabaeid beetle a common rose-chafer, the closest match to a golden scarab in Europe, flew into the room.

It was rare for the season, rare for the region, and completely unexpected.

“I caught the insect in the air as it flew in. It was the nearest analogy to a golden scarab that one finds in our latitudes… contrary to its usual habits, it had evidently felt an urge to get into a dark room at that particular moment.”

— C.G. Jung, “Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle” (1952)

He handed it to the woman and said, “Here is your scarab.”

It shattered her resistance and opened something far deeper in the therapeutic process.

That moment the inner world and outer world suddenly aligned became the very foundation of Jung’s synchronicity theory.

“It is impossible, with our present resources, to explain synchronicity as a causal relationship. The connection between events must lie in the equivalence of meaning.”

— Carl Jung, “Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle”

I’ve come to see it like this:

Synchronicity is what happens when the inside and the outside briefly agree.

I Don’t Chase It. But I Notice It.

I’ve learned not to look for synchronicity like a hungry seeker.

But when it appears, when something lines up with no effort, no planning, and yet perfect timing, I pause.

I acknowledge it.

I give it a nod, like an old friend showing up unannounced.

“Chance is not the only factor in the universe—there is also meaning.”

— Carl Jung, “The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious” (1959)

It doesn’t explain everything.

But it reminds me I’m being held by something I don’t need to name.

“Your visions will become clear only when you can look into your own heart.

Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.”

— Carl Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections (1961)