Synchronicity: Beyond Coincidence

Nowadays we use the word synchronicity in a much lighter sense than Carl Gustav Jung intended when he first began exploring the idea in the 1920s, later making it public in 1952 with his seminal essay “Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle.”

For Jung, it was not enough to notice that you looked at the clock and it read 22:22, that your favorite song came on just as you turned on the radio, or that you thought of someone and they suddenly called. Those, he would say, are mere coincidences—perhaps even serendipities if they feel like good luck or carry a sense of auspiciousness.

Jung gave the word synchronicity a far deeper, symbolic, and psychological meaning than its simple Greek roots suggest. From syn (“together”) and khronos (“time”), the term literally means “occurring together in time.” But Jung saw in it an acausal principle—a bridge between the inner world of the psyche and the outer world of events.

In his own words, synchronicity refers to “a meaningful coincidence of two or more events where something other than the probability of chance is involved.” In other words, when inner and outer realities align in a way that is meaningful to the observer, yet without any causal link between them.

The most iconic example comes from Jung’s own clinical practice. He was treating a young woman whose rational mind resisted the mysteries of the unconscious. One day, she told him about a dream in which she received a golden scarab—a symbol of transformation in ancient Egyptian mythology. As she spoke, Jung heard a tapping on the window behind him. When he opened it, a golden scarab beetle (rare in Switzerland) flew into the room. He caught it and handed it to her, saying, “Here is your scarab.”

That moment broke through her defenses. The coincidence between her inner image and the outer event carried a meaning far beyond chance. It was as if the psyche and the world had mirrored each other, revealing an underlying order that binds all things through meaning rather than cause and effect.

While recalling synchronicities in my own life, one of the most powerful moments happened more than twenty years ago, when I decided to leave our small town in Utah and return to Chile with my two young children. After divorcing their father, I believed it would be best to go back to my family and offer the kids a more nurturing environment. Yet I was filled with doubt. It had been many years since I’d left Chile, and I had lost touch with friends, colleagues, and my former life. Questions about how I would support us swirled endlessly in my mind.

Then, at the airport in Atlanta, as my children and I walked toward our departure gate, we ran straight into a woman who had worked as a cashier at the local supermarket in our town. For seven years, we had exchanged greetings and brief conversations at the checkout line, yet I had never asked her name. Surprised to see her there, I asked what she was doing so far from home. She smiled and said, “I’ve been saving money for years so I could leave that job and my old routine—and go travel the world.”

She, too, was stepping into the unknown, but her excitement was radiant. I told her about my own leap of faith, and just before we said goodbye, I asked for the first time, “What is your name?”
“Destiny,” she replied.

“Really?” My eyes opened wide in astonishment. I had never met anyone by that name before—and haven’t met another since.

It felt like a tremendous gift, a luminous wink from the Universe. There I was—a mother walking into the unknown with two young children—meeting Destiny face to face. I couldn’t have asked for a clearer sign that we were going to be all right.

These meaningful coincidences remind us that we walk within a web of intelligence far greater than ourselves. They invite us to pause, to listen, to trust the mystery that guides us.

So I invite you to reflect in your own story, which moments shimmer with that same mysterious coherence? When was the last time you experienced the numinous offering you a clear sign?