Synchronicity and Meaning (Part 2 of 3)

It’s not uncommon for those grieving the loss of a loved one to hope for a sign from them that all is well on the “other side.” Perhaps this is especially so for survivors left without any meaningful sense of closure. My mother, for instance, slipped inexorably into the quicksand of dementia without me being able to say goodbye in any meaningful way. Perhaps that explains my openness to receiving a sign from her, despite my Zen Buddhist leanings leaving me less inclined to believe in heavenly realms of souls and angels. Grief is never easy, but grief without closure is more difficult still.

Euonymus, sometimes called Burning Bush

In the first installment of Synchronicity and Meaning I described waking from dreamless sleep with an artist’s name on the tip of my tongue. The last name was Bosch. The first name rhymed with anonymous. Euonymus? No, that’s a plant of some kind. With the mystery yet unresolved, I fell asleep again. Upon awakening the next morning, however, I saw that a friend had posted a link to the Hieronymus Bosch painting, Ascent of the Blessed. Hieronymus! Of course! But it was the subject matter that gave me pause – deceased individuals being led by angelic figures to and through a tunnel of light towards a presumably divine figure. It was almost exactly the second anniversary of my mother’s passing. Was she letting me know that all is well? Was she now safe and sound on the other side?

It’s certainly comforting to think that this might be so. Such communication would bring closure to so many of the questions that our human condition presents us with. Death isn’t final after all. We really do transcend our earthly suffering. We really will see each other once again someday. Perhaps most important for my personal wellbeing, however, would be the knowledge that my mother understands how difficult her final years were for me as well as her. From her place of peace on the other side, she wishes for me to also be at ease.

Ascent of the Blessed by Hieronymus Bosch

Ah, but my rational mind is no pushover! What would need to be true for these synchronistic phenomena to have such an otherworldly explanation? Their orchestration, if they didn’t also include the prompting of my friend to post the Hieronymus Bosch painting in the first place, would have at least required someone or something to plant his name in my mind as I slept, knowing that I would soon be viewing one of his works. But not just any of his works, mind you, one loaded with metaphysical meaning and connotations. For without Bosch’s name somehow bubbling up into my consciousness in the dead of night, I likely would not have looked for deeper meaning in the piece of his art I was to perceive in the coming morning. Its appearance would have been little more than an interesting occurrence in life’s unfolding. It is an evocative painting, to be sure, and it likely would have prompted me to think of my mother on the second anniversary of her passing. But it wouldn’t have struck me as a “sign.”

Or might there be another explanation altogether? As I asked in the first installment on this topic: “Could it be that this synchronistic occurrence was orchestrated by my unconscious mind to facilitate the greater wellbeing of the organism that includes my conscious self?” In other words, might an unconscious aspect of my being recognize the fruitfulness of believing in a metaphysical system where souls live on, and all are made whole again in time? Set aside for a moment the question of whether such a view of the afterlife is true or not. Perhaps part of whoever or whatever I am in this present moment recognizes that “I” might become more fully actualized if “I” were only to believe, or at least act as if it is true. Maybe some guiding inner knowledge recognizes the potentially self-limiting nature of whatever anger, anxiety, fear, guilt, remorse, or shame I may have regarding my mother’s death, or death in general. Is this inner knowledge nudging me to simply let it all go for the sake of greater wellbeing as I move forward? There would certainly seem to be good reason for me to simply accept this experience as “real” regardless of its origin.

But what would need to be so for either of these proposed explanations to be true? For this synchronistic occurrence to have been a sign from my mother, she (or some entity acting on her behalf) would have needed to foresee what artwork one of my friends was about to post on social media and then somehow insert the name of the artist in my sleeping mind that it might elicit in me the meaning so intended. Likewise, with respect to the guidance afforded by some hypothetical self-actualizing knowledge deep within, the future would need to have been foreseen in order for some preceding event to then be engineered for the sake of imparting the desired message. In both scenarios it is our assumption regarding the linearity of time – ever onward into the future – that compels us to focus on synchronistic events and plumb their depths for meaning. Anomalies in the normal passage of time certainly do get our attention!

Perhaps this last point might provide an altogether different vantage point from which to examine synchronistic events. Some scientists believe that the passage of time is not as fixed as we might believe. Albert Einstein, for instance, stated that past, present, and future are merely stubborn illusions. Mystics, as well, have views of time outside our everyday understanding of its passage. Perhaps, then, our experience of synchronicity is not something that occurs because “reality” has been tinkered with in some way. Perhaps our experience of synchronicity actually results from a brief dropping away of our ordinarily constrained perception of the passage of time. This dropping away of the ordinary succeeds in getting our attention very quickly! So we give it a name: synchronicity.

What, then, am I to conclude from this experience and my resulting reflection upon it? Do I believe any one of these explanations over the others – or none at all? Fact is, I’m holding close but loosely to all of these possibilities. The mystery of this human existence is too rich and deep to be waved away with any shallow statement of belief. Do I feel better about the reality of my mother’s passing? Yes. Strangely, despite my inconclusive feelings about the “sign” she may have sent me, I do feel more settled about her death. I’ll likely have more to say on this topic of synchronicity in a coming post. There have been some subsequent experiences that have built on the one that I relate in these two posts. I hope you’ll stay tuned!

By the way, another name for euonymus is burning bush. Do I take my interpretation of this experience of synchronicity too far in contemplating the symbolism of the burning bush – the proverbial sign from God in the wilderness? Again, I’m holding it all close, but loosely.

 

Copyright 2023 by Mark Robert Frank