The Coincidences that Can Change Our Lives
By Sofia Karin Axelsson
Coincidences Can Change Our Lives
There are coincidences that forever change our lives, and as a result we re-arrange how we live, who we work with, or where we live. Coincidences may seem orchestrated. Some say these coincidences are fated, a result of grander forces moving in our lives. Others say these coincidences are purely an act of chance, events happening in an indifferent, materialistic world with no other visible patterns than that of probability. But what if there is something in between? What if we orchestrate these coincidences on an unconscious level because we need them. Maybe we are programmed to help fate along the way. Could there be a way to bring more life-changing coincidences into our lives?
According to Dr. Bernard Beitman, founding father of the Coincidence Studies and visiting Professor at the University of Virginia, there are powers in play when meaningful connections are made, that are perfectly possible to observe, but that cannot be explained by either religious conjecture, or as being the result of probability. In his new book, Connecting with Coincidence: The New Science for Using Synchronicity and Serendipity in Your Life, Dr Beitman explores the role of coincidences in our lives, and how understanding them can help us find what we need to make life more fulfilling. Dr. Beitman demonstrates that it is perfectly possible to observe coincidences in a scientific manner. But to do this we have to move beyond the extremes of either seeing them as the result of chance or probability, or as the result of higher powers at work.
Coincidences can include a whole range from charming improbabilities to meaningful occurrences. In their most dramatic form they can even save lives. In Connecting with Coincidence, we get to read many testimonials of coincidences by participants in Dr. Beitman’s studies.
One story is dramatic; a time in a woman’s life when she saw no other way forward than to take her own life. She took her father’s gun, got in the car and drove to an isolated place by a lake. Highly distressed, with tears running down her face, she suddenly heard another car pull up beside hers. Out of the car stepped her brother, asking her to hand him the gun. She asked her brother how he had known where she was and what she was about to do. But her brother didn’t have any answers. He had simply known he had to get into the car and drive, but not why or even to where. Unconsciously he was pulled to the place where his sister was.
The depth of our connection to one another seems highly influential in the frequency and intensity of many coincidences. This connectedness can, as seen in the example above, move beyond an ordinary form of communications. Dr. Beitman calls this interconnected web of communication the psychosphere. How connected we are usually depends on our time together and the degree of shared emotions. The closer the bond, the greater the chance we experience strange connected coincidences together. No surprise then that the kind of relationship that has the highest degree of coincidences is between identical twins or mother and child. But also lovers, siblings, partners, and friends can share strong coincidences. It can result from a relatively short time together with highly intense emotions, or a long time together with modest emotions.
The distress and need of those close to us can resonate in us in unexpected ways, difficult to explain within the framework of an ordinary, materialistic worldview, making it possible to sense another’s need and even to come to the rescue. Strange coincidences can also occur for important life opportunities of a much more positive nature, such as romantic meetings. In Connecting with Coincidence, is the story of Jerry and Rita.
Jerry met Rita on a flight to Los Angeles. He had attended the funeral of his father, and delayed the trip one day to visit a friend. This particular flight was routed through Chicago. When passengers boarded the flight in Chicago, Rita sat down in his row, an empty chair between them. They talked the rest of the flight. Rita had attended the wedding of her widowed mother. When they parted they exchanged phone numbers. Rita asked him to wait for her to call: she was in the middle of a separation. Two weeks later, she called and their romance took off. They married in 1973 and are still a happy couple. For a long time, Jerry thought that the meeting was the result of his deceased father helping him out from the other side. But, with time, Jerry has more and more come to believe that he and Rita had an active role in their meeting.
According to Dr. Beitman, there are several ways to increase meaningful coincidences in our lives. Keeping our minds open to them is one way. Doing something out of our ordinary routine is another. He means that our wants and needs help create coincidence, but that our real needs are not something we are always conscious of. It is possible that many “…people really do know they will meet someone, but don’t consciously know that they know.”
In both stories above, the brother who presumably saved his sister’s life and the couple sitting beside each other on the flight, there is really no rational explanation for how they could find the right place and the right time that so profoundly influenced their lives. Rather than falling back on an explanation that involves the guidance of divine forces, there could be totally natural forces at work; forces that we are just beginning to understand. Dr. Beitman has presented the hypothesis that all people have an inborn, brain-related Global Positioning System that draws us to situations where we need to be, or to people that we need to meet. Observing how our personal, human GPS creates coincidences in our lives can greatly enhance our understanding of how we contribute to opportunities as they unfold.
Maybe it was neither chance nor faith that created the coincidences of a brother being able to save his sister’s life, or Jerry and Rita finding their soulmate. It could rather be that they were guided by something inherited in all of us; a yet-unexplained, but totally natural inner-knowing that made them seek out the right place and the right time. I find this prospect much more exciting than the extremes of fate or chance. When it comes to understanding meaningful connections of coincidence, we are but at the frontier of a new science.
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About the Author
Sofia Karin Axelsson is the author of two books on Old Nordic spirituality (2013 and spring 2016). She is writing her third book for release in the United States, holds courses in goddess power and women’s self-empowerment, and writes articles for spiritual magazines. She runs LangevinAxelsson Marketing. Contact her at: sofiakarinaxelsson@gmail.com, and connect on Facebook at: www.facebook.com/sofia.axelsson.98
