[Odd post] On moths and synchronicity

I am presently a bit swamped by intellectual endeavors so the frequency (and quality) of my blog posts are suffering.

Today I would like to share an anecdote, that I find fascinating (I don't need much apparently) and completely mysterious.

For the last 7 days, when I come home at night, I find one small moth on the backside of my front door. After a few minutes the moth flies right at me and lands either on me or, if I am working on my computer, on my computer screen. Strange, right?

Now what if I told you that it is not the same moth every time? More than that it has been a different moth every time! As the moth flies to me or on me I have been catching the moth/s with a small glass and a cardboard CD case. Glass covers moth and then cardboard case goes between me and my friendly, neighborhood moth. Said moth, is then accompanied to a window. Window is opened, moth is released, window is closed. Windows stay closed. Another day, another moth. Catch, release, repeat.

No other moths are in the apartment and I can't figure out where they are coming from...

Makes me think of a Sherlock Holmes mystery and, more relevant to this blog, to Jung's story of synchronicity and his patient's dream scarab.

Otherwise, I am still reading Chopra's Path to Love. Some very interesting insights, simple but effective, so to speak. One particular question he attempts to answer is how to preserve the devotion, faithfulness and love of a relationship, without giving in to neediness and attachment. He explains, quite well, that what is NOT needed is detachment, which he assimilates to 'not caring'. What he recommends is a 'state' (not the best word, but it is the one he used...) of nonattachment


A good summary of the idea in Chopra's words: "Attachment is a form of dependency based on ego; love is nonattachment based on spirit."

Earlier he explains the difference as follows:

Love allows your beloved the freedom to be unlike you. Attachment asks for conformity to your needs and desires.

Love imposes no demands. Attachment expresses an overwhelming demand - "Make me feel whole."

Love expands beyond the limits of two people. Attachment tries to exclude everything but two people.

So on that final note, I wish you much love without attachment, and if I resolve the "Mystery of the Recurring Moth" I will let you know...

Synchronicity

According to Wikipedia:

Synchronicity is the experience of two or more events which are causally unrelated occurring together in a supposedly meaningful manner. In order to count as synchronicity, the events should be unlikely to occur together by chance.

It really is a great word/concept! One of my favorites. There have been a few synchronistic events in my life, which I guess is the norm for most of us - often attributed to that infamous lucky star.

Anyway, the origin of the word, according to lore, which I hope is correct because it is a good story, the word was coined by Carl Jung after working with a patient who was telling him about a repetitive dream she had had about a golden scarab. Just then Jung heard some tapping on the window behind him and when he opened the window to see what it was a bug flew in and he caught it in his hand. To his dismay, it was a rose-colored scarab!

Jung apparently also described the term, in the 1920s, in the following terms at different times: an "acausal connecting principle", a "meaningful coincidence" and as an "acausal parallelism." I personally like the meaningful coincidence best of the lot...

What is interesting is that this concept apparently baffled Jung to the point that about 30 years separated his coining of the term and his actual publishing of a complete treatise on it. Another quote by Jung, written apparently around 1950 shows the evolution of his thinking on the subject and the importance he accorded it:

Synchronicity is no more baffling or mysterious than the discontinuities of physics. It is only the ingrained belief in the sovereign power of causality that creates intellectual difficulties and makes it appear unthinkable that causeless events exist or could ever exist. But if they do, then we must regard them as creative acts, as the continuous creation of a pattern that exists from all eternity, repeats itself sporadically, and is not derivable from any known antecedents.

I love this notion of "creative acts" which sounds like creative acts of the universe, and his reference to "a pattern that exists from all eternity" sounds a lot like a reference to God or a God-like intentionality of the universe. Hmm...

Otherwise, the same notion has sometimes been explained (even by Jung) as some form of collective consciousness (like two people making the same invention at the same time on two sides of the world), while others place it in the realm of divine intervention, of destiny or some form of determinism, predetermination, or that heavily-charged and hard to accept notion (for me at least) called fate.

Synchronicity has also been popularized recently by books like The Secret, in which magical thinking is assimilated to the law of attraction, which says your thoughts create your reality. I believe that is true to a certain extent, but more in the sense that you are free to interpret what happens to you any way you like. I don't know how much control we have over what actually happens, even though I would like to think we have some influence, but we can all control how we live and experience everything that happens to and around us. There is the classic example of seeing potential obstacles as stepping blocks, and of there are others, like simply feeling gratitude for whatever happens... For many, the good and the less good are both good, i.e. it's all good.

I read a fun story today in a French novel on art in which a couple is in a museum and the woman is in ecstasy in front of the painting. The husband can't take it any more as his wife is always positive, always sees things in a positive light. He tells her something like "I can't stand your positiveness any more - when the alarm rings in the morning you are thankful, when it's time to go to work you are thankful for having a job, you see art and it makes you joyful, I can't take it." What does she say? "I am so happy that you feel comfortable enough with me and all of these strangers to express such deep sentiments in public." Personally I understand and feel sorry for him, but somehow I am jealous of her...

So when does being positive look naive, ingenu or silly? Like Voltaire's Candida, who in the face of every possible disaster repeats what his tutor, Professor Pangloss taught him, that "All is for the best in the best of all possible worlds." And when is it spiritual and enlightened? And how did I get so far adrift of the subject of today's post? I don't know...

To get back to the subject and to close this post, let me just say that several books have referred to synchronicity or made it part of their plots. Those I seem to recall that made direct or indirect references to it were Lewis Carroll , Douglas Adams, Philip Dick and one Russian author I discovered thanks to a Russian friend (imagine the coincidence : )) Alexander Green (aka Alexandre Grine in French). He wrote one particularly beautiful book called the Scarlet Sails, which was given to me the aforementioned friend several years ago. According to Amazon it is only available used. Beautiful story. If you can find it. Maybe with a little help from synchronicity...

[Thoughts on]The Five Languages of Love

A recurrent theme in my life is the way some books really have an eerie, I would say mystical, way of showing up and demanding to be read. One of the more recent and strange of these occurrences happened to me in regards to The Five Love Languages for Singles by Gary Chapman (which apparently has been updated to a 2009 version). I call it eerie because 1/I have no idea how it got into my bookshelf since I do not recall buying it or receiving it as a gift and 2/because of the way I stumbled upon it.

To make a short story longer, I was working on a paper recently for my doctorate and as usual this inspired me to do things I don't usually do. So I had Larry King of CNN on in the background and someone on the show mentions the book in question. About an hour later, as part of my usual procrastination routine that kicks in when faced with a paper, I decided that I really should rearrange that top shelf in my bookcase and dust off those poor books I rarely visit. I have reserved the top shelf for textbooks because I so rarely use them and I don't have the heart to throw/give them away (since they cost a fortune and maybe one imaginary day I will need them and regret their absence...). Anyway, I climb onto a chair, climb up to the shelf in question, which I must admit really did need dusting, and start to organize the books. As I take one of the fatter books out to dust I discover a book behind the books. Well, you have probably guessed by now, it was the Five Languages of Love. How it climbed onto the top of my bookshelf, into the reference book section, how it managed to sneak behind the biggest book on the shelf, and why it decided to bite my hand on that day I do not know. Synchronicity? I don't know, but, call me crazy, I decided to take this as a sign from the Universe that I was supposed to read this book...

So I read the book I did and I must say that I was not overwhelmed by the writing. It is not extremely well-written, or rather it is written simply with a rather not-too-subtle Christian prudishness. This is natural since Dr. Chapman is not just a marriage counselorbut also a pastor at a Baptist church. However, some books say nearly all they need to say in the title, and this one gets pretty close.

The basic tenet of this book, which is a follow up on a similar book for couples that sold 4 million copies, is that there are (you will never guess) Five Languages of Love which are:

• Words of affirmation
• Gifts
• Acts of service
• Quality time
• Physical touch
  

The author points out something that is obvious once it is said/read/heard but which needs to be verbalized: we all speak one primary love language. It appears that there is no lingua franca in love.

And to complicate things further, beyond the primary language which changes, each of us has our own mix of a primary love language and dialects that vary in order of importance.

The author's insight is thus that good communication, loving communication - not just in couples but also with family and friends - means being aware of both your own primary love language/s and those of others.

After having thought about the author's list for a bit, searching for a common denominator, I reworked the list with my own terms. Here goes:

• verbal giving
• material giving
• acts of giving
• time giving
• physical giving
  

Of course giving and receiving are different forms of generosity (and in no way opposites in my mind), and in this book the author was clearly referring to both - what we would like to receive to feel loved and what we usually give to express our love.

The wonderful insight here is that once this is known and understood, it makes expressing love in the other person's terms that much easier. Plus, it is a clear reminder that love requires expression, to a stronger or a lesser degree, on all five fronts.

It also explains a lot of frustration among couples. Imagine someone who is a quality time person with someone who is a gift giver. The first does not appreciate fully any gifts that are given without time spent together, and the second will not fully appreciate time spent together without a token of affection in the form of a gift. Anyway, it is not too difficult to imagine all the crazy combinations of couples who do not have the same primary love language and the feelings of frustration and lack of fulfillment this can engender.

The tragic side of it though is that we can easily feel unloved vis a vis a person who thinks that they are screaming out their love and expressing it daily. Imagine all the people...

The book itself is rather simple, with some cute stories and basic exercises along the traditions of the modern self-help book, but the core tenets alone and the awareneess that it creates to self and to others makes it worth the price and the time and climbing up to your highest dusty bookshelf to find it and read it...