The odds that I’d run across the LifePrints chapter and your blog post at the same time are fairly high — these are the kinds of topics I look for and thus find.

But I’m still very curious about synchronicity — if there really is something to it.

Synchronicity? I don’t know. But it seems that “synchronicity” is the magical word many people use when, either:

a) They don’t realize that the probability of that “rare” event is higher than they think, or
b) They can’t tolerate the possibility that there are things call “coincidences”

Yesterday I read the first chapter of LifePrints, which echoes your comments here exactly. Synchronicity?

http://lifeprints.com/

It seems to me that the issue is one of consequences. For example, when we cheat people we are likely to experience life differently than if we hadn’t. Perhaps the law or other institutional forces will catch up with us. Or we might experience more vengeful acts directed toward us than had we not cheated others. Or perhaps we will feel guilty or experience lower esteem. For me the issue is not so much whether we are enlightened, or perfect as we are, but what consequences we will have to deal with. We all will deal with the challenges we experience. The issue is how effective will we be at doing so in ways that lead to the experiences we value–circumstances that are satisfying (in an integrated, holistic way, I presume). That equation can be tweaked by changing our behavior, including how we think about something, or by adjusting what we value. … How we use and experience emotion is often key to how we experience the circumstances of our lives. In this sense I think of emotion as an inertial guidance system; one’s approaches to circumstances are pre-programmed.