A holistic worldview is a revolution in the making
Synchronicity: A Theory of Interactions, part 8
Here's where it all comes together, from concepts developed thousands of years ago like Maya in ancient Vedanta, to modern concepts like signal processing and image recognition. They point to a way of bringing more harmony and coherence to our lives.
I imagine a revolution in the way that we relate, whether to each other, to our environment, to ourselves, or to our circumstances.
Consider the concept of entropy. In physics, this term refers to hidden information. If a system like an automobile engine has energy that can't be used for propulsion because it's in a random microscopic state known as heat, we say it has a lot of entropy. Hidden, unusable information.
From Entropy to Maya
To me, entropy seems analogous to the concept of Maya, the hidden layer of reality that we can't quite grasp.
When we interact with someone without understanding where they're coming from, we might say something inadvertently offensive. Similarly, if we're angry but we don't really recognize that we are, we might hurt somebody's feelings by being indirect.
For instance, I bought tickets for a local lecture for me and my friends to celebrate my birthday. But I had to cancel because I tested positive for COVID. I called the venue And spoke to Alex, asking if they could resell my tickets, because the event had long been sold out. However, their policy was to not get involved with the ticket transfers.
As I expressed my disappointment, given the popularity of the show, I said “This was going to be my birthday....” Alex responded: "It'll still be your birthday.”
After getting off the phone I felt angry and frustrated and interpreted his comment as condescending. With the intention of repairing our interaction, I called him back and told him I appreciate how busy they were, yet I felt he was being condescending. He hung up.
There were so many emotions going on here between him and myself. It's hard to know what's really going on.
The first step in this revolution is recognizing the hidden information in every interaction and relationship.
How do we discover what's hidden? Through feedback loops.
Fixing Feedback Loops
There are many broken feedback loops in society— for instance, our economic system incentivizes short-term gain at the expensive long-term sustainability— yet I'm interested in starting with the most personal of them, our own sense of purpose. How do we know where we are in life? How do we know if we're making decisions that we're going to be happy with later?
Synchronicity is a feedback mechanism.
When we see the world as holistic, we recognize that the feedback we get may not be a direct result of the input we provide. We may end a relationship badly and hurt the other person, only to find a few years later that somebody else does a similar thing to us. If we see the entire Cosmos as one big system, the synchronicity doesn't have to be directly tied to our actions: it can come from the whole as a meaningful response or feedback mechanism.
Effective feedback loops are important because they allow the system to head towards the desired outcome. If I have my heart broken by somebody, and in the process, I catch a glimpse of hidden patterns of doing the same thing to others, it helps me align my future behavior with the outcomes I really want.
The day after my unpleasant phone call, I happened to notice an email that I had missed. It was Alex, writing in a calm tone, saying he was sad that I had told him he was condescending and then hung up. But I thought he had hung up! A feedback loop had been broken, but was now being repaired.
It meant a lot to me that he heard how his words had impacted me. Reading this email, I felt much more compassion and repair with him and the organization.
Synchronicity can untangle our filters
The final puzzle piece is recognizing our personal filters.
We understand how the human brain works pretty well now, utilizing the same mathematics as audio and video processing to recognize patterns in data. But when we think we already know the pattern, we can miss the hidden information.
Synchronicities are a great way to get feedback about our filters. Have you ever had a situation occur in a couple different ways at different times with different people, to show you something about yourself? Once we see a situation enough times, we start to get the picture. We might see how our perception of a situation is creating problems.
I had interpreted Alex's comment in a negative light, which didn't match his intention. The synchronicity of the lost and found email first helped me get better at expressing myself, then helped me repair the relationship. Both of these involved information I was missing and seeing my filters more clearly.
Feeling safe in our identity
This is really a revolution in reclaiming our identity.
Every interaction becomes an opportunity for completion and healing.
When there's a hidden agenda or unwanted advice or coercion, hidden information thrives. Similar to the physics of entropy, our relationships become more chaotic because of the unsaid emotions we feel from others.
The more we can expose hidden information and see the world without our habitual filters, the less tangled we become in our relationships.
Getting on the path
In fact, we don't need to be perfect in our communication. We just need to get on the path of “less hidden, more authentic." In each interaction, we can track how we feel afterwards. Was there something left unsaid? Was there something said that felt charged and needs To be neutralized?
Maybe we realize that we've given someone advice who didn't ask for it. This is, in a way, a challenge to someone's identity. We're telling them what we think and expecting them to change themselves according to our opinion. But even if we realize we've done so without permission, we can simply say “I realize you didn't ask for advice.”
This humble acknowledgment can relieve the pressure the other person might feel to take your advice. You walk away from the interaction feeling neutral, neither one of you carrying unresolved or hidden information.
A revolution in reducing personal entanglements
Let's say there's X amount of hidden feelings, needs, thoughts and judgments in our lives. What is important is to be on a path towards reducing it rather than increasing it.
If we use synchronicity as a feedback loop to make our filters more accurate, each interaction we have will reduce the hidden pain, coercion, agenda, or sense of inauthenticity that we and others carry around.
Chipping away at the legacy of the past, healing each piece as it comes up in a given interaction, and learning how to reduce and not increase harmful interactions is a synchronicity revolution in the making.
Welcome to a Leap to Wholeness
We are starting a new series of social media posts around my second book, Leap to Wholeness, How the World is Programmed to Help Us Grow, Heal, and Adapt. One of the big themes in the book is identifying the filters that color the way we look at the world and ourselves. When we can identify a filter or belief we have, without trying to change it, we naturally start to see it better and it's easier to see beyond it. I offer this as a way of healing our old patterns of behavior.