Inquiry with Kelly Chase - [The UFO Rabbit Hole] An Interview with Sharon Hewitt Rawlette: On Synchronicities

Episode Date: October 13, 2023

I’m so excited about today’s episode because I think it’s been a long time coming. This episode isn’t about UFOs, per se, but it is about something that often happens to people when they begin looking into this topic—or other topics that challenge our consensus reality—which is the sudden appearance of profound synchronicities. I hear from dozens of listeners of the podcast everyday, and one of the things that people reach out to me about most is to tell me that after they started listening to the podcast they suddenly started encountering strings of bizarre and improbable synchronicities in their lives. I’ve heard that exact thing from more people than I could ever get back to—and if you’re one of those people, I just want you to know that I’ve heard you, and I wanted to do an episode about this very phenomenon that I hope can serve as sort of roadmap in beginning to understand and integrate what synchronicities are and how you can best ride the wave of the improbable in your own lives. And I couldn’t think of anyone better to join me in this conversation than today’s guest—the woman who literally wrote the book on strange coincidences—Sharon Hewitt Rawlette. I’ve been lucky enough to meet Sharon and hear her speak at two different conferences in the last year—both December’s Inquire Anomalous conference in NYC, and Rice University’s Archive’s of the Impossible in May—and both times I was blown away by the depth and ingenuity of her thinking. Sharon has the ability to make complex ideas easy to grok, and every time I hear her speak I walk away with a new perspective and understanding. I’ll link up both of those talks in the episode description if you’d like to check them out.Sharon Hewitt Rawlette is a philosopher who writes for both popular and scholarly audiences on the topics of consciousness, anomalous experience, ethics, and spirituality. Before launching her career as an independent writer and researcher, she earned her PhD in philosophy from New York University. She currently serves on the board of the Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies as well as being a supporting researcher for the International Centre for Reincarnation Research. She has published four books and in 2021 was named a runner-up in the Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies essay contest for her essay “Beyond Death,” on the best evidence for the survival of human consciousness after permanent bodily death.The book that we’ll be referencing today is Sharon’s book entitled The Source and Significance of Coincidences. And if you have any interest in this topic, I really can’t recommend this book enough. Sharon attacks this topic from every conceivable angle, and the extensive table of contents makes it an invaluable reference tool when you want to dig a little deeper into strange coincidences that occur in your own life. [links in episode brief]NEW Class from Dr. James MaddenUnidentified Flying Hyperobject: UFOs, Philosophy, and the End of the WorldFour-week online class via ZoomWednesdays, March 27 – April 24 (skips April 10), 20247 – 9 pm ETLearn More About the ClassSign Up NowEPISODE BRIEFBECOME A PATRONPatrons get lots of great perks like early and ad-free episodes, access to the private The UFO Rabbit Hole Discord server, and twice-monthly Patron Zoom calls with Kelly Chase. Memberships start at just $5/month.GET THE BOOKGet a SIGNED COPYGet it on AmazonFOLLOWWebsiteTwitterFacebookMUSICTheme: Cabinet of Curiosities by Shaun FrearsonBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-ufo-rabbit-hole-podcast--5746035/support. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

There's been a horrible accident, I said hastily. I don't know what happened. Corcoran's eyeless skull gawked. His lower jaw having sagged more since I first found him, making it look like his corpse was trying to scream. His body is just a casing to be discarded, the man said softly. What's important is that you will not deny him burial in the method we prepared for him.

We're his protectors. Stop us from doing his will and you'll be harmed. His transition has come and we are ready. Go back in the house. No one needs to know. Knife Point Horror. Tales of supernatural suspense written, produced and narrated by Soren Narnia.

Now transmitting from Spector Vision Radio, anywhere you hear podcast. Welcome back to the UFO Rabbit Hole podcast. I'm your host, Kelly Chase. I am so excited about today's episode because I think it's been a long time coming. This episode isn't about UFOs per se, but it is something that often happens to people when they begin to look into this topic, or other topics that challenge our consensus reality, which is the sudden appearance of profound synchronicities. I hear from dozens of listeners of the podcast every day, and one of the of the things that people reach out to me about the most is to tell me that after they started

listening to the podcast, they suddenly started encountering strings of bizarre and improbable synchronicities in their lives. I've heard that exact thing from more people than I could ever get back to. And if you're one of those people, I just want you to know that I've heard you, and I wanted to do an episode about this very phenomenon that I hope can serve as sort of a roadmap in beginning to understand and integrate what synchronicities are, and how you can best ride the wave of the improbable in your own lives. And I couldn't think of anyone better to join me in this conversation than today's guest, the woman who literally wrote the book on strange coincidences, Sharon Hewitt-Rollett.

I've been lucky enough to meet Sharon and hear her speak at two different conferences in the last year, both December's Enquirer Anomalous Conference in New York City and Rice University's Archives of the Impossible in May, and both times I would have to be able to be. and both times I was blown away by the depth and ingenuity of her thinking. Sharon has the ability to make complex ideas easy to grok, and every time I hear her speak, I walk away with a new perspective and understanding. I'll link up both of those talks in the episode description if you'd like to check them out. They're both really good.

Sharon Hewitt-Rollett is a philosopher who writes for both popular and scholarly audiences on the topics of consciousness, anomalous experience, ethics and spirituality. Before launching her career as an independent writer and researcher, she earned her Ph.D. and philosophy from New York University. She currently serves on the board of the Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies, as well as being a supporting researcher for the International Center for Reincarnation Research. She has published four books, and in 2021 was named a runner-up in the Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies essay contest for her essay beyond death on the best evidence for the survival of human consciousness after permanent bodily

death. The book that we'll be referencing today is Sherwin's book entitled The Source and Significance of Coincidences. And if you have any interest in this topic, I really can't recommend this book enough. Sharon attacks this topic from every conceivable angle, and the extensive table of contents makes it an invaluable reference tool when you want to dig a little deeper into strange coincidences that occur in your own life. I'm so excited to share this conversation with you. But before we begin, I just want to assure you that, yes, the new series on Skinwalker Ranch is still coming and should be live by next week.

As I've gotten deeper and deeper into the research, this series has turned into a much more ambitious project. I didn't want to just give you what would amount to a book report on the books, the hunt for the Skinwalker, and Skinwalkers at the Pentagon. But I wanted to dig deeper into the strange phenomena reported there. and what they might be telling us about the nature of the larger phenomenon and about the nature of our reality itself. And in doing that, I've been particularly challenged

in finding the perfect portal into the ideas I want to tackle. But just last week, through a strange synchronicity of my own, I found that last puzzle piece that I needed to tie it all together. And so I'm working around the clock to get that finished and published live. Thank you for your patience. And in the meantime, here is my conversation with the brilliant Sharon Hewitt Rowlett. Well, hi, Sharon.

Welcome to the show. It's so wonderful to have you here. Thanks, Kelly. Thank you so much for inviting me. Well, I've been really looking forward to talking to you. I feel like in so many of my conversations with listeners and with patrons on our monthly calls, that the conversation so often comes back to synchronicities. There's something about the topic of UFOs that really surfaces that for people.

And I couldn't think of anyone better. to have this conversation with. And so, yeah, I wanted to just dive in with, first of all, what is a synchronicity and what distinguishes it from just your kind of front-of-the-mill coincidence or is there anything that distinguishes it? Well, different people use the terms in different ways. I tend to use the word coincidence more because I feel like it's a little bit more agnostic about what's behind it or if there is anything behind it because it's ambiguous in a lot of these cases. But generally, a synchronicity is a coincidence that you feel like has some sort of deeper meaning that it seems to indicate that there might be some kind of connection between

two events that you've experienced that can't be explained by the normal scientific paradigm. You can't necessarily see how that would come about, but the significance of those two events for you seem so closely aligned in a way that just chance wouldn't explain it. And so you start looking for some other explanation. And if you're a Jungian, if you, like that is Carl Gustav Young, then you might call that a synchronicity. He had a whole theory about how these events were caused, how they were connected to our process of personal individuation, our psychological growth.

But the term synchronicity has also been used more generally since his time to apply to any sort of personally meaningful coincidence. So in your book coincidences, you talk about some ways, and I don't want to make you do a bunch of math right now, but in terms of figuring out or trying to judge, how significant is this coincidence? How unlikely is it to kind of help people sort out what might just be a common coincidence from something that might be a lot more meaningful or something that's a lot harder to explain. How can people approach that thought process to figure out how significant this coincidence might be? One of the things that I think is most important and that people often don't

think about when they're considering the significance of their coincidences is the number of other ways you could have experienced something that would be just as psychologically meaningful to you. So, of course, when you experience the event, you know, your attention is, riveted on this particular thing that happened to you, that feels so meaningful. But it's important to think about, okay, what are other things that could have happened that would have felt just as meaningful to me? So an example I give in my book is if you're rolling some dice, like, say you're rolling seven dice, and you've just been thinking about this friend of yours and wondering if you should call her, and you roll the dice, and it's her phone number. I can see it right out there. So you think,

okay, this is very significant, I should call her. But it's also important to realize that there are other ways that those dice could have ended up that might have been significant for you too. Right. So the dice might have spelled out your own phone number. They might have spelled out somebody else's phone number. They might have spelled out your address or your social security number. There are lots of different ways that the dice might have ended up that are going to have a psychological meaning for you. Because a lot of times when people are trying to figure out the odds of their particular coincidence, they're thinking, well, what are the odds that this specific event happened? And instead, I think we need to figure out what are the odds that something this personally meaningful would have happened to me in this situation. So that's the first thing. And then I think it's important to consider, as you're trying to determine what those odds are, you have to consider the environment in which you experience the.

this coincidence, what other sorts of possible inputs or perceptions there were that you could have had. And you have to think about, too, how long your attention is occupied by the particular coincidence that you're experiencing. So if it took you, say, one second or two seconds to view these dice and view this phone number and really have that information enter your consciousness, then when you're calculating the probability of this event, you're going to say, okay, well, what is the probability that during that two-second span of time, I could have experienced something else that would be just as psychologically meaningful to me? And these are all, you have to approximate in all of these areas.

I mean, making estimates, but it gives you some sort of semi-objective parameter that you can use to try to make these calls. That's really interesting. So it seems like sometimes they could be really improbable, but it also seems like it could be that if you started paying attention to synchronicities more, if you started thinking about synchronicities more, that that could potentially cause you to have more synchronicities, maybe because you're just noticing them more often. Would you say that's accurate? I do think that people will notice them more often if they're thinking about them, certainly. Because, yeah, you're sort of scanning your environment. with particular things in mind. At the same time, I don't think that accounts for the whole phenomenon. I think also when people start thinking about synchronicity, particularly thinking about certain personally meaningful themes

that could be expressed by synchronicities, that they actually will have more of those things pop up in their environment. So it's not just this question of you're noticing it more, but actually they do happen more. So it's both of those things. But it's a very complex psychological phenomenon. And different people are at different places in how they're experiencing this and how sophisticated they are in figuring out the significance of the things they're experiencing.

So there are some people who, yeah, they need to be a little bit more aware of the fact that they're just paying way too much attention to the tiny details in their environment. But then on the other hand, there are a lot of people who are experiencing amazing, coincidences that are very unlikely to happen just by chance. And they're just writing them off as, you know, wishful thinking or changes in their attention. So it really depends on who you are, which you need to pay more attention to. We need to figure out how to balance these things and find the most psychologically helpful and healthy way to interact with these events. Yeah, absolutely. It's funny because as we're talking about this,

it's 11-11. And I feel like that's one that people talk about all the time is like 11-11 and then other, you know, duplicate numbers like that. And what's so funny is probably about a year ago I was having this conversation with someone about what felt like really significant synchronicities in my life. And I was talking about how I was kind of grappling with that question of like, how do you sort out what's just a coincidence and what might be like more of a sign. And I was saying, I take the time associated synchronicity a little bit less seriously, just because, I mean, it's 11, 11 twice a day, right? And it is indeed, yes. But the funniest thing is that I had never really noticed that before. And ever since that conversation, I swear to you,

I catch 1111 of both ends of the clock, like most days. And it's funny to me because I think that some people might interpret that as some sort of a sign. For me, it does feel like a sign, but it feels like a sign as like a grounding sign for me to remember that not every, to not get lost in it. You know what I mean? But somebody else, it happening to them, they might interpret it a totally different way. So it seems like there's a lot of kind of self-interpretation that goes on with synchronicities as well. There absolutely is. That's one of the big things that I try to bring across at my Coincidence book is just how there's no objective way to interpret a coincidence. And I mean, it can be helpful to talk to other people about your coincidences because it can be helpful to have

other people's perspectives. But ultimately, you're the one who knows your psychological, emotional state, which is generally what synchronicities are interacting with. It's the things that are preoccupying you emotionally that are going to get reflected back to you in these synchronicities. And so you're the one, because you know your internal states generally the best, you're the one who has to figure out what those synchronicities are saying to you about them and what sort of guidance. Sometimes I think they can give you guidance. I like what you're saying about the 11-11 being grounding for you. Like you take the message as, look, not everything. It has this earth-shattering significance.

Like, just remember twice a day. This comes around on the clock and continue on. in your path. I do want to say something about the number coincidences because these do seem to come up really often for people. I think it's one of the areas that like you, I can be most skeptical of just because we're surrounded by numbers on clocks everywhere. And with clocks, like, I don't know about you, but I have a pretty accurate internal clock. Like, I know what time it is without looking at the clock. So I know that my unconscious can be like, oh, look at the clock. right now because it's going to have the significant number. So that's one reason that I don't take the clock things to be that important. But I do think that there is something to some number synchronicities. And I actually, I wrote a article on psychology today a few years ago about license plate synchronities and numbers are using license plates to test your number of synchronicities. So if you feel like you're seeing a certain number more often than chance,

actually gave a way for you to tally up the different license plates that you're experiencing and are you really seeing those numbers more often than chance. But it's just something I've done in my own life because I was like, so it feels like I'm seeing this more often than chance, but am I really? And it turned out that it wasn't just my perception. The numbers backed me up. But there's this other cool thing that I've noticed. So my coincidence number for a long time has been, 33. But a lot of your listeners also are attracted to that number as well. And for a long time, yeah, it seems like 33 would pop up in important moments in my life. And it was just sort of this reassuring little internal thing and said, yeah, you know, maybe there's somebody out there that

was sort of watching or validating what I'm doing or going through. But I've discovered through the years that there's actually a little bit more to it than that and that I'm I can actually use the 33s to give me information sometimes, which is really kind of crazy. So, for instance, I think the first time this happened was when I gave my very first public talk on coincidences. So this was like a big step for me career-wise. And I was talking to the woman who had organized this event and it was going to be at this community, a couple hours away from me, this retirement community. and she was writing me to tell me that we were going to have the event at the clubhouse in this community. So I went online and looked up the clubhouse, and I saw that there were actually two clubhouses in this community,

and it showed the address for each of them. One of them had a 33 in it. So I said to her, I bet it's at the one with the 33 in the address, isn't it? And she said, yes, that is where the talk is going to be. We're actually, we're going to have lunch at the other place, but the talk itself. was going to be at the clubhouse with the 33. So it's like, okay. And then on another occasion,

I was going to have my first online conversation with a woman who became a dear friend of mine. We connected, actually, through my coincidence book. Our connection has had a great deal to do with coincidence and synchronicity. But she had just emailed me for a period of time, and we were going to connect online, like, do a video chat for the first time. And we were going to do it through Facebook. So I was going on Facebook.

to get into Messenger and I realized that I wasn't friends with her on Facebook yet. I needed to find her. And all I had was her first and last name, which are semi-common. So when I search for her in Facebook, there are several people with her first and last name that show up. And I have to figure out which one is her. And I see that one of these people, Facebook assigns you like a little number that's after your name in your sort of URL for your Facebook page. And one of these people had a 33 as her randomly assigned number. And I said, that's got to be her. And lo and behold, it was her.

So I've got other stories like this. But there are actually ways that I've been able to say, okay, yeah, it must be that because of the 33. So the fact that it can bring me information like that is another confirmation that. It's not just chance. It's not just that I'm noticing it more. There actually is a connection there. You know, that is interesting because I tend to, I think because I was for so many years for basically all of my adult life, an atheist and like a strict materialist and really held that worldview that even now that I've crossed over, I feel like I almost live in two worlds sometimes. Like my brain is doing two things at the same time because as you're talking about that, as much as the 1111 is very grounding for me and I'm like, oh, you know, don't take it all too.

seriously, stay in the moment. I do notice what I'm talking about or what I'm thinking about at 1111. As I'm noticing it, I notice that. And it's almost always significant to me in some way. As in if I'm trying to decide what I'm going to do my next episode about and I happen to be talking to somebody about something at 11.11, I'm like, oh, that's probably, that's the one I should do. Like, I do kind of follow it as much as I'm skeptical of it. I also notice it and use it as kind of like a GPS sometimes, which is. Yeah. Well, if it works. then I don't see any reason not to. I mean, that's the thing.

Like the proof is of the pudding. If you're getting something useful for it, then use it. So let me tell another story because this highlights for me the ambiguity of coincidences, the need for interpreting them years ago when I was leaving academia. So I got my PhD and then I did a postdoc for a couple of years and then I decided I didn't want to be an academic philosophy anymore. So I hadn't applied for any. jobs after the postdoc ended. But I was starting, I was going through a lot of personal changes, and I started to wonder, maybe I made the wrong decision, maybe I should have studied an

little bit longer or saved a little more money. So it was the time of year right after academic jobs are advertised online, or like tender track jobs are advertised. And I thought, okay, well, I'm just going to go online to the website that advertises all the jobs and look at what was advertised this year. And if there wasn't anything good, then I will feel very good about the decision I made not to apply for anything. So I go on this website and I look and it turns out that there was a job that was in my area of specialty that was in my home state of Virginia and my favorite area of the state in the mountains of Virginia. And the weirdest part was that unlike all of the other jobs on this website. This job hadn't closed yet. There was still, I think, two weeks left before the

deadline for applying for this job. And I was like, well, I guess this is a sign like I'm supposed to apply for this job. So I go through all the process of getting my application ready. I need to take my application materials to my alma mater, NYU. It turns out that I just happened to have already scheduled a weekend trip to New York. The weekend that I needed to get my application materials there, I was like, look, like the universe is just lining up perfectly. So I go to New York and I can't bring myself to take the envelope to the philosophy department at NYU. Like, I just, I can't do it. So a couple of days go by. It's my last full day in New York. I wake up. I'm sitting, eating breakfast. I'm looking out the window of my friend's apartment.

I see some people in an office building across the way, and it just kind of makes me think of working in an office, being back in academia, and I just have this terrible feeling in the pit of my stomach. And at that moment, I just said to myself, I don't care what the coincidences are telling me. I am not applying for this job. I do not want this. So that day, I left the application materials on the floor.

I went out and hung out around the NYU, but without being worried that I would feel like I needed to turn that application in. That evening, I was having dinner with my friend that I was staying with and was telling him about that, but also about these 33s that I had been seeing all day. And so then we start to go back to his apartment, and he's an architectural journalist, so he starts pointing out some different buildings to me on the way back. and he points to this one. He says that Philip Johnson designed this building.

And I'm looking at it. I'm looking at the windows. And I realized that this is the same building that I was looking at that morning out of his window. I said, this is the building across from your apartment, isn't it? And he was like, yes, it is. And we get up a little bit closer. And I see the address plate like a big gold plaque on the front of this building. And it says 33 Maiden Lane.

And it took me a long time to sort of figure out. what I thought had happened here exactly. Because, like, where the coincidence is doing, like, what was happening? Because it seemed like they were leading me in the wrong direction, and then I make this choice, and then they confirm it with this 33. And what I have come to feel is true about this is that the coincidences were helping me, but they were helping me by showing me, giving me, giving me, the perfect, the quote unquote perfect job if I was going to be in philosophy.

What would be the perfect job? Allowing me to experience what that would be to have that job, you know, a real possibility in my life and then allowing me to search my own soul, understand my own feelings, and realize that that was not what I wanted. So they took me, it took me from a place of uncertainty and doubt and brought me to a place where I felt absolutely certain that I had made the right choice. And I will say that, like, 13 years later, that I still feel that that was absolutely the right choice.

I've never regretted leaving academia. So this is why I say coincidences require this personal interpretation. Like, they don't just flat out tell you what to do. They might give you an idea. They might set some kind of situation up for you, but you're the one who has to look at your own. feelings, your own values, and decide what to do with that information. We're going to take a quick break and we'll be right back. I love that. I love that because

in a lot of ways it kind of, and I love your thoughts on this, but it kind of affirms this hypothesis that I'm developing with myself about what my synchronicities are and what synchronicities are in general. You know, we talked a little bit earlier about how something that happens a lot that I hear from people is that they get into the podcast and then they start having a lot of synchronicities in their life that feel very significant to them. And it's more people than I can even get back to. It's just, it seems to happen a lot. And it's interesting because the podcast came about as a result of like a huge synchronicity in my life. And so it feels in some ways like it's contagious or something. But I don't think, and I think that's true, but not for maybe

the reasons I would have originally thought at the beginning. But I feel like there's something about synchronicities that are like that internal GPS system. And that the reason that people start to have synchronicities out of nowhere is because something has happened that is sort of shocked them out of their normal mode of existence. Like so much of our lives is set up so that we live in these automated loops, especially once you get into adulthood, you get to a place where you can go a decade without making a decision, you know, like you just kind of get into these. And that something happens. And I think like UFOs can be something or, you know, any of these topics around UFOs can be something that does that to somebody that kind of shocks them awake in a way that makes them realize that the nature of their reality isn't what they thought it was. And that something about that puts you back in the driver's seat and it activates this GPS system that you've always had, but that you just,

maybe not paying attention to or weren't connected to. And I wonder what you think about that. I think that makes a lot of sense because, yeah, when you're going along in your life and you're just acting out of habit, you're just doing things the way that you've always done them. Well, one, you're not going to notice it, coincidence, as if they are there, you're not going to notice them because you already know what you're going to do. But two, you don't really need them because you've got your well-trod path. You're just going to stay in your lane and do your thing. But once your world explodes, like the way you're talking about, somebody discovers this whole phenomenon of UFOs, or somebody discovers after death research, or they have a communication

maybe from their deceased loved one, or something happens to them that just blows apart the habitual way that they had conceived of their world. Then suddenly, they're searching for their path. They're searching for what is the, you know, how do I make these decisions? How do I figure out what to do with all of this stuff? And so the synchronicities are going to suddenly be more useful. And you're suddenly going to be paying so much more attention to your environment because you're trying to figure out this puzzle.

You're trying to receive more information about what's going on. So you're just riveted on everything that's happening. And I think, too, that – so this phrase is going to my – they favor the prepared mind. I don't know who said that. So a coincidence. is going to come to you generally when it's going to have some effect. Because I actually think that coincidences are generally goal directed.

There's something that they're aiming at helping you to achieve. And so if you're not paying attention to them, then they're not going to show up as often. I mean, they might still, because they might try to get your attention and jolt you out of your complacency. But generally, if they're not going to have an effect, they're not going to show up. And so once you're in a place where you're open to receiving that kind of information, and that kind of guidance and emotional help, then they're going to start showing up in spades. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I've noticed that some of the biggest synchronicities in my life have happened in times of transition in my life, which makes me think also, you know what you're saying,

that that's, that you're looking for the path. Like, yeah. One of the craziest ones I had for me was I had been living in Amsterdam for a few years, and I really loved it, and I wanted to stay, but it was also everything was very difficult. I was getting past the point of just being enamored with the newness of it and kind of really adjusting to like, what does it mean to date in a culture that's so very different from your own? And I had just gotten a job. I needed to get a more serious job there to be able to extend my stay to extend my visa. So I got this job with this Dutch company.

And I really didn't speak Dutch very well at all. And Dutch people speak English, like they all learn it, but it was an all Dutch speaking office. So they weren't going to just speak English because one chick showed up and was speaking English. And the Dutch are a very suck it up culture. So they weren't going to do that for me. So which is understandable. But, you know, and I had been feeling just like, all I wanted was to stay in Amsterdam. It's my favorite city in the world.

But everything just kept feeling harder and harder. But I had a job. I had an apartment, a roommate, everything lined up. And I was just going home for Christmas. And I was on the plane on the way home and I had watched the first season of the Handmaid's Tale on the way back into the U.S. Because it was on the plane. And as I was landing, like the second when the wheels touched down in Cleveland at the Cleveland airport, the credit started to roll on the finale episode of the first season. And Tom Petty's American Girl is the song that plays.

And I started like weeping. It felt like such a significant moment to me. But I'd also been on a transatlantic flight. I'd had some wine, you know, so I didn't take it like too seriously, but it stuck with me. And it just started this thought process. And within 24 hours, I had decided that I was not going back to the Netherlands, which was not an idea that I had at all in my, it just wasn't there for me. So I went and I was like, well, if I'm going to stay, I got to find a job. And I put my resume together and I looked.

And the first job I looked at was like, well, this is perfect. And I sent my resume to them. And they got back to me within an hour and set up an interview and I reconnected with a friend of mine who I'd always had a thing for and hope things would work out with. And suddenly it was a green light and like we're married now. And all of these things happened. But the craziest part was that job. It took them a while to hire me. Like they got back to me really quickly. But it was in Gainesville, Florida. And they didn't want to hire me right away because they didn't want someone remote. And I was like, I'm not moving to Gainesville because I had just reconnected with this guy and gotten back to my family. And I was like, I'm not doing it. But Finally, I came down there for an interview and they ended up making me an offer. And after I signed the offer letter, my new boss says to me, they were building a new office. And he goes, hey, let me take you out to our new office to check it out. And I was like, yeah, great. So as we're driving out there, I had noticed what was funny is that the whole time I was there,

I was seeing Tom Petty everywhere in Gainesville. And what I didn't realize was that Tom Petty was from Gainesville. And so there's murals of like Tom Petty all over the place. And everywhere you go in, they're playing Tom Petty. And in American Girl, he name checks this one road, 441. And we're driving out on 441. And I realized that this new office is like on 441. And I was just like, what are the chances?

Oh, it's beautiful. And so I'm currently like thinking about my next project. I told you before we started doing the official interview that I working on at philosophy. speakbook right now that's hopefully almost done. And so I've been thinking about what I'm going to do next. And my next big project has to do with destiny and particularly the way that coincidences can lead you to your destiny. And so your story, it just is so, you know, beautifully orchestrated there. And especially I love the fact that when you heard the song, all the plane, like it had this huge emotional impact on you. But then, of course, you know, your rational side is like, well, yeah,

I maybe had too much wine and, you know, I'm tired of my flight. And so that's why I'm reacting this way. But then to see the events that unfolded after that. And then at the end of that, you know, and you're like patiently negotiating with these people. And then you get this amazing synchronicity with Tom Petty and Gainesville and 4.1. It's just, it's just, it's out of a novel. Like, there are those moments where you just feel like somebody is writing the story of my life. Right. No, and I think that that's exactly it is the story aspect of it is something that I've become really kind of obsessed with is that I think that I worry so much that like the way I talk about, you know, if you come an adult and then you get a job and then you get married and then you come home every night and you watch television and then you go to your job.

And it feels like we're like consuming stories and not living stories. And that when you start to reengage with your life, it does start to feel. like a story that somebody's writing. Yeah. Yeah. And there's something magical about that. Yeah. Because, I mean, it's magical. I mean, just to sort of have a sense of making decisions.

And if you've been in a place where you feel like everything is imposed on you for so long, and then you break out of that, you're like, no, I'm actually going to take some risks in my life. I'm going to do something differently than what's expected of me. I'm going to try this other thing. I mean, that in itself can be intoxicating. but then to be going along that path and to have what seems like supernatural help in that you've decided, okay, this is what I need to do. I feel like when you heard that song on the plane, that that huge emotion that you felt, that was your intuition telling you what your path was. And you did recognize it. Over that next 24 hours, you were like, okay, I need to stay here.

So you recognized it and you acted on it. Yeah. Well, I'd love to pivot a little and talk about, you know, the thing that I find so intriguing about synchronicities, I'm sure you do as well. I mean, you wrote a very long book about it. And I love it. It's a fantastic reference. I actually turn to it all the time, which is like, what does this mean about the nature of reality? If we are living our lives and we are able to kind of get information back to us in sort of strange ways. And if there does seem to be something that's, guiding us or pointing us in a direction or that sort of thing. Like, what does that mean about the nature of our reality? Yeah, that's a million dollar question. I don't think there's anything definitive that we can say at this point. I think for me, the most important thing that it says about our reality is that there's way more to it than we have understood so far. That there is a connectedness, there's an organization, an order to our world that is far beyond what we have been able to perceive, especially in looking at the world through scientific instruments,

and trying to measure little pieces of the world and do particle physics or what have you. We have this approach in our 20th and 21st century science that we can figure out how the world works by concentrating on some little teeny part of it. We make sure that we put lots of controls on our experiments so that nothing outside of what we want to focus on will interfere with it. And then we see how things act in this tiny little piece of the world. And then we say, okay, so this is what is fundamentally going on in the world. And now we'll just like multiply that, you know, into all of the other pieces of the world.

So every piece must be working just like this one. And what we get from that is this idea that, entire universe is this machine, that it's all just like mechanical and that nothing more is happening except what we can see in our little laboratory experiment, where we have purposely screened out anything that is too complicated for us to understand. When we experience coincidence and synchronicity, I think what we're experiencing is that the connections among

the different parts of our world, the different minds and the different physical substances that are part of our world, that those connections are way more complex

than our science has even we just have no conception of that. I think scientists are well, I'm not going to try to diagnose scientists. But I think we all as a culture, we're very enamored of the technologies that the mechanical approach to the world has enabled us to develop. Because we certainly have been able to understand some important things about how our world works and use that to develop technologies that work in a very reliable fashion.

But these other experiences, coincidences and even more paranormal experiences, show us that there's something else that's something else that's. going on is a more holistic kind of thing. If you think about quantum mechanics for a second, so specifically about like entanglement of particles. So I mean, I'm not going to go to the details of this, but in the phenomenon of quantum entanglement, you have one particle or two particles. And when one of them takes on a definite state because it's observed in one situation, the other particle is entangled with it. It may be, you know, miles away, but it's also going to take on a definite state that is coordinated with the other particle in a particular way. Now, there are lots of things that are cool about this, but one of them is that you can only

observe the entanglement of the particles by doing some really careful experiments that involve both of those particles and a lot of careful mathematics to figure out what the probabilities are between them having these various states. So if you don't do the right, kind of experiments, you would never know that quantum entanglement existed at all. So similarly, when we're looking at other holistic properties, like the ability of the physical world to sort of mirror our emotions or our psychological preoccupations back to us in various ways, that's something that if we aren't looking at the data in a wide enough, holistic enough way, we're not even going to see those correlations. We can just say,

the world just behaves mechanically. And anytime you think it doesn't behave mechanically, well, you know, it's just chance and you're paying too much attention to this particular instance. But if we actually systematically gathered a much larger amount of data about a much wider variety of things, including people's psychological state at the moment when they're experiencing these coincidences, I think we would see that there is so much more order. in coordination within our world than we have previously. No, that makes a lot of sense.

It occurs to me while you're talking about this, too, that when we're conducting a scientific experiment and we're trying to control for all of these different variables that, like, the variable that we usually don't control for, there are exceptions, obviously. But the variable we don't usually control for is consciousness or the observer. As part of that experiment,

there's obviously the placebo effect comes to mind, you know, in that case, we do actually in some ways control for consciousness. But for the most part, we just kind of pretend like it's not a part of the equation. But like you talked about on the podcast, do the work of Donald Hoffman that seems to indicate that, you know, consciousness is a part of the creation of the reality that we live in. But it's a part that we tend to just sort of act like doesn't have anything to do with anything. Right. It's epiphanomenal to use the philosopher's term. It's just this thing that, you know, has an existence, but it doesn't actually have any causal power.

It doesn't change the way the world works. It just sort of floats on top of all the physical stuff. Yeah. You know, something you talk about in your book specifically was about the angel of the library. And it's become a big part of my creative process and my process with the podcast. Sometimes people are like, you know, I've had a lot of output over the last two years and I'm relatively new to this topic. people are like, how are you doing this? And I'm like, no one gets obsessed the way I do for one. But also, I think a big part of it is that like it comes to me. I need to set the intention of what I want the

episode to be and what I want its impact to be. And then the books just come. And I try not to sweat it too much. And I try not to worry. I can get into this place where I worry that like I haven't done enough research. But I learned to just trust that feeling when I know that I've done enough, when I've found the thing that I need to say. And it ends up being a lot more coherent and complete than I anticipate when I look back on it months later, having learned more and seen more. And I feel like that happens all the time that just the bookshelves are a big part of my creative process, because I just put the books all on a shelf and it's just a feeling which book I should pull out sometimes. And so I think I really liked that. You put that in the book. And I,

But it makes me feel like in some ways, like books are just kind of a microcosm of the larger field of information that we're interacting with all the time. Yeah, books are one like really easy way for the information to pop up for us in a coherent way. I mean, the internet is an easy way to get information, but it's usually, it's pretty simple. You might get a few paragraphs on whatever topic it is, but a book that's like a very systematic treatment of a particular topic. And so if the universe can bring you a book where somebody has systematically examined a topic and then you can pull that in and connect it with a few other books to fit with a particular subject that you're interested in, then that's a very efficient way for the information connectivity of the universe to work. We'll be right back after this quick break. How many discounts does USA auto insurance offer? Too many to say here. Multi-vehicle discount, safe driver discount, new vehicle discount, storage discount, legacy.

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we alert you right away. all through text, phone, email, or the LifeLock app. Get the alerts that could make all the difference. Save up to 40% your first year at LifeLock.com slash special offer. Terms apply. Yeah, it makes me think of, so in my past life, before I do this full time now, but when I was in marketing, search engine optimization was a big part of my expertise. And so I know a lot about how that works in terms of querying Google.

and the information that comes up and how to make sure that your information comes up and that sort of thing. And I know also kind of a lot about digital ads and how ads that you're served and why you're served them and that sort of thing. And I notice that in some ways the internet can create those same sorts of weird moments for people to the point that people feel like their phones are listening to them and then serving them up ads, which I always tell people, it's almost certainly not that because that would be like the least effect. effective way for that to work would be for it to be listening to you. And then like the infrastructure on that alone is crazy. And they don't need to because it turns out that you leave this really rich digital trail across the internet and that the algorithm of the Google, the algorithm of Google has been perfected to the point that.

And what's funny is that like even experts in the field approach Google in almost an anthropological way. not even the people at Google know what the Google algorithm is doing or what it is prioritizing. And so you have to run big studies on it every year. And then they kind of set out like, well, we think that these are probably the top six things that Google is basing this on. But it's all very, like it's an anthropological study of Google. It's not like a, we don't know actually. Yeah, you're studying. Yeah, it's a, you're studying this intelligence thing that they, algorithm was created for itself.

Exactly. So it makes me wonder if reality just doesn't have, like there must be some sort of underlying algorithm to reality and to consciousness. So we are kind of able to query it in certain ways, like in the same way that you would query Google. And some people are maybe a little better at it than others, but that it seems to be a latent ability that maybe we all have. Mm-hmm.

Yeah. I think that's a really intriguing way to think about. I think a very likely accurate way, accurate metaphor. To think about it that way, because there is this aspect to coincidence and synchronicity that is very associative. So it often see like certain cities using puns and things like to demonstrate things to people or things that'll be like almost right, but not quite right or they'll be humorous and being not quite right. But this associative nature to those experiences, it seems to point to. there is some kind of process. There's some kind of information gathering and, not number crunching,

but information crunching that's happening to spit out the experiences that the universe things would be useful to you. And sometimes they are really useful. Sometimes it seems like, well, maybe, like, maybe it's not as useful as I thought, although. So that, like, makes me think of the experience that I had with the job applicator, or the perfect job coming up and then it turning out that I really didn't think it was a good job. Every time when we think that, you know, maybe the algorithm has gotten something a little bit wrong, sometimes later on when you reflect back on it, it's like, oh, well, maybe the purpose that was being served there was wider than I thought.

Like, from my specific goal in that moment of time, it seemed like not the right answer. but then when I view it in this wider perspective and trajectory that it's taken beyond in the years since, suddenly that seems to have been just the right thing to have happened. I just couldn't see it from that time. So part of what I'm doing in this philosophy book

that I'm writing right now is wrestling with some of these really big questions about how synchronicity works, how the universe works, because it's connected to a concept that they've talked about for a long time, the concept of teleology, the idea that the universe has a purpose or the individual parts of the universe have a purpose. And so it's not just a mechanism that, you know, what happens today depends on what it was doing yesterday, but that it also depends on what the system wants to become tomorrow. And so one of the things that's really tricky about trying to figure out if we are living within a teleological system, a purpose-driven system, is that. that if we don't see the complete end result, we can't, we don't know exactly.

It's hard to test because you always have only a small piece of the information that you need, especially if, like we were saying, you're working in a completely holistic system. Unless you know everything that's happening everywhere in the universe, you won't know whether the universe is optimized for producing A or it's optimized for producing B or what have you. I think it's really interesting to think about the possibility that the universe is purpose-driven in that sense. Because certainly our individual consciousness, our being as conscious minds and people who make decisions and who choose things, we seem to have purposes. We seem to interact with the world in that sort of way. And so it's intriguing to think that maybe there is a wider, more all-encompassing.

mind that is also doing that in our universe. Yeah, I feel like that's definitely, like you said, it's not something I could ever prove, you know? I don't know if anyone ever able to, but it's the sense that you get, the more you kind of engage with these ideas and the structure of them and how they work is this feeling that maybe there is a deep meaning and direction and viewed in everything and a purpose. And sometimes I feel like when I am more, which once again, it's a sense. sense. I couldn't prove this, but I feel like when I am more aligned with my purpose or when I sense my purpose to be that these things tend to happen more often, whether it be synchronicities or even kind of like pre-cognitive experiences or just weird connections that happen with people. Sometimes I think the most interesting connections that actually happen are just the people that come into my life

and how they come into my life. Exactly the right moment. And yeah, it just gives you the sense that when you're more aligned, but it makes it easier to plug into whatever this network of information is. Well, and it would make sense if the universe has its own goals, that when your personal goals are aligned with what the universe as a whole is seeking, then the universe is going to really help you with all this stuff because you're tapping into the very kind of order that the universe already wants to create. Yeah. The same way, when you're choosing your friends or your colleagues when you're working with people who have goals very similar to yours, there's going to be all of this synergy and you're really going to be helping each other and in multiplying the effort

that each of you is putting in. I mean, the results are going to be so much greater than they would if you were working all in your lonesome or if you were working with somebody who was at cross-purposes with you. And so if you view the universe as another mind, not necessarily wholly separate from you, but somehow like we're part of that. When you're aligned with what that larger mind is trying to do, then things get way easier. They do. They absolutely do. I think it's so cool. And for me, that ends up being kind of how I stay grounded in noticing a lot of synchronicities. And it's something you touch on in your book is that I do think that there's almost like a danger to synchronicities. I think it's so cool what synchronicities can do for people in terms of giving them

direction and also just giving them this kind of sense of agency and wonder and all of these things that I think we don't necessarily have in our daily lives. But I also get worried sometimes because I know for some people, and I've certainly teetered on that edge from time to time, it can become almost like a kind of madness. Like you can really lose yourself and lose the thread, like chasing these synchronicities. And I'd love to just like hear your thoughts on that and how that happens and what people can do to kind of avoid that. So I think for myself, the thing that has been most helpful for me in sort of avoiding getting carried away by synchronicities in a negative sort of obsessive way has been recognizing that the primary role of synchronicities in my life is

to tune me into my own intuition. So I really believe just from years of experiencing this and thinking about it, that the coincidences and synchronicity seem to show up in my life when there's part of me that knows what I should do or need to do or what I feel about something that I'm, like, on a social level, not willing to own up to or maybe, you know, to my own mind. I'm not willing to own up to it. the coincidences will put that out there in the physical world, will put it there in front of my face so that I can't ignore it anymore.

And by doing that, they will draw attention to the things that inside I have been ignoring. Because I'm a very analytical person and tend to ignore my emotions, especially if they're not lined up with what I feel like I should be accomplishing in this moment, then I'll just push them to the side. And so those coincidences often come into my life in a very strong way when there is an emotion, there's an issue that I really need to pay attention to. And it brings it front and center in such an impactful way that I have to pay attention to that intuition. So the coincidences, they played that role.

And over time have trained me to pay more attention to. pay more attention to the emotions before they get to that level where they have to be displayed on the coincidence screen of my of my life and so to bring this back to your question i feel like when people including myself at times when we get carried away with like trying to figure out exactly what the coincidences are telling us or you know this coincidence significant and in what way how does it all fit together we're starting to get lost in the analytical mind and again, which is not what the coincidences are trying to, not where they're trying to take us. We've sort of gone off the rails in looking at them.

And it's almost like we're trying to get them to speak a language that they don't speak. And we don't know why it's all coming out gibberish. But the more we look at the coincidences, the more they stop making any sense to us and just seem overwhelming. It's because we're not listening to them at the level that we need to be listening to them, which is at the level of the heart and the emotion. So when somebody is in that situation where they feel overwhelmed by the coincidences or completely mystified by what they mean, my first piece of advice would be to take time to sit quietly with yourself and pay attention to what you are feeling. What are you feeling about the coincidences that are happening?

and what are you feeling more generally in your life? Are there things that you have been avoiding doing, avoiding saying, avoiding recognizing that need to be done or said or recognized? That's what the coincidences are trying to get you to do. And so if you go inside in that way and you find the emotional root of the coincidental events, then the coincidences are going to calm themselves. You'll see this reaction in the external world where it will calm down because it doesn't need to try to get you to pay attention anymore to your feelings.

Does that make sense? No, that's such great advice. So kind of the way I've started to think about it is that I'm really obsessed with the hero's journey. And I feel like it's kind of part of that algorithmic nature of consciousness and reality that we were talking about. Like, it's a major piece of that puzzle. And it seems like, you know, like you're saying that the, the synchronicity is trying to get you to pay attention to something.

And it happens, though. It can feel like it's this really thrilling, sometimes almost euphoric moment when you have a really good one. And you feel like the universe has winked at you in particular and you, you know, and I think about it in terms of the hero's journey, in terms of. kind of like the call to adventure. It's that moment where you realize that your own, the nature of your reality isn't what you thought it was,

you know, like it's the letter coming from Hogwarts, like, it's Gandalf giving you the ring. And there's like an elation and a fear and like a lot of things that come in that, but it's very heightened. It's one of the emotional high points of the story, right? But I feel like people can sometimes get trapped in that part

because the call to adventure is just the beginning of like, there's a lot of work you have to. to do. You know, like, and it's not all like euphoric. In fact, most of it is not. Yeah, like some of it sucks. And I think it can often be the indication, like in the example I used with that, you know, see, it felt like I had gotten this confirmation that I had made the right choice in my life and that I had listened to myself and I had done the right thing. But like, then I had to do that job, you know? Like, and like, and that part wasn't so glamorous, you know? And I Right. And what didn't necessarily deliver me to the ultimate answer or purpose of my life,

but I can see now that it was the step that got me to where I am now, which will take me somewhere else. And I feel like maybe sometimes people get trapped in that. It's almost like those what's addictive. Yeah. Like when they give like rats a choice between like food and water or like cocaine and they just go with cocaine. Yeah. I think because it's so liberating and encouraging to realize, yeah, there's way more to the universe than I thought. Like there's something that's helping me along the way. There's all these other possibilities. I didn't even realize we're there. And then, yeah, then you come to the point where you've got to start doing some work to make things happen. And it doesn't feel as fun anymore. And you just want to get back to that feeling. Like just let all the possibilities open up again.

But it's not a sustainable state. And that's not the ultimate purpose of our existence. here. There's a reason that the coincidences are generally subtle and in the background, that it's not every decision that you make in your life a coincidence is going to arrive and tell you what to do. Coincidences are not a way to avoid the hard work of living. You have to make choices. You have to put in effort. You have to walk down the path. And every so often, when things are getting really tough and you might not be able to make it. Otherwise, you'll get this sparkly little intervention from the universe that says, don't worry, you're on the right path. Just keep going or maybe turn a little bit to the left and things will be okay. But it's not always going to be

like that. And it's a hard thing to accept. I mean, life is a hard thing to accept in general. Just how difficult it is. And synchronicity is a health. along that way. And like you were saying, synchronicity has often come up in transitional moments in your life. I think they come up in hard moments in our lives in general in those times when we just feel stuck, like we just have no idea what to do, how to navigate, and we will get help in those moments. But then we have to run with it and do the next step. Yeah. I love that so much. And I feel like that's such a great place for us to end it. Oh, my goodness.

I know. I know. And I'd love to have you back because of the other thing that we didn't get a chance to talk about, but I think what I would love to speak with you about in the future is, you know, you've done a lot of work with near-death experiences and the afterlife and that sort of thing. And that's another topic that comes up with UFOs all the time. So I would love to have you back soon to talk about that. Well, cool. I will look forward to that conversation at some point in the future.

But this was really great. It's really great talking to you because you've obviously done so much hard thought on your own about these experiences. And there's just, there's so much, there's so much complexity here from an intellectual standpoint, but also so much spiritual and emotional complexity. And I feel like you've really grappled with that. And it's been great talking to you about it. Oh, this has been so wonderful, Sharon. Thank you so much for coming on. the show. Thanks for having me, Kelly. What scares me is getting stuck really late at night

in an unfamiliar town at some intersection that has an inexplicable red light. That shouldn't even be red because there's no one around for miles. It's three in the morning, and yet there I am. The engine idling and the seconds are ticking and I'm looking to the left and looking to the right in the shadows. At that moment, I'm always convinced that I've been set up by the forces of dark. darkness, and this is the moment when something is going to come out of the dark at my car, and that thing is going to be, I don't know, let's just say the Wendigo, sure.