What A Coincidence!: The wow! factor in synchronicity and what it means in everyday life [Paperback]

Susan M. Watkins (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 15, 2005

What if all those seemingly insignificant little what a coincidence! moments you’ve experienced were actually hinting at something very personal and important about yourself, and about the workings of human consciousness as a whole? Would you listen? Sue Watkins does. For more than thirty-five years, Susan M. Watkins, a former small-town newspaper reporter and the author of five books, has logged coincidences as they’ve occurred in her life. What she’s discovered is that single, seemingly inconsequential coincidences—an old friend calling at the exact moment she pops into your head, for example—are often pieces of larger, more complex and meaningful coincidence clusters that together create rich and revealing stories. In What a Coincidence! Watkins presents coincidence clusters that are truly astounding and, along the way, explores those two important questions: What do our personal coincidence clusters reveal to us about ourselves and our lives? And what do they reveal about human consciousness at large? The conclusions she draws are utterly life altering. You will never brush off those what a coincidence! moments again.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Watkins maintains an exquisite balance between the critical and intuitive frames of mind. . . . Intelligent, wise, irresistibly entertaining. --Joseph M. Felser, Ph.D., author of The Way Back to Paradise

. . . an original and provocative discussion . . . [and] Watkins’ practical suggestions make her book truly unique. --Stanley Krippner, Ph.D., author of Becoming Psychic and Extraordinary Dreams and How to Work with Them

About the Author

Susan M. Watkins is a former newspaper reporter, feature writer, and columnist and the author of four books, including Speaking of Jane Roberts and Conversations with Seth. She lives in upstate New York.

Product Details

• Paperback: 156 pages
• Publisher: Moment Point Press; First edition (August 15, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1930491077
• ISBN-13: 978-1930491076
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.6 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,029,658 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

27 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars One Woman's Take On Synchronicity, November 14, 2005

By 

Janet Boyer "Author, Blogger, Radio Host" (Pennsylvania) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: What A Coincidence!: The wow! factor in synchronicity and what it means in everyday life (Paperback)

"That's the thing about coincidence that is so intriguing, and a little infuriating: it always seems to be *about* something, though what that something might be is often fleeting, whisked by in a blink of the inner eye." - From the book

Synchronicity is a term invented by Swiss psychologist Carl Jung to describe meaningful coincidences. In the book What a Coincidence!, author Susan Watkins offers personal anecdotes about "coincidence clusters" and how they have the uncanny ability to reach into the past, present and even the future. Painstakingly recording her dreams and waking coincidences for over 37 years, she notes that some of these clusters can seem small and insignificant while others are so mind-bendingly complex that it verges into infinity-if not absurdity.

Watkins asks some intriguing questions about coincidences:

* What if the mind is sorting through far more than what we think of as daily life?
* What if the mind has an infinite reach, encompassing everything that is possible and probable in a constant, dazzling organizational display from which we pick and choose the shape of our experience?
* What if the workings of that display show itself all the time, in a "paranormal" context that we tend to ignore or belittle?
* What if everything we need to know is contained in our conscious minds, of which we habitually employ the merest surface layer?
* How could we consciously employ these different forms of information, and what would it mean to us in the daily practical world to do so? And how far should we go with this idea?

She offers that she's unsure *anyone* can arrive at an empirical conclusion about synchronicity, clairvoyance and precognition. Acknowledging that a lot of nonsense has been attached to dreams, ESP, and alternative perceptions, she maintains that swinging the pendulum the other way--tossing out coincidences and dreams as meaningless--cuts us off from an entire psychological landscape. According to Watkins, this stance is a hopeless folly that diminishes a sense of community and optimism.

So why bother examining the nature of coincidence? Moreover, why invest the time and energy to catalogue these coincidences and dreams tinged with clairvoyance and precognition? Watkins answers:

"...in the middle lies a window to the workings of consciousness; clues as to how and why we got here and maybe even a way to mitigate (or at least expose the roots of) messes. And this is where I think an anecdotal, yet sensible look-see at coincidence and oddball connections and encounters is worth a study, or at least an inquiry, without specifying proof or disproof as an absolute..."

The author suggests that coincidence clusters can reveal important information about individuals and human consciousness as a whole. For example, the "Google Mind", as she calls it, can "attract" to us desired information and, acting as a form of precognition, can retrieve information into forms like "charged patterns". The resulting "coincidence parable" would illustrate, by association, the central issue that called up one's precognitive radar in the first place. Watkins also explains how coincidence "updates" itself-and, interestingly, both illuminate and *change* the past!

What a Coincidence! logs dozens of synchronistic happenings-from the complex to the simple. While a few of the situations are downright amazing, the intricacies of the personal anecdotes outweigh the surprise, at times. It's like having a stranger tell you a complex story involving various relatives and friends, towns and shops, while your head spins trying to keep track of it all. Interesting, yes, but keeping track of the details can be mind numbing.

Nevertheless, this book was a (mostly) engrossing read about one woman's experience with meaningful coincidences. Some of these coincidences span years and intersect with startling timing.

However, the author comes across as a fussy, cranky, aloof individual. I found it interesting that the synchronicities she depicted-while providing a mental "aha! Isn't this neat!" experience for her-didn't seem to influence her towards a more positive, compassionate outlook in life-despite the fact that they appeared to be customized for her own attitudes. Because of the lack of transformation, the book seemed incomplete-or, at least, unsatisfying. Why painstakingly catalogue dreams and coincidences for mere mental masturbation, I wondered?

If you're fascinated by meaningful coincidences, this book provides some remarkable stories and theories about the origin, nature, and significance of synchronicities. Also, if you've been considering keeping a journal for dreams and/or coincidence clusters, What a Coincidence! just might give you that nudge you've been looking for.

13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars WOW!, September 27, 2005

By 

Ute Kaboolian (Cliffside Park, N. J. USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: What A Coincidence!: The wow! factor in synchronicity and what it means in everyday life (Paperback)

Please delete my earlier review and instead publish the following final version:

For A lover of coincidences like me this book is a feast: a veritable smorgasbord of coincidences, dreams, precognition and psychological insight served up in the most delicious conundrums of often funny and utterly honest everyday occurrences. Written in down to earth language with the most innovative word coining phrases What a Coincidence is at the same time simple and vastly complex, and a definite page turner. My personal little coincidence with this book must not be overlooked here either. It fits right in. On September 23, 2005 my daughter and a friend went to see George Clooney's new movie Good Night, Good Luck at the New York Film Festival. I had started reading What a Coincidence the day before and on the 23rd found myself on page 111 when the phone rang. The last sentence I had read was: "I'll just have to settle for ogling George Clooney until I can reeducate myself on the pertinent allegorical derivations, that's all." Ever since George's aunt Rosemary had sung William Saroyan's Come On-a My House Armenians have a soft spot for the Clooneys. It doesn't hurt that George is a hunk. As in all true coincidences (are there any others?) the time element is so important. For it was at this moment, this precise point in time (the book is published by Moment Point Press, after all), not the sentence before or the one after, that the phone rang and my daughter informed me that after the movie none other than George Clooney had shaken her friend's hand. A great big WOW for Sue Watkins and What a Coincidence!

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I was just thinking of..., October 20, 2006

By 

Stratonautus (London, UK) - See all my reviews

This review is from: What A Coincidence!: The wow! factor in synchronicity and what it means in everyday life (Paperback)

I can highly recommend Susan's book on the theme of coincidence. I was just thinking of how it provides a really excellent introduction into the field of trance, hypnosis and NLP as they especially deal with the communicative energy/behavioural patterns that roam our subconscious and structure our waking life without our acknowledgement.

There is really no such thing as a coincidence in the sense of a pure accident. Rather, each event coincides because all events convene at a certain point of greatest opportunity. The NOW moment.

Becoming aware of and using the additional capacity in your own mind, and that it takes in everything around you, even though your waking consciousness is busy focusing on small details, is the point of co-incidents. That comes clearly across in this book.

Considering also there is no time in the accepted sense, simply stores of patterns which we combine or divide in the now and that we are each human electromagnetic transmitters/receptors who ceaselessly communicate with others on the same bandwidth, it should not be astounding that we can pick up on events which we project into (what we describe as) a future with strong intention.

Thus the intent of A to call B can be felt by B before or at the same as the action is being carried out, as the thought is instantaneously transmitted. Maybe in future we can do without the phone and simply learn just to transmit by thought - we are doing it already.

Dogs and cats often wait for their owner from the moment they pick up the thought of the master 'coming home' (several experiments to verify this phenomenon have been successfully carried out). Coincidence is really based on a transmission of intent to a tuned-in receptor accepting or rejecting the information (combining or dividing). There are so many other examples of attraction and repulsion of information, which, based on our basic behavioural value patterns intice us to co-create the moment or event we then call a coincidence or accident. In that sense we do not react to events, but we co-create in advance, and mould, the events we then reflect on as our reaction.

To that extent none of us can ever claim to really be a victim. We simply ould not be involved in any action, had we not on some level consented to be there and then. Synchronicity is the one place we all live in. Susan's book wonderfully expands on these themes and gives the reader assistance in exploring the vast realm of the mind and its workings.

I can also heartily recommend this book as an inspiration to students of clinical hypnosis and to NLP practitioners for pattern awareness and timeline work because it enhances one's own peripheral views of effect and affect in action.