If you pay attention they're everywhere. The more you pay attention the starker they are. I don't keep track of them anymore, for reasons, but if I read/hear/talk about synchronicity, a few minor ones will pop out to me that day.
You could write it all off as the mind looking for patterns, but if you actually pay attention and are honest with yourself, pattern recognition is a cope. A common thing is for some random topic to come up in conversation–Saint Elmos Fire for instance. Later that evening I'm reading whatever book it is I'm reading at the moment and Saint Elmos Fire comes up seemingly at random. The book will be on the US Civil War or whatever and have nothing to do with Fortean phenomena outside the one paragraph I happen to read the evening it comes up in conversation.
When I started experimenting with synchronicity, I did it as a lark. I had been agnostic throughout my whole adolescence and was leaning more and more toward strict materialism. When I first experienced synchronicities, I wrote them off as simple coincidences or the brain forming patterns that weren't there. The more I kept track of them, the weirder they would be, and the harder they were to write off. The one that finally convinced me:
> Working night shift as a prison guard
> Go in that night with the intention of paying special attention for any synchronicities
> When working night shift the routine is to come in, count inmates in unit, debrief with off-going officer, exchange equipment, go over rules with the inmates, inmates go to their cells, perform four random searches of inmates and cells, complete paperwork pertaining to searches, open unit for inmates to have a couple hours of free time, inmates lock down till cells until breakfast
> From the time the inmates lock down till breakfast you have to do two rounds an hour to make sure no one is trying to escape, kill themselves, circumvent rules, is dead etc. You therefor have a lot of free time and the brass doesn't care if you read a book, surf the web, watch movies as long as you get your rounds done on time
> I usually would bring a book, but that night I plan on looking up Theodore Dalrymple after lockdown. I was a big reader of Takimag at the time and had read some articles by him and wanted to check out what else he had written for. I didn't know anything about him at the time other than a few articles for Taki.
> Doing my random searches
> Three done, get to the last one
> Flipping through inmate's bible and find three white pills wrapped in toilet paper hidden in the pages
> What are these?
> Inmate says they're aspirin
> I tell him he's full of shit
> He keeps arguing that they're aspirin that the nurse gave him and I maintain that he wouldn't be hiding aspirin
> I finally tell him he can keep lying and go to the SHU (the hole) for forty days or he can come clean and he'll lose his free time for the night, but will otherwise be straight
> He sticks with the aspirin story
> I finish up searching his cell, taking the pills with me
> Finish up paperwork and am about to call nurse and find out what the pills are
> Right before I ring the nurses station, the inmate calls me on the intercom
> He's ready to come clean
> I ask him what the pills are
> He doesn't know, he found them on the rec yard and was planning on taking them later
> Why the fuck would you eat pills you found on the rec yard if you don't even know what they are?
> IDK I was bored
> OK, whatever, I keep my end of the deal, I flush the pills and he's lock down for the night but doesn't have to go the the SHU
> Everyone else comes out for free time, enjoys their two hours or so event free and lockdown for the night
> Once everyone is in their cell and I've checked to make sure the doors are secure I fire up google and look up Dalrymple
> First result is a fan page, check it out
> I didn't know this before, but it turns out he was a prison psychologist before retirement
> Click on very first article in stack
> Is an article on inmates finding pills on the rec yard, not knowing what they are, but popping them anyway because they're bored