Coincidences and pantheism

[Poledra]

How do you understand and explain coincidences in your life? In pagan circles, I have often heard the term synchronicity tossed around to explain coincidences that seem significant to the observer. This attributes the experiences to a deity or higher power that is trying to get the observer's attention, to tell them something. But in pantheism this explanation doesn't quite work.

So what are coincidences to you and how do you explain and use them in your life? Are they evidence for the extreme interconnectedness of life or demonstrate the fascinating ability of our minds to find connections in any situation? Or something else altogether?

Poledra

[Windsmith]

Another great question, Poledra! I think it's both.

The web of All That Is is interconnected in countless subtle and complex ways, ways that humankind will probably never fully understand. When you really think about it, everything that every being has ever done has some sort of impact on every other thing that every other being does and will do (think about that some night when you can't sleep at 4 a.m. and your restless brain turns to thoughts of free will!). So a lot of events are connected, but I bet they're not the ones we think they are.

I like to think that events that seem to have nothing to do with each other, like the migration of monarch butterflies and the announcement of the Nobel Prize winners, are really interdependent on the deepest possible level, while the ones that seem really obviously connected, like getting an email from my best friend just hours after I've been wondering how she's doing, are only loosely related, and I only see them as a pattern because my brain makes it so.

[cheddarsox]

I have to go to work in a minute, so I'll give you my quickie answer...everything that happens takes just as many things/cycles/energies working together...as everything else that happens. The odds of anything happening as they do are astronomical, because everything in the Universe has to "line up" just so for anything to happen as it does.

So, a coincidence is really no more fantastic, statistically, than anything else, what makes it special is that it has personal meaning to us.

Roses mutate all the time, but people only save and name the ones they like.

I pass the same people on my way to and from work every day, but I only get tingles when the guy I have a crush on is in the van ahead of me.

Most of what happens I ignore, my brain can't process everything, but what matters to me, what I have placed significance on, my brain is alert to.

gotta go,

this is a subject near and dear to my heart...what I notice says waaay more about me than about the Universe in general.

cheddar

[Poledra]

I have to go to work in a minute, so I'll give you my quickie answer...everything that happens takes just as many things/cycles/energies working together...as everything else that happens. The odds of anything happening as they do are astronomical, because everything in the Universe has to "line up" just so for anything to happen as it does.

So, a coincidence is really no more fantastic, statistically, than anything else, what makes it special is that it has personal meaning to us.

Roses mutate all the time, but people only save and name the ones they like.

I pass the same people on my way to and from work every day, but I only get tingles when the guy I have a crush on is in the van ahead of me.

Most of what happens I ignore, my brain can't process everything, but what matters to me, what I have placed significance on, my brain is alert to.

gotta go,

this is a subject near and dear to my heart...what I notice says waaay more about me than about the Universe in general.

cheddar


I think my feelings match yours pretty well. I suspect there are hundreds of random connections going on in our lives all around us, but we only notice a few. Those ones we notice seem significant to us because we place significance on them. Meet someone from your hometown while halfway around the world? Cool! But only significant if you then become closest friends. How many times do we pass by someone from our hometown everyday without even noticing? There's a reason the saying goes "It's a small world".

So the question then becomes why are these events significant? Should we pay attention to the coincidences that our brain picks up for us simply because it notices? Or should be smile at the beauty and chaos of our universe and go about our day?

Poledra

[cheddarsox]

So the question then becomes why are these events significant? Should we pay attention to the coincidences that our brain picks up for us simply because it notices? Or should be smile at the beauty and chaos of our universe and go about our day?

Poledra

I opt for both!

our brains are wired to notice certain things for a reason, it has proved useful to our survival as a species, so by all means...pay attention. But also enjoy the sacred cycles that don't personally involve us as well. Smile at the "random" bumper sticker, the unexpected shooting star and the ant dragging a crumb to it's home.

[RavenStars]

Coincidences, fate, psionics and even magic are all in this gray area for me. That somehow the universe lines up just for little old me? Intellectually this is garbage. But emotionally I want some of it to be true. The web idea you've been discussing sounds comforting. If I pay attention, I'll get more good things in my life. But there must be bad stuff out there as well, if I don't tune in will it go away without touching me? When do I become paranoid? Sigh. This one is a nasty little circle for me. As some of you know, I have a mental illness, so everything out of my brain is suspect. The twinges, pricklies, deja vu, coincidences are all suspect. I doubt them for good reason. But I still want them to be real. And immance is very important to me, I just have a hard time when it lines me for some unusual event or knowledge. Why is it that a sending does not work? Why is it that a likely seeming coincidence leads me down the wrong path? I'm babbling, sorry.

[Poledra]

I know what you mean about wanting syncretism to be true emotionally. And I agree that intellectually, it's the height of hubris. But what makes it even somewhat plausible is that the universe isn't just lining up for one individual, the universe lines up for ALL individuals. How weird is that? How do I rationalise that?

Poledra

[cheddarsox]

the Universe wasn't created for us, we were created by it, formed out of it's stuff, following it's laws, to live in the situations it creates.

the universe isn't random, there are ways in which things operate. Random is a term, like good and evil, that humans use to describe things from a human perspective. Things may appear random to us because we don't know the causes behind them, but there are causes behind them.

When people say "what are the odds that there would be a planet with the exact conditions for life..." I think...but the planet came first, life evolved as part of the energy cycle of THIS planet. We are of it, we belong to it.

The odds are no more astronomical than those of Jupiter being as it is, or Venus. The difference is we aren't personally invested in those planets so we tend to think they are less astounding. But the odds of Jupiter being just as it is, with it's energy cycles just as they are...are just as astronomical as earth being as it is.

things are the way they are, because that is the way they are. This is how matter and energy behave when combined in these ways. The things we notice are astounding, but so are the things we don't notice, because the same matter, energy and forces are behind them all.

I guess, for me, that is pantheism in a nutshell.

[Poledra]

the Universe wasn't created for us, we were created by it, formed out of it's stuff, following it's laws, to live in the situations it creates.


I think this is the key and I agree with everything else you said as well Cheddarsox. I clipped because I think that this thought lets us emotionally believe that things line up for use personally without contradicting the idea that there is no entity personally looking out for us. Our brains and our lives are built around the way the universe works so coincidences just remind us how integral the universe is to our lives.

Poledra

[Mogget]

I believe in Fate (though it is my own definition) a sort of inertia, a directional pull that means the path of least resistance is determined... not that you can't resist it, but it's harder work and I think, given that we tend to go where we feel it is natural to go, that there is not all that much impetus to go against the flow.

Human ares meaning making/pattern detecting creatures - it is one of the neatest things about our brains - we see patterns, speculate about the causes and generalise to pre-empt new patterns - so I know that a lot of the goo-eyed mystical significae I feel about theser thigs is just my very human brain doing its job... on the other hand I LIKE how it feels so I run with it!

I used to regularly do a paticular meditation (it had a special name which I cannot recall - sumsati??) where you replay you day backwards, and as you get better at it you can replay longer sections - the last week, the last month, the last year - and examine how each step followed on form the preceeding one, how the flow is so irrisitable and logical that at C you came from B and at B you came from A and how every little detail, each choice, each chink of experience lead you to where you are right now; to being the person you are, in the place you are, with the thoughts you have.

When you look a it in hat way you can see the directionality - it is one of the things that makes me feel so connected with the Isness, and witht he other people in my life... all those fascinating paths coverging together... all those near misses and never mets, so complex and beautiful.

[Windsmith]

Mogget, this is awesome. Fate as the path of least resistance is a really excellent way to look at it.

I end my day by reviewing it, too. First I look at the things that went well, and I end by saying, "Today was a good day." Then I look at the things that went less well - especially the things that I had control over. I end by saying, "Tomorrow will be a better day."

I'm not sure I believe that everything leads to everything else as linearly as the meditation you describe would have it; from time to time a random element seems to interject itself that nothing I've done until that point accounts for. Maybe if I could trace the path of everyone I interact with every day, I could see the whole web and how it connects, but no one could be that good at it, I don't think - and even if I could, I wouldn't want to: I need that energy to focus on my own life. Still, the knowledge that what we are today is the accumulation of who we've been every day before today is, if we don't get bogged down by the sheer overwhelmingness of it, so liberating. One of my personal credos is "It's never too late to change direction." A meditation like that would be a great way to hammer that home.


I believe in Fate (though it is my own definition) a sort of inertia, a directional pull that means the path of least resistance is determined... not that you can't resist it, but it's harder work and I think, given that we tend to go where we feel it is natural to go, that there is not all that much impetus to go against the flow.

Human ares meaning making/pattern detecting creatures - it is one of the neatest things about our brains - we see patterns, speculate about the causes and generalise to pre-empt new patterns - so I know that a lot of the goo-eyed mystical significae I feel about theser thigs is just my very human brain doing its job... on the other hand I LIKE how it feels so I run with it!

I used to regularly do a paticular meditation (it had a special name which I cannot recall - sumsati??) where you replay you day backwards, and as you get better at it you can replay longer sections - the last week, the last month, the last year - and examine how each step followed on form the preceeding one, how the flow is so irrisitable and logical that at C you came from B and at B you came from A and how every little detail, each choice, each chink of experience lead you to where you are right now; to being the person you are, in the place you are, with the thoughts you have.

When you look a it in hat way you can see the directionality - it is one of the things that makes me feel so connected with the Isness, and witht he other people in my life... all those fascinating paths coverging together... all those near misses and never mets, so complex and beautiful.

[Mogget]

I'm not sure I believe that everything leads to everything else as linearly as the meditation you describe would have it; from time to time a random element seems to interject itself that nothing I've done until that point accounts for.

Maybe if I could trace the path of everyone I interact with every day, I could see the whole web and how it connects, but no one could be that good at it, I don't think - and even if I could, I wouldn't want to: I need that energy to focus on my own life. Still, the knowledge that what we are today is the accumulation of who we've been every day before today is, if we don't get bogged down by the sheer overwhelmingness of it, so liberating.

One of my personal credos is "It's never too late to change direction." A meditation like that would be a great way to hammer that home.

Oh yeah definitely... but the random elements that come in, they effect where you went fromward from there, so they still lead to the end result. It would be amazing to be able to track the web of everone and how connected it is.

There is actually a GREAT group exercise that you can do if you have 10 or more people, which demonstartes this.

You get everyone to sort of randomly space themselves around an are and ask them to find two people in their direct line of sight with whom they make an equalateral triangle (roughly). Once veryone has shimmied around a bit and settled into this pattern ask just a couple of people to move a couple of steps. The get everyone else to reposition themselves so that the triangles are reformed and watch the rippling go on and one and on...

I love it because nothing we do happens in a vacuum, everything influences everything else - sometimes in far removed and strange ways.

LOVE your personal Credo by the way,

[spiral]

I tend to see coincidences as just that - coincidences. Although sometimes they are pretty amazing, lol. But most of the time it seems to me that I've just started noticing things I never noticed before because something's brought them to my attention. That doesn't mean we can't learn something from them.



Human ares meaning making/pattern detecting creatures - it is one of the neatest things about our brains - we see patterns, speculate about the causes and generalise to pre-empt new patterns - so I know that a lot of the goo-eyed mystical significae I feel about theser thigs is just my very human brain doing its job... on the other hand I LIKE how it feels so I run with it!


:qft:




First I look at the things that went well, and I end by saying, "Today was a good day." Then I look at the things that went less well - especially the things that I had control over. I end by saying, "Tomorrow will be a better day."


Oh, I like that. Sometimes I think I spend too much time just dwelling on the bad things that happened and forgetting the good things. I'll have to try this!

[RavenStars]

I am struck by the idea that people form a web of relationships, but on a deeper level everything is in the web. The elements, this computer, my family downstairs watching a dvd. There is no separation.