I have found a new extremely interesting book again: "The happiness trap", by Russ Harris. I feel that I'm not completely off track while I read it. This is what he says, filtered through my colored glasses:

Don’t try to get rid of your thoughts and beliefs, and don't try to change them. It won't work.

A belief is made of thoughts, so we can’t get rid of our beliefs because we can’t find a way to stop thinking. Not even the Zen-monks can free themselves from thinking.

Some beliefs are quite useful, though, and some are completely useless.

But how do we know if a belief is useful or not? Well, If you believe, for example, that you will wake up also tomorrow and that you will have your salary in the end of this month, it is useful thoughts. But you can sometimes clearly see that a belief or a thought is totally useless, how do you get rid of such thoughts or how do you change them? This is the point, you can’t; You will never get rid of your thoughts and you will never be able to change them, no matter how hard you try, they are involuntary. The only thing you can do is to see them for what they are, just thoughts. This is what I understand now, again. Thoughts are just thoughts, imaginations, totally out of my control, like dreams.

No one can make you change your mind. If you truly believe, deep in your heart, that the earth is flat and the moon is made of cheese, or if you believe that all the poor people in the world are poor just because they haven’t read enough self-help books on how to get rich with self affirmations, or if you believe that you are an ugly old fool, whatever crazy idea that get stuck in your head, it is not the truth, it is your thoughts. No one can change you, not even you. None of the many mind changing methods has proved to be effective in the long run. And there is no way to be completely sure if a belief is useful or not. But it is possible to understand, for those who are not too dense, that all these beliefs are just thoughts, not different from all the other thoughts in our heads.

What can I do, if you truly believe that war is good and the law of the jungle still applies, or if you believe that you are Napoleon? I can’t change your beliefs because I can’t even change my own. But a growing number of people begin to understand now, that thoughts are just thoughts and that beliefs are just beliefs. If a crazy thought fly through my head, so what? It’s just a crazy thought. All sorts of crazy thoughts fly through my head, day and night. When I wake up after a weird dream I think: “ Oh, that was a weird dream” But I don’t believe that I actually met those talking cats, or whatever. It was just a dream.

This is a kind of awakening. I am right here, right now, writing down thoughts on my computer. The kids outside my window create an incredible racket. The sun is shining. It is a wonderful day here today.

This is from Russ Harris book `The happiness trap´:

The observing self is fundamentally different from the thinking self. The observing self is aware, but does not think; it is the part of you that is responsible for focus, attention, and awareness. While it can observe or pay attention to your thoughts, it can’t produce them. Whereas the thinking self thinks about your experience, the observing self registers your experience directly.
For example, if you are playing tennis and you are truly focused, then your attention is riveted on that ball coming toward you. This is your observing self at work. You are not thinking about the ball; you are observing it.
Now suppose thoughts start popping into your head like,” I hope my grip is correct”, “I’d better make a good hit,” or Wow, that ball is moving fast!” That is your thinking self at work.

Although we understand words as “awareness,” “focus,” and “attention,” most of us in the western world have little or no concept of the observing self. As a result, there is no word for it in the English language. We only have the word “mind” which is generally used to denote both the thinking self and the observing self, without distinguishing between the two.

When we look at life we will see different sceneries depending on were we have our view point. The north side of a mountain can look completely different than the south side.

Suppose you’re well-off, with a nice husband, great kids and a nice job, but you feel very miserable and unhappy with your life anyway; maybe you say to yourself: `I have everything I want but I’m so unhappy that I almost want to kill myself´. Suppose you wake up from that depression, maybe with help from a psychologist, from a spiritual counselor or maybe it happens spontaneously, by grace. You will now probably see that you were fooling yourself before and how your mind tricked you. (It was just dark thoughts but you believed they where the truth.) And maybe you will now have the feeling that you have woken up from a bad dream.

If you are very poor, on the other hand, and work 12 hours a day, six days a week, picking grapefruits or bananas, but still have serious difficulties to feed your kids, so that some rich shareholders in a big fruit company can get richer, then all talk of waking up from illusions and the necessity of not taking thought's seriously doesn’t mean much. Other things than self deception and thoughts will be much more important. To wake up from that nightmare you probably have to win money on a lottery ticket.

To wake up doesn't mean the same thing to all people. We have philosophies for the rich and philosophies for the poor, religions for the rich and religions for the poor. Rich people will read the Bible with rich people’s glasses. “To those who have, more shall be given” will be taken literally. And poor people will find that “many of the last shall be the first". In India they have also teachings and gurus for different tastes, slow-witted gurus for slow-witted people, smarter gurus for smarter people and crazy gurus for crazy people. But none of them have the whole truth. Those who claims to know it all, belongs to the slow-witted kind.

Can you endorse this: Religions have caused and are causing endless miseries and evils in this world?
(For example, the inquisition trials and torture chambers, the witch hunts, the suppression of women and children, the religious wars, the Crusades, Catholics against Protestants Jews against Arabs, Shia Muslims against Sunni Muslims, the Islamist terrorism...)

Do you agree with, that also non-religious belief systems have caused and are causing endless miseries and evils in this world? To abandon religion was obviously not enough.
(The Gulag, the Killing fields, the Holocaust, nationalism, racism, neo-Darwinism, the horrendous exploitation of fellow men, women, children and the whole planet in the name of freedom and democracy…)

Are you aware of the fact that your ideas about yourself and the way you look at life can create endless problems to you, and not only to you, but also to people near to you?
(I am completely useless. I’m ugly. There is not much point with anything. I don’t want to do anything. The only thing I care for is alcohol. Or: The only thing that counts is money. My career comes first. One has to fight like hell for a room at the top. One must not fail. Losers can go and fuck themselves. I have to have it my way because I know that I'm right. I’m entitled to this because I‘m from a rich family…)

However, many religious and superstitious people are not causing miseries and evil, on the contrary, many of them are good people. Many communists were really fighting for a just society without poverty, bondage and exploitation. And many neurotics with a low self esteem are also good people who do the best they can with the potty horses they have to ride.

I have a work mate who voted for the extreme right. When I asked her why, she said: “Because I don’t like Arabs.” She didn’t know anything about the political program she had voted for, because she doesn’t care a bit about politics, but she is nevertheless an easy going person, always truly enthusiastic and happy. Isn’t that quite common? Many people vote without any idea of what they vote for. I have friends that have totally inconsistent ideas but who are very pleasant to hang out with. I have friends who believe in astrology but that don’t make them evil. And I know of from my, way back, two unhappy years in scientific laboratories, highly rational and well informed people who were complete assholes.

So, when do ignorance, superstition and misapprehensions become evil? I don’t know. But I know that it is possible to relinquish religion, political ideologies and ideas about oneself and life, if we want to. Religious and ideological beliefs are not necessary for anything but holding a group together and we don’t need to belong to mad groups anymore, if we don’t want to. If you desperately need a group to belong to, no matter what crazy beliefs they cherish, because you are so afraid to be alone, then that is your problem. (As long as you leave me alone.) And we don’t have to admire or resent other people, or ourselves, if we don’t want to. Human beings have since the dawn of history been superstitious, ignorant and cruel, but we can, nevertheless, step out of that madness if we want to. It is not until recently we have begun to understand that it is actually possible to break the spell. I don't have to be a racist because my family and workmates are. There is no need for a belief system to make pancakes. You don't have to become an atheist to mend a bicycle. There is no need for scientific theories or religious mythologies about how the universe was formed to live here and now with whatever is under ones nose. You don't have to become successful, slim, radiating, wonderful or positive. You don't have to become anything. You don't have to think positive thoughts all the time. You are completely free to feel whatever you feel, think whatever you think, here in this moment. Get rid of your self improvement books. Get rid of your dreams of self improvement.

Are there any benefits with waking up? Isn’t it often much more pleasant to be pleasantly deluded? Maybe it is so. Maybe it is more pleasant to be asleep or half asleep. Maybe it is more pleasant to be drunk or drugged. Maybe it is better with comforting beliefs and ignorance of ones foolishness. Some people might even have to kill them self if their illusions are taken away. What I’m saying is that it is possible to wake up and sober up and that this insight is fairly new to us. We are like recently discharged long term prisoners or mental patients. We are bewildered and don’t know exactly what to do.

If we are borne with a free will, we have certainly not had many opportunities in our history to exercise it. The majority has always been slaves in one way or the other and slaves have no use for a free will. And we have always been sent to war.

This is from Richard Dawkins book, The God delusion: “From the high command’s point of view it would be madness to allow each individual soldier discretion over whether or not to obey orders. Nations whose infantrymen act on their own initiative rather than following orders will tend to loose wars. From the nation’s point of view, this remains a good rule of thumb even if it sometimes leads to individual disaster. Soldiers are drilled to become as much like automata, or computers, as possible.”

“Natural selection builds child brains with a tendency to believe whatever their parents and tribal elders tell them. Such trusting obedience is valuable for survival. But the flip side of trusting obedience is slavish gullibility. The inevitable by-product is vulnerability to infection by mind viruses. For excellent reasons related to Darwinian survival, child brains need to trust parents, and elders whom parents tell them to trust. An automatic consequence is that the truster has no way of distinguishing good advice from bad. The child cannot know that `Don’t paddle in the crocodile-infested Limpopo’ is good advice but `You must sacrifice a goat at the time of the full moon, otherwise the rains will fail´ is at best a waste of time and goats.”


To sustain yourself or a family you almost always have to have a job, but only a lucky few have a job they love. Often you have to accept what is offered. And as employed you have to adjust to the policies and the atmosphere of the workplace. You have to follow orders. This can sometimes be a horrible experience. You are often forced to pretend that you are someone else. As a salesman you have to be positive, charming, competitive and result orientated. If you don't want to play that salesman game, if you have had enough of classes in positive thinking, team building, goal setting and neuro linguistic programming techniques to improve yourself and your performance, you have to look for another job. As a laborer of any kind you have to be strong and able to work hard without asking too many questions. If you don’t want to adjust to or feel like taking orders from sometimes complete idiots, you have to set up a business of your own, but you will still have to adjust to the rules of the market. To be free to do what you want, you have to be rich enough. For us who have to go to a job we don't love to make a living the free will is limited. It can often only be exercised at vacations and at times off duty. But something is better than nothing, isn’t it? The big risk is that when you are off duty you are not aware of it. You can become like an actor in a play that comes home at night, still in your Hamlet costume, still believing you are prince Hamlet.

We are often forced to act and play games to satisfy relatives, workmates or bosses. Many people certainly don't want to hear that their beliefs are nothing but imaginations; often, if we happen to be around touchy and quick tempered people, we have to learn how to keep things to ourselves, but we don’t have to sell our soul. It is possible to wake up. It is possible to break the spell. We are not the persons we think we are. The world is not as we think it is. It is possible to live without all these crazy ideas about everything. Often we have to put our lamp under a bushel, but we don’t have to put out the light. It is this that is new. Mankind is in the beginning of the disenchantment process.

Ramanand

These events took place in 1983, I think, and this is my recollection. I was staying in Rishikesh, India, when I met Ramanand while walking to Muni-Ki-Reti, a small town about two kilometers outside Rishikesh.

Ramanand was an unhappy and disillusioned yogi. He had once been an engineer, specializing in air-conditioning and ventilation, but he had left his career to become a sanyassin, a monk. For years, he wandered, looking for the truth. He came from Tamil Nadu in the south but had somehow ended up here in the north. For years, he taught meditation at Maharishi Mahesh's ashram, but he grew tired of the place and left. Some time back, he stayed at the Mangal Nath ashram, which wasn't really an ashram, but a very low-class guest house. He helped the owner bring guests to the place and stayed there for free as payment. Anyway, he asked me if I needed a place to stay, and I said yes, so I moved to the Mangal Nath ashram.

For months we discussed life, often at night in an open tea shop for truck drivers in Rishikesh, smoking Panama cigarettes and drinking tea in the light of kerosene lamps. When we went home, a pack of growling wild dogs always followed us.

One late afternoon we visited some other people who stayed in another ashram on the other side of the river Ganges. This was a bigger place, near the Maharishi Mahesh Ashram, but I can't remember its name. I remember they had a cow hospital there, an old cows' home. This place was more like a real ashram, but it also served as a kind of hotel. You didn't have to pay rent for a room, but you were expected to donate. I think the donation fee was 10 rupees a day.

One of the guests was a Canadian woman, but I can't remember her name, which is unfortunate because it would have been so interesting to contact her to confirm what happened there. She was Armenian by birth, had lived in Egypt for many years, but eventually moved to Montreal, I think, where she worked as an art teacher at an art college. She was a big, very loud, intense woman. She wore brown corduroy pants and a dark blue sweater, and she had very bad hearing. The day before, she had lost her hearing aid, and she was very upset about it. She couldn't hear almost anything.

We were sitting there, a bunch of people, on the porch outside one of the "rented" rooms, drinking tea and talking. The room was a small studio with an adjoining kitchen and bathroom. I can't recall the others, but there must have been six or seven of us altogether. They had just finished their meal when Ramanand and I came. When Ramanand learned about the missing hearing aid, he said he would see what he could do. So he went into his Kali meditation, as he called it. This meditation began with about half an hour of what looked like "normal" meditation: a yogi sitting there with eyes closed in a lotus position.

We soon lost interest in him and went on with our discussion about this and that. But after some time he gave up an incredible howl and fell down looking dead. What the hell was going on? The ashram managers came running, wondering what we were doing. When they saw Ramanand lying there on the floor, they became as alarmed as we were. He was clearly dead. They couldn't hear any heartbeats and didn't know what to do. So they carried him to their office and tried to wake him up. They didn't have any success with that, and Ramanand was just lying there on the floor when he suddenly sat up and shouted at the top of his lungs: GO TO THE BATHROOM! GO TO THE BATHROOM! GO TO THE BATHROOM!" And then he fell down again, but now he wasn't "dead". He was breathing and fast asleep.

When we went back to the studio and went into the bathroom, the hearing aid was there on the floor. The concrete floor was completely dry, but the hearing aid was wet and probably ruined.

Isn't all this very strange? We had been coming and going to the kitchen and bathroom all evening without noticing the hearing aid on the floor.

When Ramanand woke up in the morning, he had absolutely no idea about what had happened. He didn't remember anything, but he was very happy and a little bit proud when we informed him.

These events took place 25 years ago. As I write about it now, I realize how poor my memory is. I remember some parts clearly; others are faint, and much of it is lost in a haze. It makes me think of the Gospels. Mark, the oldest Gospel, was written more than forty years after Jesus' death. How much of these stories are real memories, and how much was added later?

It would be very interesting to get in touch with some of the people who were there and who can help to confirm this, and maybe fill in where my memory is failing, but how can I find them? I don't even remember their names. And where Ramanand is, I have no idea. He left Rishikesh many years ago.

Ramanand was very adept at meditation, but he wasn't very happy with life. To conjure up hearing aids for tourists wasn't enough for him. And though he loved the stories about the God Krishna, he was very displeased with Hinduism, yoga, and the caste system that permeated it all. The Vedanta philosophy didn't appeal to him. He used the expression "mental speculation." It was all mental speculation, not simply speculation. Finding happiness or bliss wasn't enough either. Happiness could just be another self-deception. Many people in Germany, for example, became incredibly happy when Hitler came to power in the early thirties. They had finally found meaning and direction in their previous empty, hand-to-mouth existence.

I also learned many other expressions from him, for example: the false ego. A false ego implies a true ego, but by true ego he didn't mean the Atman; he simply meant the true ego, the one you are when you are not lost in some crazy idea about life. Atman is the eternal soul. The body, the mind, and indeed the whole world are illusions or misperceptions; only Atman is eternal and real. This concept, along with the karma theories and the caste system, has caused endless miseries in India. Today, India is experiencing an incredible economic boom. But the rich middle class hesitates to spend money on the poor. They want to spend just enough to ease their conscience and take the edge off the arguments of those who criticize these injustices. UNICEF has recently criticized India for its reluctance to build a proper health care system for the poor. India has a much higher rate of child death than both Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. And one-third of the women in India are malnourished, which leads to them giving birth to malnourished children, which makes them much more susceptible to all kinds of painful diseases. So what? This world is but an illusion, and if someone suffers, it is because of the bad deeds he or she did in a previous lifetime. In this way, the Indian philosophies of life cause a lot of misery.

I also learned from him this, for me, very meaningful and interesting expression: "Yoga connection." By this, he didn't mean how to connect oneself to the greater source. He meant a special kind of synchronicity, a mysterious principle that lets people who need to meet, and are supposed to meet, find each other.

I am for the time being taking care of two guinea pigs for my little friend while she is out of town. They are sitting there in their cage all day waiting for more food. Though the cage door is always open they refuse to leave it. I guess they feel safe there in their little prison. Sometimes I take them out of the cage to run around on the kitchen floor. I imagine that they need some kind of exercise. But they immediately hop back in the cage again. It is too scary for them out there, in the big world.

We are often not much different. We like our safe and cosy corners. We like things to be comprehensible, not too much drama, not too many worries and uncertainties. When we leave our homes we like the world to be as we expect it to be. Our beliefs and habits are like guinea pig cages. They make our world comprehensible.

I prefer cats. A cat certainly like a snug and warm home where they serve good food. But at night he has to go out to check things out. No one knows exactly what he’s up to out there. Sometimes he is gone for weeks and you begin to think that he might be dead. But he comes back, sometimes with scars and wounds sometimes sound as a bell, with a faint smell of perfume. Cats are mysterious. That is probably why they are associated with magic and witchcraft.

About two months ago I saw a woman walking her unleashed dog through the park. They where maybe 50 yards ahead of me and I felt a strong irritation. I was thinking: “She really ought to have her dog leashed at this time of the year. Dog owners are so careless these days. When they have passed the bridge the dog will go crazy. He will see all the stupid geese on the meadow, with all their stupid little gosling's.” I was stepping out to try to catch up with them before they got there. When I was just a few steps behind them we had just crossed the little stone bridge, but the dog didn’t even look at the geese colony. I was surprised, so I asked her while passing them, how come the dog didn’t even look at the geese, and she answered:
-Oh, I have trained him.

We have managed to domesticate and tame a lot of animals, including ourselves. We have been trained to see what we are supposed to see.

ON MEANINGFUL COINCIDENCES

Monika



Doreen

Me


I was traveling in the US in the fall of 1979. I was 25 years old and completely lost. My girlfriend back home had just left me, and I was extremely unhappy. We had been together for maybe five or six years, and I had no idea how to make it on my own. I didn't know how to sleep alone, and I didn't even know how to cook a supper.

In San Francisco, I met some people, and we rented a car and drove to LA. It was a Canadian girl, Françoise; two English lads; a guy from Austria (I can't remember their names); and Monika Hauri from Switzerland. Somehow Monika and I found each other, and when the group split up in LA, we traveled on together. I have vague memories about staying in Santa Monica for some time, but eventually we took a night flight to Mexico City. We drank lots of tequila at the restaurants at Plaza Garibaldi. Hundreds of Mariachi bands were playing simultaneously. It was a fantastic cacophony. I also remember that in Mexico City we always had to run to cross the streets to escape all the mad taxi drivers.

Anyway, after some time I explained to her that I was going to Isla Mujeres because I needed to be alone to think things over. A week or so later, she found me there, but I didn't want to continue our relationship. I was looking for adventure, and adventurers don't walk hand in hand with women. So I told her to fuck off and went to Guatemala.

After a few months, I was back in Stockholm, more miserable than ever. I didn't know what to do with my life. I couldn't fit anywhere. My friends had little home parties, and I was bored to pieces with all the coziness and their boring small talk. "Could you pass me the sauce, please? It's wonderful, isn't it?" That kind of stuff.

In late September 1981, I had had enough. I sublet my apartment and bought a one-way ticket to Greece. I had no plans at all for where to go, and I figured Greece could be a good place to start. The first thing that happened to me was that I caught a terrible flu. I was completely knocked out for a week or so. After another week of recuperation, I realized Crete wasn't for me. Crete was for couples, sitting in the taverns, silently sipping drinks with little umbrellas or sparklers for decoration. I was desperate. Where should I go and why? Wouldn't it be the same thing wherever I went?

I checked out of my hotel and went down to the harbor, with no idea where to go. The next boat was to Santorini, so I took it, glad to leave Crete behind. It was a horrible trip. The sea was very rough, and people were puking.

We arrived in Santorini late at night, maybe around 11:30 pm. The harbor was crowded, with a restless hustle and bustle. I put my backpack down and smoked a cigarette while I tried to figure out where to stay at this late hour, when a young boy came up to me.
-Hotel room, mister? Do you want a hotel room?
When I said yes, he told me to wait a few moments and disappeared into the crowd. When he came back, he had a young American woman with him.

Then we took a bus up to his parents' hotel. I fell in love immediately. She was so pretty and seemed so smart. I liked the way she talked. I liked everything about her.
At the hotel, they made us dinner. Suddenly, I was sitting there on a warm Mediterranean October night, with all its stars and creaking cicadas, a beautiful young woman with brown eyes across the table, and a bottle of wine to the moussaka. I thought I was dreaming.

We had some wonderful days and nights there, and I was madly in love. One day I asked her what she did before coming to Santorini, and she told me she had stayed in Luzern, Switzerland, for some time and worked as a waitress in a hotel there. Then I told her that I knew someone from Luzern and that her name was Monika Hauri. I can't find words for how I felt when she told me she knew her. She told me about what had happened to Monika and that she was now happily married to a Canadian guy.

Then the love of my life suddenly left me, just like that. She ditched me. She had had enough of my neurotic negativity, and I was all alone again.

The next day I took a night boat back to Athens, and if I had been confused before, it was nothing compared to my confusion that night. I spent the whole night on the upper deck, looking at the stars, the moon, and the dark, endless sea. And the sea, the night sky, and my consciousness kind of merged into an incredibly strange experience. I was all alone in the universe. I was feeling so alone. At the same time, I felt connected. We were all connected in some strange way, through some kind of invisible web.

Well, to make a long story short, I went to India, and then I spent several years on the moon.

One day there in India I bumped into Monika again. She wasn't very happy to see me, but we had a short conversation in a chai shop in Pushkar. I told her I knew a little about what had happened to her, and I remember asking if she didn't find the whole thing very strange. She couldn't see anything strange with people bumping into each other. She said: "Of course you meet some people again if you're traveling along the same routes."

Eventually I came back home, found myself a girlfriend, an apartment, and a job as a gardener, and everything was all right for many years, with pasta dinners, TV nights, and everything. This relationship also ended in a catastrophe, and I have been living alone since then. And I have been quite happy with that. I have finally learned how to live alone.

In July 2005, something interesting happened, though. I found a letter among my bills and junk mail when I came back home from work. It said: "Greetings! Do you remember me? If yes, send me an email." It was from Doreen. I hadn't heard a word from her for almost 25 years, so I was, what should I say, a bit surprised.

I emailed her right away, eager to know what had happened to her after she left me in Santorini. And I had so many memory gaps that I needed help filling them in. I have always been interested in strange coincidences, and I've experienced plenty of them, but what happened to me in Santorini was by far the most fantastic. Isn't it incredibly strange that I fell in love with someone who knew Monika Hauri? What is the probability of such a coincidence? And Doreen dumped me much in the same way as I had dumped Monika. Wasn't it strange that I kind of got paid back with the same currency? Is there a God who sometimes interferes with the course of events and directs our steps, and if so, why? Is it a God, a bunch of Gods, or something in our unconscious minds that creates the synchronicities? Or is all this about synchronicities just an illusion?
I had thousands of questions I needed to discuss with her.

*

Well, here are some of my observations regarding synchronicities:

Many people have experienced or will experience synchronistic phenomena without being aware of it because synchronicities aren't on their maps.

Some people seem to believe that one experiences synchronicities when one's meditation practice deepens, when one begins to find more harmony in life. I don't think so. I think that synchronicities are more frequent when we are completely lost and upset, when we lose our heads, when someone or something has put us out, like a divorce or the death of someone near to us. Synchronicity can happen when we feel balanced, yes, but it will not be very strong. Well-balanced and satisfied people who are set with everything rarely experience synchronistic phenomena. In fact, they may not even know what you're talking about if you bring up the subject.

It is often impossible to tell anyone about a synchronistic experience. If you do, either you or someone else will look completely ridiculous. Synchronicity is often set up that way. Many of my "best" synchronicities can never be told without causing trouble, so I have to take my stories with me to the grave. Jung noticed this. Many people experience synchronicities but refuse to talk about them. Synchronistic experiences belong to a secret, esoteric dimension of life.

You can never prove that you have experienced an interesting synchronicity. Therefore, it is meaningless to study the phenomenon scientifically. If someone tells you a story about a synchronicity, it may be true, or it may be made up. Or it might have some truth in it, but it is changed a little here and there to make it sound better.

One shall not become too interested in synchronicities, though, I think. If you look for synchronicities and meaningful encounters everywhere, you will go crazy. You will become paranoid. Why is he calling now? Is there a secret meaning behind this seemingly normal meeting? Why did I forget my keys? Not everything is synchronicity.

However,if I had not caught that terrible flu on Crete, I would have left Crete much earlier, and in that case I would not have met Doreen. Well, in that case I would not be sitting here writing this. If I hadn't been so desperate and unhappy with everything, I most probably wouldn't even have gone to Crete. Synchronicities have serious philosophical implications. Unhappiness and desperation can be a part of a plan. Is everything part of a plan? It is impossible to find answers to such questions, so it is better to drop them, I guess. It is like speculating if there are many more universes out there. We will never know. We will never find out whether we have free will, but we have to live as if our will is free.

A strong synchronistic experience can change the way a person looks at life. Still, really, there are many things in life that are far more important than looking for synchronicities, like taking care of children, for example, or trying to be helpful to other people, and waking up to what is going on in the world and every once in a while celebrating and having some fun.