Synchronicity, chance with a meaning

Sometimes, you bump into someone and think: How the hell did this happen? I was thinking of her just a minute ago. I haven't seen her for over thirty years, and now she's suddenly here. Jung called this phenomenon synchronicity.

Sometimes, you bump into someone you have never met before and realize that this meeting is not just about meeting someone. It is something much more important. You can feel it. You know it. You may think that this must be your soul mate. Maybe it is. Or, maybe it is not.

Maybe you are supposed to marry this person, maybe you aren't. Perhaps you are soul mates, but you are not supposed to get married. Still, you are connected in some mysterious way. What is all this about?

Sometimes, you bump into someone you don't want to meet and have tried hard to avoid. And now you meet him here, of all places. What's going on? This is ridiculous.

You can also have a synchronistic meeting with a dangerous person, a psychopath, or a narcissist, and you get played. Later, you may wonder what that meeting was about. Was it arranged in some mysterious way to make you learn something about yourself? Or was it a punishment?

However, primarily, a chance meeting is just a regular chance meeting.

Why do meaningful chance meetings, or synchronicities, come about? You can never know for sure.

Apophenia is the tendency to perceive meaningful connections between unrelated things. The term was coined by psychiatrist Klaus Conrad in his 1958 publication on the beginning stages of schizophrenia. He defined it as "unmotivated seeing of connections accompanied by a specific feeling of abnormal meaningfulness." Wikipedia

According to the invisible ships myth, when European explorers' ships approached either North America, South America, or Australia, the appearance of their large ships was so foreign to the native people that they could not even see the vessels in front of them. Wikipedia

Some people can see things that don't exist; others can't see things that do.

Questions

Did you choose your path, or did you end up on it? Are you all alone on your journey, or do you have company? Have you ever befriended someone else along the way who later decided to leave you? Have you ever considered turning around and going back? Have you ever abandoned a travel companion? Do you trust your gut feelings? Do you trust someone else's gut feelings? Do you follow advice from a spiritual teacher or a life coach?

Are you a stranger to yourself? Are you an enemy of yourself? Are you sick and tired of yourself? Are you pleased with yourself? 

Why did the biological evolution come about? Why did the first prokaryotic cell evolve? What kind of force is driving the evolution?

Why is there something rather than nothing? Is the universe really a massive explosion? What was exploding, do you think? Nothing?

How can you be so damn sure that you picked the right way? Or the wrong way? Or that I picked the wrong way? Did you choose the way, or was it selected for you?

What do you expect to find at the end of your journey?

Dishonesty

It is not just politicians who lie; all people lie, and everyone pretends honesty is essential. Even priests and policemen lie. We hear about this almost daily. You know that people lie. This is not big news. Therefore, you shouldn't trust yourself either.

So, if all people lie to themselves and others, this must mean that lying is a natural human trait. But why are you then ashamed when you lie? And why do you get upset when other people are lying to you? What if the birds were sorry they could fly?

Robert Trivers thinks that self-deception has an evolutionary origin. He says that if you can convince yourself that you are better than you are, you can more easily deceive others. Your scam becomes more challenging to expose if you believe it yourself.

Here's another hypothesis I've come up with: Reality is too unpleasant to live in. It's like a winter's day in a biting wind and snow slush. You have to find some kind of mental escape.

It's nice to share a bottle of wine or two with a friend, but drinking a bottle or two every day can turn you into a drunkard. You can't always be sincere, but lying too much and too often can also turn you into an unpleasant jerk.

Choose sides

”No one can serve two masters: Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.” Matthew 6:24

Regardless of what kind of Christian you are, you have to choose sides. (Prosperity theology is not a Christian faith.)

This also applies to other forms of spirituality. You can not be both a spiritual seeker and a social climber striving for money and power. You have to choose which path to take.

Even those not religiously or spiritually inclined have to make up their mind. Are you a careerist? Do you believe that competition is good? Do you think that all that counts is money? Does it not matter to you which mountain you climb as long as you become someone with other people to look down upon?

Telepathic waves

Not so few people have experienced synchronicities or telepathic phenomena. Does this mean that your mind is not confined to inside your skull?

Your eyes detect photons, and your ears detect waves in the air, but what part of you detects telepathic signals? And what is a telepathic signal?

Are we connected somehow, also without telephones or the Internet?

What if some of your thoughts and emotions are not created in your brain?

What if all of your thoughts and emotions are created somewhere outside of you? The brain may be some kind of receiver, some speculate.

Why do so many stupid, silly, and nasty thoughts arise in the brain? Have someone hacked our minds?

Evolution

What if God is a kind of scientist? Maybe he created a single cell in his laboratory some 3,5 billion years ago. He may have made a lot of cells, but only one of them survived and multiplied.

A billion years later, he mixed up cells that had evolved and managed to create an eukaryotic cell. Only one of these experiments was successful; only one of those cells survived.

Six hundred million years ago, he managed to create multicellular organisms from these eukaryotic cells. Multicellular organisms evolved, and biological robots with intelligence slowly emerged.

Some of these robots developed their own will, and God lost control of his creations, like the boffins of today who lose control of their organisms which escape their laboratories and create havoc.

The Placebo effect

Both the red pill and the blue are sugar pills.