| Some thoughts on synchronicities |
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Wednesday, July 8th, 2015 14:05:54 GMT |
| Self-Help |
I've been continuing to procrastinate about even checking my email or forums lately. Sorry about that.
At the moment, I'm more in the mood to just climb up on my soapbox and give a speech than interact with people.
A CMS of some sort should also help with my old project of writing my autobiography. (It's surprisingly more interesting than most people would expect. Surprised me, too.) And, since I find most mundane things about life relatively boring - with my autobio project, I will probably continue to mostly focus on documenting the weird but cool synchronicities and other surprising oddities I've sometimes encountered, rather than writing very much about the many boring things in my life (which far outnumber the interesting things).
I have a bunch of remarkable things rather crudely documented, but, I want to make them a lot more organized and presentable, even beyond what I've already managed to achieve with the help of Astroblahhh Desktop.
But, I'm not sure publishing it would do the world much good anyway, since reading about others' remarkable experiences (and then having to wonder if they're even true) is definitely far from as life-changing (and hopefully beneficial) as having your own remarkable experiences.
So, perhaps what would be more worthwhile for me to share would simply be, suggestions which could help curious people increase their chances of encountering (or noticing) remarkable synchronicities.
Such as the idea of keeping a dream journal, so if there ever happen to be any odd coincidences between your dreams and the real world, you'll have a much easier time noticing that than if you never write down your dreams.
And I also highly recommend checking out checking out asteroids in astrology, including both natal placements of asteroids, and transits. There are thousands of differently-named asteroids. I particularly recommend checking out the ones which have your name(s) or similar, or the names (or approximate names) of significant people or things in your life. I've seen some darned weird-seeming stuff with asteroids at times.
(At the moment, it's probably easier to look up asteroids using the free chart-calculating features on Astrodienst than to use my free, libre, open source astrology software Eryss, unless you happen to already be running Lucid Puppy Linux 5.2.8 version 004, or something quite similar. But someday, I hope to release versions of Eryss for a wider variety of computer platforms.)
And another thing I highly recommend is taking lots of notes. And not only having a dream journal, but a diary of events in your life might really help a lot.
Hmm, those actually might already be the best suggestions I have for anyone who wants to encounter (or notice) more odd synchronicities in their own lives.
And, I hope analyzing these various oddities more carefully, comparing them to each other, looking for patterns amongst them, etc., might help shed more light on how and why in the universe such strange things sometimes happen.
Is there actually some grain of truth in the often disgustingly snake-oily-seeming New Age "Law of Attraction" crap?
Some people (like various famous reputedly psychic mediums) believe that everyone has "spirit guides", and that sometimes your spirit guides send you meaningful "signs". So is that the explanation for synchronicities?
Can astrology ever be proven objectively to have some grain of validity? What would analyzing astrology in depth using statistics reveal? (Hopefully future editions of Eryss - my free, libre, open source astrology software - will be useful tools in exploring these questions.)
Does telepathy really exist, or other psychic phenomena? (I'm not sure what else could explain some of my dreams.)
Does reincarnation really exist?
Searching for credible answers to questions like those will probably keep me busy for the rest of my life.
Sure, many flimsy synchronicities are probably totally explainable that way - though I think they probably shouldn't even be called synchronicities if they're that flimsy.
But the really interesting ones are not so easily dismissed.
I'm tempted to share a doozy or two from my own life - but, I'm feeling a bit too timid to do that at the moment, so I'll just direct you to Wikipedia's article on synchronicities.
Plus, anything written by C. G. Jung would probably be fascinating to check out. I haven't read very much of that yet myself, but I really want to, maybe even in its original language (German, I assume).
Then, on a curious whim, I took a closer look at astrology when I was 18, and was quite surprised by what I found. (But that's a long story which I can't yet get into.)
So, I gradually became agnostic (with major suspicions that God might really exist), rather than an atheist-almost-for-sure as I had originally been.
I still retain my skeptical distaste for blindly believing in anything without evidence/logical reasons to believe.
But the various remarkable synchronicities I encountered seem to provide me some legitimate reason to at least suspect that there really might be "more things in heaven and earth" than were dreamt of in my original cynical, closed-minded, very mainstream-skeptical philosophy.
But, thinking back to the various wonders I somehow had the luck to stumble into (partly thanks simply to keeping a dream journal and diary, and being observant and curious) has done a lot to rescue me from abject despair.
So, I just thought I should write about that - the best cure for despair I've encountered in my life, other than obvious comforts like food, shelter, money, love, etc.
Perhaps if other people do some of what I did (dream journaling, keeping a diary, playing around with astrology, etc.) and encounter their own remarkable synchronicities, perhaps it might help lift them out of despair too?
But, fortunately, there's far less reason for me to avoid pointing out odd astrological coincidences I've noticed which have nothing whatsoever to do with anyone's private lives. :-)
I guess I'll only point out a few for now. And, with the particular ones I had in mind, it seemed most appropriate to post them to Eryss.Com.
So, here's a link to that post:
I'm still itching to create (or find) a CMS (or content management system, for lack of a better term) that I feel happy and comfortable with - since until I do, I don't think I'm going to feel really enthusiastic about adding to my websites. Plus, I think a lot of my projects could benefit from some templating features.
Unfortunately, I probably won't be able to publish most of my autobiography for a very long time due to privacy concerns and the fact that I almost certainly wouldn't be able to obtain permission from everyone mentioned.
Actually, I already mentioned some ideas a long time ago on the About Astroblahhh.Com page.
Even though I probably won't be able to release my autobiography for a long time, I still want to work on it, because for me, synchronicities serve as a lovely reminder that perhaps it's really true that "There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy", and that maybe miracles really are possible.
I have far more questions than answers. Questions like, does prayer actually work, at least a bit, sometimes? Does God exist and really send "signs" sometimes?
Returning to the topic of synchronicities - another possible (but boring) explanation for synchronicities is that they are nothing but an illusion resulting from the human brain's capacity for perceiving patterns that aren't really there.
I used to have an even unhappier life than I do now. I used to be far more cynical (I still am probably more cynical than I should be, but at least less than before), and far more close-minded, scornful, and prejudiced against anything I regarded as irrational nonsense, such as religion, spirituality, astrology, or anything else that seemed to make no darn sense. (Though at the same time, I was still curious and both repelled and intrigued by such things, rather than 100% dismissive and avoidant. I was quite dismissive, but not nearly as avoidant as many people who consider these things a total waste of time are.)
Those and other fascinating synchronicities gradually made me more and more open-minded, and I became convinced that parts of religion, astrology, spirituality, and other things I had scoffed at were quite possibly not such abysmally irrational and empty rubbish as I originally thought.
Despite my largely transformed worldview, I stlil sometimes (OK, often) pout and get profoundly sad about how unpleasant and lonely my life has too often been, and the tons of problems in the world. O me of little faith.
Again, I'm unable to share too many private details from my and others' lives.