[wolfgang]

Originally Posted by John Freestone

I think it's exactly that: we all have a strong tendency to invent significance in random events. Getting excited about LoA just makes you more susceptible to the disease.

I think we have a strong tendency to look for meaning in life. Which is because we don't feel whole. Making random events have significance is an attempt to feel whole. The thing is we don't have to pin significance on random events. There is an order to the universe's meanderings even if random, the whole ball of reality is whole and we forget that.

Furthermore, when you are obessessing about the mystical meanings of everything, you miss the psychological and realistic meanings. You invented the description 'stinking' to describe thoughts about your friend after finding the fish, I think, and if you analysed the situation you might have recognised that you were having perfectly acceptable, but negative, feelings about a relationship, and you might have concluded that you needed to exercise loving assertive behaviour. Instead, it seems, you felt guilty for feeling irritated sometimes with a friend, saw a fish, and made up a complete fantasy connection between the two, labelling your thoughts 'stinking'. I don't want to offend you, but most doctors would describe this - and most of the 'connections' manufacured and reported here on this site - as insane. Sorry if that offends you, but their text books describe these thinking styles and relate them to all sorts of other problems. It might not be a problem, but it can be. In some classic cases of psychosis the term 'over-inclusivity' is used to describe this thinking style where every event is interpreted as significant (adding to the patient's delusive beliefs - you know the kind of thing, the CIA are trying to kill them, they're Jesus Christ, etc.).

Interesting. Often when people become "enlightened", if they aren't also grounded some how, are shuffled off to the looney bin and given drugs and sedatives - instead of taken out into nature and allowed to connect, feel whole, be natural/unconditioned and given a chance to "come down" and get grounded - that is to also know they are an individual at the same time as having the "over-inclusivity" thinking that opened their ability to feel that there is oneness and a connection to everything that we forgot about.

The problem is actually the other way round - in ordinary human life there is so much data pouring in all the time that if we set up a kind of search filter by thinking 'mouse' or whatever, the chances are we'll spot a mouse. This kind of thing has been demonstrated endlessly and, as I said before, is ironically part of the LoA philosophy, but after that it comes to false conclusions, IMO. What's happening is that you're seeing mice all the damn time (relatively speaking, if you took note of everything over a long enough period), you just haven't a clue, because if we noticed everything that came to our minds we'd go nuts.

Hence no need to look for particular weird synchronicities. It's our filters on life that make us view the world as to our liking but that is a conditioned mind, mostly. If we could have such a flexible view of the world, without any specific filter - we would actually see the world in the moment to the point that there will be a knowing. That knowing is a feeling. Some call it conversion, if going the religious route. Or seeing the light, etc... In that state of mind, everything is exactly as it is and there is no mind objections going on and there is profound peace and meaning. The 3d world will look dreamy. Everything will be symbolic more than static objects "out there". Anything can have deeper meaning and it's our ability to decide what we want it to mean that is part of it. Like a dream that can be interpreted for how we are feeling or achieving or progressing or wanting or failing - so too the 3d world can be for us.

But once you start collecting so-called 'evidence', you notice those random features of your experience that fit. Look what's happening here - I mentioned seeing a mouse on tv, and you're talking about hippos on tv. I just wrote "nuts" (and "insane") and someone mentioned squirrels earlier. Are these significant synchronicities? Psychology and mathematics tells us it is highly unlikely.

They are connections, yes. That is part of what we do. Look for associations. That is part of the holographic mind. Getting things to fit into the big oneness hologram requires making associations that can make sense of the too much data that we get in 3d. That is the friction between individuality and oneness.

Did the hippos mean anything? Nope. Did you just waste a load of your life wondering what the message was, what the fish meant, and what to think about in the car in order to win the lottery? Yep.

When viewing 3d as symbolic, you can have spiritual sight. There won't be much need to figure out the "message" but rather feel that all is right with the world. That's what one is looking for to find meaning. The message is that there isn't really anything "wrong". There's no need to fear the world. I'm not sure how much the messages of a symbolic view of the 3d world is like external guidance that you can base deciding on. But rather the reflection of what you are trying to decide or have already decided. Which then could be our filters on reality again anyway. But if we view without filtering, with unconditioned minds, the 3d world will be full of things that tempt us into wanting to think there's grand messages and something explainable. When really the only message can be - all is right with the world, no need to fear. Which, if one takes that message to heart - one can view with a less conditioned mind. Then everything will feel right. lol - what the heck am I saying?