Garbage, all of it.

[mercuryrising]

Originally Posted by cylon

Yeah you're right. At some point you have to accept this is how it is if you want to take it further. At this point it seems everything we're all talking about is connected, which I think is cool since we don't know each other in "real life", but if everything is connected then EVERYTHING is connected.

I suppose I could list everyone that happens to me too and that would take 24 hours a day to accomplish.

I bet John is gonna have a great time with this one. I know I am.

Well, since he is going to fillet all of this anyway, here's a little tidbit I found interesting...

I did a couple psychic readings for some people on line. Reading people's auras. I did ok, nothing special. But I noticed that the number of synchronicities I noticed really picked up. I think it had something to do with exercising that part of my brain on purpose.

[cylon]

Originally Posted by moonrambler

How old was Huey when "Sports" was released?

That would be 33. Good thing he didn't stop at 31!

[moonrambler]

I looked through a plastic canvas magazine for good pictures for an auction listing. There was a basket with jelly beans in it. There also was a pattern called "Happy Frog." (Wax Frog, you lurking?) Then I got an e-mail that somebody responded in a thread I'm watching in the eBay forums about the management's controversial decision not to allow sellers to leave negative or neutral feedback anymore. Somebody had posted a long piece of information by someone else claiming to be an eBay insider. I could see that eBay won't leave that sit up there very long, so I Googled to look where else on the Net it might be posted where there might be commentary. For this Google search, responding to my search in quotes "spirit of ebay," with 5,280 results, the number 2 result begins with my first name (spelled properly) in big capital letters, along with some numbers: 258A SHELLEY.

Now. What're the odds of THAT? LOL!

Interesting also about the numbers 5280 and 258A.

[Wax Frog]

Originally Posted by moonrambler

There also was a pattern called "Happy Frog." (Wax Frog, you lurking?)

I come and I go, my appetite for IM posts being insatiable these days...

[alegro]

Wow, what a long thread. I have tried to read everything, and may have missed a few details. But I hope I got the most important points so far.


Prior to raising my issues I would like to point out that I have followed the recipe given in "Think and Grow Rich" by Napoleon Hill and found that the advice is extremely useful and worked for me. I have been able to realize my goals even though not all of them were money related.

However, I did not believe in the LoA - which is the main subject of this thread. I did believe that only through having goals, programming them into my subconscious and taking action consistently I can realize my goals.


Maybe I was wrong. Maybe I could just rely on the LoA and didn't need to take action. This would be in contradiction with the philosophy of "The way itself being the goal". Which is what I find useful and which may prevent me from getting the LoA work for me.


So inspired by this thread I have allowed myself to consider the possibilities of subjective realities and the possibility of manifesting material goods without taking action (since this is basically what the LoA is about and what distinguishes any meaningful definition from the LoA from my action-based approach outlined above):

1.) Is the Earth flat?
If it is true that there is no objective reality, then the Earth will be flat for some and round for others. In fact, there is a group of people who subscribe to the idea that the Earth is indeed flat: Flat Earth Society - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The problem is that both types of people live on the same Earth and I just don't understand why it is possible for me to have travelled around the Earth once (which I have) and come out at the same spot. I have crossed the date line twice. And still I can talk about the experience with people who believe the Earth is flat - a feat that would be impossible assuming a subjective reality exists. What would happen to someone who believes the Earth is flat when we sit in the same airplane, look at the same compass pointing North and travel around the globe?

And how was it possible that the Earth became/appeared/whatever round in the first place? A few centuries ago the world was populated by so many people who believed it was flat that a small group of people should have made no difference about it. And when finally Columbus reached India he didn't believe himself he discovered a new continent. In fact, nobody manifested the continent, it was just there. If the LoA did work for Columbus, he would have succeeded in finding a new way to India, *not* in finding a different continent.

(And, actually, it should *not* have worked for him since he was ultimately outcome-dependent. He put his life at stake by attempting to sail out to the sea, although he knew that people had done so before and had not returned. So attachment should have prevented him from making the Earth round in the first place. At least according to the LoA practitioners in this thread.)


2.) What are the laws of our Universe?
How come some people believe in Quantum Physics if nobody understands it? Many findings in modern physics are just counterintuitive or "obviously wrong". They are so far outlandish that nobody believed them when people figured that the evidence their colleagues found is in contradiction with established believes.

Quantum Physics was met with more resistance in the physics community than Uri Geller would be at the James Randi Foundation meeting. It was just so *obviously* wrong that it just couldn't be right. When Max Planck published his seminal paper on thermodynamics assuming the quantization of action, it was clear to him that it just was a mathematical trick and that the true explanation would never have such a nonsensical feature.

Later people found more evidence for quantum theory, despite they were ridiculed by the titans of science. Einstein resisted the non-deterministic nature of quantum mechanics all his life. It is hard to imagine anybody would cook up something weird like this against the resistance of every thinking person on the planet and the entire science community.

It was only when evidence became available that people started to look closer. They found flaws in experimental design, procedure and methodology. But eventually it became clear that the Universe did not behave as a reasonable person thought.

How can the history be reconciled with the LoA? Evidence becoming available with nobody believing it?


3.) Abundance of money
Let's assume that everybody in the US would manifest one extra US-$ for every buck he already owns *today*. No questions asked, no strings attached.

What would that imply? The effect is the same as if the Feberal Bank just printed more money and distributed it among the population. What would that effect be? Right, it is called inflation - money would just be worth less than it used to be yesterday. Traders would ask more for their goods, and employees would ask for higher salaries. Ultimately, it would not have any effect on the US domestic economy.

There would not be more cars to buy, not more bread to eat nor more or less work to do. So the possibility of manifesting money does not yield to more material goods.

Using the LoA to manifest money means that the Federal Bank prints the money just for *you*, leaving other people out of the picture. There would *still* be inflation - depending on how much money you manifest, the prices would still go up noticeably. Which implies that you did not just make yourself richer, but everybody else poorer. By the amount you manifested divided by the number of people in your country.


To conclude, I do not find that the premises of the LoA are consistent with my experience of the world. On the other hand, the possibility to realize my goals is.

There are two possibilities:
1.) The LoA does indeed work, but it does not do so under reproducible conditions. Sometimes it may work, other times it may fail. Maybe that's good enough for some people, but the thing is that I have a method that works 100% of the time for me (according to the evidence I have). So why should I abandon something that works in favor of something which doesn't?

2.) The LoA does not work as advertised. Then we should find something else.

[hkalchemy]

I find it fascinating which threads become popular which get buried straight away. Often, the 'useful' ones go to the wall, whereas threads which allow people to get into debate and are a bit controversial often become popular.

This tells us something, I suppose?

[John Freestone]

Originally Posted by cylon

Yeah you're right. At some point you have to accept this is how it is if you want to take it further. At this point it seems everything we're all talking about is connected, which I think is cool since we don't know each other in "real life", but if everything is connected then EVERYTHING is connected.

I suppose I could list everyone that happens to me too and that would take 24 hours a day to accomplish.

I bet John is gonna have a great time with this one. I know I am.

I'm struggling not to have a great time with it! - I mean, because you guys are probably great and seem very nice to me and if I keep arguing alternative explanations for the old stuffy world of reductionism, rationalism, realism, etc., I'm afraid it's gonna upset you. It's really hard.
Edit: (I failed, then deleted it - coping with the addiction of arguing these points....must......do.......something............ else............)

Have fun weirding out.
:-

[moonrambler]

Originally Posted by moonrambler

I looked through a plastic canvas magazine for good pictures for an auction listing. There was a basket with jelly beans in it. There also was a pattern called "Happy Frog." (Wax Frog, you lurking?) Then I got an e-mail that somebody responded in a thread I'm watching in the eBay forums about the management's controversial decision not to allow sellers to leave negative or neutral feedback anymore. Somebody had posted a long piece of information by someone else claiming to be an eBay insider. I could see that eBay won't leave that sit up there very long, so I Googled to look where else on the Net it might be posted where there might be commentary. For this Google search, responding to my search in quotes "spirit of ebay," with 5,280 results, the number 2 result begins with my first name (spelled properly) in big capital letters, along with some numbers: 258A SHELLEY.

Now. What're the odds of THAT? LOL!

Interesting also about the numbers 5280 and 258A.

Just to mention, this is my post # 285.

John Freestone -- one thing, I've asked you twice now what you would need to experience to believe it was a significant synchronicity, or whether there's nothing at all that would convince you the phenomenon exists. I'd love it if you'd answer that.

Bummer that you deleted what you wrote since you took the time to write it. That's the point of this thread, after all.

Alegro -- I don't know if anybody here is truly advocating the idea of LoA with no action. Even those who are big proponents of this, are still taking action. ALG, for instance (talking about him in the third person, Hi ALG if you're lurking), insists he can create events with no action, yet in order to get a poetry book deal he had to write a book of poetry and he had to send the manuscript around. In order to create big monetary gains through his work, he has to do a spectacular job, and he had to get education to get the type of job he has, and so on. And he gets job offers that he didn't even look for, but that isn't uncommon with people who have high-level positions and are doing spectacular work. We have an entire industry employing people who spend all their time trying to hire away the best people from one company to go to another, and they are called head-hunters.

You'll also find that if a person comes to this forum looking for LoA help with curing a disease or fixing financial problems due to unemployment, for instance, the first thing that person will be asked is if they've gone to a doctor, or in the other case, if they've been applying for work. Even the most fervent LoA proponents want to make sure the basic action is covered before moving beyond that.

The LoA is fundamentally stating the tendency that "like attracts like." People who have money and have a good attitude about money are probably going to get more of it. People who have money and have a negative or conflicting attitude about money are more likely to run into financial problems. People who don't have money but have a positive and motivated attitude about getting money are more likely to get it than people who are opposite of that.

Here is a little LoA experience that happens to me now and then. I go around to rummage sales and I find a magazine from the 1980s that I've never seen before since starting to work in resale. I know I've never seen it, because if I would have seen it, I would have bought it. There are five of them, and I buy them. The next day, in an entirely different part of town, I find another one of these magazines at a yard sale, and then later in the day I find a couple more. I have no idea why this happens, but it's not uncommon. JF would say it's "just a coincidence," but it's weird. The other day I was looking through books at a sale, and I picked one out which was unfamiliar to me, and a woman says to me, "I'm reading that book right now!" And I said, "Oh, yes?" or something, and she says more adamantly, with a big grin, "I mean, it's in my car right now!" And I realize she's got her own LoA experience going here, and I get a big kick out of that.

Nevertheless -- I still have to take action and get in my car and go around to these sales for any of this to happen. The LoA builds from that.

[cylon]

I wonder if skeptics experience many synchronicities. In the past when stuff happened to me I just said wow that was an interesting coincidence, then completely blocked it out of my mind. It was easy, I would freak out and think "yeah but what about all the times what I think DOESN'T show up somewhere else". I do remember feeling uncomfortable and wanting the quick, rational answer so I could "go back to normal".

This worked for me for a long time. Eventually I started thinking "wait, maybe there is something to this" but quickly imagined all the intelligent science people laughing at me and calling me dumb. "What would Carl Sagan think"

And I had spent all this time investing in skepticism, in order reject fundamentalism. I thought I had a new model (humanism, naturalism,) that explained the universe to me and now THAT was about to go under scrutiny (miserablism).

It wasn't fun or easy. I felt like I was betraying myself and all the insights I had gained from my science/skeptic studies. So John should know, people take this seriously. Not all just jump right in. Giving yourself permission to think outside the box is too risky for some people. Think of this thread alone... it takes about three seconds to go from "do my thoughts create reality?" to "Don't jump off a building or drink poison! Be careful!" Like as soon as people start to question their reality-model, the first thing they will do is the worst and most dangerous thing they could do. That's how scared people are of change.

It's the same when a christian or highly religious person deconverts to atheism. What do their friends and family say?"God is the source of all morality. Now you're probably going to walk around murdering and plundering because you don't care what God thinks anymore."

Come to think of it, this LOA is for weird people reminds me of when I was going to bookstores and buying books on atheism, how scared I would be walking up to the counter, hoping no one would see the big word "ATHEIST" on the titles. LOA is like that for me. Sure it may be popular right now (the secret) but when you get down to it, most people think it's crap. It's not something you walk around and start talking about to everyone.


Anyway most of my life was spent miserable. The best feelings I've had are childhood, and post LOA. So it's working for me.

[newmark]

'Do skeptics experience many synchronicities?' I expect so. They just rationalize them away, as I used to do. Now, I've stopped rejecting my experiences. This means taking on beliefs, or at least considering ones, that at one time I would have considered very strange.
And, yes, most of the world, would consider LOA as very strange.
I expect if I told many people about this they would think I had become very weak minded, at the least.
That, however, is their business.

[wolfgang]

Bowie! Should it be significant I was learning to play/sing Suffragette City?


Some material I picked up on talked about synchronicities being like a situation where multiple possible universes have intersected. I forget where I got this idea from, sorry. And it was said that the more into being aware of results of your intentions, the more the intersections show up because of your consciousness having focus and that focus could have multiple layers of consciousness coming through. Like if you imagine your individual consciousness can be shared by other non ordinary consciousnesses that jump on the band wagon when you are able to have this kind of focus. That what you are really doing is calling oneness through you, in a way. And sort of combining a bunch of threads of possibilities together for all the consciouses that have become less fragmented. That wave collapse function idea and that the collapsing into reality can come from more that just your ordinary state of consciousness.

pretty wild ideas, ha? maybe not very rational thought, perhaps.

wish I could remember where I read/listened to this idea and I may have added my take at this point.

[cylon]

This mellow thighed chick just put my spine out of place.

If everything happens right now, if time isn't linear, if we can be everywhere and nowhere at once... that's sci-fi. Right?

[John Freestone]

Originally Posted by moonrambler

John Freestone -- one thing, I've asked you twice now what you would need to experience to believe it was a significant synchronicity, or whether there's nothing at all that would convince you the phenomenon exists. I'd love it if you'd answer that.

Bummer that you deleted what you wrote since you took the time to write it. That's the point of this thread, after all.

Oh sorry, moonrambler, that was a bit silly of me - I forgot to give you a specific answer. It wasn't on porpoise (oops) I just thought that if I describe how I think about the world you would kind of understand the answer to the specific question.

I do not understand the question. The thing I am being asked about - 'significant synchronicity' - seems rather curious and, the more I think about it and try to define it, nonsensical. I'm not too hot on Jung.

As I suggested, if two events have a 'connection', that, to me, suggests that they are in some way causally connected. I don't quite know what other kind of connection you could be suggesting (or cylon) when you say that things are connected, but NOT causally, or that they are too unlikely to happen together to be a coincidence, but they aren't causally connected. I couldn't really give you a specific answer to what I would require as evidence for a phenomenon that doesn't make sense to me.

Let's simplify the terms and talk about what I would need to verify a miracle. Would I be right in assuming that you're asking pretty much the same question in principle, although your 'synchronicity' is to do with things happening in a particular pattern, where a miracle might just be a single event? Anyway, maybe if I address this, you'll see what I'm driving at. If you asked me that question, and we consider something obvious like a statue of the madonna said to be crying. Now, statues don't cry, we generally think, so let's say I investigate: now, the point is, what categories of phenomena can I divide my experience of the event up into:

1) something natural is happening, like a curious chemical process in the paint used on the eyes, causing them to produce an oil which is running down the face...NAURE

2) I discover a tiny hole drilled in the ceiling, perfectly aligned with the madonna's eyes. I go up into the roof space and find an eye-dropper and a bottle of water, and the dust that covers everywhere else is disturbed here recently...FRAUD

3) I examine the statue for seven years and eliminate all possible fraud and known scientific processes, but the statue continues to produce water at the eyes...PERHAPS AN UNKNOWN NATURAL PROCESS IS STILL UNCOVERED

4) After the above, I become moved by the teachings in the chapel there and convert. The statue is reported as crying only when several are gathered together, so it goes, or when a person goes there to pray in silence for a long time in great distress. I do that. I pray there, many times. She cries. I go to services, she's dry to start, then she cries. Eventually I am convinced that there is something super-normal happening, so ... well ... you see, that's the purpose of my question to you, and the reason I'm going into this so deeply.

You see, if we say...CHRISTIANITY, GOD, CHRIST...ALL THAT IS REAL AND TRUE AND GOD AND CHRIST ARE MAKING THIS STATUE CRY TEARS...

...well, what is that? It's a religion. It's a philosophy. It's an explanation. IT IS A CAUSE.

Similarly, if things of a co-incidental or syn-chronous nature keep happening to me that I can't explain my normal means, including what we know about psychology, I can only conclude one of two things - their relationship has some causal link, or it doesn't. If it has a causal link, it is not supernatural, but natural, and if it doesn't, it is coincidental. Now, even if there is some great pattern to the universe that means that everything is linked in such a way that when you start thinking about teal motocycles they actually being to increase in number around you, that's fine. If it had some really substantial evidence, we might have to consider it as a real contender for the universal cosmology, but it would still be a causal link, and it would only be magic(k) if you defined magic(k) that way - in other words, once discovered as REAL, it is NATURAL.

Some IMers say that there is a real process going on that we haven't discovered yet. Ok. No problem. If it is, let's investigate it. Others just seem to want it to be unknown, because they like being 'weirded out' and enjoy 'trippiness'. That's fine too, as long as you're happy to live in ignorance, in a world of makebelieve, not bothering to find out. I'm not meaning to tar everyone with the same brush. Some people are genuinely open minded and would forget these magical connections if they turned out to be false, a trick of the mind, as I think they are. Others would just hate it. That's ok too. Everyone's free to make up their own mind.

I was asking you to define your terms. I don't think you have done that yet. And I think that if you really think about what Jung's statement means, it points nowhere. It's like saying I've got a dog that is not an ordinary dog. You're asking me what kind of evidence I'd need to be convinced your dog isn't ordinary.

[cylon]

Originally Posted by John Freestone

I do not understand the question. The thing I am being asked about - 'significant synchronicity' - seems rather curious and, the more I think about it and try to define it, nonsensical. I'm not too hot on Jung.

Where a coincidence happens to you and it takes you awhile to get over it. You personally. Something in your life where you had to remind yourself that it was only a coincidence and not to think silly thoughts. Don't pretend you haven't had a few.

If you read this thread, we're having them live, right here while talking about them.

[cylon]

Originally Posted by John Freestone

Some IMers say that there is a real process going on that we haven't discovered yet. Ok. No problem. If it is, let's investigate it. Others just seem to want it to be unknown, because they like being 'weirded out' and enjoy 'trippiness'. That's fine too, as long as you're happy to live in ignorance, in a world of makebelieve, not bothering to find out.

Hey John, do you think you could take things a little more seriously please?
I saw you relaxing for a minute there and I want to make sure you're always on alert for the bad things coming your way.

I've already described my own story. You just gloss over it like I'm some backwards fool who doesn't think. You're being a real big bad meanie.

[wolfgang]

Originally Posted by John Freestone

I was asking you to define your terms. I don't think you have done that yet. And I think that if you really think about what Jung's statement means, it points nowhere. It's like saying I've got a dog that is not an ordinary dog. You're asking me what kind of evidence I'd need to be convinced your dog isn't ordinary.

But what about reality as we think we know it already? Is gravity to be considered natural? Why is that? Because we have an equation that works for us? Is that a cause? No. That's just an equation. It's a causal relationship that repeats itself. But there's still a mystery about gravity. What says masses have to exert force on each other? We say it's a law, that just is. But we still don't really know why it is. Gravity particles?

So, if someone comes up with an quantifying equation for an IM exercise and tests it to the point of an equation that works for us - will that show us the cause? Or just be an equation like gravity? And there might already be approximations for IM type results. Something about a certain number of TM practitioners per city and crime rate going down, comes to mind. One could make an equation out of that - a mathematical relationship that links TM to crime rate. Is that a causal link? maybe, ha? But would we know why or what makes that happen? Peace mind particles?

[wolfgang]

Quote:
Originally Posted by John Freestone
Some IMers say that there is a real process going on that we haven't discovered yet. Ok. No problem. If it is, let's investigate it. Others just seem to want it to be unknown, because they like being 'weirded out' and enjoy 'trippiness'. That's fine too, as long as you're happy to live in ignorance, in a world of makebelieve, not bothering to find out.

I still trip out on things we think we "know" - that's called being in awe and wonder about the nature of the world. We forget this and think everything that science made equations for is too mundane for us to smile at - taking 3d for granted.

What process has science figured out? There will always be a mystery under neath. What makes black absorb light? Why is the sky blue? Do I sound like a kid yet? why? why?

[cylon]

Originally Posted by wolfgang

Do I sound like a kid yet?

Kind of. Get more serious.

[moonrambler]

Originally Posted by John Freestone

Similarly, if things of a co-incidental or syn-chronous nature keep happening to me that I can't explain my normal means, including what we know about psychology, I can only conclude one of two things - their relationship has some causal link, or it doesn't. If it has a causal link, it is not supernatural, but natural, and if it doesn't, it is coincidental. Now, even if there is some great pattern to the universe that means that everything is linked in such a way that when you start thinking about teal motocycles they actually being to increase in number around you, that's fine. If it had some really substantial evidence, we might have to consider it as a real contender for the universal cosmology, but it would still be a causal link, and it would only be magic(k) if you defined magic(k) that way - in other words, once discovered as REAL, it is NATURAL.

Some IMers say that there is a real process going on that we haven't discovered yet. Ok. No problem. If it is, let's investigate it. Others just seem to want it to be unknown, because they like being 'weirded out' and enjoy 'trippiness'. That's fine too, as long as you're happy to live in ignorance, in a world of makebelieve, not bothering to find out. I'm not meaning to tar everyone with the same brush. Some people are genuinely open minded and would forget these magical connections if they turned out to be false, a trick of the mind, as I think they are. Others would just hate it. That's ok too. Everyone's free to make up their own mind.

Ok. This all makes total sense to me.

What you wrote makes me do some mind-bending. Perhaps there is an underlying causal relationship amongst a string of coincidences, and maybe sometimes that's where it feels weird -- like I am causing all this somehow, but I don't know how, or why.

Or perhaps there's an acausal relationship, which isn't just coincidental, the way correlation doesn't necessarily mean there is causation and also isn't coincidental. You can find articles in the media all the time which like to take a scientific study and draw a causal conclusion, which typically is false, and the study itself never stated anything like that. For instance, the study that shows people who live alone tend to die younger than people who live with somebody else. The media reports I read about this tended to heavily imply this all had to do with loneliness. But in fact there are probably all sorts of other reasons that are actually causal, that would better explain why a person who lives alone might die younger. Another one -- being male doesn't cause baldness, though by the looks of it, one sure might think so!

I'm very happy to investigate synchronicity further, although I'm not so sure how far we will get trying to create it in a lab.

I totally agree with wolfgang about the trippiness of natural phenomena that we do know the underlying reasons for, and would hope that if we found the underlying reasons for synchronicity, that it wouldn't take the magic out of it. Last night I drove over to the Mobil convenience store (we're so used to driving that we forget just how magical a car is, and we forget just how magical it is that there's a store right there which has aisles and aisles of stuff I can get if I need it, just like that), and the sunset was so breathtaking, I went out loud, "Whoaaaa . . . that's beautiful."

Wolfgang - did you ever hear George Carlin's take on why the sky's blue? "Why is the sky blue? Well, it's not really blue. We only think it's blue because that's the name we call that color."

[cylon]

Originally Posted by moonrambler

I totally agree with wolfgang about the trippiness of natural phenomena that we do know the underlying reasons for, and would hope that if we found the underlying reasons for synchronicity, that it wouldn't take the magic out of it.

Well many people are still in awe of a nice sunset, and it's natural. Just like I think these synchronicities we're discussing are natural. Doesn't make them any less interesting though.

I mean, just being a living, conscious creature to begin with... it still amazes me that existence even exists to begin with.

I made a reference to a specific song today (kraftwerk--man machine) and now it came on my iPod randomly. Glad it did I wanted to hear it after that.

...I just did an experiment. I asked for a Morrissey song to come on. Instead it was the Smiths which is the same thing. So that was three songs later, a three in 12,354 chance. I don't know how to do statistics. I suppose you could subtract the amount of morrissey and smiths songs I have (basically everything ever recorded by them) but still, that can't be more than a hundred or so songs.

Right now I'm freaking out. I was tempted to not even ask for a song, but to just go with it. Happened anyway.

Science or not, it's still cool/weird.

[Wax Frog]

Originally Posted by cylon

So that was three songs later, a three in 12,354 chance.

I'm still trying to get my head around the idea of 12,000+ fave Cylon tunes; that in itself is miraculous to me! Even if I had a music-download account I don't think I could find that many of my own!

[cylon]

Originally Posted by Wax Frog

I'm still trying to get my head around the idea of 12,000+ fave Cylon tunes; that in itself is miraculous to me! Even if I had a music-download account I don't think I could find that many of my own!

Yeah music is my thing. Can you tell?

[Wax Frog]

BEAUTIFUL Sychronicity just now. I posted yesterday and today about a book by Steve Chandler. Well, I'd forgotten I was on his mailing list, and lo and behold today I got a "snail mail" ad from him! It's been a looong time since the last one!

Here's a quote - "Fear closes the human mind. It shuts it down. Soon the mind is contracted and shivering in the corner. But when you open your mind to the soft upward spiral of repeated shifts, it soars. And soon what you wanted to succeed at becomes a "joke"... it's so easy to do"

[John Freestone]

Originally Posted by cylon

Where a coincidence happens to you and it takes you awhile to get over it. You personally. Something in your life where you had to remind yourself that it was only a coincidence and not to think silly thoughts. Don't pretend you haven't had a few.

If you read this thread, we're having them live, right here while talking about them.

So synchronicity is a coincidence that shocks me enough to think silly thoughts about it. Wow. With logical opposition like that, who needs supporters? Doesn't that mean, cylon, that you should get over your silly thoughts and recognise the coincidence that just happened?

[cylon]

Originally Posted by John Freestone

So synchronicity is a coincidence that shocks me enough to think silly thoughts about it. Wow. With logical opposition like that, who needs supporters? Doesn't that mean, cylon, that you should get over your silly thoughts and recognise the coincidence that just happened?

I'll take that as a "no".

Anyway, take it easy John.

So in other news, a co-worker just a while ago told me on HIS iPod he heard the word "stone" at the exact same time he was typing the word "stone", and it weirded him out enough to mention it.

All I said was "yeah, wait till the next one", I don't talk about this stuff in the "real world". He said he was cursed already, he didn't need any more devil magic (he was kidding). A few times he's pointed out things like that and been scared of them, really disturbed by them, and I take that stuff for granted now. Shows me how I've grown a little more accustomed.

I always assume something is going on inside me and it's being reflected back.

[John Freestone]

Originally Posted by cylon

Hey John, do you think you could take things a little more seriously please?
I saw you relaxing for a minute there and I want to make sure you're always on alert for the bad things coming your way.

I've already described my own story. You just gloss over it like I'm some backwards fool who doesn't think. You're being a real big bad meanie.

I haven't a clue what you're on about. I can't believe that you're accusing me of not taking this seriously. I gloss over what story? I'm not here to discuss your stories.

And what do you mean, making sure I'm always on alert for the bad things coming my way? Is that philosophical, or some kind of threat?

[cylon]

Originally Posted by John Freestone

I haven't a clue what you're on about. I can't believe that you're accusing me of not taking this seriously. I gloss over what story? I'm not here to discuss your stories.

And what do you mean, making sure I'm always on alert for the bad things coming my way? Is that philosophical, or some kind of threat?

I'm saying you should lighten up and have some fun with this.

I was being "sarcastic".

[John Freestone]

Originally Posted by wolfgang

But what about reality as we think we know it already? Is gravity to be considered natural? Why is that? Because we have an equation that works for us? Is that a cause? No. That's just an equation. It's a causal relationship that repeats itself. But there's still a mystery about gravity. What says masses have to exert force on each other? We say it's a law, that just is. But we still don't really know why it is. Gravity particles?

So, if someone comes up with an quantifying equation for an IM exercise and tests it to the point of an equation that works for us - will that show us the cause? Or just be an equation like gravity? And there might already be approximations for IM type results. Something about a certain number of TM practitioners per city and crime rate going down, comes to mind. One could make an equation out of that - a mathematical relationship that links TM to crime rate. Is that a causal link? maybe, ha? But would we know why or what makes that happen? Peace mind particles?

I've added emphasis to your post, wolfgang, to show how different IM is to gravity. Yep, gravity is a bit mysterious yet. However, we can calculate the trajectory of a spacecraft accurately enough to land men on the moon. IM - has anyone got anything like 'an equation that works for us', or 'a causal relationship that repeats itself'?

The big different between these phenomena is that gravitational mathematics, theories, equations, proposed particles, etc., while they may be best guesses, have been devised purely to explain repeated, predictable experience, so reliable that no-one argues about whether it is real or not. We experience it so widely, with such clarity, the same in function everywhere (though differing in strength), that we call it a natural phenomenon, and the mathmatics that fit with it PERFECTLY EVERY TIME 100%, a law. The Law of Attraction is a sparkly dolphin in comparison, an imaginitive construction.

Did you say relates TM to crime rate - what, Transcendental Meditators reduce crime? I suppose you could theoretically test such a ridiculous theory if you selected, say, a thousand cities and measured those things. You may be able to establish a relationship between them, but it is unlikely you would establish a causal direction. I suspect that TM practitioners live mainly in Western, industrial cities, where crime rate may be higher, due to other features, such as economic pressure. You see the problem with social science, as someone pointed out, is that there are so many variables. Maybe after a few more fantasies about what IM or TM or QXZ might possibly be the cause of, the apple might drop.

[John Freestone]

Originally Posted by moonrambler

Ok. This all makes total sense to me.

What you wrote makes me do some mind-bending. Perhaps there is an underlying causal relationship amongst a string of coincidences, and maybe sometimes that's where it feels weird -- like I am causing all this somehow, but I don't know how, or why.

That was my words making total sense to you? jesus.

You can find articles in the media all the time which like to take a scientific study and draw a causal conclusion, which typically is false, and the study itself never stated anything like that. For instance, the study that shows people who live alone tend to die younger than people who live with somebody else. The media reports I read about this tended to heavily imply this all had to do with loneliness. But in fact there are probably all sorts of other reasons that are actually causal, that would better explain why a person who lives alone might die younger. Another one -- being male doesn't cause baldness, though by the looks of it, one sure might think so!

I'm such a meanie, apparently, I just thought I must copy this bit and say that I agree completely. Social science goes off on one all the time and comes to all sorts of ridiculous conclusions, or rather, as you say, the reporters do. Nice going! However, the same issue comes up in the 'IM-superstition?' question, only much more powerfully, and I don't buy your attempt to turn the principle around and say 'Maybe there's a causal...weird...' Maybe schmaybe.

I'm very happy to investigate synchronicity further, although I'm not so sure how far we will get trying to create it in a lab.

No, I rather regret saying that we could investigate it now. There's the big problem - if it is meant to be a general natural law, we could do science with it in a lab - but a lot of people say that it's a very personal or subjective or unpredictable thing, and if that's so, we can't. The only experiments that can be done would be by individuals working out if they get weirded out enough to convince themselves (Steve, ALG...) and they don't have to bother about general laws or convincing anyone else. The scientific community just laugh at the whole idea.

I totally agree with wolfgang about the trippiness of natural phenomena that we do know the underlying reasons for

Yes, AMEN to that too - most sensible thing you've said all my life, btw, cylon ...

, and would hope that if we found the underlying reasons for synchronicity, that it wouldn't take the magic out of it.

That's my point again - I think that if they're honest, most IMers would say it would. In practice, you could have a little program on your computer, or a pocket IM machine, making the best possible progress towards the fulfillment of your heart's desires given the current circumstances - where's the fun in that? The problem is, I believe, that deep down, the whole point of IM/SR/LoA is that it is a source of trippiness and weirding out. That's also why I don't think I support the idea of trying to scientifically investigate it (but, hey, I'm not going to fire-bomb the labs or anything) - it's like trying to prove whether Jesus is Alive, or God is Love. If some clever bastard proved the existence of God, a whole bunch of believers would be extremely pissed. He's supposed to be contentious, that's the point. IM wouldn't be trippy if you had a - - - oh wait for it - - - trip computer. You'd go "Oh, another Harley/Dead fish/Chipmunk - my imPod said that would happen".

[John Freestone]

Originally Posted by cylon

...I just did an experiment. I asked for a Morrissey song to come on. Instead it was the Smiths which is the same thing. So that was three songs later, a three in 12,354 chance. I don't know how to do statistics. I suppose you could subtract the amount of morrissey and smiths songs I have (basically everything ever recorded by them) but still, that can't be more than a hundred or so songs.

Right now I'm freaking out. I was tempted to not even ask for a song, but to just go with it. Happened anyway.

Science or not, it's still cool/weird.

That's right. You did an experiment, and you don't know how to do statistics. This report of your experiment demonstrates several of the common mistakes in thinking that lead people to believe they are psychic - and that's what you're saying, after all, basically - call it IM if you like - you're predicting a Morrissey song. Now, I'm not an expert at stats either, but I know enough about it to tell you that if you examined this with a purely objective, mathematical eye - or submit the problem to someone who can crunch the numbers for you - you would find absolutely no reason to get freaked out. For a start, you say you have all the smiths and morrissey songs on your ipod, so you can get the proportion of those (hits - I mean a positive result, not chart hits) to non-morrissey-smiths songs (misses - tails). Next, you have to take into account the fact that you waited for another three tracks, which makes the odds of getting a hit within any of those three much much higher than you probably realised. What is more, you have already tricked yourself. You ask for a morrissey song, and get a smiths song, and tell us it's the same thing, but it has a different name, so it isn't the same thing. Then, when you asked for it, you were not specific about how many tracks you would wait and still consider a hit as significant. I'll bet you originally intended it to be the next track. This is a big big problem in all sorts of social sciences - things like complimentary medicine - very often people test these and find that the improvement is no better than chance - the medicine does not work in terms of scientific objective tests. Why are we so convinced? Because, if you're ill and you take no action whatsoever towards curing it, the illness is likely to get better itself. People who are susceptible to self-hypnosis on these matters just keep waiting for the 'hit' for as long as it takes. How many songs later would you have considered your so-called experiment a failure? That's rhetorical - the point is you didn't set yourself any specific targets and stick to them when testing time came. In other words, no offence, you cheated. You don't mean to cheat. You just want it to be true so you cheat.

Toss a coin and try to get heads if you want to find out whether you're psychic. All these IMers telling me I should just experiment and I'll find the truth of it! There's a real challenge for you, an experiment rather than an opportunity for self-hypnosis. Most people dont get too far before they realise the difference between gravity and psi. The longer you continue, the closer it gets to 50-50. Now, if you were psychic, presumably, the longer you went on, the further it would get from 50-50, or it would at least maintain a steady positive ratio that is significant. What's significant? Well, of course, that is subjective, but if it's anywhere near 50-50, your powers aren't very impressive are they, batman? That's when the Dr Jahns of this world start talking about micro-effects, because they want it to be true so much that they just keep hanging on, or, in some cases, have started to make a career in that direction and decide to fix the results to keep their funding.