Coincidence?

so i like to come to this forums for interesting threads. here is what i have been wondering lately:

in the movie v for vendetta in the opening scene where v saves evey in the alley he says:

V: e... v... of course you are.

Evey: what does that mean?

V: it means that i, like god, do not play with dice and do not beleive in coincidence.

there have been a striking amount of coincidences in my life lately and they have all been pointing me to one place, and i can't tell whether it is just a bunch of coincidences or a sign; or whether i should follow the direction they seem to be pointing me. i can't really decide for myself: are coincidences an illusion? are they some kind of divine intervention? or are they just coincidences?

 

go with the flow

 

I'm not trying to imply anything here, just mentioning something that happened with a close friend of mine.

He was a bit unstable, and started using (I should say abusing) LSD. He began having some serious delusions and eventually wound up in a psych ward. Just before his final breakdown, he was obsessed with coincidences that he claimed were happening all around him. He believed that these coincidences were all pointing to some ultimate truth.

He became to believe that the ultimate truth was that he was god, and that was somehow the explanation for all the coincidences that were occurring.

He is on medication and is stable now, but these delusions reappear if he discontinues his medications.

What does this have to do with your question? I don't know exactly. I have noticed an increase in strange coincidences in my life when I am tripping too often. I don't know what the connection is... and I try not to look too deep into. I've always figured it was somehow an unexplainable side effect.

 

all of the above?

 

hehe thanks for the post pedaltopedal, i'll be cautious i don't think they are pointing to some ultimate truth though, but just a choice that i maybe should make but that i am reluctant to make. i'd rather not say, it's personal.

i am very mentally stable though, i just find it strange that all of these occurences seem to be pointing in the same direction.

they really stem back to before i ever even did acid well over a year ago, and were occurring in a 6 month break i had from psychadelics as well. so i don't think they are too LSD related although it's possible.

it's good info to have though.

---

i was more concerned with the ultimate nature of coinicidences: are they a divine sign, or just chance?

and with their current relationship to my life. *as a seperate topic

 

well (and this is just my take), things can be approached pretty confidently with simple reasoning.

just look at the coincidences and see if they stem from something you've done, or see if they're related. try to seperate what you're looking for, and what actually is.

if you find they're related, it means that you've either: gone crazy, or caught on to something.

but i'll bet that you're just looking for what's not there, and seeing it because you're looking.

Edit: just saw your most recent post, and if it's something about a choice you should make, that's different. i was thinking you had a really wacked out idea in mind.
Well, if it's reasonable (which it sounds like it is), don't be afraid to connect things that have to do with each other. just be wary of going out and looking for coincidence, because like someone else said, that can go wrong pretty quickly (or at least, indicate that something's wrong).

Whether they're divine, or by chance, is really up to personal belief. i don't think that they're divine, i just can't really believe that. i do think they're chance, in the sense that sometimes things happen that can be connected. doesn't really mean anything other than that humans are able to connect and relate ideas and things back to a main theory or supposed "cause".

 

Desos, half the people here are going to tell you to listen to the voices, and the other half will tell you to be careful if you start hearing them. You are a grownup, only you can decide for yourself which path to take.

I know that if I start "seeing coincidences" and reading deep meaning into things that obviously do not have deep meaning, then I must cease my drug use and possibly seek mental help. It only took my seeing 1 friend go down the rabbit hole from marijuana mostly (+1 acid trip that was a final kick) to show me how easy it is to fall into the trap of mental degradation through drug use.

Be vigilant. Remember these are chemicals affecting your brain, and anything else you think is going on is subject to the utmost scrutiny and examination by rational means.

 

As usual, I find myself agreeing with Mr. Writer (dude, I should PM you... you make some awesome posts!), but I have to ask the obvious question that no one seems to have asked... what exactly is the direction you are being pointed in? If the direction is loving yourself, loving others, being creative, being productive, being free... then I say go for it!

 

I find that after an intense trip i come out knowing that something has to change or that i am ready to change.
Sometime after that coincidences start to appear. It generally points me in a good direction though sometimes in between the trip and finding my way it can be a very tough period for me emotionally, making bad decisions or just lacking joy in life. Once i do work out what i need to do i feel fantastic..
I dunno if that helps at all.

 

what is a non-coincidence? it is when we refuse to believe that two things happened together without a similar cause or meaning behind their happening.

Eg. Is it a co-incidence that I saw a car stop right when a red light was flashed ahead of it? Well, no, because we consider the car to have stopped BECAUSE of the red light.

Is it coincidence that Bobby saw his sister at the family gathering?
No, because both bobby and his sister's being there was (assumedly) caused by them both being on the same invitation. or something like that.

Is it a co-incidence that I came across a packet of papers on the ground when I ran out one day?

Well some might say NO that is not coincidence. You needed papers, and papers appeared. Everything happens for a reason and we can clearly see a reason for those papers to be there! to serve your rolling when you ran out!

In all of these cases, there is definatelty a CO-INCIDENT

but whether it is 'just coincidence' is up to whether we can not believe our luck

Perceiving things to be beyond coincidence is a matter of perceiving a potential meaning for something happening. It has to do with interpretation, not in the initial experience that we are interpreting.

Now, I never look on the ground diligently or think much of cigarette paper packets on the ground unless I have run out of them. This is where coincidence gets out of hand.

We know very well that events are interpreted differently depending on what we are expecting.

Remember that we can engross ourselves in MEANING but not in CHANCE. We cant apply ourselves properly to chance. We can only calculate it abstractly given certain mathematical parameters.

But the human brain does not actually adress chance in any rational way. By default, we interpret meaning over non-meaning. Because otherwise we would have a constant struggle between asuming things happened for a reason or for no reason. Since it is always better for us to be 'in on something' than to be unaware, we process the possible meanings, and in teh absence of any possible meaning, we conclude on chance.

So often our denial of coincidence merely has to do with our ability to imagine a meaning for something.
Whether or not our imagination is correct or not.. well that is just the question we have to ask whenever we have any conclusion about anything in the world. 'Am I seeing too deeply into this?'

How about you share with us what these coincidences are, Desos?

 

oh by the way, the word coincidence is an awkward one.

when we 'notice' coincidences that usually means that we actually consider them to be more than just coincidences

 

but how can there be coincidence if we havnt noticed it.
how much importance we place on it determines whether or not it is more than a coincidence.

 

a coincidence happens whether we see it or not. A coincidence is just two things happening at the same time, or place, or context. There are infinite number of coincidences occuring always. Only the ones with potentially related meanings do we actually notice, and then its a matter of whether we think it is reasonable that such a meaning is there.

Nothing is more than a coincidence really, except organised actions of people

 

What's interesting is that "reading into things too deeply" can actually be caused by too much dopamine in the brain. It's a very simple chemical root.

What do most drugs do? Alter dopamine levels.

 

There is no such thing as coincidence, what you are noticing is synchronicity.

Coincidence means two or more events at one time by chance. Myself and many others don't believe in chance as everything happens for a reason.

Synchronicity is when you notice that you are part of a beautiful pattern. There is no chance as everything happens for a reason.

When you notice what some might call a coincidence, what are actually noticing is that life has synchronicity and yes this is a sign that you should pay attention to.

Forget about coincidence and start paying attention to the synchronicity in your life while you allow yourself to be divinely guided.

 

the word coincidence feels like a long forgotten memory.

 

some very enlightening posts.

now i guess some of this falls under the category of 'destiny'. it seems that we can either see events as coincidents or as a destined event that happened for a meaning.

now i beleive in destiny in that we are all going to end up in the place that we are supposed to, but at the same time i beleive we are the masters of our own destiny. after all, we do have free will. maybe coincidences are just a median for the exploration of our desires, for furthering ourselves.

i see what you mean when we only really notice the coicidences that have meaning to us. perhaps we notice the ones we do because they are relative to what we are going through in our life, and relative to our current psychological and spiritual place in existence. we derive meaning from them because it represents a deep rooted desire, or somewhere that we are lacking. so really taking meaning from them can only further us in the path that we are supposed to take.

i had to do alot of thinking to figure out exactly what everyone was talking about haha. for some reason this is just something that doesn't click with me very easily(most things do). what do you all think about this post?

 

Watch the movie I Heart Huckabees. Seriously, don't just read this and think about it, if you really care you should make an effort to see it.

I think the greatest truth I've found so far is that, ultimately, things are really funny.
Life is both benevolent and absurd.
It is happening.
The most effective way to deal with that is to try to consciously enjoy it.

 

Is that: if we really care about you? or if we really care about coincidence?

 

maybe if we care about ourselves or the world we should watch the movie?