The Guardian for this meeting was Bruce Mowbray. The comments are by Bruce Mowbray.

Several days ago, I suggested that folks watch the movie "I ORIGINS" - hoping that it might give us a sort of "shared launching pad" to begin a discussion of synchronicity.  No one else at the session had watched the movie all the way through, but this YouTube trailer will give you some notion of why I suggested folks watch it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPuoWzLjhFo

The movie's title is a multi-layered pun, and I like to think of synchronicity as a multi-layered pun-of-being. THANKS to everyone who attended and participated!

Negafook Resident: evening all
Bruce Mowbray: Hello, Riddle and Negafook.
Riddle Sideways: All
Bruce Mowbray: Hello, Ewan.
Riddle Sideways: Shinji
Bruce Mowbray: Hello, Shin - Hope you're feeling better.
Riddle Sideways: ewanji
Ewan Bonham: Hi friends..
ShinjuJin Resident: Hi everyone, yes thanks Bruce
Bruce Mowbray marvels at so many early arrivals.
ShinjuJin Resident: you set the hook well
Bruce Mowbray: Ha ha!
Negafook Resident smiles.
Bruce Mowbray: The cosmos and I have a conspiracy going . . . Can you tell?
Riddle Sideways: When Bruce says be here, they will come
Negafook Resident: hello Shin, nice to see you again
ShinjuJin Resident: Hi Negafook, you also!

--BELL--

Bruce Mowbray: As always, some will be arriving late and coming/going throughout the hour, so shall we begin?
Negafook Resident nods.
ShinjuJin Resident: sure
Bruce Mowbray: kk.
Riddle Sideways: sorry, not to be late :)
Bruce Mowbray: I'd just like to start by asking if anyone saw the movie... I ORIGINS.
Bruce Mowbray: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Origins

ShinjuJin Resident grins at Riddle
ShinjuJin Resident: I began the film but then things came up and I have not yet finished it - made it about half way through
Bruce Mowbray nods.
Riddle Sideways: It appears NetFlix mail DVDs subscriptions are different from streaming subscriptions
Bruce Mowbray: Hmmm. Yes, I do not have streaming Netflix - only snail mail.
ShinjuJin Resident only streams
Bruce Mowbray: kk.
Negafook Resident: fascinating. I hadn't heard of that before
Bruce Mowbray: I'm assuming that all of you received my email with the quote from Carl Jung -- and his definition of synchronicity.
ShinjuJin Resident: yes
Bruce Mowbray: Jung, of course, coined the term... in the 1920s.
Bruce Mowbray: I should probably have come better prepared -- so that I could now provide Jung's quote, but I'd rather open the topic up - with wider implications, perhaps, than Jung's definition might allow . . . Heya, Qt>
ShinjuJin Resident: Hello Qt
Bruce Mowbray: Welcome.
Qt Core: Hi all
Riddle Sideways: hi Qt
Bruce Mowbray: To get us started, does anyone want to share her views on the subject -- tell us what synchronicity means to you or something about your experiences with it?
Bruce Mowbray listens...
Negafook Resident waves to Qt.
Negafook Resident: I can't think that I have had any such experience, sorry
Ewan Bonham: It means two or more things happen in a way that helps to build a greater whole experience. The events seem to be coincidental... but there are no coincidences...:)
Bruce Mowbray: TY, Ewan...
Negafook Resident: unless I'm searching my memory for the wrong thing
Bruce Mowbray: usually synchronicity refers to events in space/time that have no apparent causal connection: "the simultaneous occurrence of events that appear significantly related but have no discernible causal connection."
Bruce Mowbray: That last line was taken from the Wikipedia...  ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronicity )
ShinjuJin Resident: from time to time I've kept a synchronicity journal
ShinjuJin Resident: Hi Darren
Bruce Mowbray: Good to see you.
Darren Islar: hey everyone
Negafook Resident: hello LP
Negafook Resident: Could you say more about your journal, Shin?
Bruce Mowbray: Okay well I may just bounce something off what Negafook just said -- that he had not had any experiences with synchronicity.... 
Bruce Mowbray: My life experience is very different . . .
Bruce Mowbray: in fact I would say that all I have are experiences of synchronicity... whether I recognize them are not.
Bruce Mowbray: The universe - in my experience anyway - repeats itself infinitely and on every level...
Bruce Mowbray: whether I discern the isometrics of this ... the isomorphic similarities -- well I guess that depends on my perception...
Bruce Mowbray: Do you need an example?
Negafook Resident: please
Bruce Mowbray: Whew!
Bruce Mowbray: I thought you might me off the hook there for a minute.
Riddle Sideways: yes, if you were not so glued to cause and effect being such partners
Bruce Mowbray: Okay, let's say that you've gone for a walk in the woods and you sit down beside a stream to take a rest,
Riddle Sideways: you might see all as syncron
Bruce Mowbray: You look up at the sky and notice that there is a cloud and that it has a certain curve along its top...
Bruce Mowbray: You then drop your eyes a little lower and notice that in the distance there is a hill and that the hill seems to repeat the curve of that cloud.
Bruce Mowbray: Again you drop your eyes and notice that the stream in front of you seems to bend with the same shape of the cloud's curve...
Bruce Mowbray: And coming closer there is a piece of driftwood on your side of the stream, again with the same curve...
Bruce Mowbray: And as you come closer, perhaps you see other things on the ground, and eventually your eyes fall upon your forearm, and your forearm also has that same curve that you saw in the cloud.
Darren Islar: hey Zen
Bruce Mowbray: Heya, Zen.
ShinjuJin Resident waves to Zen across the pond
Zen Arado: Hi all
Riddle Sideways: Zen enters

--BELL--

Qt Core: I start from a skeptical position as there are so much events to choose from that one could see anything he/she want. Then we would need to know the cause of everything. All in all i feel that it is a subjective thing
Bruce Mowbray: None of the curves in my example (with the possible exception of the stream and the driftwood, perhaps), are causally connected to each other. Yet, they each seem to "reflect" an iso-morph -- "same shape."
Bruce Mowbray: kk, Qt.
Bruce Mowbray: Are you skeptical about the Fibonacci sequence?
Qt Core: No, there is a cause in that
Bruce Mowbray: There is also apparently connection in that... connection among very disparate things - - - each reflecting the same sequence . . .?
Riddle Sideways: yep
Zen Arado: what way skeptical?
Zen Arado: that it isn't valid?
Darren Islar: It is actual Jung's sort of materialistic explanation QT
Bruce Mowbray listens...
Bruce Mowbray: Jung certainly did not exclude the importance of these subjective viewpoints in this; in fact he says subjectivity is necessary...
Darren Islar: It's harder to argue that they do have causes or are interconnected
Ewan Bonham: The connection for me is in my mind..
Ewan Bonham: It is how I can allow the events to have a greater meaning for me.
Qt Core: If there is no cause-effect relation, is only a "lucky shot"
Bruce Mowbray: Could you say more please, Ewan?
Zen Arado: Humans invented the sequence or noticed the pattern in their mathematics and then noticed that the pattern is in nature
ShinjuJin Resident: just because 'subjective' doesn't mean not valid
Bruce Mowbray: or Zen... or anyone….
Qt Core: (that is not to say that it has no value for the one that noticed it)
Zen Arado: No, it is useful.
Darren Islar: that's not true either since it's recognized
Ewan Bonham: Hmmm... any event or events that happen in the outside must be interpreted by my mind in order to have meaning for me.
Qt Core: yes
Ewan Bonham: If I am lead to put some events together by Spirit, intuition etc.. then i have benefited from the events in a very personal way..
Bruce Mowbray: So, if I am hearing you correctly, Ewan, you are saying the so-called synchronicity is an invention. . . or an interpretation unique to each  individual?
Zen Arado: Isn't it humans looking for patterns to help know the world?
Ewan Bonham: These same events may have had no meaning or a different meaning for others
Ewan Bonham: Yes, Zen
Ewan Bonham: Yes, Bruce..
Zen Arado: and a very useful practice it is too
Ewan Bonham: Perhaps interpretation is more of what I am saying..
Bruce Mowbray: okay let me put my question a different way, then...
Ewan Bonham: But often lead by my Inner knowing
Bruce Mowbray: Is mathematics - of which the Fibonacci series is an example - something that we invent, or is it something that we discover?
Bruce Mowbray: Is mathematics inherent to the structure of the universe itself and therefore something we discover?
Zen Arado: I am led by my inner unknowing :)
Bruce Mowbray: Or, is mathematics something we invented . . . as we supposedly invented the Fibonacci sequence?
Zen Arado: An old question, Bruce
Bruce Mowbray: nods, it is indeed.
Bruce Mowbray: but I feel that it's germane to the question of synchronicity.....
Darren Islar: hi, stevenia
stevenaia Michinaga: waves
ShinjuJin Resident: hello Stevenaia
Bruce Mowbray: Hi, steve.
Negafook Resident: hello stevie
Riddle Sideways: hi stev
Zen Arado: Hi Steve
Bruce Mowbray: Okay, let me ask it a different way: Does anyone sometimes feel that the universe is gracious, rather than indifferent?
Darren Islar: Isn't that referring to cause Bruce?
ShinjuJin Resident: That question comes closer to the way I relate to the subject
Zen Arado: totally random and indifferent I would say
Riddle Sideways: both
Bruce Mowbray: Do you sometimes feel that events in your life seem to synchronize in ways that are almost 'miraculous' ?
Zen Arado: unless you believe in a God who cares about us?
ShinjuJin Resident: It is about view and whether one experiences phenomenal reality as friendly or not (Einstein's miracle/no miracle view)
Bruce Mowbray: I'm not really talking about God -- although that is certainly available.  -- I'm talking about the structure of cosmos itself.
Qt Core: indifferent, bar the lucky/blessed condition that made life possible ;-)
Zen Arado: friendly/unfriendly are labels we apply?
Bruce Mowbray: For decades, literally, I have treated synchronicity as a sort of benchmark.... an indicator that I'm "on my right path" - or however that would make sense to you.
Zen Arado: do they apply really?
ShinjuJin Resident: I'm more likely to experience synchronicity, or for my mind to view in that more trusting way, when I'm less caught up in being a subject in a world of objects.
Zen Arado: they are survival indicators
ShinjuJin Resident: That's my experience too, Bruce... alignment indicators :)
Bruce Mowbray: ahhhh, alignment indicators.... I like that!
Zen Arado: Perhaps some people are more inclined to look for markers?
ShinjuJin Resident nods
Zen Arado: and others wouldn't even notice them?
Bruce Mowbray: So, in that sense, perhaps our subjective experience of synchronicity is a sort of "compass" or perhaps even a rudder ?
ShinjuJin Resident: If I'm not writing as a practice, or meditating, or having regular dreams, I fall out of synchronicity.
Bruce Mowbray: Right, Zen.... everything I've ever seen on synchronicity indicates that it is highly subjective.
Riddle Sideways: and stick meanings to the indicators
ShinjuJin Resident: or feel to
ShinjuJin Resident nods
Darren Islar: Is noticed synchronicity there while it is not noticed by others?
Ewan Bonham: Nods... and I think that is the only way it works for me.
Bruce Mowbray: Just as in my example, the observer of the curve of the cloud also saw curves in everything else in front of him, down to and including his arm, but no one else in that environment may have seen those curves exactly the same way.... and yet he's had a powerful connecting experience -- and an alignment with cosmos, if you will.
ShinjuJin Resident: I reserve judgment about whether imposed, but find it fascinating that there can be/is collective imposition
Darren Islar: maybe a more interesting question: Does synchronicity lead to insight?
Bruce Mowbray: In response to Darren's point about synchronicity leading to insight, there are literally dozens of YouTube videos on this subject . . . and most of them sort of turned me off because they insist on something like a New Age metaphysic that I can't quite embrace.

--BELL--

ShinjuJin Resident: same flavor though... I really like that question
Bruce Mowbray: Yes, I also like the question very much.  In fact, it is the very reason I called this theme session together.
Zen Arado: Humans are desperate to find meaning in things yes?
ShinjuJin Resident: Synchronicity can 'feel' like a flow of insight
Qt Core: isn't when we discover a scheme, so a cause-effect relation insight from what we (before that) call synchronicity ?
Zen Arado: the riddle of life
Zen Arado: It just couldn't be random happenings, we think
ShinjuJin Resident: not sure we have to say it is about meaning though... maybe just about enjoyment/pleasure?
Bruce Mowbray: No, Zen, synchronicity implies a connectedness that is not random -- but nor is it caused.
ShinjuJin Resident: going along with a friend
ShinjuJin Resident: whether the day ends up somewhere or not
Zen Arado: humans synchronise because they have the same interests
Zen Arado: no puzzle there
Bruce Mowbray: Has anyone had experiences of synchronicity so powerful - like lightning bolts - that they simply grabbed your attention?
ShinjuJin Resident is puzzled by many of her friendships
ShinjuJin Resident: lol
Zen Arado: :)
Ewan Bonham: Is it possible that a part of synchronicity is an exquisite listening to the universe... Spirit or how you may experience this force?
Riddle Sideways: yes, bruce
Darren Islar: As insights, yes, Bruce, but that didn't necessarily mean something was happening outside me
ShinjuJin Resident nods
Zen Arado: I don't know what that means, Bruce
Bruce Mowbray: Shin, I think you are suggesting something that New Age metaphysicians might call The Law Of Attraction. . . and your friends have come into your life, maybe, through that...
ShinjuJin Resident: relationship with time as linear vs spontaneous (maybe healthiest place is both?)
Bruce Mowbray slows down and listens.
ShinjuJin Resident: well actually, Bruce, I was just thinking of how I have many friends who share almost no interests with me :)
Bruce Mowbray nods.
Riddle Sideways: good
Bruce Mowbray: me too!
Zen Arado: curious, Shin
Zen Arado: how did you become friends?
ShinjuJin Resident: I'm continually puzzled by our connections with each other when we converse, etc
ShinjuJin Resident: all sorts of ways
Bruce Mowbray: e.g., NONE of my RL friends care anything about Second Life....
ShinjuJin Resident nods...relates
Bruce Mowbray listens again...
Zen Arado: true for me too
Negafook Resident: same here (for any of my virtual worlds)
Darren Islar: my gf does, I met her here :)
Negafook Resident: ShinjuJin Resident: :) Darren
Bruce Mowbray: I would like to note that I relate strongly to Ewan's "an exquisite listening to the universe."
Bruce Mowbray: and I find it interesting that the universe, for all its variety and diversity, is still an "orderly" place -- a cosmos, if you will.
Ewan Bonham: Nods
Zen Arado: I would tend to just see coincidences
ShinjuJin Resident: "Orderly chaos"
Zen Arado: is that wrong?
Bruce Mowbray: Oh!  Far be it from me to judge what is right and wrong -- except for myself, of course, and even then with great reservation.
Ewan Bonham: An Order IN Chaos..
Zen Arado: it is only orderly on our small timescale though
Zen Arado: and from our narrow viewpoint
Bruce Mowbray: So, Zen has introduced the notion of "context" and viewpoint...
ShinjuJin Resident: weird when someone thinks everything is a divine coincidence and points that out a lot, because objectively it is true that we're having very different experiences even right next to one another viewing the same thing
Zen Arado: and from our interpretation
Zen Arado: it is always changing don't forget
Ewan Bonham: Our solar system can be seen only as an aggregate of planets and sun... Until you immerse in the process... then you recognize the order...
Bruce Mowbray nods, always changing.
ShinjuJin Resident: agree Zen
Ewan Bonham: And feel the energy... in this case of gravity..
Zen Arado: actually I read recently that it isn't changing because that implies there was something, some unchanging form to begin with
Qt Core: thinking about synchronicity this song came to my mind, maybe it has no real relation, but still... in the page linked there is both the video and a translation in english: http://lang-8.com/14021/journals/498539
Bruce Mowbray: Since there seems to be such an emphasis on our subjective interpretations and contexts of our experience in the universe, would this be the 'same universe' without humanity in it?
Bruce Mowbray: ty, Qt.
Zen Arado: the moon is gradually getting closer to the earth
Zen Arado: the sun is burning out
Darren Islar: Nods, that's the problem Zen, it's changing and not
Zen Arado: sorry for bad typing :(
Zen Arado: we will disappear in a short while
Zen Arado: (in cosmic terms of time)
Zen Arado: synchronicity only applies for me between humans
Darren Islar: But it is also said that it does no good to try to find the beginning: it's a waste of time.  So I think we seek for meaning here, whatever it is, since meaning can give us direction, which is a very human thing since that is what keeps us alive.
Zen Arado: like the song 'and we meet not really by chance'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z5GAgr2A0b8

Zen Arado: :)
Bruce Mowbray: Another question - and a serious one, actually - Do you think that the notion of synchronicity existed before Jung coined the word? or did he, in effect, also create our experience of it?
Negafook Resident: the word perhaps focussed our ability to recognize it
Qt Core: it [synchronicity] existed way before [Jung's word for] it
Negafook Resident: having a conceptual pigeonhole to put the experiences in makes it easier to remember them
ShinjuJin Resident: Religious texts were written before Jung, and stories... think he was zeroing in on a quality of mind, in a way
Bruce Mowbray: "On the clear understanding that this sort of thing can happen, shall we dance? Shall we dance? Shall we dance?"
Qt Core: We started searching for schemes just after coming down from the trees
Zen Arado: :)
Ewan Bonham: I believe it has always been there in potential, BUT putting a name to it makes it easier to understand..

--BELL--

Darren Islar: I guess Jung didn't came up with it if it wasn't already there :)
Bruce Mowbray: "Some enchanted evening . . . " -- seems that Rogers and Hammerstein had a vision of how synchronicity might work in romantic relationships.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGyfw3yiMT4
ShinjuJin Resident does like the term conceptual pigeonhole
Bruce Mowbray: For me, rather than pigeonholing experience (focusing it into a narrower context) - synchronicity seems to expand my world and experience.
ShinjuJin Resident: but we're able to talk about it because we hold something in our hands
Bruce Mowbray listens for more from Shin about holding something in our hands...
Bruce Mowbray: Do mean like the word? Or do you mean like the piece of driftwood with the same curve as the cloud?
ShinjuJin Resident: yes, the concept or idea
ShinjuJin Resident: something traceable, even if vaguely
Bruce Mowbray: okay, thank you.
ShinjuJin Resident: a tune to carry along
Bruce Mowbray nods.
Bruce Mowbray: Has anyone had the experience of thinking about a friend. . . and having that friend suddenly call on the phone?
Zen Arado: perhaps it is more like ideas develop like memes
Bruce Mowbray: . . .or having that friend pull up beside you in a car when you're on the street -- right as you were thinking about her/him?
Zen Arado: like Newton and Liebnitz both came up with the idea of calculus
Negafook Resident: not I, sorry :)
ShinjuJin Resident: more often see them in a dream
Bruce Mowbray: Or, how about thinking about some subject, and suddenly that very topic is playing on the car's radio, and appears on a billboard through your windshield?
Negafook Resident: perhaps I'm just unobservant
Zen Arado: Darwin and Wallace with evolution theory
Bruce Mowbray: excellent examples, Zen.
Bruce Mowbray: wonderful!
Qt Core: but how many times that does not happen, Bruce ?
Negafook Resident nods to Qt
Bruce Mowbray: Or rather, how many times does it happen but I don't notice it?
Qt Core: We end up remembering only the times it does happen
Bruce Mowbray: How many times do the clouds simply float over without my noting that their curve and the curve of my own arm are the same?
Darren Islar: I think they tried that out, let a few people resolve something on one side of the world, then another group people on the other side of the world, and the last ones can do it in a shorter time
Zen Arado: I have noticed that after reading about something I start to see it everywhere
Bruce Mowbray: Of course, this could become a fetish -- even a sort of tight religious framework -- unless one hangs loose with it.
Zen Arado: perhaps that is more like sensitization?
Zen Arado: having had my awareness raised?
Bruce Mowbray: Isn't that the 100th Monkey effect, Darren?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundredth_monkey_effect

Darren Islar: I don't know what it is called, sorry
Bruce Mowbray: well, I have seen it mentioned in many places...
ShinjuJin Resident: :) I think so
ShinjuJin Resident: If I write in what I experience as a synchronized state, it is often of no better quality objectively, than when I write in a technical way, and yet I really enjoy the experience and sometimes there may be something a little extra that shows up from the first, something that goes just a smidge farther
ShinjuJin Resident: maybe just able to relax more
Zen Arado: What is a synchronized state though, Shin?
Zen Arado: Don't you mean an intuitive state?
Zen Arado: a less logical way of thinking?
Ewan Bonham: Shin, yes writing helps me a great deal!
Bruce Mowbray listens. . . wonders what honing awareness is for.
Zen Arado: I'm not sure I know what synchronicity is
ShinjuJin Resident: sometimes... hard to say exactly, but when life is more subject among subjects view
Zen Arado: I always find words disintegrate when I examine them too much
ShinjuJin Resident: little resistance and what is needed appears
ShinjuJin Resident nods
Bruce Mowbray: The way we are using the term synchronicity here today, it means an apparent time-space connection of disparate things or events -- without that connection being through causality.
Darren Islar: nods to Shin
Zen Arado: how surprising to find you guys here today :)
ShinjuJin Resident: lol
Bruce Mowbray: Yes, Shin, I find that my biggest barrier to experiencing synchronicity is my own resistance to it!
Negafook Resident: synchronicity!
ShinjuJin Resident: it is really really hard to actually relax
Bruce Mowbray: Oh, I suspect there's a lot of causality going on in our being here together today...
Bruce Mowbray: For me, " relaxation" means allowing the contexts to fall away one by one, and resting in their falling off.
Zen Arado: PaBeings like to talk and discuss things
Ewan Bonham: Nod
Bruce Mowbray: So many of those contexts are simply learned shells, cocoons.
Qt Core: thinking too much about synchronicity makes me think about ancient mythology and how it tried to explain the world, creation, and seasons and such
Zen Arado: throw in a topic and it's like giving a dog a bone :)
Bruce Mowbray: Yes QT, right on target.
Bruce Mowbray: But how can we think too much about anything?  Obsession?
ShinjuJin Resident: Did anyone see the study that if people stare into one another's eyes for something like 4 minutes (per day?) they are sure to fall (and stay) in love?
Negafook Resident: hmmmm
Bruce Mowbray: I had not heard that, Shin. I will take note and be careful not to stare.
Bruce Mowbray: ha ha.
Negafook Resident: Funny that, I was considering staring more
ShinjuJin Resident: think there was only one study so it is fringy
Bruce Mowbray: Actually, facial gazing is something that is both done and also a taboo in virtually every culture.
Qt Core: heard about that, but thought it was just an emotional connection, not love
Negafook Resident: remembering how often and intensely I do make and hold eye contact
Darren Islar: stares at Bruce
Bruce Mowbray: :))
Ewan Bonham: I am all for emotional connections!
Bruce Mowbray: Facial gazing is almost always a prelude to some sort of romantic-sexual connection...
Negafook Resident: well, *looking* rather than staring, there is a difference
Bruce Mowbray: Whether it is permitted to go that far is a whole other question, and something that each society has to deal with.
Zen Arado: Letting go of thinking is what Shin suggests I think?
ShinjuJin Resident nods... maybe I connected the two ideas because there seems an openness beneath
Zen Arado: by synchronous state?
Darren Islar: yes you can wonder where it starts, with the staring or with a thought/feeling
Zen Arado: let the flow of nature suggest things
Bruce Mowbray: "Letting go of thinking" is partly what I meant by letting the contexts fall away.
Zen Arado: creativity is like that
Ewan Bonham: yes
Zen Arado: not from thinking

--BELL--

Bruce Mowbray: True mystics, you know, do not pray. . . They will and allow God to pray through them. Could you allow the cosmos to think through you?
Darren Islar: yes
Zen Arado: yes Bruce
Bruce Mowbray: That's part of what I meant by letting the contexts of thinking fall away.
Zen Arado: and letting meditation meditate you
Ewan Bonham: Exactly... that is what i am allowing to do...
Bruce Mowbray loves "letting meditation meditate you."
Ewan Bonham: Hmmm... I am afraid I must take my leave... a very interesting and self-reflective discussion!
ShinjuJin Resident: bye Ewan, gtsy
Bruce Mowbray: kk, ty for being here and for contributing, Ewan.
Darren Islar: I am, somebody tries to distract me here :)
Zen Arado: love the blue color of pavilion Darren BTW
Qt Core: no, just crashed... i was just thinking i had been online a lot given my late crash rate
Darren Islar: thank you all and bye bye
Zen Arado: my fav colour
Bruce Mowbray: It is beautiful, isn't it -- the pavilion!
ShinjuJin Resident: it is a restful blue
Bruce Mowbray: indeed.
Darren Islar: thank you :)
Bruce Mowbray: bye, Darren.
Bruce Mowbray: and thanks.
ShinjuJin Resident waves
Zen Arado: bye Darren
Bruce Mowbray: One big philosophical theme that synchronicity raises for me, is how "the one" and "the many" align themselves...
ShinjuJin Resident nods... sides of a coin
Bruce Mowbray: I regard my particular phenomenological viewpoint -- my subjectivity, if you will -- to be unique.
Qt Core: as many ones i presume
Bruce Mowbray: and yet, there is that vast Cosmos that we are all connected to, and that Big Bang that we all came out of.
Bruce Mowbray: and when I think that way, my individuality almost disappears... like an infinitesimal speck.
ShinjuJin Resident: :)
Zen Arado: we are separate yet interconnected
Bruce Mowbray: Synchronicity becomes a sort of steppingstone that connects me... or am I being too fanciful now?
Zen Arado: no explicable these things I think
ShinjuJin Resident: openness and precision
Zen Arado: I will soon be sinking back into the great oneness
ShinjuJin Resident: it is a wonderful koan and contemplation to me... the play of contradictions
Bruce Mowbray: Returning to the movie -- I Origins -- the biological fact that multiple species evolved a visual mechanism independently of each other... is that not a sort of synchronicity?
Bruce Mowbray: Won't we all, Zen?
Zen Arado: yep
Bruce Mowbray: and for me that is comforting.
Zen Arado: Did you ever read of how the eye evolved?
Bruce Mowbray: I trust the 'great oneness' more than I trust my individuality, if you get my meaning.
ShinjuJin Resident: Our eye is still more suited to underwater viewing I think
Zen Arado: from a little light sensitive patch on the skin
Bruce Mowbray: Yes, that is partly what is discussed in the movie.... I Origins
Zen Arado: so amazing is evolution
Qt Core: sight was too much a useful thing to be ignored
Bruce Mowbray: for sure!
Zen Arado: we evolved to the point where we can wonder about synchronicity
Zen Arado: :)
Bruce Mowbray: Also, note that the eyes of every species on earth have evolved to perceived an extremely narrow band of visible light...
Bruce Mowbray: of what we call visible light.
Zen Arado: yes we evolved what was useful to us
Bruce Mowbray: but the electromagnetic spectrum is so much larger than that narrow band.
Zen Arado: yep
Bruce Mowbray: Would it be unfair to say that the universe made/evolved us to see it self?
Negafook Resident: but it needs vastly larger eyes to see them
Zen Arado: We are so limited in sensory terms
ShinjuJin Resident: can take a long time to drop off something no longer necessary
Negafook Resident: thinking of images of those huge radio-wave telescopes
Zen Arado: yep
ShinjuJin Resident nods
Negafook Resident: dishes more than a hundred feet across
Negafook Resident: that would be a very big animal
Zen Arado: we are still just sophisticated apes
Negafook Resident: anyway, my time us up, my dears. I must go
Zen Arado: sitting around a campfire/fountain
Bruce Mowbray: Did we evolve visual organs to use for ourselves.... or did the universe evolve us in order to see itself?
Negafook Resident: take care, stay happy, be synchronous and well-evolved
Zen Arado: kk me too I guess
ShinjuJin Resident: have a nice day negafook
ShinjuJin Resident: and zen
Negafook Resident smiles.
Qt Core: bye negafook
Bruce Mowbray: bye for now, Negafook.
Zen Arado: Well, we are part and parcel of the universe
Zen Arado: The universe is us
ShinjuJin Resident: there is something that comes from the dzogchen tradition that I contemplate quite often...
ShinjuJin Resident: It is from something called the cuckoo of awareness
Bruce Mowbray listens carefully for more from Shin.
ShinjuJin Resident: "the nature of diversity is nondual"
Zen Arado: mmm yes
Zen Arado: byee
ShinjuJin Resident: It tastes of the wonderful Zen saying about all the universe is one bright pearl
Qt Core: bye zen
ShinjuJin Resident: bye Zen :))
ShinjuJin Resident: and there is that book, reminding me of what you said a bit ago Bruce, "You are the eyes of the universe"
Bruce Mowbray: Well, it's not an original idea, of course,
Bruce Mowbray: but for me it is an inspiring one.
ShinjuJin Resident nods... but it takes a fair bit of quietness perhaps, to have an experience of that

--BELL--

Bruce Mowbray: Quietness, yes, and a willingness to let the shells and cocoons of our own beliefs fall away (our contexts, as it were.)
ShinjuJin Resident nods
ShinjuJin Resident: sorry more of us didn't get to see the film Bruce :)
Bruce Mowbray: If I am hearing Zen correctly and accurately, I think that's what his practice is all about.
ShinjuJin Resident: I know Cat did but ::looks around::: hehe
Bruce Mowbray: Well, the film is still out there to be seen... so maybe at some point you'll be able to do that.
Bruce Mowbray: I've watched it three times so far.
ShinjuJin Resident: wow
Bruce Mowbray: I'm a bit sorry that we didn't get into the concept of "layers"
ShinjuJin Resident: I found it a bit hard to tap into
ShinjuJin Resident: please say more?
Bruce Mowbray: I understand, Shin. the first time I watched it, it took me about forty-five minutes just to understand what was going on...
ShinjuJin Resident: hehehe Harry Potter howler
Bruce Mowbray: Well, by layers --- I mean the sort of thing I was trying to give the metaphor with earlier: cloud, hill, creek, driftwood, arm....
Bruce Mowbray: The curve appears in multiple layers... isomorphic.
Bruce Mowbray: and I think synchronicity works like that.
Bruce Mowbray: Before I go I'd like to give one more brief point... if I may.
ShinjuJin Resident: yes please
Bruce Mowbray: Do you ever watch Antiques Road Show on PBS?

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/roadshow/

ShinjuJin Resident: have but don't :)
Bruce Mowbray: QT probably has not heard of that.
Qt Core: no idea
Bruce Mowbray: it is a show in which people bring antiques and have them appraised....
Bruce Mowbray: They could be objects of art, or tools, or paintings, or weapons, or anything..
Bruce Mowbray: But here is the interesting thing to me:
Bruce Mowbray: An excellent antique dealer or appraiser (or an excellent anthropologist)
Bruce Mowbray: can almost immediately tell you, just from the qualities of that object,
Bruce Mowbray: when and where it was produced.
Bruce Mowbray: In other words, all objects produced during that same time/space period have similar qualities.
Qt Core: it's his/her job
Bruce Mowbray: Yes, is it his job...
Bruce Mowbray: but isn't it interesting that a cultural time period can produce similar artifacts?
Bruce Mowbray: There must be something going on - Renaissance, Impressionism, Art Nouveau, etc. etc. -- that determines the unique 'quality' of things happening during that period.
Bruce Mowbray: and that suggests to me our theme: synchronicity . . . although it's not quite the same thing, of course.
Qt Core: i would be interested if the two "makers" had no contact (direct or indirect) with each other
ShinjuJin Resident: fascinating to read about the silk road
Bruce Mowbray: good point, Qt.
Bruce Mowbray listens.
ShinjuJin Resident: so much left out of history, but small encounters likely began many unlikely trajectories
Bruce Mowbray nods.
Bruce Mowbray: in America we have the concept of 'frontier' --- the expansion of European civilization westward to the West Coast...
ShinjuJin Resident: we see vague traces of what was thought as important
Bruce Mowbray: Although there were tens of thousands of persons who made that journey, most of them had no contact with each other,
Bruce Mowbray: and yet they had a common experience.
ShinjuJin Resident: yes
ShinjuJin Resident: thanks for this session Bruce
Bruce Mowbray: and I also need to go.
Qt Core: bye shin
Bruce Mowbray: thank you both!
ShinjuJin Resident: and Qt, and Darren, and Nega, and Zen, and Riddle.... and...
Bruce Mowbray: My suspicion is that instant connection with anyone on the planet - made possible with our technology - may actually lead to a decline in our sensitivity to synchronicity.
Qt Core: don't know
ShinjuJin Resident: interesting idea
Bruce Mowbray: and thanks to the universe, too!
Qt Core: i get surprised about how alike we are
ShinjuJin Resident: :) :) :)
Bruce Mowbray: Yes! THANKS to everyone!
Qt Core: bye