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Do you believe in coincidence?

shady4091

shady4091

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I have a friend who says that she doesn't believe in coincidences at all. She thinks that every coincidence you experience was meant to be, or pre-determined. Now, this friend also believes in Karma. I tried to tell her that they were totally contradictory. That if you don't believe in coincidence and any actions you take are simply leading up to the next coincidence that you experience, then your whole life was now pre-determined. Karma can't function, at least not properly when you can't be held accountable for your own actions. If you had "bad karma", it wouldn't be your fault, it was meant to be.

But I started thinking, is it ever possible to not believe in coincidence or pre-determination? What exactly is a coincidence? And what if a coincidence presented itself, but you didn't notice it?

And what about karma? It's a pretty radical thought but what if every action you took had a direct action on someone else, somewhere in the world? If your life was determined by someone else and their life was determined by someone else and so on, where does the chain end, or begin?
 
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karma leaves room for new interpretations as-well.
;-)

coincidences to me are interesting areas to allow for moments of self-inventory, to be rationalized accepted and absorbed, then perceived created and shared.


perhaps we are all connected, maybe not each of us directly, but if we are all made of the same stuff then like elements, we each wont combine with something not of the same essence, like a pool of once scattered mercury, we become and are as always from and then drawn to the same element again.
something.
with our actions/reactions and karma, maybe not in an instant would someone be affected, but maybe 7 years from now, and if that is so then at that moment when the cause has been completed, the action is set forth into play, which then carries as a cause for further action, its pretty much inevitable.

ones dharma is what needs to be payed attention to if anything, there are the karmic keys that will open and allow for those coincidences to be fallowed until stopped - of-course being-led the wrong way and fooling yourself with wants etc. is a possibility...
 
shady4091 said:
It's a pretty radical thought but what if every action you took had a direct action on someone else, somewhere in the world? If your life was determined by someone else and their life was determined by someone else and so on, where does the chain end, or begin?
Click to expand...

In a very real sense, everything does affect everything else. However the vast majority of these affects are so miniscule as to be meaningless.

Consider that your body is in contact with air molecules, which are in contact with other people & things, which in turn are in contact with still more people & things, an so on ad infinitum. So in a way, you are connected to everything in the universe. If this is so, then it makes sense that every action affects the entire universe.

So what happens if certain microscopic actions have a cumulative effect which exceeds some threshold and causes change on the macroscopic world? Coincidence perhaps? And maybe there's a 'rebound effect' wherein your actions, or lack thereof, eventually make their way around the universe, attracting other forces, and return back to you? Karma? In either of these scenarios, free will is entirely necessary and things are basically indeterminate, yet there is a cause & effect relationship existing between everything.


Fascinating subject... but I have to get back to work now.:)
 
different people have different version of what karma and coincidence means

some person will have different version of what they means on different days...
 
Hey Panic, do you know that you avatar represents the symbol of Apartheid? :D It's nice though ;)

On topic: I believe coincidences do not exist. Be it karma or something else, I don't know. But one thing I know: there's no fortuity ;)
 
i totally believe in coincidence. given the enormous numbers at play in the multiverse, to me coincidence is simply inevitable.

alasdair
 
Yea i definitely don't believe in the fact that everything is predetermined, or set to happen, fate. To think that everything happens for a reason is absurd. In a religious sense, yes there might be a bigger picture where certain things might have happened or been forced- but the way i see it, is we were dropped here in this chaotic world, which from the beginning was made and left alone for us to choose, and it's up to us to make the right choices.
 
Karma could be equated to the scientific "cause and effect", but the actual dynamics of how it works.. I have no idea and I don't care to find out. We tend to forget in my opinion that we think about this idea from within a human perspective.. from outside the human frame it probably would have a completely different meaning. There is no right or wrong. So what could karma mean or be related to if not to our actions? Who knows.. but personally I do not buy the "you reap what you sow".. for this life or carrying on into the next.
 
I think the law of karma is misunderstood a lot, it refers more to a balace of the whole system...symbolized basically withyin/yang. "Bad" deeds comitted by an individual may/may not ever come back to bite them, what karma says is that this "bad" deed instantly triggers its oppostion elsewhere, at random apparently. So actually evertime someone fucks up, a positive reaction will be released to keep the stasis at equilibrium.


As for coincidense, there are no chances in this place. Every bit of information presented to us in life is, especially coincidence, deja vu, and spiritual vision, just a meaningful point/idea that may lead you to a person or insight that could produce the answer/path for you to get exactly what you need and want out this existince. if youre open to this and even come to the point of expectation, the numbers will grow dramatically providing a sketch of your life to live by...oddly u also are the author of said sketch, but thats for another time...
Hope
 
Do you believe in coincidence?

It's funny you should say that, I was just thinking the same thing.
 
alasdairm said:
^ what do you believe is the difference between coincidence and synchronicity?

alasdair
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Not to answer for him, but I believe that many, including myself, have opted for the word synchronicity over coincidence, as if to say "it's not just a coincidence", implying that the word, coincidence, is a lesser thing, when in fact they really are the same thing, just different forms of verbalizing. "Synchronicity" might seem more... elegant, or deep. Perhaps it's needed for descriptions, but at the same time, we must find as many roots as possible, I believe, to make sense. To keep making sense of things. Coincidence, to sound it out, Co-incident. If one event can be an "incident" in nature... such as a tree, or a dropping of a seed, or a sound; a "distinct piece of action" (which can be a human being, anything is action), to tack on "co" simply implies "together". Two incidents together. And what is not together in this reality? It's all how we want to, or choose to see it.
 
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alasdairm said:
^ what do you believe is the difference between coincidence and synchronicity?

alasdair
Click to expand...

A coincidence is something which happens, but is not predetermined (gotta watch the linear time condition on that one) unless it's been called a strange coincidence in which case the sayer believes in the possibility of determinism and/or fate. Whereas synchronicity is an occurrence which when speculated upon is without a doubt some part of a divine plan or something. I think I'm on the money there. And I've noticed the word synchronicity has been cropping up alot on the internet lately... Weird !!! :D

These enlightened folk (some anyway) are talking of taking note of synchronous events taking place in ones life and no longer viewing things as coincidence or 'just chance' so as to awaken to ones nicely grooved and fitted place in existence.

I like to believe in coincidence considering I'm extremely paranoid. I like to say 'Something like that was bound to happen sooner or later' or 'It's completely logical for such an event to occur'. However my mind often falls down the traps of 'That must mean something' and 'This can't just be a coincidence'. Anyway recently, especially since my late deep meditative experience in which I had no thought and realised (without thinking) that thoughts are afterall thoughts and only thoughts. Thoughts are useless unless they have practical application (need food, catch rabbit, make stew) and even then they are still only thoughts and are entirely illusory.

I do wonder if my mental suffering has meaning in the sense that I am meant to overcome it by permanently realising the nature of thought (awaken). So there is syncronicity within my thoughts, but the external events likely hold no meaning. Again, these are all only thoughts, which only exist in the mind and are not true!
 
^ thanks for the considered response.

it terms of definition, synchronous and coincident are effectively synonyms but i understand what you're saying about the subtly different ways people use them.

i go back to my original point. the other day, i was out walking with my gf and i was talking about an awesome sandwich i had from a place near my house called "the canteen". as i was talking, i looked up and 25 feet away, the guy who owns the place was walking up a side street. if i had been a minute earlier or later with my story, we'd likely have missed seeing him. what a coincidence, right?

if you believe in ideas like alternate realities, in another infinite number of realities, i told my sandwich story and the owner of the business did not walk into view. as i say, with the astronomically large numbers at play when considering existence, it's inevitable that amazing coincidences will happen. in a way, it's actually pretty mundane, isn't it?

alasdair
 
alasdairm said:
i go back to my original point. the other day, i was out walking with my gf and i was talking about an awesome sandwich i had from a place near my house called "the canteen". as i was talking, i looked up and 25 feet away, the guy who owns the place was walking up a side street. if i had been a minute earlier or later with my story, we'd likely have missed seeing him. what a coincidence, right?



alasdair
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Your example isn't too strange if the guy works in your area. That kind of thing you can easily shrug off as a funny chance coincidence. I know their must be some stranger coincidences which people have experienced and when a coincidence is strange enough, maybe even someone as level headed and logical as you could think it had some sort of higher meaning. As a paranoid presently living in reality (fingers crossed) sometimes I think events have meaning and other times I don't.
 
The difference between a pure coincidence and a synchronicity is that someone judged the synchronicity meaningful. Our brains are wired to seek out and/or create meaningful relationships between any subjects that we make our focus. I do believe in Jung's acausal connecting principle but I'm not sure how much of it resides in our psyche's and how much if any of it is an active force in the portion of reality that isn't coming from our mental processes. Definitely I do believe in some things being pure coincidences, for it not to be the case you'd have to have an acausal connecting force not just nudging the temporal world to make meaningful coincidences but also working to make sure random events never occur in a way that can appear meaningful, when they are not.
 
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