Unexpected invitations are dancing lessons from the Divine.
Those words were inspired by Kurt Vonnegut’s phrase from his novel Cat’s Cradle:
Vonnegut’s original phrase was, “peculiar travel suggestions are dancing lessons from God.” Cat’s Cradle, pg. 50, Dell Publishing Co. Inc., 1974 paperback edition, Delacorte Press, A Seymour Lawrence book, 1963.
I found my own phrase more expansive and more inclusive and it became a part of the philosophy of life. I try to open myself up to those unexpected invitations – and take the chance to dance.
Have you danced lately?
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Comments: 13
Or aimlessly wandering through a book store and then just stopping suddenly at a book that I didn't quite see the title of and reaching out and discover it is fascinating and take it how and learn about new ideas and cultures I never even thought to be curious of.
Those are all examples of what I am calling 'unexpected invitations'.
dirct cause and effect is what science teaches us. As in hit the cue ball it hits the eight ball. Direct clear cause and effect. 'non-causal' was the term they choose to describe events that occured whose consequences having meaning to the human viewing it but the consequence was not the directed forces that caused the event - the outcomes is an unintended significance.
Hard to describe but Jung & Pauli used the term to define the word. Best go to read the essay that is the defining source of the word to understand it as clearly as they could explain it.
They did mean that a synchronistic event/outcome was a kind of 'accident'.
From Wikipedia:
Synchronicity is a word that Swiss psychologist Carl Jung used to describe the "temporally coincident occurrences of acausal events." Jung spoke of synchronicity as an "acausal connecting principle" (i.e. a pattern of connection that cannot be explained by direct causality). Cause-and-effect, in Jung's mind, seemed to have nothing to do with it. Jung introduced the concept in his 1952 paper Synchronicity — An Acausal Connecting Principle, though he had been considering the concept for almost thirty years.[1]
Put plainly, synchronicity is the experience of two or more occurrences (beyond coincidentally) in a manner that is logically meaningful- but inexplicable- to the person or persons experiencing them. Such events would also have to suggest an underlying pattern in order to satisfy the definition of synchronicity as developed by Jung.
It differs from mere coincidence in that synchronicity implies not just a happenstance, but an underlying pattern or dynamic that is being expressed through meaningful relationships or events.
It was a principle that Jung felt encompassed his concepts of archetypes and the collective unconscious [2], in that it was descriptive of a governing dynamic that underlay the whole of human experience and history — social, emotional, psychological, and spiritual.
Jung believed that many experiences perceived as coincidence were due not merely to chance, but instead, suggested the manifestation of parallel events or circumstances reflecting this governing dynamic. [3]
One of Jung's favourite quotes on Synchronicity was from Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll, in which the White Queen says to Alice: "It's a poor sort of memory that only works backwards". [4]
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I link my concept to Jung's syncronicity idea. Was Jung a atheist?
As for myself, though it is a matter of subjective faith - I am a deist, one who beleives in the Tao, to use the most accesible human name behind the concept.